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Comment by motters | Hacker News Reader

I've no real objections to advertising online, so for a long time I didn't use an ad blocker. However, in the last two or three years some adverts on sites which I visit often have been becoming increasingly offensive. Flashing animated images, pictures of the inside of people's mouths, and semi-pornographic ads are something which degrades my web viewing experience and if a technical solution to this problem exists then I have no hesitation about using it. For the foreseeable future it seems that ad blocking will remain necessary.

Perhaps the solution is some sort of code of conduct for advertisers. If ads are discreet and respectful of the viewer then I'd certainly be prepared to stop blocking them.

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If ads are discreet and respectful of the viewer then I'd certainly be prepared to stop blocking them.

I can only speak for myself but a solution does not seem that far off (at least not to get me to see your ads). While I agree that some sort of code of conduct may be a good idea, I don't really see it working out in the long run what with everyone always being willing to sacrifice good will for a quick buck.

That said, I use NoScript in Firefox and I run it for other reasons than blocking advertisements and I don't have an ad-blocker installed. If I white list a website it means I made a deliberate choice to trust whatever it is going to throw at me. The most important thing here is that I did not allow any third party to serve me some random code (plain markup is fine). I have no way of telling whether the site I just white listed in fact knows what their external advertisers actually serve. And this is proven again and again by how site owners expect visitors to contact the site when they see an ad that is intrusive so that they can "nuke it". This to me makes it a no deal.

To kill two birds with one stone: Serve your advertisements from your own servers and if I want to read your content I have to make a choice whether to trust you and your webserver(s). If you violate my trust then I will go elsewhere and I am no longer a waste of your resources and you are not a waste of mine.

If I have for some reason decided to not let you run dynamic content on whatever device I am currently on you simply have to respect that or I leave. You still have the opportunity to serve me static ads, surely that's got to be worth something. You don't know my reasons for not white listing you (as this article states as well). What surprised me about this link was that I did not see a single advertisement on the page. This means they are all using JavaScript or Flash. Sorry, your loss. And eventually my loss as well since the website might not live to see another day due to lack of income.

Incidentally, easy white listing [of script execution] for sites is also the only thing stopping me from switching to Chrome today.

Well said, that's exactly the problem. They aren't asking us to unblock their ads, they are asking us to unblock our third party cookies in the browser and in Flash. That's just not going to fly. It's the third party cookies that are precisely the problem with unblocking Flash.

Adobe has abused our trust with a third party cookie blocking mechanism that just doesn't protect us without essentially making Flash worthless on many sites where we do want to use it. One of the few ways around it is to use NoScript to block JavaScript driving Flash by default, and then allow the ones we want to allow one by one. But why would I allow an ad network to track me across web sites just because I like Ars Technica?

So asking us to unblock Flash? Wow, I love arstechnica, but they know better than asking us to do that.

We are being asked to accept a particular type of ad technology that is fraught with problems, it's not ads we're blocking, it's widely abused technology that we're blocking. It's not for the pretty animations that Flash is used in many ads, it's for the third party cookies that track across sites.

Most people don't even realize how those Flash third party cookies track their movements across the net. But Ars Technica realizes, and so do I. Hell no!

"Serve your advertisements from your own servers and if I want to read your content I have to make a choice whether to trust you and your webserver(s)."

Unfortunately, the advertiser then has to trust the publisher on how many users visited the site (or come up with something less intrusive that counts views).

Absolutely.

Amazingly this trust has worked well enough for television and radio (and its advertisers) for decades.

No, the advertisers in radio and tv are in the same boat as the stations themselves... no one really knows how many people really saw/heard an ad. They just both choose to trust a third party (neilson/arbitron) to give them the ratings. It just isn't possible to know for sure how many people saw an ad from a broadcast. Cable/sat and DVRs make it a bit easier, but only a bit.

On the web though, it's ridiculously easy to verify each request that there is no need for the trusted third party.

+1 for mentioning the switch to Chrome. I'm in the exact same boat.

FWIW, they appear to be working on it. http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=16932

Prime example: the evolution of Evony's ads. http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/07/14/evolution-of-evony-...

Yeah, I'm curious what the culture of Evony users are like, since it seems that they're attracting one sort of customer (horny men) and then providing a completely different product (fantasy computer game). Is the game world filled w/ a lot of adult role players or something?

I'm not curious enough to go and try it, though.

Absolutely. I would not block ads if they did not degrade my reading experience.

I deleted my AdBlock Plus easy list entry and started only manually blocking irritating ads.

It turns out that only about 20 rules covered 99.5% of the _really_ annoying ads, whilst still leaving the OK ones. Adding those rules wasn't difficult, or annoying, or time consuming - just click and block when irritated.

The nuclear option (easy list) gets everything - even ad words - despite the fact that I don't mind them very much. The ABP developers really shouldn't make that the default, because I don't think people realize what they are signing up to. I don't object to them having the option, but it shouldn't be the default.

Agreed. Text-based ads are fine with me, as are non-animated ads that roughly blend into a site's color scheme. If the ad animates, flashes, moves, makes sound, tracks me with cookies, etc. then I want it blocked. However, I don't have time to manually unblock all the unoffensive ads after installing EasyList, or block all the offensive ones instead of using EasyList. Another default subscription option that blocks the most offensive ads would be most welcome.

Advertisers are in an 'arms race' with users. Users become less likely to click on ads over time. Website owners have to increase the percentage of the first visible page over time to maintain the same income from ads. Adverts also become more visually distracting over time for the same reasons.

Witness Adsense, which started off with text only, but now has full flash capabilities.

What is the solution to the problem? I don't think there is one.

Perhaps the rise of the paid app will provide a way to reduce ads, just like cable tv has done, but this will only be a niche. (I'm speculating there.)

Well then don't go to the sites with ads you do not like. Just close your browser, or press the back button the moment you see an ad that disgusts you. And then don't go to that site again.

The way I see it, there is an implied contract between a website and a viewer. The website says, "well you get to look at my content for free and you will not have to pay for all the work I have done creating the content and serving it to you, but in exchange you should see and consider the various advertisements and deals we are offering."

Again you do not have to use the website, but if you do you should not block the ads.

The solution, (IMHO) is don't visit those sites any more. Vote with your feet.

Ad blocking means the market will never correct itself. You're cutting off the feedback loop.

If an ad annoys you, just don't visit that website again! Simple. It's not like there's a shortage of websites to visit.

edit: Yeah downmod me. It's a crazy idea! If you go into a shop, and the owner beats you with a bat, you'd resolve to wear full body armor when shopping from now on, and go right back there wouldn't you.

The vast majority of sites that I visit, I visit from aggregators such as HN, from Google, or from 3rd-party links in my Twitter stream or RSS reader. I don't have any numbers, but I would imagine that nowadays that's how a large number of people consume their content. When you say "don't visit these sites anymore", how exactly am I supposed to keep track of who I can and can't visit for fear of offending?

I do it with sites like nytimes.

If there's an article on here from nytimes, I just don't bother with it any more. They have a paywall/subscription thingy and I just can't be bothered to google for login details.

But it's fairly simple to just block sites that annoy you - firewall/hosts/etc

"Ad blocking means the market will never correct itself. You're cutting off the feedback loop.

If an ad annoys you, just don't visit that website again! Simple. It's not like there's a shortage of websites to visit."

Doesn't this depend on how ad blockers work?

If my browser fetches some HTML, and it includes an img ref to some ad site, my blocker might a) prevent the fetching of that resource, or b) allow it to be fetched, but block the rendering.

I'm pretty sure blockers use the first technique. So, visiting a site with an ad blocker ups a site's hit count, but adds nothing to the eyeball count for the ads. Fro the ad-tracking POV, it's as if you never visited.

It may very well be the sort of feedback that's needed.

If you really want to be more active about this you're better off writing to the site owner with your concerns than simply not visiting the place.

If my site gets no traffic, how will I know if it's because of the ads, or crappy content?

I won't use an ad-blocker as I think advertising is legitimate, and provides support for many great sites and potential for important startups.

I do use flashblock/click to flash (which has the side effect of hiding the most offensive video ads). But any site that becomes unbearable with ads, I move on, and don't go there again. I would suggest it is time to avoid those sites.

Blocking ads selectively is ethical. Blocking ads indiscriminately by using a provided block list isn't.

"Blocking ads indiscriminately by using a provided block list isn't."

Can you explain why not?

Unless there's some explicit prior agreement, I have no obligation to use my resources to render something in some specific manner, or at all.

Online ads fall into the same technological mismatch as online music. It's the application of solid-to-the-touch thinking to a fluid digital medium.

Web pages are not print. Don't base your business model on a different medium. (Ask the RIAA how well that works out.)

My browser requests some HTML; what it does with it on my end is up to me. If I don't want to waste time and resources making additional requests for other content, that's my business. If I don't want to render everything specified in the HTML, that's my choice. If I want to skip elements, apply custom CSS, block scripts, all are my choices.

By that same logic Ars Technica are allowed to detect if you have blocked their ad and not deliver you the content you requested.

And you better go tell Google their business model doesn't work before we're all left without a search engine!

"By that same logic Ars Technica are allowed to detect if you have blocked their ad and not deliver you the content you requested."

Absolutely! It's my choice what I will render on my machine, and it's the server's choice what it will send me when I make a particular request. If they are capable of detecting when I've blocked ads and choose to deny my request for the content, that's well within their rights.

I actually wonder if they would do this. It's technically possible, but it is really a 'nuclear option' for a website.

Then again, Ars is one of the few sites that will actively ban your account if you use ad blocking. But so far, I think they've only removed accounts for comments/forums, not the whole shebang.

Perhaps they could redirect first offenders to a summary of this article with a link to the article at the bottom and see how that goes.

Split test it first of course if you are reading this Ken!

If you enjoy something but you circumvent the methods by which the producer earns a living, you're making it less likely that the things you enjoy will continue to be produced. You may not see that as unethical, but at the very least, it's unreasonable.

"You may not see that as unethical, but at the very least, it's unreasonable."

OK, but the assertion was that it was unethical, not that it was unreasonable.

I agree that there's a downside and I may end up spiting myself, but it's not unethical for me to do so.

That's what I do, but it's enough of a hassle that I'm not far from going to a full block list. The main problem is that, perhaps on purpose, ad networks use pretty random URLs that make it hard to block particular ads. If, say, Evony ads all included the string "evony" in the URL, it'd be a lot easier to selectively block them.

Is there actually a practical way to that though?

1) Install an ad blocker.

2) When an ad annoys you, enable your ad blocker for that site.

3) If you actually enjoy the content the site provides, you should let them know why you're blocking their ads so they can fix the problem. Otherwise, if everyone does what you do, the site will cease to exist.

2) I don't think AdBlockPlus lets you do that

3) You surely know that, that is a waste of time, 1. they already know, 2. they won't respond or do anything

http://adblockplus.org/en/

"Right-click on a banner and choose “Adblock” from the context menu — the banner won’t be downloaded again. Maybe even replace parts of the banner address with star symbols to block similar banners as well."

The AdBlockPlus documentation explains how to limit specific rules to certain sites. (EDIT: http://adblockplus.org/en/filters#elemhide_domains) If you get filters from someone else, you're probably blocking ads that don't bother you on sites you enjoy, which sounds counterproductive to me.

2) Sure it does - just click on any add and blacklist the domain. Takes two seconds.

(I'm actually surprised more sites haven't started responding by proxying ad content through their own servers to make it harder to block.)

Doubleclick doesn't allow proxied ad distribution, and I'm not sure a similar effect could be achieved through DNS.

The Ars thread touches on this, where Kurt mentions that Doubleclick's ad deployment isn't smart enough to detect flash-blockers and serve a static ad, and Ars isn't permitted to replace Doubleclick's deployment code.

Ok, thanks though you can't do it per site so you have to click on all the ads that offend you and they may change ad supplier.

Also your effectively blocking a particular ad supplier not a domain that has a poor ad policy.

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