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

That is what LL has effectively done. The only thing that keeps the mainland from going completely down the toilet are the small collection of 'estates' that were set up before the ad-farm cancer spread across the mainland.

Hi Katie - thanks for your reply. Either I am misunderstanding you or you are misunderstanding me I think. My suggestion is to select off your parcel the things you want to see, not things you don't want to see. Therefore, if someone is on your own parcel or infringes upon it, you would know/see it as you do today. In such a case, all visitors to your parcel would also see the things you chose to see (as opposed to things you chose to mute) so would therefore be a benefit high traffic areas.

Would love to see a simple, scalable maximum price allowance based on the # of segments (4x4m blocks, 16sqm) a parcel is made of.

1 segment - 16m - max L$1/m = max price L$16
2 segments - 32m - max L$2/m = max price L$64
3 segments - 48m - max L$3/m = max price L$144
4 segments - 64m - max L$4/m = max price L$256
5 segments - 80m - max L$5/m = max price L$400
6 segments - 96m - max L$6/m = max price L$576
7 segments - 112m - max L$7/m = max price L$784
8 segments - 128m - max L$8/m = max price L$1024
16 segments - 256m - max L$16/m = max price L$4096
32 segments - 512m - max L$32/m = max price L$16384
64 segments - 1024m - max L$64/m = max price L$65536

Simple codable formula:
max price = (parcel size*parcel size)/16

I think this cuts under most land extortionists, while not affecting livable parcels at all. It encourages consolidation of small lots, and puts the low-level ad lot cutter (the ones that buy the 512m lots cheap and make the first cuts) out of business.

Sorry - I'm a little slow witted on this - is it being suggested that there be some option for a parcel to parcel mute so that you could pick the ad farmer's parcel and have your land mute it? Anything on that parcel would be invisible from your land, regardless of who was on your land. That way your guests, customers, whatever wouldn't see the adfarm next door unless they stepped off of your land. The benefit to the landowner is they don't have to see the adfarm or build big screens to try to block it out, but encroachments on their land would show, since only stuff on the neighboring parcel would be hidden. The adfarmer could still put whatever they want on their land. Both parties have complete control of their land, which seems to be what people want. The only argument the adfarmer could really make would be that they cannot use their ads to extort the neighbors as easily, and if that's the argument they want to make, then screw'em. They aren't getting any sympathy from me.

I don't know if this is even possible for LL to do, but if they could implement it, then it wouldn't take much enforcement from them, since it would be up to the landowner to decide whether to mute an adjoining parcel or not.

This wouldn't solve the lag problem from all the crap that adfarmers put up, but it would help the landowners with the blight issue.

Code-as-law doesn't work.

It never has.

It's a wonderful dream... a dream I share.

But in the end, this sort of thing falls squarely in the domain of having someone - a person or human-controlled avatar - accountable for social issues.

* * * * *

The unmentioned elephant in the room is that only 20% of the grid is mainland any more.

Yep, mainland fails to meet the needs of 80% of everyone, roughly speaking.

Ever seen rotating, towery, extortionist ad farms on a private estate? You won't. Because bluntly stated, private region owners are the solution.

I'd LOVE to see a coded solution to such things, but how many avatar names, how many filters, can be added? Imagine checking each object for over 1000 avatar names before rezzing it or not. Because if you don't, you'll still see the crap...

I think the Company will simply have to enforce their own service terms, which is: broadly offending stuff needs to go bye-bye. Adfarms are broadly offending.

Slot machines, atm's, child porn and similar stuff are zapped now. Real people have to make snap judgements now about what is a slot machine, atm or porn - why not toss in adfarms too? Bloody hell, they are the *easiest* of all of them to find, by design!

* * * * *

It's a matter of extremes vs reasonability. 80% have basically chosen 'something else' beside SL mainland. What does that say about success of policy?

And if someone gets too uppity with their private region, people can 'vote with their feet' and go with someone more reasonable - it's not *entirely* Tyranny-Mart out there. There's a lot of diversity in the private regions.

Well, enough written about this, time to go polish my boots... grin

Hi Trout - ty for your reply. Kinda sorta except the implementation is opposite. Instead of muting things you don't want to see, you select what you want to see. If you mute things, you will be forever muting things as ad-farmers will just keep changing it around (parcel sizes, objects, using new alts).

However, if you select what you want to see instead of what you don't want to see, it doesn't matter what they change as you have not elected to see it.

Agreed - lag could still be a problem but perhaps easier to quantify and deal with than something that is only aesthetic.

It'd be a strawman if I was trying to argue something. Instead, I was requesting clarification - which I got if you read on past the post you quoted

Carl - Can I use your map kiosks to screen out ad-farms where i own the land surrounding them? I currently have the map on a 10 x 10 prim, but 20 x 20 would be even better.

As a sidenote, the maps are GREAT!!! when I first found them several months ago I didn't realize I could get a copy by touching them. I made many return visits to NCI to examine them. Have you given any consideration to mapping the other continents like you have Sansara & Heterocera?

I still think charging a minium tier per sim would work. Yes, some adfarmers may just pump a nest of ads into one plot, but that sort of defeats their scamming game.

If any plot (512m and lower) in any sim cost the owner 5 USD (or use of the full 512m tier free premium allotment) a month, how many of those 16m plots do you think would just get abandoned?

This means that the adfarmer would need 32 of the 16m plots to "break even".

Aside from adfarmers, this would effect no one else. Some minor landbarons might complain, but they can simply watch what they buy per sim. I'd theorise that this method would also reduce, if not eliminate, micro-plots from the mainland.

The coding is quite simple. Calculate Mainland tier per sim, instead of per grid. Yes, an exception clause would need to be established for those that have multiple sims, and are in the HUGE tier group. However, How many of those are there? Anche, Prok, a handfull of others? And no, places like Caledon and the IBM sims don't figure in as those are private islands, not Mainland.

~Jessy

opt out for those of us who explore would lead to the most horrible experience. If it in the individual level I would be required to either turn it off or click thousands upon thousands of names every time I go flying or shoping. It it is on the individual parcel level then it would make sl even mroe... wierd. As you say fly around you would see the world flickering again and again as you go form one opt out list to another. Opt in is the only thing that works for a world like this unless you never want to explore what is actualy there.

Now I am for parcel owners to be able to mute by parcel the land is on but for us explorers we should be able to turn off that feature. and there is less bits being passed around if it is just by parcel then by avatar.Sure you would have to do a little more work to mute a persistent ad farmer but that is the work of a second.

Got it. Wouldn't that be an awful lot of work? It seems like the problem is this - ad farmers want to put something awful, offensive and ugly on their parcels so that the neighbors will buy the parcel at an inflated price just to make the adfarmer go away. Let's ignore the fallacy that it's legitimate advertising - it's extortion, plain and simple. If you could use your land tools and simply select a neighboring parcel and turn it off so that anything on it wouldn't render for people standing in your parcel it would serve the same function as a building a huge screen, except that 1) you wouldn't have a big ugly screen, 2) the adfarmer couldn't get around the screen by building higher, etc.. and 3) your friends and customers wouldn't have to deal with giant rotating penises or epileptic seizure inducing flashing vaginas every time they come to your property.

If you have to pick what you want rendered, that would take a lot more work.

At any rate, I don't think either approach offends people like Har - his argument, as strident as it was, seems to be that we shouldn't legislate away people's rights to do things based on our interpretation of what is offensive or obnoxious. Both solutions above allow the adfarmer to put whatever they want on their property and give adjacent landowners the ability to do whatever they want with theirs. Seems like a solution to me.

Except...Tasrill is right. If you are flying around, stuff will flicker on and off as you go from parcel to parcel. I have no sloution to that, but as someone who likes to fly around and explore cool stuff (where I'm welcome), I'm willing to deal with that.

Back in the old days when Lindens used to actually talk to us and contribute here on the forums, every time the topic of Zoning came up their answer was always the same: "you want Zoning, do it yourselves."

Those words launched dozens of land barons into the void to create their own continents and give residents what they wanted. As Des pointed out - the people resoundingly chose the benevolent dictatorship of governed and covenanted islands over the free market of the mainland. What is kind of sad is that it should have been the other way around since the mainland is where 99% of new sign-ups wind up and LL basically drops potential customers right into a war-zone slum and then can't figure out why their retention rate is only 10%.....

The difference is not "dictatorship" v. "free market", the difference is Bad Landlord v. Good Landlord.

I wonder if perhaps creating an Ad Farm Paradise might work?

A place where people *actively* went, to see things that normally they would shun and run screaming from?

Sorta like a reptile zoo.

* * * * *


Proposal: a new micronation... Respublica Blingtardia!

65536 square meters of the *worst* of SL, in one place, available via guided tour!


When you first arrive, the dazzle of the particle bling is softly muted by dozens of notecards, pop-ups and inventory items streamed rapidly to your avatar.

Even so, from around the edges of your screen, the blinding rays of silver and gold betray what it is like.


You don your free avatar shades for that 'cool' look, which also dims the supernova in front of you.

Then, you wear the shirtless 'VIP VISITOR' tattoo over your bulk-muscled, small-headed body, and put on the free gold chain.

For the ladies, they have their own free avatar: 'Busting Out Barbie' - which comes with a variety of revealing dress colors: 'Escort Red', 'Drama Diva Black', 'Passive-Aggressive Purple' and for the truly undiscriminating, the classic "Gold-Digger Metallic."


You don't even see the adfarm towers at first.

It's too hard. You are trapped in a ridiculous maze of banlines at street level, with no choice but to follow down the golden sidewalk.

You and Barbie walk past rows and rows of ATM's, slot machines, and poker parlours beckoning you in.

Escorts laze in lounges, tossing out invites as you walk by. "How can this be?" you wonder. This makes old north Las Vegas look classy by comparison! "Oh, right, you can't actually get money BACK here... that doesn't make it gambling or banking!" Duh. The Company can't touch this.

It's solid crowded. Bling encrusted avatars are everywhere, doing every imaginable thing. You hear a cacophony of conversation.

But everyone ignores you. They are all campers, and it is their Xcite parts doing all the talking. Every few minutes a couple of them grows very... agitated, before falling silent for a little while, then repeating the 'conversation' with the nearest partner.

You walk through several areas, one by one... Gambler's Paradise, the VIP Cyber Lounge, the Charles Ponzi Memorial Financial District, Spanky's Hentai Haven, The Griefer Boyz (Ownage, Chatspiez and Moar!)

At long last, rising high up via VIP elevator to the top of the the mostly temp-rezzed spire of the Blingtardia State Stock Exchange, you can step out upon a little mezzanine, just below the giant sculptie statues of the most prominent adfarmers of Second Life.

And there they are, before you, rising up out of a silver-gold sea of particle effects - the ad towers, revolving in synchrony... a slow, stately dance. They are subtle, compelling... a full 15% of them do not have female body parts, but instead appeal to this or that heartrending cause. You tear up, just a little, looking at them.

In the distance, a saxophone wails, and you hear another Xcite couple complete their evening.

And you know you are home at last, in the grid you were born into... free to live as you will, and be as tacky as you care to be, under the blazing "gold particle-star on VIP-luxury black" flag of Blingtardia.

There is a workable though not perfect solution for most parcelholders - screens. They can look very nice. I know, because I make them. They have some drawbacks, but none so great as the drawback of waiting for LL to do anything about this issue, which is like waiting for the cows to come home.

blingtardia ... i love it

(said while looking at the ad towers bordering my home sim)

Desmond, you do realize that you basically just described the Los Angeles landscape of Snow Crash, don't you?

The problem with this suggestion, is that its making the assumption that there are no valid reasons for owning a single 16m parcel in a sim, except for adfarming. It would affect some folks that aren't adfarmers. (Like me! )

I own a 16m parcel, and its the only parcel in that sim I own. It has a realistic-looking telephone pole on it, that blends in with the surrounding area.

I use it primarily for scripts. Not anything laggy or resource intensive, but there's certain scripts I need to make sure are operational at all times. So I have one running in my home sim, and another running on my 16m parcel for failover. This isn't all that uncommon.

I still think the idea of 'parcel mute' would be the most effective option. However, as pointed out above - unless the community rallied around the issue & became an unignorable squeaky wheel (such as Project Open Letter), the chances this sort of feature would see the light of day are pretty slim.

Funny description.

I thought someone who posts on the forums built some kind of interaction or exhibit around an adfarm within their property.

I seriously thought about that at one time: making sort of a "Times Square" of deliberate ad farm land in an urban center.

Hmm... there is certainly a place for parts of LA in Blingtardia!

I read about half of snowcrash, then... stopped, and logged back in here one night. Literally. Never finished the book. Didn't feel I had to.

* * * * *

As for Project Open Letter, other than serving as a lightningrod for discontent, people simply kept spending more and more on SL. Yeap, that sure taught the Company a lesson, alrighty!

Just about everyone who signed that letter is still here, within the bounds of user churn - I don't have stats, but just look at the names. How many of them are off on Platform X thumbing their nose back at us, saying, "Haha suckers, I'm on 'the better SL,' you stayed!" Not... many. If any?

Nope, they stuck around. Yeah, that was some impact - if anything, it proved that protests could be rapidly diffused with: some PR, a town hall, and... ooh, sculpties! Doh.

I'm sure we'll hear how the Company "listened to the feedback, we made changes, are better for it, yada yada" but sorry, not convinced. We didn't even see throttled logins. They basically did what they were already set to do from the previous year. Can't change direction that fast anyway with engineering departments, either sustaining efforts or new development.

Imagine it.

"Hey guys, you are now ALL on this other project."

You'll get a collective:

"Huh?" and,

"I don't know anything about X, I got my degree in Y" and,

"Give me six months and I'll have my head around it to professional standards." and,

"Will it matter if the project lead is the same guy?"


I have actually turned entire engineering departments around on a dime, myself - not that I have wanted to. Board decisions, stuff like that - in one case, it was the reason I was hired in the first place. You break a lot of china doing that, and the returns aren't anywhere near worth it, almost as a rule. It's about as smart a move as firing more than 25% of a workforce to get through tough times. Many try it, few rebound well enough to tell any sort of success story.

* * * * *

I hereby offer the sovereignty of Blingtardia...

...it's name, it's covenant (or lack thereof), it's theme, it's music, it's sparkly VIP club madness - to anyone willing to light said sparkly torch, and hold it up On High, slowly rotating, to act as a beacon of taste for all of us... (go toward or away from it as desired)

...parcels for 'sale' 16m at a time, for a mere $L 9999999999999999999*


*Disclaimer: WTF Bonds not accepted in lieu of funds

That might be my "Temple of Adfarming", Dallows 239, 205, or a pic in Ordinal's Griefbuild Digest, http://www.flickr.com/groups/slgriefbuild/ -- unless more specious DMCA notices have been filed (see recent posts in /128/3c/234394/2.html#post1848838).

From what I've heard, I really believe LL now understands that this problem represents a significant loss of revenue. It took a while to get them out of Linden Village to see the hectares of unadulterated crap flooding over the newer continents, but I think they finally see that the Mainland needs more than the current absentee-landlord laissez faire approach.

Apropos the "free market" : The Lindens will keep selling Estate sims, and if there's a market for it, there will be space to hoist spinning ad signs there. In Real Life (remember Real Life?) LL needs to protect its assets: if that means adfarmers have to move off the Mainland, they're a victim of that RL free market, not of some pretend "dictatorship."

People who spend hundreds of dollars only to have someone put up huge ugly wall or box next to their land that literally blocks the view and causes claustrophobia on the land want to do something so the can enjoy their land.
Its just as other bothersome for many when they have spent hundreds in land and couple hundred for tier then some sex club can open near someone on mature land put up a box, have screaming avatars bombard a neighboring lot and if they try to do something about it their is literally no recourse.
At this point why is it that the ad farms and whomever able to move to spot and do whatever they want and their is no recourse for the average resident who just wants a quaint serene beautiful forest or village with gardens
Not everyone knows what to do and often in frustration after spending thousands will or do just sell out and quit being residents.

this pic is from last summer .... http://www.flickr.com/photos/42166057@N00/2215536216

i forgot where it was ... but what amazed me was the plot of land at auction right in the middle of all this!

Okay--I think I may have been wrong. After reading the comments here and in some other forums, I'm no longer convinced that "coding out" adfarms is the right approach.

I'm leaning now towards thinking some sort of outright ban by Linden Lab might be the better approach.

How could such a policy be worded to eliminate the problem without being too vague to enforce--or end up banning the wrong things? Clearly some ads are going to be allowed. But where is the line drawn? Is a group of ads worse than three 4x4x10m ad prims stacked on top of each other? Is it based on prim size?

And if advertizing restrictions are adopted, does LL have a responsiblity to compensate the owners of the adfarm parcels in some way?