Linden “actively discussing” ad farms
By Eric Reuters
Jack Linden said Friday that Linden Lab is looking into the problem of ad farms — small patches of land filled with garish virtual billboards. While discussing a new “Linden Department of Public Works” initiative to beautify the Second Life mainland, he wrote:
Yes, we are actively discussing ad farms at the moment, we’re very aware of the impact they have but we don’t have anything concrete to share as yet. Keep reading the blog.
Ad farms are designed to obstruct the views of surrounding territory and lower its value. Owners of newly-devalued virtual homesteads argue that the practice is tantamount to extortion, as ad farmers ask for rates well above market value for their land.
Large swathes of Second Life’s mainland have been rendered uninhabitable by ad farms, as residents and businesses avoid building next to existing ads.
The sad thing is that picture doesn’t do it justice. Imagine all those things rotating around flashing various images and colors and you would truly understand why people HATE ad farms.
Mon Feb 11, 2008 7:02pm PSTHopefully Nicholaz’ Jira proposal to just visually mute objects will solve this problem. You would just stop seeing them.
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1017
Tue Feb 12, 2008 12:02am PSTWhile we all hate them… this should be left to land owners to deal with…(covenants are exactly for that) Linden should not deal with it and focus on performance…
Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:02am PSTLL should just dispossess all the add farms ASAP. Those farms are ugly and without any use…just crap. We dont need it in SL. Casinos were gone, banks too. Hope next will be all the ugly add farms!
Tue Feb 12, 2008 7:02am PSTLinden should just set up zoning laws above and beyond covenants. “This is a residental sim so no business related items. This is a business sim so anything goes.” Linden should do more with enforcing the “over 18″ rules and then leave the residents alone. We can handle ourselves.
Tue Feb 12, 2008 7:02am PSTYesha there are no covenants on the mainland, that is the problem. LL needs to be involved in order to set standards on land they ultimately control and have oversight for to insure the enjoyment of all residents. A stable platform with hideous mainland that no one wants to own, live on, or have a business on serves nobody and serves only the ad farmers and decreases land values.
Tue Feb 12, 2008 8:02am PSTThis is also performance issue. Many of these farms purposedly use high lagging scripts to make it not only unappealing to located near them, but almost unfuncional.
Wed Feb 13, 2008 11:02am PST@revochen : do you really want LL to tell you what you can do or not do with your land? Think it through - while it may result in getting rid of the adfarms, will you be so happy when they start banning red hats? Just when you happen to love your collection of red hats. Seems all to silly, but if people stopped advertising on those adfarms and stopped buying those parcels, the adfarm creators/owners would get stuck with a hefty tier bill and nothing more.
Mainland is unregulated. One should know that upfront, hence before buying. If you want to be “protected” by a covenant, find a private sim owner that has a balanced covenant that protects you, but not limits beyond what you are willing to give up. Every rule has a pro and con, and a blanket ban on adfarms will too.
Wed Feb 13, 2008 11:02am PSTThere are some nice plots of land that I would be interesteed in if the advertisiments were less in-your-face. A compromise for a reasonable rule on ad-farms is in order.
Sun Feb 24, 2008 12:02am PSTwell, they ARE ugly, and laggy, but how is LL going to enforce this, they’re short-handed as always, visual muting works when the user takes matters into his hands. (personally I just encase objects like that with a big box, sometimes an invisiprim when some wise-guy puts them in the sandboxes… Box scripters hate ads in the sandboxes. (cause I rarely go elsewhere)
Well, they got rid of casinos and gambling, ads aren’t the same though, in my experience, LL never makes a big move unless they’ll get in trouble with the law, they got rid of casinos, and banks mostly due to legal issues, ads aren’t nearly as bad to them.
Tue Mar 4, 2008 12:03pm PSTIf SL gets flooded, then nuts to it, I’m off to an OpenSim.
I think the thing that is most annoying about the ad farms is that the people creating them make themselves out to be ‘marketers’. This is preposterous. What kind of marketer would do such a thing and alienate all their customers in the process? In my experience the most important customers you meet in SL are actually your Sim neighbours. So, go ahead you clever ad guy and just see how they react to your dumb crap.
Fri Apr 4, 2008 3:04am PDT