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Comment by richardknop | Hacker News Reader

There has been a growing trend of websites that will ask me to either:

a) whitelist their site in my adblocker b) or subscribe to their monthly subscription and keep reading their site with adblocker

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I've said this before, but it bears repeating. "Unblock or Subscribe" misses the point. The the point is this: I don't trust you.

I don't trust you not to show me scammy ads, load 2MB of tracking JS, maliciously redirect me, or generally ruin my overall user experience with your content you claim is so valuable. So I run an ad-blocker. I'm blocking your infrastructure because I don't trust it and blocking your ads because I question your judgement.

And the only other option you offer me is for me to give you my credit card number!? To infrastructure I don't trust and to a company whose judgement is in question.

Nope.

So consume content from providers you trust.

Which results every single time in choosing option C: the browser back button.

Usually two or three times because fuck sites who hijack browser history because I scroll a little too far

It's fine if they're just letting you bookmark the particular spot in the page, but this is what replaceState is for. pushState is definitely wrong.

That's what open in new tab is for.

Close tab is way better than back. Easier, more consistent and faster.

Use the mouse wheel/middle button. Will open a new tab when you click on a link and will close a tab when you click on the tab. This changed my life.

too fickle: half the time I endup also scrolling. ctrl-click is far more predictable. Same result, less "trying to press a thing designed to roll".

On most mouses that's not an issue (assuming no motoric problems). Ctrl-click, on the other hand, requires the use of both hands in most cases.

I've never had a mouse where it wasn't a problem. I don't buy uber-quality mouses, so I'm down in the trenches with the vast majority of mouse users with moderate-to-low quality hardware.

I'm also often using a laptop, on linux, and I do the middle-click-simulation (both buttons at once) with two hands, which is really annoying. I suppose I could fix it.

Also I always have my left hand on the keyboard, so for me it's not a problem to ctrl-click.

Ctrl+click doesn't work on a tab, though--have to hit the X.

My laptop has a middle click button ;)

That's a cool trick. Thank you.

That's most likely a well known issue WITH adblock, not the site.

Some of the websites that do that have solid content though. Not good enough for me to pay them though so I end up clicking the back button and using alternative sources.

soon, someone will implement one-subscription for online content - something like netflix.

Already happening in some form with Blendle. It will always be bundles though, the internet is too huge.

why? what if sites are rewarded based on time user spends on it actively? what if websites just sign up to be part of the network, and uses common api (think: subscriptionService.isPaidUser() { show content } else { say "sorry" }

You realize that everyone CBS, Disney, everyone is starting their own subscription service and (for many) pulling out of Netflix.

Besides grasping at maintaining stranglehold over distribution. They are hoping to replicate the cable model. Pay for the base package where all the crap no one wants is, then pay for all these extra premium packages.

It's kinda like the channels a-la-carte they've fought against for two decades.

This idea has been Coming Soon for decades. But maybe that's ok.

I really like that I can visit the vast majority of links I click on for free.

Do you think this will collapse if adblock becomes 90% ubiquitous?

Well, the sites that currently fund operations through ads would have to fund them some other way, right? I think many of them would transition to other business models, scale back, or go away completely. I think you'd also see a sharp rise in types of sponsorships that look less like traditional ads and aren't as blockable, like when The Onion has funny original content about cooking at home brought to you by Blue Apron.

Or D: add the popup asking me to disable my adblocker... to my adblocker.

Only works on some sites, but where it does it's effective.

If I'm really interested, I might open the inspector and delete the offending div, but often scroll is still hijacked or I'll delete div after div up the stack only to accidentally delete the content too.

It's a pain and it's often easier to use the cached version from a search engine or some archiving service.

After you delete the div, go to the body tag and delete the relevant class, or add style="overflow: auto !important;" to the body tag.

I'm quite fond of the "Kill Sticky" bookmarklet

     javascript:(function()%7B(function%20()%20%7Bvar%20i%2C%20elements%20%3D%20document.querySelectorAll('body%20*')%3Bfor%20(i%20%3D%200%3B%20i%20%3C%20elements.length%3B%20i%2B%2B)%20%7Bif%20(getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position%20%3D%3D%3D%20'fixed')%20%7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)()

Typically, I find that toggling Javascript Off works - like with Wired.

I always enable ads on a URL if it asks me to (provided they don't over advertise/have spammy advertisements), kind of already feel shitty about what is effectively stealing content for free so those notices just make me conscious of the guilt.

I wonder how others rationalize blocking ads and not subscribing either but still feeling entitled to access the content.

I block all ads because my safety is a higher priority than the site's profitability. Internet ads are a malware vector, with no accountability. Also, advertising companies have made an art out of psychological manipulation; I protect my mind by filtering their input from my senses.

Just saw your subscription update. Why would I subscribe to something that I am unlikely to return to?

The only solution that I can think of, are micropayments. Perhaps this financial pressure will motivate the powers that be to eliminate roadblocks to its implementation.

I don't feel guilty about it, just like I don't feel guilty about not reading ads in magazines or newspapers.

If you put something on the web, and you want me to pay for it, put up a paywall. If you want to instead serve ads, don't expect me to read them (or load them, even). My bandwidth, my decision.

I don't feel entitled to access arbitrary content. But by the time a web server has already sent it my way for free, I don't give any fucks. If they can't afford to do that, then they shouldn't do that. But they probably do it because they can afford it, and find it profitable enough. I'll be happy to leave if the site sends me a paywall instead of content.

4) accessing the site via archive.is or similar service.

That's honestly what they would prefer if you're not going to make them any money. It's fair to both sides.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this alternative: disable JavaScript.

It's fairly easy in any browser to create a list of websites to ignore JavaScript on.

doing so breaks an increasing number of sites. "so don't visit those sites" is the common response, and is fine as general policy, but sometimes isn't an option.

I have noticed that blocking scripts makes the pages of most local television stations break.

But then I look at the list of 50 different domains blocked on the page, and I am not sorry--not one little bit. I don't really need to watch your little news video that badly. And I certainly don't want it to autoplay.

They are by far the worst offenders among sites I am likely to encounter frequently, as destination links from aggregators and social media. Newspaper sites are far more well-behaved with respect to their scripts, but also more likely to directly monetize the page view.

It only works for some sites.

I see some disagreement with you, but I am somewhat of the opinion that I agree (though I don't think it's a great "common user" solution.)

ScriptSafe is running and I allow some sites, trust a few domains, and the rest get, at best, temporary access to run local JavaScript if specific content I want isn't loading. I get the feeling the majority of sites don't even function without JavaScript at this point, and some intertwine their ad system with other "necessary" JavaScript, so it's tough to surf the web without some hassle.

I don't think this is a perfect or even passable long-term mainstream solution.

Doesn't disabling JavaScript these days pretty much break all websites? Or do you disable by default, then keep a whitelist?

Depends on what you define as “to break”. Of all the sites I use most remain very much usable even without scripting support, but certainly some functionality is often lost (whilst performance, on the other hand...)

To me, disabling JavaScript often tends to fix websites. I consider ads, animation, interactive menus, scroll-hijacking, malware, and auto-playing videos to be broken functionality.

Yep. I do it in a slightly different way. I have uMatrix installed as a browser add-on to help control for privacy, fingerprinting, security etc. But it can also be used for stuff like this. Simply disabling scripts on many sites' root domain and hitting refresh solves paywalls and adblock prevention on a fair amount of sites. For others it obviously doesn't work and nothing will load, but it works on more than you may expect.

uMatrix rocks. It can take a few minutes of fiddling to get a complex site working, but it's totally worthwhile.

If disabling JavaScript allows you to circumvent copyright access controls, you're right back where you started ostensibly violating the DMCA.

Unless it's The Atlantic, which blocks all article access from my iPad even though I'm a subscriber. I can read their content only with a computer-based browser (with ad blocker, of course).

I contacted them about this, actually. I subscribed to The Atlantic's digital edition expecting ad free: it turns out you need to specifically get an ad free subscription from them. The one offered on the block page is what you need or it doesn't count.

Bonus: After I asked The Atlantic, they partially refunded my subscription and a magazine arrived at my door (for my now cancelled and partially refunded digital only subscription).

Well, it sounds reasonable to ask that question if so many people have Adblock installed?

I have always blocked ads and always (try) will be, but I this is the outcome from Adblock going mainstream. Yes, the ad networks/sites were the reason in the first place, but it doesn't matter. Another side-product is (hidden) "native advertising"... so many tweets/share/likes are purely marketing. That gay marriage article Madonna tweeted? Think twice before you believe he does it out of morals, most likely she is being paid to share that out with her audience.

I click on "Reader Mode" in Safari, and see the content without the pop-up, which I don't have to click or touch in any way.

I have just been blacklisting those sites for myself. I haven't missed out on anything yet.

How would you know what you missed, since you missed it ?

I just globally turned of javascript, then enabled it on a site-by-site basis. I have been against this for a long time, but turns out I was wrong, and as a site effect this prevents most ads (it also makes sites loads fast).

Call me crazy, but this seems like a pretty honorable scheme for profiting off of content.

Someone put effort in to create content, and has the option of putting this kind of paywall up. There is a consumer choice made to sell their own attention by viewing ads, pay a subscription fee for the content directly, or just move on to free content elsewhere.

That said, most places where you pay the subscription fee will ALSO show you ads and silently sell your data, but still... The above scheme feels reasonable in principle.

Publically accessible content simply wants to have their search engine pie (public content) and eat it too (paywall).

Ad-blocking makes sure they have to make the hard choice of putting content behind authorization. A user-agent's job is simply to be the user's agent, and not the publisher's monetization platform.

Perhaps. They are losing people like me though. I will never pay for a subscription to read a website and I will continue using adblockers to get rid of annoying ads.

But they could still profit from me. There are less annoying ways to monetize which I might accept.

For example affiliate links to buy products I am interested in (books, video games, gadgets). I'd be willing to pay % extra for some nice product in order a fund a website which pointed me to it. Or extra traffic I'd refer to their site.

There's no way that affiliate links can pay the bills for publishers; numbers don't ad up (otherwise everyone would do it, and no one does -- well, actually, there's extremely limited situations where it works in some consumer corners, but those situations are limited and the total amount of revenue is also very limited). And how much extra traffic are you really going to refer? Ads are sold on the thousand -- $X per thousand (consumer can be cents up to maybe $8, B2B much higher). So even if you referred 200 people that's not even worth any effort. Unfortunately, if you're not going buy a subscription, register for a paper or click on an ad, you're probably not worth anything to the site anyhow.

But they would not make any money via ads from me anyways. I never click ads unless I do it accidentally by mis-clicking. So even with disabled adblocker I'd just lower their CPC (cost per click). So it costs them nothing to let me read their website with adblocker and there a tiny possible upside from me referring more traffic to them.

Either way I assume people like me are a fast growing part of millennial population so their business model based on ads is doomed to fail anyways.

Some sites still monetize (minimally / part of the time) with impression based schemes.

Click throughs aren't necessary for advertising to work. A lot of it is to prime your subconscious, or strengthen associations. This is why Coca Cola doesn't care if you click through. Same with car companies. When most Americans think of soda, they think of coke. If you prime their subconscious to associate soda positively with thirst, and soda is similarly associated with Coke, you've got them.

> But they would not make any money via ads from me anyways.

Then perhaps you are not their target audience, and they won't miss you.

Ads are far more influential than you think, clicking on them is not the only they care about nor the only way they are paid.

Also the ad business is not going anywhere, the tech will evolve and you'll start seeing more native advertising and sponsored content.

I don't understand the distinction between intentionally overpaying for products to benefit a website and just paying the website directly. Also, not all websites can (or should) talk about products.

Why would they care about extra traffic referred to their site if they can't profit from traffic (other than with even more traffic)?

Adblocking, at this stage, is about personal safety. Ad networks are demanding the right to execute arbitrary code on end users' machines, and have shown themselves to be completely incapable of vetting that code, leading to ad networks being a common and persistent malware distribution channel.

Which means that using the best available adblocking technology is a necessary personal-safety step on the modern internet.

Is this a complaint? I find this perfectly reasonable if you're browsing their content which they would like to be paid for.

I think it's fair game to say "Our newspaper pays for quality journalists to do quality journalism, please consider subscribing or not using an adblocker on our site".

I prefer this to the WaPo model of paywalling or having a limited number of articles.

I do object to the Bloomberg model though, where they say "We notice you're using an ad blocker, which may adversely affect the performance and content on Bloomberg.com. For the best experience, please whitelist the site."

Wth? No way. Please ask nicely, no FUD.

> Please ask nicely,

Asking nicely doesn't work.

So being a dick about it will? It hasn't worked so far for me. I still block, and almost without exception still get the content.

The verbiage isn't exactly assaulting anyone, and it sounds like you're being the dick if you can't see why publishers would like to make money.

I agree it's fair game. But I think that message needs to recognize why I blocked those ads in the first place. It's not because "I don't like ads" or "I don't want to support you". It because the ads you were showing sucked: they bogged down my computer and they were malicious.

I would very likely unblock a site if they spoke to that. "We've taken numerous steps in the last 3 months to increase your privacy and eliminate bad, bloated, malicious, and frankly user-unfriendly advertising. We value and will not abuse your trust in allowing us to share advertising with you."

Absolutely agree. And for really large sites such as major news sites, there really isn't even an excuse for using any of the "normal" ad networks. There should be (if there isn't already) an ad network with only acceptable non-tracking ads that just show dumb images to people without worrying who sees shoes and who sees cars. I accept a shoe ad as relevant next to a shoe article, not because a Facebook friend sent me a PM with a picture containing a shoe yesterday.

Right, because they aren't earning revenue otherwise.

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