Feedback on Ad Farm Post - Part 2

A parasite is an organism that provides no benefit for the organism that it's parasitizing, and generally (though not always) harms it.

A "parasitic ad" would be an ad that does not provide any benefit to any of the people who are being advertised to other than the (arguable) benefit of the ad itself. For example, a banner ad is not a parasitic ad because it is paying for the content that you're visiting the website for, whereas spam on Usenet is parasitic because it's providing no benefit to the group it's posted in. In SL, an ad in a club you're visiting is providing rental to the club owner, and thus paying for the club. An ad in a microparcel outside the club isn't doing that, and thus is a parasitic ad.
Talarus explanation was not good. Hopefully this one works better

My argument is not whether Advertising is being parasitic or not,

I stated before under this policy it is allowed by LL, you, I or any existing advertiser can place up to 50 adverts where ever we choose as long as we follow LL's guidelines.

The mere fact that someone is benefiting from yours or my traffic is immaterial.
The amount they put into the Sim is immaterial.
As things stand under this policy they have that right and if it works for them they would be smart to take advantage of it.
Whether we like it or not.

The important issue is the practice of hyperfine dicing as you put it is actively discouraged.

For this reason LL must act to prevent further large scale cutting from continuing, just stating it is unacceptable and taking direct action to remove assets of all perps. should put a stop to that.

Allowing advertising to be attached to roads only, should also drive most microparcel owners and advertisers out of problem areas towards roadsides.
These are clearly the obvious positional choice for advertising vending machines etc. anyway, as instantly none of these parcels can ever be bordered on 4 sides by a single private owner.

Limiting ownership of these parcels to 50 instead of the many hundreds some now hold would also help recombine land and clear some of the problem.

Not relevant. It's not the content that's the problem, it's the method.
A good businessman does not treat unreasonable members of the public any differently from reasonable ones. "A soft answer turneth away wrath" really does work.
Not relevant. Spam can be very profitable, too, that doesn't mean it should be accepted.
In the past 15 or so years that spam has been a problem on the net I have met many people who believed that "good spamming" was possible. They were often good people. The problem is that the most these people can do is legitimize the bad ones... they can't stop them, and they can't make spam a benign business model. The economics of the business mean that Gresham's Law (bad money drives out good) rules. If you want to make a space where you can operate the way you want to, you need to come up with a way to change the economics. If that makes it harder for you, that's a cost of doing business... but it's less of a cost than letting the people who don't care about the business define the rules.

That's the bottom line. This thread should give you an idea what things will be like if you let other people control the fight against the bad pennies. If you want to control the fight you need to do more than try and be a good penny, you have to take charge of the fight against the bad guys yourself.

I don't think you can. The "ethical spammers" weren't able to. The economics of the situation are all against you.

That is precisely what I mean when I say the economics of the situation are such that it's not possible to solve this problem while allowing parasitic advertising to continue.

That is precisely what I mean when I say the economics of the situation are such that it's not possible to solve this problem while allowing parasitic advertising to continue.
A parasite doesn't need to be significantly harmful to be a parasite.

A symbiont is beneficial to the host. A parasite isn't. There's no question but that widely distributed 16m ad parcels are not beneficial to anyone but the advertiser. They are a parasite, and parasitic advertising has *always* led to the "tragedy of the commons" situation we currently have, no matter what efforts are made to regulate it, no matter how many ethical members of the community there may be.

Increasing the size of the parcel changes the economics. I don't like having one of Outy's particle emporiums in our sim, but I'm not going to fight it. Why? Because the economics of paying for 512 square meters per shop mean that there's only one "networked store" like that in every dozen or so sims, instead of dozens of ad plots in every sim they've managed to get a foot in.

Yeah, it is.

Initially, you claimed that 16 sq. meter plots were inherently more parasitic than other lot sizes. To support your position, you came up with a hypothetical in which such a plot was utilized in a parasitic fashion. I pointed out that the same argument could be used to argue against 64 sq. meter plots, rentals, or even larger plots. Now you concede that it's not just 16 sq. meter plots that are parasitic -- now we're up to 64 sq. meters.

Should we try for larger? Your argument would be just as valid in such cases -- one resident puts a great deal of time and effort into a business and is successful, and another resident puts less time and effort in and siphons off the customers of the first. This same template could be applied to plots of any size, not just microparcels. I still don't see things your way. So I guess that we'll just have to agree to disagree on this point.

NOT on Linden land. If someone's not allowed to turn an abandoned Linden road into a river while waiting for the Lindens to get around to building a road there, if a rail bridge that's been commended by Lindens can be ARed and demolished, then there's no way "free-rider" advertisers should be rewarded.

If this WAS to go forward, then there MUST be a mechanism to allow residents to have a say in the development of adjacent Linden land.

In the economic world, however, these are called "uncompensated negative externalities" or "free riders" and lead to the tragedy of the commons. You don't end up with a symbiotic relationship, you end up with dust bowls and poisoned lakes.

The only way to make it work is regulation, and the regulation has to directly attack the behavior that is the problem. We have yet to see whether the Lindens proposed regulations will do the job. I am not hopeful.

The small parcel owner is still paying tier whether that tier is very low or not, so thus is contributing to the platform as a whole.
So probably can't be termed parasitic anyway, especially where adverts for larger shops are involved with privately generated content.

Advertising is going to be allowed on microparcels whether we like it or not, under both this proposal and the previous proposal LL has made that abundantly clear.

So banging on about the parasitic nature of a advert is pretty much pointless, we have them now, we are going to have them when LL's new policy runs out.
Micro parcels are annoying, they piss off the majority of the community but some people have reasonable uses for them, so they are here to stay to.

This said we need to limit their impact on the wider community, whatever the purpose of the plot, limit the options available for these plots to be used to aid extortion and ensure the advertising, that some are vehemently against is carried out in as low an impact nature as possible.

A little off-topic but Jack also mentions here that all mainland is now on class 5 hardware.

I was pretty surprised to read this.

First of all to anyone complaining about rights:

This is Linden's site and we're all privileged to participate. They can do what they want, and if they decide spinning junk over every plot is ugly, a distraction, and maybe causes people with epilepsy to lapse into seizures, it's their right to demand it removed, and it's their discretion to remove a nuisance when the majority of people feel their output - which isn't as a resident and who have no regard for any land other than to move it OR use it as a weapon to terrorize people who work hard to pay for their RL living expenses, medical, children, and monthly tier to have a nice downtime escapist paradise - is not condusive to a good aura.

Yes, if you advertise land for sale, the money sign on the map when clicked shows the land title as entered and the price. Note that yes, when someone looks for land and there's one in a cluster of same on the map, we DO look around when we get there if the price is right.

I am repelled by garish sale graphics and animations. I am attracted to straightforward ones and I admire plain prims and modest sign builds. And resonable prices. Some chowderhead rebought and repriced land in my area, oblivious to the PG (cheaper) status; I plan to enjoy an unobstructed view for quite some time. Just keep rebuying and repricing it. One 1024 is now valued at half the original 4096 was when I first came there in June.

To be honest, the Lindens should have been the only ones who offered advertising space from day one on land where advertising and redirecting was a dominant purpose. If I buy a plot of land in RL, the government or whatever sells or rents space on an existing billboard structure for the image to appear. They are sparsely and strategically positioned to stand out AND not litter the landscape with chaos. I dont see a plot of land owned by someone to plop down three disgusting neon signs next to my ranch house. We sure as hell dont need it here.

Talarus' hypothetical had nothing to do with networked ads or the economies of SL chains. He was talking about a single microparcel ad laser-targeted at a major landowner's customer base by offering similar products at a lower price. That example was what I was addressing.

He mentioned that at the office hour, Yes welcome news

Yes, I've seen that argument from spammers too. They're paying for their bandwidth, and so supporting the internet as a whole. But even when that was true (with the rise of botnets, it's not even true any more) the cost to the internet (to everyone else on the internet, to mail servers, news servers, ISPs) from unregulated spamming was far in excess of any benefits they provided.

The small amount of money money paid by spammers (or adfarmers, or botfarmers) does not make a difference in the service received by mail users (or SL residents). They're too small a part of ISP's (or SL's) income to reduce anyone else's tier charges (the way, say, banner ads or google adwords make the sites that run them possible).

So the bottom line is the same. For a negligible payment that doesn't benefit the people you're advertising among, you get more or less unlimited ad placements. That's the economics that make "free riders" a problem. There's no feedback mechanism to control them, so they will continue to grow without limit.

That doesn't change the prediction that I'm making, that the new policy will not make a significant difference to the problem. It's like the CAN-SPAM act... it doesn't target the bad behavior... it legitimizes it.

Um, yes, I pointed out that his example was a bad one too. He didn't explain why what he refers to as parasitic ads are a problem, he got distracted by his example, and so did you, I guess.

It doesn't matter that his example was a bad one. Because it's irrelevant... the real problem with "parasitic advertising" is not unfair competition, it's the economics of uncompensated negative externalities.

I hope your wrong!
LL need to target the bad behavior.
Hit hard on 1st October and keep with their intentions.

QFT

I could not agree more.

And, without further input from Jack, it just seems like this thread is spinning its wheels and going nowhere.

I'm not talking about Weedy. I don't necessarily have a problem with Weedy's plots, because Weedy is WILLING to negotiate fairly. If Weedy decided that she just HAS to have a hole in the middle of my mall, then I would definitely have issues, but she isn't like that at all. We've already talked about her situation (and yes, she does presently have a hole in my 23000+sqm mall plot, along with 3 others who are jerks, UNLIKE Weedy), and we have an understanding of how things will pan out when I get her the parcel I want to trade with her so I can get rid of the hole so I don't have to build around it.

No, the ones I am talking about are the people who are attempting (and EPICally failing) to extort or harass me. The ones who refuse to even TALK to me, or if they DO talk to me, it is a stream of anti-American hate speech and personal trash-talking that is sure to get them suspended for another few weeks the next time they utter a peep. The ones who rub their grubby little hands with glee at the prospect of bilking me out of thousands of L$, or want to rub their trashy little life in my face.

TO JACK LINDEN:

I don't think you are going to correct how many sims have been ruined by micro parcel cutting or signs in the past. Proof shows on property sale searches that the majority of these type sims get values trashed. Look at the low L$ per meter figures. Almost all of the time the NinjaLand and Super Freak Ninja bots are purchasing parcels in heavily trashed sims for L$3 to L$3.5. BELOW what Linden even starts land auctions at. The cheap parcels always for sale are in heavily micro'd sims. Many people as you know have abandoned lots surrounding micro grids. Seasoned people know to stay away from purchasing land near any micro parcels. But there are many novice people just starting and they sadly don't know how to make a proper "land investment". Some stay on and lick their wounds, while others just leave, left with an image of SL being a silly game.

So how do YOU WANT SL TO BE VIEWED BY PEOPLE JACK?

What you can do for the people is before you EVER decide to auction off complete sims again, that you create a server upgrade that limits the amount of micro parcels one can SET FOR SALE (not own) at a given time. Same for ban lines. It will throttle this behavior....somewhat.



So by your definition then all the ads in NYC Times Square are parasitic ads? How silly! Now lets get to the point already....

In RL advert costs are based on visibility and / or subscriber base. An advert costs more in a mag with a circulation of 45,000 as opposed to that which has one of 40. A sign in Times Square costs more than a sign in the middle of a farm with no visibility.

The problem with signs in SL is that there is no zoning and the idiots "selling" advert space have no real traffic figures to base what visibility these so called signs have. The logic appears that by annoying people, you get visibility. Most RL companies if they found out about this practice would sue them and SL. I've warned about this in the past, and you can bet soon enough a RL company WILL SUE Linden labs for allowing their company name to be tarnished. BET ON IT. More importantly is the stupidity of corporate monkeys actually spending money on these in world adverts for their real world business because they are usually given data that is flawed no matter how good these "networked sign metrics" are trumped up.

Have you ever noticed the lack of the common networked signs in real traffic sims?

I understand the logic of having a sign in every sim assures some sort of visibility. But without knowing the demographic of who is looking at your sign it becomes faulted as well.

SL should be a free marketplace. It is a great way for people to learn how to do business and try business models out without too much damage if they fail.

No, I didn't get distracted. I saw his example, I disagreed with it, and I articulated my disagreement. I don't think that he got distracted, either; I think that he believes a certain thing to be true, and he felt it was important to voice his opinion. We disagree on that particular issue, but I'm sure that we'll both get over it.



No, the real problem has nothing to do with advertising, parasitic or not.

The real problem is that a fairly small group of people discovered that they could add value to land by erecting ugly and annoying builds that residents who put time, money, and effort into their own plots would pay good money to remove. The blight that they create isn't a side effect of poor advertising policies, it's the whole point. The blight that they create isn't a result of unregulated advertising running rampant, the ads that they put up are nothing more than a cover.

Their ads don't attract business. That's because they're not designed to do that. They're designed to be ugly, repugnant, and annoying, and they're commonly placed in locations with little or no traffic other than the nearby land owning residents. They're often positioned in such a way that there could be no conceivable advertising benefit from their presence. These people are not advertisers, they're blight farmers involved in aesthetic extortion.

In fact, there's no reason that this aesthetic extortion has to be tied to advertising at all. This week, blight farmers are using intentionally ugly "advertisements" to shake down other residents. Next week, they could be amusement game operators with garish and ugly gaming machines that serve the same purpose, or artists who put up hideous prim anti-masterpieces, or activists drawing attention to good causes with builds that make everybody's eyes bleed. They'll go into business as vendors with hideous stores and stalls. Squeeze the advertising business and legitimate advertisers will suffer while the blight farmers ooze away and find new ways to shake down residents, and it'll be necessary to squeeze other sectors of the Second Life economy.

Which brings me back to the point that I was leading up to when you said that I got "distracted" -- go after microparcel advertising, and the blight farmers will move to microparcel vending. And outlawing 16 sq. meter microparcels won't work either, as there's nothing special about 16 sq. meter plots except that they're the smallest and most inexpensive out there. Eliminate them, and the blight farmers will just cut up plots into 64 sq. meter parcels instead, with a slightly smaller profit margin. Eliminate the 64 sq. meter plots, and then they'll move to the next smallest. In time, a level would be reached beyond which extortion would be economically unfeasible, but a lot of innocent residents would suffer, and probably leave SL, in the process.

This week, the blight farming extortionists have turned lots of people against advertisers and microparcels. Next week, it may be not-quite-microparcels and vending stalls or gaming machines. The week after that, it could be small satellite stores, or outdoor art, or whatever. Each time, the story will be the same -- divide and conquer, turn residents against legitimate pursuits, and then slip away to find a new extortion angle.

On the other hand, the sources of many residents' complaints will dry up if the extortionists are targeted. Edge cuts, donut holes, and other slice'n'dice schemes? Without residents adding value to these parcels via extortion, much of the economic incentive to cut up land in this fashion will vanish, so it won't happen nearly as often. Ridiculous levels of ugly ad blight? Like I said, they're not really ads, they're extortion tools, so they'll vanish as the extortionists find it increasingly difficult to do business.

A discussion about advertising more generally or the impact of the industry on Second Life is certainly valuable, but let's not kid ourselves as to the nature of the problem here: extortion is the issue, not advertising. I suspect that Jack's aware of this, which is why he's taking the approach that he is, but saying more would probably only help the blight farmers. We'll see how things go after October 1st.

Sorry for veering into tl;dr territory, and thanks for your time if you got this far,
Liandra

Yes, ADVERTISING, in general, is allowed. What is being CURTAILED are the METHODS of advertising, including, but not limited to, ads on small parcels. The jury is still out on exactly what methods will be allowed and which ones will be banned. Hell, it all could change again this Friday with the next blob installment of "As the Concierge Spins".



While that is true, the difference is that the person has made a PRESENCE. An AD is NOT a "presence". I don't have a problem with stores. I don't have a problem with *FAIR* competition. What I have problems with are people using non-presence parasitic methods to compete, because they are NOT fair in the least. Someone wants to invest significantly in the sim and compete? Fine. I will consider them my neighbor as long as they act neighborly. Someone using a microparcel with an ad on it is NOT being a neighbor, they are being a parasitic nuisance.



If he puts up a store, then he is driving traffic to the region, which symbiotically benefits me as well. At that point, it becomes *our* traffic, as well as others who make a significant PRESENCE in the sim for that express purpose.

This really isn't that hard of a concept to grasp: A STORE *generates* traffic. An AD *steals* said traffic the STORE (or other attraction) generates.



No, it isn't. That may be YOUR take on my "whole argument", but it isn't remotely the entirety of it.



As Qie already and astutely pointed out, no, a parasitic advertiser is using MY resources well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing

That's the only kind I have ever known.

I dunno. I think that you and I pretty much have said the same thing over the course of the debate, agreeing more than we disagree.

Which explanation/example? I've used several.

Fact is, competition, in general is what it is all about. Competition for scarce resources (artificially, anyway), MONEY, etc. It is what drives this whole thing. Why should someone pay L$14999 for a microparcel to "buy back their view" from an adfarmer/extortionist instead of spending that money buying stuff at my store, or Phil's store, or someone's club? Everyone here who is selling something, whether it be a product or a service, or simply themselves is necessarily competing with everyone else who is doing the same thing. As such, the competition argument is valid when applied to this situation. In addition, just like in RL, there are fair methods to compete and unfair methods to compete, most of the latter of which are quite illegal, and for good reason.

I think you are misconstruing what I said.



The DIFFERENCE, as I stated before, is that a STORE *generates* its own traffic. Ads *don't* generate traffic. It has little to do with the size of the parcel, except that it's awfully hard to argue that a "store" on a microparcel is actually anything other than an ad, since a microparcel store won't generate traffic for the region and, thus, would also be parasitic. Regardless, my main point is about *parasitic advertising*, not *parasitic storefronts*. If the situation was judged by the Lindens that the microparcel store was nothing more than advertising-in-store-clothing, then I wouldn't cry any tears if they nuked it. We've already seen that as one of the dodges planned by a couple of rather notorious adfarmers.