I could go with this if they actually apologized and fired BrandShield. They did neither of those things, so have demonstrated their full endorsement of BrandShield’s fraudulent behavior.
Comment on Funko gets community noted
homesnatch@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Some people are looking past the partner or putting “partner” in quotes.
Funko doesn’t handle these takedown requests, they hired BrandShield for this. BrandShield definitely went overboard and their reputation is at risk.
I’ve shopped around for brand protection in the past when scammers registered a domain name with my company’s name in it, and used it to do fake job offers. We got the domain suspended by contacting the registrar, but we didn’t know about it until it was reported to us.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
homesnatch@lemm.ee 1 week ago
They blamed the service provider… BrandShield called for removal of the page, not the whole site.
madasi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Brandshield sent a fraud report to the domain registrar. Unless they are also your hosting provider, a domain registrar has no control over individual pages, only over the domain as a whole. So this was the only action you could expect to be taken, if you expected the domain registrar to act, and you sent them a fraud report hoping they’d act. So claiming they only tried to take an individual page down is disingenuous at best, and more likely just an out and out lie.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 1 week ago
The factory didn’t beat up the strikers. The Pinkertons did it. Don’t hate the factory owner who hired them to beat up the striking workers.
uis@lemm.ee 1 week ago
They were hired specifically to go overboard and risk reputation. To shield brand from reputational damage of scorching internet. It’s even in their name.
Tsar is good, blame the boyars.
ms_lane@lemmy.world 1 week ago
No, Funko’s reputation is at risk, as it should be.
Other companies should look at the situation and cease using BrandShield, but from a consumer standpoint, the blame falls squarely on Funko.
my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 1 week ago
If you hire a hitman you’re still on the hook for murder. Making someone else do your dirty work does not absolve you. Especially when you’re a corporation and literally everything you do is through people you pay.
homesnatch@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Terrible analogy…
Brand protection is something that a lot of companies care about and many use third parties to handle it.
A much better analogy is if you were to hire security guards to protect your person and property and an overzealous guard kills someone. That happens often enough, we know the guard is on the hook, but the boss is rarely charged unless he was micro-managing it.
my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 1 week ago
You disagreeing does not make it a bad analogy.
If you hire someone to do a job and the process of doing that job results in someone being killed then yes, you absolutely are to blame, but that’s not what happened here. They didn’t hire someone to protect themselves, they contracted an AI company to delete anything which could paint them in a bad light then made claims of fraud through nonstandard channels to force their way through red tape then threatened parents of their victim when they were called out.
homesnatch@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Wow, way to spin… I’m currently looking at Brand protection for my company but have crossed BrandShield off the list… Companies hire third parties to handle brand protection because it doesn’t make sense to staff internally.
Funko and other companies don’t want their brand used without their permission.
This wasn’t necessarily showing them in a bad light, it was a fan page, but it appeared like it was an official Funko entity, imitating the Funko Fusion Dev site.
The issue was reported to both Linode and the name provider. Itch took down the page. Linode contacted Itch and closed the case after the response. The name provider ignored Itch’s response and went nuclear… Funko contacted the name provider to clarify and get itch back online.
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
They did it on Funko Pop’s behalf, at their direction.
It’s perfectly fine to also blame the partner, but Funko Pop ultimately bears 100% of the responsibility for the actions they instigated.
gsfraley@lemmy.world 1 week ago
This, and further exacerbated by this post where they take no accountability.