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Why is Google's AdSense doing the bidding of Scientology?
- jacquesm 17y agopretty much since the start google adsense has offered a 'competitive ad filter' which you can use to block unwanted ads. Incidentally, this is also a great way to get your CPM up quite a bit if you use it smartly.
- ErrantX 17y agoThe title is a bit misleading. Clearly Scientology have spent a lot of money to make it to the top of the pile; Google have nothing to do with it.
- far33d 17y agoBut wouldn't he be seeing a change in his CPM rates?
- mrkurt 17y agoWe've had a hell of a time getting Scientology ads out of our backfill adsense. They show on feeds, in content, on forums, etc. The competitive ad filters don't seem to be working either (or we're total morons who can't figure out ad domains).
- grandalf 17y agodo you also block ads that pertain to other religions? Or are you a sectarian opposer of Scientology? :)
- jrockway 17y agoScientology is not a religion, it's a scam. Do you delete 411 scams from your email? Same thing.
- grandalf 17y agoDo you differentiate between Scientology and other mainstream religions like Mormonism, Catholocism, Judaism, etc.? I don't. You say Zenu I say tomato.
- jrockway 17y agoPersonally, I think all religion is silly. But, mainstream Christianity is rather harmless compared to Scientology. It doesn't require its members to sink money into its lawsuit fund, for example. (But sure, there are crazy Christian groups too.)
- grandalf 17y agoThe Catholic church, for example, has had quite a head start, during which time it's done things that make Scientology's worst alleged misdeeds look quite harmless. I don't think anyone is required to donate, though there are varying amounts of pressure in various religions -- Catholicism focuses mostly on estates and wills to amass its billions.
- icey 17y agoWhat does that have to do with adsense at all?
- 17y ago
- rubinelli 17y agoI must confess that, after a week seeing those horribly distracting ads, I started clicking just to make sure they were at least paying for the annoyance.
- grandalf 17y agoMost of the anti-Scientology crusade is motivated by other sects who simply don't like competition. It's pretty ironic that they make fun of Zenu, etc., when their own beliefs do no better in the absurdity department!
- jrockway 17y agoAtheism is a "sect" now?
- grandalf 17y agoYou seem to have taken the bait of my comment -- you assume that anti-Scientologists are atheists! I'd argue that they are Christians.
- Retric 17y agoAtheism is the largest religion.
- jrockway 17y agoAtheism is not a religion.
- Retric 17y agoAs an Agnostic, I disagree. Atheism makes strong clames about "God(s)" without any evedence.
- grandalf 17y agoNot at all, Atheists don't grant beliefs associated with religion special status. To an atheist, the statement "a small pink elephant named wilson created the universe with a squeeky sneeze" and "God created the universe in 7 days" are equally likely to be true... An atheist may not assign a probability of 1 to the truth of each of his/her beliefs, but he/she considers all absurd beliefs equally unlikely, and grants that science has allowed humanity to make educated estimates about many such probabilities.
- sfphotoarts 17y agoWhy isn't everyone using AdBlock? Isn't this pretty standard these days? I haven't seen a web ad for a long while and since I don't have TV the only ads I see are in Hulu and on the street.
- jasonkester 17y agoNo, it's just you. Regular users don't know about, and wouldn't go out of their way to install it if they did. I certainly haven't, and I'd consider myself quite a bit more tech savvy than your average computer user.
- tybris 17y agobecause I don't care and hardly even notice them. I've gone banner blind in the 90's during the animated gif pandemic.
- eli 17y agoI'm having a hard time mustering a whole lot of sympathy. If you want the ability to individually approve each ad then Google is definitely the wrong tool for the job.