Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by hahainternet | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

hahainternet

> a) it disavantages smaller players in the ad market

How?

> b) Who determines which ads are "unintrusive"?

Adblock

View on HN

Answer to "How": (Copied from another comment of mine) a) The smaller company would have lower margins because they invest much more in superior materials, QA, R&D, etc. Where the larger company has an advantage because they invest more of their margin on ads

Regarding Adblock: b) I posted another comment elsewhere about how choosing which ads are "acceptable" or not presents challenges. There is a lack of objectivity. It should be a choice between ads or no ads.

Adblock was recently sold to an undisclosed buyer[1]. They told users of the switch the same day they started the "Acceptable Ads" program. I don't want someone I don't know controlling which ads bypass my ad blocker..

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/adblock-gets-sold-acceptable-...

To be precise, you don't want someone whose interests oppose your own controlling the ads. I don't use ABP, but paid "acceptable" ads make them a straightforward protection racket, beholden to advertisers who can pay. Google and the other big players can buy them off for pocket change, so they're useless.

> Google and the other big players can buy them off for pocket change, so they're useless.

Why do people post this nonsense. Their use is to block intrusive ads. They are very clear about it and every argument against this has been incredibly misleading.

Whether payment is required or not isn't even clear, because it is mentioned only as a potential.

Like many others, I use an ad blocker at least as much to protect privacy as to reduce annoyances and malware. ABP's criteria for "acceptable" say nothing about tracking, so while they're a step in the right direction, they're mostly irrelevant to me.

The obvious conflict of interest from making payments even optional for advertisers makes them clearly untrustworthy.

> I don't want someone I don't know controlling which ads bypass my ad blocker..

Then I think your only option to remain logically consistent is to not install any ad blocker.

Because what people want from an ad-blocker is an affirmation of their logical consistency, and not "blocked ads". Uh huh.

I think there is a big difference here between distinguishing "is this an ad? y/n" vs "is this an allowed ad? y/n"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com