FuckAdBlock
github.com
github.com
Plus, ads are not the only way to make money online. So, if it isn't working for a company, then it's time to change the business model.
That being said, ultimately as long as the user has control over what runs on their computer, they have control. Period. Things like this are doomed to failure.
It's so silly. Their pages are static.
The site will probably die eventually but it seems like that is fair. What doesn't seem fair to me is leaching add supported content.
Buy viagra today.
Sure, you can embed ads in regular text, but if humans can detect it then maybe computers can, too. Of course, it might be harder to detect product placement. You should read the chapter about that in my upcoming book. It's only $9.99.
HN itself is one big advertising platform to promote Y Combinator Startups.
I wish to block a few things, and ads tend to fall under these categories. If ads did not fall under these categories, I wouldn't mind them:
-I wish to minimize my attack surface.
-I wish to minimize resource consumption.
-I wish to use my display to see the content I am focused on.
-I wish to not worry about distracting / annoying / being judged by others.
-I wish to not be tracked - preferably not by the site I am visiting, and definitely not by random third parties, and certainly not by random third parties in countries with questionable laws.
Unfortunately, most ads seem to fall under all of these categories.
This: http://jonathandub.in/cognizance/ will always be easier to do in the relatively constrained environment of the web.
Again, the cat and mouse game continues. And the ads cannot win while the user has control over their own computer.
AdBlockerPlus (Chrome extension) allows ads as long as there's no video, animation, or js shenanigans. That seems reasonable enough to me.
It's actually been amazing how nice things are with faster page loads, and fewer annoying distractions...not to mention no video/audio autoplay.
I for one would rather not see an ad versus ad blocker arms race.
Same for me. I can live with the annoying ads but losing a day rebuilding my computer is not worth it
Life has been much better with adblock. I turn it off on sites that I know don't use abusive advertising practices, but it's strictly opt-in at this point.
Here's a short explanation on how an add blocker might be build for iOS 9: https://www.hackingwithswift.com/safari-content-blocking-ios...
AdBlock: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock/gighmmpiob...
AdBlockPlus: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-plus/cfhdo...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...
faster, less memory footprint, just as many features
I'm on the other side, with the good guys and all the technical advantages. Good luck to your side!
I thought the purpose of ads was to generate revenue so that content could be created in infrastructure built. You know, like it's been done for a few centuries now...
Netflix, HBO, and Amazon are creating the best content in the world and they're not using advertising to pay for it. Low margin ad-supported television is one of the worst aspects of modern cultures.
And that's just from the Americas.
I assume you do seeing how you like to casually quote Shakespeare in your HN comments.
You said (quite cynically):
> The only purpose of ads is to forcefully track, distract, and exploit people's privacy for financial gain.
Then when someone pointed out that in general that's not the point of ads, but rather to support businesses that wish to keep their fees nominal or nonexistent, as has been done for a very long time, you said:
> What businesses were ad supported centries ago?
To which I replied with proof from a newspaper some 300 years ago.
And then you, as a last-ditch effort (I like this one the best):
> you're trying to be technically correct instead of actually correct.
Hilarious!
2. My assertion that advertising was historically a minuscule part of civilization and played little to no role in most people's lives is entirely correct.
3. It was misleading to suggest that you were even technically correct. I never claimed advertising didn't exist, nor would I ever. I could point to ancient sources of advertising much older than your newspaper clipping.
4. I already replied to you, clarifying that I believe "In some cases advertising may have been a net positive but I think the future can do entirely without."
As a bit of an outlier example, PortableApps.com makes use of another detection technique to then show a simple message in place of the first ad on the page and hide any remnants of the other ads so that the page layout doesn't look sloppy for ad-block users. The message is shown on all internal pages (not the homepage) when ads are blocked and asks users to consider allowing ads for our site with a link to a page explaining how to ad an exception or making a donation to help keep us funded. The small message uses the same fonts and colors as the rest of the sidebar navigation so it's not distracting and has CSS that reserves space for it in the event of ads being blocked so the content doesn't jump at all and distract from reading a page. I realize it's a bit of an outlier case, of course, but many users do then allow ads or make a donation. Granted our ads are bit less intrusive than many sites with only a single sidebar ad above the fold, no banner ad, no popouts/flyovers, no download button ads, no ads that autoplay sound, etc and many of our visitors are open source/free software fans.
For the curious, here's a link to an internal page so you can see it in action with your ad-blocker active: http://portableapps.com/support
0: https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer#supported-sites
It will be bad for bandwidth, bad for readability, bad for layout. But it'll likely make no one see content without ads.
My only question is: If users can block ads should content creators not be able to detect that and not serve the request?
It may be a horrible business decision but it only seems fair to me.
Yes, of course, but how are you going to do that, and is the end result going to be what you want? It seems to me like if a website goes down that road, it ends up in an arms race with some of its users and the authors of adblockers.
The biggest issue with being able to detect ad blockers is that you could do something nefarious, so I understand why the blockers don't want to be detected. I could just imagine my someone going to an innocent site with an adblocker enable and getting goatse'd for example.
// Recommended audit because AdBlock lock the file 'fuckadblock.js' // If the file is not called, the variable does not exist 'fuckAdBlock' // This means that AdBlock is present if(typeof fuckAdBlock === 'undefined') { adBlockDetected(); } else {
The advertising industry, and those that employ it, need to aggressively move against bad practices, or the consumers will continue to do it for them.
edit: B did exist in the days of windows 95 but I don't see it as a problem now. The biggest issue is auto play video or audio which even browsers makers are taking on.
Savvy users can tune these things out, and/or know sites to avoid, but for the lay-person it is hazardous.
The only time I've seen this is when I've gone to shady websites (porn, filesharing, etc). Legitimate websites don't want to piss off their user base and don't have ads like this.
"The problem is that much of the times ads are disruptive, annoying, and potentially harmful"
Do you have statistics to back this up? We seem to need scientific evidence in every other case, but with things like this, you can pull it out of thin air.
There are a small percentage of ads that are disruptive, but the majority are not. It sounds to me like Sysadmins need to start doing their job.
"The advertising industry, and those that employ it, need to aggressively move against bad practices, or the consumers will continue to do it for them."
The consumers will only get punished. Ads are on their way out. What's becoming more popular? Paywalls, ads disguised as movies/videos/actual content.
Think of things like Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz. This is the direct result of consumers creating a culture of avoiding ads.
How about if all of the major Internet providers decide to cut off anyone trying to use Bittorrent because of a small percentage of people abusing it for illegal content??
This is the equivalent of adblocker: punishing all businesses for the actions of a few. Funny how the same people that are against this behavior has no problem using it when it is in their favor.
More bullshit hypocrisy.
Which button are they are most likely to click and do you think that is what they are after?
I suppose it's a good parallel to the drug laws: you push people to the illegal market when it becomes impossible to get what you want through the ethical/legal route.
Remember what happened when advertisers started increasing the volume of their TV spots? Do you think that increased sales, or just annoyed people enough to change channels? And what happened in the end with that? Because my recollection is that the FCC stepped in to curb those practices.
You're not quite making a moral case that it's my duty to open my computer to exploitation to browse the web.
No worries though. Developers will continue to come back to HN and bitch about losing their high paying development jobs.
I'm tired of trying to defend stupid...and just do what everyone else does and capitalize on it instead. The company that writes the most popular Ad block extension has done just this: you can pay to get yourself on a white list. Tell me again how this has anything to do with saving people from malware?
I've done my part for society.
It's amazing that there are so many smart people that can't see the forest through the trees.
FULL STOP
I know there are other business models but I would not be surprised if we hit a point where ad supported content no longer exists. I hope some new "free" business model is developed because I certainly don't want a pay as you go model.
Right now it seems like people want to leach the content with out paying the bills.
But it really only hurts the small business trying to eek out a living. Small businesses will go under and what's left will be large conglomerates.
Hacker news seems to be a popular place for people that no nothing about economics and do everything in their power to willingly give up markets to the likes of large companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.
The interesting part is that that then there's outrage when the above companies abuse their monopoly...when the regulations and culture that you supported created them in the first place!
The main advantage of ads is that they are potentially brain-dead easy to enable profitability if you have lots of traffic. But even then that's not necessarily an objectively good thing.
Also, I wouldn't say that "people want to leach ... with out paying" is accurate whatsoever. Between merch, events, crowd funding, and patronage (patreon et al) there is a massive and rapidly growing amount of money that has been going to content creators direct from content consumers. It's easier than it's been in a long time, perhaps ever, for a creator to support themselves, aside from ads, and it's only getting easier.
http://www.pledgesociety.com/ (Patreon)
There are certainly sites that make way more than $67k per month in advertising fees.
Tipping might be one of the possible business models but it still has a long way to go.
On the mobile side, Apple sells hardware, which pays for the servers that power Siri. Search engines may end up with that model.
The news industry is already dead. Except for the New York Times, Reuters, and the Economist, news sites are mostly fluff.
It's time for a tax on advertising.
Google Adsense recommends you stuff as many ads on to your page as possible. They even alert tell you when you are missing out on revenue by not including the maximum number of ad units.
At the same time Google Search announces a penalty for overly ad heavy sites.
Ultimately, I believe most of Google's "search penalties" actually serve the purpose of driving any site that makes money to paid search. They disguise them as "UX enhancements" but they really just want you to pay for traffic. They are even trying to compete with Amazon in the Google Shopping product.
Edit: I'll followup really quick on how ads can be harmful with regard to content making. Ad revenue scales based on eyeballs alone, that's the primary metric. To maximize profit that means you need the most eyeballs and the cheapest to produce content. That causes a pressure towards tabloid-style content, especially in journalism, which has become a very noticeable trend. When there's a more direct route for revenue from content consumers to producers there's more reward for producing higher value content. Having correctly aligned incentives is hugely valuable, and something that has been sorely missing in regard to a lot of content that was produced in the 20th century.
It's always easy to look at major business changes as hugely scare and potentially calamitous but in the end it's extraordinarily unlikely that the fire to create art can be easily extinguished and the hunger to consume it won't result in sufficient expenditures to enable creators to support themselves. Overall I'd say a lot of what I've seen in regards to how new creators emerge and get on their feet and how that's changed since the dawn of the web-era has been almost exclusively beneficial.
Full disclaimer: I made a decent amount of money from advertising in the past. That doesn't mean I don't sympathize with users/consumers. The ad industry pushed too far and users are pushing back.
Also I'd probably prefer ads on wikipedia versus the yearly begging but that's another topic.
For some reason you seem to fall into the trap of thinking that ads vs "begging" are the only options, though that's not going to be true, isn't true now, and hasn't been true for literally decades. There are tons of ways to make money with a non-paywalled content site on the internet, as witnessed by... the many ways that people have been making money on such things for going on two decades.
Probably. Though I'm pretty sure the ability to make money (not necessarily form ads) was a driver.
It's not the only way to make money on the Internet, but it is one of the only ways someone with very little money can actually make a living on the Internet.
One more example of the tech community helping large companies take over entire industries and make it nearly impossible to start a company without massive capital.
It started with open source: Businesses now can take entire open source apps, which were engineered for free, and hire software mechanics at 1/4 the cost.
Napster and file sharing only made it impossible for the average independent artist to make a living on music. I know a handful of artists that could at least make a decent living before file sharing changed the mindset of the average user. Now, nobody will buy their music because they can just get it for free. Services like Spotify are a joke with nearly 1 million plays netting the artist something like $100.
Think about it next time you see these articles that claim that the only way to have a successful business is to come from a rich family and realize that the reason this is the case is because of increased government regulations and a community culture that supports the further destruction of small businesses.
It's not really a contradiction. You're just like a drug dealer who knows better than using the product yourself.