Seriously, is a site like Afterdawn the type of site to have an ad for scientology? I personally don't think it is. I know that ad space is ad space and anyone can buy it but it just doesnt fit for me. I was kinda shocked to see this on the page. Any1 else?

Didn't see it, but I think it breaks the "no religion/no politics" rule.

I did a double take when I saw the advertisement. Definitely strange that Afterdawn would advertise that on the home page.

Edit: it's kind of ironic that members are dissuaded from having debates on religion... and now there's an ad for that creepy cult.

my thoughts exactly

I'm pretty sure it's just an ad agency that puts that up. As far as I know, AD doesn't choose each specific ad that comes up, but instead agencies match ads to key words to advertise their clients' services and products on relevant sites.

Some branches of scientology call themselves "new dawn" so that may be where the linkage comes from.

TTF for adblock.

Originally posted by varnull:

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Didn't see it, but I think it breaks the "no religion/no politics" rule.

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/Adblock FTW!

The bosses have handled it, so I would not expect more scientology ads :)

@DVDback

just out of curiousity. are adds done by the admins of aD or are they ran by a group higher up? From reading a post here it seems aD is owned by a company that has several websites. I assumed it was ran as its own entity. like i said, just curious.

Ads advertising scientology some of our users have seen recently, have been sold by Google AdSense and once we first heard about them, we simply added scientology.org to our AdSense block list, which should block all advertisements coming from that address.

We're religion neutral site and don't endorse any religion/cult/similar on our site (after all, we have registered members from virtually _all_ independent countries, only exception being, I think, North Korea), so such take is more than obvious. Furthermore, we're a tech website and technology doesn't mix very well with religion :-)

But as a summary: we don't directly sell any of our ad space, our ad rep partners do (Netshelter Inc., Google, Vibrant Media and many others). Particularly AdSense is somewhat complex system, as advertiser typically doesn't buy ad to target a specific site, but instead, specific "target group" or "keyword" and those ads then appear on all sites that fit into those limits. Thus, Google most likely haven't sold "Scientology ads to be shown at AfterDawn", but instead Scientology ads to be shown on particular context, that our site has then, for whatever reason, fulfilled.

In future, every time you see ads that don't really fit to our target group and/or you think can be offending to some of our users, please let us know and we'll handle the situation.

Quote:

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From reading a post here it seems aD is owned by a company that has several websites. I assumed it was ran as its own entity. like i said, just curious.

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AfterDawn is owned by a company called AfterDawn Oy, which itself is owned by seven of our founders, me included. We don't have any venture capital, etc owners.

The "several websites" means that the company mentioned, AfterDawn Oy, also owns our various sidekick projects :-) Such sidekicks include Blasteroids.com (our English language gaming site, albeit small one), Finnish version of AfterDawn.com (Finland's largest IT website), Swedish version of AfterDawn.com (recently opened), download.fi (Finland's largest software distribution site) and Finnish mobile comparison site.

why is it that north korea is exempt from using afterdawn?

after all not everyone in north korea like the propeganda system in their country but still lead free lives despite the controlling government over there

sorry if you feel im saying something wrong but all companys and websites i see these days are excluding north korea from everything

It's not that AD blocks North Korea, it's that North Korea blocks AD. The government is nuts over there and has a stranglehold on the education and entertainment granted to the populace.

Bit stupid really.. they should fill the country with torrent trackers and get rich on adsense and hollywood movies.

North Korea is afraid of its citizens dressing up in life size furby suits like our beloved Auslander, hence the blockage.

haha, wow i want a furby costume

Hey, an army of furry soldiers, complete with enhanced physical abilities, survival and fightings instincts, and anger of tails being pulled would be a pretty awesome fighting force to overthrow that god-awful government.

In other news, Auslander still doesn't have a fursuit because Auslander is broke as Hell. :-(

But now my Grandma has died recently MUNKYEARS is now £7,000 richer :)

That's a nice way to view an elders passing. me me me.. so typical of the greed generation.

It's great to see that aD has stepped in and delt with the matter it is soo true that we get enough religous discussin that gets out of hand sometimes here and threads and users get banned. I am just wondering if its not a part of AfterDawn's disclaimer to advertisers that they can not advertise certain things.

yes i know everyone has the right to an opinion but they shouldnt force it upon us through advertising.... if we want to know more we can do our own research but i wouldn't go for something because they advertised

anyway Scientology is terrible from my point of view

wow, i figured this thread was dead. i guess it still serves a purpose though.

Originally posted by MUNKYEARS:

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yes i know everyone has the right to an opinion but they shouldnt force it upon us through advertising.... if we want to know more we can do our own research but i wouldn't go for something because they advertised

anyway Scientology is terrible from my point of view

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LMAO! How exactly are they forcing anything upon you or me for that matter? It's an ad man, get over it. If you really don't like it that much I suggest you upgrade to FF with ABP.

Some people make the biggest deals out of nothing.

Along those lines, people aren't that creative. There could be the greatest idea in the world, but if you didn't see it advertised and look into it out of curiosity, the odds are very much against you ever coming up with it yourself.

This is really getting too far. Can we please close this thread?

Closed.