Unlisted videos being relisted on YouTube

After the blacklisting of WonderGamer.net & this blog from the Bing search engine (as well as all other search engines powered by Bing), it was determined it was time to set a number of the unlisted videos on my YouTube channel back to public (previously being set to unlisted in response to attacks by certain companies).  While the non-gaming videos still remain as unlisted on the channel (even after attacks from said companies), the video game videos have been relisted as public.  It's expected this will result in even more retaliation from those companies that have attacked the channel in the past, however they are likely already aware of articles I have published in the past of their attacks trying to cover up negative publicity of their products (or the companies themselves), I'm certain they will be well-aware that further articles will be published in the future if they continue this same type of anti-consumer censoring.

Bing cutoff, where it goes from here

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)...

Anti-consumer business review submitted to the BBB (again)

I decided to take the wipe of my site & blog from Bing a step further yesterday, this by submitting another anti-consumer business review to the BBB.  This is one of the same companies that has been after me since my original attempt to stream video games on YouTube in 2016 & has proven themselves capable & fully willing to take these types of actions (even attacking the blog due to the link to the site is the same method they used in the past, however they decided to abuse the report function on Bing rather than manipulating the report function here).

Not that it's going to matter in the case of Bing, but currently this blog is still public & can be found on other search engines that aren't powered by Bing, so for the time being this company is going to remain unnamed on this blog.  Those who have been following me since my PS3 streaming days is going to know EXACTLY who this company is (another channel on Twitch actually made me a moderator on their channel when we used to play that game together on PS3 while being streamed to Twitch), this same company is discussed in the boycott discussion video highlighted on my Twitch channel in that same year.  Additionally, I will point out that I noticed a Twitch rep in my channel for quite a while a little more than a week ago (there's a reason why I have a constant IRC link on my channel's chat, so I can monitor it's activity even when I'm not streaming or on Twitch, along with the other channels that have me down as a moderator in their channels), at the time I expected somebody had filed some kind of report against my channel, but I never really saw any action taken against it (as of yet, my channel still remains free of strikes, despite numerous attempts from individuals that have had a vendetta against me after publishing a video of their poor behavior).

While there is a fair chance that it may not be the company that I submitted the review on that caused the wipe in Bing (possibly being Epic Games instead, given I did give them a directly link to the boycott on my personal site in their support survey, which clearly had an unsatisfactory rating), history gives a high likelihood that it is the same company that has been after me since 2016 due to almost identical attack patterns & they already managed to get the last review submitted to the BBB about their company for such business tactics removed by what appears to be a move of address (despite the company page saying in business for 25 years), which apparently deleted the old business page that the previous review was submitted to.  So given the circumstances & the new development of a full wipe of my site from a specific search engine, it was time to get that review public again on the BBB (or an updated review giving additional details about the database wipe of my personal site from Bing, in addition to the previous details; unfortunately the review had to be cut short due to a 2000 character limit, but the full updated review that could not be submitted to the BBB due to character length (over 5000 characters) is on my personal site regardless, along with the old BBB review & the new one that was submitted yesterday, still awaiting acceptance (or rejection, if that company is able to manipulate the BBB into rejecting it).

One additional note, the review was submitted using an email address created under the domain for my personal site, so it's going to be blatantly clear which site was attacked that resulted in another negative review of their company being submitted to the BBB.

Site & blog de-indexed, expected retaliation from Epic Games

I became aware today that both my personal site & this blog had been de-indexed from some of the most known search engines, this includes Bing, Yahoo & DuckDuckGo.  In response to this, I've taken the time to post a new news entry on my personal site (on the home page) as well as will be blocking traffic from those search engines as traffic from those sites are noticed (while not expected there will be any traffic from those sites given they've done a full wipe of both this blog & my site from their databases, I suspect traffic from other sites where their pages have been cached is still possible).

While it's expected Epic Games is most likely the company that is responsible for this action (given they were the last company to have a boycott published against them after their changes with V-Bucks in Fortnite, locking them to the BR mode), there are other companies that are just as likely to be responsible for it based on their history of bad publicity cover-up (Bandai/Namco, Patreon, Pizza Hut, etc.).  In either case, because this happened only shortly after starting the Epic Games boycott, any expectations that I would have dropped the boycott against games that are developed using the Unreal Engine in a few years is now locked as that won't be happening, especially while this manipulation of legal methods & report functions to successfully allow cover-up of anti-consumer business practices continues to restrict search engine access to why those boycotts & reviews were published in the first place.

There are other search engines that still have my site listed in their databases (not so much the blog, but there are still results for the site, even if they are outdated or extremely lacking compared to what has been submitted to search engines for indexing).  For the time I will not be making any public recommendations as any public listing is expected to be the next attack from these companies to further succeed in their attacks to cover up the truth.

Ultimately this attack to fully wipe results for my personal site (this was already expected with the blog) puts a full lock on any boycotts that are currently in effect & any minor points that could have dropped off on their own over time won't be removed until either the boycott ends (meaning the company made the effort to correct the issue on their own) or I start seeing results for my personal site in search engines again (which is unlikely given they've already succeeded in their cover-up tactics).

In addition to their actions, I will be creating some auto-responses in my bot that will provide links to those boycotts when I happen to start on Twitch, meaning they will still get out one way or another.  I'll also be setting a timer that will occasionally give a link to my personal site, with details of search engines that have allowed this abuse to allow companies to succeeded in hiding truths about their companies (any attacks on the channel will result in further publications being made regarding further cover-up attacks to hide negative publicity about their companies, not that it's going to matter much when the most popular search engines have already blocked the site from their databases, but there are still some out there that haven't buckled to the aggressive cover-up tactics of anti-consumer companies).

In addition to this, I will be making it a point to block & ban these game & company pages from being able to access my channels on Twitch & YouTube.  The new commands will be triggered when their company names or games are mentioned in chat, which will provide a link to the pages detailing this information that they succeeded in hiding from the public.

---

UPDATE:  Bing has been contacted regarding this matter to ask why this has happened, using the Feedback function on their search results (the only functional contact function I could find on the site, the contact form for webmasters never finished loading).  In this attempted contact, I sent them the following (having to cut the attempt short due to a character limitation):

My personal site appears to have been wiped from Bing, Yahoo & DuckDuckGo.  I've already made an update about this on my blog (which is also wiped from these search engines), the site itself, my Facebook, my Twitch channel & created various commands in my Twitch bot to auto-respond to various terms of what was hidden from the public as a result of this wipe (expected to be aggressive retaliation to negative reviews displaying the poor behavior of anti-consumer companies), giving links to the site in those auto-replies.

At this point I'm simply trying to find out "Why?"  This wipe is expected to be a common discussion when I start to Twitch, how long it continues will be dependent on how long it takes to get this issue sorted out, I will just have to tell viewers "I getting ignored on my inquiry for a reason" until I am given a reason for this gross injustice.

Of course I don't really expect to get any response that is going to give any useful information in it, despite getting an email auto-response to the attempt fairly quickly (unsurprisingly, without any useful information):

The mention of this page is what leads to here (further details about this listed in the 5/26/2022 news update on the site).  As I mentioned in the contact attempt, this will probably be a common disussion when I'm streaming to Twitch (that is when I have the health to do so & have decided on something to stream, many of the games I used to stream now being restricted based on the terms of the boycott until the issue in Fortnite is resolved, which it's clear from Epic Games' response is unlikely to happen) until this matter is sorted out, however my research on the matter tells me I won't ever get a response about it & the issue will never be resolved on Bing or any other search engine that pulls results from Bing.

In the mean time, I've decided to remove the block of traffic from Google (previously blocked due to negating over 96% of the site from their site crawling, but this is still better than nothing).  Either way, I am going to have to recommend against any search engine that isn't listing the site, the recommendation of a search engine (already decided) will likely be made at a later date (probably a few months from now, stated later than sooner to slow down a repeat of whoever manipulated the reporting function on Bing to get the site wiped from it in the first place).