Trumper ads

I find the pop-up ads on this site annoying, but I suppose the LVA has to supplement its income these days.

However, I find the continual barrage of right-wing pro-Trump propaganda deeply offensive. You can't read a single page of the website without seeing an alt-right extremist ad. Of course, I realize that some of our customers might be titillated by those same ads and consider them to be a highlight of the LVA experience.

Someone is paying LVA for those ads--why did LVA sell space to alt-right extremist groups? Ads for casinos, or for drain cleaner for that matter, are one thing. Political crap is another.

I hasten to add that I would be just as offended by left-wing political ads. We should have places where we can get away from all that bullcrap, at least for a little while.

Apparently, my ad blocker is working, because I never see those ads. Maybe you should get an ad blocker like uBlock Origin which is free and open source, but there are scads of others.

Could you provide a little more detail as to what you consider alt-right ads? I'm just curious.

What I have seen is that when I go to YouTube's main page where it serves up video recommendations based on what I've previously viewed, the first video lately is always a video labeled as an "ad" and paid for by the Trump campaign or one of the groups supporting Trump. That ad is not based on my previous viewing. It's placed there, because someone paid to have it there. I never see a Biden ad there. It looks to me like that is clever placement by the Trump people. The ads are usually negative ones purporting to show Biden's alleged deficiencies.

So I guess if YouTube and probably every other site that sells advertising to support itself  is running political ads, you can't blame LVA for doing the same. I am curious, though, how far right these alt-right ads are that you wrote about. (I temporarily disabled the ad blocker, but I didn't see any popup ads.)

Google tailors ads based on users' previous search history. For instance, the ads that are displaying for me are all Vegas related because I search Vegas stuff all day. If I search for a Mattress I will start seeing ads for mattresses, if I search for RVs I will start seeing RVs ads. We do not choose which ads display. And targeted ads follow you everywhere, so if you go to a different website that uses Google ads you will see the same ads.

I'll take your word for it, but I don't spend all day searching right-wing websites for propaganda---and yet, over 2/3 of the ads I see are encouraging me to support Donald Trump, join Proud Boys, have Nancy Pelosi boiled alive, etc. etc.

I think what's happening is that Google Ads has identified LVA subscribers as belonging to a demographic that might be receptive to those political pitches---mostly male, mostly older, generally affluent---and has told its right-wing propaganda customers that this site might be a good place to target their ads.

But...I suppose ya gotta make money. When I was broke in college, I briefly considered letting a business I hated have my car painted to be a billboard for them. $500 was a lot of money back then. I almost did it.

Jeff, it ranges from relatively innocuous stuff such as "DO YOU SUPPORT DONALD TRUMP?" to dreck such as "DON'T LET THE LIBERALS DESTROY OUR COUNTRY!!!" and "THE DEEP STATE IS TAKING AWAY OUR FREEDOMS! VOTE REPUBLICAN!!!" The proportion of fairly mild to raving nutcase is about 50/50.

Like you, I've never seen an ad for Joe Biden, or for any liberal cause or candidate. So that tells me these ads are targeted--and the people generating them think that LVA subscribers (and website viewers) might be a good audience. They couldn't logically be thinking that I personally would be receptive. I don't browse white supremacist websites.

I've tried two different ad blockers. Unfortunately, they cause my browser to crash whenever I leave the LVA home page. I get some cryptic message like "Bad Gateway" on an otherwise blank screen.

Kevin, have you been busted?  A closet conservative after all?  LOL.

I've not seen any political pop ups.  Febreze seems to have me pegged.  I do use it a lot, but never did an online search or purchase.  There is also Amtrak, Walgreens, Farm Bureau Insurance, Smoothie King, Arizona Charlie's, Reynolds Parchment Paper, Soma Boutique, and more.  The bots have taken over!  I guess they do know my interests, somehow.  Never have taken Amtrak, though.

The fact that these ads are so "personalized" means that they are tracking your web activity (as in, not just on LVA, but everybloodywhere). For me, they seem to have realized that I'm politically active but got the specifics a wee bit, uh, totally wrong. The result is like targeting a Jewish person with ads for the American Nazi Party.

One time, I did some contract work, writing a series of short articles for an attorney's office that specialized in defending accused sex offenders (hey, the money was good, and everybody is entitled to a defense). The ONLY communication with the client was the emails we exchanged and the attached documents. For six months, I was bombarded with pop-up ads saying things like, "Hey, pervert! Want to stay out of jail? Call us at..." You get the idea.

So they know everything about you, including what you've had for lunch the last five years. You'll gradually learn to love Big Brother's warm embrace. Don't fight it.

I have to teach a class of antsy, squirming second graders in fifteen minutes. I bet Google knows that, too.

Kevin you are unreal!

I never really paid attention to this before, but an anti-McConnell ad just popped up for me. For the record, I'm a progressive and have donated to like-minded candidates and causes. In contrast, I constantly get fund raising mail and e-mail from both sides. But I've always suspected that one of my conservative friends signed me up to get the pro-Trump messages as a joke.

Yeah, it definitely depnds on how some computer algorithm evaluates you, and those algorithms are obviously of dubious accuracy. If they evaluated me correctly, they would never bother to send me exhortations to join the forces of evil (Trump/Republicans).