I’ve been thinking about this all day, trying to find a way of doing the right thing without sticking my neck out. But there isn’t one. I can’t stay silent and not feel ashamed of myself.
So here is the response I received this morning from the WordPress/Automatic representative:
‘….For your site the ads placement is correct for the double sidebar option you have enabled under Settings > Theme options
There is an issue I see though where the the first ad in the sidebar is appearing blank. I have reported this to our ads team as well as the “asian girl chat” ad.
I will remove the ads from your site for the above reasons. Like I mentioned though, the ads do appear in their expected places on the site.
Write back to me here with any further questions/concerns about this. I will not be able to disable ads for every report in that forum thread. The thread will be closed once I’ve reached everyone by email.
Take care,
Liz
Happiness Engineer
WordPress.com’
If you stop receiving notifications of blog posts from me, it may be because Meeka’s Mind is no longer here. Should that happen, I would dearly love to hear from all of you on my gmail email:
meekasmind@gmail.com
-massive hugs-
Meeks
Meeka's Mind 
February 20th, 2018 at 1:29 pm
This is bad…I don’t see the ads because I use an ad blocker. I think I’m using a business version of WordPress which gives me the option of having ads. It seems kind of tacky that you should have them imposed on you.
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February 21st, 2018 at 8:56 am
Yeah. I think we all recognize the need for the company to make money, my beef has always been about it not damaging my blog in the process, and the placement of the sidebar ad. was a step too far.
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February 22nd, 2018 at 6:47 am
I’ve never seen ads on your blog — my guess is I don’t have ads on my blog. All of my browsers across systems have ad blockers.
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February 22nd, 2018 at 7:52 pm
Just had a look and no ads on yours Rob. I did like the I love Lucy theme though. 😀
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February 23rd, 2018 at 10:39 am
LOL!
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February 23rd, 2018 at 3:21 pm
🙂
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February 20th, 2018 at 7:16 am
There comes a point when you have to make a stand. If more people made best use of adblockers you wouldn’t have to worry about the visibility of these things. (In fact, I don’t know how anyone can use the internet these days without adblockers. I find it utterly unusable and distracting when I turn off all my Firfox plug-ins to see what’s actually there on a webpage!)
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February 20th, 2018 at 12:44 pm
Sadly I don’t have an adblocker so I see the ads everywhere. I honestly don’t know why advertisers bother. The people who do see the ads hate them and those with adblockers don’t see them at all. Can’t see them making any sales out of these ads.
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February 17th, 2018 at 5:05 am
What a pain. Well, you are still here, so I’m taking that as a good sign. It seems to be one of the challenges with WP free sites 😦
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February 17th, 2018 at 7:21 am
lol- hi Diana. Yes, it appears that they haven’t banned me, but I’m actually in the process of moving, kinda/sorta. More on that soon. 🙂
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February 16th, 2018 at 9:25 am
P.S. … found it on my settings – ad control … looks like you send a request to be in the WordsAds program … so that’s that answered, at least.
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February 16th, 2018 at 10:39 am
Yeah, sorry I answered this on your earlier comment. Those ads pay the blogger, if eligible.
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February 16th, 2018 at 8:43 am
The WP person (I’m not going to call them a ‘happiness engineer) monitoring the thread mentioned someone being enrolled in a program called ‘WordAds’ which I gather is the cause of this issue.
Did you ‘enroll?’ … because if you didn’t then this may be something that WP has ‘enrolled’ all sites in, with a voluntary ‘opt-out’ that has to be done manually.
I left a comment on the thread asking for clarification … we’ll see.
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February 16th, 2018 at 10:31 am
Hmm….I have no idea. I’ll go check straight away. BRB.
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February 16th, 2018 at 10:38 am
Just had a quick check and my blog isn’t eligible for WordAds as it doesn’t have a domain, amongst other things. I think it’s for people who are on one of the plans that include a ‘free’ domain name. The WordAds however, pay the blogger for views [I think] not WordPress.
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February 16th, 2018 at 8:22 am
Meeks. I’m sad about the angst you are experiencing. I tend to be oblivious to advertising, but I understand your concerns. Nothing, it seems, is ever, really free. Social media included. I also have a WordPress hosted site. We can set the levels of content to G, PG, R, X. I wonder if the ad content levels correspond. But, I’m also considering paying my way as I really am very fond of my blog and the platform, even if at the moment my other interests distract me. Take care ♡
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February 16th, 2018 at 10:44 am
Hi Dale. I’m fond of my blog too, I guess I just object to being forced to do anything. -shrug- Stubborn as hell, me. 🙂
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February 16th, 2018 at 5:18 am
I will keep you posted.
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February 16th, 2018 at 6:09 am
Thanks. 🙂
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February 16th, 2018 at 2:06 am
TANSTAAFL, I guess?
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February 16th, 2018 at 6:15 am
Erm…who?
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February 16th, 2018 at 1:46 am
Wow. What more is there to say.
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February 16th, 2018 at 6:16 am
lol – not much. Thanks for following this saga.
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February 15th, 2018 at 11:56 pm
Yes, make note of us so when/if you move, you can tell us!
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February 16th, 2018 at 6:53 am
Will do. 🙂
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February 15th, 2018 at 8:51 pm
what about editing your banner, to highlight your opinion about the ads?
and make sure you have copied your blogs so you can migrate them over to whichever platform you select, should you need to. Oh, and perhaps make a note of all your followers so you can message us all should you have to. kisses.
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February 15th, 2018 at 9:04 pm
To be honest I’m still a bit shocked. I really wasn’t expecting ‘divide and conquer’. I’ve backed up as many posts as I can, but I have so many I can’t do them all. Good point about the followers. I’ll do that first thing in the morning. Been teaching all day and my brain refuses to work any more. 🙂
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February 16th, 2018 at 11:37 am
You can back up your entire blog by going to your dashboard and using the Export function in the Tools menu. It will generate a .xml file that can be uploaded elsewhere if need be. Good idea for back ups in general too.
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February 16th, 2018 at 2:02 pm
hi Katia. I’ve done a backup but I’m not familiar with xml files so I thought the file could only be used for another WordPress blog. No idea what to do with the back up now. Any help would be appreciated.
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February 16th, 2018 at 3:42 pm
It usually is, but I think migrate options for other hosts have the ability to import WordPress info in their settings. I’ve never done it but have seen a help article on it here https://www.siteground.com/tutorials/wordpress/transfer/.
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February 16th, 2018 at 6:05 pm
Thank you for that link. I’m assuming that if you can migrate the files to a self-hosted site [to WordPress software] you should be able to migrate them to other providers as well.
Tomorrow I’ll drill down into Medium’s help files to see what I can find.
Much appreciated. 🙂
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February 15th, 2018 at 7:45 pm
I hope that doesn’t happen.
xxx Massive Hugs xxx
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February 15th, 2018 at 8:20 pm
Me too but I’m prepared. 😦
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