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    I would never want my community projects associated with Stack Overflow if ads horribly inserted in the middle of content as proposed here. Who wants people to start actively hating their open source project??? That's super-negative publicity. So maybe ditch that other ad proposal before moving ahead with this one? Commented Dec 16, 2025 at 16:02
  • 9
    The way we did this back in 2021, communities could choose what types of ads they were proposing — banner, sidebar, etc. So we could do the exact same thing here, and you (a community) could specify that you wanted your ad to be shown in the regular leaderboard placement (in q&a pages), but not on this new native ad space (in question lists), for example. In other words: an ad doesn't need to be made available on all possible spaces, unless that's something you'd explicitly want ^_^ Commented Dec 16, 2025 at 16:05
  • 13
    I think what @Lundin meant is that your reputation back in '21 isn't as good as the one you got now. So, they were probably trying to imply that no one would really want to associate with the current company Commented Dec 16, 2025 at 16:11
  • 5
    @ꓢPArcheon It wasn't good back then either, but indeed it has gotten far worse. More importantly nobody talked about slapping in sneaky adds in the middle of the site content back then, nor slapping various AI trash all across the site and flooding it with strange monochrome icons - all out enshittification until we end up with this. But with extra adds. Err no thanks, I'll pass on being a user of such a site, let alone someone who advertises in the middle of that s***storm for maximum backlash on the poor advertised product/project. Commented Dec 16, 2025 at 16:18
  • 3
    Like the post denotes, research from 2021 showed that community members found the initiative to be of value to them, and as a community-building exercise. It seems like the both of you disagree — inasmuch as "we're unhappy with the company" is a valid viewpoint, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts about why you think the initiative doesn't bring value to communities and their members in a longer format, if you'd be open to putting those thoughts into answers ^_^ Commented Dec 16, 2025 at 16:23
  • 26
    @JNat I agree with Lundin and SPArcheon. It's not that this initiative doesn't bring value. This initiative in the ad space is coming at the same time as another initiative in the ad space, the "native ads". I, and based on the voting onthe native ads announcement, much of the community, is opposed to the use of native ads. So what I think they (and I) are saying is that I wouldn't promote anything for advertising in a place that uses a deceptive ad format. So unless you nix the "native ads", a lot of people who may want to take advantage of community pomotion ads won't want to. Commented Dec 16, 2025 at 16:35
  • 4
    But I literally just explained (and then edited the post to make it clearer that that's the case) that you don't need to use that space, @ThomasOwens — you can take full advantage of this initiative and not use that space. Presumably, that would mean you get all the "positives" of this initiative, without having to incur any possible "negatives" that the new native ad placements could bring to your community/project/self. What am I missing here? Is your point solely "we don't want native ads?" Commented Dec 16, 2025 at 16:45
  • 5
    Again, I am not really expressing my view here since i simply have no project to advertise in the first place. I am just trying to point out what the objection Lundin made is. Basically it all points out to this: your choice to use native ads mixed with actual content painted the company as a bad actor in the ads management ecosystem. Therefore they are point out that they don't want to be associated to a bad actor. Commented Dec 16, 2025 at 16:52
  • 12
    From a brief glance through the post, this looks great! I was just thinking this week that we don't have Community Promotion Ads any more and it's a shame - they were a great way to cross-promote communities to each other as well as various other projects and stuff. I remember spending a lot of time helping to design CPAs for some of my sites to promote on other sites. If community-created ads are coming back, I'm all for it! Commented Dec 16, 2025 at 16:54
  • 2
    You say they don't have to use those spaces, but imho that is like saying "our company sells bio tomatoes and endangered species meat, but you don't have to buy the meat to buy the tomatoes...". I think their point is that if they think bad of the company choices, they can't simply "ignore the bad part and use another service" Commented Dec 16, 2025 at 16:54
  • 15
    "This initiative's potential value is rendered neutral by the fact that you are rolling out native ads (...)" seems like a valid point of view, which I think could stand as an answer so the rest of the community can up- or down-vote it and discuss in the comments. I think I'm struggling a bit here because the critiques before seemed more about the company's standing with the community, as well as the native ads initiative, and I'm trying to understand how y'all feel about this initiative, whether you see value in it, and how it can be run in the best way possible. Commented Dec 16, 2025 at 17:07
  • 1
    a side question- I wasn't active at the time previous iterations existed. were/are there any concerns about voting fraud, or people/companies voting for their own stuff? are there existing ways to mitigate that? Commented Dec 17, 2025 at 1:10
  • 6
    We've generally not had worries around those issues in the past, to my recollection, @starball These have generally not been used by companies, and that is indeed not the intended usage — for that reason we've generally taken the score of proposed ads to accurately reflect the communities' interest in those ads being shown on their sites, etc. I imagine that, in cases where someone raises concerns about how a particular proposal is faring, we could investigate and make sure nothing weird seems to be taking place, though. Commented Dec 17, 2025 at 11:39
  • 6
    It's not just about where the ad is placed btw. Nobody professional want their product to be seen next to snake oil & porn - yes, SO are still showing such adds in 2025. Nobody professional would even want snake oil and porn adverts on their web page in the first place. Commented Dec 17, 2025 at 11:47
  • 3
    The core problem is that SO isn't a professional company, or it would immediately have stopped all cooperation with the snake oil/porn vendor. Like back in year 2019 when the site was flooded with bad ads, from which the company learnt: absolutely nothing. Commented Dec 17, 2025 at 11:48