Axel Springer Goes After iOS 9 Ad Blockers in New Legal Battle | Hacker News Reader

Axel Springer Goes After iOS 9 Ad Blockers in New Legal Battle

techcrunch.com

73 pointsdanso67 comments

Axel Springer is not the only publisher that’s taking a confrontational approach to dealing with ad blockers, The FT recently reported. U.K. newspaper City AM banned ad blockers from its website; U.K. broadcasters ITV and Channel 4 have now done the same; and the Washington Post redirects readers to a subscription page, or asks them to sign up to newsletters, or disable their ad-blocking software. Even Yahoo has gotten in on the action, blocking users from their email when they have AdBlock running.

This goes right to the heart of the issue so I felt it was worth highlighting: Who cares if they lock out their content? There are literally millions of news sources on the Internet, all (hilariously) copying each other's posts on what's trending in news, with often amusing (or horrifying) results when the stories are wrong. Oh, I can't read this story on Yahoo? Well I guess I'll just have to pick from the ten thousand freaking other copies of the same information available elsewhere.

We have TOO. MANY. NEWS. WEBSITES. The ad space isn't worth shit because the same ads are being pushed on millions of pages many times over, and the public is so desensitized to them at this point that the click rate is dropping like a safe.

If you work for one of these publishers, get a new job. Fast.

I think part of the issue too is that on some of these sites even if you subscribe, you're not getting an ad-free experience.

Market Saturation: If there is too much product in the market, the product is worthless. News right now is worthless. Way too many providers not pushing enough quality.

Right? It always cracks me up when I see an paywall. It's like, who do you think you are? I don't care whatsoever about your site or business, I care about quickly finding the information I'm looking for.

And you shouldn't care! Their business success is none of your business, you're the customer and you are there for the content, not to help them out. If you're running a business and not making money then your business sucks and you need to do better.

Monetizing via ads is proving to NOT WORK yet so many businesses are still banking on it. I don't fucking get it.

>> U.K. broadcasters ITV and Channel 4 have now done the same

Have they? Just went to their sites, no indications there.... is it just mobile?

I wonder if they're referring to video portions? I'm fairly sure both of them have attempted to block adblocking users from VOD for ages.

No. Try playing some video content on C4, if you're running any kind of adblock, it refuses to play. There was a bit of an 'arms race' back when it was first introduced between C4 and developers on the internet. C4 won, adblockers simply won't work on their site, video ads are unskippable and every 5 mins or so.

Ah, ok, thanks. I'll have a look later from a computer that has a working flash install, this one does not...

Yes, they have made a user-hostile service, that everyone I know avoids in favour of getting the content via another (ad-free) route. Good one.

Just to clarify: Every five minutes? How big are these ad spots, just curious?

> Even Yahoo has gotten in on the action, blocking users from their email when they have AdBlock running.

Wait, really? Users can't read their email if an adblocker is installed? I can't imagine what mother would do if she ran into a error message like that while trying to check her email (but she doesn't use yahoo).

Wow really? I hadn't heard that (and never used yahoo), that's just straight crazy.

I just logged into my all-but-abandoned yahoo account's webmail in Chrome with Ghostery set to block all, then in Chrome again but with AdBlock at default settings (and Ghostery disabled), then in Safari with uBlock (my default) and none of the sessions prevented me from seeing my mail. In fact, Ghostery and AdBlock in Chrome still displayed a Yahoo sponsored ad at the top of the list of unread messages much like GMail's top-ad. uBlock did not show that Ad.

I call false on this claim, but the sample size here is beyond insufficient to draw a wide conclusion.

I'm totally in favor of this type of solution. The go-to justification around here is "it's my computer, I'll use it to display anything I want, just because you served me data over HTTP doesn't give you the right to dictate what's on my screen."

I think it's is a pretty compelling argument, but if we're being fair then the provider should have the right NOT to serve you data based on what you intend to do with it.

> but if we're being fair then the provider should have the right NOT to serve you data based on what you intend to do with it.

Technology is a tool, and the world is not fair. I'm not sending you intention HTTP headers over. I make a request, you send me a response, I do what I want with that response. So sorry that ruins your business model.

> I think it's is a pretty compelling argument, but if we're being fair then the provider should have the right NOT to serve you data based on what you intend to do with it.

As an ad-blocker: I absolutely agree, however, there's no shortage of people offering me the same exact content elsewhere. Basically, supply and demand end up in the consumer's favor.

Likewise: "...essentially all of the ad supported sites I visit are diversions" - https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/AdSupportedWebD...

It's kind of a non-solution when said data is available through so many other providers, though. I don't have an ethical issue with it at all, I just don't see it being effective.

It's pretty stupid what they try to do to get even more money

They somehow managed to get a law in place which prohibits quoting of even small passages online (i.e. Google News) without paying for it. What did Google do? Simply removed them from the results, they tried to sue and lost. Now they gave Google permission to include them for free. What about the smaller services? Who cares about those - loads of news aggregators shut down in response.

Now that (some) adblockers have been ruled legal they sued a bunch of people (youtuber, the adblock forum) for providing instruction on how to get around the anti-adblocker wall they put in Fun times

Even more money? The delicious graphs at http://www.bildblog.de/auflage.php show twelve consecutive years of decline. That's not "even more money".

That's only offline sales. They know this business is dead and aggressively push their online services.

I don't see a downward trend in their over-all profits: http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/451654/umfrage...

> Größter Wachstumstreiber ist das Geschäft mit Kleinanzeigen im Internet wie Immobilien-, Job- und Autoportalen. Hier verfolge Springer eine "sehr aggressive Wachstumsstrategie", sagte Döpfner. Das Ergebnis in diesen Rubrikenmärkten kletterte binnen Jahresfrist um 35,2 Prozent auf 221 Millionen Euro und steuerte damit rund 44 Prozent des gesamten Konzerngewinns bei. [1]

But most of their profits are generated by their online markets for cars, houses and jobs, not their digital journalism.

[1] http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article138064544/Digitalstrate...

Oddly, that graph starts after the graph to which I linked. I can't find anything that covers more years (don't have time to search thoroughly now).

BTW I like your choice of adverb.

"Now they gave Google permission to include them for free. What about the smaller services? Who cares about those - loads of news aggregators shut down in response."

Sounds as if it worked out beautifully for Springer - the competition is gone and they are included with Google again.

I started using iOS ad blockers on day one. Judging by the amount I have to recharge - I'm on pre paid - I use about 50% of the data I used to and spend proportionally less.

I also stopped using the Twitter and Facebook apps in favour of the mobile web sites. I only see Twitter ads now.

There really needs to be another model.

There are third-party Twitter clients (Tweetbot and Twitteriffic, to name two more popular clients) that use the Safari View Controller, and therefore have ad blocker support. Facebook is more locked down with it's API, so there's no good equivalent third-party app, and they've given no indication as to if or when they will be migrating their web views to SVC.

What ad blocker are you using? You comment inspired me to start using one on my iphone, but, as usual, the App store is full of garbage and I have no idea which one is the real deal.

I'm using Peace (RIP) and Crystal at the moment.

But I hear 1Blocker is good and also very fast. It has an in app purchase to unlock all the features. Otherwise it is limited to one block list at a time.

Totally agree. The ad-subsidised business model is flawed on so many levels. Personally the biggest one for me is that the evolution of ads moves less away from information and more towards emotional manipulation.

Question is - what other model? Would you give money to news?

personally I wouldn't, but that's because I can get the news via 1000 other sites for free. I freely admit it's not fair, but I'm not sure what the answer is

> “The results are beyond our expectations,” said Springer chief exec Mathias Döpfner at the time. “Over two-thirds of the users concerned switched off their adblocker.” He also noted that the Bild.de website received an additional 3 million visits from users who could now see the ads in the first two weeks of the experiment going live.

Then trying to shut down ad blockers by legal routes must be completely pointless if just asking people is so effective?

Soon in the news: Comcast sues to make going to the bathroom during commercial breaks illegal.

Sssht, you might give them ideas. I am cynical enough to believe that they will add a IR heartrate sensor (a la XBox One Kinect) to 'pause entertainment' when nobody is in the room.

Formulated like that, it even sounds like a feature ;).

Theres a rather convincing episode of Black Mirror about this...

Spotify won't let you mute during adverts and will pause if it detects the system volume drop quickly.

They can't detect the volume on external speakers. But there's no reason why they couldn't with a microphone.

iHeart, at least on Android, will download (using precious cell bandwidth) video ads and play them, during which time it disables the "back" button. You're forced to let the ad play. You can still switch to another app while this is going on, but IIRC you can't turn off the audio part of the ad by doing so. My "solution" when listening to iHeart is to keep the Android settings app running with the iHeart app selected, ready to "Force stop" it.

Drink verification can.

Or they could make bathrooms without TVs illegal.

Black Mirror, episode Fifteen Million Merits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits

The episode was absolutely wonderful (and disturbing). The whole series is worth watching.

BTW. It took me a long time to figure out the meaning of the title of the show.

I'm a little tired, sorry about the typo, been reading that Atari stuff until daylight and still got up at 9 am. So, yes, Black mirror, and it's definitely worth watching though some of it may not for everybody, especially not if you're easily disturbed.

You joke, but network executives have actually said such things, and there's a long history of them suing and winning against ad-skipping features for TV. Here's just one example: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120525/04185919074/tv-ne...

There is already a concept of TV checking (using Kinect-like stuff) whether you're there watching ads or not. I recall there being news articles about it, and people proposing it were not joking.

From a different article that's on the home page at the moment:

"There was a wonderful quote from CBS this autumn that they’re less worried about PVR ad-skipping ‘because people are too busy with their smartphones to bother skipping ads anymore’." - http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/11/24/tv-mobile-and-...

Oh well. It's like Music Lables vs Napster all over again.

The funny twist is, Springer gives away content for free. They just imply that there is "some kind of contract" between a website provider an a visitor, that the visitor has to "pay" for the content by viewing Ads.

Most people (especially in Germany) don't block Ads because they hate Ads. They block because they hate tracking, slow websites, bandwidth usage etc.

The sad thing is, most of the big publishers, that rally against ad blocker don't have the guts to just go subscription-only.

Since they love their old business model so much, why not try that on the web? Because showing Ads and sell visitors to tracking and ad networks is so much easier.

Just to clarify: If the visitor has the choice to block ads, publishers should have the choice to block adblocker-enabled visitors.

Is it that they "don't have the guts" or that they just don't have a product offering enough value to support itself on a subscription model?

Just to add to your clarification: Publishers do have the choice already in the exact same way that visitors have the choice to block ads. They could/have Implement(Ed) some less than perfect software that uses a bunch of heuristics to determine if the visitor/element is blocking/displaying ads then block/block the element/visitor. This assign equals rights to visitors and elements, which seems a bit off balance to me, but still they could do it already they have the technology.

i was more startled to learn in passing that yahoo was blocking people's email if they blocked ads. that one seems particularly desperate, given how the last thing yahoo needs now is more reasons for people to abandon them.

That one is right along the lines of 'the beatings will continue until morale improves'.

Or the beatings will continue until morale improves unless you notice the door is unlocked.

Yes, you'd think they knew about that before they made that policy. It really baffles me how someone might think this was a good enough idea to actually implement and that nobody stopped it baffles me even more.

That's weird, because I use yahoo mail, and have adblock installed and I've never had a problem accessing my email.

So, they've already lost in the German courts vs. ABP; why do they get to keep going after other companies with the same bogus arguments?

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

There are hundreds of ad blockers.

They aren't desperate. They're stupid.

They only need one original precedent. If they get that, apple will have to stop all the others.

Those aren't mutually exclusive.

Quite obviously, they are trying the American model of suing everybody in sight again and again until they give up.

I wonder how much all this litigation will cost their bottom line.

I guess they hope eventually a judge will confirm their ridiculous position, and then they can go "See!?!? We told you so!" and once again go after ABP.

Axel Springer should really read up on the Streisand effect. If they hold on a bit longer the whole world will know about these absolutely terrible ad blockers.

Which means that all the data minimizing the scale of the blocking was a lie, people are massively blocking ads and the whole ad industry is dying faster than its player want to admit.

My solution is pretty simple: censor axel springer and their websites from my entire network. Blockr or not, nobody on my network and VPN needs to see their filthy pages anymore.

> on my network and VPN

Do you run a network other people use? Are you really going to censor Springer because of a personal opinion?

Well those axel brats are suing out of personal opinion too, your point?

Two things seemingly are true:

1. information is a commodity (including most news)

2. information is valuable

I'm looking at this problem right now because which answer to this question is chosen is critical in shaping how we as a society function (and what the online landscape will look like).

Do people (in general) care about good information sources (your own personal criteria) to give money to them (by whitelisting, paying for subscription, donations etc)?

Full disclosure: I'm working on a project that is trying to tackle this problem.

Good reason to buy Blockr.

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