Placing Anti-Hate Speech Banners on our LJ accounts.....

[thoreau]

Livejournal has been serving ads from the National Organization from Marriage. Goddamnit. Granted - I have a paid account so I don't see ads.... but its just awful to see that they are running the ads. greatbearmd reported it on his journal here - and it looks like a member of the LJ staff commented on his entry saying they are looking into getting the ad removed from their ad service. But as qnetter pointed out in a comment "...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..."

So what to do folks - - - part of me says that with adblockers you'd never see this content; or that if you paid for an account you wouldn't see the ads. But - it would subject non-LJers I refer to my journal to possibly seeing an ad from NOM or some other right-wing hate factory.

So - do we consider or discuss leaving LJ because they accept ads from NOM - if even through a 3rd party ad insertion company? Do we allow LJ to make a written policies about ads that come from this kind of group? Should we accept that while we live in the progressive gay corner of LJ - that there is undoubtedly a conservative anti-gay corner of LJ - - and would they want ads served from HRC promoting marriage equality on their ads?

Is it LJ's job to police ad insertion advertisers?

The broader question is - do we simply bail on LJ or do we try to formulate a response. Does LJ care what the gay corner of LJ thinks - are we inflating our "importance" to the LJ business model in any sort of response we might take?

Can we go anywhere on the web and expect an adversarial viewpoint not to show up? by bailing - to the next shiny supposedly 'free of hate-organization advertising' blog platform - are we holding LJ to high of a standard?

Surely - I am angry - and dislike that LJ accepted the ad at all - regardless of how it is served.

but - how do we make a wise response other than - FUCK LJ I'M LEAVING. How many times to we do that - before we find a more creative response?

One suggestion? Run banner ads of our own as permanent sticky entries on the front of our journals.

Like this one:


Now - this is an animated gif - just like NOM's - that I have installed at the top of my livejournal account declaring my journal a hate-speech free zone.

I just quickly bashed this out - so is it the BEST ad I could come up with? no.
It'll do for now - but I encourage everyone to put a sticky post at the top of their journal.

Journal--->Customize Style--->Text----> and there is a selection there for a "sticky post" - where you can write a permanent entry that shows up that the top of your Livejournal everytime someone LJ or not visits your journal.

But how about all of us put anti-hate speech banners at the top of our LJs - and showing the faces of the people NOM hates.

what do ya'll think?

Comments

[balanceinchaos.livejournal.com]

As usual, you are a voice of reason in the maelstorm of anger!

I suppose I could put a banner up like that... though what would I say? "Hi, my name is Jay... and I love my wife Sherri... no matter what anyone says!" Somehow, I don't think they'd give a blip.

your ad could be even cooler actually.....

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

you could put up an ad that says "Gay Marriage doesn't threaten my love for my wife Sherri. Don't let NOM tell you it does. Hate speech doesn't belong on MY internet."

[mallie-kite.livejournal.com]

I think your response is a much better one than banning or censoring. I just can't get behind the idea of censorship, even against stuff I hate. I treasure my right to speak freely too much to risk having any of it trimmed away in order to stifle someone else, no matter how much what they say rankles and hurts.

Far better, I think, to speak positively.

BC -- what about "Hi, I'm Jay, I love my wife Sherri, and I think that Bob and Dave are allowed to love each other, too. More love, Less Hate."

I'd post it.

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

see the comment I left for Jay up a comment (wink)

[balanceinchaos.livejournal.com]

I'll play with banners tomorrow... then figure out how to add one to my template.

[eric-mathgeek.livejournal.com]

I like the "More love, less hate" idea.

[qnetter]

How is it censoring to determine what should be shown on YOUR page?

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

assuming such ownership of your LJ is a misstep - just because you have an online journal - doesn't mean you have say over the ads that the service serves. Now - LJ has come out and said it doesn't know how the ad got through it's filters. (info here (http://wet-in-sf.livejournal.com/37609.html)) but it is a first amendment censorship issue (even if they are despicable) to say that if they are paid ads that a website shouldn't run them.

[qnetter]

You're accustomed to working for a regulated medium. In real publishing, you do have 100% control over the ads you do and do not accept. And that is real freedom of speech, not censorship. Your behavior is speech. The advertisers' is not speech -- it is commerce.

[mallie-kite.livejournal.com]

Explain to me how a page you own would have ads on it from someone else.

[qnetter]

That's exactly how it works now -- LJ tells Google what categories of ads they will or will not accept, Google sends ads, they automagically appear on your pages and mine without the pre-screening of either LJ or you or me.

[bukephalus.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this post. I love the way you thoughtfully deconstruct the problem, and then propose a positive, creative solution. It's trademark Bob, and the reason we all admire you so much.

[inbhirnis.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to hold it against LJ for having inadvertently received NOM ads. I remember during the election season, a liberal blog I read, talkingpointsmemo.com, reported that it had been made aware it had been showing either Republican ads or ads for some conservative cause (I can't remember now). They said they'd look into the matter - but also said that if the group was dumb enough to waste money on a liberal blog, then that was a good thing.

Perhaps that's one way to look at it, too - if NOM is advertising in LJ, and a big portion of its subscribership is liberal (and I'm not sure that's true...), then it may be a waste of their resources.

But - LJ may want to look at its policy re ads. I'm prepared to give them some slack on this, though.

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

I am too. I think that the nature of blogging is that all viewpoints need space. Can you imagine how we'd react if LJ came out and said that the liberal viewpoint is unwelcome and started banning ideas and people's posts? I can't imagine that there aren't uberconservative LJ's - we just don't read them or travel in the same circles. To say that a big portion of LJ's subscribership is liberal? I'm not so sure. I think that LJ has hundreds of thousands of accounts - and we're just the liberal fag corner. and I'm happy with that. BUT I'd like to hear from LJ about their policy re: ads. :)

[inbhirnis.livejournal.com]

Yep - I don't know if LJ has a liberal slant. As you say, we are in a little corner with people with like-minded views, and we probably have little idea about what goes on in other LJ clusters (and might be quite surprised). I remember joebehrsandiego once had an LJ friend who turned out to be a big Rush Limbaugh dittohead (and who eventually disappeared). There are all sorts of people who use LJ, and that's fine. LJ doesn't just cater to ghey bears and their friends.

[qnetter]

I don't think LJ should necessarily ban the ads throughout. But it should be possible for them to approve what ads go on what classifications of pages. (For that matter, the responsibility is ultimately ours -- we should be able to reject individual ads that are incompatible with our content, before they are presented.)

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

do you have that option on any other site? Twitter? Facebook? can you reject ads that don't match your point of view?

[qnetter]

You do on your own website, if you sell your own ads instead of letting Google splash up whatever they want.

We've accepted a dominant business model that is best for Google, not for us.

[qnetter]

The whole advertising model is broken. No website should be able to "receive" an ad. If you carry advertising, you can't just say "Google screwed up" -- you are directly responsible for the publication of every ad that is shown on your pages, and not just to block them after the first time they show up. We wouldn't accept this kind of sloppiness from a print publication, and we shouldn't accept it here, no matter what it does to the business model. Websites should have the opportunity and the responsibility to approve or reject every ad BEFORE it appears on their pages, AdSense or nonsense.

audrabaudra's sticky post

[audrabaudra.livejournal.com]

Do you want the government in your bedroom?

Reject NOM's efforts to tell us who we can love.

Say NO to government intrusion. Say YES to freedom and equality.

Say "NO!" TO NOM.

Re: audrabaudra's sticky post

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

will people in New Zealand know who NOM is?

GO YOU THOUGH ----

Re: audrabaudra's sticky post

[audrabaudra.livejournal.com]

I belong to a few communities with Yanks in 'em, as well as international folks--and will anybody on LJ see the ads (not just US residents)? I don't see 'em myself (paid/ad blocker) but I think folks in Oz are....?

Ahhhh! Questions of audience are so complicated! :-)

[allanh.livejournal.com]

I'm torn between saying, "Fuck YES, pull the NOM ads!" and my strong attachment to Freedom of Speech, even when it's somebody I'd rather not hear from.

I would prefer that people NOT start leaving LJ over this; it's been too quiet around here since the Black Out Day, after which a number of people folded up their accounts and left.

(Disclosure: In the interest of prudence, and unrelated to the NOM ads, I admit to having created an account on Dreamwidth.org and importing all of my LJ content to there. I wanted an online backup of everything.)

[pklexton.livejournal.com]

This is disturbing. I would prefer to advocate to LJ tbat tbey not take politically controversial ads of any sort - as a private business, that's their right. They should have known this would offend a big part of their user base.

[pklexton.livejournal.com]

Update: I was pleased by what I read following the links from greatbearmd's post - it seems this was already a violation of LJ policy and shouldn't have happened.

[inbhirnis.livejournal.com]

One more thing on this topic...: Click on those NOM ads, and you make NOM have to pay Google. Those who see the ads should click like crazy and bankrupt them!

[tigerbeard.livejournal.com]

As always a positive and constructive approach which is why I like your journal so much. Hopefully LJ will take notice and actually consider their user base.

I'm sick of these groups. They don't represent MY marriage or MY family values.

Freedom of speech is fine but there should also be freedom to choose who's speech you listen to. Thankfully a paid account and good ad-blocking software is filtering most of the crap out.