Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0x0 | Hacker News Reader

And then content makers are still scratching their heads on why people please won't stop using adblockers?!

To be fair, I suspect that content blockers aren't puzzled as to why you would want to block ads. What they're trying to do is make it feel morally/ethically unacceptable to block ads.

This is an example of them failing to live up to their role in the their preferred moral order (i.e. "you don't have to block our ads out of safety concerns because we'll safeguard them for you").

I don't recall them saying anything about the safety of ads one way or the other. Their arguments seem to center around calling things theft and restating the thesis that if their ad revenue dries up, their content does as well. The safety or lack thereof of advertising isn't mentioned. It isn't part of the narrative they want everyone discussing.

This is more like Banquo's ghost: Something they hoped everyone would forget which comes back to haunt them.

Out, out, damned spots indeed.

Exactly. Adblocking is almost more important than regular antivirus these days. Arguing against adblocking while serving ads from third party networks with unverified javascript is like arguing that running antivirus software is morally wrong.

I completely agree everyone should be blocking ads for security, but this comparison is not right. Antivirus should already protect you from many known javascript-based malware. The difference is that antivirus will block (some of) the attacks being executed and let ads through. Adblock will block both normal ads and malware.

That's why nobody ever argued that running antivirus is morally wrong.

> Adblock will block both normal ads and malware.

Normal ads are malware for the brain. It's just that this type of malware is legal and considered by many to be a respectable occupation.

People have argued against running antivirus: the desktop advertising industry. This is why "antivirus" and "antimalware" are separate products. This is the murky world of the "potentially unwanted program" (PUP).

e.g. http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2015/05/sour...

I'm sure there are people who'd like you not to run AV. But the link you presented does not mention anything about them arguing "that running antivirus is morally wrong."

This has nothing to do with blocking ads. You'd still be affected by this hack whether you were running adblock or not - the service is designed to be extremely difficult for adblockers to catch except maybe on a site-by-site basis. It's more of an argument for blocking all scripts.

I'd expect any decent adblocker to already have blacklisted this and similar services.

This is a service publishers use to show ads when a user has a adblocker enabled. It works on the most popular adblocker, adblock plus (firefox/chrome). Not sure if it works on ublock origin or ghostery/others, but those are still a small proportion of all adblock users.

Noscript would have protected you though, which has a pretty large install base.

"ad blocking" includes "ad (blocking blocking )* blocking"

Adblock extensions block tracking as well as an extra perk, sometimes by default (ublock origin does). Ultimately their tracking script is a metric they're using to help sell their product/agenda to more users anyway, so its a form of advertising either way, or at the very least in a similar realm.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com