Regarding Boycotts
In response to the Bing blacklist of my personal site & this blog, it's been determined that I'll be placing ALL ACTIVE BOYCOTTS at the time of the attack in an elevated status. What does an "elevated status" mean? Well let's first go over why all active boycotts at the time of the attack are being affected, as opposed to a single one.
The problem here is it's not currently confirmed who was behind the attack. Based on the timing, it's expected Epic Games is behind it, however Bandai/Namco, Black Shell Games & a number of other gaming companies have a history in these types of cover-up attacks (while I personally haven't had an issue with Digital Homicide Studios, this is a prime example). Additionally, it could have just been Bing finding the Yahoo review regarding revocation of game licenses (given Microsoft now owns Yahoo; this was an old review back when Yahoo still had games for sale) and decided to take action themselves. There's a number of reviews & boycotts on the personal site that could have resulted in retaliation from any number of those individuals or companies and Bing just isn't giving a response to why it's happened (which isn't surprising, even their own search engine is flooded with search results of people inquiring why it happened to their own sites and Bing not giving them the decency of a response, which is the same thing that is happening here; seems giving support to webmasters under the Bing Analytics program is no longer an obligation when their sites are blacklisted from Microsoft's search engines). With no definate indication as to who is responsible (although there's plenty of speculation on who, especially since this blog got hit with the same actions at the same time), I just have to put the same elevation on ALL active boycotts at the time of the attack until it's resolved (which I'm certain won't be, as search results on this particular matter just has a bunch of webmasters asking questions, never getting a response & never getting a resolution), in addition to starting a new boycott against Microsoft...
Before I get into what the elevation details are, I'm going to point out why I do public boycotts. While most people will see it as an effort to get others to stop funds going into the company, this isn't entirely the case, but it does still ring some truth after looking at the purpose for publishing one to begin with. When I publish a negative review or boycott, I am looking for a change (typically a reversal of a decision that made me decide I personally was not going to be willing to put any more money into a company). This is a pressure tactic stating that if that company is not willing to change what made them lose customers, then those customers remain as lost customers & the negative publicity stays indefinitely. In most cases when I publish a boycott, it's a personal boycott, but the details of it are shared in case anybody else sees eye to eye with the reasoning behind it and chooses to be a part of it. Ultimately that change usually doesn't happen (some companies just have too much pride to care much about negative publicity against their companies or games, however then you have companies that will attempt to cover it up, attack the hosted source to penalize the publisher or seek other ways to retaliate against the author of said publication), but if it does ever get resolved, I'm always willing to drop the boycott & remove the publication (aside from some elements of negative reviews may still remain).
While I did state I would be willing to "drop the boycott", this statement tends to lose validity after retaliation that results in some form of penalization on another service (such as Bing, YouTube or some other site that isn't directly affiliated with the attacking individual/company, but that site still allowed the manipulation to happen regardless). This is where the elevation of the boycott comes in (and given it's not clear who is responsible, it's going to affect ALL that were active at the time until it's been cleared up who is responsible). As far as what the elevation means, it differs depending on the boycott, but ultimately the terms are still very similar:
- One of the biggest aspects could be that even if the issue that resulted in a boycott being published, the boycott still won't end (however certain minor points may still drop off over time or immediately after it's resolution, just not the major points, meaning the company that an article is being written about).
- Of course when there is retaliation that bleeds the issue over into other websites, this is a prime example of when the boycott really doesn't have any chance of being ended, even if the original issue that resulted in a publication does ever get resolved...
- In particular, the retaliation by Bandai/Namco that affected my YouTube channel is a prime example of why that particular boycott will likely never end.
- Any consideration of dropping certain minor points over time are locked, meaning the only way those points could be dropped would be if the issue that resulted in it's publication were to be resolved & that comes at the expense of the major points still remaining in effect even after being resolved (at least until it's determined where the attack came from, which it's clear Bing is keeping their mouths shut on the matter).
- Additional points may also be added over time (which technically could happen anyways before an issue is resolved, but more to be expected to happen as I'm likely to be researching information relevant to the original issue, that may result in more points being added as more information is found online), which only results in further expansion of the original boycott & more companies being affected over lack of effort from the company to even attempt resolving the original issue.
Regarding Search Engines
Changing the path of this publication for a bit, I'm going to discuss what happens when search engines decide to negate search results or just completely wipe results for a site entirely.
I've personally tried using other search engines before, particularly when I found that Google was negative over 96% of the site from their one spider (a search engine indexing bot), later finding out that anything that really remains in Google are pages I typically haven't even added to my robots sitemap (a way of specifying what pages are supposed to be crawled & indexed by spiders). On a number of these other lesser known search engines, I've noticed that if they aren't cleaned of results occasionally, they tend to be a MASSIVE maze of irrelevant articles that don't get you closer to what you are searching for. While I do understand the purpose behind trying to keep a search engine accurate (which appears to be one of the things that Bing claims when a site gets hit with this type of crap), there is a line that you don't cross if you want the search engine to remain dependable. De-indexing of specific pages I can understand, but doing a full blacklist of a site only pushes search engines in the other direction, by taking things too far. Full website blacklists reverse the effort to make their search engines accurate by negating information that could still be accurate towards a specific topic and individuals that are aware of it on search engines they use should consider whether that search engine really is the best option for them to be using (this is one of the reasons I've looked at other search engines in the past, however I find many of them either don't have the results I'm looking for or the relevant information I'm looking for is in a mess of irrelevant articles that take you ages to sift through).
From another viewpoint, what happens when a user of a search engine is aware of sites that are being negated from it (particularly sites that they may actually go to)? Users who are aware that a search engine is hiding sites from their users usually start looking for other search engines to use (as I have done in the past, going through the same problems of looking for accurate results & not having to sift through too much clutter). Unfortunately many search engines that can't see from the perspective of their users end up losing their users to another search engine (one that proves it's capability over the former). Luckily, I never really had much interest in Bing (I was primarily a Yahoo search engine user before switching to Google), I only started using Bing more often when it looked like I was having better luck with search results, which became a full cutoff & easy switch (not really spending enough time on Bing to get hooked to it) when I realized that they had purged all search results for my site & this blog; additionally, I closed my Bing Analytics account immediately when I realized this had happened (and realizing that this had actually happened roughly a month prior to my noticing it according to those readings).
I still can't claim that Google is any more dependable, finding that results for my personal site barely even fills a full four pages anymore (and most of those search results are on pages or evidence files that were never submitted to search engines & are not listed in robots). Aside from the site, I've found that even new publications to this blog are also not getting indexed on Google (at least the blog follows the "mobile-first" standard they have set that negates most of the site, but it's still getting pages ignored regardless). It should be no surprise that I occasionally look at other search engines to see if there is one that is going to work better than the ones I've been using (and isn't doing widespread negations of my own content like Bing & Google are doing).
What Happens Now?
The cutoff by Bing made it clear
that I could no longer trust Microsoft (not limiting this realization to just
Bing), so as stated earlier, I started a personal boycott again Microsoft (as
of yet, these details still aren't public, at least not on my site where I usually publish them, but it's expected to be published
to my personal site when I have time to write the entirety of the article). As
with most boycotts, I determined that I wasn't going to be putting any more
money into their company. Perhaps the hardest part of that is the fact
that I won't be willing to upgrade my OS beyond what I currently have (at least
not if it was going to take money out of my wallet & put it into their pocket), in addition to the fact I'll
have to find other software suites for word processor & spreadsheet tasks.
I've already been putting the Ignore on anything on Steam with an OS requirement over Windows 7 (over 800
games prior to these actions by Bing, now over 1000, an exact count being displayed on my Steam profile), but I decided I would need to start
adding any games that are either published/developed by Microsoft or XBOX as
well (even if my system is capable of running it). The ignore on the
games that were added as a result of OS over what I currently have was
eventually going to be removed and those games looked at again after I had installed an OS capable of running them, however with these actions making it
unlikely I will EVER be going over Windows 7, those ignores are pretty much
permanent at this point...
In addition, I ended up finding out
that Minecraft was apparently acquired from Mojang in 2014 for 2.5 billion
dollars, which was a bit of a downer for me... I did have an account for
Minecraft at one point and it seems this was around the time that I lost access
to my account (believed to be an account theft, however never confirmed as
such). There was a consideration of purchasing a new key so I could
access the game on PC again, however after realizing that Microsoft was now the
owner of the game, it was determined that purchasing the game on PC again was
NOT an option, I'll just have to stick to playing it solo on the used Switch I
got recently (despite really HATING playing first-person games on console
systems without proper keyboard/mouse support).
In regards to console systems, I
was actually considering my next console system purchase would be an XBOX
system (driven by all the cutoffs on the PlayStation 3 over the past few
years, mainly on their site & their mobile apps). Unfortunately after the actions of Bing and my recent decision I
could no longer trust Microsoft, I am now considering going back to Nintendo
systems if I were to buy a new console system (leaving them after the release
of N64, when I switched to PlayStation under the belief that
backward-compatibility would still be important to them); even if XBOX is still
keeping backward-compatibility as an important function, I can't see any value
in putting money into a company that has made it a point to show me I can no
longer trust them.
UPDATE: At this point my new console system is in fact a Nintendo Switch. Additionally, with the upcoming OS cutoff with Steam, money that would have been spent on Steam is now going into purchases for the Nintendo Switch.
Then there's the case of their apps
on the Google Play store. I spent several hours that same night after I
realized they had purged my site & blog from Bing just removing (or
changing) 2-step authentication over 6 different accounts (1 Hotmail, 1 Skype,
1 XBOX/GFWL & 3 Yahoo accounts) so I could remove the rest of the
Microsoft/Yahoo accounts from my mobile devices (which included the Microsoft
Authenticator, Xbox, Skype, Yahoo Mail & Microsoft Outlook apps). In
addition to not using Skype on my phone anymore, I'm also considering removing
Skype from my PC & fully closing the account that was used with it (still
can't remember if I have anything else under that account, but I will be
closing it if I determine that's all it was used for), refusing to touch Skype
in the future (even if others are suggesting I make a new account for it).
UPDATE: Note that a few nights ago I got a suspicious activity alert of somebody pulling my Hotmail account emails over a mail client transfer protocol. I was able to kick them back out after a few pulls by changing my password & de-authorizing all devices that were previously connected to it (having to re-authorize all my own devices again) & filed a claim that the access was in fact not authorized. When I traced the IP address of the individual that had compromised my Hotmail account, guess who it traced back to? It was none other than Microsoft themselves that was pulling my email through a mail client transfer protocol. As if it wasn't bad enough they already lost the trust of a former customer, they had to give me further fuel to throw on this fire of negative publications against them...
Additionally,
I stated that there were elevations on existing boycotts that were active at
the time of the attack that resulted in Bing wiping my site & blog from
their search engine. One in particular is the Epic Games boycott, which I
had already discussed with another Twitch streamer (not spending much time on Twitch
because the Epic Games boycott extended to so many other games developed using
the Unreal Engine, not really even going to the site much on a whole), their
statement was that I should consider dropping the point that restricted
supporting streams of or buying of games that were developed with the Unreal
Engine. My response to him was that I might consider dropping it in the
future, be we could be looking at as long as 3 years before I would even
consider it.
Given
Epic Games is one company that is expected to be responsible for the actions of
Bing (among a few others that have proven themselves capable of this type of
manipulation), the elevation here is the lock I said prior; the consideration
of purchasing games in the future & dropping that point just won't be
happening, not while the 4+ years of my life collecting V-Bucks in StW are
still locked behind the BR mode. Only after that issue is resolved (and
only if I'm made aware of the change, as I don't even have Fortnite installed
anymore, after being rejected twice of my request to convert 37,100 V-Bucks to
X-Ray Tickets), will there even be the consideration of purchasing games that
use the Unreal Engine again. As for whether I'll ever purchase a game developed/published
by Epic Games (or ANYTHING on their platform) again, I'll first have to
determine who was behind that attacks on Bing (and make certain it wasn't Epic
Games, or Bing will have to start indexing my site again).
When
you get right down to it, I haven't even started up the Epic Games launcher is
over 3 months, that's the affect that locking the V-Bucks I had collected over
the past 4+ years in StW had on me, even putting nearly a full halt on my
interest in Dauntless, which I was playing pretty heavily prior to Epic Games
locking V-Bucks behind the BR mode. So this change didn't really just
affect my stance/interest towards Fortnite, it pretty well killed my interest
on any game I had on the Epic Games platform (specifically those that were
exclusive to it)...
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