Gaming community,
As you are no doubt aware, allegations have been made that Microsoft and/or PR firms associated with it are participating in efforts to manipulate the content and voting on /r/gaming in order to spin XBox One announcements and information to their advantage. We as curators of this community take such allegations very seriously, and have completed an investigation.
Yesterday, one individual posted to /r/gaming, claiming to work for a digital marketing firm, and alleged that during a visit to Microsoft's Redmond campus, she overheard Microsoft employees discussing content they had posted on behalf of their employer to "pics and gaming," and that she witnessed one of these employees mass-downvoting reddit content.
This provoked a HUGE thread that quickly spiraled out of control, with people digging through other redditors' submission history and then fingering them publicly as a "Microsoft Shill," encouraging everyone else in the thread to engage in mass-downvoting of all these people. At this time, we were forced to step in and end the thread, as this kind of behavior violates the Rules of Reddit regarding vote manipulation. Further, some people had become so angry at the allegations of corporate interference that personal information (dox) of people accused of having any affiliation with Microsoftproof or notwas getting posted.
At this time, I made a statement regarding what is allowed (discussion for or against the XBox One) and what is not (vote manipulation and posting of personal information). That statement remains in effect. In it, I promised that I would share any results of our investigation with the community, and I would like to do so now.
In the original post that set off the entire firestorm, no proof whatsoever was posted that the submitter worked for any marketing firm or had been to any Microsoft office (pun not intended). It was literally one giant wall of text with National Enquirer-style allegations, and not one iota of supporting evidence.
In the comments on that post, several people chimed in with similar stories. One individual claimed to work for Waggener Edstrom, whose client list does include Microsoft, and alleged that this PR firm was "really trying to ramp up their presence on blog sites and Reddit in particular."
I have since communicated with Peter Wootton, Senior Vice President for Waggener Edstrom, who reviewed his firm's employee and contractor records and found no trace of the individual in (2) ever having worked for or with them, and as such that individual would have no knowledge of any of the operations of that firm. I reviewed the data he sent me and found it compelling enough to assert that it is true and correct.
I asked Mr. Wootton the following questions, on the record:
Is your firm now, or has it been in the past, engaged in using paid or unpaid staff, contractors, volunteers, or associates to post, comment, and/or vote on content for or on behalf of any company, firm, or organization in the /r/Gaming section of reddit.com? Has your firm ever advised or suggested to any other company, firm, or organization that it should use its own paid or unpaid staff, contractors, volunteers, or associates to post, comment, and/or vote on content in the /r/Gaming section of reddit.com?
His response appears below:
Totally fair question, Dan. The answer is no. Waggener Edstrom adheres to a strict code of ethics and conduct in terms of how we participate in social forums and services as individuals, and on behalf of the clients we counsel and represent.
Mr. Wootton has agreed to participate in this thread and answer questions you might have about his firm and their relationship with Microsoft. His username is /u/petewootton. I know many people will have an initial instinct to distrust and downvote, but in my interaction with him over the last 24 hours I do not feel he has misled me, and I do not believe he is trying to mislead you either. He, after all, has provided proof of who he is and what he does, something the original poster making the allegations completely failed to do.
Let's reiterate that last bit there. The original allegations that Microsoft was engaged in manipulating this community did not come with any proof and the person who chimed in to back up those allegations (see point #2 in this list) has been proven false.
Let's also look at it from a pragmatic standpoint. If Microsoft was trying to manipulate /r/gaming, they're certainly not doing it effectively. Ever since the XBox One was revealed, the commentary on it in this community has been universally negative. Our entire front page, for the last 24 hours, has consisted entirely of memes making fun of Microsoft and the XBox One.
When you add all this up, what do we get? 36. Also, the inevitable conclusion: /r/gaming, we have been trolled. A zero-day account showed up with a lot of claims and no proof, but knew all the right things to say to rile up the community in their revulsion for both the XBox One and corporate interference in our free community. The post was explicitly designed to trigger rage at heavy-handed and Orwellian tactics, and it did exactly that.
Unfortunately, as is often the case with such crowdsourced rage, innocent bystanders got caught in the crossfire and were subjected to abuse and harassment that they'd done nothing to deserve. Just because they had said something niceor even neutralabout Microsoft or its latest console, they found themselves at the receiving end of dox dumps, threatening PMs, and crowds of downvote brigades annihilating their user account all over reddit.
Friends, we can do better than that. We're a big community, and it shouldn't be so easy for someone to register a new account, type a couple paragraphs, and get a three-million-strong pitchfork mob going for funsies and lulz. When someone comes along with claims like that, we should take a cue from /r/IAmA ask for proof. Demand proof. If we had done that in the beginning, we'd have quickly found out the whole thing was a fake, and saved this community from the last day full of headache and front page shenanigans.
In the end, no, we're not being manipulated by Microsoft. We were manipulated by something much less impressive: one person with no proof and another with a lie. I hope they got the cheap laughs they were after, because we sure as shyt delivered one hell of a show.
We can do better than that. We owe it to ourselves to do better than that. I hope, going forward, we do.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Since when do PR Firms employees willingly admit to astroturfing?