Anyone dislike new pictures/graphics icons on each thread page?

exbrnxgrl

Ruth,

cive

If you are unwilling to at least set your browser to dump cookies on exit, it's like trying to protect a skydiver that won't wear a parachute. Just my worthless opinion.

BarredOwl

Obviously, people can have different takes on this subject. Again, I do not object to the ads themselves, but to the intrusive placement of the outbrain links on the discussion boards, links ostensibly designed to alert me to content of interest (which it is not), but actually designed to manipulate me to go to a page where the ads are located to generate click revenue.

Such tactics (pushing to ads, possible information gathering) are certainly a reality and business model on commercial sites of privately held and publicly traded companies, such as Google and Facebook, accountable to their investors or Wall Street. But as I noted above, non-profits who are not so accountable do not all engage in similar tactics (e.g., American Cancer Society, ASCO). And of smaller entities, add FORCE.

I believe the links were here before, but located at bottom. It is an assumption and not an established fact that the more prominent link placement is driven by some financial necessity, because it is a recent change and was apparently not necessary before. A non-profit is not obligated to maximize revenue in any way possible, and has greater leeway to achieve a different balance.

Notwithstanding the expectation that commercial entities are generating profits off users, even Facebook users have reasonably questioned and demanded information about privacy settings/changes and practices (recent news feature issue), and the company has promptly responded to their concerns.

BarredOwl

fifthyear

First, I am hoping this topic does NOT TURN MEMBERS AGAINST MEMBERS. That would be so uncool.

I understand this new ad thingy do not bother many users on this site, including many long time members. I respect that and my post is NOT an objection nor an attack to your take on the situation. The notion of "not biting the hands that feed you", we are using this site for free, non of us have to pay, non of us have to lift a finger to support the site. Donation is optional etc...sound reasonable!

But we LIFT our fingers alright, that is the only reason the site exists. Membership is the only value the site has. With that, you would expect BCO to take into considerations our privacy. It took a long time to build up this many members, granted the BCO provides the framework but it was/is the members that build the site. People come to learn from the members before them.

It would be good to have our voices be heard and respond to. There was a saying that in the absence of real information, people create rumors. So lets get real information BCO!

Anonymous

@Cive - good analogy.

"but actually designed to manipulate me to go to a page where the ads are located to generate click revenue."

"Such tactics (pushing to ads, possible information gathering) are certainly a reality and business model on commercial sites of privately held and publicly traded companies, such as Google and Facebook, accountable to their investors or Wall Street. But as I noted above, non-profits who are not so accountable do not all engage in similar tactics (e.g., American Cancer Society, ASCO). And of smaller entities, add FORCE."

@BarredOwl thankyou for these points. Excellent.

", and the company has promptly responded to their concerns."

Unless I'm missing something, the basic gist I got was typical of what you'd expect...they have no intentions of backing down on this wholesale spying even though there's been constant opposition to the point of being sued last year in Europe to the tune of millions and this isn't the first time. This is through the hideous "like button" and other nuisances and embeddings, sites put in their pages. I'll go have a look and see if I can find any updates on the FB matter.

Fifthyear though I concede it's easy for things to be misconstrued through cold hard print alone, disagreeing doesn't necessarily turn people against each other. Some places/threads are more acceptable to do that than others, like, say, polls - which I take it, this thread is not. The other side: you get people coming in pitting one against the other or to cause division for whatever reason. You're going to get trolls (including surreptitious ones) where ever there's forums. Boards everywhere have to deal with this and BCO would certainly be no exception. It's good points you bring up about how important members are.

ceanna

Moderators,

Now we're two weeks without answers to our many questions. Please respect us enough to provide us answers or at the very least tell us you're working on the problems.

Moderators

Ceanna, and all,

We're watching this thread and taking all points into account. We are passing along your opinions to upper management, but these things take time to come to a consensus and put a plan into action. We assure you all, your opinion matters and we are constantly making an effort to improve our community.

We thank you for your patience while we consider options.

--The Mods

ceanna

After the Moderators comments in the previous post that our opinions are welcome, I started a new thread with the subject line Personal privacy, tracking, and Outbrain monetization on BCO?? which will more obviously state the subject of our discussion here. I thought a new subject line would encourage others to join our conversations, and I urged everyone to read our comments here but comment on the new thread. Let's see what happens!

Moderators

Dear Breastcancer.org Community Members,

In the Breastcancer.org community we invite and encourage our members to share their thoughts, fears and concerns openly and honestly. So thank you for sharing your concerns related to the recent repositioning of the Outbrain content widget sharing "More from our site" in our community discussion pages. In response to hearing your concerns, we want to share more with you about why we have made this addition. We believe it will help us better serve our mission which, as you know, is to help women and their loved ones make sense of the complex medical information about breast health and breast cancer so they can make the best decisions for their lives.

Why it is useful to our Community Members

Breastcancer.org works hard to provide our members the most helpful peer support on our discussion board forums in addition to access to the medically-reviewed expert content that helps each of you make the best decisions for your care. This content widget allows us to make useful recommendations to each member, with an option to click on it for more information.

How the Outbrain widget works on Breastcancer.org

The Outbrain widget is a widely used publishing tool that recirculates and surfaces content on a website for its audience members. It uses an algorithm to select from Breastcancer.org's own medically reviewed content to recommend additional reading based on each person's viewing behaviors and preferences on our website. This algorithm requires some time to fine-tune the matching to suggest the most relevant content for each user. Our team of moderators is watching closely as the algorithm continues to learn more about community members' viewing behaviors and preferences on our site.

Your personal information is never shared with Outbrain or any of our partners. Breastcancer.org does not receive any direct financial compensation from Outbrain.

How Breastcancer.org benefits

As a non-profit organization, Breastcancer.org generates funds in a variety of ways, including the ongoing, sustainable revenue from our banner advertising program which has been in place since 2009. The Outbrain widget was recently added to the medically-reviewed content pages and the community discussion board forums. It allows Breastcancer.org to surface a variety of "More From our Site" content. Clicking the links and viewing these pages provides banner advertising impressions on those content pages and also offers our audience the opportunity to click thru on the ads from our carefully chosen partners. The revenue generated from our banner ad program and the ad impressions generated by the Outbrain widget is critical to helping us continue to deliver value to our audience at no charge. Our partners in the banner program never influence the editorial content we publish.

In our ongoing commitment to you and our Community, we continue to watch the performance of the Outbrain widget and will make decisions informed by its performance. Please continue to share your thoughts on how we can best serve the needs of our community and the millions of men and women living with or affected by breast cancer.

Best,

Hope Wohl, CEO

Traveltext

Hope, thanks for the head's up. In future, many of us would like a consultation phase before major changes are instituted. As excellent as the site is, you must recognise the passion and devotion of BCO bloggers, to what is regarded by many as "our" section of the site. We are often post primary treatment and hang around to ask questions, share the fellowship, and help others. Many of us rarely visit the main part of the site.

I'm glad to hear that personal information is not shared with Outbrain, although I assume they will have access to our site search patterns. It is reassuring that partners in the banner program don't influence the editorial content.

I believe the big fail is the placement of the ads on the discussion pages. Could you please exclude ads from inappropriate discussion pages, e.g. this thread, the angels page, STFU, and and many others where algorithms will never gather meaningful information of site users search behaviour? And could those remaining not be better designed for smart phone and tablet users and better incorporated in the page design?

ksusan

And please, no diagrams!

cive

If anyone is interested in actually finding out how much tracking there is on this, or for that matter on any other site, you should disable cookies without permission in your browser. That way, anytime any site wants to plant a cookie you will have to option to accept the cookie or not. You will be amazed at the amount of times you will be asked if you wish to accept the cookies! Not just outbrain, but doubleclick and others on this site. Generally speaking your mail server will require you to accept cookies, so you'll probably want to change the setting back after just observing how much tracking is going on. Which is why I dump cookies on browser exit, that way other sites I visit don't get to read the cookies left by say this site.

Tomboy

If outbrain can learn anything from me, it is that I am an omnivorous reader. I started to read a cereal box, then realized if I paid for that cereal with a credit or debit card, then buying that cereal was like a vote, and that data is also being collected and watched closely, and they know that box is at my house. I just find those ads for neglected portions of BCO, the 'valuable information,' is just not very valuable, and is written is such a plain manner, that it is insulting to my intelligence, as if I didn't get very far in school.

I didn't mind them on the side so much, and okay, the first time I saw them, I saw them under my home thread, crazytown, after Slowdeep's header, much like elimars' cheetos etc, and I thought, hmmm, why did she put those there, she must think there is something there important for us to read, so I was duped into clicking. So, really, if anyone wants to confuse the watchers and counters, practice prestidigitation like I do, and just click random stuff, they will never be able to surmise much, except that I am a slutty reader.

chef127

I am tempted to randomly click too, but I believe no one gives a damn about me anyway. I was known as a slut in HS due to my very large breasts and sexy appearance. Far from who I was. I can be a slutty reader.............(love it)

Maureen

Tomboy

Haha, Maureen! My breasts were so big when I was so skinny, - no one would talk to me, except a few brave misfits like myself!

chef127

I made my friends in JHS before my skinny body decided to place ALL my body fat in two small spots on my chest so our friendships were already established. Yes we were msfits, and still are. There's 8 of us HS buds. Here we are, 49 years later and still...............well, being somewhat bad and rebellious. Successful beyond expectations and HAPPY, Messing with tracking sites.

Maureen

auntienance

I hate the location of the ads.