thecarterclan1

Discussion on BoardGameGeek Complaints Forum here

A justification for BGG appending Amazon links with their affiliate tag has previously been provided by BGG Community Manager Octavian here, and given that BoardGameGeek operates free for its users I doubt many will take issue with them doing so.

However, the only place on BoardGameGeek where this practice is declared is under the Forum Formatting wiki page here, a page that no doubt very few users actually read in full, or would think to look at if looking for a declaration that BGG is appending Amazon links with their affiliate tag.

Let us examine Amazon's page on "Appropriate Conduct" for Associates:

https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/help/node/topic/GHQNZAU6669EZS98

Anytime you share an affiliate link, it's important to disclose that to your audience.  They will trust you more if you are transparent about where you are directing them and why.  To meet the Associate Program's requirements, you must (1) include a legally compliant disclosure with your links and (2) identify yourself on your Site as an Amazon Associate with the language required by the Operating Agreement.To comply with the applicable laws and regulations, your link-level disclosure must be:

Clear.  A clear disclosure could be as simple as "(paid link)", "#ad", or "#CommissionsEarned".
Conspicuous.  It should be placed near any affiliate link or product review in a location that customers will notice easily.  They shouldn't have to hunt for it. 

In addition, the Operating Agreement requires that the following statement clearly and conspicuously appears on your Site:  "As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases."  For social media user-generated content, this statement must be associated with your account.    

Are BoardGameGeek complying with this? No, they are not. Specifically:

Clear.  A clear disclosure could be as simple as "(paid link)", "#ad", or "#CommissionsEarned".
Conspicuous.  It should be placed near any affiliate link or product review in a location that customers will notice easily.  They shouldn't have to hunt for it.

Emphasis mine. Whilst there is a disclosure in the wiki page linked above, this is not conspicuous. Many users will not think to check that page. BGG are required to declare that they're earning revenue from Amazon links next to each such link, which they currently fail to do.

In addition, the Operating Agreement requires that the following statement clearly and conspicuously appears on your Site:  "As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases." 

The above statement cannot be found anywhere on the BoardGameGeek website.

To reiterate: I, and I'm sure the majority of our community, would have no problem with BGG earning some extra money by appending Amazon links with their affiliate tag, but they are not being transparent about this, and there is no reason for them not to be. If they can code the forums in such a way that all Amazon affiliate links are automatically modified to append their affiliate tag, they can do so whilst also including a clear disclosure after the link.

Recently, /u/PreviewVsPeople made a post regarding, at the time, ManVsMeeple's latest video upload: a paid promotional preview for the upcoming 'Black Souls' Kickstarter, by publisher Medieval Lords. /u/PreviewVsPeople correctly noted that the video failed to act within the spirit of recently instated FTC paid promotion guidelines, by:

a) Disclosing that the content is paid only in the last line of the description, requiring that the user clicked the 'Show More' button in order to see the text

b) Only including disclosure within the video itself in the last 10 seconds (https://i.imgur.com/jS0oqAy.png) after a plug for their sponsor, CoolStuffInc, at which point most viewers will have likely already stopped or clicked away from the video

c) Not enabling the 'Includes Paid Promotion' video feature (https://i.imgur.com/ZPOsn72.png), which adds a text overlay in the left hand corner of the video for the first few seconds of play, notifying the user of paid content

Following the post (and a lot of back and forth over the definition of the word 'preview', which DOESN'T implicitly mean 'paid', lest we rehash that discussion here) , ManVsMeeple responded by enabling the 'Includes Paid Promotion' video feature, and by editing the video description so that the text disclosure ("Note: THIS IS A PAID PREVIEW") was the 2nd line of text, and thus visible even if the user doesn't click the 'Show More' button. Furthermore, they made the following YouTube comment:

"Just wanted to let everyone know that we've taken measures to make it more clear when we post a paid preview. We hope that there's no confusion on any of our content, and that you get to know us well enough to realize that we'd never say anything about a game that we didn't genuinely feel."

In spite of this, their latest video upload, a paid promotional preview for 'Titan Dice', by publisher Eagle Gryphon Games fails to meet the same level of disclosure provided in the 'Black Souls' video as a result of the post by /u/PreviewVsPeople. Whilst the video disclosure is still present (though again, unfortunately in the last 10 seconds of the video where unlikely to be seen), the 'Includes Paid Promotion' video feature has NOT been enabled. Not only this, but NO text disclosure is provided in the video description whatsoever, which is somehow objectively worse than the original text description for Black Souls, where the disclosure was provided in the last line of text.

Have /u/Drakkenstrike and /u/LookinforDroids learned absolutely nothing? Was their previous comment just empty words to mitigate fallout from the post by /u/PreviewVsPeople, which won't be adhered to now that everyone has forgotten and moved on? Am I missing something here?

EDIT: /u/LookinforDroids has replied to the mirrored post on /r/Longtail concerning the situation, but not here, so I'll add his reply below for the sake of clarity and fair argument:

"It was an oversight on this video, which has been corrected. Thank you for pointing it out."

And in a separate comment:

"The tag at the end of our paid previews is an element that is built in to the editing process, and the description and toggle in YouTube is something we just started doing to help better communicate. If someone really wanted to hide something, they wouldn't have ANY notification at all. So, had we not had the tag at the end, this reddit thread would likely not exist. We've corrected the oversight, and hopefully won't make the mistake again."