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

[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.