The watchdogs of #GamerGate still remain vigilant, keeping an ethical eye on various outlets who have, in the past, committed various ethical breaches. Recently they discovered that Polygon had been breaching Federal Trade Commission guidelines with undisclosed affiliate links being used in articles without disclosure. After contacting Polygon and Vox Media’s advertising department about the discrepancy, they replied making it known that they will be looking into the issue.

A support representative from the advertising department replied via e-mail, stating…

“We are aware of the FTC requirements and committed to implementing clear disclosure practices on all our sites. We are in the final stages before launch.”

Previous to this response, the #GamerGate hubs on the chan boards and on Reddit had organized e-mail campaigns to the Federal Trade Commission. Kotaku In Action has a thread up about the campaign, which rallied users into action back on August 24th, 2017, following an article that was published here on One Angry Gamer about Polygon’s use of affiliate links without disclosure.

This has been an ongoing issue for various sites throughout years, and something that #GamerGate has been vigilant about since 2014. This is despite the fact that the media has widely labeled the group as a “harassment campaign”, despite the fact that there has never been any evidence that it was or still is.

Nevertheless, anonymous users from around the world have been regularly keeping tabs on the various sites known to commit ethical violations, all to ensure that they do not breach Federal Trade Commission standards. These same individuals have also even worked with the FTC by providing them with enough information so that the organization could use #GamerGate and Kotaku in Action material during their investigation into Gawker Media.

We’ll continue to keep you posted on any further updates regarding Polygon and their parent company, Vox Media, adding disclosures to their content.

(Main image courtesy of Kokosac)