Hacker News Reader

Comment by jbb555 | Hacker News Reader

As far as I'm concerned advertisers had their chance but they totally abused their chance turning the internet into an ad-laden hellhole and now I just block everything I possible can. If a site decides it doesn't like this then it's literally no use to me.

They had their chance, they abused it beyond all possible tolerance. I hate advertising on the internet now so much that if anything does manage to get past my blocks I make a conscious attempt to avoid buying anything from the scumbag organisation that thinks forcing their crap on my is anyway acceptable.

View on HN

Internet ads are the equivalent of someone pointing a gun at your face and saying "Hey stupid.. give me all your attention if you want to browse this site".

If you play along then, occasionally it just slaps you in the face with an add popup. Meanwhile it's just dancing around the edges of the content you're browsing or odiously slips between the lines of texte whil scrolling.

What's the best response to this type of behaviour ? Obliterate the fucker !! AdBlocks does this on my behalf. Thank you AdBlock, protector of my most valuable resource!

My thoughts exactly!

When exactly did you "give ads a chance"?

Probably from the late 90s to the mid to late 2000s? And probably whenever she sits at a computer for the first time and hasn't get installed the blocker of her choice?

For me it was approximately until the never ending popup era. You know, when you closed that popup, and another one came one, And then another one. And then another.

Then I got some popup blocker, then some other stuff, then AdBlock, then AdBlock plus, and I started white listing site that didn't abuse their users.

Back when there were some default 'banner sizes' sites used to exchange ads. I remember 468 x 60 being one of the more prominent ones. It was just a static image or an animated gif.

Plenty of people mentioned "a while ago" so I'll refrain from that but I'll add something: I give them a chance whenever I accidentally open Edge/IE or find myself using a computer that doesn't have ublock installed (I love you mom!). It's amazing how much shit they ad to most websites that gets blocked. Every single time it's a cringe moment of rushing to close the window or installing an adblocker.

I'm curious as to what sites you visit that cause such a reaction.

I too use adblock, but I use it in blacklist mode by default. I only ever add a site that I feel is very intrusive (funny enough it's usually mainstream news sites that are) And as of writing this comment, 24,893 different pieces of content which makes up 0% of all that I've viewed (according to uBlock Origin)

http://imgur.com/wgjXhe5

I rarely ever have any issues with ads on sites unless I visit some pretty horrific sites, and trust me, I've visited some horrific sites. I come from the adult industry, an industry whom's advertisements are so bad that they actively attempt to make their ads look like content, so that you click them. Then realize it's not the content, close the window, click next. Repeat.

In the years of internet use before I started to use ad blockers.

Enjoy your future of pay walls!

I will.

I will also enjoy watching a large amount of "content" find out exactly how much they were actually worth.

There's definitely a shakeout coming among publishers and I won't deny that's a good thing, especially with all the clickbait out there now. It's just a shame the bad players have ruined free content for everyone else by slathering bad advertising everywhere.

The clickbait sites will do fine. The folks reading these sites on a regular basis are going to keep reading these site because they like the material. And these same people don't run ad blockers. These are the people that click on the first thing that comes up in google because it's the first thing that shows up. They don't know, than after being told, don't care that the first thing that comes up is an ad. And they are the majority of the population.

I consider paywalls to be a good solution. I'd rather pay with my money than having to see ads. I even think it is more sane for websites as they are not reliants on the companies provding the ads, avoiding some corruption.

I don't know man, I visit sometimes hundreds of sites a day, if I had to pay even $1/day to visit a site, I'd be paying hundreds of dollars a day. I'd rather view an ad. I already pay out the ass for internet. I don't need to pay to view content on the internet too.

"pay out the a" is an odd expression.

It seems what you are paying isn't worth very much (i.e. a pile of worthless s)

It isn't. I pay $65/mo for "up to 50Mbps" internet. I am paying no less than $1.3/mo per Mbps.

You could pay for some websites and be limited by a paywall for the others.

And the content on the internet has nothing to do with your ISP so I have somme difficulty understanding your argument "I don't need to pay to view content on the internet too.".

Meaning, a paywall everywhere is not a smart thing to do. Yes I know content is independent of ISP, that's why I accept ads. Because that's how content producers afford to give you content without charging you.

The value of your view is closer to 0.1 cents. So 100 web clicks a day would cost about a dime to remove ads.

The good way to avoid the future of pay walls is to share content. Users must bankrupt major copyright holders and media monopolies to stop them influencing laws and technology.

Welcome to Kopimism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missionary_Church_of_Kopimism

And if everyone shares all content for free and all copyright goes away, how do you expect independent authors and artists to get enough money to, y'know, live?

A basic income that's going to need to exist for most of the population regardless?

That will require a socialist restructuring of America, which while greatly needed, is never going to happen.

Except that a large majority of the US population is already moving towards Social Security and Medicare. As more of the population is covered by them, it becomes trivial to cover the remaining populace not on them.

I think that would also imply a reduction in clickbait so I will!

That's only a scary threat to people who are afraid of spending money.

It's scary to people who are uncomfortable spending money sight-unseen on non-refundable goods with no guarantee of fitness-for-purpose and insufficient information to make educated estimations of the value of said goods.

That should be just about everyone who hasn't money to burn.

It's also scary to anyone considering breaking into the market. I certainly wouldn't pay to read content written by someone I've never heard of, published by a company I've never heard of, without a very compelling reason, such as a strong recommendation from someone whom I trust to have appropriate opinions on that specific kind of content.

It's also scary to anyone who hopes that the Internet could help to break the echo chamber effect. If my online reading is confined to what I'm willing to pay for (and indeed, to what I'm willing the author/publisher to be paid for, which is a subtly different thing), then my exposure to conflicting views is going to be restricted.

Or anyone under 18 years old.

I learned so much on the internet, forum, learning website, etc... theses were living out of ads, they still do and in fact there multiple one that I was using when I was young that are now real enterprise and make quite a bit of money from theses ads.

Now that I'm an adult, I'm happy to pay for content but that wasn't possible for me younger.

> Enjoy your future of pay walls!

I love how people say "I will!"

For starters, most won't. These are people who tend to be ideological and naive kids who probably still have their parents paying their bills. Or they don't really fully understand what the implications are. Also, subscription models have proven to be poor solutions and don't work very well at best, and at worst, completely fail taking the website with it.

Another thing, what about poor people? We talk about how people "are happy to pay for content they like!" Only, there are going to be a massive amount of people who simply can't afford to use the internet that way. If the entire internet turned into "pay as you go", the poor & working class are screwed. They're the ones who are going to be the hardest hit. Not just poor people in the U.S but what about all that traffic from other countries? And there is a lot of it... That's a lot of people who used to be able to keep up with current events, study science, math, history (educate themselves), chat on forums, make new friends, play games who now can't, because they can't afford it. To me, that's a shame. A travesty even if you take into account the educational aspect.

I feel like the people who push for the paywall & a la carte type solutions don't really consider the full implications of their suggestions. I mean, I thought about it myself the last time it came up on hackernews for weeks, no, months and I still have no clue how the internet would evolve as a result. And what little I did conclude wasn't good. Yet these people seem to be so certain...

Majority of people aren't blocking ads and considering how low ad revenues are while the amount of ads blocked might seem high it doesn't really affect the revenue as much as advertisers like to suggest.

I've already addressed your claims in this thread, but as for these new arguments:

> most won't

This is an unsubstantiated claim.

> subscription models have proven to be poor solutions

Really? I guess you haven't seen the people that have moved from youtube to twitch.tv (because of the subscriptions) and patreon.

> what about poor people?

Not only is this a cheap emotional gambit, it pre-supposes that they are currently getting content for free. As we have repeatedly discussed on HN, if it's free, you are the product[1]. Moving to explicit payments - or other forms of funding - is a huge improvement over taking advantage of the ignorance most people have about what they are paying for "free" content.

> study science, math, history (educate themselves)

Do academic websites have ads in your world? Does wikipedia?

You seem to have a very inaccurate view of what is available on the internet.

[1] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...

Wikipedia does have a large, irritating begging banner though, so kinda. I guess.

That banner is directly from the service itself, which means the product is still Wikipedia, not its users. Very important distinction.

It isn't there for 11 months of the year.

I mostly agree with you, but ...

> Not only is this a cheap emotional gambit, it pre-supposes that they are currently getting content for free.

I don't think it does.

The poorer you are, the more money is worth to you relative to other things. (Because as you get more money, what you spend it on is in rough order of priority, which means the things you buy when richer are less valuable to you per dollar than the things you buy when poorer.) In particular, other things being equal, money is worth more to you relative to attention when you are poorer. Therefore, "cheaper internet but more ads" is a better tradeoff for richer people than for poorer people. So it's at least credible that relatively-well-off people agitating for more expensive internet but fewer ads might, if successful, make life worse overall for poorer people.

(This is far from watertight. For instance, if being poor makes ads more harmful to you or reduces the total amount of attention you can bestow on things -- for both of which I can at least imagine possible mechanisms -- then more-ads-more-money might not after all be a better tradeoff for poorer people than richer people even though X more-X-more-money is for most bad things X.)

> Not only is this a cheap emotional gambit

Are you really suggesting or implying that the poor won't be affected by this? This is a huge issue and trying to claim the concern isn't valid by calling it "a cheap emotional gambit" is shockingly dishonest and disingenuous. Quite the contrary, it's a massive concern. It's reminds me of the whole idiotic & naive "flat tax" ideology. Millionaires love the idea because it hurts the poor the most. They're the ones most directly impacted.

> it pre-supposes that they are currently getting content for free.

They are. Practically the entire internet is free. Do you have to pay to use youtube, facebook or reddit? Do you pay when you go to carforums.com and chat with other people about cars? Or video game forums to chat about the latest Call of duty game? If you instead had to pay a $5 per month subscription to youtube, or reddit or facebook, the entire internet changes overnight. The fact you don't see this pretty much solidifies my idea that you really haven't thought this through.

> Do academic websites have ads in your world? Does wikipedia?

Are you suggesting people only educate themselves on wikipedia and academic websites? Because I've learned considerably more from non-academic sites. Sites like Reddit's /r/Askscience, /r/TodayIlearned or /r/Askhistory. Or sites that popularize learning & education, like Mentafloss, Zidbits or even Cracked.com

> You seem to have a very inaccurate view of what is available on the internet.

No, quite the opposite. You haven't really began to comprehend just how much of an impact the changes you suggest would be. And how it would eventually directly & indirectly effect everything else. You haven't fully connected all the dots yet.

Do you know how I know you haven't connected all the dots yet? Because nobody has. Nobody can predict the outcome of something like that, though we can make some educated guesses about some things. I think that's the difference between our opinions; I freely admit that I have no idea, while you claim to know everything and have an answer for everything. Only, that's impossible. Nobody is omniscient.

> Are you really suggesting or implying that the poor won't be affected by this?

Due to some unfortunate medical issues, I currently live just barely above the poverty line (SSDI). I have about $100/year that I can spend on "fun" things like my fastmail account. I will be able to afford very few paywalls, if any.

The people I know personally that currently live below the poverty line are sick of being taken advantage of by supposedly "free" services.

Don't you dare try to tell me how you think the poor will be affected by any of this.

> Practically the entire internet is free

Some of it, like wikipedia, is free because it is funded by the community (a funding model that you seem very reluctant to acknowledge).

As for the youtube/etc, I already covered that in a previous reply[1].

The rest... is not free. Services like google or facebook may not cost money, but only a naive fool would describe their services as free. If, by some chance, you are actually ignorant of how their business model actually works, you should watch Aral Balkan's very good overview of how you are the product[2].

> Because I've learned considerably more from non-academic sites.

I can tell. You might want to consider studying better sources. I have nothing against those places, but there are significantly better educational sources available on the internet.

> You haven't fully connected all the dots yet.

I never claimed I had. I only know what I've seen, and I've seen the internet slowly crumble. NAT ruined the power to publish freely[3], and advertising became a perverse incentive working against actual journalism and creativity.

On the other hand, you seem unable to acknowledge that advertising is only one type of funding model, and you seem very naive regarding the actual costs that model exacts on society.

Explore more of the internet, and think of creative ways to approach the question of funding. If you are observant, you may notice that there are quite a few successful creative endeavors that exist outside of the world of advertising.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10730416

[2] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...

[3] https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/

> there are going to be a massive amount of people who simply can't afford to use the internet that way

In that case, they probably can't really afford to buy all the things targeted advertising is pushing on them either.

The problem for both creators and consumers isn't advertising, it is poor quality advertising.

Pages get filled with crap because ad rates are pitifully low. The default method of ad selling online is directly equivalent to what traditional publishers do with remnant ad space that they can't sell themselves. Online advertising has been systematically devalued by poor sales practice and an over-reliance on algorithmic methods. Advertising is treated as an afterthought to be tacked on rather than an integral part of the business.

Savvy web publishers don't fear adblockers. An adblocker can't detect product placement in a video, it can't detect a podcaster reading an ad for Squarespace, it can't detect branded content.

Better ad sales practice is a win-win-win situation - content creators increase their revenues, advertisers get better value and users get a less intrusive experience.

Buzzfeed are a good example of a web publisher with a deep understanding of the right way to sell ads. They carry no traditional advertising. Their branded content is genuinely valuable to their audience, so delivers much better engagement for their advertisers.

There is also a great deal of space in online publishing for business models that aren't reliant on advertising. A large proportion of the content creators I care about are predominantly reliant on patronage. Subscription is a perfectly sensible model for publishers who serve a niche market with highly valuable content.

> I feel like the people who push for the paywall & a la carte type solutions don't really consider the full implications of their suggestions.

This sounds ironic, considering that with cookie- and tracker-supported content, people also don't and can't know the full implications of their online transactions. If there were terms of service I had to agree to for every single business who was going to view or handle my data for every single ad I loaded before the ad loaded, then I'd be considering the full implications of the ad-based model.

There was lots of fun stuff to read on the web before advertising and paywalls came along, and there will still be lots of fun stuff to read on the web should those awkward business models finally wither away. I'm not worried about it.

Content optimized to generate revenue through direct payments will be of higher quality than content optimized to generate ad revenue. For example a paid search engine would display the most accurate results instead of those results that are quasi accurate but most likely to generate ad revenue.

Also.on such an internet it would be easier to get users to pay for content because there would be infrastructure in.place and it would be the norm.

That's exactly the point, i rather see nothing at all (if i don't have the budget to pay for something) rather than getting drained by all the advertising distractions, and i suspect many people feel the same.

It´s not about pay walls. For example:

I want to rent a flat and I´m ready to spend 30% of my mothly net salary so I go online and what do I see? 6 different irrelevant ads. And this is a site, where the the landlords have to pay for placing their adverts.

I want to go to the cinema and check out online the program. What do I see? 2 irrelevant ads on the site, one more before the trailer and if I buy a ticket I get in the cinema 30-40 mins of bullshit ads before the movie begins.

This is really distracting.

Oh god, I really hate the cinema ads. I've already paid for the damn thing! Obviously I didn't pay enough, or I wouldn't be seeing ads, but it's still frustrating. I guess it was either ads or a price increase. Those are easy to block, though, just arrive 8 minutes late.

I paid for my TV channel and it still shows me ads!

For me, precise and binding terms of service are what's at issue. When people start forking over dollars, they will be more sensitized to precisely what's being exchanged. They way the deal is structured now, they're implicitly agreeing, usually without knowing about it in the first place, to give over an unspecified amount and type of information to an unspecified set of businesses who will be licensed to use it in unspecified ways for an unspecified period of time. That's just stupid. I'd be all for an advertising-based model if there were precise terms of service that would be binding for both parties. Until then, I cannot prove that I'm not being screwed now or later by someone completely unrelated to the content I'm trying to read.

A while ago, Internet was about people sharing things, freely. And it was an interesting place!

Not all the content has to be written by professional writers and a lot of code is actually written for free by volunteers...

Advertisers did not make the web like this. Web developers did and consumers did.

The thing is, that's not really true. Developers made it possible for advertisers to insert their adverts into web resources. Advertisers decided to use that power to track users through cookies, tracking pixels, localStorage and various Javascript tricks. Yes, there were no doubt a few developers working for the ad companies, but they are far outweighed by the mass of developers that work for content sites.

Marketers did not build the tracking systems. Developers built them and then website owners decided they were happy to deploy them. Everyone had to accept the proposal at least implicitly for us to get to where we are today.

You could say that Google, specifically, has so much power in web-advertising that no content site could walk away from them if they don't like how they behave but I don't think this is the case.

Web _advertisement_ developers did.

Also, to get money back for hosting content, ads was pretty much the only way, as a lot of people rather not pay a sub fee.

Patreon or similar options are the best I think.

The humanity has its chance. And then came Hitler. I am now travelling to Centauris Alpha.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com