Revenge of the Ad-Farms

Yes Just like zombies rising up out of their graves that Ad Farmers have returned and I am seeing plot after plot of 16m squares rising up all over second life again...

Is there still a profit to be made doing this? Is it that land prices have crashed making it irresistible?

Looking frantically through my inventory for Garlic, holy water, wooden stakes and Silver bullets!

I never really saw a reduction in them at all. I have a couple 16m and 32m parcels right next to me that are for sale for 1100L that I've AR'd over and over again, they're still there.

Wow Smoke that is cheap lol. The one in the middle of our land is 10,000 L

There are still a number of ad farmer parcels along the Linden road that runs through Moran, which I why I've finally decided to actively shop for a new place that doesn't have a Linden road through it.

And a couple of weeks ago there was a piece of property along the road that came up for auction; I couldn't bid on it as the next increase in tier would jump me up by $70 U.S. per month, which I can't afford. The lot was bought by someone who promptly carved it up into 16 and 32 plots and put them up for sale at relatively high prices. :/

SL needs to state a maximum price for the 16m and 32m parcels, above which it's considered abuse.

oh wow, have you AR'd it? Maybe thats why they're not responding to my AR...guess mine aren't that bad lol.

It is not against the ToS to set your land for sale for a ridiculous price. Only time the Lindens get involved is when there is an obvious attempt at placing an obnoxious build on the parcel to force the neighbors to buy the land to clear their view.

I would agree that LL should place an upper limit on the possible selling price for smaller parcels but, where do you draw the line?

One of the Lindens specifically stated that they did not want to give a number for this. Actually it was in a response to U.Hax. He asked them what the number was, and they wouldn't give him one. He had the conversation published in his profile for a while. They shouldn't give a number! If they make it, say, 500L, then the bastards will sell them all for 499L.

I suspect that they are flooded with ARs for these, and it takes a lot of time to investigate each one. I AR'ed one, and it took several weeks, but the offending prim disappeared eventually.

I would recommend not ARing something repeatedly. When you think about it, that's really kind of an abuse itself, and is clogging an already bogged-down system even more. For the greater good, I'd suggest giving them a reasonable number of days (or weeks) before you follow up.

Land extortion/Ad farms will go away for good ...

The same day that ..

Gambling is gone for good.

Sexual Ageplay is gone for good.

-and-

Banking/Investment scams are gone for good.


Basically the 5th of never. If your town had a million people in it and only 10 cops, crime would run rampant in your RL too.

Yes I know that along roads is bad but I am seeing new ad lots in the middle of Sims that have been carved out of 512 parcels, that quite frankly don't make a lot of sense.
I have two roadside shops and one of them I bought up some of the adland that was abandoned after the first anti-ad push.

The newest ad farm in is a place it will be easily blocked by the shops on both sides of it, I know it dosnt take much intelligence to buy land and cut it into tiny chunks, but I fail to see the profit in it.

Although at the low price of land, if you sell just a few parts I guess you win.

I've done an AR on a particular 16m parcel about once a month for 6 months. I don't think its too extensive. I didn't do one this month, kind of given up on it lol.

There is about 20 of them along a linden road in my home sim. They were not always there. They are priced at 295 to 995 each. I would buy them,but I don't feel the need to give these scums my money.There are no ads on them though,yet...

Yup. Happened in my previously ad-free home sim a few weeks ago. A large land owner sold out in a a few large plots, those were purchased and one cut into 512's, one of which was promptly bought again and carved up. The 16's weren't set too high at first, but by the time I logged in and saw what was happening a few had been purchased and one had an enormous ad tower on it, gleaming in all its full bright glory. The others were purchased pretty quickly, marked way up and left vacant. No rules broken, so I didn't consider an AR, just a sad turn of events. There must still be some amount of money in it.

Also, I just saw a stack of ad cubes with posters for a campaign that some pretty major vendors take part in floating in a sim. The cubes were owned by an ad hosting agency, so I guess there is money in that too?

I'm not saying that advertising is a bad thing, but no one wants it hovering over their backyard like that.

If it was then Linden Lab would have to ban themselves from Second Life.

Yeah they've finished destroying the new mainland and are now getting their teeth into the older continents, Andraca was adfarm free till 2 months ago now the sim is ruined forever, the oldbies are giving up and selling out, so gone from 5 groups owning all the land in the sim to 20. Stupid green temprezzers from that snake bellied bitch and her cohorts.

Ad farms still rampant. Further proof that LL does not follow through with anything.

Landbots are still running too despite Robin Linden's vow to take action with them.

Performance issues? Still here.

Asset server issues? Still here.

They keep coasting because due to the lack of competition, we're still here too.

Ill bet ya $5L they aren't going to "facelift" the forums either.

Ooh thanks. I forgot that one.

I live next to the remnants what was a small ad farm 18 months ago. It's now in the 'burnt-out' phase. Several of the plots eventually got sold cheap or ended up with the Governor and I bought some and joined them to my land. Three of 16m lots still have ads on - two I would call 'legitimate' as they are advertising in-world locations in a sensible way. Then there are 2 x 16m lots for sale at L$ 5000 each, one of which has had a pot plant on it for 18 months and another is empty, not for sale but with ban lines.

I surrounded an old ad lot and built a tower around it, I check it now and then but the ad is still there and still changes 4 times a minute or so, I don't believe anyone maintains the ad lot, just puts the ad up and left it.

The new ads are as obnoxious as anything Hax in his heyday came up with, and while their little squares are not for sale all the ones around them are. it is my bet that they are counting on us to pay for 8 of them to put up anti ad towers.

Right now the biggest roadblock to LL doing anything further about the new explosion in ads and land extortion is this weird bee in their collective bonnet about "Mainland zoning." Supposedly there's a "Raymond Linden" who's working on this zoning policy, but I don't think any resident has ever met him, and whatever is being planned is shrouded in secrecy. Supposedly one can telegraph suggestions, but it has all the signs of "Write-Only Memory."

It's beyond me how they imagine they'll be able to scale such a thing, but it pleases the Raven immensely, and I guess if you own as much of the Mainland as S/he does, it's only fair that you get to call some of the shots. The weird thing is that it seems "zoning" will only apply to new land, so the Raven's current vast holdings would still be completely vulnerable (except for the few patches in the previous attempt at Linden zoning, on a few first-continent sims--which, not coincidentally, are ringed by burnt-out adfarms).

But until they get this nonsense out of their systems, there just doesn't seem to be any way to get their attention to deal with the real problem.

You're right; that's not extensive. And pretty shabby service on LL's part. Maybe it's time to get angry and vocal about this again. Say what you will about LL not caring, and not listening; but they did finally act (however anemically) when our tempers finally reached the boiling point last year.

It's probably worth a concierge chat to ask why they're not acting. And maybe they really are truly overwhelmed with them? How many Lindens are there who have AR-followups in their job descriptions, and how many thousands of 16m extortionist plots were/are there? If the ratio is something like 10 / 10,000 for example, then that's a huge job.

Smoke, sorry if you already know all this, but: make sure your AR is as clear as possible, with "Ad Farm Extortion" in the subject. And remember that ugly isn't enough, and expensive isn't enough; it has to be both for them to be violating the policy.

Get RC 1.20 whatever it is, move up to 3,000 [or higher!] metres and abandon the ground level to the eyesores. No matter where anyone moves ad farms are sure to follow unless it's an island estate. I've long suspected that alot of the adfarmers are a front for island estate owners intent on driving residents off the mainland onto their 'safe and ad-farm free' islands.

The forum face lift seems to have silently disappeared too, more blog news is being reported on the viewer login screen as well, as someone lost their job?

AdFarmers will just use their temprezzers to cover every meter between ground and 4096 then.