Policies for Manually Reviewed Ads

These are the policies to which ads I manually review for approval (such as AdBrite ads below the posts) will be subjected. They will be updated from time to time.

The following types of products or services cannot be advertised:

General

• Anything being sold using false or misleading claims.
• Anything containing plagiarism or copyright infringement.
  
• Anything that is illegal or unavailable in the targeted country, and does not state this in the ad itself (e.g. a "USA and Canada only" footnote).
• Anything that is likely to expose the viewer or anyone else to malware, spam or compromised security.
  
• Pages with little or no original content that are themselves supported by advertising, except those which advertise themselves as, or are well-known as, classified ad directories.
• Tobacco.
• Weapons whose sole or primary purpose is to kill or torture.
  
• Alcohol or gambling, targeted to people who are below their local legal age to consume it.
• Casual-sex dating sites, unless they take extensive care to verify users' age, sex, appearance and marital status, are unlikely to be used for prostitution or crime, and (unless they are specifically for same-sex dating) take care to attract both sexes in reasonable balance.
• Peer-to-peer file-sharing tools that cost money.
• Amazon.com affiliate marketing (since it competes against me).

Health

• Alternative medicine or spiritual healing.
• Health or weight loss advice, unless written by medical doctors and provided by a government or registered charity.
• Drugs, supplements or "natural health products", unless manufactured by a major pharmaceutical company, with the following exceptions:


• Energy drinks. A natural health product is an energy drink if it has at least 80 mg of caffeine per dose, it is marketed only for the purposes caffeine has been clinically proven to achieve, all of its ingredients are generally recognized as safe in the amounts present, and it is intended to be taken orally.
• Smoking cessation aids containing nicotine.
  


• Pharmacies that do not have a licensed brick-and-mortar location in the targeted country.

Employment, business and finance

• Child labour.
• Jobs or get-paid-to sites where it is not realistically possible to earn the greater of the targeted country's minimum wage or US$1 per hour.
• Multi-level marketing, except where it is realistically possible to earn the above amount without recruiting new marketers and by selling only products that meet these guidelines.
• Pyramid schemes (including "cash gifting" and "inverted funnel") or Ponzi schemes.
  
• Recommendations of specific stocks, unless made by a licensed stockbroker (to prevent "pump and dump" schemes).
• Tools for unsolicited bulk communication.
  

Books

• Self-published e-books that are not viewable for free on the web without disclosing personal or contact information, and which have not been reviewed by a reputable source.

Games

• Gambling games that are rigged to increase the house's advantage beyond what would be calculated from the rules of the game.
• "Free" games (other than those advertised as "free demo" or "free trial") where it is not realistically possible to experience the game fully without paying real money or providing real and otherwise unpaid labour.

Mobile phone content

• Anything that requires the user to have a mobile phone, where the ad does not make this clear.
• Anything that is advertised as being for any mobile phone but does not support all makes and models that have been in production within the past five years, or does not support all service providers that operate in the targeted country (including service providers that do not provide incoming e-mail to SMS gateways).
  
• Ring tones based on copyrighted music and not authorized by the musicians.
• Anything that requires the user to make an ongoing paid subscription but is advertised as being free or a one-time purchase.

Supernatural beliefs

• Any religion or cult. (Agnosticism, atheism and pantheism are allowed.)
• Intelligent design.
• Anything based on paranormal beliefs, including astrology, witchcraft and psychic readings.

Politics

• Political advocacy based on religious, cult or paranormal beliefs or conspiracy theories.
  
• Advocacy of war, capital punishment or the violent overthrow of a government.
  
• Conservative politics, or the fiscal aspects of libertarian politics.

Ad style guidelines

In addition, ads cannot contain the following:

• Plagiarism or copyright infringement.
• Malware or security exploits. 
• A message that appears to come from an operating system or application the viewer may be running, or from an acquaintance of the viewer.
• Nudity or anything else that would require me to put Life User behind an adult-content warning.
• Pop-ups or an attempt to extend beyond the space I have allocated to them.
• An attempt to alter or delay the display of blog content to the user.
• An attempt to mislead the user concerning what the ad is for.
  
• Anything that appears to be, but is not, a button whose function is to hide the ad or replace it with a different one.
  
• Sound that activates without the ad being clicked.
• Elements that blink more than once per second or jump-cut more than once per 2 seconds.
• Jittering text or images.
  

Policies for Manually Reviewed Ads