A few days ago I shared the strange discovery my friend Prince Watercress made in that a game walkthrough / let’s play sharing site known as “GameAnyone” apparently has a tactic of making “fake” accounts for various content creators, auto publishing content they create or share to the platform without that content creators consent.
Note: This article was updated after publication with additional information to be found at the end of the page.
What’s worse, the way the site works means a video can only be shared to the site by one person at a time, meaning persona A makes a video, but person B shares it and game anyone picks up on that, then person A cannot share that video on GameAnyone. This is what happened and actually alerted Watercress to the fact that he had a phantom account on the site!
Confusing? Maybe. It may be easier to explain, but to make a long story short I see this as a tactic to force people to sign up for the site, thus making their member counts look larger than they really should be.
When this was discovered, Watercress immediately sent an email inquiring about the service and the account, but he never heard anything back from the site admins.
Thus, the only update I can provide on the site is that Watercress has decided he may as well “take over” the account, via a link provided on the page, and go through the process of deleting the content on there, including the shares of videos produced by another content creator he follows, so that the issue of having the phantom account there becomes moot, and so that the other person can share their videos there as they intended to. Update: He has sent another message and is giving them more time to respond, see the end of the article.
Needless to say, this isn’t the course of action he wanted to take, but it is what it is. If it solves the problem then so be it, but it doesn’t change how scummy this entire process seems to me.
It’s basically an opt-out setup – you’re put on the site against your will and you have to sign up to have any control, up to and including deletion, which may or may not even be an option! I don’t know, but I can say this much – Watercress will be filling me in on all the details once he’s on which I’ll be relaying here for whatever use it is to people going forward.
One last additional note, while GameAnyone looks to have a social media presence, it doesn’t seem to exist much in any form that’s managed, so not even there can they really be contacted – it’s like the site exists but at the same time doesn’t.
I want to know what the deal is behind this account generation process – why the say they do it, how they go about it, and whatever else they may wish to say on it. I’m quite curious how they would defend this tactic, because I can’t see it as anything other than a way to passively force people to sign up for the site
I want to know what the deal is behind this account generation process – why the say they do it, how they go about it, and whatever else they may wish to say on it. I’m quite curious how they would defend this tactic, because I can’t see it as anything other than a way to passively force people to sign up for the site
UPDATE: Watercress sent another email, at my suggestion, and is giving them another “5-7 days” to respond.
I did not make this account and I want the account removed. I want this account removed because one of somebody else’s videos – which I shared on Twitter – ended up on this page, and the author of said video cannot put it on their own page. I am aware of the “This account was generated by someone” message, but I should not have to opt out of having a page that was created under my nose and without my knowledge, and I should not have to take the account over myself just to remedy this
Needless to say, I’ll let everyone know how this turns out.