It's not because of our personal desire to censor those words. We've run this forum for over 20 years and we KNOW the discussions on here are polite, informative, and not problematic in terms of inciting violence, or angry rhetoric. But the "advertisers" who help support this site have signed up to Ad Networks that DO care and they don't care about the context. They are using bots to scan for words, yes "g-u-n" gets flagged, including ones used for "grease", "glue", or "water."
The problem isn't they flag a site and a human then reads it and decides whether it's a false flag or not. If they flag a site, the ENTIRE Ad Network simply blocks your site until WE contact them, reach a human, appeal the decision, and HOPE they understand the difference between a rural-living forum that has legitimate discussions about the uses of those tools. This sort of "punish first, forgive later" really hurts individual operators like TBN. We don't have big corporate bank accounts with millions of dollars in it. We need to ensure we comply with the companies that set the rules for their advertising networks.
I personally think it's ridiculous to censor these words and we have been in contact with our ad networks going back and forth about what is allowed and what isn't. Our contacts seem to understand our situation, but they told us there is nothing THEY can do because they "have to respond" to advertiser complaints and requests. This is a situation that has gotten worse this year, and they are saying this is the way the entire Internet is going. One real example: A couple of months ago Amazon canceled all their ads on every forum across the Internet. You may have noticed Amazon ads used to show up on this forum and others you may have visited, but Amazon's ads were shown with a user-created App that Google allowed on their store that had adult themes and bypassed age check. Amazon freaked out and just canceled all ads across the Internet for "user-generated sites" like forums.
I understand the concept of "get better advertisers" and we ARE working on diversifying our ad clients so we aren't as reliant on ad networks. But big names like Kubota and John Deere may only engage with customers through ad networks and also may object to the same words as they are corporations and they have "Brand Safe" situations on their minds.
We always are working to keep the site free, open and a great place to discuss Tractors and the aspects of life around and adjacent to Tractor use. But our hands are tied here about this "censorship" issue and we are genuinely trying to come up with automatic ways to handle this and smooth out this change.
Sorry that this is affecting you guys, but we are doing the best out of a tricky situation here. We'll keep trying to find a smoother solution for everyone.
