Nom nom nom nom livejournal nom...

[greatbearmd]

Uh oh.

While quietly tinkering in the Workshop of Mayhem I sensed a disturbance in the LJ Force. Actually, I was just hungry, but during my break for lunch, I discovered this:

Comments

[furrbear]

Getting a LOT of conservatard ads in RSS feeds such as DailyKos, AmericaBlog, and Crooks&Liars, got me to update and tune AdBlock. I don't see these ads any longer.

The big thing I learned in the process is that SUP isn't choosing the ads, they look to be being inserted from Google.

I know it's popular to invoke Drama on SUP, but beyond opting for ads in the first place, I don't believe they select the ads. Although, I do think they could/should work with Google to remove obviously offensive ad choices.

[qnetter]

If you're running ads and accept whatever comes up from your "agency" (i.e., Google), you're responsible. You can't just outsource the responsibility. A real business with real ethics sells its own ads and manages whose ads it will carry and whose it will not.

[pklexton]

Yes they are ultimtately responsible, but I thought her responses were good, at least at face value. I suspect trying to get them to disconnect all automated ads may not be realistic as a business proposition.

[qnetter]

Sorry -- you have to figure out what it costs to run your business ethically and responsibly, and base your business model on that. Any print publication that ran an unacceptable ad and tried to explain it by saying "we gave our inbound ad agency the page flats and guidelines, and they pasted up the ads -- we have no responsibility" wouldn't get away with it -- we shouldn't accept "it's Google's fault" either.

[pklexton]

The response I read was:

Thank you for letting us know about this advertisement. This is not the type of advertisement we want to appear on LiveJournal. We have been made aware of it and taken several additional steps to ensure that ads such as this do not appear on LiveJournal in the future.

I'm sorry that anyone had to see this ad, and understand the frustration it has caused.

I can understand why you are upset. I am too. And I don't pretend to know all the details of the situation. But with all due respect I don't think your characterization of the response is fair. I see an apology and I don't see a denial of responsibility.

[qnetter]

The point is that they can apologize all they want, but as long as they use the "we'll give you categories, and you hand us ads which we don't pre-screen" technology, there's nothing they can do to prevent it from happening, only block it once someone tells them it's happening. And that should be unacceptable.

[pklexton]

My understanding is they do put in criteria to avoid unacceptable ads, but somehow this one gamed the system. That's likely to always happen on occasion with automated ads. Basically you're saying automated ads are unacceptable in an ethical business model. That's certainly a virtuous position, but I'm not sure I would agree you need to go that far.

And I don't know why I'm putting so much effort into defending them.

[greatbearmd]

Since a lot of the third-party ad serving setups are contextual (like Google AdSense) and given the content of that particular blog, this is a case where the contextual ad service is used to insert opposing, unwelcome advertising, spew and graphics into a particular audience. Like your finding conservative crap in otherwise liberal text, this is a case where people are gaming the system for their own gain (or in this case, to shove an agenda where it's not wanted). Internet advertising by and large has an abusive, in-your-face nature, and since this behavior goes against what I approve of, I very aggressively filter ads and scripts by default, only allowing ads from pertinent, first party services. People will say this is a form of stealing content, but they can pound sand for all I care.

LJ/SUP is ultimately responsible for the content that gets placed inline with page views, regardless of the third party ad servers. They chose the service, so they end up directly involved.