Feedback on Ad Farm Post - Part 2

Exactly. And however existing Mainland can go about petitioning to be zoned, they too can opt-in. This is the *right* way to do this thing.

[Edit: Well, not quite. Don't auction off the parcels, auction off a *lease* on the parcels, for advertising purposes. Sounds like licensing? Well... yeah.]
Right: to paraphrase Churchill on democracy, it's the "worst possible choice" except for all those others.

I own land bordering an unbuilt SLRR railroad bed on one side, and an unfinished roadway on the other. I very much value the roadside as a semi-public place: the roads really are an important asset of the Mainland, and shouldn't become a dumping ground. But, if the ad locations were chosen by LDPW on new sims, or as some part of the "opting-in" process for existing sims, and the ads really were designed to be appropriate to the sim, and there really were just a handful of them, it could be more than acceptable. I'd even volunteer some of my roadside for some of them--bearing in mind that the exchange is that every other ad and extortion parcel on the sim disappears forever.

Are you saying that the people putting those signs up are not paying rent to the businesses who own the buildings around time square for their ads?

I don't think it's that small a small group of people. And it doesn't matter if they're "real" advertisers or not. Most of the spam on Usenet and in email isn't for real products: a good deal of spam is for spamming services, or part of a "pump and dump" stock scheme, or businesses who are taken in by spammers and who don't make any money from their ads. Some spams are done just to trash reputations (Joe Jobs). The biggest impact is not the relatively small amount of income that most make, or even the respectable income that a few make, it's the devastation of email and the destruction of not just well intentioned spammers but any kind of email-based commerce, no matter who's running it, by association with spammers.

On usenet it was worse. There were people who were using Usenet as cheap archival storage for their jobs databases, pretending to be advertisers.
I agree, and if the Lindens do that then things will get better. Like things got better on Usenet after the cancelbots started killing the spams. But they need to DO that, and they need to keep from offering them *any* cover for their schemes. And allowing any kind of "advertising", I'm afraid, will still leave the hole open... and it will only get a little better.

..and that one statement right there pretty much sums up why most forms of bad advertising are almost universally reviled by the public.

Most of the time, people aren't shopping. They don't have the money, or they aren't interested in buying right now, or perhaps buying the specific product or even type of product being advertised. However, that doesn't stop quite a few advertisers. They see advertising as a form of "pressure" placed onto people to subtly coerce them into buying. Some of them take it too far, and it ends up being harassment. Some even take it beyond harassment (email spammers) and into criminal territory. However, the nature of a great deal of advertising IS harassment. It may not be overt or threatening harassment, but it treads on the patience of the person/people being exposed to it, usually to the detriment of their mental well-being.

Basically, I am all for advertising in some very narrow categories: 1) When I am shopping or looking to buy, and 2) If it is blanket advertising meant to support a free service I am partaking of: Broadcast TV commercials; Website banner ads; The Yellow Pages; Magazines; Newspapers; Affiliate advertising in venues, like ads before a movie when you go to the theatre; et cetera. ALL of those forms are tolerable because they are, for the most part, opt-in.

As for ones like telemarketing, email spam, door-to-door sales, billboards, etc, they can't be wished into the cornfield fast enough to make me the happiest possible.

By the way, has anyone mentioned Sao Paulo here?

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jun2007/id20070618_505580.htm

Advertising companies repeatedly refused to comply with assorted zoning laws so the city council just said "right - no advertising - take it all down". It is an interesting read. I am not sure what has happened since last year, but even the reaction from advertisers was not all negative.


(Of course, these people were actually trying to _advertise_, rather than conducting parcel-buying extortion.)

I don't agree. Even if I've got nothing to sell, an ad is an intrusion (if it's an effective ad, it's gotta be an intrusion... ads that aren't intrusive don't get noticed). I don't mind moderate amounts of advertising where I can see myself or my neighbors benefiting from them, but where there is no mechanism to keep them moderate these kinds of "free rider" ads WILL multiply until they saturate the carrying capacity of the medium they're parasitizing. I've seen it happen too many times over the past 15 years online, and over the 35 or so years I've been old enough to notice it happening elsewhere. I've seen it happening in SL in search spamming, camping, botspamming... and only when the basic mechanism that is being abused is absolutely banned is it ever kept in check.

Thats how I see it better to have them in roadside places than anywhere and everywhere.
Should reduce cutting dramatically to

Agreed the idea is not the ideal(Talarus) but offered as a compromise if acceptable.

The ideal for me would be set of new zoned commercial Sims as mentioned above.
With either no or opt out advertising if possible.

So a neighbor of mine who put his home up for L$his-phone-number as a joke should have it "repriced" and sold to a landbot?

I used to think that it might be useful to only allow parcels smaller than 512 to be sold to a specific person, and for L$0... but more recent actions by extortionists have convinced me that's not going to be useful. They'll just put the price in the parcel description and make the sale out of band.

So a neighbor of mine who put his home up for L$his-phone-number as a joke should have it "repriced" and sold to a landbot?

I used to think that it might be useful to only allow parcels smaller than 512 to be sold to a specific person, and for L$0... but more recent actions by extortionists have convinced me that's not going to be useful. They'll just put the price in the parcel description and make the sale out of band.
A lot of people deliberately bought parcels alongside Linden roads because they were "safe"... they would have at least one neighbor that wasn't going to put up a giant toilet or ban lines. Ads along Linden roads would be one giant kick in the teeth for them.

I dun always talk about my RL here, bur I have *some* background in marketing and advertising stuff. The 16m spinny parcel is not an effective nor ethical form of advertising.

People teleport here. They go where they want to go, spend time on their own parcels or at a relatively small number of places (their favorite hangout, or example, or a small number of favorite events). They don't wander the roads of the mainland as a general rule (would that this will someday change!). If one is looking for effective advertising in SL, ads placed as busy locales are a better bet than random 16m parcels -- and classifieds, sponsorships, blogs, etc. are better still. Best bet it to get people to teleport to a location *because* of your ad, not teleport away.

On top of that, some will refuse an advertiser because of the method of advertising -- even if it isn't as formally done as a boycott.

People are still seeking the best ways to promote products in SL, but one thing is clear: the 16m spinny plot is not it. Knowing this, yes, one has to consider that there is another motivating force behind them.

How I see it is better to have the in the North West corner of sims beginning with letters A-E, rather than anywhere and everywhere. How is that worse than roadside? Unless of course you live in the Nort West corner of Alderbugh. In that case, you would see what I mean.

If you want to guarantee visibility, make a rule that all ads be 16m from one side of the plot they occupy. Don't inflict all the blight on those who live on the roadside. (And who, at least in my case, spread expensively to roadside specifically to save themselves and others from the blight.)

I am in danger of feeling as persecuted as JubJub, what with the mantra crying out that for all adfarms to be exclusively foisted on me and my kind.

Actually, you are agreeing with me, because, in your case, they are competing for your attention with all the other things out there competing for it.

You're preaching to the choir, here.

If they bought up to the road then they wouldn't have an ad placed on their property.
We bought up to protected land to.
For similar reasons we knew there was always going to be a guaranteed nice open sea view

I have some roadside areas mainly so people can walk in as well as tp. I always thought of the area as a commercial area due to the road and never expected to have the draw distance so low I couldn't see the toilet over the road if it ever appears.

The extortionists already control much of the roadsides, their small cuts seem to be everywhere much with nothing on.
How will this land be repaired?
Will extortionists relink it and just charge same rate for the larger parcel anyway if advertising outlawed completely?

My idea is not to disadvantage a few but to benefit the majority.
Yes I agree though it would be lovely if all parcel owners could benefit.
So Jack would you go that far?

I know you hate spam as you say and parasitic adverts but if the advert is for a neighbors shop its ok.
I really disagree though I dislike something because it looks imposing, or out of character if the rules are followed then adverts shouldn't look like this, but match in to their surroundings.

In some ways adverts can be informative of a new product, that might interest me, they do have a place and I don't think that place has to be hidden inside a building.
In real life I quite often walk past adverts and see products I fancy.
Often adverts are for known quality products I already use.

I admit though I don't have any adverts on the road in front of my house, and would probably be less tolerant of them if I did.

Which leads me to suggest adverts should coincide with commercial ares only.
Another way of enforcing this could be the Lindens responding to adverts in front of a clearly residential build as being out of character for the area and removing it.

I think they meant if there is private land available at the roadside, not that part of the linden land would now be made into an ad parcel. If you own the land all the way to the road, then no ads would be between you and the road.

I don't want you or talarus or any one with residential roadside parcels to have the adverts foisted on them.

I don't want Jub Jub and Shimada or Mark Anthony to loose out either.
We have to respect whether we like averts or not they bought the plots in good faith, knowing the adverts were accepted by Linden Labs.
Possibly they even had to pay the extortive prices for them that we see on many ad plots.
Jub Jub can be obnoxious (LOL) but when spoken to nicely he showed he isn't in this for any reason than to help his business.

Maybe his idea was not the most virtually environmentally friendly method of operation but he did have the decency to hold his hands up and sort of apologize for his earlier outbursts, which no other person involved in advertising has done.
From my point of view this could be down to his upset and frustration as he saw his efforts belittled and us, myself included, as we responded to him with ridicule.

It would be nice to come to some understanding where everyone could coincide peacefully together.

This could be with new commercially zoned sims or a method in which LL make sure adverts are only placed in front of commercial builds.

I had hoped this would have been the outcome of putting adverts on roadside plots as they are already in the main purchased and earmarked for that purpose by the landcutters.

Perhaps naively I consider that common sense would make advertisers choose commercial locations for their adverts without being forced.

Thanks, Talarus.

In another post, you mentioned the ads on the roadside outside of your store as examples of particularly obnoxious levels of advertising. So, in the interest of fairness, I decided to visit the mall listed in your Picks to check out your view of the roadside. I expected a lot worse. Since my draw distance is set fairly low, I decided to take a walk up and down the road. I was surprised. Your description led me to believe that the situation was much worse than it was. In any case, it's obvious that you have a much lower tolerance for ads than I do. (And keep in mind that I was viewing a pre-October landscape -- some of the nearby ads I saw will either be gone or look very different after the new regulations are in place.)

I think that it's obvious that some people are particularly sensitive to advertising. You seem to have a very low tolerance, and Argent's tolerance seems to be even lower than yours. But what I keep seeing in this thread, and in the new closed thread that spun off of Jack's earlier blog post, are people saying that they don't have a problem with advertisements as much as they have a problem with the way certain so-called ad farmers conduct their business. So, to be honest, I'm not sure that Linden Lab will be so inundated with complaints that they'll just have to address it.



Jack has said that Linden Lab will introduce zoning on new land, but I don't think that the Lindens will ever allow the kind of voting-based zoning that you're talking about anywhere on the grid. That would be a foot in the door for other sorts of voting-based zoning, and the level of drama would increase to stratospheric levels. (And anyone who has ever held any sort of staff/moderator position on a MUSH, message forum, or bulletin board probably understands why.)

As far as blocking builds goes, I totally support that response if it's appropriate. I don't think that it's a "reversion", but a totally legitimate and justifiable response. As I said in my first post on this thread, if an advertiser buys a plot of land that can be blocked legally by someone who doesn't want to see the ad, then that advertiser should go into another line of work.

I know you don't Esther , and it isn't you in particular who I am adressing. We are really on the same side. The answer, of course, is not to have ads where the local people don't want them, wherever that may be.

The roadsides have been the most affected by the blight of the adfarmers and have been cut more than other land. I think they need saving even more than everywhere else. I would hate to see them adandoned to compensate the blight farmers (very good name, by the way).

I'm going to stop now, because I feel some of us, especially me, are starting to argue over details and this may dilute the impression of our essential agreement on the most important issues.

We do agree Drongle.

Blight farmers should be banished for the environmental and emotional damage they have inflicted on the residents of second life.

Advertisers are not the real blight though, the true blight are the greed driven extortionists who have deliberately ruined the experience of many residents in the pursuit of fulfilling their own delinquent desires.

Please remove these true parasites as while they remain Linden Labs appears to condone their practices.

That's right, because I have spent the last 8 months buying up the adfarms as the prices were dropped or plots abandoned. Just this past week, several of the signs came down, and one other one popped up, so it has improved even beyond that. However, I am not the only one dealing with these problems. There are many sims MUCH worse off because no one there is actively pursuing addressing the problem; instead, they opted to quit SL or leave the mainland altogether as a result.

If you would like some pictures of what it looked like when I started, IM me in world, and I will be happy to give you a photo history of my efforts. I hope you have a free hour, though.

Yes, I have an EXTREMELY low tolerance for certain types of advertising, ESPECIALLY when those foisting it on me have made it abundantly clear that their aim is to harass, and MOST especially when the type of advertising is harassing by its very nature.

My goal is not a SINGLE adtower in my region, and to heal ALL of the chopped plots back into usable ones again. I have already spent more money in the process than I ever hope to reclaim, but that's not and never was why I am doing it. My neighbors are very supportive of my efforts, because it directly benefits them.



Well, if you're trying to minimalize our take on the problem by numbers, I think you will find that there are quite a few folks besides Argent, Qie, and myself who are very militant about not allowing people to foist adspam on us. For me, at least, the problems are comingled to the point where I don't see a way to solve only one of them without addressing the others. Harassment is harassment; it already is against the ToS, and it needs to be dealt with.



Actually, he has said several times now that they will be looking into ways to bring some kind of optional zoning to existing mainland sims at some point, and has solicited input regarding that concept.

Vote-based zoning is nothing new, especially in RL. I know in my RL community alone, we've had several local zoning and ordinance referendums on the ballot at the last election, and there are several more coming up on this one. I realize that it isn't always the best way to do things, but when faced with a large majority opinion in a local area about something like advertising, most politicians tend to sit up and at least take notice about it.

I've also run online game communities before, so I know the drill. However, that is what separates the rank amateurs from the pros: a savvy and willingness to actively manage the property and its players/residents, and manage it well. You're not going to please everyone, and I realize LL won't ever please everyone, either. However, they really REALLY have large room for improvement. We're all hoping this policy will make great strides towards it, but it has been so long, and so hard-fought on all sides, that they really can't afford to half-arse it, and making conflicting policy postings pretty much back-to-back doesn't bode well on that front.

Weedy might want to tell us what the nature of her business is, rather than being so mysterious about it. Maybe she can use the forum as free advertising, since dozens, perhaps hundreds, of potential customers are reading this thread.

I recently swapped parcels with Elanthius Flagstaff and he used the few minutes we were together to pitch his services. I didn't buy, but I enjoyed chatting with him

I have been considering his for a while because I fear that all roadsides will be lost to avatars with questionable business practices. I have always been on the side of the arbor project and others who stand against extortion. These are the rules I, a) have to, and b) choose to follow with regard to future advertising in Second Life, if I go down the microparcel route. I would suggest others who are genuine and have an interest in the overall health of mainland at least read these policies and consider adding them to their own business model.

From LL advertising policy

* Adverts should be grounded to the terrain, not floating.
* Adverts should extend no higher than 8m from the ground.
* No rotating, no flashing content and no particles.
* No unsolicited dispensing of IMs, notecards, landmarks or content.
* No light sources or glow (full bright is acceptable however).
* Advertising hoardings should be Phantom.
* Adverts must be clearly PG in nature.
* No sound and no temp-on-rez content.
* Ban lines should be switched off.


Additional measures

* No cutting of plots under 512 or that would render the remainder under 512.
* Plots will always be sold to a neighbour who owns or can make a 512+.
* Advertising plots will never be sold above average price.
* Advertising will be roadside with the rear total clear/ transparent to neighbours.
* No scanning. information collection/ data farming.
* Do our best to make scripts as light on resources as possible
* Endeavour to rejoin land to honest land users.
* Terraforming will always be sympathetic to surroundings.

I read your post and thought it would be good to go and see these areas of obnoxious advertising, so I did exactly as you, visiting Talarus's mall, I must agree on first impression there were very few adverts I have seen far more in other areas of SL.
However while I was looking around thinking whats he bothered about, I bumped into him and must say after he showed me a couple of the other holes he has on his land my viewpoint changed somewhat.

I now see exactly what Talarus is so intolerant of, he showed me two plots on one side of his mall building one with a large prim and the avatar shape lines texture on it.
Which he told me had been doubled in price because he contacted the owner and another with ban lines setup and plain textured prim blocks placed there just to harass and cause maximum disturbance. He receives weekly abuse from the owner of this plot, which resulted in the owners suspension in recent weeks.
Over the road he has a reclamation area with more of these hidden plots.
I asked him whether any evidence of the harassment he suffers had been collected and he stated, yes he had collected folders full of information passing all of it on to linden labs.
For the last 6 months he has attended Jack Lindens office hour.
Yet the harassment continues, Linden Labs are fully aware of the sustained abuse Talarus receives.

So after learning this, intolerant is not really the term I would now use, f**king hell if this had happened to me, I would have left secondlife after the first couple of weeks with the blame firmly placed on the very people we are now expecting to clean up this mess.

How on earth can any company with a TOS which already is supposed to prevent adfarming, extortion, harassment claim to have any sort of customer service when it allows this sort of abuse to continue, knowing the details that have been passed to them as evidence, speaking on a weekly basis to the victim, taking action to suspend one of the abusive bas**rds, but still not actually acting to prevent the continued abuse from occurring.

This is one individual case, how many others have experienced this?
How many of them were forced to pay up just for a bit of peace?
This is not a case of parasitic advertising it is abuse and harassment, over a sustained period of time.
How can any company condone this sort of abuse.
While this is allowed to carry on why is anyone even remotely concerned with advertising?
Personally if this continues to occur I shall not be a second life user for much longer.


Jack Linden

Linden Labs is responsible for ignoring this behavior.

Some of your users may suffer from depression or have any number of severe problems in the real world, which seems highly likely as this platform offers a form of escape, as the operators you have a duty of care to your users.

Yes Talarus has chosen to go and fight these people, he has chosen to attempt reclamation of an area. So in some ways he can expect a little bit of trouble, but sustained weekly abuse over a six month period goes well beyond that.

I would just like to put my 2 cents in on this subject. I feel that the problem is not advertising per se, but abusive behaviour. The adfarming is just one symptom. I am fairly new to SL and have bought land on the newest continent which is still very pretty in parts, although my travels have shown that the rot sets in fairly quickly. Anyway I bought up some roadside micro plots at quite a high price as - a) I wanted to preserve the obviously pretty nature of my surroundings and - b) i thought a little roadside stall would look nice, and although commercial in nature was still very organic and not ugly. (unless you dont like brightly coloured flowers ). So my experience thus far has been a positive one. I hae met my neighbours and they actively work to keep the region looking nice and we are forming ourselves into a loose community. But there are donut peices and land extortion, and apart from me buying up the roadside (or what will be a roadside soon) those plots remain unsold.

The very nature of SL with tier etc stimulates the need for commerce, and it is this commerce gone wrong - in the extremes of greed - that causes the problem. I think somehow the problems have been built into the game with the opportunity to make 'real money'. People play the game for different reasons, some for the joy of creativity and exploring new social possibilites and some to 'make money' and 'win'. As a social experiment I find it fascinating and horrifying that the ugliness and greed springs up so strongly.

I think putting fine tuning to 'law' eg 8 metre high limits, limits on colour and brightness etc - is missing the point and there will always be ways around and loopholes for those whose main aim is to annoy others and try and gain an 'advantage'. I think to judge on the terms of service as to what constitutes Harrassment is a more constructive way to go. Some of the stories in this forum of the harrassment that residents have suffered is appalling, and to have to formulate legislation to say what is and is not harrassment is bizarre. I think we should be able to petition the Lindens to take action on a particular issue, as in a public hearing for issues that have dragged on and on and have seen no satisfaction.

Just my views anyway, and as a newcomer there is no doubt some glaring fact I don't know about...usually the case when you are new at anything!!! Anyway i applaud Jacks efforts to address this, as the ugliness will eventually kill SL if it goes unchecked.

It troubles me when I see so many people saying "keep the advertising on the roadside". I love the roads and I wouldn't want them to be made uglier just because people don't want ads in their back yard. I see many people with houses next to the road and I am actually considering having one myself. I say... get rid of the extortionist/greifing advertising, then let the legitimate advertising fall where it naturally should. Where it will get the most bang for it's buck. If it ends up being along the roads then so be it, but don't try to force it to be there.

I love the roads too, but if LL insists on allowing advertising on mainland microparcels, I'd rather see them limited to roadside rather than spread out all over the place, where they can be used to harass and annoy more residents. Though if LL were to limit it to roadside, they would have to limit the number of adblocks allowed per sim, or we would run the risk of the roadsides being covered in nothing but ads.

I think this post is a well thought-out contribution. It makes a quite valid point that in a way echoes Jack's own clarification and amplification that LL means to actively manage the Mainland to remove any behavior with substantial negative impact. Certainly any specific set of rules will always be tested at the "edges" by folks trying to gain advantage, so the basis for effectively applying the rules remains the broader terms of the ToS/CS: interpreting "harassment" operationally, as situations arise. (There is a long-standing school of thought that LL could have halted the adfarming plague long ago by merely interpreting those terms to its own benefit and that of Mainland residents, without needing to craft any new policy statements. That's pretty much what is happening now, but with some advance notice of a change in that interpretation.)

The thing is, though, the problems are not just the failings of human nature at work; they are those failings operating within the features afforded by the platform as designed--as a very much *engineered* "social experiment." And there are problems with those features that amplify the effects of such human failings as greed.

As I've (too-often) repeated here, one of those failure-amplifying features is the existence of a vast range of parcel sizes, all afforded identical "rights." That fact guarantees advantage to those with the least investment and highest social cost. It optimizes the Mainland for greed. It is, simply put, a design flaw.