Banning Sites That Don't Respect Adblock | Hacker News Reader

Banning Sites That Don't Respect Adblock

60 pointssetra62 comments

Certain sites that are linked to here are very difficult to navigate for those of us with adblockers installed. Such a site would include forbes. I propose sites that break adblockers, or are generally horrible to use because of advertisements be banned from hackernews.

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Please don't try to prevent me from using things because you don't like them.

Sure, some sites limit who can view them based on visitor preferences. Analogy: Some restaurants have a "no shirt, no service" policy. It would be ridiculous to impose a blanket ban for all people on such restaurants just because you refuse to wear a shirt.

If you want to pick a more sensible fight, try going after links to paywalled sites (whose content is blocked through their decision rather than mine). However, bear in mind HN policy already has those covered: "It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds."

Nobody here is able to prevent you from using Forbes or other similar sites. So, your analogy is way off base and that's why it sounds ridiculous to you.

It would be more accurate to compare this to "removing a restaurant from a single list of good restaurants because their food has a high chance of making you sick or making your computer download some malware".

Nobody here is able to prevent you from using Forbes or other similar sites. So, your analogy is way off base and that's why it sounds ridiculous to you.

This is actually a very good piece of advice that holds true in all sorts of conversations. If you attempt to argue the other side of an argument, and find it completely ludicrous? You don't understand the other side. Instead of arguing, ask questions.

I only wish that I could follow my own advice!

Serious question: what are these publishers to do?

I look at a site like Reddit: no tracking, no flashy ads, no sound, significant investment in their own custom ad serving software to try and make things more targeted and relevant, clearly marked ads, etc.

They are doing _everything_ that our community continually says that we would like more publishers to do and they are severely struggling despite being one of the most popular sites on the entire Internet.

If you have even a semi technical audience for your site, you're today looking at a rapidly growing 30% of your audience using an ad-blocker.

Except in very few cases, most people aren't willing to pay for content and more paywalls (the non-advertising business model) further fracture the open web.

I feel kind of scared for where we're going.

Is this not the natural conclusion of the trend that started with ad supported sites/services though? I use an adblocker because most sites require one in order to be usable but do whitelist sites I like and use frequently. The problem though is that for the last decade and a half entire industries have gone 100% free in exchange for ads and when people stopped clicking they started adding more and more ads and then made them more and more obnoxious and then added more and more tracking and analytics.

I also feel kind of scared of where we're going because I don't see any way for everyone to win. An entire generation has been taught that they should expect everything 100% free out-of-pocket. And to pile on top of that there's another point to consider. Even if everyone was willing to pay for their favorite sites, how many can actually afford to do so these days? And that problem is only going to get FAR worse before it gets better.

I'm willing to "pay" for content via ads, as long as those ads are not a vector for security violations.

I just wrote to the NYT the other day, pointing out that I block ads, yet had just visited a site (linked from NYT) where I saw ads despite blocking and didn't mind. These were just content in the page, not ad network-served.

If the only way a publisher can profit is to risk my security, then they have a problem, not me.

(I also pay for NYT access, but I still block)

Supply vs demand? there are just wayyyy too many websites for any particular niche to be paying for it.

If its not economically viable, shut it down, find another job

Reddit does a shitload of tracking

Here's the reddit CEO bragging about it

https://youtu.be/6PCnZqrJE24?t=499

Maybe we should create a community maintained list of blocker unfriendly sites, and serve a public blacklist compatible with existing software.

Forbes and others are blocked on my home DNS for hostility and crippling of features. If a company can demonstrate how it protects its visitors from its advertisers and respects my rights, I used to exempt them from my ad blocker. Now I'm sick of seeing rude messages targeting me as an ad blocker user telling me what a horrible person and a thief I am, so I block all ads, and I've discontinued use of nearly all ad supported software. Bottom line: It's not our job to make their business models work, they need to adapt and quit whining.

Have you tried Brave? Whenever I have to view a website with a particularly onerous anti-adblock system, I use Brave. It blocks the ads and loads the pages fine.

So far, I think Guardian has the best approach towards ad-blocking. There's a non-intrusive banner message at the bottom of the screen, which says that they know you are using adblock and asks if you would like to support them via a paid subscription.

That's a step in the right direction. The problem I have with signing up for a subscription is two fold. First is that I don't feel like I traffic particular sites often enough to justify the price they ask. Second is that I don't want to give up the personally identifiable information they ask for (and sell off).

I'd much rather there be an anonymous mechanism for making one-time payments or tips. Maybe a metadata header that indicates a BTC address that can be picked up by a plug-in of the user's choosing?

I'd love to be able to anonymously say "Yeah! This article was sooo good, it deserves $10!" or "That article was crap. It doesn't deserve anything". But that has to be done after I've read it. In the current ad model, articles get paid based on how much they are shared, not how much people like the content.

EDIT: It's kind of like tip-sharing. If I have a good waiter, I don't want to the crappy waiter to have his share of the tip.

And I responded to the Guardian's request by subscribing. (And still blocking)

But I'm not going to do that for everything. Just the ones I think are worth paying for. You know, like I used to do for magazines. And during that time, I also read free magazines (the alternative papers that most big towns have).

Actually, that's kind of interesting. Those free alternatives are still around, and I still read them, on and offline. I haven't touched a physical magazine or newspaper in years.

I see this as a double-edged sword. I think people should have the right to block ads, but sites should also have the right to block your access to their content. It's the same no-shirt no service rules for businesses. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but no one has a legal right to gain access to the data on a website. If that website chooses to restrict access that's their problem. I and others will just go somewhere else.

Your point is a good one. However, it doesn't imply that HN must allow these sites to be posted.

I don't have an opinion on whether HN should make such a change, but just wanted to connect your statement to the question at hand.

A fair point. I think HN should let these sites be published because it gives us all the knowledge that something exists. We can then freely make the choice of how we wish to interact with that site. Taking the position that something should be not be shared, disseminated, or indexed, simply because of the bad behavior by that link, brings to mind the delisting of material from search engines that may be offensive to others. Put the articles and websites out there and let people choose for themselves.

If they want to restrict access they can put up a paywall, otherwise they serve HTML. HTML is our contract not how a browser renders it.

Not enough people understand this. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too.

What we need is a little plugin that puts a * or some sort of symbol next to a link to a site that blocks content for adblock users.

I recently wrote a Greasemonkey script to do this - it changes the link text background to yellow and disables the click.

If anyone is interested, the code is posted here: http://scottlilly.com/greasemonkey-block-links-to-annoying-w....

This is the solution.

I do agree in certain extent. Forbes is really bad regarding adblockers.

I don't mind being reminded that they use ads to generate revenue to deliver news for free, but doing it in a way where they actually loose readers because of that is nonsense.

Give me a popup asking me to turn adblocker off, not banning me from the content.

In the information age where the same news gets presented on numerous sites it's a bit shooting oneself in the foot denying access to the content because of adblockers.

People on hacker news should try to avoid posting content from sites like forbes, but we shouldn't force them to do so. Because then hacker news wouldn't be better then forbes.

This is the reason why I haven't visited Wired or Forbes in months. And it's not that I couldn't figure out a way past their ad-block detectors. The idea that I must disable what is inherently a security feature just so they can satisfy their marketing goals is antithetic to an open web.

I noticed Wired no longer blocks uBlock Origin (or more humorously, uBlock Origin has now began filtering out anti-adblockers) but I continue to see no reason to frequent their site.

Wired was suggesting I needed to whitelist their site but I had disabled and removed ghostery and adblock some time ago. WTF. I haven't been back since.

I subscribe to the NYT and yet still get asked to be whitelisted. So a subscription model will not generate enough revenue for them without ads.

It's like the cable tv model - we pay to watch more ads.

I wonder how much of this is cultural, with respect to newspapers like NYT. In the early days of print, newspaper ads were both unobtrusive and useful, such that paying subscribers had no problem with the double dip model. Advertising has always been a thorny ethical issue for papers and it would be great if NYT, WaPo etc. could get out if the ad business altogether and support themselves entirely through subscriptions. Maybe we'll see this in the coming years as more and more people switch to ad blockers.

You're still served ads with a paid NYT subscription?

edit: well, I had been thinking about a subscription. I suppose not anymore.

Yeah, I brought that up when I called to cancel and they said "well the ads help keep the cost of your subscription low!". But that's not the point! I pay to remove ads, I don't watch ads to keep the price low!

That's what you think you're buying, but that's not what they're selling.

Yes, and WSJ does the same - shows ads even if you are a subscriber.

I'm not sure why they do it though - since not annoying their paying customers seems to be worth more than the few extra cents/a couple of bucks they generate per year off us.

Yep - http://i.imgur.com/76xzA5X.png

The subscription is not to get rid of ads, it's to allow access past the N free articles per month.

I used to pay for someone to throw a newspaper in my driveway. They still had ads. In fact when I stopped paying, they still threw the newspaper, so they could say to their ad auditors that they had N viewers of ads.

I run with NoScript because I don't like the crap that a lot of these sites do. But if a site is broken for me and I'm not that interested in chasing it down, well, the Back button is a tiny mouse movement away.

The mods already have enough to do without having to curate a blacklist of sites for lazy users.

Hacker News' purpose isn't to promote discussion from explicitly free or noncommercial sources, or from sources which enforce a particular moral framework. Even though paywalled sites and sites that block adblock are annoying (although many provide workarounds,) banning them outright would deprive the site of potentially worthwhile content, and the content is what's important, not the commercial model behind the site hosting it.

If you're not willing to RTFA, fair enough, just don't comment in threads about TFA. That would improve Hacker News more than blocking those sites altogether.

Personally I haven't clicked on a single Forbes link in months after being forced to unblock them to view content that should be available to the public with no catch. I never go back to sites that implement that system.

I agree with you. The worst part is that most of the links in front page are from these big média players that have paywalls and adblockers blockers. A strange shift in HN profile.

Linking to paywalled content should also be prohibited. Those links should be treated as ads themselves. The submitter is posting spam to HN.

>The submitter is posting spam to HN.

Except in the case where it is the submitter's own paywalled content, how is that spam? The submitter isn't benefitting from the paywall.

Get a better ad blocker or try find the content they've spent time and money creating elsewhere.

Because how dare a company try to make money on a service they provide to us for free!

I don't believe that serving up malware is a legitimate business practice to make money.

Certain websites have had unintentional incidents regarding malware served by 3rd party networks. Using that as an excuse is perverse.

  unintentional incidents regarding malware served by
  3rd party networks

If I buy some burger patties from X-mart and there are razor blades in them, I don't give a shit about whether it was a party ten levels down their supply chain or if this is the only way they can make the level of profit they want. I'm just going to stop eating their burgers.

At least with food they are regulated and all parties in the chain will be investigated and held responsible for damages.

It happens quite frequently because of the way ad networks work. Ads are not vetted or regulated in any meaningful way and often ad networks will serve up ads from other networks so a content provider has no way of knowing the true source of the ads they're serving.

There's been a violation of the trust between content providers and consumers. Consumers have found ad blockers as a means to protect themselves and it's up to providers to now come up with a safer arrangement.

Requiring visitors to leave themselves open to such malware attacks is actually a perverse business practice.

No web browser user in 2016 needs to excuse themselves for practicing good web hygiene.

It is the right of a consumer to not patronize businesses with that particular monetization model

No one argues that. It's much more dubious whether the consumer has the right to patronize a business in explicit disregard of the terms that business sets. If you don't want to see ads on Forbes, you can not go to Forbes. I'm not so sure you're entitled to just read Forbes without the ads.

I use an ad-blocker too. I'm just not so sure I'm defending some principled public good in doing so.

And that's kind of what OP is doing. He's saying "lets not even go to those sites". In a weird way, it's more ethical to just not share them, than to share them with ad-block users.

So don't do it. Nobody tells you to click on those links, and I'm sure you're intelligent enough to read a URL.

A website such as HN is inherently a filter on the worlds content. Imagine if all the worlds content was infront of you. You could say just don't click on what you don't want. But surely content filtered to what you want is better? I am asking for a filter, HN, to be more properly tuned. Saying just don't click on it ignores the inherent nature of the situation.

The inherent nature of the situation is that most people have zero problem clicking on these links.

You seek to deny me content because of choices you have made.

I'm happy to subscribe to content.

Why is your choice somehow more right than mine?

A site getting posted to HN is not forcing you to use it, nor asking you to agree with its aggressive anti-ad-block measures.

In a voluntary market such as the internet force is not part of the equation. I the consumer choose not the suuport aggressive anti-ad-block measures. I further am taking part in advocacy of removing aggressive anti-ad-block measures, or links to, sites I frequent. If someone posted links to trash you did not support you would of course not be forced to click it, but if you find a medium you enjoy frequently full of trash it would certainly be an annoyance.

You would be right, if hacker news would generate it's own content. But it doesn't.

Hacker news itself, is free from ads. Only the shared content might have it.

As I wrote, forcing people not to share certain content just flies in the face of hacker news and the free sharing of information.

We can advise not to use these sites, but never restrict the freedom to do so, because in the end the ad itself is not mandatory and you can ignore it. And frankly hacker news would become forbes 2.0, but in a different way.

If forbes wishes to use aggressive blocking strategies, it's their problem. They will be the ones in the end not having new readers.

Hacker News is filled with ads. It's run by Y Combinator, and you'll notice there are some "articles" you can't comment on. Those are sponsored ads from Y Combinator companies. Posts made about Y Combinator companies often skyrocket right to the top as well.

Haha, been here for quite a while now and haven't noticed these yet. Thanks for the clarification.

>Hacker News is filled with ads

Where "filled" means there are rarely job ads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11389835#11391805

The discussions are content.

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