How to White-List Ads on Gaia

[Rare Ginger Myst]

Basically like any person that sells their idea to a company, Gaia like every company
, is a business, no longer a simple "chat program" or "social network" as was it's original intention. Any thing you can squeeze money from or manipulate, you will in the name of perversion, greed, corruption, any and all forms of rebellion, did that just about cover it? After all why leave well enough alone if it's so easy right? And most people are so willing to think this is a good thing. Maybe my dad was right after all in saying, just turn it off. I think I realize why I save money now. I stopped spending on sites like gaia. Why don't you so called "Californian's" stop using "entertainment" now renamed "The media" as a weapon against people who refuse to give in to overinduldged brats.Start learning or rather Re-learning the definition of "starving artist"!!!!! And once you understand it's meaning and purpose, pass that on with a Huge helping of humble pie.

[Obsidian Kaesken]

I apologize but I'm not white-listing the ads on GaiaOnline. You guys simply have WAY too many of them. I used to just ignore and pass them over, but when you guys started to put up the auto-play video type ones then decide to update you guys' bar with those large ads that pop up half my screen for a short time, that's when I finally went to grab my AdBlock Plus.

If you guys would limit your advertisements and get rid of the auto-plays, I might reconsider. But as far as right now, I'm not white-listing GaiaOnline.

Edit
Also - yes, I know the ad isn't coded by you guys 'directly' but the choice of adding a bar MOD knowing how bad those ads are was poor judgement.

[Kohaku Hoshi X3]

Obsidian Kaesken

I apologize but I'm not white-listing the ads on GaiaOnline. You guys simply have WAY too many of them. I used to just ignore and pass them over, but when you guys started to put up the auto-play video type ones then decide to update you guys' bar with those large ads that pop up half my screen for a short time, that's when I finally went to grab my AdBlock Plus.

If you guys would limit your advertisements and get rid of the auto-plays, I might reconsider. But as far as right now, I'm not white-listing GaiaOnline.

Edit
Also - yes, I know the ad isn't coded by you guys 'directly' but the choice of adding a bar MOD knowing how bad those ads are was poor judgement.

Same: I'm not risking the integrity of my PC on a site whose ads are obnoxious, shady, intrusive, and make load times crawl even on a high speed connection.

[EviI Spaghetti]

first trying to force people to buy cash to remove ads

now begging people to remove add block

LOL no.

[Obsidian Kaesken]

Kohaku Hoshi X3

Same: I'm not risking the integrity of my PC on a site whose ads are obnoxious, shady, intrusive, and make load times crawl even on a high speed connection.

I know very well how that is. I even had to disable the animations. I love them and all but just too many animations going on at once slowed this place down drastically, haha. Since I disabled animations and the ads, I've been able to get around GaiaOnline with the same speed as any other forum site who don't rely on animations and advertisements.

[Druscylla]

I love Gaia, but the ads are so intrusive I choose to keep them off. I abhor perusing the site only to be blasted in the ears by a noisy ad that won't stop. Or some of the ads (Burger King was bad for example) that start as a tiny ad on the right side of the page. Suddenly without my clicking or hovering over it, it expands to fill the page, I misclick and am redirected. The occasional ad is fine. But the kinds I see here are horribly intrusive.

[Hikkychi]

Cameron Valimere

3) I hear all the time that Gaia used to be SO much cooler, then it came down to sucking up to the sponsors while still preaching it was all about helping us out. In the mean time you have people quitting, because your fighting to give us an online home, has seemed to cut into your actually focusing on making that home a place we really want to stay in. Sure it looks all nice and pretty on the outside, but stay for a few months and you see the cracked counter tops, the leaky roof, some of the foundation is falling apart. While I understand the need to pay the bills, what I don't understand is why that need became more important than the reason you have to pay them.

I don't know, those are just my opinions, take them as you please.

So, true.

[like2omg]

rimedragona

siskataya

Happy Monday everyone! Thanks so much for the continued feedback over the weekend. I've passed along your suggestions and ideas to the ads team, as well as your feedback on why you will or will not white-list ads on Gaia.

As always, if you have any more ideas, let us know! biggrin

I personally think that a more careful selection of ad providers on gaia's end would solve many of the problems, even if people still had adblock. I would suggest going through the default whitelist that adblock has and going through those companies only, or at least as much as possible. Then, even if someone has adblock, your ads will still get through. But they'll be unobtrusive types. smile

https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads
https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/exceptionrules.txt

As it is now, with adblock on, I don't actually see any of these unobtrusive ads. Which makes me sad, because it would seem you don't use ads through those providers. It also means I can't give you ad revenue, because I'm not willing to be annoyed at every turn, and get viruses on my computer for your sake. sad

EDIT: okay, as a curiosity, I turned it off for a bit, and I can definitely concur with what people have been saying, for the most part. The ads really do slow down the loading of the page, almost to the point of becoming unusable. I guess I never realized how many ads there were, either. ^^;

However, most of the ads I've seen have been static images that I think would have already fit the requirements to be on the default whitelist. The providers probably just haven't made a deal to be added to the list. I would hope most of the ads would be like that, and the porn/sound/etc ads are just being talked about so much because they're the ones that would get complaints.

I'm deciding now whether to turn it back on or leave it off for a bit...

This... THIS... this is what matters!

One of the deciding factors I made of getting off the Windows bandwagon as much as I could was due to viruses, either by downloading something, or even just by loading a website!

As a hardcore Linux fan (that can also use Python, Bash scripting, and Lua (for a Minecraft mod)), I know that Linux alone isn't enough for keeping my computer safe. That's why I'm not adding you to my white-list until you add yourselves to the Acceptable Ads list the "legit" way. No other way will I accept your ads. Period.

By the way, this is only my opinion that I state here in this sentence, but I dislike the concept of Free-to-Play with Paid content that is necessary for doing most of the stuff on the game (read: RuneScape). Go that way and I might even leave this site for good (yes, that's a threat to leave this site and you never get one cent from me).

I shall take my personal (self-assigned) gaia_star and go about having fun without ads.

[Ruanz]

I don't mind watching ads, some of them are informative to me.

[CatsOnFire]

It would be nice to be able to give ads a thumb up, or down. Those ads that really are unobtrusive would earn thumbs up, and the annoying ones would get thumbs down. That way the staff could decide if the money coming from the ad is worth the bother.

[AKB0048]

My issue with ads is not just seeing them is annoying, but mainly because they have the tendency to put s**t on your machine with no consent or notice. I block ads mostly to protect my computer.

[pink-master-man]

my ads are on. i Like some of the ads and it would be cooL to see more you can cLick for gaia cash or goLd. Not a fan of the videos they take up too much MB for my net. it would be best if the ads was more Like Facebook has it (ie) the ads are of stuff on your Like List and interest.

[fuiuchi]

Obsidian Kaesken

I apologize but I'm not white-listing the ads on GaiaOnline. You guys simply have WAY too many of them. I used to just ignore and pass them over, but when you guys started to put up the auto-play video type ones then decide to update you guys' bar with those large ads that pop up half my screen for a short time, that's when I finally went to grab my AdBlock Plus.

If you guys would limit your advertisements and get rid of the auto-plays, I might reconsider. But as far as right now, I'm not white-listing GaiaOnline.

Edit
Also - yes, I know the ad isn't coded by you guys 'directly' but the choice of adding a bar MOD knowing how bad those ads are was poor judgement.

This. There's just way too many of them, they're invasive and obnoxious as hell, plus some of them have sound. They're just terrible.

It's funny because I usually don't mind ads. Gaia is one of the few sites that I don't have whitelisted.

[ray ray is here]

I keep the ads up on mine. ovo