I’m beginning to get e-mail complaining about various political ads on this site. These ads are being served automatically by Google and do not necessarily reflect my beliefs or the beliefs of this blog. In fact, I have no control over them. I could block individual ads, but that requires about 24 hours to take effect. I could remove all ads for the next day, but that seems silly. Instead, I ask that you just bear with me until the election is over.
If you’ve read GRS for a while, you know that I generally steer clear of religion and politics. You know that I’ve never espoused a political agenda, and can probably figure out that I wouldn’t start now. Like anyone, I have political opinions, but I save those for my personal blog, and intentionally keep GRS agnostic.
For the future, please note that Google ads on a web site do not necessarily reflect the opinions of a site’s owner. The best response to an ad you find objectionable is not to accuse the site owner of some political bias, but to capture the ad’s destination URL and send it in an e-mail so that he can block it, if necessary.
Here’s more about my fight against inappropriate ads.
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In a former life, I was a newspaper reporter and editor, and one role that the page layout people had responsibility for was to move inapprpriate ads. So if the plane crash story jumped to page A8, the guy who laid out page A8 made sure to physically pick up and move the United Airlines ad from page A8 to page A12.
Because it’s all automated now, you’ll have some awful juxtapositions.
My “favorite” recent example was when the Chicago Tribune did a masterful series about the horrors of online payday lenders.
What ads were sprinkled throughout? You guessed it. So a series that decried the ease with which people could plunge into financial despair actually made it easy to plunge into financial despair.
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It’ll all be over in a day. I’m not sweating it.
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Yes, Cathy, but some people are sweating it.
I cannot wait for it all to be over. As a man who dislikes conflict, modern political campaigns take a heavy psychic toll on me.
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I don’t like conflict either, but even if I did, I’ll be glad when tomorrow’s over. I just hope that it really is over tomorrow and it’s not a rerun of the 2000 election.
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Sorry but you’re responsible for what is displayed on your website, whether you like it or not. If you don’t want that responsibility, switch to a system where you will approve manually the ads before they appear on the site.
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What really cracked me up when I read this post was that sure enough, down at the bottom there was a political ad with which I strongly disagree!
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Dan Ray, I wish someone would have done that when I graduated HS. Instead, my commencement photo as valedictorian was right beside a large headline that read “Murder Suspect Arrested.” How’s that for a family Heirloom?
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Yep, I’m getting the same thing, ads that I personally don’t support. That being said, your readership is probably a diverse bunch and not everyone will agree with everything. I think censorship is unnecessary, we can all make up our own minds. If you don’t like the ad, don’t click on it.
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I half-agree with Ben. Google Ads are a great source of revenue that’s hard to drop just because of a few ads. I hope in later revisions that it will be easier to opt out of certain categories of ads – even if that means earning a bit less. That’s at least a better option than dropping it altogether.
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I didn’t even notice the ads until this was pointed out.
I’m rather amazed people would be that upset about it.
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I’m not worried.
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I have a future weather forecast “gadget” posted on a website of my own….does that make me responsible for the weather?
And for the record…I am voting for the candidates who had the least amount of campaign ads [aka propaganda].
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While I’d agree you have some responsibility for the ads displayed on your site, I’d argue the bigger issue is people who are unable to look past political bias to read the message J.D. is delivering.
Good advice is good advice, regardless of political persuasion.
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That’s rich, Curtis. Boing Boing noticed a much more recent juxtaposition: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/10/14/todays-la-times-cove.html
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For the other Ben poster above, I have two words for you, Firefox and Adblocker. Get them and quit yer complaining ya lamer!
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I think that the upsurge of political adds is actually very, very interesting. With my understanding of how Adsense works, it means that they had to outbid all the other competitors for placement. These adds could be very profitable – but I guess there could be an ethical dilemma for some individuals (and maybe even me, but it has never happened to me yet so I don’t know for certain!).
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I read GRS via your RSS feed, and I just got served a “Defend Oregon” ad in my reader. And I was smart enough to figure out that I could look at it or not. And click on it or not.
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I’ll say what J.D. cannot to his readers: Lighten up.
I agree election issues are huge, but assigning a blogger responsibility over something so irrelevant is absolutely ludicrous. Not to mention a complete waste of his and your time.
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I never even noticed the ads (I never click on them so I don’t even see them anymore).
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Haha. Here’s something completely unrelated. After posting this, I altered the time setting on my site to account for the end of daylight savings. This bumped the timecode on new comments back an hour, which has made a mess of the continuity above.
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I’m entertaining myself right now by clicking on the political ad on this very page, which I am strongly against. I figure that way they will have to pay Google (and hopefully GRS!) some of their money, but I’m still not voting for it!
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A lot has been made of political ads on sites lately. What most don’t understand is that if you take money from one side, you’re obligated to take it and run ads from the other side of the coin too. Hopefully that doesn’t offend too many people.
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People don’t understand that google just takes keywords from each page to create their ads, so if you write anything about politics or an election, those types of ads will show up. People should stop fighting over what side is cooler and start doing things to actually make changes. It’s ridiculous how defensive some people are, or how they refuse to tell you who they voted for, I mean, if your too ashamed to tell, them maybe you shouldn’t be voting for that guy in the first place.
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This is why I love adblock plugin.
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Here’s a suggestion to all who enjoy JD’s content for FREE but still see fit to complain about the ads (which make the FREE content model possible)… Shoot JD an e-mail with an offer to become a paid subscriber. If you guys are willing to fully replace the income that he makes from running ads, then I’m sure he’d be happy to take down the ads. Any takers?
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That’s weird, I had never even noticed any political ads until this post. There was one at the bottom.
What’s the big deal? Its just an ad, ignore it. Anyway, I am with you JD, bringing up politics is a sure way to ruffle feathers. I avoid it at all costs!
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Jeez, people, are you new to the web?
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Well, since ads are location specific I’m not seeing them at all from the UK. Perhaps you guys should just move continents?
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Or wait a day…
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Or just stop complaining…ads aren’t exactly a new concept.
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Not to play armchair psychologist, JD, but my boyfriend also hates conflict. And finds himself in the middle of it constantly. They say aversion and desire are flip sides of the same coin…
I don’t even notice the ads. I watched a lot of TV this election cycle – it’s a fascinating look at the psychology of America.
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Amen… I’ve seen too many Proposition 8 ads to last me a lifetime. I guess that’s the problem of living in a state where there’s more money on both sides than any other proposition in history
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I’m curious as to how many complainers have taken me up on my suggestion to offer to pay for a subscription to GRS…
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