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Comment by secret_island | Hacker News Reader

There are no "better" ads. The only good ads are the ones I cannot see. My computer, my rules. Lately now blocking coin mining in addition to all ads, trackers, beacons, pixels, etc. I have the right to surf on my terms. Traffic to websites is a cost of doing business; don't try to recoup in ways that I never agreed to (mining), selling my data w/o my permissions, etc.

You have to love the tripe in the article: "Better ads experience..." No one enjoys the experience. No one except those in a position to make money from same. Everyday IT people and others find ads intrusive, annoying, and dangerous. Ads are a major vector for malware. Again, my rules, my computer. I've not seen an ad in many years, but I do keep up with the tech and means to keep blocking all newcoming means to circumvent my own security.

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I'm sad to see you downvoted into the grey.

>My computer, my rules.

This is really the only thing that matters. Ads are not a working model for monetization on the web for this reason, and this is non-negotiable. Ads are a non-starter. It's as simple as that. If anyone can't find a different way to support their content, then the web is better off without them. "Better ads" is putting lipstick on a pig - I'd sooner not invite the pig into my living room, thank you.

Thank you for your comments. You are right. What with the now ultra-cheap Amazon and Google in-home devices, it's increasingly difficult to have a "safe" space. Like you, I will not invite this nonsense into my home. I don't use Siri, won't use any Google product, and I don't have any iot devices other than my iPhone, and I don't use non-Apple apps.

I use OpenBSD and Fedora Linux for the majority of my work and I heavily filter my personal and work connections. Being I run the firewall at work, I took the liberty of blocking all advertising connections to our buildings to save on bandwidth. My boss was thrilled to learn this could be done.

People are horrified to learn that I, an IT veteran of now 20 years have the attitude I do towards technology. It seems everyday there is a new startup offering the same old dreck that all of them seem to offer--ways to divest you of your privacy, freedoms, etc. I never bite. I stick with the minimalism I always have.

> My computer, my rules

Or maybe their website, their rules? Otherwise this is like walking into a store and telling them to take off their ads, because your eyes, your rules.

It's like requesting a chocolate bar, paying for the delivery, and the store sends you a truck full of garbage with that chocolate bar at the bottom.

Sorry I'm all out of car-themed analogies.

What part of sending a GET request to view a web page corresponds to ordering chocolate bar?

A GET request is not a request to view a web page, it is a request to receive the page. It is up the recipient to determine if and how the page should be rendered.

You seem to be constantly replying in a way that looks like you disagree with me when in fact we're in agreement!

Sorry, but nobody ever promised to render your website in any specific way; my browser does whatever I programmed it to do. I might be using w3m. I might be using a browser you never heard of. I might be using a text-to-speech engine. Website owners do not get to set the rules on my machine, no matter how badly they want to.

You can put on rose-colored glasses (or AR goggles) when you walk into a store, too. I don't really see a contradiction.

Exactly: you can put on AR goggles and have them draw opaque rectangles over all the ads in the store, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Not a great analogy.

We all know that HTML is an opt-in language, in that user-agents are designed to render the tags that they support and ignore the ones they don't.

My user-agents do not support ads at all.

Your glasses (or AR goggles) when you walk into the store would correspond to the HTML renderer here.

I can't wait for the day that lightweight sun-glass frames can block real-world ads in real-time. Perhaps replacing them with classical art or even white rectangles.

That sounds great.

I don't think the analogy stands. For example: If I walk into a shoe store I won't see ads for pain meds. I might see ads for special sales or maybe for a sibling store which doesn't sell shoes, but is under the same company. These kind of ads can bypass or are not even blocked by today's adblockers because they usually don't have to be served by an ad-network. And that's perfectly fine. The problem comes when ads are not relevant to your context and are shoved into your face. I would definitely complain if ads are shoved into my face in real life (please don't misunderstand, I am aware there are ads everywhere, assume the scenario where you walk into a shoe store or an apple store). It would also be easy to argue that showing irrelevant ads in your store is distracting and even bad for business.

> The problem comes when ads are not relevant to your context and are shoved into your face.

That's not the problem the parent had:

>> There are no "better" ads. The only good ads are the ones I cannot see.

My apologies, you quoted just the part with

> My computer, my rules

So my reply was mostly about the store analogy.

I see. Well, there's not enough information in the mere phrase "my computer, my rules" to come up with an analogy (or even a reply). If this was about my friend using my computer without permission, the statement would well be an apt one. It's definitely worth looking into the context & main ideas of whatever people are replying to, not the mere tiny parts they quote!

Terrible analogy. It's like me putting my hand in front of my eyes to block out the view.

They don't have to serve me content. But since they do, I can view it however I wish.

Would it make any difference to you if a site notified you that they monetize with ads before they display content?

I had so much respect for Google about a decade ago.

Now they are on the same level as Microsoft. The Orweillian attempts at redefining language is... not surprising. This is beyond regular corporate-speak.

Their search results are full of spam.

They take hostage Gmail accounts.

It seems that everything "cool" they do... has a sinister, ulterior motive.

I don't know if all the good they have done outweighs the bad.

> They take hostage Gmail accounts.

> I don't know if all the good they have done outweighs the bad.

Well, I wouldn't call Google outright sinister. That's just what happens when capitalism goes unchecked. Too bad that even the EU, even the mothership of regulations Germany, didn't have the guts to put some red lines (and consumer rights!) towards Google.

The old Google Toolbar had a warning with big red font saying “THIS IS NOT YOUR USUAL YADA TADA”. It explained the page rank feature sends what domains you visit to Google for checking their pagerank, and how Google processed that specific information.

It gave you the choice to enable or disable, in equally sized buttons.

Today, you instal Chrome and are immediately asked to sign in without being aware this “syncs” your browsing history to Google.

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