Vanderhoth writes:
"According to a story from the Washington Post, Microsoft is using gamer profiles to create targeted political ads. The article talks mostly about XBox Live, but other services like Skype and MSN will be included. The article also presents some interesting, to non-gamer, stats about the typical gamer that Microsoft was promoting at the CPAC. As an example, 40% of it's 25 million subscribers are actually married! who'd of thunk it?"
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Targeted Political Ads for Microsoft Products
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday March 18 2014, @08:13PM
From the article:
" The ads, which would appear on the Xbox Live dashboard and other Microsoft products,
Nope. Really, I have to pay Microsoft extra to shove ads in my face? Not even once.
" Those numbers are important, because they represent key demographics that are among the most contested in political races. Microsoft is particularly aggressive in selling its ability to reach women, Latinos and millennials; across the company's other platforms, such as MSN, Microsoft has developed consumer categories like 'Ciudad Strivers' and 'Nuevo Horizons' "
Wow. First of all, even as a self-loathing Mexican I found the names of those consumer categories to be extremely patronizing to a condescending degree. And, believe me, I'm no fan of Mexicans. But second of all, I'm having a hard time deciding if this was a brilliant new idea or a stale, retarded idea 8 years too late. For example, is this a tacit admission that the demographics are up for grabs because Obama pissed off enough people to scare them away from the Democrats? Or is is just pandering to people who traditionally vote Democrat (Hispanics have typically Republican values but vote Democrat for the handouts because they subscribe to a Mediterranean value system which is extended social welfare through the family)? Or is it just shitting up the user experience for more money? Nothing is a coincidence when money is involved.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by melikamp on Tuesday March 18 2014, @08:32PM
(Score: 1, Interesting) by robp on Tuesday March 18 2014, @08:18PM
This is certainly going to be interesting. I have a question for anyone who can answer, how obtrusive are ads on XBox Live? I'm a Sony and PC guy, so I haven't seen the Xbox 360 dashboard very much. As much as I want to hate this, if this gets a few more people to take an interest in civics, I think thats a good thing. Even if that "interest" is simply bitterness at having politics show up everywhere.
The article mentions this as well, but during the last election cycle, Obama took out ads within a bunch of games like Burnout Paradise. The pictures are pretty surreal.
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/obama-campaigns-i n-burnout-17-other-games/1100-6199379/ [gamespot.com]
(Score: -1) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @08:25PM
The article you mentioned suggests that Obama took out ads only in sports games(yes, racing is a sport), which cater to primarily to Blacks. Bad move indeed, for the Blacks have long memories and have wisened up to the Uncle Tom who is every bit as white as the house in which he lives.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by joekiser on Tuesday March 18 2014, @08:29PM
I assume they are very obtrusive if Microsoft summed you up the wrong way and delivers ads that aren't in line with your political views.
The World is Yours.
Former
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Kell on Tuesday March 18 2014, @11:06PM
If your political views are already in line with theirs, why do they need to advertise to you? As long as they don't alienate any one voter too much, they can count on them to hold the line, since people tie their political views to their own sense of identity, which changes only slowly and infrequently. If, on the other hand, they can target the fence-sitters, they have the most opportunity to affect change.
Scientists point out problems. Engineers fix them.
(Score: 5, Informative) by dry on Wednesday March 19 2014, @02:09AM
There are 2 strategies to winning an election. Besides the obvious one of trying to swing the fence sitters and indifferent. There is also getting your people out to vote and getting the opposition voters to stay home. Next election probably a lot of Democrats are going to feel jaded and still refuse to vote Republican and just won't vote, so the Democrats have to work to get their people out and the Republicans will work to get them to stay away from the polling stations. The opposite of course also happens though it all varies from election to election.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitari
(Score: 2, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday March 18 2014, @08:23PM
Is this really surprising to anyone? If a large internet ad company has your location info, they will target ads to you based on that. Facebook, Google, and many others already do this. Is the difference this is on XBox instead of Android?
Politicians love to target segments of potential voters with appropriate messaging. The postal mailing I may get will have things about supporting schools and traffic, the one sent to my parents may focus more on Social Security.
It's actually more surprising to get ads for small service companies far outside my area, which seem to be simply wasteful. Why would I use a web design company 500 miles away?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [dev.soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Angry Jesus on Tuesday March 18 2014, @11:08PM
This is waaay more precise [pbs.org] than that. This is about tailoring their lies^h^h^h^h^h ads for you based on the ~1000 different data-points that companies like BlueKai (now owned by One Real Asshole Called Larry Ellison) and Axciom have on you plus every tv show you've ever watched, every song you've ever listened to, every game you've played, even what you did in those games.
(Score: 2, Informative) by twitter on Wednesday March 19 2014, @12:43AM
Microsoft uses its services for political purposes, not just money, and that's why this is disturbing. ">Back in 2007 they censored TruthOut and convinced almost everyone but Google to do it at the same time [dev.soylentnews.org]. Microsoft has always been more of a political movement than a software company. Gates made an empire of lies [techrights.org] to serve himself.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Open4D on Wednesday March 19 2014, @09:38AM
Your hyperlink for this didn't work for me. I had a quick search myself and all I found were rebuttals: 1 [carlhutzler.com], 2 [sethf.com]. Seems that this 'Truth Out' site was being a bit spammy. On this Truth Out page [truth-out.org] I can see a link to "AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications [truthout.org]", but it gives a 404.
Your techrights.org link was interesting though.
(Score: -1) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @08:24PM
The verb's called thought.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @08:37PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Tuesday March 18 2014, @08:39PM
This is truly just hilarious.
What did people think they were going to get by continuing to pump money into Microsoft or Sony consoles?
It's like expecting the devils to not act like devils, although in this case, it seems the devils are retarded.
Personally, the first time I got an advertisement the box would have hit the wall at Mach 10. A political advertisement? No way man. C4 in a shaped charge. Let me see how far down I can push it into the ground.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by codepigeon on Tuesday March 18 2014, @11:13PM
I have xbox live. The ads on the dashboard appear in small boxes at the bottom of the screen....for now.
Personaly, I am sick of seeing ads everywhere and activly try to ignore them. I pay out the arse for cable tv and 50% of the programming is commercials, and then they use overlay ads during the show. Popups and autoplay videos on nearly every website...
I imagine the xbox, maybe ps too, will be overflowing with ads in the future. I am sick of ads everywhere.The only way to avoid them is to become a hermit it seems.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @09:52AM
I too was like you. I tired of the adverts. So much so I got tired of the 'free' stuff they sold along with them. I also got rid of as much paid stuff that had it in there. I made it clear in the surveys they give you when you stop. Not much I know but hey maybe if enough people do it... I am not paying 100+ dollars a month so you can try to sell me something.
If I owned an xbox and saw adverts like that would be about the same day I update my proxy server and block that. Even if I have to man in the middle it. Squid and varnish can handle it quite well.
Cable TV was commercial free at one point too :(
The only way to avoid them is to become a hermit it seems.
Its not *that* bad... At least not yet. What I found was the highest volume of adverts seem to come from entertainment sources. Take for example the 'news' stations. Look at how many adverts they have. They are little more than entertainment to help you pat yourself on the back to say you voted for the right guy.
Adblock and noscript nix 90% of the other stuff from the web. One of the main reasons I have not moved to chrome is its poor adblock and no script capabilities.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @03:45PM
Good luck pulling a MITM on an xbox ssl connection - how are you going to get your certs into it?
(Score: 3, Informative) by etherscythe on Thursday March 20 2014, @12:12PM
You may be interested in a Chrome plugin called NotScripts [google.com]
It is basically NoScript for Chrome. It does require you to manually edit a password into a file because of how Chrome works, but once done is quite effective.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Angry Jesus on Wednesday March 19 2014, @10:03AM
Piracy FTW! Nearly every tv show of any significant quality (which means very few reality shows) is available commercial-free, often free of logos and overlays too. And because it is illicit, none of the data-miners are willing to touch it for fear being of branded as pro-pirate and losing the cooperation of the licit channels, so nobody is recording your viewing habits either.
When peace-of-mind is outlawed, only pirates will have peace!
(Score: 4, Funny) by JeanCroix on Wednesday March 19 2014, @09:57AM
I think it would be more interesting to know what percentage are divorced.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by TK on Wednesday March 19 2014, @05:32PM
and how many of those are kids using Mom and Dad's credit card for their subscription?
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum