Ravenscroft
Banned
So, I was browsing this forum, idly curious about media coverage. Then I clicked on a particular link that sent me to a commercial website for a magazine. A totally gratuitous Chrome script (either a movement tracker or a paid ad placement) failed. This locked up my browser, forcing me to restart & costing me a post I'd been working on for another forum. Now Firefox is acting hinky; I'm doing a system restart & hoping for the best. Fortunately, I have another PC, but many people don't have that luxury.
So, though I've meant to raise this issue in the past, now seems highly appropriate.
Speaking as a recovering journalist, here are strong recommendations for good form & possibly for policy changes on Polyamory.com.
Foremost, if you are going to recommend something, then have the good graces to tell us WHY.
On other sites, people show up just long enough to make some sort of plug for their hobbyhorse-of-the-moment. You see it all the time on Amazon.com: "Good book." "Changed my life." "Everyone should read this." There are actually accounts that post these "reviews" because they get paid a few cents each (by the publisher or writer) to push the item higher in the Amazon rankings. It's not unlike Twitter accounts that exist only long enough to splodge out retweets from a particular person, group, or topic.
(Though there ARE "members" who show up here ONLY to push some event from which they profit, & steadfastly refuse to interact with anyone else except in that self-aggrandizing context. On other sites, I've seen such post in forums, only to drag every damned topic around to their little project. Here, the owners seem to feel that this distracting advertisement is "free speech" in the Citizens United sense; though I don't agree at all, site policy is site policy.)
While I don't believe that people here are intentionally acting like spambots, the fact remains that pushing a link to a site that profits directly from visitors makes the pusher responsible for any outfall. That means ANY erosion of individual privacy -- for instance, cookies & trackers & adware -- & (of course) any resultant malware.
In order to minimize this, I strongly recommend that site admins consider some policy tweaking, & in any case that people here who consider themselves members of a (virtual) community take on a little bit of responsibility.
If you truly believe that something is worth sharing, then SUMMARIZE it a little. Give us the "nickel tour." Post a few quotes.
And in the name of common decency, if a page takes a LONG time to load on your browser, then TELL US there's all sorts of ads & such shit we'd need to swallow.
If you're going to make such "must read" postings on a regular basis, then get your browser some privacy-scanner plugins, so that you can give us a heads-up. Amazon & eBay are really NOT good, but most magazines SUCK, hiding two or three DOZEN little nuggets of ick on your device so that they can sell your private info.
(FWIW, Polyamory.com is amazingly clean!! ZERO trackers or ads, & far as I can tell only remembers your current & immediately previous login time/date.)
There are people here who express anxiety about the possibility that they might be "outed." Yet here we are, glibly sending them to sites that will happily track their movements & infer their interests, hugely increasing the likelihood that the next time one of the kids (or maybe an unaware partner) uses the home PC to shop Amazon, all sorts of "You Might Also Like" stuff pops up with recommendations for poly, porn, & kink , & maybe Facebook visitors start getting similar hints.
Once more, with emphasis: TELL US WHY a book/article/site is interesting... or avoid the impulse.
And (IMNSHO) Admins really ought to establish a policy to either purge commercial plugs (intentional or not) or charge for them. Like any other social media, this site does bear some responsibility to point out stuff that's actually advertising or some other form of "fake news." For starters: a post with pretty much ZERO content other than a link to another site is kinda NOT a post.
Hey, here's a bit of irony: I finally got my laptop to restart... by disabling the tracker-block plugin for Firefox. Looks like that "big-name magazine" site's failed Chrome app was intentionally meant to hack around my little firewall, & instead fucked up the code. If anyone wants to know WHICH magazine, drop me a note. )
So, though I've meant to raise this issue in the past, now seems highly appropriate.
Speaking as a recovering journalist, here are strong recommendations for good form & possibly for policy changes on Polyamory.com.
Foremost, if you are going to recommend something, then have the good graces to tell us WHY.
On other sites, people show up just long enough to make some sort of plug for their hobbyhorse-of-the-moment. You see it all the time on Amazon.com: "Good book." "Changed my life." "Everyone should read this." There are actually accounts that post these "reviews" because they get paid a few cents each (by the publisher or writer) to push the item higher in the Amazon rankings. It's not unlike Twitter accounts that exist only long enough to splodge out retweets from a particular person, group, or topic.
(Though there ARE "members" who show up here ONLY to push some event from which they profit, & steadfastly refuse to interact with anyone else except in that self-aggrandizing context. On other sites, I've seen such post in forums, only to drag every damned topic around to their little project. Here, the owners seem to feel that this distracting advertisement is "free speech" in the Citizens United sense; though I don't agree at all, site policy is site policy.)
While I don't believe that people here are intentionally acting like spambots, the fact remains that pushing a link to a site that profits directly from visitors makes the pusher responsible for any outfall. That means ANY erosion of individual privacy -- for instance, cookies & trackers & adware -- & (of course) any resultant malware.
In order to minimize this, I strongly recommend that site admins consider some policy tweaking, & in any case that people here who consider themselves members of a (virtual) community take on a little bit of responsibility.
If you truly believe that something is worth sharing, then SUMMARIZE it a little. Give us the "nickel tour." Post a few quotes.
And in the name of common decency, if a page takes a LONG time to load on your browser, then TELL US there's all sorts of ads & such shit we'd need to swallow.
If you're going to make such "must read" postings on a regular basis, then get your browser some privacy-scanner plugins, so that you can give us a heads-up. Amazon & eBay are really NOT good, but most magazines SUCK, hiding two or three DOZEN little nuggets of ick on your device so that they can sell your private info.
(FWIW, Polyamory.com is amazingly clean!! ZERO trackers or ads, & far as I can tell only remembers your current & immediately previous login time/date.)
There are people here who express anxiety about the possibility that they might be "outed." Yet here we are, glibly sending them to sites that will happily track their movements & infer their interests, hugely increasing the likelihood that the next time one of the kids (or maybe an unaware partner) uses the home PC to shop Amazon, all sorts of "You Might Also Like" stuff pops up with recommendations for poly, porn, & kink , & maybe Facebook visitors start getting similar hints.
Once more, with emphasis: TELL US WHY a book/article/site is interesting... or avoid the impulse.
And (IMNSHO) Admins really ought to establish a policy to either purge commercial plugs (intentional or not) or charge for them. Like any other social media, this site does bear some responsibility to point out stuff that's actually advertising or some other form of "fake news." For starters: a post with pretty much ZERO content other than a link to another site is kinda NOT a post.
Hey, here's a bit of irony: I finally got my laptop to restart... by disabling the tracker-block plugin for Firefox. Looks like that "big-name magazine" site's failed Chrome app was intentionally meant to hack around my little firewall, & instead fucked up the code. If anyone wants to know WHICH magazine, drop me a note. )