57 minutes ago, Ident said:

eah lets all get our pitch forks and prepare to boycott because the use of a company trying to gets its name out is just unheard of. While I dont support the use of bots, thats marketing and it has nothing to do with the product. In a free world based on Capitalism I take it as par for the course. 

The main Dev/Founder of SI got busted posting spam messages under the guise of a random user.  "THIS PROGRAM IS THE BEST!!!" posts are everywhere from random bots/paid promoters....there's one in this thread already.  A great addon would speak for itself and not need this kind of nonsense...

It looks very impressive.  The subscription model is not for me, but I’ll be interested to see how this all evolves.  Very nice to have this and BATC in the market.  I don’t really care if Asobo spends any additional resources on default ATC at this point.

5 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

From what I have seen of SI on Youtube, seems like I could ask my Amazon Echo, "Alexa what should I do now?" and get a similar answer, for free. 😉

request left heading 360 degrees.

Ok…, order placed for three hundred and sixty left dungarees 

Edited March 15, 20251 yr by jon b

2 hours ago, Flic1 said:

The main Dev/Founder of SI got busted posting spam messages under the guise of a random user.  "THIS PROGRAM IS THE BEST!!!" posts are everywhere from random bots/paid promoters....there's one in this thread already.  A great addon would speak for itself and not need this kind of nonsense...

Well, he's already botted the replies on FSElite, so it's not as if this behavior has been deterred in any way.

I'm sorry, but brands I see that bot their replies, I generally boycott, especially small brands like this. It's not very difficult or expensive (usually just time consuming) to market for a product like this without resorting to uncritical fake glaze posts to trick the userbase.

It's indicative of a lack of respect, he just doesn't think his customers are smart enough to notice. Up to all of you if you want to reward that behavior. It's not even remotely subtle.

 

3 hours ago, Flic1 said:

there's one in this thread already

The one with 96 posts? That 'bot' replied to a lot of different posts then before praising SI.

How, when and where was actually proven the SI developers use bots? I may have missed that...

12 minutes ago, Rimshot said:

How, when and where was actually proven the SI developers use bots? I may have missed that...

There's a reddit thread about it - included in the thread are plenty of screenshots where it becomes very clear.

It's also fairly common to use old accounts with history as "socks" since it's not as obvious that it's generated content. This is one of the goals of that Discord phishing scam everyone gets with the Steam giftcards - it's as much to get access to your account as it is to later repurpose it if needed. There are tens of thousands of Twitter accounts, for example, that have been compromised in this way. 

I work in GTM strategy and there is an AI play for promoting your work, but this is absolutely not it. Dude plays too much with the chatbots, he's gone native.

12 minutes ago, mspencer said:

There's a reddit thread about it

Thanks. Looks strange indeed, but I still do not see proof the SI developers are actually behind this. Actually, I don't care either. The product they make is quite good, that's all that matters to me.

3 minutes ago, Rimshot said:

Thanks. Looks strange indeed, but I still do not see proof the SI developers are actually behind this. Actually, I don't care either. The product they make is quite good, that's all that matters to me.

You have terrible morals then

the SI account on Reddit apparently confirmed it, but then deleted the post

Edited March 15, 20251 yr by Tuskin38

9 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

You have terrible morals then

Ok, thanks for your feedback. I'll remember that, lol. Bye now.

Edited March 15, 20251 yr by Rimshot

It's too bad the company does these things. Also not mentioned was the "Get the Word Out" promo where folks posted all over the place how great SI was to win prizes. There are a lot of reasons to not support the dev for sure.

Looking at the whole living world things, where multiplayer and AI traffic can all exist in this harmony is a fantastic idea. But right now there are only 300-odd people on SI worldwide.

Some like Chevrolet, some like Ford, some like Toyota, some like Honda, and so on.  To each his own.  However, there always seems to be a lot of hate posts here at Avsim and I don't get it.  If you don't like something, so be it, but it is not necessary to start a smear campaign.  No body is guiltless in this world.  Lot's of bs posted out here in interspace. It is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff a lot of the time.  If I don't like something, I avoid it, rather than trying to change everyone else's opinion.  Oh well, typical of human behavior these days. Off my soap box, now.  Ciao.

 

44 minutes ago, Rimshot said:

Thanks. Looks strange indeed, but I still do not see proof the SI developers are actually behind this. Actually, I don't care either. The product they make is quite good, that's all that matters to me.

Scammers make millions of dollars every day from people that trust them. 

4 hours ago, beechcaptain said:

Some like Chevrolet, some like Ford, some like Toyota, some like Honda, and so on.  To each his own.  However, there always seems to be a lot of hate posts here at Avsim and I don't get it.  If you don't like something, so be it, but it is not necessary to start a smear campaign.  No body is guiltless in this world.  Lot's of bs posted out here in interspace. It is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff a lot of the time.  If I don't like something, I avoid it, rather than trying to change everyone else's opinion.  Oh well, typical of human behavior these days. Off my soap box, now.  Ciao.

 

If Toyota employed an army of fake people to clog the few media channels I followed about cars, making dubious claims and offering zero nuance, just pure unadulterated propaganda - then no, I would not buy a Toyota. And I would strenuously encourage everyone who would listen to similarly not buy a Toyota. 

By the way - I'm not an extremist. All of this can be settled by the dev making a statement that they've done it with the past and they'll stop, and then, stopping it. I tried SI a few months ago and after it had no idea what I was talking about and then flew me into a mountain near Burbank, I didn't renew. There are product issues here, too, but the marketing stuff is a deal-breaker.

Edited March 16, 20251 yr by mspencer

 

1 hour ago, mspencer said:

If Toyota employed an army of fake people to clog the few media channels I followed about cars, making dubious claims and offering zero nuance, just pure unadulterated propaganda - then no, I would not buy a Toyota. And I would strenuously encourage everyone who would listen to similarly not buy a Toyota. 

Good thing SI folks aren’t doing that then.

I haven’t seen much in terms of pure propaganda here or on Reddit. And instead any discussion around SI gets brigaded by either people complaining about price or BATC comparisons. It’s a really interesting change for flight sims, and yet disappointing that it feels like you can’t have a reasonable discussion about it.

And yeah look I agree that their marketing comes off a bit strong. I’m not entirely happy about the more boasting side - but I chalk it up to Brian’s experience in the med tech space. That’s exactly how startups market themselves and personally while it does feel jarring in the flight sim world it doesn’t bother me too much.