Microsoft wants to use Xbox Dashboard for political messages? Ugh.

[binary solo]

Soundwave said:

Lets just keep political ads out period. Sigh, in some ways the days of the ol' Super NES/Genesis were a lot better.

I do respect the work MS has done as a *company* and Bill Gates in particular through philanthrophy, but the game division? Not so much. 

Don't kid yourself. If MS as a company and the Gates foundation were to spend $4 billion combined per year on various philanthropic ventures that would represent only 30% of New Zealand's Public Health budget, and if you consider all forms of social spending it's probably less than 10%. And this is for a country with just 4 million people.

The Gates foundation has total freedom as it is a NPO. But the laws and expectations around spending by a public corporation requires philanthropy carried out by MS to show some sort of return for shareholders. So it's much more constrained and ultimately must contribute to the company's bottom line, and as such would be put under the marketing / advertising / PR, i.e. the primary motivation is self promotion. Problem with that is if/when a particular initiative no longer serves the self promotion purpose it gets cut. The motivation for philanthropy needs to be outward looking and focussed on the people who are the recipients of the benfits not the how the benefactors will benefit.

US govt non-military foreign aid is about $31 billion per year, and EU's is $72 billion. Social spending by governments globally makes that $4 billion chump change, and effectively just feel good and PR spending. That $4 billion is put to good use, most definitely, and with fewer political strings attached (like conservatives not wanting US aid money spend on sexual and reproductive health) it can be more effectively spent. But it's still a tiny amout of money and it would be useless if not combined with both internal government social spending and foreign aid.

As to the topic, advertising in general for non-console related stuff is shitty. When I spend as much as I do I expect to not be exposed to overt advertising for fast food, consumer goods or political campaigns.