Feedback on Ad Farm Post - Part 2

I agree with this.

It's a bit of an anti-climax really.

Also, 50 per avatar is far too many. I think it should be 32 at the very most (32*16 = 512m2), but even that seems rather high.

Hello Jack, great work on moving on with the ad farm issue,

1) There should be some place where the people that want to run add farms sign up and state they understand the TOS and will abide by it and only people on the said list should be allowed to run advertising ad farms.

2) They should be verified accounts with payment info on file.

3) There should be a way to contest spaces where 3 or more sides are owned and used for commercial and residential but not advertising uses.

Is ad farming clearly defined?

If I put up an ad sign on ten plots in one SIM, am I ad farming?
If I do it on two plots?
Does the the sign design mean something?
Does the plot size?
The beast must be identified before we can kill it

Jack, my point of concern is threefold:

1.
The obvious: changing what they put on their land into gambling prims or garish vendors. How would that serve to improve the landscape? Those would be clickable, and perhaps your rules would cover that?

2. What about forsale signs which rent out space to advertisers? When I bought my lands in Juliet to form my home, the forsale signs resembled glowing billboards which displayed inworld porn shops. This was on PG land but the ad was networked for all the real estate entity's sale prims at once. Is there any regulation in place or to be put in place which prevents mature product advertising on PG land?

3.
You may be limiting one advertiser at a time, but with hundreds of adfarmers if you don't regulate the number of ads in one spot, you still have a crop of them aka farm.

I flew along the rails the other day, and someone's property had a road which led to the tracks with a nice little rural style mailbox for the owner's online detection. If the side of Linden roads were more like this, the Mainland would be such a better place. It can't if there are these clusters of ads dominating these areas. It's a shame really, and it doesn't look as though it's going to change.




"Mature" content (which isn't always mature - just sexual or gorey in nature) was accommodated for those who wanted to engage in whatever in their homes or property. The point being that there is no such thing as privacy, but - unlike PG land - you would not be liable for doing the poseball thing if someone looked in with their camera. Mature land was never intended to have explicit content out in the open.

<grumble>I ARed a blatant sex den rental on PG land near my home in one direction and a clear glass shop selling explicit porn photos butt up against the PG land in another, the latter discouraging anyone from purchasing the parcel whose border it shares. Neither were addressed.</grumble>

The terms already do not accommodate "mature" material in view of other properties and general view. Where would you conceal a 16sqm cube on 16sqm property, and why would you want to if that was your use?

1. Why should Advertising hoardings be Phantom?
Ads are physical type of objects as far as I am concerned.
Could you explain the need and reason to make it phantom?
I am afraid I cannot see the point in that at all. It actually makes the ad less valid to me.

2. About: "no more than 1 advertising placement by an individual in any single region"
What does "1 advertising placement" means exactly? Is a 4 ads billboard 1 placement?
That should be clarified.

The reason I am asking is that it could create a conflict with some ad networks run by Carl Metropolitan, or the way he and I place ads billboard by infohubs. We both clearly have more than one "placement" targeting the hubs.
Does that mean people like us would need an authorization from Linden Lab for that?
Or will you see it in a way that such ads don't fit in the network category but 'affiliate advertising' one? assuming we have legitimate use and ownership of the surrounding land, and despite targeting the infohubs with outdoor billboards.

3. Also on similar concerns: What if I have a 8x10 network ads on a large building facing my land, a road and someone else behind it . The '1 advertising placement' limit or 8m maximum, as presented, could have problematic interpretations there.

Looking at the "clubs and malls" FAQs, and the "it’s unlikely to be affected" mention, I think this could create various (mis)interpretations for the "advertising on behalf of others" type if the ads are outdoor facing other people's land.

Those distinctions need to be more clear or LL is going to end up with a whole lot of abuse reports with a very difficult decisions to make as to whether this type of ads fit within the "1 advertising placement per sim" or "network ad" vs. "affiliate ads".

Perhaps a mention of ad orientation/direction so that network/affiliate ads mainly or reasonably directed towards the same owners own land or Linden Land (even is visible from others land) does not fall under those limits...

PS: And I am disappointed too in the reversal of decision. You are still letting the abusers on the loose making business out of selling 16sqm cuts and selling them for possible ugly ads all over the roads, that the policy you presented can do nothing about.

Also had this same ? Jack. I asked it several times at the meeting and hoped you could set the ground rules for vendors on small plots. This is for sales not to circumvent rules: No attached LM's Links or websites. Plain and simple vendor/ items for sale not an ad. This is also a large part of commerce for many in SL and needs some clarification.
TY
ROBO Marx
BDVR

It's a fair question but my reading of this is that NCI is not an advertising business, it's primary purpose is teaching. They're really looking at plots that have the intention of advertising/extortion.

GREAT NEWS JACK !!!!! advertising was a major plague and cant wait for the day the extortionist cant drain the SL economy with over priced worthless land !!! Really what would one do with 1000s of them if they couldnt get upwards of 50 US dollars for a 16sq and we all know it was getting way out of hand on here!!!

Holy back pedalling Batman! You might as well wave the white flag now.

This is really diappointing, you have them on the run and now they'll be rubbing their hands together with glee.

Bots and data miners are as much of a problem as the ads. At the very least restrict scanning devices to the boundary lines of the parcel the scanner is on. There is no good reason for a third party other than LL to collect any information about my land.

Advertising is advertising. If it applies to one, it should apply to all. No special exemptions.

The market decides the price! This is a free market game right.

But it doesn't apply to all, it applies to those whose primary purpose is advertising.

I don't know you, never had issues with you, don't have land so never likely to have issues with you, however I just have to point out to you that this mantra is so much like people who sell arms for large profit in the real world saying "I don't kill people, I just sell the guns".

Jack,

Thank you, thank you, thank you. LL has made an excellent decision in putting forth these new restrictions on mainland advertising. I'm sure this new empowerment will see residents across the mainland flooding you with TOS violation reports for some time, and that is a good thing. We will be very appreciative of the beautification that will result these from efforts.

--Stone

EXACTLY !!!! everyone is sick of seeing a few peoples ugly high priced worthless 16sq taking over every sim on the grid !!! give it 1 more year and SL mainland would have been destroyed completely by them !!!

Hope is a fragile thing.
While trying to keep it alive, it is very disappointing to see the policy backtracking before it has begun.

The retreat from licensing has abolished the most effective anti-blight weapon in LLs hands. It removes the possibility of dealing with destructive behaviour of persistent offenders at a stroke. Instead, the G-team must revert to the same inefficiency and inconsistency of case-by-case action that has singularly failed in the past. It also leaves the same handful of individuals who have been responsible for the present devastations completely free explore and exploit the loopholes, as they will surely do.

.... details of two gaping loopholes removed by DM (for now) ....

No doubt the usual culprits, practiced in the art, will find other loopholes. Dropping the licenses seems to have left them completely free to do so.

A few more specific points (including reiterations in support of others) ...

1. Need to add incongruous terraforming to the list of prohibitions.
2. Full bright is an effective agent for harassment and should be prohibited.
3. Animations other than rotation are as/more distracting and should be prohibited.
4. Restriction of width and spacing are required as well as height.
5. Much good argument in favour of one-sided ad content has been ignored.
6. Does the PG restriction apply only to the ad itself, or also to the product/service advertised?
7. The actions affected residents may/not use to limit the impact of ads on their experience is not covered.
8. As written, legitimate land dealers are limited to 50 for-sale signs even if these are the most discreet flattened signs. Is this effect intended?

And we have to keep repeating the old one, while acknowledging that it is on the to-do list ...
Explicit restriction to advertsing content does nothing to limit harassment by otherwise identical means and therefore has no effect on the worst despoilers of the mainland.

All that aside, do keep up the momentum. I is still headed in the right direction.

I think Extortion to raise a land price is hardly part of a "free enterprise" system. Ann has an interesting and workable idea and the fact that it concerns you when we're talking about a maximum difference of 43L on the sale of a 16 sq m parcel negates your argument. And if you own multiple 16 sq m parcels as defined in Jack's OP, that tells me what business you've been in and removes ANY sympathy I might have had.

Says you!
No covenant is not the same thing as a free market and no law.
In SL LL set the rules. They always have they always will.

Jack - thanks for the continued feedback.

I am looking forward to these improvements, but they don't fix land cutting and extortion overnight.

While sub 512sqm lots continue to have value in excess of the average square meter price, they will continue to be abused. The key is to make such small cuts valueless on their own. Once you achieve that, they'll evaporate.

Others have suggested measures such as a lower limit on the amount of land you own in a sim before you can rez anything. 16sqm cuts could then be used for legitimate purposes by a sim landowner but would not support prims if the owner had other land in the sim. Compulsory purchase rights for adjacent / surrounding landowners could also be considered.

Well, licensing had its complexities--and a definite risk of being seen as playing favorites, at least without a big bunch of mechanism that could be made transparent. But there are some glaring problems with the current formulation.

8m height restriction. On the surface, this sounds like a big improvement--but as-is, it will actually be more damaging to adjacent parcels than the current 50m spires of crap: It will actually *encourage* the growing practice of "Terrorforming"--elevating the microparcel as different as possible from its surroundings.

I suggest two steps to address this. First, a simple rephrasing of the restriction to be 8m above *reverted* ground level. This is relatively easy to enforce (not as easy as AGL, but still do-able). It's not that the ground has to be reverted, but that the height restriction is based on that reverted level.

But that's the second step, which requires more technical intervention: The terrain of any parcel under 256m should automatically smooth completely to surrounding parcels, with no terraforming possible on the smaller parcel. This actually addresses that Terrorforming scam for extortion parcels, too.

Exceptions to the 50 ads per account-holder limit with LL approval. This had goddamn well better describe the null set. Otherwise LL just bought all the accusations of favoritism that would result from the licensing scheme, magnified by a complete lack of transparency in granting such exceptions.

If this ends up being free licensing through the back door, LL is just too hopelessly f*'d-up for fixing. And it's really sad that everyone--myself included--naturally suspects that this is exactly what's planned. Prove us wrong. Please.

No restriction on number and location of ads in a sim. This is a lost opportunity for LL to actually manage the Mainland as an Estate, without compromising legitimate diversity. But it seems to be water under the bridge at this point.

Still, it's important to realize that, lacking such restriction, LL's enforcement job is *much* more difficult, complex, and subtle, in dealing with other microparcel land griefing techniques such as extortion. Ad runners and extortionists have a very powerful synergy system, and by allowing any arbitrary parcel on a sim to become an ad at any time, LL has--presumably unintentionally--empowered the extortionists again.

To be realistic about it, the extortionists would have retained a fairly free reign to torment their neighbors even if there were no ads allowed anywhere on the Mainland, so this is just playing into their already strong hand anyway.

On the plus side, this will make it abundantly clear to LL that they need to deal directly with the extortion problem when it becomes immediately and glaringly obvious that the current formulation of the adfarming ban has no appreciable effect on the spread of microparcels. Unfortunately, every day this goes unaddressed adds weeks or months to the timeline for healing the whole mess back into usably-sized parcels.

We can only hope LL looks at what's really happening on their Mainland rather than being lulled into complacency by brief blips in statistics that are insensitive to the actual phenomenon, as happened with the first anti-adfarming policy.

The free market and associated bullsh!t. This nonsense has gone on long enough. There absolutely is a free market: buy a sim and sell unregulated advertising there to your heart's content. Sell the idea of microparcel extortion to the big Estate owners--I'm sure for the right capitalist share of the profits, some could be interested. Just get your freeloading, parasitic crap the hell off the Mainland.

Hi Jack, this is definately a step in the right direction. Already though I can see some gaping holes that will allow the same type of behavior as before.

What is to prevent the same ad farms from operataing? ie: an ad farm with all grounded 8M high ads, one 16M per advertiser, right next to someone's house and nowhere near the road like before. I don't see this changing with the new rules you listed.

I can also imagine whole stretches of roadside lined with nothing but 8M high ads on 16M lots. One per advertiser, all the way down the road.

So there needs to be a hard limit on the number of ads per region as well. Requiring all ads to be no more that 10M from the road would be a good way to eliminate "off road" ad farm clusters too.

I saw nothing in the solution that addresses old, half abandoned ad farms. That are less ads and more ad griefers and protesters. They leave behind scarred landscapes and ugly blocker prims ten times worse than the ads that are now long gone. How would these 16M parcels be reclaimed from unresponsive alts who desire nothing more than to be a nuisance?

The other thing that was not addressed is the matter of the 16M lot owner who is nestled into 3 or 4 sides of my larger parcel, and wants 20,000$L for his/her microparcel. I have three like this next to me in Chiron. TOS prevents me from giving their names. One wants 20,000$L for a 16M lot and 9999$L for a 32M nearby. The other wants 16,999$L, of course the lots were not for sale at all until I asked to trade them out. Then the 10,000$ price tag went up and access went off. After several AR's the price went up 10,000$L and it's still there.

Tell me how is LL going to deal with extortionists like this?

Same here, so someone gets a pass if they "only" have 49 ad plots? Plus I can see a lot of ARs eventually getting closed after a lot of running around on ll's part. After all, a resident probably does not know all the plots owned by another resident.

A perfect description of the way the earlier policy failed completely. Taking away the "official" sale price had no effect at all on the extortion. There is even one "farmer" who has the prices in the titles and/or descriptions of his plots. Many not-for-sale plots have requests to contact the owner of you want to purcahse.

JACK LINDEN FOR PRESIDENT!!!

I understand people are a bit sceptic and critcal about the solutions and personally I think
50 advertising locations are a bit too much to have per person or group but it's an improvement on when nothing was done about it. So I applaud it.

If it doesnt work out like we hoped to, LL could tighten the bolts on ad farms then some more.