Intrusive Advertising by Haloscan?
I hate unwanted advertising. I hate it when advertisers hijack other people's content in order to push their messages. I hate the fact that the job of an advertiser is to make people want, and spend money on, things they never even thought they wanted until some advertiser pushed themselves into their heads. I hate the fact that we all waste so much money on things we never use and which fuck up the planet in the process.
I hate the fact that Haloscan stick adverts in my comments boxes when I didn't ask them to. I accept that by opting for the free Haloscan service I have little control over what it looks like. I know that if I paid them ten dollars (or something like) they would take the adverts away, but I don't like the bribery which says I have to pay somebody to remove adverts from my site. But it's not the end of the world. I can, and do, put up with it.
But fucking hell, this really takes the biscuit. I just posted a comment on my own site, and happened to use the word "hosting". I was actually talking about the Olympics at the time, but anyway. After I'd pressed Submit, I noticed the word hosting had been underlined, and lo and behold it had become a hyperlink. To a company advertising internet hosting services. WHAT THE FUCK?! To put adverts at the bottom of the comments box is one thing, but to embed them in someone's words, so that it looks as though they placed it there themselves? Talk about outrageous! I feel violated.
Update: The link has now disappeared. Which has me wondering whether it's not Haloscan at all, but some kind of weird phishing virus on my PC.
I'll be contacting Haloscan to enquire about this. If there's any suggestion that I pay them for the privilege of not having my and others' comments violated in this way, I... well. I might jump up and down a little. You may as well sell a free blogging service which automatically embeds racist graffiti into people's posts unless they pay for the privilege of having them removed.
Still, jury's out until I find out what's going on.
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I hate the fact that Haloscan stick adverts in my comments boxes when I didn't ask them to. I accept that by opting for the free Haloscan service I have little control over what it looks like. I know that if I paid them ten dollars (or something like) they would take the adverts away, but I don't like the bribery which says I have to pay somebody to remove adverts from my site. But it's not the end of the world. I can, and do, put up with it.
But fucking hell, this really takes the biscuit. I just posted a comment on my own site, and happened to use the word "hosting". I was actually talking about the Olympics at the time, but anyway. After I'd pressed Submit, I noticed the word hosting had been underlined, and lo and behold it had become a hyperlink. To a company advertising internet hosting services. WHAT THE FUCK?! To put adverts at the bottom of the comments box is one thing, but to embed them in someone's words, so that it looks as though they placed it there themselves? Talk about outrageous! I feel violated.
Update: The link has now disappeared. Which has me wondering whether it's not Haloscan at all, but some kind of weird phishing virus on my PC.
I'll be contacting Haloscan to enquire about this. If there's any suggestion that I pay them for the privilege of not having my and others' comments violated in this way, I... well. I might jump up and down a little. You may as well sell a free blogging service which automatically embeds racist graffiti into people's posts unless they pay for the privilege of having them removed.
Still, jury's out until I find out what's going on.
___
Labels: Politics
1 Comments:
I agree.
I also know the man (student) behind HaloScan (he runs it himself), and I'm sure if you offer a reasoned argument he'll reconsider this, I'd imagine others are pinging flaming emails at him already.
He's not evil. But yes, that isn't right.
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