How nVidia blacklists review sites: example Hardware Secrets

[ronnn]

you have just got older

 

[jvroig]

Back in the day people got too happy about accusing people of being shills.

Happens even today, I'd say. That's really the problem, and why admins really have no choice but to curb it with an iron fist lest it get out of control. Too bad the AEG thing ended up screwing otherwise legit members - although, that's not to say some of them could have used a little more tact and could have dealt with the AEG shills a little better.

I would be accused of being an nvidia shill about 3 times a day, and an ATI shill about 2 times a day... often accompanied by flaming.

Really, that I hadn't noticed. Perhaps your posting style back in the day was different, but these days (I'm rather new here) you strike me as level-headed. Perhaps that is why you haven't been flamed as a shill these days.

 

[ZimZum]

Oddly enough, it has been a very long time since anyone accused me of being a shill at all. months

Shill

There you go, droughts over .

 

[taltamir]

it is possible that my posting style has changed... but I think its more due to the exposure of the real shills and their banning.

Now that I think about it, I am just filtering it better... I looked back on some of my conversations from the last few days and I saw fanboy accusations, but I just paid them so little mind that when it came to making that post I forgot them.

Shill

There you go, droughts over .

ha, thanks. I feel better already

 

[jvroig]

Now, back on topic, after the dumping that Anand/Ryan gave the current Fermi chips, who here guesses they will be blacklisted in the next 6 months, if not already?

 

[SolMiester]

That's not how it happened, exactly. They (AEG, the marketing agency nVidia contracted) had employees/agents to register into several forums, and they were required to post many times everyday in each one of those forums - that was their job. Eventually and swiftly, they would garner much post count, and in the (not very accurate) estimation of "forum" people, they would become "credible" due to the post count (perhaps >1,000 posts). Then, when they have garnered some amount of trust or influence in the forums, they would then bombard the forums with nVidia talking points.

And likewise, it was not "fast detected". Until news broke out about the shady AEG tactics, these people were polluting the forums (here and elsewhere), and infuriating those who knew better about the tech. The shills even often managed to get legit members banned since they (shills) knew how to abuse the rules and were quite level-headed since it was a job to them, nothing really that evokes passion from them as it would from real enthusiasts. It was only until the news that admins (even here) finally banned the shills themselves, but before then it was mostly the members that got infuriated and baited into flame wars that got the ban stick.

I was not here myself, but that topic intrigued me a few months ago, and I read the reports on news sites, and reviewed old threads here before and after the AEG news broke out.

EDIT: jstorm01 beat me to it as I was typing this narrative

So, it wasnt nVidia marketing at all, but some 3rd party acting for them

 

[taltamir]

So, it wasnt nVidia marketing at all, but some 3rd party acting for them

if you PAY SOMEONE to do something on your behalf, saying "you did it" is not unheard of. In fact, legally speaking, there is no difference between doing something yourself, or paying someone to do it.

 

[JSt0rm]

So, it wasnt nVidia marketing at all, but some 3rd party acting for them

your point? Nvidia payed a viral marketing firm and they got viral marketing.

 

[jvroig]

So, it wasnt nVidia marketing at all, but some 3rd party acting for them

Absolutely. But what would a company like AEG gain by paying employees to shill nVidia products if they weren't hired by nVidia to accomplish such a goal?

EDIT: I type too slow. Taltamir and jstorm01 (again) beat me to it

 

[MagickMan]

Stealth marketing? I mean you can say lots of things, but I think the large sig rather gives that "secret" away

There are a few on this forum who are part of that but don't put it in their sig.

 

[soccerballtux]

Actually Apoppin got an angry phone call, and now nVidia is ignoring ABT just like they're ignoring Hardware Secrets.

Wow.

 

[soccerballtux]

I'm curious, would they have enough balls to do this to AnandTech or Tom's Hardware or Hexus as well? Or do they just blacklist what they think (correctly or incorrectly) as smaller fish?

The smaller fish can't ever become bigger fish if they're not telling the truth.
The small fish become big fish by serving the community and the community verifying that they're a reputable review site. They will never become a reputable review site if they fawn over nVidia all the time.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Actually Apoppin got an angry phone call, and now nVidia is ignoring ABT just like they're ignoring Hardware Secrets.

Wow I wonder what Keys thinks of this. Seriously I though those two were pretty good friends or something.

 

[soccerballtux]

Yeah, Anand's 4x0 review wasn't "glowing" and he did heap criticism on to the 470, but NV didn't blacklist him. Is it because he's the 1k pound gorilla and they're too cowardly to take him on? Which sites are so big that they're immune to Green's tactics? Anand, Tom, Ars?

yes basically, that's it.

 

[soccerballtux]

why is tom's so high? I like anandtechs content way better.

me too.

Might be because Tom's splits their reviews into 20-bajillion pages?

 

[soccerballtux]

Not sure if you lurked or had a different account back in the pre first ban Rollo days? I wondered why this guy always, I mean ALWAYS, found a positive spin for an Nvidia card in any 'which is better' type of thread. He is a compensated Nvidia employee but did not display that information. I don't know if AMD has tried this stuff too, but we know for sure Nvidia has.

*EDIT - http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2063999&highlight=

There is an example. It seems fairly obvious that soeone affiliated with Nvidia created an account and tried to promote Nvidia/downplay AMD. Seems kind of shady to me. Who knows if AMD does the same, but we canc clearly see Nvidia does this kind of thing.

AMD doesn't do the same because their marketing team isn't big enough to have smart enough people to come up with something like that and actually implement it.

 

[soccerballtux]

While that's suspecious, there's always the problem to distinguish Nvidia fanboys that act on their own, from really payed (or otherwise "favored") stealth marketers. Though I mean last time they did that, it was rather fast revealed wasn't it? After all they need to find those people somewhere, at best someone who's already lots of posts in some forums and I don't think that they could keep that secret.. though I assume it's not like they would learn from their old mistakes, so who knows?

Hard to say, but I think even if Nvidia has the appropriate history for that stuff we can't just throw suspiciouns around as if they were facts.

there would be more AMD fanboys if what you are saying were true.

 

[SolMiester]

your point? Nvidia payed a viral marketing firm and they got viral marketing.

Or nVidia was unaware of the process....

 

[3DVagabond]

Or nVidia was unaware of the process....

When you hire a marketing firm they clear everything with you before they run it.

 

[JSt0rm]

Or nVidia was unaware of the process....

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrright hahaha

 

[taltamir]

AMD doesn't do the same because their marketing team isn't big enough to have smart enough people to come up with something like that and actually implement it.

you made a mistake, this should be:

AMD doesn't do the same because their marketing team isn't big enough to have dumb enough people to come up with something like that and actually implement it.

 

[extra]

Actually Apoppin got an angry phone call, and now nVidia is ignoring ABT just like they're ignoring Hardware Secrets.

Wow are you saying that the ABT review upset nVidia? If so, Nvidia is nuts! I thought that it was the most positive review of the gtx465 I've read at any site so far! In fact it went out of it's way to even run a PhysX benchmark! It portrayed the card in a positive light and really talked about how well it overclocked and scaled!

I really like ABT because they always seem to hit things from a little different perspective...they portrayed the gtx465 in a more positive light than other sites did...heh

 

[Seero]

I found this amusing. I don't recall, or know any laws or implicit rules about the need of giving free stuffs to medias. Paparazzi are also reporters, but they technically have no respects because they don't respect those who they want to report. The same goes to reviewers. They still can report/review however they like, but at their own cost. If they selectively report/review stuffs, then they don't deserve to get those passes.

There is a big difference between reporting honestly and repeating what is going to generate hits. A fail reporter is one who somehow believed that they are the center of the industry and get to choose what to say. For example, reporting Ati cypress series without mentioning Dx11 support, stream, and eyefinity, or reporting Nvidia Fermi series without cuda, physX and 3D vision. It really isn't a surprise. What surprises me though is this particular site that got black listed don't have a clue of why and believe it isn't for a legit reason.

Nvidia : "Hey, you forgot to mention our physx and cuda."

HS : "Those are minor stuffs that are unimportant to average viewers. Oh by the way, we don't update, correct or change whatever we posted."

Nvidia put HS into black list.

HS : "You black list me? I am the biggest site of the world! You don't reply my mails? Oh I am so going to not review your stuffs."

Unreasonable? I don't think so.

 

[thescreensavers]

Easiest (but not exactly the most accurate) would be Alexa.com

EDIT: Added some cliffs: (Alexa has some refined rankings per country, I merely got the generic global traffic rankings; lower is better since this shows ranking)
Tom's: 1,222
Ars Technica: 1,877
AnandTech: 4,358
Hexus: 13,943
HardwareSecrets: 24,837

The guy at HS is editor in chief at Clube do Hardware, its at 5,324 world rank

 

[OCGuy]

Dude as soon as John Stossel retires, you should apply for his spot.