How Can We Help LL Crack Down on Adfarms?

While most of us know that adfarms were made a TOS violation a few months ago, many of these extortion plots still remain. You can, ofcourse, send an abuse report, but so far, I haven't seen action on ANY AR that I've sent, and I have sent several. I know Adfarm dismantling is a low priority to LL, but the whole point in pushing for adfarms to be banned was to clear up the land that they were ruining. Some groups in SL are into blocking adfarms from view, thus removing the incentive for, but there are so many, and adfarming is a relatively cheap business, so I fear that will have limited affect.

So, I put it to the boards, can anyone think up a way of either convincing LL to take adfarms more seriously, or to assist LL in getting rid of them by disincentivizing them, etc?

I don't know there are several 2000 L + for 16m lots near me, friend even tried to contact the owner of one lot but he never responded.
She said she didn't want to bother reporting him because she didn't think LL would do anything.
I still see so many over price and ugly ad spaces still its like new ruling hasn't changed anything.

Without knowing anything about the actual location. . .If the plot is small, (16m certainly qualifies) has an obnoxous build on it, and for sale, it's against TOS, and the lindens WILL attend to it--One way or another.

There is a plot in Bowfin, that was in the middle of the road, and soon after griefer adlots were marked as against TOS, the signs came down, and banlines went up. I almost paid the extortionist fee (L10k) but decided to AR it instead.

It took a couple of months, but, eventually. The Lindens moved the road around the adlot.

Hey, worked for me. And arguably the lot was within the letter of the law, as it didn't have a griefer build on it.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. AR the lots. Have friends AR the lots. If you notice passersby near the lots ask them too. Then, AR it again after a few weeks.

Don't forget that there is nothing wrong with having a tiny piece of land set for sale at an enormous price, and there's nothing wrong with a tiny piece of land having ads on it. It's only when the 2 are together - ads, and for sale at a huge price - that it becomes a ToS violation.

Before the rules were enacted I built walls around the 16m plot on my land blocking the ad. My neighbor helped erecting a wall on her side. I monitored it closely incase the farmer adjusted the height of the build.

I finally purchased almost all of the ad farm land (at a low price). I recombined the land back into al larger plot. I still could not resolve the last two plots. Both owners insisted they need a 16m plot on every sim in SL. There is nothing on the plots that I could see. no scripts were detected.

"CX"

...zuh?

Yes, do note that there is a distinction in the current adfarm policy between high-priced extortionist plots and high-priced extortionist plots which are specifically set up to annoy or harass you into buying. Just the existence of the plot with a high price isn't enough.

I am part of a group which actively fights against these "land griefers", including the ones which are currently legal. We're working to help LL craft an even better policy to eliminate once and for all the ad-cutting and small plot extortion racket. It's called "The Ad Zoo".

In my home region, there were several REALLY bad areas of chopped-up ad land, and I started my own land recovery project there. I have been very successful so far in reclaiming more than half of the cut ad land, and am getting very close to completely reintegrating some of the plots back into useful land again.

There are two keys to winning against these parasites:

1) DO NOT EVER PAY MORE THAN FAIR MARKET VALUE FOR THESE EXTORTION PLOTS. EVER!!! When you buy one for some ridiculous price, yes, you get rid of that one, but then that leech has more money to buy a larger plot and chop it up in another resident's back yard. You don't like it done to you; don't do it to someone else. Put up "Don't buy this crap" signs next to these plots. Lampoon them. Do everything you can to ruin their business and their business model. The Ad Zoo has signs and notecard givers we can provide, including many building tips to help you deal with ad plots next to and even inside your land. IM me for a landmark and a kit.
2) PATIENCE! I can't stress this enough! As long as the plots aren't selling, the leeches are HAVING TO PAY TIER ON LAND THAT IS DOING NOTHING FOR THEM! However, it is an insidious and slow process. It eats at them from the inside, so it takes time. The key is to NEVER give in. Let them know it, too. When your deeds match your words, they get the message and either abandon land, get out of the extortion business, or sell it to you for a reasonable price.

Always be polite. Pick on them politely, laugh at their antics. They are nothing more than griefers anyway. If you are the one getting the lulz at *their* expense, it hastens their end all that much faster.

The last key thing is to SPREAD THE WORD! Tell your friends, get out of your skybox, meet the neighbors in your region, talk about and work together with them against the blight. Get everyone on board with not giving in to them. Let their plots rot inside of special builds which you can make and incorporate with beauty into your and/or your neighbors' build.

Remember, the ONE thing these jerks bank on is just ONE person's weakness. That's all it takes for it to make their business model worthwhile. DON'T be that person. Please. For all of our sakes, and sake of the mainland's beauty, as well as your land value.

*folds wings and climbs off soap crate*

Can we AR all builds we think are ugly?

Great! Congratulations, CX!

Yes, the last two are not so much adfarmers or leeches; they have a business concept which needs for them to own a piece of land in every sim to be viable. Presently, they only have them in around 1000-2000 sims each. One of them is a major land trading group who uses the 16s as a "safe landing zone" for their landbots. The other is a group who plans to lease out the 16s for scripters who want to put their multi-sim projects. So far, that deal hasn't seen much fruition, as the plots have been empty for as long as I have seen.

I still think it is odious and unnecessary for them to HAVE to own 16s in every sim, but at least they WILL work with you to trade their plots with others in the sim, as long as they still have one.

Not unless the intent is obvious enough to warrant an AR; the intent being to make you willing to pay an exorbitantly high price for the plot (which has to be set for sale) to get rid of the "ugliness".

So we have to assume we know the builder's intent then. Good. I shall start assuming and ARing immediately.

You can do whatever you want, pal. File a thousand ARs a minute, if you like. The Lindens very well know where the rule applies and where it doesn't.

No one here has advocated reporting "ugly builds" just for the sake of them being "ugly", despite your hyperbole.

The point is, in the cases of REAL abuse, the intent is more than obvious. If you haven't seen it or been subject to it, be thankful.

I'm not your pal, friend.

Well, you will just have to cope, then, pal.

A timely thread. Ominous developments in the middle of some of the newly auctioned sims in Gaeta show that the basic extortion model has not been abandoned in spite of the actions of the powers that be. A far cry from the battle of Riback, but it does look like the beginning of a resurgence.

Ads, or other items designed to visiually affect the adjoining plots. I've seen locations with no ads, merely excessive particle generators (continuous firework fountains) get claimed by the gov.

Hax is back, gleefully chopping away as much as he can, and pricing it to sell fast so he can buy more to destroy. How can we win when people are buying what he's selling at those prices? They're the lowest prices on the market. It wouldn't surprise me if he was willing to lose a little money out of spite for those of us who tried to fight him.

The "slippery slope" argument never fails to come up, but it's just an obvious attempt at misdirection when applied to adfarms. It just ain't hard to see an adfarm plot as currently defined.

Sure, there are gray areas: There's a 16 near where I stand at the moment, in fact, with a spinning "For Sale" sign tower and the extra annoyance of a whole bunch of separate textures cycling by script (not an animated texture) so as to maximally lag image downloads for all within drawing distance, set for sale at L$1499 by the particular land terrorist named for a Recreational Vehicle manufactured in Forest City, Iowa.

Now, it is of course an ad extortion scheme, but it's borderline, so I'm not gonna AR it. And frankly, if LL removes some like this and leaves some out, that's good enough. For now.

Ultimately, though, it's pretty likely that another step is going to be needed if LL hopes to achieve its objective of renewing the Mainland. There are a tremendous number of microplots for sale at outrageous prices, and another tremendous lot of microplots with builds obviously intended not to advertise but rather to antagonize. The former lot will presumably die at the invisible hand once the owners realize that the current value of a 16sq.m. roadside plot is precisely L$16 and they're shelling out tier for nothing. The latter lot is just self-aggrandizement by the delusional; I don't think LL can force them to take their medications, so I think they'll have to intervene again eventually. (These are probably extortion schemes in disguise, really. The owners are probably waiting for an unsolicited offer of grandiose proportions. Good luck with that.)

On the subject of the one-parcel-per-sim thing: these are at least innocuous. I surround a couple of those on one parcel. They make good neighbors, kinda: quiet, rather like living next to a cemetery. The whole premise of their existence, though, strikes me as kind of futile. The best they can ever hope to do is blanket the Mainland, which is a shrinking 20% of the grid, and nowadays completely unvisited by many new residents once they escape the Welcome Center. But... embarrassingly enough, I've had even stupider SL pastimes than sim philately, so, far be it from me to criticize this slightly eccentric hobby.

I don't know the answer to this one. But, I will say this now. If LL had allowed its users to turn off these rotating cubes from ones own parcel i.e. control what can and cannot be seen from your own parcel, I'd still be a landowner today.

But, what is the point of building something beautiful if a$$hats are just going to divide up all the existing land around you to 16x16 parcels and stack obnoxious rotating ads all the way up in the sky? This is exploitation by forcing the legitimate users of the land to either buy up the massively overpriced 16x16 parcels or leave.

I suppose LL just doesn't care anymore. I guess ad farmers make them money in some way. I guess they serve a purpose. I don't know. But, until something is done about it, I'll never buy my own land again...and thus have no reason to give LL money every month in tier fees and premium account membership. I guess ad farmer's money is worth more than mine.

There is a simple solution.

Any plot under 128 sq m should have a sell limit of twice the average rate quoted in the average price per sq m on the economics page, which is currently about 5L per sq m.

If you try and sell a 16 sq m plot, the max sell price will (currently) be set to 160L.

All LL need to do is announce such a policy, say so a month in advance, do a bit of coding on the land sale system, and then implement it. Ad farm crisis over. Done. Next.

I don't think that is anywhere near the line, Qie. It's so blatantly over it, I'd AR it in a heartbeat. You've just described why. There's no reason to have anything more than a simple "for sale" sign on such a plot. Anything else, especially something which specifically is designed to cause lag like that, is over it and should be reported.

I had some idiot put up THREE bright yellow spinning for sale towers on each of TWO adjacent 16sqm plots. I ARed them, and they went away. The plots are for sale for 995 & 1495. This person used to also have adcubes on top of them (which were big enough to encroach onto my land a significant amount), which I also ARed and they went away. I think he finally got the message. The land is still for sale for the same prices, but it is clean, at least.



No, that's not borderline. It is grossly over the line. AR it.



There are also a lot of microplots out there at insane prices, being sold on the business model "Need more prims? We have what you need!" as if 3 more prims is going to be worth $4995 and up. These usually are strategically placed, so that if you want to expand, you have to buy them up, or you will have a donut hole in your land. I have several of them now. I just wall them em up, or make them into an attraction.

I love the notion of them shelling out tier for nothing, or, worse, being a sideshow on my land. They make lovely conversation pieces.

The Lindens have already pretty much stated that they will not directly meddle in the market prices for anything in SL, most especially land. While this would have a direct and effective impact on the situation, it is a non-starter because of their basic "hands-off" posture for land prices.

Other ideas that are gaining traction include making the minimum amount of land owned in a region at something like 512sqm, or making it so that the lowest amount of tier used per region is that amount. The vast majority of these extortionists use microplots to ply their odious trade, so either would put a serious cramp in their style.

Yeah, we've been aware of him for some time now.

The answer to him? Don't buy his land. Spread the word. Put up signs if his cuts are next to your land. Communication is inexpensive.

The most workable solution is landscape screens, which can be very attractive and substitute a view you like for the one you don't like. There are landscape screens that can also be stacked to the sky, to deal with your local neighborhood land griefer. I know this because I [shameless plug alert] make and sell them. [shameless plug alert ends.]