Site Post » The Great NSFW Purge of 2013... · 12:39pm Nov 7th, 2013
...is not a real thing.
A month ago, we lost Adsense on fimfic, which was what kept the site going and ensuring I could dedicate my time to it. This isn't the first time this has happened, in fact we lost ads for a couple of weeks back in June but that got resolved very quickly and easily. Sadly this time Adsense seem to be being very unreceptive to changes made and keep throwing links back at me that apparently violate their policies for some reason. So over the past month I've been trying to work out exactly what this means and change policies on the site to allow us to keep using Adsense. This is why we removed nsfw blog posts because I was worried they created too much of a nsfw culture on the site for adsense to permit. Not to mention they're a superfluous feature on a website about text stories! Consequently I chose to get rid of them. That wasn't enough for adsense though, and lacking any better information on them, we decided to do a bit of an inhouse clean on some cover art. Note, we didn't change any policies here, we (Meeester mainly) just went over existing stories and enacted the rules a bit more strongly than we might have before.
Now, based on some messages I've received, people seem to think there is some purge of adult stories on the site coming. There isn't. The worst case scenario is that I have to create a new domain and frontend with the same back end for this stuff, but look at my favourites. Do I look like the kind of person who wants to rid fimfic of this stuff? No.
Unfortunately adsense as being really useless with the whole situation so it could be a while longer before it gets sorted or I move onto another ad provider, but I'd really like to stay with adsense as they pay the best.
Please do not suggest donations. I don't want to revert to this method and it'd be a drop in the bucket of what advertising returns anyway.
As a final note, as of now linking to nsfw stories from a sfw story (whether in the comments, description or chapter), a blog post, or a group thread is forbidden. Linking to any off site nsfw material is ALSO forbidden in these places I realise this is an annoying but we can hopefully allow that again once we have our new bbcode system up and running which can detect these links and automatically disable ads.
Edit - You can't link to NSFW content or stories from your user page either. You are allowed to put Mature stories in your Favorites/Featured Stories module, though, since those won't show up to users with Mature content switched off.
There will always be people who see a conspiracy in anything and there will be people who will believe those rather then the "ones in power".
But still thanks for yet again giving an explanation for the ones who dont know whats going on.
Neat.
I don't really care for NSFW stuff anyway.
Hmm...what about that add company for rule-34 Papheal? They don't seem to mind this stuff... Of course, that would have the opposite effect than what we were wanting, I suppose. Then it would be bad for anyone not wanting nsfw material in the first place. Eh, this is a mess.
Maybe its time to implement the Gold Membership subscription system from Aprils Fool Day?
*loving hug* it's okay.
Hopefully once you get the detecting code working you can look at a hybrid ad solution. Might mean more money if you can put NSFW ads on the NSFW pages and SFW ads on the SFW pages. (Or maybe not. I'd be lying if I said I understood anything about the insanity and inanity that is any given web ad service.)
I'm just happy to know why.
And talk about douchebaggery from that ad company...they could at least tell ya what's wrong instead of being...well douchebags.
Hey, can someone pick up that phone?
'Cause I fucking called it.
I see. Well, even though lex retro non agit and all those principles state that no rule or law may be retroactive... Ah, well, the UK never accepted international law as its standard. And, in Scotland, you can get sued twice for one crime, despite ne bis in idem.
Oh, well. What I mean is, I hope you can find a solution. Good to have an official statement. Conspiracies are usually born because there's no official info.
How much money are we talking about?
Anyway, good luck with all this, but, as I've noted before, I strongly suspect that the fact that the site, you know, has pony porn on it, is going to be something of a dealbreaker for Ad Sense.
I think the reality is that the advertisers just don't want to be associated with anything that might be perceived as them being associated with anything questionable. Which is understandable, I suppose, though in the end, I somehow doubt anyone actually cares (or even notices) such ads.
I have never purposefully clicked on an ad on this website.
You know what's funny?
If you take a moment and think about it... It's painfully obvious.
~Skeeter The Lurker
So, let me see if I've got this right, and please correct me if I'm wrong.
Adsense falsely believes the site's becoming more centric on adult-oriented material and are withdrawing support because of that. If that's the case, they need to realize such content only makes up a fraction of what's on this site, and what there is can easily be hidden if desired.
1488785>>1488792 Ditto
1488788 I second this emotion!
1488797 They aren't enforcing them retroactively - the rules were already in place, just not properly enforced. Clarification and enforcement of existing law (inasmuch as the concept of law applies to the rules of a private website) is not retroactive application of law.
Please consider adding a subscription service, at first just without ads then with some additional advanced stuff down the line (automatic sending of new chapters / full books to the paying user's Kindle perhaps?). Calculate whatever you earn from ads "per user per month", add credit card / paypal / whatever charges, a profit margin, round it up, offer the option and I'll subscribe. I enjoy FimFiction too much not to.
OVERLORD KNIGHTY HATH SPOKEN!
and it is oh so glorious, for now, we have understanding!!!
1488804
I meant the prohibition of NSFW blogs, not the cover arts. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
1488801
No.
Adsense has rules, one of which is that the ads cannot be associated with pornographic content. This includes not only direct pornographic content on the page in question, but also potentially links to pornographic content, even if nothing pornographic is in fact in evidence on the page in question.
This is because the people using adsense don't want to be associated with pornography (among other things - IIRC racist content is also banned, as is stuff advocating illegal behavior, ect. - obvious stuff, mostly).
The problem is, more or less, it only matters if they actually care. What probably happened is that either some bot saw something that set off its triggers, or someone from one of the advertisers looked back at where some reference came from and found something objectionable. Once you've already tripped something, I'm sure the system scruitinizes you much more carefully, because it is a good bet that people who have broken the rules at least once are much more likely to break them again than the people who have never done so.
Unfortunately, adsense's rules are more like... guidelines. They aren't exhaustive and are something of a matter of "does this pass the sniff test". And it is worth remembering that they CHOOSE to do business with you - they can refuse to serve you ads for absolutely any reason unless you have a contract with them, which probably includes some clause that they can pull out for any reason at any time anyway.
1488807
k then, I'll just go sit over in the corner.
Oh good. People can put down their pitchforks and flaming torches now.
Just wanted to poke my nose in and say:
Thanks for keeping the little people in the loop, Knighty!
KNIGHTY?!.............hi
1488810
Me too.
1488801
Adsense doesn't falsely believe anything. There's always been material on here that's against the rules (though some of those rules are rather vague and flexible), but they've not been aware until recently of whatever has caught their eye.
And now they know about it, they want it gone since Google doesn't want to be affiliated with that content, and presumably most of their advertising partners do not either.
Further, even if Google re-enables ads that shouldn't be taken as endorsement of the site's content, just that they haven't yet found anything else to piss them off (and at present, they will someday).
Thank you for explaining. My only complaint is this:
Adsense is wrong.
They are wrong not in their classification of Fimfiction as NSFW. They are wrong in denying their services to NSFW sites. Even the term is itself wrong. Work should not care what kind of information you view.
All they're doing is to put sexual content, extreme violence, and racism into a little ghetto and make them get other advertisers, but why? Who says that those concepts deserve to not be part of the general conversation?
Community standards? Fuck that, no one knows what they are. More adults consume pornography than don't. Where are the standards there?
Adsense should have to advertise on Fimfiction. They should not have the choice to withdraw. That they have the opportunity to is a problem, and one that's not going to get solved.
Where are they headquartered? I want to TP their place. For starters.
So, we took a step back there, I think? With the no more linking nsfw stories bit, that is? To be clear, I'm neither bitching nor complaining about it either way, just confirming that that is a change since an earlier ruling on the matter.
It does lead to a question, though, if I may? For authors who have sfw stories with secondary stories to contain any scenes dealing with objectionable materials (none named to avoid causing said authors trouble, but I could name at least two just off-hand, and am aware of a few others at least, so it is a thing) is it still permitted to have an author's note/blog along the lines of "This other story containing all of the explicit content for this story exists, the title is (insert title here), go check my profile if you want to find it"? Since there's no direct link, and all that. Or are we just having a complete exclusion of any mention of nsfw material from anything except nsfw stories?
There is ads on this site? Huh... Honestly I've never even seen any from day one. How does an advertiser even host ads to a site that doesn't even display them? I mean even EqD displays it's ads clearly so you can see them, but this site I have never seen one. Perhaps you guys should do something along the lines like Derpibooru does. So you are not constrained by advertisers whining about adult content popping up in their search results. Why not try to offer a subscription to those that want adult content? Or just a subscription for all so you can handle the cost's of hosting this site? I mean it can't cost more than Derpibooru (sorry only example I know of) to keep this place afloat can it?
1488795
This comment + your avatar = my favorite post ever on FIMFic
1488827 The problem is direct links. You should be fine with just naming the story without linking to it. At least I assume so.
Actually that raises an interesting point. Is there some limit to the number of links in a chain before adsense considers it acceptable? You can't directly link to NSFW material from any page with adsense on it, but if you link to a page off-site that contains links to NSFW material, is that also counted? Makes me wonder how far they spider.
First off, I want to say thank you for finally giving us the answers that we, a decent size chink of the FiMfic members, have been wanting. (going on just my observations, I was definitely not the only member here that wanted answers to what the hell was goin on.) When you just made all of these changes without any apparent reason, I will be honest, I was EXTREMELY pissed, and from what I saw, so was a lot of others.
Now that we know what is going on, it IS a relief. The biggest relief is knowing that you have NOT abandoned us.
It IS important to us that you be open with us about what is going on.
With this blog post, you have given us a face for our fears, and have also quelled another fear of ours. You have also shown that you care enough to talk to us about this, which makes it feel as if you do care. before, to be honest, it did not feel that way at all.
Please, Knighty. Work with us on this. I am certain that there are members here who can help come up with a solution. We just need to know HOW we can help find that solution.
1488826
I think it's very presumptuous to say you're wrong to choose who you do business with.
Imagine for a second it was the other way around -- in fact, it is in a lot of cases since many websites filter their ads -- and Google started running porn ads or something. You don't think it's unreasonable that a website might refuse to allow that and not want to give off that image?
Who you do business with affects your brand, and that's why anyone who knows what they're doing is always going to be cautious about who they deal with. There's nothing wrong with that.
1488833 I assume such as well, but you know the old saying about assuming. Though, considering your avatar, perhaps that's a foregone conclusion for you.
Just thought it bore clarifying, that it was only a proper link that was barred, and not link in the mere sense of having a connection of any kind. I, for one, have no idea how anal about such things adsense can be.
Well, that clears up a lot, I've been feeding off other bs made-up stories for way to long, thanks for clearing it all up!
Does that mean that I can add my tumblr back to my profile page? Or was that just an overlooked category?
1488805
I think I would pay for a premium Fimfiction service. Maybe put up a poll and find out how much people would pay for what services. Personally I'd pay for nothing more then fimfiction staying around and my stories on here being secure, as well as stories I have yet to read on my list.
Why would advertisers want to exclude a majority of the internet from their advertising? I guess they actually care more about having a stick up their butt about things then they do money.
By the way, it's very, VERY likely that AdSense will keep objecting to anything sexual even of a pure textual nature. I once developed a blog for a customer who wanted to talk extensively about sexuality and related subjects. That was about 5 years ago, and we had to carefully read AdSense's rules back then to check whether the blog would be accepted. We concluded it wouldn't even though he wouldn't be using adult images, so we had to go with another provider.
So, sorry for bringing the bad news, but if you want to keep AdSense you'll probably have to move everything NSFW, including stories, to another domain. On the positive side, that site will be able to get everything back: images, blog posts etc.
1488826 Here's their HQ: http://www.google.com/about/jobs/locations/mountain-view/
Have fun with that
Ah, that sucks. Good luck getting stuff sorted out.
I do echo the question of if we can mention a nsfw story in a blog with no link to it.
1488798 Considering how much Knighty's webhost costs for the dedicated server I'm ASSUMING he has, if it covers his hosting costs, probably close to a grand a month. Maybe more.
This is a pretty bignasty website, bandwidth wise.
Now Imma check out Knighty's favourites XD
1488826
Uh... They do. It's their money to do with as they please.
1488834 Indeed. Clears up a buncha stuff we were speculating on, eh?
Even so...damn you Adsense!
1488847
Spoiler alert: It's clop.
1488846
Yeeesh.
1488852 Yup. Their dedicateds run from $300-ish to $800-ish, and that discounts the possibility that Knighty has a custom setup. Which is possible.
I really hate how NSFW stories tend to clog the feature box, but removing them entirely would just be silly. I like the idea of a separate domain, though. Sort of like Equestria After Dark.
1488851 Yeah... damn them! There HAS to be advertisers out there that will pay well enough that wont be pulling bullshit on us. Hell, e621 seems to be expanding... and look at the content there!
1488846
It's not going to be anywhere near that much. Probably something in the region of a few hundred since the site content is mostly text with some images. Biggest cost is likely needing to run it on a fast server to handle all the scripting the site uses.
I worked on a site network a few years ago that was serving a lot of downloads, and that cost about $1K in hosting fees and bandwidth per month.
Scared the shit out of me with that blog title, man.
Sorry to hear about all the troubles. I know a lot of us give you shit, but I think you're doing a fantastic job, Knighty. Keep up the good work, and thank you for this amazing website.
1488837
And I'd be OK with that...if we went full Soup Nazi and said that anyone has the right to refuse service at any time to anyone. But the fact is that we tell businesses all the time what to do to make it fair. The only difference is that we do it for popular causes--you can't discriminate against a charity!--and not for unpopular ones like porn and gore.
1488854
You DO realize you can turn off mature stories, right?
1488853
I suppose this site has a pretty different hit profile from a webcomic, which is what I'm mostly familiar with hosting of. The image files are smaller, but there's tons of them, and of course, there's a pretty good number of users.
1488837
Eyup. A lot of marketing is about image, and being one of the people who is supporting the KKK's website or some site about midget bondage might be troublesome for many of these companies, who don't want to be associated with either.
There's a reason advertisers pulled their ads from Rush Limbaugh for a while after he went on some sexist tirade - they didn't want to be seen as supporting him (or actually support him, for that matter - it is worth remembering that, soulless as corporations may seem, it isn't actually all that uncommon for them to take a stand on SOME issues).