Firms help websites evade ad blockers | Hacker News Reader

Firms help websites evade ad blockers

bostonglobe.com

27 pointsOatseller36 comments

I block all ads. Full stop. I also whitelist a trimmed set of websites to allow logins. I disallow HTTP/S referrer, DOM storage, WEBRTC, and whole host of other things. I have not seen an ad in years, I have not suffered malware in years, my bandwidth is my own, not to be used for ad servers to serve up their dreck.

The morality surrounding ad blocking is up for debate, but I do not feel guilty because there is no OBLIGATION for me to view ads. Just because you serve them up does not mean I need to view them. I don't view ads on TV, live or DVR'd. I don't look at roadside billboards or look at magazines because they contain too many ads.

I don't like being tracked, seen as a means of income by fly-by-night operations, a target for malware because the ad server operators are too lazy to secure their servers because there is no ROI in server security. In short, I have a right to protect my precious bandwidth and my computers whilst on the Web.

not making any moral judgements, just curious, do you pay for content where possible (via donation or subscription)?

I do if I feel the content is worth it and I currently have multiple subscriptions. However I'm not going to allow ads from any blogger that believes that because I view his content I have to support his website regardless of the quality. The claim that independent bloggers need ad revenue for hosting costs is a joke when you can get dedicated hosting for less than your phone contract, and if you want revenue, create something that is worth it, so people would want to subscribe. Also I will always block 3rd party cookies/trackers regardless.

adding one data point, yes I do. I actually think I'd be better off if I only read that which I subscribed to, i.e. less HN linked articles. It'd be a good way to curate content and save time -- if I am not willing to pay out of pocket for something, I shouldn't waste my time reading it.

One baseball analyst, in particular, Joe Sheehan, has been doing some really open stuff about his newsletter, including financials, etc. It's $35 / year. I usually try to buy a couple of gift subscriptions to friends. I also donate an extra $50 because his content is just that damn good, and it would really hurt me to not have his newsletter to enjoy.

(Interestingly, he only does email newsletters, no web content. Seems to be somewhat to mildly successful at it, although I have no doubt his hourly wage is around minimum.)

> The morality surrounding ad blocking is up for debate, but I do not feel guilty because there is no OBLIGATION for me to view ads. Just because you serve them up does not mean I need to view them.

Do you not tip when you go to restaurants (in America)?

And the Japanese regard tipping as a personal insult. Your point?

I want to ask a question on this subject. Don't websites get paid for(most of?) the ads only when user clicks through?

People talk about turning off ad block "to support creators", but aren't you supporting creators only by clicking on ads?

Personally, I have probably clicked on at most 3-5 ads in the years before I started using adblocker(by accident). Does it even make sense for me to turn it off if I'm not going to click on links anyway?

> Don't websites get paid for(most of?) the ads only when user clicks through?

Depends on the inventory. CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPC (cost per click) pricing models are both common in the online advertising industry, though CPM is more common with higher end publishers:

https://written.com/blog/51/cpm-cpc-cpa-pricing-online-media

> Personally, I have probably clicked on at most 3-5 ads in the years before I started using adblocker(by accident). Does it even make sense for me to turn it off if I'm not going to click on links anyway?

You'll end up clicking more than 3-5.

I've been using a computer without adbock for the first time this week in the last 6 or something years that I've been using adblock. I've clicked on a lot of ads, they're too relevant. Curiously, I'm getting a lot of ads for products that I've already bought.... and I end up clicking on them to find out more info. They're just too relevant, they'll be about the thing you were thinking about just the other day -- you'll click them.

>Curiously, I'm getting a lot of ads for products that I've already bought

Exactly the same thing happened to me. Prior to the purchase I had been doing a bit of web searches -- first for the family of products I was looking for (i.e. not a specific brand) and based on what I read I decided to learn more about one product specifically. Confident about its quality after having read a lot of reviews, I bought it shortly after I had began looking. Several days later I began seeing ads for the product and they kept targeting me for quite a while since then.

When I need something, I will generally research intensely and make a decision in short time. Sometimes the decision will be to not buy, sometimes to buy later and at other times to buy right away.

When I decide to buy later, ads are useful to remind me or to offer competing products which come out in the meantime since when I'd done my research.

Ads about something I decided I didn't want are mostly annoying.

Ads about something I have are always annoying. The only kind of ads which are worse are those for things which are so irrelevant that I've never even considered them.

You've seen ads, unless you've managed to avoid almost all video content. They're just "native ads" -- advertisements worked into the content itself. It's just another evolutionary arms race...

But is the an 'OBLIGATION' for them to serve you content? As such if they want to serve content with ads they have that right. You always have the choice whether you want to view their content, with ads and all. You dont have a right to their content.

Then they can say "hey, you didn't let us serve this ad, you can't see the content!". I'm perfectly OK with that.

And I allow all adds. Haven't had malware problem in ages. And I am getting better at ignoring them. And there is always F12 to remove from the dom something that obscures the content.

I don't blame you for blocking ads because a lot of them are really out of hand (intrusive and deceptive) but I believe your reasoning for having no obligation to view ads is faulty. If everything is fair and square, I believe that you do indeed have an obligation to be served those ads when you're using the default medium that the content is served on (viewing the webpage). I won't get into technicalities of other methods of reading the content like downloading the content to a feed reader, or viewing TV on DVR without ads for that matter.

You of course have the right to ignore the ads, but from the perspective of the content providers and advertisers, it's only fair that the ad gets DELIVERED to the reader. Because on the off chance that you might actually look at the ad, and on the off chance that you're actually interested in what you see and decide to buy ... that small chance for every reader is how the content provider stays in business.

What's with this hateful attitude?

I'm running several non-profit websites where I donate 100% of my ad revenue and people still treat me like I'm the scum of the earth.

"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs."

- Banksy

If you don't already know about it, this is pretty interesting http://adnauseam.io/

Why on earth would they use TV as an example of a medium where ads worked? The response to the 1999 'ad-skipping' digital recorder was a ridiculous amount of lobbying to try and make it illegal, followed by an ever increasing torrent of ads, which has lead increasingly many people to move away from television altogether to other media with fewer ads.

Seriously. Does no-one remember ReplayTV, and the shit-storm that went up against them?

"The Washington Post has begun testing a system that locks out visitors who block advertisements. “In the long run,” said Post spokeswoman Jennifer Lee in an e-mail, “without income via subscriptions or advertising, we won’t be able to deliver the journalism that people coming to our site expect from us.”

The Washington Post site has 21 trackers, ad services, and other junk. They dug their own hole.

> For instance, the Washington Post has begun testing a system that locks out visitors who block advertisements.

I understand that position. But that's a losing position. It's an arms race, ad-blockers will always find clever ways to bypass these schemes then consultants will come with more complicated scripts that will make web pages heavier and harder to visit for those who don't block ads ...

The Washington Post certainly is not going to win that war. The only solution for them on the long run is all their website behind a paywall, like the Financial Times.

I'm curious if youtube is going to do the same, since they introduced an ad free paid offer.

YouTube would dry up and blow away. The vast majority of people use YouTube precisely because it's "free". Google can afford to allow YouTube to remain free.

An industry is born and a few companies laugh all the way to the bank. Just like radar detectors and radar guns (now laser instead of radar). The companies that make the technology supply both sides. Innovation improves the guns so then the innovate the detectors so they innovate the... Charging both sides on an ongoing battle.

Most people don't pay for ad blockers.

I do this the other way round; I block entire sites that use obnoxious ads rather than use an adblocker. Funnily enough, WaPo are on my block list - they must've hit me with a modal (I unblocked them temporarily to see if they're still doing it, apparently not)

The only ads I do block are the 'recommended for you' fake content from outbrain, zergnet, gravity and taboola. Just terrible.

You may be interested in this extension, which will do the site-blocking for you:

http://tinysubversions.com/notes/ethical-ad-blocker/

The Washington Post certainly is not going to win that war.

For tech-savvy people who understand the issues an ad-blocker might be worthwhile even if it means some websites don't work temporarily while the ad-block developers think of new ways around things. For more typical web users though, the Washington Post's approach will result in a line of thought like "I installed that software and my Internet broke because some websites didn't work any more. I'm going to uninstall it." It's not unreasonable to believe ad-blocking might never become a mainstream technology that enough people use for it to change the way websites are funded. That, I would argue, would mean the ad industry has won the war.

Tools that work on the local resolver level:

https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate

https://gaenserich.github.io/hostsblock/