Comments | no_lj_ads: Popups on LiveJournal? Say it ain't so.

soph in no_lj_ads

Popups on LiveJournal? Say it ain't so.

Jun 23, 2006 20:37

Hi there,

New member of this community checking in. Hi! :)

I wanted to crosspost an entry here which I wrote in my personal journal today. It doesn't deal directly with the issue of not wanting LJ ads, but it deals with an issue some people have been having with popups on LiveJournal. Popups on LiveJournal? Say it ain't so.
23rd June 2006, 11:58 ( ( Read more... )

inappropriate ads, issues with ads

Comments 19

burr86 June 23 2006, 19:47:55 UTC

See lj_ads for an update about this.

ex_shattered767 June 23 2006, 19:48:37 UTC

Has anyone reported this to LJ? It will most likely take someone pointing it out for them to remove it.

foxfirefey June 23 2006, 19:51:37 UTC

Hey, you're a wee bit of a slow poke! ::wink:: We could've scoped lj_ads if you were a bit earlier, teehee.

Although I'm in agreement that this isn't directly LJ's fault, per se, I disagree that they have no control over it. They could control it by refusing to run Flash ads. People begged for no Flash ads, even users otherwise open to ads. The Flash ads are just being used for annoying animation, anyway. GIFs can animate (tho' perhaps not as gratuitously in a small space as Flash), and they never have launched popups or popunders, to my knowledge.

Now I'm going to post about FlashBlock.

PS foxfirefey June 23 2006, 19:52:16 UTC

If you could be a dear and ad a link to the lj_ads post, that'd be awesome!

Re: PS soph June 23 2006, 20:30:41 UTC

Oh, you were talking to me? My bad, I didn't see it before.

I went and added a link in the post.

Re: PS foxfirefey June 23 2006, 20:32:46 UTC

Sweet, I figure it's good to cross reference! Thank you very much!

Thread 8

elfwreck June 23 2006, 20:41:26 UTC

I can go with "they didn't do this deliberately." I can't agree that "they had no control."

They could:
1) Ban all flash ads, or
2) Screen *all* ads before allowing them on LJ.

I suppose they've decided the first is too restrictive and the second is too time-consuming. But both of those are economic decisions--they've decided it's not worth the money it would cost to keep LJ users safe from this kind of ad-based attack.

soph June 23 2006, 20:45:03 UTC

Screening with a packet sniffer would be a time-consuming thing to do. Don't forget that if the site was returning "popup=0", it would appear to be, for all intents and purposes, a perfectly normal banner ad.

I agree with banning all Flash ads, for that reason. Plus, they're annoying, and I never see them anyway due to Flashblock.

burr86 June 23 2006, 20:58:34 UTC

No, we do screen all of them, at least the big graphic/Flash ads -- the problem is, it seems to be displaying different things to people from the US than people elsewhere.

soph June 23 2006, 21:47:48 UTC

If it makes a difference, in #lj_support it was noted that at some point after the discovery of what it did, the site started returning the "popup=0" code and thus stopped the ad from showing the popup. My guess is that this was done to evade detection - they probably thought they could get away with doing these things in small bursts.

[edit: Sorry for the edit a year later, I just hate typos. >_>]

Thread 8

Users in lj_ads having trouble for reference: foxfirefey June 23 2006, 21:08:46 UTC

http://community.livejournal.com/lj_ads/1886.html?thread=470110#t470110
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_ads/1886.html?thread=471134#t471134
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_ads/1886.html?thread=472926#t472926
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_ads/1886.html?thread=474206#t474206

I'm going to go linkify them.