TRAQ Scores and You

May 14, 2014 7:54 AM

Obby Breeden, husband of The Devil's Panties and Geebas on Parade's Jennie Breeden, on what happens when the web advertising industry decides that an occasionally foulmouthed webcomic is equally "Adult" as a porn streaming site, as well as how to find your own site's score.
posted by Pope Guilty (20 comments total)

http://api.adsafeprotected.com/db/client/25124/absit?adsafe_url=metafilter.com

{"action":"passed","bsc":{"adt":1000,"alc":1000,"dlm":1000,"drg":1000,"hat":1000,"off":1000,"sam":1000},"iab1":["iab_arts"],"iab2":[],"ttl":"2014-05-21T11:01-0400"}

posted by zamboni at 8:03 AM on May 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

For Reddit:
{"action":"failed","bsc":{"adt":650,"alc":1000,"dlm":1000,"drg":1000,"hat":1000,"off":875,"sam":500},"iab1":["iab_tech","iab_lawgovt"],"iab2":[],"ttl":"2014-05-21T11:14-0400"}

Which is a less "Adult" score than the webcomic.
posted by Peccable at 8:18 AM on May 14, 2014

So I'm really wondering now what the mystery SAM metric is and why Reddit scores so low on it compared to all the other examples. S for Social, maybe?
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:24 AM on May 14, 2014

I wouldn't be surprised if SAM was something along the axis of political action of the sort that advertisers would find unappealing (like Occupy Wall Street).
posted by zippy at 8:28 AM on May 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

According to the official site they track "Suspicious Activity" which might be related to the SAM score. It was described as fraudulent clicks or "Impressions being served to browser plugins that typically overlay existing publisher ads or create the appearance they are being served by the publisher." Seems like a measurement of how likely an ad click is to be genuine.
posted by Peccable at 8:33 AM on May 14, 2014

For Equality California, which talks about gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people and their rights: {"action":"failed","bsc":{"adt":450,"alc":1000,"dlm":1000,"drg":1000,"hat":1000,"off":1000},"iab1":[],"iab2":[],"ttl":"2014-05-21T11:40-0400"}
posted by klangklangston at 8:42 AM on May 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Reminds me a bit of how iTunes will tag podcasts as "Explicit" in red text if there's a bit of swearing. The same tag as used for what I would consider actual explicit podcasts like Savage Love.
posted by smackfu at 8:48 AM on May 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Interesting that there's no SAM score in the Equality California results, klang.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:49 AM on May 14, 2014

Ah, but for www.metafilter.com the result is:

{"adt":875,"alc":1000,"dlm":1000,"drg":1000,"hat":1000,"off":875,"sam":1000}

Which probably reflects the policy on profanity and open discussions of sexual behavior. MeTa has the same result. Interestingly, AskMeFi passes with flying colors despite what I would have guessed is similarly frequent discussions of sexual topics.

However, Fanfare is objectively the seediest part of MeFi by far:

{"adt":875,"alc":875,"dlm":1000,"drg":650,"hat":1000,"off":875,"sam":1000}
posted by jedicus at 8:52 AM on May 14, 2014

Seems like the bar to get an 875 ADT score is pretty low, since a lot of mainstream sites like CNN, NYTimes, BBC have that.

Also, I was able to get a lower ADT score by guessing porno sounding domains, so 450 isn't the floor:

{"action":"failed","bsc":{"adt":250,"alc":1000,"dlm":1000,"drg":1000,"hat":1000,"off":450},"iab1":["iab_society"],"iab2":[],"ttl":"2014-05-21T11:58-0400"}
posted by smackfu at 8:59 AM on May 14, 2014

On the plus side this reminded me I hadn't looked at oglaf in a month or so.

(Oglaf fails, with the same score (it seems) as the webcomic in the OP. {"action":"failed","bsc":{"adt":450,"alc":1000,"dlm":1000,"drg":1000,"hat":1000,"off":1000},"iab1":[],"iab2":[],"ttl":"2014-05-21T11:58-0400"}. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, this is one of my favorite ones, completely sfw. The rest of the comic is typically...not.)
posted by advil at 9:03 AM on May 14, 2014

I'd assume that the whole reason for the low TRAQ score is that the word "panties" is in the URL. Needless to say, there are a lot of sites that actually sell panties around--like Amazon, say--but probably few of them have a word that's probably more associated with a fetish on the Internet than with plain ol' lingerie shopping.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:13 AM on May 14, 2014

I wish that the "hat" score was a measure of how frequently the website discusses fedoras and other hipsterish stuff. Maybe "ukl" would be more apropriate?
posted by benito.strauss at 9:24 AM on May 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

I wish I could remember the name of the late-'90s Geocities-style web hosting service I used for a while...until it shut down my site for "pornographic content" due to the fact that one post had the word "porn" in it. They even had a "jail" where they displayed outlines of headshots behind bars and the names of banned users.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:25 AM on May 14, 2014

What about, say, api.adsafeprotected.com ?

{"action":"passed","bsc":{"adt":1000,"hat":1000,"sam":875},"iab1":[],"iab2":[],"ttl":"2014-05-21T12:22-0400"}

Suspicious Activity! Even more suspiciously, alcohol, drug, and offensive language scores are missing.
posted by Kabanos at 9:34 AM on May 14, 2014

The site owner claims that the webcomic is PG-13. PG-13 is a rating issued by the MPAA reviewers for movies. There have been many instances where filmmakers believe their film has been rated incorrectly and are forced to censor the film in order to attain the rating. The MPAA does not issue PG-13 ratings to webcomics.
posted by humanfont at 10:17 AM on May 14, 2014

He is using PG-13 as a shorthand to explain the level of profanity, infantile behavior, violence (actually, very little in that) etc. that is found in the comic. If the comic was made into a movie, it would get a PG-13 rating.
posted by Hactar at 10:45 AM on May 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm familiar with Breeden and her work since she and I have crossed paths at the LARP a time or two. Somewhere I have one of the Geebas on Parade books.

I'm not as familiar with her The Devil's Panties comic, but from the ones I have seen her husband has a point. There's adult humor, but it's not even close to pornographic. To be rated the same as an x-rated video site seems excessive.

The lack of meaningful transparency or oversight in the process is what's most troubling to me. I don't envy people having to make a decision between artistic integrity and keeping a roof over their heads.


P.S. For what it's worth, a geeba was local slang for a goblin, the lowest level orc-like creature in the monster manual. It was common for people playing them to say, "Geeba," as part of their characterization of the monster. Geeba was also the name of the BBS that served as the hub of the game before the advent of the Internet made it obsolete.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:19 PM on May 14, 2014

The MPAA's ratings are also inconsistent and without transparency. If the comic was a movie it might try to get a pg-13 rating. However the artist would probably end up making changes to get the desired rating. For example the MPAA might require that the word "fuck" be used less frequently.
posted by humanfont at 8:30 PM on May 14, 2014

BTW, The Devil's Panties has frequently used the tagline "NOT Satanic Porn" on the site and at conventions. I suspect that just mentioning the "Satanic" and "Porn" contributed heavily to the low rating from an algorithm that doesn't understand the word "NOT".
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:28 PM on May 14, 2014 [2 favorites]