Do you bother to check out Links?

Firebird978

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Can you give us a hint about which "entire threads" have been completely dedicated to pushing one person's external site? I don't remember any of these starting that got beyond one or two posts before they were sussed by eagle-eyed posters and reported as spam to GnHQ, who deleted them pronto.

And what does that kind of spam have to do with people posting links to sites that illustrate or explain the points they are making, or which contain music or cartoons that have entertained them?

The internet is like a library - a potent source of good and bad literature. It is better to teach people how to tell the difference between a great book and dangerous trash, and how to read the signs so as to avoid finding themselves in the wrong aisle by mistake, than to warn them not to enter the library at all, because some books will harm them.

LINK > www.gransnet.com/forums/site_stuff/1314053-PLEASE-READ-AND-COMMENT-Is-it-wrong-for-the-virtual-cruise-threads-to-have-lots-of-links

Oh, that had never occurred to me.

Yes, the links do go to YouTube videos of walks around various places for sometimes an hour, such as Mainz in Germany.

And, sometimes the videos have an adverting break in them.

Oh.

Ah.

I have always had a policy of never becoming "an affiliate" for a link to a site as I feel that if I post a link to a website that sells something that I only do it to tty to be helpful and that I should not receive any reward for doing so.

Also, when various sites have offered me something if I send through them an email to someone I know and they buy something, I have never accepted.

If I inform a friend of a website I do it privately and not for gain.

I suppose that it could be said (by me) tht having that long-running virtual cruise thread has people coming back to Gransnet to enjoy the virtual cruise, or to spend ;longer on Gransnet.

I will start a thread in site issues on this and then report it to GNHQ and try to find out how they feel about it.

I'm happy to read links. It can be very helpful.

Firebird978

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I’ll be honest, I don’t see the logic in what you’re saying. If Gransnet was purely a chat site, with no referencing to other sites for people to find out more about a subject or to verify whether what somebody is saying is true, the membership would dwindle dramatically. A lot of us want to have intelligent and informed conversations about different topics and to do that you need to read more widely.

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

Good post doodle

When a thread is started with just a link I do not look at it, if the poster cannot be bothered to put a brief description of what it is about or their opinion of the link I cannot be bothered to read it.

I think some people on this thread are just having a dig as usual, sigh.

In the thread

LINK > www.gransnet.com/forums/culture_arts/1312375-Virtual-cruise-from-Mainz-along-the-river-Main

there are many links, a lot to YouTube videos. A lot of them posted by me.

These have provided interest and enjoyment to a number of people who have said so, and possibly to other people who may be reading the thread yet not posted.

Various people have suggested various things in that thread, one of which, a side trip that had not occurred to me, but which I gladly incorporated, was wonderful. That involved a link to a YouTube video that was amazingly interesting.

Does anyone here consider that having the large number of links that are in that thread to be wrong and/or a breach of Gransnet guidelines?

MN is well known for refusing to deal with certain companies. And some companies refuse to deal with MN which always makes me smile.

Doodledog

Firebird978

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Well all you need to do is to say it.

There's no need to dress it up with faux concern about people's online security, is there?

Sorry - I was multi-tasking and skim read your post.

It's not for me (or you) to say what is excessive. I open links all the time, and surf happily all over the net. I may be tempting fate to say this, but I her never had my data security breached in any way serious enough for me to be aware of it.

If you don't like a thread, or a poster, just ignore it/them. Setting out to spoil their enjoyment of a thread is just nasty. There is no need for it, and assuming that we are all too dim to notice what you are doing is offensive to the rest of us, too.

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

Firebird978 the GN guidelines you quoted refer to frequent links to a poster's own site.
I haven't seen that happening.
If you have seen it happening, report it.

Galaxy

The thing about adverts is interesting isnt it. It's actually the use of adverts which enables websites/podcasts with different/alternative views to survive. I may vehemently disagree with some of the views on the podcasts but I think there is a case for saying that advertising enables more freedom of speech.

Absolutely. That's what I was getting at before I realised the real purpose of this thread.

People get scared at the idea that their data is being collected, and put like that, with no context it sounds scary. But when you realise that huge amounts of data is collected about huge amounts of people and that the purpose is to send ads for paint to those who are searching for decorators or wallpaper and so on, not to round up everyone who has ever posted that Boris Johnson tells lies, it is put into perspective. And when you ask yourself if you'd rather pay per search (or for login onto sites) or just scroll past ads it can put a different perspective again.

That's not all you are saying - you are saying it's so wrong that it should be stopped.

I don't care how many links anyone posts, provided they do it in good faith to give information or enjoyment.
It's up to me and everyone else whether we look at them or not.

Firebird978

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Well all you need to do is to say it.

There's no need to dress it up with faux concern about people's online security, is there?

NotSpaghetti, I always tell people where the link is going. I’m not daft

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

The thing about adverts is interesting isnt it. It's actually the use of adverts which enables websites/podcasts with different/alternative views to survive. I may vehemently disagree with some of the views on the podcasts but I think there is a case for saying that advertising enables more freedom of speech.

If you have reported the things you have seen Firebird that's surely enough?

Blossoming - I deliberately ^don't* use tinyurl so that people have an idea where they are linked to.

Firebird978

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Hmm.

I repeat then - who would pay for our web use if we didn't get targeted by ads.

As Glorianna says, algorithms can be used to very precisely target people by spending trends, political interests, membership of groups and all sorts of things. It is extremely sophisticated but it is not used to target 'Doodledog of Hometown, who votes Raving Loony, eats caviar and drives a red VW campervan to potholing holidays in Borneo'. Someone wanting to sell me potholing gear might pay to get access so that they can stick relevant ads on my news feeds, but nobody is going to knock on my door trying to sell a bag full of crampons. I am no more likely to get hacked (whatever you mean by that) than anyone else, or get a virus.

I agree that what you believe to be 'over-linking' is a separate issue, so why link that to the suggestion that links are dangerous? Unless you are targeting a particular poster, that is? That would be a flagrant abuse of talk guidelines, wouldn't it?

Sometimes and sometimes not. If I know there will be lots of links I don’t want to follow, I just pass by. I appreciate the copied and pasted text when an article is behind a paywall. It makes me laugh when something I’ve clicked on leads to a flood of adverts for the same thing even though I’ve tried selecting the ‘no tracking’ method. A search for bush trimmers for my gardening friend brought some unexpected results.

I started a thread with a you tube link. It was to Joni Mitchell at the Newport Folk Festival. It was something which I enjoyed and I thought others might have missed.
Of course your internet history is used to try and decide what sort of a person you are and what can be sold to you. So arguably by clicking on few links, only using a few sites and limiting your net use you are playing right into their hands. They have you classified as X who likes Y1 and Y2. Whereas if you click quite randomly and look at lots of different things it's harder to pigeon hole you.
I suppose you all know that if 2 people type in a question the sites which come up as answers will probably differ completely and be in a different order for each of them.

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

Galaxy

I know the guidelines firebird, if you have concerns that they are being broken then you should report.
I am guessing this is 'not in the spirit of GN' as its discussing a specific poster.

Ah. It is becoming clear.

Is there a specific poster who posts a lot of links? If so, has that poster been targeted by spiteful posts before, and could this be an attempt to spoil a thread that the poster is enjoying?

Right.