Why We Hate Adfarms--A Gallery

Parcel muting, or the idea of rendering whatever you don't like invisible, wouldn't help at all when new people come into SL and see all this junk.

You know, if it were me - if I were Philip Linden - I would establish a hotline for people to send in where these ad farms are.

Then I would have some of my employees go around and just remove everything on them, and issue a warning to the owner of the land. I would, in other words, make them do it, on a regular basis.

How would they know which ones? They would use their EYEBALLS and their COMMON SENSE.

They would cite the portion of the TOS cited earlier in this thread, and have the balls to ACT on it.

They could start with the places pictured by the OP.

Just go through, and cut a swath removing the most egregious. Should the individual put up more, he loses his land.

And have regular sweeps.

This would . . . ta da . . . solve the problem.

-----

OR - they can sit around all lily-livered and wringing their hands and watch as their whole enterprise goes down the tubes.

Cause these people aren't just ruining our experience, they are ruining SL and LL.

coco

Coco, the more and more that I hear arguments that LL should do this or shouldn't do that, The more I hear arguments about starting dangerous trends and slippery slopes, etc. I think I'm reaching the point that I am agreeing with you on this one.

Why are we making this thing so damn complicated? It's a company dammit, not a democracy. They know what an ad farm looks like. They can create a definition to give the community an idea of what one is, but that should be very quick and easy. Shouldn't take more than a two hour meeting. Once that's done, announce it to it's customers and start the business of cleaning up.

Sound like fascism? Give me a break. It's one of the beauties of owning a company. Let's quit pussyfooting around and end this damn thing.

I don't think it's the fact that they're ad farms that annoys people. It's the fact they're so damned ugly. If somebody was going around buying plots and placing hovering boxes on them for the fun of it then we'd be complaining about those too.

Do we really want LL to ban ugly builds?.

It's complicated.

its only as complex as you make it.
ban them already.

haha

But what do you want to ban? plots designed solely for advertizing or just plain ugly builds?

How would people feel about well built Ad farms?.

Crap. I actually agree with you on something. Alert the media.

This is why object muting is my solution of choice. Give me a way to get rid of ALL the ugly.

If LL banned all ugly builds they'd be too damn busy. Like I said, they know what an ad farm looks like. Ban them. If we start seeing a huge influx of ugly spinning cubes on 16m parcels then they can get rid of those.

Again, we are all acting like we'll begin seeing the crumbling of democracy. It's easy to tell when something is just a matter of taste or something is being done for the sake of extortion. This is something that is so simple that even LL can handle it.

This is all such a waste of time. They really need to get some balls.

I'll get me a camel when they give us a mute option.

There is no democracy in Second Life, period.

Linden Lab have the final say on any argument, or any situation, whether we think it does or doesn't break the CS.

The closest you get to a democracy is when a group buy a region and set their own rules for that region only - but even then, they don't get the right to override Linden Lab's rules in the end.

It's because ad farms are ugly. There's actually a lot of unnecessary advertising in SL; if people were tasteful in this - such as making them on roadside billboards at ground level that LOOKED LIKE BILLBOARDS, then I'm sure more people wouldn't have such an issue. You also have to take into account the content - much of the sex crap that's advertised is quite beyond the boundaries of acceptable decency to many people.

Your world, your imagination (providing it doesn't upset the neighbors)

Exactly my point. That's why this shouldn't be such an issue. They write up a few simple standards of what is and is not allowed and then start taking care of matters. As I said, the more I see this issue be discussed and debated the stronger I feel about this.

When I was a hotel manager I didn't have a book or a list of rules that detailed every nitpicky reason of when I could or could not deal with a customer issue. We just had one simple rule: if you are disrupting other hotel guests you are asked to leave with no refunds, don't let the door hit you on the ass. It's really not complicated folks.

Big difference between extortion and upsetting. An ugly build might upset me but I don't expect LL or anyone else to do anything about it. Extortion is a different issue. You act like you can't tell the difference and I know you're smarter than that.

We already have them, don't we... "Community Standards"?

I know there's different way of interpreting them, but I would have thought that some things are fairly straightforward. Ad farms being one of them - we so need "building regs" on the mainland.

I agree with you. The Community Stardards are there. See, it's even easier than I said. They don't even have to put a committee together to set up a bunch of rules. They are already there just need to start enforcing them.

It's difficult for LL to know whether somebody is deliberately creating something ugly or whether they just have poor taste.

This is SL. It's supposed to be a virtual world where we can create wild and whacky (and sometimes even spinny) things. Remember?

Or would you rather have it like RL where we have to apply for building permission to add a flower box to our windows.

First of all, again, I am talking extortion. So if someone has an ugly build and is trying to sell it for a ridiculous amount of money then it's a pretty easy call. I'm asking LL to be like any company in the world and make judgment calls.

Go back to my example of when I was a hotel manager. If I had complaints of someones tv being too loud we would call that person, let them know we had complaints and ask if they could turn it down. Then if the complaints continued we'd go up and see for ourselves. At that point it sometimes is easy, the tv is ridiculously loud and is blaring up and down the halls or it's so low you can't hear it. However, some times it's in a range where you have to make a tough judgment call. Well, you know what? You still have to make that call. That's one of those tough decisions companies make and with good management they handle it well.

I'm only talking extortion issues, but sometimes there will be a thin line where they will have to make that call. LL is not handling this well because they are making any decisions at all at this point that we can see.

I suppose it would be possible to tie it in with the AR system. So if enough people were to report a build for being ugly then LL could ask the owner to take it down. But wouldn't LL do this anyway?.

Just so you understand where I'm coming from, I hate seeing any kind of authority in a virtual world. I see it simply as a sign of poor design and something that should be corrected through programming. This is why I never use the AR system. When I come up against a griefer then I usually find myself cursing LL rather than the griefer.

Griefers are like sharks, they're just doing their thing.


So in future, if you ever come across a griefer then AR LL for being crap.

to claim that adfarms are little more than 'ugly builds' is disingenuous. umnik isnt renowned for ugly builds, hes infamous for adfarms hey.
and the parcel muting thing is a problem for many reasons, one being:
people already complain that people can cam into their homes. you are suggesting we should actually be able to set their homes as invisible when viewed from your land. forget void parcels then, this is the polar opposite effect.
so no longer will you be poseball hopping in your home, you will be doing it out in the open in plain sight. not because YOU want to, but because I want you to.

And that makes sense and I get that.

I guess the only thing I can say is it seems LL does not agree with you, yet sometimes it does. Sometimes it seems like they love to promote SL as the wild west when that serves their marketing needs. Other times they talk about SL eventually serving the corporate world and interlinking throughout the net. If that is going to happen, then it's going to have to be restricted and controlled.

I agree parcel muting is a great idea. I just don't have much faith in their technical ability at all these days.

This suggestion is probably going to get lost, since it's page 5 of this thread, but here goes anyway...

Bradley, I think you are making a lot of sense, and there has been a lot of sense talked in this thread. I also see that there have been a lot of anti-ad-farm threads in the last few weeks, not started by Arbor but by normal residents. From the Linden comment on the Public Works blog, it sounds to me like the Lindens want to do something (tho' they're not sure what), and from the postings here, it sounds like the residents want something done too.

Would it be possible for us to organise a sort of in-world action (mentioned in an earlier reply I think)? I would like to think the Lindens would listen if groups of us started going to their Office Hours and putting forward some of these suggestions.

Perhaps especially if we attended Office Hours wearing spinning cubes above our heads...

i wish i was as optimistic.
i still remember project open letter.

ll wont take any action other than lip service until either rl law interjects itself, or they see a major grid exodus.
ll are all about the status quo.

I don't like the in-world office thing. It looks like PR to me, a way of softening up the residents. If LL really wanted opinions then they could visit the forums. It's a far more practical way of gathering opinions.

How hard is it to start a thread?. They don't even have to use a Linden account.

A Linden?? In the SecondLife fora???

I think it reads "Here be Dragons" rather than "Forums" on the Linden's version of the home page...

Oh, and just so I stay on topic - I agree that LL just need to grow some balls on this issue. Destroy the adfarms as they see fit and remind the community that it is (imho) already a ToS violation.

Don't take their land away, because the cutters have paid for it - and it will make them contiue to pay tier without their griefing, extortionist, income stream to fund their dirty little habit.

Deu. x

Just back from driving from the North CA coast to Oakland airport and back. Made me think of this thread. There were lots of "ad farms" on the route, but they were only in a couple of locations along the highway in Richmond and Oakland. Also lots of industry, again concentrated in a couple of areas.

Rest of the drive was mostly ad and industry free due to the concept known as zoning.

The adfarm examples are hideous, but I can understand the Lindens' reluctance here.

I have a horrible fear that part of the fallout from the Bragg lawsuit has been that anyone who bought mainland while the advertising still referred to "owning" it (it doesn't any more) and who has their land taken away, will be able to sue LL pointing to the Bragg case for precedent. Even if the "judgment out of court" doesn't create a legal precedent for the claim being upheld, it at least shows that such a claim is not frivolous.

The other issue is that the real goal of ad farmers, we know, is not to advertise companies but to make money by forcing people to pay over the odds for the land - so in other words, there is a risk that whatever LL ban, the adfarmers will simply "walk the edge" and it'll be laggy particle systems, political statements (an old favourite!) or huge prim penises instead. LL are probably trying to come up with a policy that doesn't have a clear, walkable edge, but that doesn't enter the realm of "anything you build that we don't like we can delete".