Is There a Practical Way to "Code Out" AdFarms?

I am not stopping anyone from raising any issue, if that is what you are implying. I'm simply answering Har's comment with my own. Feel free to raise any issue you see fit. And if my world view doesn't mesh with your's you are free to mute me. I am not sure what makes you think I don't care. I care a lot. I just don't agree making builds vanish would solve anything, and I have a right to my viewpoint, even if *you* don't seem to think I do. You are in fact acting exactly as you just described.

Godwined on page two. That's close to a record.

Yeah, serioously. What's wrong with empowering each individual to mute or ban or whatever you want to call removing from one's client view, rahter than forcing one faction's view on everyone else.

I'll embrace the former, reject the latter, and go elsewhere on the Web if the latter wins. Which I think it will not.

Har, I respect what you have to say because its usually reasoned and intelligent.

However, I just don't understand where you're coming from here. You're saying it would be a bad thing for individual parcel owners to be able to control what their visitors can see on their own land? We're not talking about wherever they go - we're talking about allowing landowners to better control their visitor's visual experience.

Anotherwords: If Carl would like to make it so folks visiting NCI don't see the 40-meter Penis next door while they're on NCI property.... that's a *bad* thing?

You realize, that *right now* we can block chat from entering our parcels from specific avatars. How will it be the end of the world if similar functionality is extended to object rendering?

I mean, by the same logic - its 'unfair' that Landowners can control the parcel stream their visitors can listen to when on their own land. This argument just doesn't make sense to me.

Travis, you are trying to put words in my mouth arguing the exact opposite of what I am arguing. I am FOR individual empowerment - and by extension, Your land, your rules. I am against universal bans to enforce any faction's views.

That sort of distortion won't work. Hey, it doesn't even work in the primary races! Why would you think it would work here?

As for Godwined on page two - I just didn't figure out a good way to Godwin it at the first word or two. Sorry. I mean, at bottom, it is the same fascist mentality at work, whatever it calls itself, so why shouldn't I call a spade a spade - or Godwin a Godwin?

I misunderstood your position as well. Ok, I get it now. lol

--Hugsy

Will you be offended when private sims feed their windlight settings to visitors so they can see whatever's there in the environment it was designed for? Changing what's visible from your property isn't any different than that. If such a feature were implemented there could simply be a preference to override the parcel settings if you prefer, just as you can opt to listen to a parcel stream or not. I've never been much bothered by things next to my land, even if they weren't aesthetically pleasing to me, and I like when land owners work cooperatively to make nice cohesive areas, but I see nothing fascist about giving people more control over the experience they want people to have on their land, especially if people can opt for their own settings instead. I'd like it if we could set other people's draw distance as well.

<short OT response>

That might have the effect of crashing some folks' video cards. When on my laptop I habitually use 64m, if I spend any more than a short time at longer distances it will crash, possibly bluescreen. Since I travel often, the laptop is a necessity at times.

Good point. I was thinking of lowering it and not raising it so that didn't occur to me.

<--- needs coffee

A solution would be for LL to be smart about allowing land owners to set setting on visitor's clients. I say give land owners the ability to *attempt* to set settings on visitor's clients. Then, give us checkboxes that allow/deny land owner overrides perhaps on a category by category basis (e.g., allow music (already there I think), allow windlight, deny draw distance, etc...)

--Hugsy

Hrm.... I'm truly not trying to put words in your mouth. But where in this thread has anyone suggested universal bans on a specific user's content? I don't see that concept being brought up before you mentioned it.

Perhaps we're both arguing for the same thing, and I'm just confused? Or is it possible you misunderstood what was originally being suggested?

For what its worth:

Someone (other than Linden) being able to decide for everyone else in Second Life what they can globally see in Second Life..... BAD.

Someone (The Landowner) being able to decide for everyone else what they can see while visiting the Landowner's individual parcel..... GOOD.

I'm not sure I'm arguing for anything different from you are. I'm just confused then where this idea of 'universal supression of content' came into the mix.

/me whips of her pants and waves them in salute. For the Godwin, for a thought I agree with and for using the word Jackboot so effectively.

OOOH Brenda! I clean forgot! Way to go.

I got your back, Punkin.

Um...please note posts 1 and 2...

If someone erected a huge billboard that you hated on the edge of your land, facing towards your parcel for the obvious intent of having your visitors view their avertising, would you be a fascist to build something on your side to block it from view? That would preclude your visitors from being able to see it. Would you be forcing your views on them in that case or would that be different for some reason I can't grasp?

I would also like to be able to swap out other people's avatars I don't like and replace them in my client with avatars of my choosing - bet this is way easier than muting content.

Do you suppose my visitors could not move off my parcel? Say, onto the parcel of the person doing the advertising? That would be totalitarian indeed if I could enforce that, and I would not if I could. Sorry, a screen, even a physical one, is not quite an Iron Curtain. And it certainly would not be the sort of general, SL-wide ban I was inveighing against. Try again.

/shrug. I'm still not seeing how you made the leap from Carl or Broccoli's post to universal banning of content. I'm reading Carl's post as asking for a way to make Ad Farms irrelevant to those who are bothered by them, and Broccoli making a couple (probably non-viable) suggestions.

I guess I was just a little off-put by your out-of-left-field comparison of my post to sleezy politicians. I opened it respectfully, and stated what I thought you meant (albeit incorrectly). Perhaps I should have phrased it clearer to relay the request for your clarification it was intended to be.

Just like you read Carl's OP one way, I (incorrectly) read your post to mean that you were against folks being able to control their visitor's view. Neither of us deserve to have our head bitten off for misunderstanding.

I think the original suggestion was that a resi could globally mute another resi's content from ever appearing, SL-wide, but only _on their own computer_ - not for everybody.

No, they work because they are land extortion schemes pretending to be advertising, what they are really trying to do is make people buy out the crappy view they provide for $200/m

Going back to the original question:

Is There a Practical Way to "Code Out" AdFarms?

I would be inclined to say 'No' as it is a socio-economic problem and not a technical problem in the first place. SL was created by idealistic technocrats and they've done an admirable job on the technological front. However they seem to fail to grasp the nettle that technocratic fixes don't work with socio-economic problems. Either that or they lack the cojones and hide behind pseudo-technocratic humbuggery.

The closest possible thing I can think of as regards 'Coding-Out' Ad-Farms would be to make them invisible to premium accounts. This would be an incentive for residents to upgrade from basic. However this would not remove the gut-wrenching lag generating cr*p laid down by the Ad Farmers in the first place... merely render it invisible to residents who would then still suffer degraded sim performance. Basically a bodge and not a very good one either.

Like I said earlier: socio-economic problems require socio-economic answers.

Amen! I don't get why we still call them adfarms. Something like 'Extortion Lots' would be more apt and warn residents of what was really going on.

Someone will prolly tell me why but couldn't you use an opt-in method effectively instead of the opt-out method which seems to be the focus of most attempts to solve the problem.

By opt-out I mean the land owner must select a parcel and/or avatar name and/or object to visibly mute. Opt-in would mean everything is visibly muted in the region and you would select the parcel and/or avatar owner and/or to visibly unmute. You would have to choose to activate opt-in for a region and there is certainly some upfront work but it is mostly one-time. That is, it is not a default feature nor normally employed and used only when required.

There are the mechanics of doing this - i.e. a screen that enables the land owner to select and test various parameters/combination before applying them, etc. I would think that this would be a parcel level setting for all avatars entering the parcel. So even the ad-farmer would enter the parcel he is trying to extort and see that their ad-displays are invisible.

As noted many times, opt-out would certainly result in an arms race (re-parceling, changing alts for ownership, etc) but in opt-in, re-parceling and the use of alts as would have no effect. The land owner can check out what is going on anytime by opting-in, looking around and choose to opt-out back if the ad-farmer (or a new unsightly neighbor) is still there.

There are probably some shortcomings to this method - what do you think?

The problem with muting is while it works for a house parcel where you and the people in your "family" wouldn't see the ads, it doesn't work for businesses or people who want to have a lot of visitors. Also once you have muted someone, if they started to infringe on your property or something, you wouldn't know.

For the mainland, i think a 512 minimum parcel would go a great deal towards solving the issue.

Of course, there's an easy solution right now. Don't go near the mainland when you want to buy a parcel, instead go to a private island. The problem there is not everyone is a smart consumer and people have been defrauded by landlords or don't understand the agreement they are making. I think a system enforced rental system would help by making private island land a more palatable and reliable solution. (Yes, actually, I am willing to just abandon the mainland as a hopeless cesspool.)