Ad Farmers & Extortionists

Going on a rant here,

There has been many threads concerning these people who put up ad farms, and then ask exhorbant prices for the land in a not so subtle attempt to extort. Although I support their right to do so, I do not like it or them and wonder if they would feel so willing to have their ad farms that they would be banned by everyone who dislikes the blight. If all would ban each ad farmers and all in their groups everywhere they might find that paying the fees soon is more expensive than their outrageous asking prices ( I have one group that would sell me one at 10,000L/16m and another for 16,000L/16m). I am saddened by Linden Labs sold at auction a 16m parcel completely inside of one of my parcels (I own more than half of the sim referred too) yet no notice did I recieve. Yeah, sure it was announced somewhere however, knowing it is such a problem for so many you'd think LL would take a proactive stance by alerting any property owners who have small under 125m lands within their borders first allowing or giving them the opportunity to purchase and alieviate such concerns(actually I think that LL should deed them to the property owners that encompass the small bits sans fees).

So what do we do? I'd suggest that a list of the owners of such enterprises and all that makes their groups be compiled and shared with all interested in stopping or minimizing their impact. With this list compiled all go on to each persons properties ban list. I am convinced most of the ad farmers don't do much else in sl other than to try and extract $. If they are builders or creators of any meaningful content I would be suprised. From nightclub owners to musical event throwers, malls, stores, private residences et al were to follow suit and make it near impossible for these people to travel and no one bought at any of these exhorbant prices we may see them dry up a bit and or maybe the fees might run them out.

Would that ever happen? Probably not. Someone else (those who advertize with ad farmers) makes it possible for these people to make money. So, do we ban all that advertize with ad farmers as well? Obstructing veiw of their ads with trees or builds so far has been my SOP. Still its LL's who promotes this by allowing small abandoned properties to be bought up at auction by those opportunists and in that vein you can't really blame them.

So all the banning is problematic on many different levels, especially if LL's is going to actively encourage such practices by their lack of a common sense solution. If I am paying over 150/month own more than half a sim, me absorbing any small peice totally encompassed by my property would seem only right. I am Fhelzgud in Sammamish and be damned if LL doesn't know it, I do not believe any of my neighbors would suggest that we don't work hard to present a well organized property. We are content providers and suggest LL imediately start alerting on their own dime, those property owners who encompass small parcels of any upcoming sales within their lands.

Yes, I think I know that there is a way to request lands encompassed be purchased, one small problem there is that the couple times is sent inquiries ( albeit not recently) I never recieved any response and that kinda dampened my attempts.

End of rant.

Clocktower Network/Arbor Project has a land-cutter auto-ban you can pick up for free.

If the ad farms actually have ads on them, a better bet might be to IM the people who are renting ad space and letting them know you don't appreciate it.

What does that do?

Adds to the parcel banlist anyone on Arbor Project's blacklist.

Of questionable utility because ad-farmers could give a fuck less about exploring SL -- they're here to make a quick buck, not to enjoy the landscape, so being randomly banned won't mean much to them.

This also works for RL companies advertising in SL. I contacted one particular company about their ads. Although I didn't expect any response, I got an email from them thanking me for bringing this to there attention. Several days later the ads were removed from the ad-farm. I also recieved a second email informing me that the ads had been placed by an agency hired by the RL company and that in the future the RL company would be excercising much tighter control of their advertsing.


Granted this may have been a fluke, but it was encouraging nevertheless.

This past Saturday in between crashes. I was searching for land that was for sale.

I discovered a nearly empty area that was almost completely subdivided into 16m plots. there was a 1024 plot with not only each corner chipped off into an ad-plot but the entire plot was cut up into 16m plots.

Several other surrounding plots were divided up the same way. Seems like 16m plots all together like a checker board would cause the ads to block each other.

Funny part is the land was for sale at $L9 per sqm, not the usual $1000 or more per sqm.

"CX"

Hopefully they didn't pull out of SL all together. I have no objection to RL companies being in SL, if it's bringing in US$ for LL.

Some ways of making their presense known are better than others, though. IMO, ads placed in shopping areas are fine; ads placed in my back yard are not so fine.

Clocktower Network probes are on most of my land, but it's more symbolic than anything else. If for some reason an adfarmer wanted to be on my land, it would almost surely be while as an alt anyway. (Whenever there's adfarmer news, it's fun to hang out and watch the alts congregating. Sometimes they forget and use their other adfarmer alts, with the wrong hidden-group tags. Silly adfarmers. )

The usual practice in adcutting is to slice up the 512 or 1024, then price according to proximity to the edge, corners highest (and usually the ones with the adfarmer's ugliest ads displayed).

There's a RL realty firm with a white-on-blue logo that is still (again?) using one of the prominent adfarmer "services." I gather they are trying to do some in-world land deals, too, though you can be sure I'd never buy or sell RL real estate from them, given this in-world affiliation. What's odd about it is that the ad copy displayed on the signs, while grammatically correct, was certainly not written by anybody who knows anything about advertising. That's one company whose PR department might be a good recipient for an alerting hardcopy letter. (Real paper is always more effective in such matters; they have to actually *do* something with the paper, and before it's "filed" it will usually filter up pretty high, often in multiple photocopies with ever-more-puzzled executive scrawls with each copy generation.) If their executive decision is to leave SL altogether, well, what a shame.

Some people in older threads about this subject reported having some luck being proactive about small p0lots next to or inside their land by contacting LL about them and inquiring about buying them. Sometimes they got the inside track on picking up the parcels. I'm sure LL would be glad to get land back into use adding to someone's tier as quickly as possible. If it comes up again for you, shouild be worth a try - the worst they can do is say no or ignore you, and nothing lost.

Sorry to hear you got shafted like that. Hope you figure a way to work a "tower" build around the plot into your landscape scheme.

Don't encourage the Lindens to make rules about what content is acceptable on 16m or any size parcels.

Instead, let's cut out the economic incentive that leads to parcel cutting and extortion and introduce a scalable upper limit on land prices, to control the low end and stabilize the land economy.

Visit, log in, and vote for:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-894

This proposal firmly squashes the extortion practices and encourages people to combine land back into livable parcels. It won't guarantee that an area will be nice looking, it doesn't legislate good taste - but it also doesnt limit creative expression in any way. All it does is say that if you own small lots, if you want to sell and do not want to be part of the neighborhood, then you can NOT be tempted to extort an outrageous price from the good people living there.

Advertisements are not the problem, nor the point - its extortion and the allure of the quick buck by slimy people that needs solving.

I recently filed a support ticket about 2- 16 meter lots and a 64 meter lot that I suddenly found myself surrounding on all 4 sides after a small expansion and ad farm demolition project. One of the 16's I only had 3 sides surrounded.

THE VERY NEXT DAY! (Wow that was fast) The lots had all been set for sale to me at a more than fair rate. In fact they were sold to me at basically an "Honest Money" price.

They are now part of my newest renaissance residential development and I have happily killed my 7th ad farm. I do get a strange pleasure out of killing them off too.
I did have to buy a couple of the ad lots from the cutters but I was able to come to a fair price on those too. I guess I got lucky that they didn't hold out for 10k a meter.

So file a ticket with the region name and coords of the lot, state your intended use (as an end user, which I definately am), and if you own the land around them, you should get them in the future. All 3 were Linden owned when I filed the ticket.

Thanks to Guy and Patch Linden who have both helped me to kill a few ad farms now.

Are ads really that economically feesable?
Mainland is so messed up i rarely go there and when i am there i don't see another sole.
Hard to imagine ads being worth anything.

Search is what drives sales i would think.

The most notorious "ad farmer" at the moment doesn't carry ads at all, he just ruins the landscape to try and blackmail people into buying the land off him at extortionate prices and heck it must work or he wouldn't have ruined three of the new sims already.

i lost all respect for the Arbor project yesterday
i get an im from a memeber of theres telling me i am blocking there land

i go to see what they are talking about and it seems they own 16 meters in the middl eof amy 44,000 meter mall and she insisted i remove my prim from her land

i had not know her land was there the mall was built when i purchased it and had never been a problem in the past and she will not sell the land to me to go with the 44,000 meters i have on that sim surrounding her


so my only recourse is to create a 44,000 meter add farm around her tree

yea iknow it sucks but when members of the supposable good side wish to create problems such as this instead of selling the land to me she would rather distrupt the build that is there which includes trees and land scaping



ps i hate add farms but seems that i am hating arbor project even more since yesterday

i refused to remove my prim she got a linden and as off last look my prim was still there and i was banned from the 16 meter piece so time will tell the outcome

It's an open enrollment group. Anyone can join - the biggest land cutter in SL is also a member. So if you are so closed-minded as to lose respect for groups based on one member, well, I don't respect you either.

Advertising lot owners convince gullible business owners that they work by showing them numbers that mean nothing - generally, how many people could potentially see their ad because they're within a certain distance (like people can see through walls). These business owners pay the ad lot owners until they figure out they're being scammed, but then they're replaced by new business owners that don't know any better.

See my signature for a link to a gallery of these idiots.

I'm sure someone has thought of this long before, but here is a quote from the Community Standards:



It seems to me that an ad farmer that intentionally messes up the land to make the surrounding land less desirable falls into "objects that intentionally . . . inhibit another Resident's ability to enjoy Second Life" category.

So it could be argued this is a violation of the terms of service. What would happen if enough people organized a little demonstration and AR'd the pukes simultaneously?

I recently had a neighbor who offered to sell me a auto ban he scripted, he had it set so that anyone banned from one property would get banned by all in the sim lol I don't need anyone, anything to ban for me especially since not all cases are as severe or reprehensible and I am more than capable of banning myself. The current want to be extortionist found that as a builder I was able to completely exclude his , their, her ads and I hope they choke on the fees. Yes, I have banned one of their advertisers (as well as ad farmer and only wish I knew who else was in the ad farmers group so I could ban all them as well) and I IM the advertiser and let them know why (their 100L was well wasted). Funny thing is even when Fhelzgud's free public yard sale was giving 20 prim allowances with no split profits or groups to join these people rent ad signs lol they could have just as easily got a pad and sold their things for free.

Residential vs bizi area's- on the Mainland there is no such thing unless a large land owner who rents residential plots in a sim(s) they control. However, We work very hard to get our name out there to get shoppers and ad farmer do nothing but either try to extort or at the least take advantage of others efforts to get traffic. So though I apreciate the idea no-one wants their residence surrounded by ad farms, no biz owners want their efforts to go to advertize some others agenda unless of course the ad farmer wants to subsidize us when they point signs around our biznesses, lol. I am also against any cap or scale price for any size property. I had to pay handsomely for some of my property though I would never cut lower than 512m, I still would have issues against LL trying to cap prices especially when an easier solution exists. Either do not auction any under 125m , (especially if locked within another parcel), till that larger parcel owner has been notified and given opportunity to buy thus re-absorbing these small plots and circumventing opportunists or buy all our land at the same 16,000L per meter sale price they created by selling at auction small parcels (and we have about 32,000m's) .

For what it's worth. Dragger was asked politely to to remove the obstruction from our group land.

He responded by refusing to do so. Instead, further created an obstruction by placing "ad boards" around our land. We don't really care that he would choose to pollute his own land with annoyances, all we asked is for unobstructed access to our own lands.

Dragger is nothing less than abusive and griefing. He seems to think it's ok to 100% block our land. I got news for him, the Governance Team will remove the obstruction like they have in the past.

A Linden was asked to attend. He explained to us, to file an abuse report and he would note the file with his observations to the Governance Team.

Our plot in Aragonese is neither an Arbor Project plot, nor is it an ad plot. We owned the land alot longer than he has owned his and our project has received the scrutiny of Linden Lab on numerous occasions. We are however, regular contributors to the Arbor Project, having donated multiple plots to proactively remove ad cutter viability and maintaining sim asthetics.

We do not sell our land under any circumstances, despite unreasonable demands (even threats and intimidations), and have never been approached to trade plots with Dragger. It is clearly displayed in out group charter, our willingness to trade plots for other locations within the region. Dragger was notified prior, to remove the obstruction from our land, but failed to do so. He was nothing less than abusive, griefing and arrogant with his behavior in-world.

Everyone is welcomed to see for yourself. Aragonese 238,113

By his own admission, he intentionally blocked our land, yet prefers a whole lot of drama and unreasonable demands.

With point to point teleporting, how is he blocking access to your land?

This policy you are appealing to, is outdated and should be repealed. Why would you want to keep a 16m plot in the middle of someone else's land. Sounds like you are the one griefing in this instance.

They allow ad cutters to remain in the group because they have full disclosure as to what they are trying to do to stop them.

I've never understood the logic of how the "blocking" rule could work, even when there wasn't point-to-point teleporting. In this case, for example, say the surrounding land owner carves out four 16sq.m. parcels, one on each side of the "blocked" parcel, sells them to four friends, and each of the four friends builds their own ad towers there, again blocking in the surrounded parcel. Now, the surrounded parcel owner cries to the Lindens, and then what? Which of our four new "adfarmers" has to give up his right to build what he wants on his land?

Had he contacted us, we would have been willing to trade plots at any time.

He uses prims to 100% block us from our land. Both horizontal and vertical.

We owned the land since March 19, 2007. He bought the land in October.

Nobody has the right to demand anyone sell their their land. His methods are the ones being used to extort, not ours.

He was asked politely to remove the prims overhanging and blocking access to our land.

We have been involved with our project since 2004 and have always been in good standing with Linden Lab and our neighbors. We have been around alot longer than the "Bush" guy and ad-cutters and all too often get painted with their brushes in wide strokes. We have never placed annoyances, griefing objects and do not put stress upon server and sim resources. We have a strict policy of not paying more than market value for our land and we do not hack otherwise larger plots to create ours. Likewise, we respond to ALL IM's requesting trades for land.

Dragger had every opportunity to do so, but has chosen a route which is griefing and subjected to abuse reporting and Governance Team oversight. If he chooses to break the rules, he will have to accept the consequences of doing so. His post here, openly admits his blocking our land, hatred of a group which has nothing to do with our project and defecating in his own nest violating the TOS.

We have done nothing wrong. All we ask is to be able to freely access our land, without obstruction.

What kind of griefing and abuse went on between the parties is between ya'll and LL, but you are definitely blocked horizontally. Slab of his concrete running straight across your land.

Vertically is a different matter. Yep, it's ugly as hell, but as long as it's on his land I don't know how it affects access to yours.