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You Will Read Our Ads, And Like It
sheister writes "over at myciti.com they are asking members to agree to a new set of terms before using the service, including "'..we may display advertisements and promotions of all kinds on our web site(s) and you agree not to disable any technology required or utilized to serve or display such advertising;' Has anyone else noticed pushy Terms and Conditions like this on the web?"
It's no big deal. It's even less enforceable than all this crap the RIAA is giving the P2P users about pirating MP3s. Honestly, how would they be able to figure out that you are using a local proxy program to filter out all their advertising?
Software piracy is victimless theft.
Your ads do run under lynx, don't they?
I checked both the terms & conditions linked at the bottom of the page, and the privacy policty just above it. I didn't see any reference to advertisements of any sort.
So, where is this new policy?
I will definitely want to buy stuff from their sponsors after reading that.
Now here is the issue: Who pays for the content on the net?
I know in my case I pay my access fee for X amount of bandwidth potential, and I pay by the GB for my colo'd servers at ColoGuys ( - shameless plug for John and Co). In fact, I charge ( or rather my company charges) for access to our servers. As part of my personal connection I have personal and organizational websites set up. Now I choose to make those freely available to anyone at any time. Why? because I want people to come by and take a look see. However, if I make my money off of a site ( as I do with my colo'd servers), I have the right to restrict access. In this case they are wiling to provide content in exchange for marketing. They can do this, I think it is a poor choice and will drive people away, but it is their choice. Think what would happen to slashdot if al advertising were taken away. Would it become subscription only? If not who picks up the tab? I say just don't use the service if you dont want to abide by the terms.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
have i seen it? no.
would I use their service? probably not.
__________________________________
Take a moment and IMAGINE a world
with no unsolicited ads. can you? It is a
fun excercise -- I think it would be
a much nicer world.
All your bandwidth are belong to us! Ha ha ha!
The bank can now tell me what software I can and cannot run on my computer? How I run my computer is MY business, and if I choose to block ads, that is my right, since it is MY computer, MY bandwidth and MY choice. I don't give two shakes if they want to make more money off me. Maybe if they would split 50/50 with me anything they make from it, I might consider it, but otherwise, push off jack.
"Has anyone else noticed pushy Terms and Conditions like this on the web?" My browser and ISP both have ordered me not to answer this question.
...until: By agreeing to these terms you agree to buy the products advertized on this site.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Yet another reason to cancel their stinking card once I get it paid off. Their telemarketers are bad enough.
Simply copy and paste this into the terms and conditions
I agree to allow citibank to hire one blonde [playboy bunny|chipendale] each month to my home and [suck my cock|lick my cunt] and show me advertising material until I cum in [her|his] mouth.
On first reading this submission, I assumed myciti was a content provider of some kind. And I figured, if I wanted their content that badly, I'd just pay for it. More likely, it wasn't something I needed more than I need my peace -- and buzzy banner ads manage to disrupt my peace far far more often than they encourage me to buy anything. After all, I've already given up reading washingtonpost.com at home, as I'm not even able to register with them using Mozilla.
But myciti.com isn't a content provider; it's a banking/investment service. Presumably, if I take the trouble to browse there, it's because I think I might want to see what services they offer.
But apprently they assume their services are so worthless that before I'd purchase those services, I'd have to be overcome by their advertising. Or they think their marketting position is so precarious, they must have a captive audience.
Or perhaps they're confident in their services but want to subject me to ads for their third-party affiliates? Is citibank worried they can't profit without selling my eyes to third parties?
Whatever the case, it appears that citibank isn't doing so well. Either their products don't sell without extensive, in-your-face advertising, or the company isn't profitable without selling marketting in addition to investment products.
Either way, it seems a good indication -- one might say an invitation even -- to stay away from citibank.
And that's what I'll be doing, thanks.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Ascii artist &
I'm pretty sure I accepted a click-through license which requires me to prop my eyes open with toothpicks so that I won't blink and miss one of their ads. It sure is considerate of them to make sure I don't miss any Valuable Offers! don't you think?
Try surfing www.1wrestling.com with Norton Internet Security's Ad Blocking feature switched on... you get shunted to a No Access page saying:
"We're sorry, but our site relies on the revenue we get from advertisers to bring you the quality content you see each day. Consequently, we no longer permit access from users who use Ad blocking software."
They should rename themselves to "myshiti" ;-)
A little planning goes a long way...
I say just don't use the service if you dont want to abide by the terms.
:) The fact that they suspect that I would disable certain technologies (not having studied their specific infernal ways of stuffing ads up my nose, I'm only guessing) I would guess these technologies include things such as JavaScript, Java applets, Flash, Shockwave and... simplest of all, images.
In essence I agree... but
Now, this indicates that they assume that I'm using this technology in the first place. What if I'm browsing in Lynx? What if I haven't downloaded this and that plugin?
Does browsing in Lynx violate their terms? Does not spending several hours on my 14k4 modem downloading the latest JRE violate their terms?
If you put something up on the web, expect people to request the data - through any tools they choose. If you specifically don't want them to do that, wrap the data in some way so it's only available to the people you want to see it...
May we live long and die out
I really can't see a lot of value in advertising to people who are determined not to be advertised to.
Are the advertisers insisting on this, or is it something that Citi are doing to increase the number of views they get for each advertiser?
well.. It's easy for them to block people that block ads. It's just to check if they have a hit on the gif banner pictures. If not, then they should ban their ip for e.g. 3minutes.
They can track you, but why would they go to the expense of legal action against one individual? (Beyond blocking access to your online account?) What they're more likely to do if they catch you blocking ads is to use that as an excuse: "Sorry, we see you've broken the terms of our agreement, so we can no longer keep your credit card interest below our maximum rate."
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Strange that in this discussion, which is about being forced to accept advertising, nobody has mentioned Slashdots policy or the thread that got bitchslapped for debating the pro's and con's of disabling the ads here...
Now, what are the odds that this post is modded offtopic?
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
"myshiti"
The joke is old.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If their advertising dollars are worth more than the money in their bank.... well then, they're in the wrong business!
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Does THAT count?
Damnit, WTF is up with this trend of saying sights instead of sites? It's really annoying!
I'd better post AC, this would probably burn some karma otherwise....
I don't run any ad blocking software, but I do two things to avoid this waste of bandwidth:
:-) Mind you, some sites now refuse to load any content unless you enable Javascript, but that's a clue that they're full of bandwidth-wasting garbage and not with my time anyway. The proxy would be hard to defeat unless some of the scripts can look for cookies set by some of the banner sites.
* Use the "trusted sites" zone in IE5 to list sites and even whole domains whose scripts I'll allow to run, such as "https://*.mybank.com/", and then turn off all scripting for the other zones.
* Run a local proxy server that refuses to serve certain URLs, such as "http://*/ads/*". I have a pretty long list of URL patterns now.
The 1wrestling.com site comes up ok on this setup - probably because the Javascript that looks for ad blockers doesn't run.
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
Usually comes from the outside ad agency (assuming the site doesn't serve its own advertising). Therefore the bandwidth costs are assumed by the advertising agency, and not the site that you're viewing them on.
This is probably posted elsewhere in this comment, but you can use the hosts file provided by http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html to help redirect some of those ad lookups to localhost. I'll leave the ethic question of doing that up to you, but it can help in a low bandwidth situation (as well as turning off images).
"...agree not to disable any technology required or utilized to serve or display such advertising"
Technology? What technology? Where is the description of the technology in question? How is an end user supposed to know which technologies are "required or utilized" if the "agreement" does not specifically include them? How is anyone supposed to know if they are in compliance with the "agreement"?
The "not to disable" part is also interesting. That's not the same thing as "enabling" the unmentioned "required or utilized" technologies (cookies and popups?). I don't have to accept cookies or enable popups, especially if I disabled those features before visiting their website. I don't have to install Flash. In fact, I can easily find a web browser that is simply too old to support any of their "technology".
And then we have the last line of defense: ignorance. "Gee whiz Citibank, I had no idea that I was prohibited from disabling W, X, Y, and Z to use your site. I have no idea what those thing are or why they don't work on my computer. Besides, the whole thing was set up by my brother in-law, who uses some other bank."
Now for an example of two wrongs making a right: Let's tell Citibank about Gator. Perhaps the marketing stupidity on both sides will cancel out.
Also this.. "Further, if I enroll for the My Accounts aggregation feature, I understand that the My Accounts Privacy Promise explains how the information provided about my online accounts, both Citi and non-Citi, may be used to tailor marketing messages to my personal interests. "
I'm never going to achieve Nirvana with my Karma