> We choose Adblock as it is one of the most popular. It is also possible to use Adblock Plus or uBlock, as the way they operate is exactly the same — HTTP filters and HTML element hiding.
AdBlock in the Chrome store uses Adblock Plus filtering engine[1], so to say the way these two "operate is exactly the same" makes sense.
However uBlock Origin uses its own code base, and is far better equipped than AdBlock/Adblock Plus to deal with anti-blockers, so to say that the way uBO operates is "exactly the same" is a stretch.
Block any outgoing connection you don't trust instead of simply taking some 3rd party list with URLs, unverified, no quality control etc, and only blacklist these KNOWN bad urls.
Ad parties don't sit still, they don't keep their ads on the same url when they found out they are blocked or maybe already preventive rotate through new urls etc.
In the end you'll end up with some bizar long list which has to be checked for every url you visit etc etc. This will be a performance hog, and if you cant imagine that, then your list isn't long enough yet.
Use proper egress filtering, allow what you know, and don't allow what you don't know, not just what some 3rd party put on a list.
My advice for you in 2018.
For
""Block by default" is a usability nightmare."
yes it is for a week or 2, but I prefer usability nightmare then a safety nightmare.
> They all suck. Period. Block any outgoing connection you don't trust instead of simply taking some 3rd party list with URLs, unverified, no quality control etc, and only blacklist these KNOWN bad urls.
uBlock Origin allows you to block yourself any outgoing connection to servers you do not trust, including working in default-deny mode if you want[1].
In any case, those filter lists are maintained by dedicated volunteers[2], their work is way under-appreciated, because contrary to what you state, these volunteers spend a whole lot of time ensuring everything work as expected so that in the end all non-technical users who wouldn't be able to deal with default-deny mode can also be protected.
I have been using uBlock Origin for years and it's one of those things that just works. Turning it off in those rare moments it needs to be off is a bleak reminder of the state of the internet. Why would I want to go through the hassle of managing all of this work by myself?
A massive THANK YOU to the individuals behind uBlock - You literally make the internet tolerable for me.
The point is that if you do what you suggest, either maintaining your mothers’ devices becomes practically a full-time job where you are on call at all times (and you end up fully monitoring what she is doing even if you don’t want to know), or, from her perspective, the internet is “broken”. Probably both.
The point is, that you make assumptions how much work it actually is and i am not, as i do this with almost everybody that asks me for such 'help' (after fixing, cleaning etc their machines).
Stating it will be a full time job is such an overstatement, i'd almost call it a blatant lie. Your mom is on FB, YT, and maybe a handful of other sites daily (so no popups for those or decisions to take there). You could also monitor and log and then apply block/allow rules later for when you visit for coffee or dinner. (if you want to reply something here about unprotected in that period, think about all the new bad urls not on such url lists yet for apps like uBlock)
And i only get positive feedback how well it works and how much they learned about websites and other internet services, the information leaked to 3rd parties, cooperation between companies. Even scared some contacts i have from social media like FB, Instagram and alike. Makes them a lot more aware of what is going on instead of giving them a list of known crap urls, again, maintained by some samaritan in an attic. Nice effort, i just think its fair from sufficient nowadays on the internet. In the time it takes these people to update the list, 1000 new crap urls have been registered.
And doesn't take that much time, sure you have to put in some more time then, simply telling people to install uBlock (or similar) and tell them that they are safe and secure with this application. I prefer to educate properly instead of just throwing some half *ed solution their way and having them figure out it fails in the end anyway.
Another note, the internet is broken, broken in many ways. And _you_ know this else you would not suggest any protection, apps like uBlock.
It might be realistic for you, or me or anyone in here, but it definitely isn't realistic for the average user. And it's them we try to protect by blocking ads. Technical savvy people have an armada of options at their disposal, for example we could just block JavaScript. But the average Joe relies heavily on ad blockers for a smoother and safer experience browsing the web. You can't expect non technical users to do any of the things you propose.
You're arguing against yourself. They do put all caught pedophiles in jail, and it's extremely safe for children to roam the streets from a pedophile point of view (but very risky from a car accident point of view).
> Block any outgoing connection you don't trust instead of simply taking some 3rd party list with URLs, unverified, no quality control etc, and only blacklist these KNOWN bad urls.
Right, and how is that supposed to happen in practice? Manually inspect every CDN domain loaded on every page that you visit? Or just live without scripts, images, fonts, video?
I don't know. I'm not a web dev (x), and I went from "dafuq?" to "I get it, this is so cool" in two minutes flat. Let's just say it sure helps if you're a technical person, not j. random user.
Certainly, it just can take more time to sift through the list of tens of domains and deciding to allow or ban each connection if you don't already know which connections tend to be needed and which are not.
Still, it's perfectly doable for anyone if you experiment a little, and it's done once per site, so the time needed for this shouldn't be an issue. It's just that people working with this stuff will have an easier time using uMatrix - which is what I really meant in my comment above :)
I'll trust the block lists from my internet neighbors. Thank you for your concern but the people who build those lists take sufficient care and most use a transparent process to add rules to them, like GitHub pull requests, and if there's ever a rule that wrongly blocks a site I can whitelist it myself with ease.
They might burn some CPU cycles but surely the ads themselves burn much more.
You beat me to it, but I was going to mention LS too.
Imaging you start off with Safari being unable to connect to anything. Little Snitch is running in Alert Mode and it asks you to decide on every outbound network connection. You visit Facebook. LS asks if Safari can talk to facebook.com on port 443. You say "yes, always". What about "server893.ads.facebook.com:443"? You say "make that .ads.facebook.com and block it forever". Do this through the few dozen prompts you'll get on this first visit when you visit a resource-heavy domain. Now hit reload and pick up a few more (like maybe this time you'll get a connection to a video CDN that you didn't see last time). Repeat until the requests taper off to nothing.
Now put Little Snitch into "Silent Deny" mode and enjoy your Safari that can only view ad-free Facebook.
Note: I don't really recommend doing this because I'd rather be doing almost literally anything else, but if I had to set up a social media kiosk for a relative, that's how I'd go about it.
I do highly enjoy telling Little Snitch to deny connections to all the non-port-80/443 ad trackers. I can't imagine a single legitimate reason why I'd want Safari to connect to moatads.com:843.
What would you recommend for mobile? Browsing on Android with Chrome is a nightmare, and the last time I tried FF it was a bit sluggish (although it did allowed me to install extensions!)
Firefox for Android is wonderful after Quantum. uBlock Origin works fine with it, and you can even use the custom filters to purge the scourge of the so called "dickbars" from your browsing experience. It's not as streamlined to use as with a mouse, but never having to see those Medium banners again makes my Internet life so much better.
Huh, I didn't know this. I felt Firefox 56 -> 57 was a major improvement in Android too, and was sure this was due to Quantum. I wonder now if that was just placebo.
Firefox is a LOT better since the Quantum update. Like, actually usable compared to Chrome.
A lot of websites will still look weird but still a million times better when you don't have popup windows poking your eye, also reading mode is a god send.
I've tried countless browsers on Android, as well as various adblocking plugins and services. I always found myself going back to Chrome because it just worked.
I started using Brave about a year ago and I love it. The only thing I'm missing is syncing my bookmarks between Brave on my phone and Chrome on my computer, but a year later and it hasn't bothered me enough to find a fix.
Firefox of course! I've been using it since the day it came out on Android. It means less phoning home to Google, and you can install Privacy Badger. Works for me like on the desktop.
I use an ad blocker, because otherwise the web is unusable.
Maybe if (1) fewer ads pumped up CPU and memory usage for a page, and (2) companies didn't give their non-technical asshole free reign over placing scripts on the page, then maybe many of these sites wouldn't be so bad to visit without an ad blocker.
I use an ad blocker for a much simpler reason. I do not consent to having my behavior analyzed. Calling these things `ads` is deliberately misleading. The primary purpose of these things isn't to show you an ad, its to record everything you do on every site you visit, so then that data can be correlated to your credit history and other real world sources to profile you and optimally manipulate your behavior to sell you shit.
Just wondering how many people here noticed that pornhub injects google analytics, and gives google unscrutinized access to your sexual preferences and habits? They don't even bother showing a google ad, they just let them inject their arbitrary js payload.
How about by manipulating your facebook news feed and exposing you to a carefully selected series of images and headlines to sway your opinion on political topics without you even realizing.
How about identifying which youtubers your children are impressionable to, and then approaching them to push unhealthy food products?
How about using your porn browsing habits and location history to figure out when you start cheating on your significant other, how about offering you divorce lawyers before you even realize you need one.
How about figuring out when you become isolated and lonely by looking at changes in the volume of texts and phone calls and IMs you exchange, and then selling that primarily to dating and sex chat websites.
Ever wondered why these websites are silently deploying anti-adblock functionality rather than trying to bring the matter through the legal system? Because if it ever became a legal case and they were made to disclose how they use the data, there'd be a fucking uproar. This is exactly what happened in the EU and that's why advertisers had their balls cut off in that region. So now they've opted to support the destruction of net neutrality and bolster DRM laws so they can shoehorn advertisements and anti-adblock under DRM instead.
People need to get 100% clear on something: there are very smart people getting paid very generous salaries whose job is to find ways to distort and manipulate laws and public perception to prevent consumers from asserting their rights against having their behavior manipulated. I don't think it's an understatement to say that these groups are a major threat to the wellbeing of the people, right up there with war and climate change. Ajit Pai is a textbook example of this pattern. He's not stupid, he's not an asshole. He's a smart person who has been tasked with a goal that goes against the public good. And he's done a good job at that task.
The sad truth: nobody cares. There won't be an uproar. There are/were countless blog entries on how your data is abused, and nobody cares. _Oh, look, a site where I can showcase my vanity and have followers like some kind of celebrity!_ - this is the reality.
I'd love to make people realize how bad it is. I'd really want to know where are the people who donated enough to the Mozilla foundation to supports a 2-page ad in the New York Times in print for Firefox back in 2004. I'd really like to know what makes people listen, but I honesty have no idea.
That might be because I'm odd... But all I can catch them doing is trying to predict the next thing I'll consume and inserting themselves as a middle-men in any possible channel I can use to buy it.
Yes, they leak data like a sieve. But I don't see they using that data, except for defrauding people I buy stuff from.
I don’t believe people are as easily manipulated as you do.
I don’t buy things I don’t have a pre existing need for based on advertising, or really in general. If anything ads make me less likely to buy something based on the associated irritation.
My political beliefs have not been swayed by my Facebook feed. I think if anything Facebook has made people more hardline to their existing beliefs by feeding them that there is mass agreement with them.
You rolled off into unsupported tinfoil hat land for a bit. Soon to be divorced men isn’t a big enough market to go after.
And if your kid wants gummy bears, that’s on you for buying them.
I don’t buy things I don’t have a pre existing need for based on advertising, or really in general. If anything ads make me less likely to buy something based on the associated irritation.
How do you know if you're being silently manipulated? That's kind of the point of silent manipulation - you don't know it's happening.
Maybe you think you wanted that product, but in reality subtle ad exposure made you desire it.
Yeah. They already used operating system and browser to change price on ecommerce sites according to the wealth those project, imagine let them having a clear correlation with your credit score
I hate to be that guy, but I'm going to guess you probably _do_ consent just by accessing certain sites. I'm sure if you read the terms they disclose that. I'm not saying that's right, and I also have a similar stance of trying not to be profiled, but don't delude yourself thinking your ad blocker is stopping organizations from gathering your metadata.
> I'm sure if you read the terms they disclose that.
As an average person, if you spend 8 hours a day reading all the terms and conditions you 'agree' to, it would take you 76 days to just read them, nevermind understand them.
I'm not actually sure how we ended up living in a world where those terms and conditions are legally meaningful. But I'll reiterate that they can fuck right off and there is absolutely no moral dilemma about blanket filtering of ads and trackers. As to how effective they are - effective enough to prompt anti adblocking measures such as TFA.
> I'm not actually sure how we ended up living in a world where those terms and conditions are legally meaningful
IANAL, but as an European I'm pretty sure they aren't legally meaningful. To be honest, I don't consider any online T&C's to actually affect me, and only pay attention to explicitly mentioned licenses for content. I have no idea how far from actual reality this is.
According to German law those T&C are meaningless for just browsing the website (they neither ask you to agree nor offer the possibility of reading the terms in advance). And as long as you aren't acting as a business, those "I agree" checkmarks don't bind you to any "surprising" terms (in other words: not even the law expects you to read them)
Would be nice to have a government standard Meta-TOS with things grouped in sections with plain language and the service specific TOS could be required to reference the sections from the standard that they want to apply, even with a simple standard system of logos.
If you are explicitly not consenting, then surely the correct way to do this is to not visit the site. If I go to a shop and want a product but don't like the price I am within my rights to refuse the contract and not buy the item. What I am not entitled to do is unilaterally change the contract, and walk out with the item without paying full price. I use an ad blocker because so many sites are barely usable without it, but I don't pretend it's a morally justifiable thing to do, and I try to disable it for sites that I use a lot, unless I pay for them.
The actual analogy is walking into a store and being forced to buy something for walking in. I don't feel the store owner should be entitled to do that.
As for moral justifiability, I find it unacceptable that a website operator can sell data about me without my consent just for following a link to their site.
In any other situation in society, the content owner is responsible for controlling access to the content until a price is explicitly agreed upon. An artist can’t display a painting in a public place and charge everyone whatever they want after they happen to view the painting.
I would agree, if only I were given the choice. As it is, I have no way to know what the terms of a website are until I visit. The intent of the ads are also usually not made clear. If I don't view the ad am I allowed to read the content?
I guess it boils down to what you think the Internet is. I feel I should be in control of my computer, and thus I get to decide which bits I allow onto my network and which of those bits are then rendered on my screen. If you've made content publicly available, it's mine to consume in the way I see fit. I don't see why I shouldn't, for example, be allowed to use a text based browser to view content or browse with JavaScript disabled.
Payment for content is of course difficult for websites, but I just don't feel an ad based revenue is feasible on an open web, precisely because the web is open. The platform does not support the notion of content creators implicitly dictating terms.
It is more like they require you to place cameras all over yourself, and the cameras are yours, not theirs.
I don't really know if one could require this. Seems complex. But add that the cameras are hidden (you don't know they are cameras) and it becomes a very simple issue.
I don't necessarily agree fully, but even then we can discuss the morality of selling the data to trackers without informing the user, let alone not giving them a choice to opt out before viewing the content.
Societal norms for theft of physical property have been fairly clear for a long time, and shared across nearly every culture (every one I’m aware of). It’s a huge leap to apply those norms to downloading and running software on your own computer.
You’re claiming that, by choosing to visit a website, I have implicitly agreed to and am obligated to download every resource and execute all code that website’s maintainers decide to include, and to do that recursively for each downloaded resource. That is preposterous. It could, for instance, obligate me to download a literally endless amount of data, which might be very expensive for me. It might also obligate me to perform limitless computation on my machine, if for instance the website includes a script to mine Bitcoins.
I try to avoid making moral arguments, but I will certainly point out logical consequences of other people’s moral arguments that to me seem absolutely ludicrous.
Since when is visiting a specific domain falls under the "I'm allowing 3rd party as well"? If that is in fact the TOS that needs to be shown before any content OR 3rd party, tracker, ad, etc. is loaded.
I don't think they can enforce their TOC just by opening the page. I need to open it just to read the TOC in the first place. By reading this comment you consent to agreeing with it.
And I’d like an answer for once other than the super literal “Because their server returned the status code 200”
Because sure, it did, but if we’re turning this into an ideological discussion of how you feel you haven’t given permission, why even feed the system with your view.
Even using an ad blocked you’re still adding views to the page, and the powers that be will simply view you as a customer, albeit one they’re being cheated out of with a pesky ad blocked.
To me you are consenting the moment you decide to use services and websites that cost millions of dollars to maintain and expecting and paying little to nothing compared to the real cost of those services. If you used paid sites you’d see less ads (maybe not no ads because often times the cost you pay still isn’t the “real cost” of that service”) and my guess is this tracking would seem a lot less intrusive.
Example: Sometimes I use sites to watch foreign films that show several tabs of ads for each click. You need to click on each hyperlink about 3 times, each time opening a new ad, some of which are the “Update flash” malicious type. I don’t ad block them (anymore, for a short while I used ad-block on sites like this and then thought better if it) because hosting 100s of HD movies costs money.
Sometimes I run out of patience and instead of playing up my entitlement and just saying “I deserve this because reasons” I just... close the page. If no one views the videos, no money will be made, and either the hosting service will shape up, or it will close. There won’t be an arms race of anti-ad-blocker vs ad-blocked.
> To me you are consenting the moment you decide to use services and websites that cost millions of dollars to maintain and expecting and paying little to nothing compared to the real cost of those services.
That's not how consent works, if it was then I would just claim that by establishing a connection to my computer, the remote website consents to my rules including ad blocking. My computer is mine, I have the right to display the content sent to my computer however the fuck I want. If my doing so ends up putting some company out of business because their tracker revenue dries up, that's perfectly fine, that's literally the free market at work and the consumers signaling to providers that this business model is not viable.
I'm not obliged to be a source of revenue to these companies.
I guess my point is you’re also not obliged to use their services. I don’t understand the entitlement of “I shouldn’t have to play ball by their rules but I also want to use the ball until it deflates”
Your response is just a variation of the “They returned status code 200” argument which I explain as really just supporting the system albeit half-heartedly.
If you really hate them so much (I mean, you’re fine with them going out of business so at least, you don’t love them or rely on them) why even make the request? Why put their filthy ad-tracking blood money funded content on your PC. If it’s so repulsive to you on such a deep level but you also don’t rely on it or need it or care if it goes away, why even get near it?
Edit: And I’ll add my take on it. I think you want to have your cake and eat it too and the “their server responded with content” argument is just trying to romanticize the concept. I honestly don’t have a problem with people trying to fight ad blockers, my issue is when they try to paint it as anything more than wanting something they act like is absolute poison for less than it costs to make. It’s like I give you a bite of my sandwich and you decide to lick the whole thing because “I can consume it how ever I want”. Sure you can, and I willingly gave you the sandwich, but I’m not going to be able to give you bites of my sandwich if you insist on licking them and leaving them unpalatable for me. If you really don’t like my sandwich why not refuse my offer and show me that the sandwich is flawed, not the conditions I’m offering you a bite under.
If anyone is wondering what greater harm comes from the advertising industry than just showing obnoxious images, it's this.
Consumers becoming so brain washed, so accepting of the advertising status quo that they actually defend it even though everything about it is against their personal interests.
> I don’t understand the entitlement
There is no entitlement, it's a right. I am exercising my right as the operator of this PC to connect to content providers and display their content however the fuck I want within the confines of the law. The law doesn't give them any right to extract revenue from me if I choose to opt out. If they have a problem with that, they have the right try to block me within the confines of the law. And I have the right to bypass that block within the confines of the law.
Let me put it another way. Your sentiment is way more pliant and ethical than the sentiment of the guys who run the ad industry. Your job history, drinking habits, sex habits, food preferences, mental health, personal aspirations, etc - all of this stuff is up for sale to anyone in the advertising circles. The only thing missing is your credit card number and name/address so it's not 'technically' PIA even though correlating all of it back to you is trivial and everyone knows it. I thought I was paranoid about ads, and then I landed a job in the ad industry and realized my worst paranoia was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what actually goes on.
Don't defend the guys who are fucking you, stand up for your rights.
I’d argue you’re pretty much just ignoring my larger points and nitpicking very specific excerpts and ignoring the context of them to make a point that’s not entirely new in the thread then appealing to emotion with what was supposed to be jarring commentary but just comes across as ranting. I mean you spent something like 70% if your commenting trying to dissect half of a sentence in my comment.
And, I don’t appreciate being called brainwashed... this is barely a step above ranting about sheeple.
You points about my profile I guess are supposed to be alarming but are not news to me. I’m fine with all of that being for sale. Correlating it back to a person is trivial... until you try and do it at scale and evaluate the risk vs reward. Risk is very very high and gets exponentially higher at scale, and reward is almost nonexistent until you do it at scale. And are guards that add enough friction to make it not worthwhile often.
Sure there are cracks in the system, but seeing as I can’t pay what the content I consume is worth, I accept the risk gladly.
I mean, you're using moralistic arguments to defend a clearly immoral market actor whose entire business model revolves around abusing lack of regulations to collect and sell consumer information without their knowledge or informed consent.
You're defending a business entity whose entire existence is against your personal interest. In market terms, you are not a rational actor maximizing self interest. If you're not brain washed, what are you?
Just like businesses would be irrational if they didn't use every legal tax 'loophole' to make sure they pay no tax, you are irrational if you don't use available legal avenues to get the content you want for the lowest price - in this case, viewing it with ad blockers. If that means content providers go out of business, that's okay. New ones will show up with new business models that are actually viable. The free market expects individuals to maximize their self-interest within the confines of the law. If you're not doing that, you're just harming yourself for no meaningful reason whatsoever.
Again you spend so many words to say so little to address the actual topic at hand and instead shift the topic. This time to... doubling down on saying I'm brainwashed?
I understand your points, people don't want to pay (enough) for content, so content provider have little choice. I'd say it's the content-provider responsibility to market its content in such a way that people are willing to pay for it. That's what all businesses do.
If they can't make it, then it's no excuse to resort to creepy stuff like tracking and profiling people without their consent, or with them ignoring the extent or implications of it. It's nothing short of abusing people, and it being the last card not to get out of business is hardly an excuse.
You made a free mall analogy in another comment: if businesses can't run free mall without abusing customers, then don't run free malls; it's not like people always expected free malls, it's just that some companies began to offer products/content cheaper and cheaper, and now they hit rock-bottom. Whose fault is it? The customer for asking, or the businesses to enter a race to the bottom, and then going full unethical?
Again, I get your points, but don't track me, my friends or my family.
I thinks we need to remember the context of this conversation, I’m not against blocking tracking and not wanting to be tracked. I’m just against blocking ads then saying it’s taking the moral high ground and vilifying content creators who offer ads. I’m not even against blocking ads period, so long as we’re accepting the fact that it’s for personal benefit and definitely not “sticking it to the man”
The problem is we don’t have a protocol for signaling that they want to track you before you load the content and its tracking.
So you get the content, the tracking code, and detection for anti-ad/tracking plugins.
If they detect anti-ad plugins they say “We did give you the content, but we see you don’t have the form of payment we want so please don’t view it”
At that point, to me, neither side has done anything wrong. Would it be preferable if they could give you the “please don’t view it” message upfront? Definitely. But instead they let you opt out.
Once you decide to modify the paywall away and view the content you still haven’t done anything wrong but you’re saying “I want to view content paid for by showing people ads that was also designed to drive ad engagement but I don’t deserve to have to view ads so I’ll ignore your paywall since it’s my computer and you let me have the content” ... which is fine. And also won’t solve the actual underlying problem. Instead we just get an arms race of ad-block vs anti-ad-block (which anti will lose) and content creators hoping ad-blocking doesn’t reach critical mass.
The alternative is to turn down the content by going away. That sends the message that you won’t support the model. Bonus points if you pay someone willing to take your money in exchange for not tracking you since the most effective way to disrupt the market right now is to fund those trying to break out of the current model.
Not the OP, but the "brainwashed" angle applies to more than just ads.
Anyone with a Gmail account is effectively selling my communication with them to Google for a free service. And you bet that when told about this very few would see it that way. Consumers _are_ as guillable as they are ignorant. These new "established" online norms - be it tracking, profiling, ads, what have you - would've never flown in their physical form, but here we are in a world where Gmail, WhatsApp, Android phones, Google Analytics, etc. are considered gold standards of modern tech.
No sane person, if explained the exact ramifications of these "free services", would've agreed to any of them just 15 years ago. But they do now, giddily at that. Pray tell how this is anything but a brainwashing.
I wonder if this guy will look at this topic and all the counter arguments and downvotes and actually stop and ask himself if maybe its possible he is a bit brainwashed.
Half the comments are yours and aren’t counter arguments at all.
And all the downvotes just tell me people aren’t confident enough in their counter arguements to let them stand against a comment that isn’t intentionally de-emphasized.
And the fact you think I’d change my mind over downvotes, even in part, tells me something about you.
> At that point, to me, neither side has done anything wrong.
Well, tracking my mother who doesn't know enough about ad-blockers or the implications of being tracked is already wrong, to me. Collecting detailed personal information on people for commercial purposes should be strictly regulated, at the very least when it's done automatically.
> That sends the message that you won’t support the model.
We should send the most effective and unambiguous kind of messages: I like that content, but not the ad/tracking that you put on your site. That's much clearer than not visiting the site altogether (they might think they just have to change their content, or their marketing or sth). Some media are not fully aware of the crap they run, because it's run by a third-party, and the decision was made by another department etc. I don't necessarily want to send a bad signal to everyone there.
The answer to your question is: Because of hyperlinks (ie, the way the web works), it's not practical to tell people "hey, you clicked on the link, you agreed to pay them via advertising". A publicly accessible page is like a public space in that way.
If a company doesn't want to offer free access to content that costs them money to produce, they can create a login system and a paywall.
If the one in the comments several levels up from this one, isn't this just a variation of the HTTP Status Code 200 argument? (which I explain why I don't support in other comments)
They can also implement ad block detection. Not every site is going to implement a paywall, they should have the option of business model and ad supported is a valid choice though I do hope more variety comes along to more sites.
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that and ultimately comes down to a lack of regulation of what third party advertisement companies should be allowed to do without full disclosure.
It is reasonable to expect a free lemonade stand to print ads on the cups and have sales people around trying to initiate conversations with you while you consume your free beverage. Peeling off the ads and yelling at the sales people would make you an entitled hypocrite. However, if the same sales people would also secretly take a creep photo of you, write down your preference of lemonade and take note of your clothing and body type and compile all of it into a personal file on you to be sold and shared with other businesses in the whole world? Wouldn't you start to question whether they take a bit too much in exchange of that free lemonade?
I would accept it if they wrote the conditions on a sign before entering, but that is not how most free sites today operate. The fact that the tracking is completely automated somehow makes it seem less intrusive to many people, but it is just as creepy as someone spying on you in person.
I agree that sites should be more direct with what they're tracking, and would support regulation around that, but this thread is really about people claiming they're fully aware of what is being tracked and just don't want it to be tracked.
I think your analogy makes it easy to see why people support it if you take it a little further.
For free lemonade? A layperson would say of "Of course that's too far!". But now imagine a mall where everything is free. Everything. Suddenly laypeople start asking "Well can they at least tell me they're taking the picture?", "Can they write down the answers after I checkout instead of holding up the lines to do that?"
I think we need to sit down and seriously evaluate what content is worth. I feel like we reached our current predicament because people just seriously undervalue content, and advertising became the last bastion of value generation. It's similar to how IAP became the only smart way to generate revenue since people feel 5$ for a solid app with indefinite support is just too much. yet IAP ends up being a lot more intrusive than upfront payment.
Right, I agree that it is a bit hypocritical to use a free site on a regular basis with ad-blocking enabled if you have full knowledge about its advertisement and tracking practices, and you know that their business model depends on it.
I think you are right that the problem comes down to valuing personal data and content. How many $ is your data worth to e.g. Google vs. how many $ would you need to get paid in order to give up your privacy? There is probably a discrepancy here, which is why people are getting mad.
I like some content. I am willing to pay ten times[0] the revenue ads would generate, potentially more, to see the content without ads. I want to pay for only the content I read, and not a monthly sum. Why am I unable to pay, and what incentives would change the system so that I can pay, other than using an ad blocker?
[0] Say a website has a CPM of $5 and displays 10 ads to each user, such that a single impression from a user without an ad blocker earns 5c. 50c is entirely reasonable, particularly if a user can refund clickbait.
>what incentives would change the system so that I can pay, other than using an ad blocker?
That's really simple, more people need to be willing to pay.
I mean, I say in other parts of the page that I can't pay what the content is worth, but I'm actually not sure that's true for myself. But it is true for the general public.
And it's not they can't because they can't afford it, but rather, they don't want to. So we can make it easier to pay, for example. We can try and explain what advertising is doing. But in the end, I don't see a change happening.
People just seriously undervalue content.
People won't pay 99 cents for an app, so the market switched to IAP and suddenly people were gladly be nickled and dimed for more than 99 cents with intrusive applications designed from the ground up to drive IAP.
It's not like content generators wouldn't rather just take your money. I'm sure they don't love the hoops they have to jump through (it cost money to implement those ads too) to get inconsistent ad revenue that is often not very transparent and rife with pitfalls.
But until enough people to at least cover the cost of content are willing to pay, we'll see ads be king.
While there are solutions we could build in the future like the one you describe, today the answer is pretty simple if you’re really against the current ad-supported model...
You’re expected to find some number of sites X that let you pay to access ad-free content that total to an amount you find palatable and limit yourself to those.
It’s not trivial, and it’s inconvenient. The sites like that are relatively few and far between.
But it means you’re making a sacrifice to support sites that are trying to break out of the model that you don’t support.
If enough people do that, the incentive forms to make paying for content upfront and ad-free and suddenly the market will solve the problem of 50 sites wanting payment, be it through easier payment mechanisms or “share cropping”
The problem doesn’t go away for other types of content and that reasoning is often repeated but not supported by other markets.
There are apps that had thousands of downloads and great reviews that failed because of peoples in unwillingness to pay for them.
How will you know you’re going to like a news story before you pay to read it?
The metrics you have are the same as any other type of content, word of mouth, reviews, past performance of the content creator.
People will spend 10$ on a movie ticket when critics and reviewers are split on if it’s a good movie. They’ll spend 20$ to try a new dish they might not like on the recommendation of a single person, even an impartial waiter. But they don’t value apps so they don’t pay for them. People will go to app developers with their brilliant idea and act shocked when they get a 5 figure estimate because they figure app development is a dime a dozen.
Likewise I doubt many people appreciate the true cost of the content they consume.
I think it's not about monetary cost, but about attention. If you had an opt-out payment model where users are automatically charged a capped amount that they can later refund, or even a paywall with a "Pay with Ads-B-Gone" button, users would accept much more readily.
Or maybe an emotional approach like the Guardian or Patreon would work better.
The point here, though, is that you can both like the content and want to support the creator yet choose to block ads.
I’m not trying to imply blocking ads means you don’t want to support the creator.
But if the creator only offers ads as a method of payment and you consume their content while blocking their ads, regardless of what you want to do, you aren’t paying them for their content.
At that point your options are to continue consuming the content (and preferably not post comments vilifying the content creator driven to using ads like the original comment I responded to above does, which I take exception to) or to not consume the content, signaling to the content creator that something isn’t working about their ad-based model.
>If you really hate them so much (I mean, you’re fine with them going out of business so at least, you don’t love them or rely on them) why even make the request?
Because you like the content?
If it's genuinely decent content it should encourage the middleman who owns the delivery system to look for more honest and up front sources of income. If it's crap, bottom feeder content then it's no great loss if adblockers drive it out of business is it?
Well it's a complex subject that can't really be boiled down to analogies and idioms as much as people like to act like it is. The analogy is only meant to give a slight glimpse at the direction the entire rest of the comment is going for, not explain the current market.
Individual choices are insignificant. The future of advertising is being planned by Facebook and Google. Blocking advertisments is a workaround for a broken web. Surfing the web has always been about discovery. Are we supposed to intuit whether or not to visit a site for the first time based on how we predict it will align to some kind of ad rubric? The fact that many websites have bad business models is noone’s fault but their own. In fact, tools like AdNauseum[0] show how broken this moralistic consumer thinking is:
Block all ads?
> That’s robbing sites of needed advertising click-dollars!
Click all ads?
> That’s robbing advertising companies of needed attention!
This is totalitarian capitalism: it’s not good enough to accept being tracked everywhere, spied on, and burdened with processing advertising. Not good enough even to click every ad. You must love the ads in your heart. It’s your duty, citizen!
The end game in both cases is ads become worth less, or worthless. It doesn’t matter which side of the scale you tip to cause that.
It’s so easy to understand what’s wrong with AdNauseam if you look into the spirit of the tool. The problem isn’t clicking every ad, it’s clicking every ad with the intent to throw a wrench in advertising.
If it worked well enough the end result would just be ads are worthless and sites lose money, just like if you block their ads.
You seem intelligent and I don’t mean this as an insult, but I think you’re missing the point.
To use an inexact metaphor, if I am selling gas no one is obligated to fill up at my station. Fuel efficient cars are not “robbing” me. People who take public transit are not ripping me off. My job as a businessman is to make money. Consumers owe nothing to me. If the gas I sell is leaded and no one wants to buy it, I have no right to complain.
If I cut out every ad from my copy of the yellow pages no one has a right to complain. Adblocking is no different.
> And I’d like an answer for once other than the super literal “Because their server returned the status code 200”
Hopefully I can answer your question.
I use an adblocker all the time. I make no exceptions, and I have never whitelisted any site. If I notice something managed to sneak through a filter, I send a pull request to add it to the filter.
I know I'm robbing the content hosts of their ad-based revenue. So why do I keep doing it?
Because I fucking hate ads of any kind. I want all ad-based revenue streams to dry up permanently. And I put a lot of effort into that. Fuck ads. They can burn in hell.
Going through the trouble of clicking/closing a few ads is not the same as having your information being added to an ever-growing file that major corporations have on everyone.
And you can't say "just don't visit the site" because pretty much every site does this. You might as well say "just quit the internet" which obviously is not a solution.
It’s not true that every site does this, but yes, most are funded by the model that relies on your information being sold and used to build a profile of you.
If you don’t support that model why buy into the system? After all, the content minus ads was still written and designed to drive ad revenue. Any conflict of interest between driving ad revenue and conveying information (ie. uninformative clickbait) in the content is still affecting the end result even if you never see the ads.
Why not compile a list of sites that don’t track you and offer paid services that can provide what you’re looking for?
Will you be limited? Very! Will you be feeding the system you apparently have deep seated qualms about? No! And if it means that much to you, I think you should be very happy.
If the system is broken enough that enough people go that route, companies will chase the money. If users are willing to pay enough to cover the real, un-intrusive-ad-tracking-subsidized cost of content, companies will jump for joy at not having to deal with ad networks and pay people to optimize for ads and just take your money directly.
Not every site does it, but most of them do have tracking of some kind (at least google analytics). I refuse to give up these information in exchange for access to content.
If me blocking ads/tracking results in some company shutting down, then so be it. But maybe others will jump in to fill that gap and try something different like, say, a subscription fee, in which case I'll happily pay.
But if I/we just stop using those sites that I truly enjoy, then if/when they shut down others might be afraid to go into that market because they might think there's not enough interest in it.
When you arrive on most sites with ads, they don't make you to accept anything. They don't give you a term of service to read. You just click, and download the code, and it executes. It's an implicit contract, which means they sell your data without your consent, as most people don't understand what's going on.
Actually, even when you understand what's going on, the sheer number of things to check to get the full picture make it unpractical.
Your argument make sense if a website clearly make you click on a term of service like google does. In that case, you accepted a clear, explicit contract. Either consent or leave.
But that's not what happen with most services.
And because of that, it makes sense to use an ad blocker. You just prevent sites to make you pay a price that they don't disclose.
Another thing is:
- what they are doing is immoral
- what we are doing is not illegal
So the reason we should stop doing this for sites that DO disclose what they do is morality. But there is little incentive to be seek morality when playing with an immoral player. So there is not scenario here, where not using an adblock is a good strategy.
I take from this that you're happy for sites to then use these anti-ad-blocker scripts to deny access to users that won't view the ads? I certainly think that's a more honest approach than using them to get around the blockers to display ads anyway, but it's probably less popular.
So are you closing the page when AdBlock shows Blocking X ads? My point isn't that you shouldn't be told that the site wants to block access unless you agree to view ads, but I feel like people are nitpicking over an implementation detail of how the internet works.
Because they want to allow things like indexing they serve the content and the "paywall" (payment being you allowing ads) in one swoop. Yes it's on your computer and you control your computer so you can get rid of their paywall, but you can also do that to software that requires a license key to activate, yet we don't seem to defend cracked software the same way.
Maybe if we reimplemented the internet today we'd allow browsers to send an "Allows Ads" header and have an HTTP Status Code for "I only accept clients who accept ads".
I mean, even Google doesn't actually make you click on a term of service to search.
> - what they are doing is immoral
> - what we are doing is not illegal
Only one of these is a factual statement. Ad-blocking is not illegal, and of course it shouldn't be.
But what they're doing is extracting value out of their content. You can argue it's immoral, but it's not a factual statement in the sense your other statement is.
> But there is little incentive to be seek morality when playing with an immoral player. So there is not scenario here, where not using an adblock is a good strategy.
What you're saying to me is pretty much "if they won't play fair why should I". Which is fine logic, I just think if you're going to follow that line of thought, don't trumpet it from the rooftops like it's some sort of interesting proposal. To me they're desperate to generate value from content people won't pay upfront from and leaning on unfortunate tactics, and you're saying I won't pay at all. Neither side is right, yet only one side seems to be really proud about what it's doing
Again, my point isn't that Ad Blocking shouldn't be allowed, and I'm not here to convince anyone to uninstall their ad-blocker. My point is if you don't like ad-driven content, the "moral high ground" isn't to say "yeah well why'd their server return status code 200 and let me download the assets?". The moral high ground is to decline to use their services. Except that'd take actual inconvenience, curating the minority services that aren't ad-driven. So it's much easier to just say that ad blocking is "taking a stand" instead of admitting it's really just "having your cake and eating it to"
Aren't we talking about someone explicitly blocking the content they object to?
I also don't quite buy the argument that a view on a page relieved of all ads is somehow funding bad behaviour.
And I completely don't follow the argument that viewing content somehow obligates you to contribute to their morally bankrupt revenue system. If this means the end for web pages relying on morally questionably ad companies then I'd consider that a success.
Ever since newspapers, the social contract has been that they serve content and I become a reader they can sell advertising space for me to look at. They can't suddenly change that contract and expect everyone to automatically agree.
In what way are they changing it? Surely by using ad blockers it is us that are changing the contract, by removing the ability for the publisher to show us ads.
Because the ads they show us are autoplaying headache-inducing flashing videos with jump-scare sounds. Their ads open new windows, which open further new windows when you try to close them. And on top of that, they also gather data about you which they'll sell to whoever is buying it.
They are changing it by not only selling my eyeballs, but selling everything they can learn about me by tracking me all over the internet. Ad blocking is a change, but it is a reaction to their change (adding tracking to ads).
I probably will never not use an ad blocker just because that's my form of white-collar anarchism. But I tell everyone in my family to also use them and that will not change until ad vendors do a better job vetting the quality of the ads they sell. That means no deceptive "buttons", claims that "your computer is infected", or "people in _insert_geolocated_city_" type deceptive ads. And if the site owners complain about lost money, well it's your fault for cooperating with these con artists. If you can't promise that my grandmother won't be tricked into downloading malware when she visits your site then you don't deserve to earn anything from her.
Animated ads actually give me sensory overload. If a site could promise non-moving ads, I'd gladly whitelist them. It's amazing how many sites think you'll just accept incredibly intrusive and annoying banners.
I feel like we are reaching the 'end of days' as the actual informative content on a site is typically less than 20% of the visual information on a page. I have adjusted my browsing habits to avoid sites which may be visually offensive to my sensibilities, bog down my cpu, or hang my browser. That isn't necessarily a bad thing (for me) but it certainly seems counterproductive to the site owners' goals.
I'll tend to whitelist sites that I find useful, but the moment a distracting ad shows, the ad blocker goes back on. I understand the reason some sites rely on ad revenue, and I sympathise when theyre not given a chance, but if they can't be civil to their users then I see no reason for their users to put up with it.
I used to whitelist all webcomics I read, then one served malicious flash and another started aggressive mobile redirects to advertisement pages
Now I just siphon the images into a rss feed. If they want my eyeball they better start putting up banners like they used to. Active content can fuck right off.
Or video ads. WTF. Those sites I just close and never return.
Some sites I use a lot, I have enabled ads just to be friendly to the site. These sites also seem to have mostly acceptable ads, so it's not intrusive.
It wasn't that it was slow for me; I got i9 with 64 ram and things speed up tremendously from my last i7... the huge problem is insecurity!
Lots of website have no control over what ads are popping up! Drudge Report is probably the most frightening! All the time popups of "outdated" Adobe Flash (that I dont have at all), installation of recent updates of Windows 7 (even tho Im on Win 10)... recently I had some sort of ajax script that actually literally installed extension in Chrome (!!) I believe somehow my mouse was hijacked to perform a click action. Unbelievable!
Im fine with Ads so long as someone is properly vetting!!
That particular site is highly functional without allowing any JavaScript at all. All links work. All non-advertising images load.
By default I just don't allow JS. Thank you NoScript. Many sites that won't display anything without JS can be viewed by View -> Page Style -> No Style.
This x1000. Any site can circumvent ad blockers by just doing ads like Drudge. So if they want, they can always show ads. The problem is that they want to do more.
I don’t have any philosophical objection to advertising or even tracking, really, but ads have gotten so bad that they destroy user experience and make it impossible to read the sites I want to read.
If advertisers would agree to some behavior standards, I’d happily re-enable ads. Somebody has to pay for content.
Most web sites seem to work well enough. But the real killer is on mobile devices like laptops.
After the recent Firefox update I had to run without Noscript for a while, until it got updated. My laptop battery really took a hit. Loading web comics in 70 tabs or so took battery life estimates down to an hour. With Noscript running and blocking most advertising Javascript the estimate stays up at 3.5 hours.
I've noticed recently that every Google news links to major publications are 70 percent ads 30 percent content. (That is a rough guess) but my point is, the web has increasingly aggressive and largely pointless ads. I will aggressively block them, or click them to ruin metrics one ad at a time
Local news are a cesspool in my country. Ads all over, floating layers that slide in when you scroll, covering the main article, requests for automated browser notifications, and the text itself is just 10% of the page and quite hard to find sometimes. It can be a whole page of ads with just one phrase of actual content.
Sometimes the whole thing is a bait and switch - things like "Incredible, find out what happened to this starlet with amazing butt".... after 5-6 phrases that don't say anything about it we find out "... she's crying because her grandma died" (real story). Fucking bait and switch gutter news. But Adblock can't solve that.
I don't think a laptop can be normally used to browse these news sites without Adblock, and sometimes at all.
On YouTube in particular, I'd be mostly fine with pre-roll ads if it weren't for those World of Tank ads above the recommended sidebar. Those ads slow my machine down to a crawl some times. No clue why they allow webgl animations in their ads.
When reading we’re free to skip and skim. Vinyl, VHS, Cassette, CD, and DVD allow us to seek or rewind as we like. When I buy a PC, I can install any software I choose to. When browsing the web, I can accept or reject any served content.
That’s not entitlement. Entitlement is the sentiment that users somehow owe advertising or web firms anything.
I honestly used to browse the web without an adblocker and bounce from the site if it was too bad. About a year ago I ended up getting so fed up with not being able to visit pretty much any site that I installed one. I’m totally fine with being served ads, and recognize that it will even come with some not so friendly user tracking. Surely it must be possible to both serve me your content and ads at the same time. My only explanation is that it is pure laziness on all sides. The content maker gets paid if they display ads, the ad network gets paid if they fill ad slots, and the advertiser somehow sells more product (this I’m more skeptical of). So no one in that chain ever bothers to think of the end user.
I choose what runs on my machine.It is bizaarly entitled in fact to believe that viewing a website obligates me to run software of your choosing on my machine.
If operators want something from me they can ask for it. They can ask for money and I'll decide whether to provide it or they can demand I look at ads by refusing to work without ads.
If they want to connect to 37 different domains, ruin my battery life, unexpectedly play sound and video, or mine bitcoin the answer is probably no.
If the resource is valuable enough or If they simply want to load a singular resource that doesn't itself consume much compute or bandwidth I might consent to let them.
How many other industries rely on adversarial relationships with the people that ultimately keep their business running.
As sb contributing to open source- yes, yes i do.
Why - do you feel entitled for a universal income for adding another service layer, by wrapping something (usually open source) in some service (library usually open source)?
Some adtech startup should just quit playing games and go full creeper mode:
* simple text-only ads
* give the advertisers the tools to generate text content that is minimally distracting, maximally invasive, maximally creepy, and maximally personally-identifying
"$35,000 in debt, unemployed, recently dumped and insecure about your male sexual identity? You deserve this special price on Axe Body Spray..."
The buzz alone would get people to turn off their ad-blockers just to see what content gets generated for them.
No, because Google advises their advertisers not to creep out their potential customers.
AFAICT an ad from Google is chosen based on the reams of data Google has about me, but the content of the ad seems generic (or at least seems like it's meant to come off as generic so as not to creep me out).
The hypothetical adtech I'm describing would of course choose the ad based similarly on reams of data about me, but the content of the ad would itself also be worded using invasive data about me.
Google ad: "get some cheap technical degree"
Creeperville Ad: "climb out of your 35,000+ debt with a technical degree"
There are even more convincing examples wrt pornography but I'd rather not go down that rabbit hole.
They would still find themselves in the filter lists. It's hard to trust any ad company, that is unfortunate truth. I did text only Amazon links sort of advertising but it triggers some unlock filters because of the affiliate link.
I've been using uBlock since it came out and I just immediately leave those sites that don't function unless I disable it. Whatever content they have, someone else likely has a "good enough" alternative.
I also happen to run a blog (no where near a major website) but my thought process is, you should write because you want to spread what you've learned with others, not create a platform for the sole purpose of making money.
To me, having a visitor on your site is a privilege. Why would you go out of your way to interrupt and attempt to manipulate them, yet that's what so many large sites do. There's other ways to make money rather than tormenting your users.
But you are not writing for a living, so it is easy to say, just doing it for the joy and not for money. But there are people which profession is writing - and they need to get money.
The normal way, unfortunately is with ads, even though nobody likes them.
My preferred solution of voluntarily pay what you want ... probably takes a bit more time, to become established.
I do write for a living, but instead of basing my business model around selling ads I went with a different approach (doing freelance work and training).
I know that's not applicable to every writing industry, but those other industries have different ways to generate income too.
I apply the same logic but to website that has annoying ads. You annoy me, I go somewhere else.
I have the privilege to have content creators to visit, not the other way around. There is 8 billions potential visitors, there's can only be less than that potential content creator. Visiting takes no time, creating takes so much more time (if it wouldn't, well I wouldn't even read your stuff, I would do it myself).
> There's other ways to make money rather than tormenting your users.
Sure, but what does it have to do with me visiting your website? I'm there for a single reason, read what you got. Except if you directly sell me what you write using a paywall, if you have a sideline, than what you do is ADVERTISING, which let me remind you, you don't like (I don't either). At least using advertising on the side of what you read, the text is no longer an advertisement, just what's beside it (which is clearly labeled and clearly ads).
Since the explosion of adblocker and the effect was increased after the Youtube Adpocalypse, there is so much more sponsored content produced, it's disgusting. I can live with some of it but currently, it just becomes worse and worse.
I've started noticing this from Google, among others. Tracking scripts are no longer explicitly named as such, or they're prefixed with some slug or GUID alongside the legitimate "functional" scripts.
It's getting to a point where you need to actively monitor every network request the site makes. It's despicable and I have nothing but ill will for the data scientists, software engineers, and product managers who participate in this.
One local news website I sometimes use was covering elections - news reports, partial results, the usual. It's a very high traffic day for any news outlet like this, so it would be a shame not to monetize it.
They had this huge background ad covering my whole screen with a bit of conent in the middle (which also has inlined ads of course). They served the background image from the root of their main domain, new url was generated with each request (there seemed to be no pattern that I could match), scripts requesting and displaying the ad were inlined, and the ad itself couldn't be easily hidden as it was attached directly to the <body> somehow. I played with blocking it for a few minutes and then just gave up and used different website.
They went back to regular ads after the election, but I know they are saving this crap for later. Oh, and they also do pop-up asking you to disable the ad blocker.
How will search engines make money if not by ads? How will free webmail providers exist?
How do other businesses do it? By providing goods and services the customer wants at a fair price. Radical I know, it’s only worked for like, thousands of years...
Ads provide wealth redistribution. Resources are given to poor people subsidized by rich people.
Don’t kid yourself. If the major platforms could exclude those who aren’t in their advertisers demographics they wouldn’t waste a single server on them.
Maybe that's the source of the problem: "free", the assumption getting a service without paying somehow.
I'm old enough to remember a service, which added a footer into your IE5 and showed ads constantly, and in exchange, you got paid, with actual money. (Pocket money level, of course; unfortunately I can't recall service names, this was pre-2000.)
Getting a service for viewing ads - that is fine.
Telling me it's free then showing me ads - that's just plain dishonestly and/or lying, so don't tell me not to block ads: I never agreed to them explicitly.
And as for information access: Wikipedia, one of the most well known source of information, is running on donations - subscriptions, really. It is viable. Makes no money for investors though and serves and actual purpose, like a library.
They don't lose billions because some people hide annoying stuff that makes their pages esesstially unusable and have no extra benefit because ... I personally don't think this kind of online marketing actually works. I cannot imagine someone actually buying something because of some meaningless text snippet, a stupid blinking image or a video clip.
Do you really trust your personal opinion on this, versus literally an entire billion dollar industry which has an enormous incentive to get this right, and which thinks this as business DOES work?
So very sorry (and depressed) to say, but there are some sound and scientifically based metrics that show that it does work. I know. You and I can't imagine it. Personally; I think that it can't possibly be bringing in as much money as they spend. But whatever.
If I had some guarantee that if I paid for Youtube and Google Maps they'd stop spying on me, I'd buy a subscription in a heartbeat. Likewise for online news sources.
Tie the advertisement to the type of content that the user is already there to read about. Then you can serve ads from the content web server and make it indistinguishable from content, completely unobtrusive, completely noninvasive, and maybe even welcome.
As a positive example, I like how many YouTube channels take 30 seconds out of a 10 minute video to talk about some company's product that might be of interest to their audience.
Not an annoying video ad that has nothing to do with what I'm reading / watching, just the host talking about a product or service that their audience has a chance to be interested in.
This is the only type of internet ad that has ever worked on me. They read-out a promo code unique to their channel that gave me a 10% off discount upon purchase. Not just that, but the channel got a kick-back for promoting relevant content, and the advertiser got data telling it exactly how effective money-spent on this channel was by virtue of the promo code.
No tracking of my habits was required, and all parties involved probably got detailed-enough feedback as to their campaign's effectiveness.
I completely agree. I cannot stand some random YouTube ad that YouTube itself plays before videos because it's not relevant and I do not trust the people that are marketing it.
When I see someone I trust on YouTube recommend a product in a pre-roll ad or the like, then I don't really skip it and I do really keep those companies in mind in case I ever am looking for a product that they might offer.
If-and-only-if the sponsorship or product recommendation is properly disclosed as a paid promotion[1], this is a great way to handle product promotion.
> trust
This is the key feature. The advertiser risks trusting that the promoter will show their product in a positive light. The promoter risks their own reputation on the quality of their endorsements.
This element of risk hopefully serves as an incentive to maintain a high quality of both the product and the endorsement. Bad manufacturers and poor quality (or scandalous) services should lose access to trustworthy endorsers with (hopefully) large audiences. Good manufacturers and high quality services won't want to associate with cheap shills.
The only problem I see is that places like YouTube are not optimizing for quality endorsers. Their focus on engagement is driving away people that try to create quality; may have already left. Those that remain are becoming increasingly formulaic, uninspired, risk-adverse, and "advertiser safe".
[1] Which is required by law![2] This probably also means disclosing if you got a free copy for review purposes[3] of a product that would otherwise cost money or have a non-monetary value. The disclosure must also be "clear and conspicuous"[4].
> I like how many YouTube channels take 30 seconds out of a 10 minute video to talk about some company's product that might be of interest to their audience.
I like how many podcasts have ads with predictable lengths, so I can skip them with the "fast forward" button without hearing them. NPR is 4 skips; Slate is 8-10. It seems like "deep learning" should have figured this out by now.
Only because they’re using comskip. Don’t give Plex credit for simply setting a post process script. It’s also not very reliable as you need to tweak the settings per channel/show and so on.
I kind of hate the idea of having marketing-planted material appearing indistinguishable from real content. Most of that is the general distrust I have towards large organizations in general.
That said, one could argue that all content is "marketing-planted" even when it's not an ad. There's always an agenda or at least bias. That's a fair point. Carry on good sir.
People already pay journalists to mention products or write reviews, Facebook runs ads in the feed that at a glance look like regular posts, and internet commenters (colloquially called shills) get paid to promote views or companies.
They already do this if possible. The VAST majority of publishers are selling only a small percentage of their own ad space (the giants of the industry might be different, but even they probably have third party networks to fill gaps in their inventory). Instead, they partner with networks who auction ads off to the highest bidder. That bidder is usually going to be a company who trusts the ad network to track users and show ads relevant to either the interests they've shown or the current content.
I work with a publisher on these sorts of things (I am not an ad network, though). Some of those networks have strict prohibitions against showing ads on pages featuring certain types of content, and so we've had to build our own system to display ads on those pages which work with networks which are fine with that content. The publisher does sell its own ad spaces to interested local parties, but these are usually accompanied by periodical ad sales because the company ultimately makes more money selling ads through networks.
In theory this is a good idea but in practice it leads to thousands of low quality "top ten things you need when going camping" style websites only created to sell things.
> [...] serve ads from the content web server and make it indistinguishable from content
This sounds like an argument for sponsored content. At least with the current ad strategy, it can be relatively easy for a user distinguish ads from content. How do we distinguish a YouTube video that ends with the statement "this video was brought to you by [sponsor not relevant to the content]" and a YouTube version of an infomercial?
I was reading the news with Safari on iOS 11.2 with a new iPhone X recently. As I was browsing different sites I noticed I was getting redirected to those scammy "You've won a cruise" style websites. I had no idea ads were so out of control. I've been using ad blocking technology for 10+ years and never see it first hand. It's pretty crazy that website operators have to create such a terrible user experience to survive these days.
I've been using 1Blocker on iOS for ages now and can't tolerate the mobile web without it. There are several other good blockers, too, including Firefox Focus. I highly, highly recommend using one.
Advertisers need to fuck off. Ads are never going to work on the web - the ad bubble needs to pop already! Advertising on the web is a horrifying web of fraud, psuedoscience, and invasive tracking and sensitive data hoarding. Frankly, it should have been outlawed by now.
While everything that is going on with ads is horrible, it does work. This is very wrong side to hope for things get better. There is fraud but companies pay premium for ads because of it and in the end customers.
I agree, but it will be ugly. These "ad" companies are really surveillance companies who can currently print money by selling ads. When the bubble pops, they'll still have all of their surveillance data, but will be forced to sell it in different and sleazier ways. Think credit reporting that is technically not "credit reporting," job applicant screening based on web histories, reporting on political dissidents, etc. FB/GOOG will get seriously evil as they collapse.
Disabling javascript is the best anti-anti-adblock solution. I wish chrome added an option for tampermonkey scripts to be run with disabled js, that would make this solution perfect.
Brave (at least on mobile) has a handy toggle by default right in the tool bar for blocking javascript and trackers. I don't use anything else on mobile anymore. Been using it about 50% of the time on desktop as well. Thinking about doing the micro-payments thing they offer.
> I wish chrome added an option for tampermonkey scripts to be run with disabled js, that would make this solution perfect.
that's up to tampermonkey but maybe it's possible that google wouldn't like it since it would let userscripts access extension apis
what tampermonkey does is inserting the script into the page in a script tag to isolate it from the extension[1] and let it access variables defined by scripts on the page, but if scripts are blocked on the page it just doesn't run
i made my own custom js manager (with no userscript api support) that lets you choose if the script should be ran in the extension or page context (defaults to extension which works with scripts blocked) but i don't know if it's in good enough state to put on the internet and i've never really made things for anyone but myself
I've found Policy Control [0] to generally be a better choice than completely disabling JavaScript. Way fewer sites break with my defaults: disabling third-party resources and requests prevent most ads and trackers.
I fiddled with disabling 3rd party scripts a lot, but the problem are inline scripts on some pages. They detect adblock that way and serve a cookie which if detected by the server translates all 3rd party links to first party like a proxy which makes this technique useless - check e.g. idnes.cz - go to this site with an adblocker, reload the page multiple times and check cookies for adb and adb.key. I mean sure, you can disable cookies for the domain but it would be easier if I could just run my own script and disable everything else.
Ads are inherently psychologically abusive, targeting your insecurities and exploiting sex and basic instinct to move product.
There needs to be a fundamental shift from the old tv and radio model of advertisers targeting everyone through inescapable ham fisted and manipulative ads, to a system that is all but dormant until I query it for a service.
Show me nothing, nothing at all, until I make the effort to ask the question "what products are available for $need?"
If I'm on a website and begin searching, give the site the ad revenue.
> Ads are inherently psychologically abusive, targeting your insecurities and exploiting sex and basic instinct to move product.
This is a pretty wild claim. Most ads I see are relatively tame (like the “Build on AWS” and iPhone X ads I see around San Francisco), and I don’t see them “exploiting sex or basic instinct.”
Ads targeted at women almost universally target their vulnerabilities in subtle ways, many of which are culturally cultivated and manipulated by marketers. Consider how the food industry plays on weight anxiety: "light", "guilt free" (why should anyone feel guilt over eating?), "sinful", "temptation", "fear X". All the foods are "out to kill you" or at least make you "fat and undesirable". It's all manufactured, alarmist fear-mongering designed to sell stuff. It works. Very few people see through this game.
This then extends to other industries. Chocolate is heavily marketed to women as a "decadent" "indulgence" for those times you want to let loose the strictures of life. So the diamond industry cooks up a way to sell crap brown diamonds specifically to women as a way to treat themselves with "chocolate" ice. No man required so you can express your feminism in full force. Go girl power!
This changes the very language we use. Decadent no longer has its original meaning of severe depravity any more because advertisers co-opted it in the mid-70's to apply whenever you eat a candy bar. Now it's just a bon mot women's pulp lit. sprinkles in every few paragraphs regardless of the topic.
Firstly, none of those examples are subtle. I'm not sure when the actual words fear, temptation, sin and guilt were redefined to be 'subtle' manipulation, and these words are literally used in the advertisements.
Secondly, the indulgence food industry doesn't care about cultural inclinations in the way you argue. They didn't set up a culture of considering fatty or carb rich food bad for one's health, or sinful. They'd be happy if everyone considered eating cake to be a wonderful thing, that rich, famous, inspirational people do in great quantities.
> Decadent no longer has its original meaning of severe depravity any more because advertisers co-opted it in the mid-70's to apply whenever you eat a candy bar.
Sin based language has been fading in intensity for generations. We have a show on the Disney channel celebrating "evil" during Christmas.
However the association of candy bars and decadence didn't come from advertisers originally. Gluttony is a deadly sin, and for puritan American settlers indulging in such pleasures of the flesh outside of special holy days would have been seen as downright decadent.
Who mentioned subtle? That's not even moving a goalpost, that's conjuring one out of thin air.
> However the association of candy bars and decadence didn't come from advertisers originally.
Again: so? The point is they use it. The point of many ads being "inherently psychologically abusive" stands, and I count the space wasted on sophistry to try and wriggle out of that as further damage caused by it.
I don’t necessarily deny your broad claims, I just wonder where to draw the line. For example, given that obesity is a prevalent and serious health risk, not to mention that being more fit can make you feel better and be more attractive, is it inherently bad to advertise healthy food or other products that are intended to make you healthier?
When I worked as an intrusion analyst, I worked on a lot of content to detect domain generation algorithms (DGA) that are sometimes used by botnets and other malware for more robust command and control. Over the last couple of years this has become increasingly frustrated by a lot of websites using algorithmically generated domain names in order to evade adblocker blocklists. Domains like "djbvueiabjqkna.com" are increasingly just some major news website delivering their banner ads.
I'd be happy to install an extension that blocks all sites/content that consider viewing ads a prerequisite for accessing their content.
I run an ad/analytic blocker, and I will never turn it off. I also understand that content creation and hosting costs money. If you're not a company that I already give money to (bank, insurance, other meat space service) then I accept the ad-for-content relationship and choose not to view the content.
The biggest problems are that I can't scale randomly adding domains to a host file, and it's difficult to know the intent of content creators/owners regarding ads.
It would be nice to have a signal, maybe a html tag in the header or something to state the intent regarding ads. I would set my browser/an extension to honor it and block access to content instead of accepting ads.
Interesting how the response of sites with terrible user experiences caused by ad tech is not to say “oh, how can we change our ads so people will accept them?” but rather to find ways to make their user experiences even more horrible, e.g. popping up new unwanted interruptions accusing you of having an ad-blocker.
Hey big web sites, here is the solution, and I won’t even charge you for it: stop making terrible user experiences. I am not trying to block your ad; I am blocking your carelessly-written malware-laden code, your obnoxious pop-ups, your auto-playing videos, your shove-in-my-face-at-the-worst-time messages, your unreasonable consumption of my mobile data, and everything that is making a simple article difficult to load.
I’ll even tell you how to fix this: make more simple text ads, or images that are not animated and not peppered with distracting colors. Make the first paragraph of every article a nice little blurb telling me more about a company that pays you to advertise for them. Put some cute ads in muted colors inline with the content. Create a couple simple links to things that cost money that could support you (apps, T-shirts or whatever). In short, don’t be a complete jerk to the people you apparently “need” to help maintain the costs of your site.
I had to disable my ad blocker today to try out another plugin. The sites were 2-3x slower to load. There is no way anyone can convince me to disable my ad blocker again.
Although I agree with your first point, I think this is a symptom of a much larger problem that we are ignoring:
We have a serious economic problem in which we can't fund things that we want and need. Instead of making advertising "less bad", we should be looking into alternative ways to fund sites and services. Advertising in it's current form simply needs to go.
My bet is microsubscription, but that's only because it's something I've been working on (Robojar). Part of my motivation has been to make the best parts of the early web economically viable.
For a few years it was normal to have relatively successful small sites with good writing and regular readers. They've largely been driven out by the economics of clickbait. I'd like to help that come back by breaking the rigid nexus between traffic and revenue.
Adblock/flattr are doing something very similar. Google Contributor was, but seems to have morphed into a prepaid micropayment scheme. Patreon splits the middle.
I still think the model where a single subscription fee is distributed amongst participating sites/services/apps approximately according to usage is the best overall model.
Flattr is the closest to what I'm aiming at. Some minor scheme differences, quite distinct implementation. One thing I can do differently is to interoperate smoothly with paywalls without revealing user identity.
Do many sites have that much direct editorial control over the ads they run?
I've only ever done a little ad banner work so I don't know how it is for "large" sites, but I assume the people writing and maintaining the code are not the ones actually selling or creating the ads. I assume those decisions are made between sales and the client.
Any site that doesn’t control the content of their ads deserve to be starved out of business as fast as possible by ad blockers. That is: I don’t mind ads, I just don’t accept “adtech”.
Advertisers tend not to be willing to give that much control to whatever medium they're advertising in. More often than not, they can dictate terms because they drive revenue.
Well advertisers have clearly shown that they can't be responsible with the controls they have. It's time their tools are taken away. I'm not sure that how this should happen, but this is a clear sign that something in this system is seriously broken.
And they then use that leverage to attack the readers/viewers. Speaking for myself, I will see the internet wither and die before I'll accept that as a valid model for anything.
I understand that. But once adblocking ensures that the cost of an impression via an “ad network” is an order of magnitude higher than the alternative - their trust will likely increase.
> Interesting how the response of sites with terrible user experiences caused by ad tech is not to say “oh, how can we change our ads so people will accept them?” but rather to find ways to make their user experiences even more horrible, e.g. popping up new unwanted interruptions accusing you of having an ad-blocker.
That's not how online advertising works. If a user doesn't like ads, they block all ads indiscriminately. Changing ads doesn't do anything, because users will always block ads regardless of their quality, at least until the vast majority of ads are "acceptable" -- and even then, many demographics will continue blocking anyway. What is "acceptable", anyway? Make the ad small enough and/or dumb enough that it is no longer worth anything to the advertiser?
> stop making terrible user experiences.
There are plenty of websites with acceptable UX (or UX that isn't practically made worse by ads) that use ads. How many of them are on your whitelist? Do you even know which sites are showing ads if you use an adblocker?
> I’ll even tell you how to fix this: make more simple text ads, or images that are not animated and not peppered with distracting colors.
While this is a reasonable request, it doesn't change the fact that many/most people now have an adblocker on their browser.
There's no doubt this problem has been exasperated by malicious ad creatives. But the onus of correcting the problem lies in the hands of BOTH adblocker developers AND the online ads industry (including publishers, exchanges, and advertisers.)
I always forget to install my ad-blocker after an install. Once I start browsing the web I re-install it. If ads weren't so terrible, I would likely just forget to install it.
> “oh, how can we change our ads so people will accept them?”
If a single website -- say, your local or regional news site -- overhauled its ad experience to become more user-friendly, how would you even notice, if their ad server was added to your ad blocker's blacklist?
Maybe not use 3rd party banner systems infected with cancer and malware code. Adblock systems are not an AI, they just operate on a database of known, obnoxious and annoying shit.
One possibility is to configure ad-blockers to allow only a tiny amount of data to be loaded from 3rd-party domains (i.e. can’t be a 2MB blob of JavaScript, giant animating image or video but a nice text blurb would fit within the limit).
Though I probably would trust it more if it were directly embedded in the site.
This is obviously the right solution. It's what print newspapers and magazines do. Why isn't there a quality first-party ad platform? Is there a business opportunity here?
I think it comes down to control and trust. Right now advertisers can run all sorts of crazy stuff without reproach, they don't want to give that up. Having ads served by the first-party would also require the advertiser to trust them to report all data accurately.
Perhaps another reason is that you lose the ability to track users through third-party cookies?
You can't track exhibitions, but you can surely track clicks. It's not like it's the end of the world, it's only that advertisers want it all, and some more.
Some non-legacy news sites do make ads first-party content, i.e. native advertising or sponsored content. BuzzFeed is probably the most prolific at it [0], with a great tech team and focus, but even BuzzFeed is floundering when it comes to revenue targets. I think Quartz [1] also does it well (though it's also part of the Atlantic media group. Newer outlets do it well too -- e.g. theoutline.com and axios.com -- but both are too new to know how viable their business is.
Of the legacy outlets, New York Times is in the forefront as it is in most digital categories (the creators of D3, Backbone, and other tech have been on the payroll), but most of their gains seem to have come from digital subscriptions, with digital advertising still nowhere close to offsetting the loss in print ad revenue [2]
I'm guessing the reason why native advertising hasn't been the status quo is related to inertia and the timing of seismic change in the industry. When I was in j-school many years ago, the professors were fond of saying that newspapers was basically money printers with profit margins only rivaled by the cocaine trade -- though this was only the case after TV and radio crushed the industry, to the point that most cities became one-newspaper monopolies.
At around the time of the digital boom, i.e. 90s and mid-200s, regional and local newspapers were floundering and bigger players figured it be wise to swoop them up and turn one-city monopolies into regional monopolies. The NYT famously bought the Boston Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion -- and then sold it for $70m in 2013 [3]. McClatchy had become the 3rd biggest publisher after buying the Knight-Ridder chain for $4.5 billion in 2006 [4] and racking up $2B in debt as the entire industry was facing double digit drops in revenue. And all of this was about the time when publishers realized (too late) that Craigslist had effectively decimated everyone: classified ads were once as much as 20-25% of a newspaper's revenue. All this is to say that the news business definitely had the money to blow on innovation [5], but by the time they realized how fucked the Internet was going to make things, they weren't in a position of confidence and stability. There was some efforts -- I think cars.com was a bright spot for McClatchy and Tribune [6] -- but all too little and too late.
The shitty ads that I see news sites serving up seem to me to be a symptom of legacy inertia and existential panic -- going with DoubleClick and other shitty 3rd-party ads probably seemed like the most efficient solution. Remember that most of these companies still have significant print ad departments, because these ads still make way more money than digital. And then there's the traditional firewall between the editorial and ad departments. I worked at a McClatchy newspaper as a reporter and a developer and there were many problems arising from the fact that digital operations were basically under the business side, and effectively in an entirely different building.
I think the other problem is that ads are fundamentally a different experience in print than they are on the web (and for TV and radio). Newspapers have a whole page to work with for ad layout, and ads can come in all kinds of sizes and formats, from full-page ads to small bottom corner ads to tiny classifieds. When newspapers were rolling in money, they were also the primary places for the average citizen to find out things like stock prices, government auctions/notices, apartment rentals, and local sales and events. My parents (Vietnamese refugees) weren't much into reading English publications, but we subscribed to the local newspaper's weekend edition because it was chock full of ads and coupons. Ads were a destination -- arguably, for the average person, they were more valuable and desired than the newspaper's actual editorial content, in the way that people might watch the Super Bowl just for the ads.
In today's web environment, is there any normal mindset in which people actively seek out ads (other than looking them up on YouTube if you missed the Super Bowl)? The kind of native advertising that BuzzFeed et. al seem to have the most success with are advertorials that don't seem like ads. Unfortunately, this creates its own conflict with news-minded organizations.
we (users) would catalog them by md5 hash and block them accordingly. It will always be an arms race: but at the end of the day; it's the users' computer, it's the users' connection.
One can find many examples of corporations successfully making money on things that aren’t good (such as harm to people and the environment). Web sites are merely the latest.
Just because terrible companies exist and are “successful” doesn’t mean that they’re not crappy and it sure doesn’t mean we should give up and not work for something better.
As I've said many times I don't mind ads, but I block trackers. What these websites need to understand is that this is the market in action. We can bemoan trackers. We can legislate against them (at least in principle). But if WEBSITES were to LOSE MONEY if as a result of using trackers and therefore NOT USE THEM then the companies hoarding our data would have to find another business model or go out of business.
Using ad/tracking blockers is the morally correct choice if you want the market to handle this.
I definitely agree that some sites are better than others. I guess I should clarify- in principle I don't mind the concept of showing me ads to pay for a site. I do mind the concept of tracking me.
In my view site-related ads have a higher probability of being relevant to me than search-engine ads.
Unpopular opinion, but I more often than not find the sites plastered with ads to be things I’m better off not having in my life. Junk news, clickbait lists, I just don’t bother.
There is a single site I use regularly that is ad ridden, and I use Brave for it basically exclusively. I can see that they accept Brave Payments as well, so I don’t feel too bad about it.
In the beginning, I tried to avoid ad-blockers in the beginning out of consideration for the sustainability of the content providers.
It took one site for me to start using ad-blockers.
Facebook: they persistently were showing me ads for online MBA programs when I already had completed a better brick-and-mortar one.
I recall that I tried complaining and got no response. For some psychological reason, that did it. I installed an ad-blocker on my and my wife's laptops and never looked back.
If the big sites had been more conscientious about their ad strategy (and specifically allowing people more control over what shows up on their screens) we might not be in an escalating technological war over ads.
I've actually tried telling the company that purchased a useless ad that it's wasting its money- to no avail. I still see ads for something I won't re-purchase for five years or so.
The linked article is highly readable and loads very quickly simply by disabling all JavaScript on the site. Which I do by default. Thank you NoScript.
This is the only way to live. Been doing it for years and while I do end up whitelisting a lot (especially on a new browser) it is so much easier and less annoying than dealing with the ads and crappy scripts.
True. However, I refuse to use AMP as long as it's a google vendor lock in. Also not the solution; if they can provide an amp version without all the tracking and ad JS they could just as simply provide an actual, working website as well.
- you now have 70 new tracking cookies
- a degraded battery
- have exceeded your bandwidth allotment
- probably some malware payload that exfiltrated your contacts via a 0-day XSS
- almost certainly slower UI/scrolling performance
> Also, I'm not sure where the irony is here.
the irony of degrading people's experience [via popups, countdowns, etc] who refuse to load slow and annoying ads.
Y'know, you could not force multiple tracker scripts and obtrusive ads on me.
Stupid bastards.
The sad part is that anti-adblocking may work in their favor because the average person isn't going to go as far as to stop using certain websites or turn off JavaScript. It may get to that point with me, though. I already refuse to use most websites that try to block my ad blocker, autoplay videos, open modals too early, etc.
It's not about ads, but the types of ads that are presented. There would be backlash if the types of ads we see on the internet were equally as plastered everywhere in real life, but for some reason we've just got to deal with it on the web.
I generally don't disdain people for doing things for a living, but I'd openly thumb my nose at developers and anyone else involved in thwarting adblockers and tracking blockers. Talk about a sisyphean job that helps nobody except one of the slimiest industries to exist.
A lot of people would be willing to pay for web content; Patreon and the wealth of content on YouTube are a testament to this. But websites that let you pay to remove ads have a problem, and it's that they don't use a unified system to manage subscriptions. The user is somehow supposed to manage what sites they're subscribed to. It'd make more sense if news sites, for example, could integrate with a service where you could manage your subscriptions to these sites as well as more content.
Without adblocking, the web is unusable for most sites. Full page ads, video ads that follow you while you scrolling, popup, malwares, bitcoin mining, tracking, etc...
TBH, the only solution is browser makers put out an ad acceptable standard. However, with Google's revenue base on ads, I doubt there will be any change to it until someone come along and disrupted the browsers.
Its like email. Email without spam filters is unusable for most people. Scams, fraud, malware, targeting of vulnerable people in society. At some point people have enough and the market falls into even further decay. The web is where email were before 2000, still somewhat usable without a blocker but has reached the breaking point for a lot of users.
The major difference between email and web advertisement is that the web has so much more money invested into the system, so the browsers and the biggest advertisement system that exist is trying to save the market by ad acceptable standard. Will be interesting to see if they can do what email advertisement could not. Personally I doubt it, as email, scam, and fraud is remains something which the publishers refuse to take responsibility when distributing. Practically every country in the world has advertisement laws, except that none of them is followed on the web.
>the only solution is browser makers put out an ad acceptable standard. However, with Google's revenue base on ads...
funny you should call out google for this, as in february chrome will start blocking ads (including google's) on websites that violate the policies defined here: https://www.betterads.org/standards/
- We miss the old internet of independent creators.
- We love ad blockers.
The rise of the second has in no small part injured the first. Money is a big incentive for independent creators, and removing it from the equation has a chilling effect.
I wish, instead of fighting Ad Blockers, they would try as hard to fix they way they run ads. Not to mention the sites, which only exist to display ads and practically don't have their own content except for clickbait headlines.
A side comment: while blocking ads might reduce revenue for sites, it also means the advertiser has to pay for views by people who wouldn't click on the ads anyway.
The thing is that ad blockers don't often don't discriminate between acceptable ads and unacceptable ads and just block everything. Even if you put a lot of effort to make your ads better most people will just block them regardless.
Ad blockers generally _don't_ block acceptable ads. Acceptable ads, by my definition, are ads which are hosted by the website owner and doesn't include spyware; even a small banner ad from a third party ad platform is not acceptable, because regardless the size of the third party ad, it's part of the ad company's surveillance program.
Ads which take the form of an <img> tag pointing to an image hosted on the same domain, aren't blocked (at least in my experience).
Yes, that is the collateral damage inflicted by participating at the current ad model far to long. However, for sites who really want to change, this isn't a real problem. First of all, if you don't serve ads via "ad networks" but as part of your hostet content, I don't think the ads are getting blocked by default. Also, if a site with true content and regular readers has a proper ad model, they can just ask their readers to whitelist their site. If you don't just ask because you don't want to get your ads blocked, but at the same time can tell your readers why this won't be a problem for them, I think many would whitelist the site - if whitelisting is needed at all.
Yeah, any site that pops-up "pls whitelist us!!" gets an instant X on the tab from me. It sucks, but I will never tolerate ads of any kind, no matter how good or bad. To me, they are done, along with tracking on the web (including mobile).
Oh, and before you scream at me, what about people that simply disable JS, which is basically how all of this works anyway.
I'm not entitled to a free web, I get that, but ads are a failing revenue model due to years of sustained abuse, and that damage is not going to be reversed ant time soon.
I would accept ads as the price of a web without paywalls, if they behaved like printed ads: being static, without user tracking, just selected by the relevance of the content they are placed in. Then ads might not only bring revenue to the publication but might be genuinely interesting to me.
This is not a complete truth. Yes, many of them are scam, especially the big, fat, ugly things the adblocks are invented to block.
However, the need for a list of contractors for works is also required, but things like yellow pages is sort of dead, and if you offer services - eg. you're a freelance photographer, designer, etc. - you need to make yourself visible somehow.
I'm not opposed to ads per se but simply the extra workload it puts on the browser. What baffles me though is the across the board negativity and Robin Hood-like mentality here from people who are, to a large part, directly or indirectly monetizing their work by means of advertising.
I find that ad blocking is a must for older relatives, and I think anyone managing technological access for the elderly ought to also be installing ad block.
Advertisers love to scare old people in every way, and then peddling them scam solutions and pills.
I have JavaScript off and I don't get that... I suppose JS off doesn't count as an ad-blocker, despite how effective it is.
(I know there are many more sites these days rendering simple static content with JS, possibly in an attempt to defeat/confuse others like me --- but my solution for them is either Google's text-only cache, or the Back button. Chances are I can find the same or even better content elsewhere; forcing me to jump through hoops ensures I'm not coming back.)
TBF, the article does admit as much. I also don't mind this sort of thing as long as it's a reasonable request (not sure if it is tho cause I block all javascript lol)
Can someone explain to me why they want to show you the ad even when they don't care if you look at it, let alone click on it? Are advertisers still paying for just showing the ad?
Actually, I don't mind these. You can click them away if you want and it wont reappear (at least on TC, on spiegel.de the nagscreen reappears after 20s or so of reading time).
While these anti ad blockers may succeed confusing pattern matching ad blockers, how are they going to work against domain/IP list based (i.e. hosts file) ones?
If they would go back to ads hosted on their own servers they likely wouldn’t get blocked. That means the ad network doesn’t get to track the users though.
Given that banner ads are a major malware vector, I'll disable my ad-blocker when sites take responsibility and reimburse me for the time and money spent repairing computers affected by the malware they inevitably end up serving.
> It turns out that many ad providers are offering anti-blocking tech in the form of scripts that produce a variety of “bait” content that’s ad-like — for instance, images or elements named and tagged in such a way that they will trigger ad blockers, tipping the site off.
you don't need a provider to help detect ad blocking in most cases. just serve a script from your server called `ads.js` that modifies some global js variable or does an ajax post to some endpoint indicating it was served....or "pixel.gif".
If I came to a site, liked what it was about, noticed it didn't get any hits by uBO and saw an affiliate link with text (no images hosted elsewhere) like "Do you need AAA batteries and would like to support our site? Click Here", it's very likely I would click the link if I will need the thing any time soon. It doesn't have to be related to the content of the page or fit the genre of the site, it doesn't need to try and guess exactly what I need at this very second or prey on my insecurities. Just links to basic necessities.
Thats exactly the edge of the cliff everyone jumped off so many years ago. Even if they don't have to drop in a third-party JS snippet on their site to get that feature, now you have to question the motives of the author.
I have always been against ads and misguiding Internet users. Ads should be strictly regulated and the Internet should be completely free and open, it is that simple.
I wonder why the major websites are not going for the old way of "self-hosted" ads where the ad networks buy a space in the website and the website shows it at that space from their own domain and it is harmless.. That I'd consider allowing in my laptop.
It's not the ads themselves that make me run to the blockers. It's their creepiness and tracking. If they're just images shown same to everybody, then I'm okay.
I think I was not clear. I meant to say that instead of hitting the users with creepy ads that the users block anyway or have developed a "mental ignore",
May be the ad companies can sell harmless image ads that content publishers can serve from the same domain as the content is. No tracking, no user customizations. The user knows what they click.
Why would millions of people working at ad companies go out of business in the above scenario?
The ines that are writing creepy user tracking code will have to go. But, I don't sympathize with them. They will find some Tyler's meaningful to do with their skills.
Imho, just because millions are doing/depending on the creepy stuff doesn't justify their presence.
I wish I could view a version of Hacker News in which ALL links to articles that are behind a paywall are just hidden from me. I would just rather not see them at all.
Ad blocking seems like a possible application for machine learning, to distinguish between ads and content.
Anti-ad blocking also seems like a possible application for machine learning, to distinguish clients that are blocking ads and those that are not.
In a battle between the two it seems like the anti-ad blocking side will win. They have resources (big companies with lots of money and server farms, versus small developers and browser-adons) and incentive (earning money versus improving my web experience).
I use an ad-blocker but I am not optimistic about the future of ad-blockers.
If anti-ad-blocking countermeasures compel ads to become undetectable as ads, then they would, it seems, become non-popups, non-animated, silent, and not mess with webpage layouts. So, less annoying. That outcome looks like a significant victory to me.
I am still optimistic about ad-blocking. Because the client system has the final say for how websites are displayed.
Using machine learning for ad blocking suffers from the same issue malware detection has : your "environment" will actively try to game your detection system, which can greatly hinders the learning phase.
I'm not entirely sure AI is currently fit to solve cat-and-mouse games such as ad blocking.
I use an ad-blocker and have since 2011. To get around broken/hidden content, I just copy/paste the link into Terminal after $lynx. Works almost every time.
This article got me thinking. There should be an ad company without any tracking. And the only company that I would actually trust with this is Mozilla.
I wish content suppliers would listen more to clients. Clients want more content without ads, so why not invest more into offering content without ads?
What I'm not ok with is third party content from who knows where downloading who knows what script. And trackers. And putting so much junk on a page that I can't access the real content in a timely fashion. Get rid of all that and I'm happy to forgo my ad blocker.
And if you are wondering why they haven't already, it's because google/stackoverflow/reddit etc. are already providing the service for 'free'. So as soon as they shut down, someone else will make an alternative.
> So as soon as they shut down, someone else will make an alternative.
They exist already. They're mostly horrible.
I pretty religiously use DDG, but even then I probably use the !g operator every third search or so.
Reddit's already almost entirely open-source IIRC. People have used it to make alternatives. Check out Voat, you can see the alternative in action (you might not like what you find, though).
They're horrible becuase not a lot of effort goes into them. If there's no alternative, then they will drastically improve.
Voat is bad becuase of the users. Not becuase it is an alternative to Reddit. If all Reddit users switched to coat, it would have a pretty similar culture and content, becuase it will have the same users.
I also use ddg but I haven't used a !g in over a year.
> They're horrible becuase not a lot of effort goes into them.
And not a lot of effort goes into them because there's no money to be made off e.g. a Reddit clone without doing the same things Reddit is doing. A vicious cycle.
> If there's no alternative, then they will drastically improve.
Ah yes, monopolies (virtual or otherwise) are well-known for drastically improving their products.
> Voat is bad becuase of the users. Not becuase it is an alternative to Reddit.
Alternatives are often created by people with strong viewpoints, e.g. Voat.
> If all Reddit users switched to coat, it would have a pretty similar culture and content
This makes a lot of assumptions, namely that the admins of Voat wouldn't quash that (and there's little reason to believe they wouldn't).
The big problem with Reddit was that the moderators abused their power to censor. (and in some cases, moderation was infiltrated with bad-actors, trying to create a controversy to manipulate a group of Reddit users to get them to leave).
The problem with Reddit alternatives like Voat; was that there were no responsible moderators who would censor the absolutely indefensible.
In other words: Welcome to the same problem the Internet has known since use-net. Hell. Since the BBS days.
At this point use of an ad-blocker for me is no longer a question about ethics or business models or the like, but about security.
I use an ad blocker because ad networks serve malware. I'm sure they don't mean to, but they do, so I block them. I'm no longer concerned with their intent, but concerned with what is actually happening.
How does this work? I'm not in webdev so I don't know the ins and outs of browser editing, is it really possible to only accept a portion of a website and get around those things? Wouldn't this also be useful for getting around pay-to-view sites as well?
Those types of limitations can be implemented either client or server -side. When it's clientside, removing overlays from DOM can easily circumvent paywalls and such, but when it's server side, there's nothing you can do.
They usually don't send you the content for a paywall without a login. But adblock detection is another story. They need to render the ad to detect that it's being blocked. They could use some js to do this before downloading the rest of the content, but they usually don't.
> We choose Adblock as it is one of the most popular. It is also possible to use Adblock Plus or uBlock, as the way they operate is exactly the same — HTTP filters and HTML element hiding.
AdBlock in the Chrome store uses Adblock Plus filtering engine[1], so to say the way these two "operate is exactly the same" makes sense.
However uBlock Origin uses its own code base, and is far better equipped than AdBlock/Adblock Plus to deal with anti-blockers, so to say that the way uBO operates is "exactly the same" is a stretch.
* * *
[1] Since version 3.0: https://help.getadblock.com/support/discussions/topics/60000... -- it's not explicitly stated in the announcement but this code repo mirror shows it: https://github.com/kzar/watchadblock/blob/c5f5b7f535182d6774...