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 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

You have stated multiple times that you have a vested interest in pushing the narrative that Funko isn't the bad guy but somehow I'm the one that's not arguing in good faith? Yeah, sure, whatever helps you sleep at night I guess.

Making a fraud claim to a DNS provider and hosting service is the nuclear option. Literally the only thing either of those providers can do is to effectively take the entire site down. They intentionally made a misleading fraud claim instead of a DMCA takedown notice so they could force it through quicker. And you've completely ignored the fact that they're relying on AI to identify these "offending" pages, and the fact that they threatened the owner's parent. The non-apology statement they made is just icing on the cake.

[–] homesnatch@lemm.ee 1 points 2 weeks ago

This is definitely a warning on AI use for decision-making.. BrandShield's AI identified and reported the issue using AI. Apparently IWantMyName also used an automated process to disable the site. Linode had a human in the mix and did the right thing.

Ultimately, this did more damage to the Funko brand, which is the opposite of what you want from a brand protection platform. I'd expect this to ripple through both BrandShield and Funko as to how they handle these cases and which platform they utilize.