Nom nom nom nom livejournal nom...

[greatbear]

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:



Of course, this is to be expected around teh intarwebs these days. But that's not the whole issue. This ad has been popping up in ad-supported LJs and is being hosted by SUP, the outfit that owns Livejournal.

I think it's time that Teh Gays pwn Livejournal. Again.

More info can be found here.

(snugglebitch via nebris)

EDIT: It seems that LJ itself was blindsided by this about as much as those journal owners who were affected by it. The comments following this post include one by the LJ staff apologizing and referencing in greater detail what happened and what they are doing to prevent it from happening again. It seems this issues was pretty promptly dealt with before it became huge. Kudos.

Comments

[normalcyispasse.livejournal.com]

Is there supposed to be an image there?

[normalcyispasse.livejournal.com]

Nevermind -- I'd already adblocked the server, apparently.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Fixed. I had the ad on my own server, but it's name was such that it would trip some ad filters. I changed it up a bit so it would not happen to others.

I use a very fine-tuned adblocker, so I rarely encounter ads, pop-ups and whatnot unless I want to. I would never have seen this ad, and it would not have shown up in my LJ since it's a permanent account. But others using the enhanced ad-supported free model and surfers from outside LJ not blocking ads would be subjected to this.

[djmadadam.livejournal.com]

Yikes!

But, LOL nebris.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Credit where credit's due. I found out from him first, and probably would not have discovered this at all otherwise. There's a few good links between the LJ drama, war machinery and snatch 'n' titty pix. ;)

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

Wow. I didn't read much of the comments from the post itself but man, some people are quick to jump to conclusions here, saying LJ is in bed with...

It would be interesting to see what happens in the morning. I have a paid account and thus don't see any of the ads. Can we definitively say SUP allowed this or do the ads just appear as promised and the content is not up for discussion? That would be good to find out, especially if provided by a 3rd party provider. It appears to be from the No on Marriage group.

Staff comment

[marta.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to comment over here, so many apologies if this is out of place - I've been looking around for more information on where this ad might have popped up. However, I wanted to answer your question regarding 3rd party providers.

I've got a little longer explanation over here (http://snugglebitch.livejournal.com/54663.html?thread=247943#t247943), but, yes, we can and do filter any ads served by providers like Google. This one has been very difficult to track down and we've added some additional criteria so that hopefully this ad, and others like it, won't end up in rotation in the future.

I'm really sorry that this ad appeared today.

Re: Staff comment

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your reply. It does me and others good to know that this is being looked at.

I hadn't said it anywhere else but it had occured to me that these people probably snuck it in somewhere w/out your knowledge. these ultra conservatives will do anything, even if it means going through the backdoor to get their message out.

They are a sneaky bunch.

Re: Staff comment

[jimmyadventure.livejournal.com]

Wow! Really offensive. I'm surprised and disappointed.

Re: Staff comment

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Marta, thank you very much for your efforts in taking care of this and hopefully preventing future occurrences. I was hoping that there is policy covering ad content via third-party servers and I'm glad LJ disallows such nastiness in the banners. Since I have a paid/permanent LJ, I never see ads when logged in nor do outsiders find any in mine, but there is a huge amount of visitors to this site that will see such advertising. This sort of thing has no place among the LJ readership, and especially not in context with those journal owners who do not hold such views.

Thanks again!

Re: Staff comment

[marta.livejournal.com]

Yes, this ad went against our stated ad guidelines (http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=265). It shouldn't have appeared, and for that I apologize.

In this circumstance I also find this ad appalling, personally, and am glad that I have an employer who will back me and agrees. Even if we can't always respond immediately or exactly as everyone wants all of the time, please don't forget to open a ticket (http://www.livejournal.com/contact/?dept=feedback) to let us know about things like this. We can't correct a problem we don't know about, so we do appreciate questions or feedback.

Re: Staff comment

[qnetter]

But what can you possibly do to prevent this from ever happening, if you don't pre-screen the ads with which you are presented? As long as you use an agency, all you can do is nag and nag them, for what little that is worth.

Re: Staff comment

[marta.livejournal.com]

Just for background on the subject, I'd like to explain a little bit. I don't work directly in that department, so this is just my understanding based on the meetings and conversations I've been part of and any errors or fumbling are mine.

Firstly, we do sell ads directly for use on LiveJournal - those are first-party ad campaigns, and they're all sold, vetted, reviewed, pre-screened, and all that jazz. Since ad campaigns are run differently - some require you to show an ad a certain amount of times, some require you to limit how many times you show it (too many and it reduces impact of the ad, I guess), and some only want to be shown to a certain demographic or people in a certain area - they don't always fill up the slots available on the site. These first-party ads are ideally what we'd like to be able to use exclusively - it's better for us with control and also for revenue. But that's not always possible.

For the ad slots left over, we use a variety of agencies, Google AdSense being one of them, to fill those spaces. With those services, we have the ability to add categories of ads that we'd allow to be shown, but since they deal in much larger volume (kind of like an ad clearinghouse), it is very very cost-prohibitive to view and approve every ad provided. But what we *do* have the ability to do is filter out ads with certain keywords, URLs, and content. That's on our end, and we have control over the categories ordered and the filters used.

In this case, after our discussions yesterday, we've determined that previous filters didn't catch this ad. It appears that NOM may have purchased a large amount of ads, possibly with several services, that began to run over the weekend. So while we checked to see which agency it came from, and it appears to be Google, it doesn't mean that the other agencies didn't have the ad, only that it didn't get into our rotation through them because of our categories or filters already in place, maybe.

Again, I'm not hands-on with this system, but it appears to me that we're not the only one (http://nlsngrc.blogspot.com/2009/05/be-careful-what-you-ask-for-nom.html) whose categories and/or filters didn't catch this ad. So as soon as we paged our backend ad-person on Sunday, she added the URL for the NOM ad (and several others), and they were blocked.

I'm not sure what further adjustments or changes we'll be making due to the situation with this particular ad showing on Sunday, but we've been having some conversations about possibilities. Those conversations are along the lines of the question you ask - "what can you possibly do to prevent this from ever happening?" and are ongoing as of now.

Regardless of the outcome of those conversations, please know that absolutely any time you ever hear of an ad appearing that's in violation of our ad guidelines (http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=265) (which this ad most certainly was), we would very much like to know (http://www.livejournal.com/contact/?dept=feedback).

[furrbear.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Ya know, that's a cool idea. Preemptive ad placement! And for the best cause too. I wish I was so creative with the graphics.

[redbackfur.livejournal.com]

Glad you took action.
Hey, we have similar shit-piles.