health insurance industry goes after in-game currency buyersFollow

Okay, if you don't play Mafia Wars, here's the deal. Often the best swag in the game is purchased with points called Godfather points. You can earn very few of these, or you can buy them, or you can do surveys, click-throughs, sign up for subscriptions and other offers in order to get them.

Turns out, the health insurance industry, in an effort to drum up opposition to healthcare reform, is now using this system to generate anti-healthcare reform letters to Senate. They really are scraping the bottom of every barrel, aren't they?

(Do yourself a favor and forward to about 2:00 to spare yourself Rachel Maddow's blathering as she attempts to explain the concept I covered in the first three sentences of this post.)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/34387500#34387500

Maddow said the AP was reporting on it, including the fact that there is some information to indicate some of the same shenanigans being perpetrated by the pro-reform faction, but yeah, I haven't seen any banner headlines to this effect anywhere.

1) I'm not hung up on it. Mostly I find it amusing. I've never done the click-through stuff myself, because these games are nothing more than a few clicks when I'm bored, but it's pretty much the way every "free" game on Facebook, and I'm assuming MySpace and other social-networking sites, makes their money, so it pretty much ain't no thang.

2) The issue here is that a) the process is deceptive to the end-user, who just wants their Godfather points and probably isn't paying attention to what they're clicking on because (I'm given to understand) the process of using these click-throughs is rather labyrinthine and God only knows where you'll end up and b) the result isn't just a petition signed, but an actual letter sent to Senators and Congressmen.

Since the anti-reform lobby has been trumpeting the MILLIONS of anti-reform letters that have been sent to Congress, I'd say it's pretty valid to question whether or not many of the people who sent those letters ever intended to send such a letter or whether they were duped into doing so, and also whether the person truly is anti-reform, or was just being bribed by in-game currency.

Edited, Dec 18th 2009 4:05pm by Ambrya

Maybe not Gbaji, but Varus or Thiefx would be outraged at the liberal conspiracy. Gbaji would sit back until page one was done, and then take up the slack once Varus or Thief started being sub-defaulted when they posted.