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Comment by aranw | Hacker News Reader

Couldn't even read the article due to Wired's anti-adblock banner.

While I also use an ad blocker, it seems odd to be upset that they block you from viewing their site. You've (we've) decided that you (we) don't want their ads. They've decided they don't want readers who don't take their ads.

Seems fair.

I've reread the GP post several times and I am only seeing a stated fact, not evidence of any specific emotion. The GP might be upset, but his post is sparse enough that his point isn't really clear. While the post doesn't add much to the discussion, neither does a non sequitur about fairness or using pronouns in weird, parenthetical ways.

But I find some value in the GP post. It tells us that Wired is taking an active stance against ad blockers. This information can be used when considering sources for submission or deciding whether to click a link. Many of the responses to the GP provide value as well by shedding light on which ad blockers are more effective and/or are triggering the issue.

What is "GP"?

Grandparent - the comment two posts up

Problem is: There a thousands of comments like this on HN. They do not have any entropy anymore. It is just an expression of being upset for this "discrimination".

Thing is, Wired's ad-blocking door slam appears to be triggered by Firefox's anti-tracking protections built into its Privacy Browsing mode.

So, this is a really shitty false positive for Wired's system.

Or are their tracking bugs providing enough of a revenue stream that their real issue is with not being able to track you?

Indeed. The appropriate response when someone renders their own site unusable is to close the tab and go on about your day. Hopefully their analytics tools will help them refine their design.

If they use 3rd party analytics tools, you're already invisible to them and don't matter.

Resources consumed by non-subscriber blockers do increase their costs.

Personally I use an adblocker and got the door slammed in my face as well. I found it frustrating but closed the tab and went about my business. Trouble is, this is allowing this very non-webby behavior to normalize itself.

There should be a backlash against this idiotic adblocking-blocking, I'm just not sure what form it should take.

We know already that some people use a adblocker. We also know that some pages try to motivate people to disable those blockers. What, at least me, don't know is why some people still think they have to tell us that they use an adblocker. Or in other words what does your blurb has to do with the content of this article.

The point of the blurb is that the contents of the article are invisible, which makes discussion about the content of the article difficult.

Yes, sure. Invisible like an ostrich who sticks his head into the ground.

The contents of the article is invisible to anyone who blocks outgoing connections to domains ending in "d.com" as well. That doesn't mean that people discussing the article need to hear about how you can't read it.

The banner asks politely to disactivate the ad blocker. You just need to deactivate it on the page and you can read the article. You have a message of thank you. I think wired is very polite in its anti-adblocker policy.

The way to ask politely is to provide "close this popup" button at an easily accessible place.

Saying "you can't view this content unless you register/disable adblock" is NEVER polite, no matter how many times you say "please".

You should never read a Terms of service. You would be shocked about the shortage of the word "please". And most upsetting is that there is no "Just let me ignore this!" button next to the "Accept" button.

>You would be shocked

That's a very strange and unwarranted assumption.

I've read a few. Admittedly, I've read ToS less times than I've clicked on "Accept" button.

Nonetheless, there is an external "Just let me ignore this!" button here:

http://bugmenot.com/

It lets you bypass registration with the most extremely annoying websites, so you don't have to register.

Or just keep your privacy, browse using TOR/VPN, and you can ignore ToS completely with no real-life consequences.

Thankfully, the battle between users and lawyers usually favor former.

ublock origin appears to block/not trigger their banner

Ditto for me

does that mean that it allows their ads/tracking? how is that better?

No, it probably means that it blocks the anti-ad-blocker.

> does that mean that it allows their ads/tracking?

No.

> how is that better?

Why ask the question at all if you already made up your mind about the answer?

You can defeat their ad-blocker blocker by disabling javascript.

In Chrome, go to DevTools (CMD+Option+I). Press F1 for settings then check "Disable JavaScript" and reload the page. There are similar ways to do it in other browsers too.

More and more, I find myself using "Inspect Element" in Firefox to bypass ad blockers in order to read a page (or less!) of text. Today was no different.

I do this too, manually edit CSS on some sites to improve my reading experience. I do the same for removing fixed header menus that reduce the height of readable content. And sometimes fonts. Today I found an extension (on Chrome) that lets me keep my CSS changes per site - probably there's something similar for Firefox.

Google translate -> choose random language -> show original.

Luckily the "Reader" icon in Firefox fixes that.

Reader in Safari works too.

I don't even run adblock and it triggered for me. If anything that convinced me to run adblock if they're going to punish me anyways.

They are teaching us to use incognito mode more often :-)

(No cookies get saved, so it's a win as far as privacy goes.)

I just tried disabling javascript for wired.com and actually found the experience of wired.com much nicer!

NoScript and Self Destructing Cookies (firefox extension) makes the internet much better overall. The first handles all but the most aggressive paywalls (the really nasty ones use <meta refresh> inside noscript blocks). The second handles the sites that you've turned scripts on for, clearing their cookies as soon as you navigate away. Just whitelist the sites you want to stay logged in to.

It's eye-opening how much of the internet relies on Javascript that you don't notice- and how much works totally fine.

uMatrix is even better than NoScript in many ways. It blocks all cross-site requests aside from CSS and images by default, and can integrate with uBlock Origin to provide a visual indication of which requests are to known ad sites.

Wow this spawned lots of debate. For my part, I am far happier to temporarily disable an ad block, than to get the "5 articles per month" nonsense from the Economist or NYT.

In chrome you can just open up dev tools, select an iphone emulator (6+ if you want the biggest screen), and refresh.

I do believe they give you the option of paying to read their content even with an adblocker enabled.

Seems like my adblocker has anti-anti-adblocker functionality.

Interesting. I get the same banner, but I'm running an anti-malware installer script. Maybe I should upgrade to one that downloads their malware then just /dev/nulls it.

Not a problem if you block all javascript.

In my experience, most of these you can right click >view source and find the text there.

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