I just created a new EDC knife category for news, reviews, deals, and maybe other stuff, and I did this for reasons you probably won’t guess.
I enjoy exploring the nuances of EDC knives – mainly folding knives.
Every knife design has a particular character.
The engineering is intriguing.
Some pocket or EDC knives are cost-effective for work or workshop use. Others have utility but are really premium-priced pocket jewelry or “shelf queens.”
It’s an interesting category that I like to explore.
That has nothing to do with the new category. To explain that, let’s talk about why I stopped posting about knives.
A few years ago I started running into issues where the ad network ToolGuyd uses – which contributes a significant chunk to our operating revenue – was issuing policy violations for random knife-related posts.
I would request review, and after some time I would argue with a support tech who was claiming “all knives are weapons” despite official written guidance saying otherwise.
Eventually they would remove the policy violation, and then a new one would pop up.
This wasn’t a big deal – it basically just dropped ad options on affected content pages until the violations were cleared.
I think the problem wasn’t so much the knife content, but that other weapon-type products were within a few clicks of the product pages I was linking to. But even after removing purchase links, sometimes just a brand name was enough to trigger an automatic policy violation.
The flags were very aggressive, contrary to what was in the actual written terms, unfair, and at times nonsensical.
After going through this cycle too many times, there were a bunch of false policy violations all at once, some for content that had nothing to do with knives.
The ad network threatened to place site-wide restrictions over this.
So, I heavily edited a couple of posts, removed others, and pulled back from EDC and knife content.
Some time later, it wasn’t just me having a problem with an ad network over knife content. Starting around 2-1/2 years ago, social media networks started cracking down on knife and EDC content, limiting reach and exposure.
A lot of companies don’t want the ads they’re buying to be adjacent to “weapons” content, and the biggest players in the ad industry – including Google and Facebook – or at least their automatic content policing systems, seem to consider all knives to be weapons. Their terms and conditions say otherwise, but their flagging algorithms are aggressive and support staff tend to have their own interpretations.
Shadow bans, content restrictions, and even account deletions have hit outdoors enthusiast channels, makers, blacksmiths, EDC and gear enthusiasts, and others.
When manufacturers, retailers, makers, and other started talking about being “shadow banned,” I immediately saw parallels to the arguments I’ve had with the ad network about how not all knives are weapons.
BladeHQ just launched new exclusive Spyderco Para 3 folding knives with a diamond mesh G-10 handle and MagnaCut blade. It seems pretty neat.
The Para 3 is not a utility knife, but I consider it to be a tough and well-balanced workhorse.
It’s not inexpensive, and I’d consider it a “feel-good” type of tool. You spend more for something like that because you want to.
Some tools aren’t the best at what they do, but provide clear advantages and sometimes a little bit of joy. That’s how I see the EDC knife market. The nuances are interesting to dig into.
How can I post about the new Spyderco or other folding knives and EDC gear topics without entering another frustrating and seemingly endless cycle of violations, debates, and removals with the ad network?
A solution finally came to me, and it seems simple – I’d create a new category for EDC knife content, one where all ad network spots were stripped away.
Maybe no ads on these pages will mean no problems.
This way, I could link to BladeHQ’s Spyderco Para 3 listing without risking headaches, at least in theory.
If it works, and I don’t see any false policy violations, I’ll start mixing in more EDC knife content.
I don’t want to be a knife reviewer. I just enjoy exploring and sharing about cutting tools.
Pliers, screwdrivers, flashlights, scissors, knives – these are the 5 categories of hand tools I use most often. So shouldn’t we be free to talk about knives that are used as tools?
Most people are well-served by inexpensive knives. But for knives around $30 and up, there’s depth that I – and I know some of you – enjoy talking about.
Some of you will be thinking or even saying “but I don’t care about knives.” That’s fine. It’s a tool category that I enjoy, and I think there are enough readers that do too. You can skip those posts, or maybe tell me what you’d enjoy seeing more of.
As for the “new category” part, I think there will be some user-facing access benefits.
Right now there’s an EDC category within the hand tools category, but I think it’ll make sense to expand this into a separate EDC category with flashlight, multi-tool, knife, and gear headings. The knife category will be the only one ads are excluded from, at least for now.
But, I really just created it so that I can exclude ads from knife posts.
We’ll see how it goes.
