Re: [syndication] Re: Ads in RSS

[Julian Bond <julian@netmarketseurope.com>]

In article <5.0.2.1.0.20010315102640.01e3f940@mail192.pair.com>, Robert
A. Lentz <ralentz@ralentz.com> writes
>At 10:12 AM 3/15/01, you wrote:
>>I hope that we are not going towards a world where RSS files include an
>>ad which must be displayed to use the other information in the RSS. That
>>would suck.
>
>The best way to fight this is to ensure that negative feedback mechanisms 
>are in place and used: if somebody starts putting ads in their syndication 
>file, stop subscribing to their syndication.

This is probably self defeating because they may well have interesting
content, but insist on putting a doubleclick banner in the 3rd item. I
want to read the content, just not see the banner.

If this gets bad, I'd suggest that the RSS viewers start putting an
image filter switch on their display. In fact it might be a good idea to
do this now, to pre-emptively stop this sort of abuse.

Scripting News and Jeff's weblog frequently put image links into the
description field and I actually find it pretty imposing when I'm
scanning headlines in Radio Userland. As an experiment I dropped a pic
of a T shirt ( iMacchiavelli  Think Dissident ) into my Manila site, and
sure enough the link came through on the RSS feed. All it did was screw
up the visual flow of the headlines. If there was a no <img > switch,
I'd probably flip it.

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Julian Bond eMail: julian@netmarketseurope.com
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