Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
> We choose Adblock as it is one of the most popular. It is also possible to use Adblock Plus or uBlock, as the way they operate is exactly the same — HTTP filters and HTML element hiding.
AdBlock in the Chrome store uses Adblock Plus filtering engine[1], so to say the way these two "operate is exactly the same" makes sense.
However uBlock Origin uses its own code base, and is far better equipped than AdBlock/Adblock Plus to deal with anti-blockers, so to say that the way uBO operates is "exactly the same" is a stretch.
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[1] Since version 3.0: https://help.getadblock.com/support/discussions/topics/60000... -- it's not explicitly stated in the announcement but this code repo mirror shows it: https://github.com/kzar/watchadblock/blob/c5f5b7f535182d6774...
Cool!
And thank you for your service to the Internet!
Block any outgoing connection you don't trust instead of simply taking some 3rd party list with URLs, unverified, no quality control etc, and only blacklist these KNOWN bad urls.
Ad parties don't sit still, they don't keep their ads on the same url when they found out they are blocked or maybe already preventive rotate through new urls etc.
In the end you'll end up with some bizar long list which has to be checked for every url you visit etc etc. This will be a performance hog, and if you cant imagine that, then your list isn't long enough yet.
Use proper egress filtering, allow what you know, and don't allow what you don't know, not just what some 3rd party put on a list.
My advice for you in 2018.
For ""Block by default" is a usability nightmare."
yes it is for a week or 2, but I prefer usability nightmare then a safety nightmare.
I have been using uBlock Origin for years and it's one of those things that just works. Turning it off in those rare moments it needs to be off is a bleak reminder of the state of the internet. Why would I want to go through the hassle of managing all of this work by myself?
A massive THANK YOU to the individuals behind uBlock - You literally make the internet tolerable for me.
It's like putting all _caught_ pedofiles in a jail, and then saying children can roam the streets free and in safety...
Negativity usually bills itself as realism, but that doesn't make it so.
Right, and how is that supposed to happen in practice? Manually inspect every CDN domain loaded on every page that you visit? Or just live without scripts, images, fonts, video?
Basically, yes, see uMatrix. It's not for non-web-devs, I feel, but if you can easily recognize unnecessary connections it works pretty well.
I don't know. I'm not a web dev (x), and I went from "dafuq?" to "I get it, this is so cool" in two minutes flat. Let's just say it sure helps if you're a technical person, not j. random user.
(x) but engineer/CS, tbh
edit: remove accidental markup
Certainly, it just can take more time to sift through the list of tens of domains and deciding to allow or ban each connection if you don't already know which connections tend to be needed and which are not.
Still, it's perfectly doable for anyone if you experiment a little, and it's done once per site, so the time needed for this shouldn't be an issue. It's just that people working with this stuff will have an easier time using uMatrix - which is what I really meant in my comment above :)
(Just kidding, I'm actually a foolish middle-aged man. But I'm talking about my inner bright child.)
I find recognizing unnecessary connections to be the painful part.
no i don't work for or get paid in anyway by little snitch, i just love the product.
Imaging you start off with Safari being unable to connect to anything. Little Snitch is running in Alert Mode and it asks you to decide on every outbound network connection. You visit Facebook. LS asks if Safari can talk to facebook.com on port 443. You say "yes, always". What about "server893.ads.facebook.com:443"? You say "make that .ads.facebook.com and block it forever". Do this through the few dozen prompts you'll get on this first visit when you visit a resource-heavy domain. Now hit reload and pick up a few more (like maybe this time you'll get a connection to a video CDN that you didn't see last time). Repeat until the requests taper off to nothing.
Now put Little Snitch into "Silent Deny" mode and enjoy your Safari that can only view ad-free Facebook.
Note: I don't really recommend doing this because I'd rather be doing almost literally anything else, but if I had to set up a social media kiosk for a relative, that's how I'd go about it.
I do highly enjoy telling Little Snitch to deny connections to all the non-port-80/443 ad trackers. I can't imagine a single legitimate reason why I'd want Safari to connect to moatads.com:843.
uBlock Origin allows you to block yourself any outgoing connection to servers you do not trust, including working in default-deny mode if you want[1].
In any case, those filter lists are maintained by dedicated volunteers[2], their work is way under-appreciated, because contrary to what you state, these volunteers spend a whole lot of time ensuring everything work as expected so that in the end all non-technical users who wouldn't be able to deal with default-deny mode can also be protected.
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[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...
[2] https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commits/master https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/commits/master
They might burn some CPU cycles but surely the ads themselves burn much more.
- This helps with all types of ads for many news and reading,
- the big benefit is: opening all youtube videos on Firefox with ublock origin in order to get rid of youtube ads -
Specifically, scrolling on Firefox feels very laggy. Also, Firefox doesn't play videos on same tab. That becomes very frustrating.
A lot of websites will still look weird but still a million times better when you don't have popup windows poking your eye, also reading mode is a god send.
I started using Brave about a year ago and I love it. The only thing I'm missing is syncing my bookmarks between Brave on my phone and Chrome on my computer, but a year later and it hasn't bothered me enough to find a fix.
Maybe if (1) fewer ads pumped up CPU and memory usage for a page, and (2) companies didn't give their non-technical asshole free reign over placing scripts on the page, then maybe many of these sites wouldn't be so bad to visit without an ad blocker.
Now I just siphon the images into a rss feed. If they want my eyeball they better start putting up banners like they used to. Active content can fuck right off.
Some sites I use a lot, I have enabled ads just to be friendly to the site. These sites also seem to have mostly acceptable ads, so it's not intrusive.
What sites are unusable? Aside from some click-bait destinations like BuzzFeed I've found the web without ad blockers works well enough.
After the recent Firefox update I had to run without Noscript for a while, until it got updated. My laptop battery really took a hit. Loading web comics in 70 tabs or so took battery life estimates down to an hour. With Noscript running and blocking most advertising Javascript the estimate stays up at 3.5 hours.
Sometimes the whole thing is a bait and switch - things like "Incredible, find out what happened to this starlet with amazing butt".... after 5-6 phrases that don't say anything about it we find out "... she's crying because her grandma died" (real story). Fucking bait and switch gutter news. But Adblock can't solve that.
I don't think a laptop can be normally used to browse these news sites without Adblock, and sometimes at all.
Youtube.
Particularly nice for the app.
This is extremely hyperbolic. Why not just, you know, not visit those websites if their business model is so abhorrent to you?
Do you feel entitled to something for nothing?
That’s not entitlement. Entitlement is the sentiment that users somehow owe advertising or web firms anything.
If these companies are unhappy with me using an ad blocker, then THEY are the entitled ones. They should change the law, if they don't like it.
I AM entitled to use an ad blocker, because that's what the law says.
If operators want something from me they can ask for it. They can ask for money and I'll decide whether to provide it or they can demand I look at ads by refusing to work without ads.
If they want to connect to 37 different domains, ruin my battery life, unexpectedly play sound and video, or mine bitcoin the answer is probably no.
If the resource is valuable enough or If they simply want to load a singular resource that doesn't itself consume much compute or bandwidth I might consent to let them.
How many other industries rely on adversarial relationships with the people that ultimately keep their business running.
Lots of website have no control over what ads are popping up! Drudge Report is probably the most frightening! All the time popups of "outdated" Adobe Flash (that I dont have at all), installation of recent updates of Windows 7 (even tho Im on Win 10)... recently I had some sort of ajax script that actually literally installed extension in Chrome (!!) I believe somehow my mouse was hijacked to perform a click action. Unbelievable!
Im fine with Ads so long as someone is properly vetting!!
That particular site is highly functional without allowing any JavaScript at all. All links work. All non-advertising images load.
By default I just don't allow JS. Thank you NoScript. Many sites that won't display anything without JS can be viewed by View -> Page Style -> No Style.
Just wondering how many people here noticed that pornhub injects google analytics, and gives google unscrutinized access to your sexual preferences and habits? They don't even bother showing a google ad, they just let them inject their arbitrary js payload.
I do not consent. They can fuck right off.
As an average person, if you spend 8 hours a day reading all the terms and conditions you 'agree' to, it would take you 76 days to just read them, nevermind understand them.
http://techland.time.com/2012/03/06/youd-need-76-work-days-t...
I'm not actually sure how we ended up living in a world where those terms and conditions are legally meaningful. But I'll reiterate that they can fuck right off and there is absolutely no moral dilemma about blanket filtering of ads and trackers. As to how effective they are - effective enough to prompt anti adblocking measures such as TFA.
IANAL, but as an European I'm pretty sure they aren't legally meaningful. To be honest, I don't consider any online T&C's to actually affect me, and only pay attention to explicitly mentioned licenses for content. I have no idea how far from actual reality this is.
(IANAL)
As for moral justifiability, I find it unacceptable that a website operator can sell data about me without my consent just for following a link to their site.
I guess it boils down to what you think the Internet is. I feel I should be in control of my computer, and thus I get to decide which bits I allow onto my network and which of those bits are then rendered on my screen. If you've made content publicly available, it's mine to consume in the way I see fit. I don't see why I shouldn't, for example, be allowed to use a text based browser to view content or browse with JavaScript disabled.
Payment for content is of course difficult for websites, but I just don't feel an ad based revenue is feasible on an open web, precisely because the web is open. The platform does not support the notion of content creators implicitly dictating terms.
Where this analogy breaks down is when those cameras start following you from store to store.
I don't really know if one could require this. Seems complex. But add that the cameras are hidden (you don't know they are cameras) and it becomes a very simple issue.
You’re claiming that, by choosing to visit a website, I have implicitly agreed to and am obligated to download every resource and execute all code that website’s maintainers decide to include, and to do that recursively for each downloaded resource. That is preposterous. It could, for instance, obligate me to download a literally endless amount of data, which might be very expensive for me. It might also obligate me to perform limitless computation on my machine, if for instance the website includes a script to mine Bitcoins.
I try to avoid making moral arguments, but I will certainly point out logical consequences of other people’s moral arguments that to me seem absolutely ludicrous.
It doesn't work that way.
And I’d like an answer for once other than the super literal “Because their server returned the status code 200”
Because sure, it did, but if we’re turning this into an ideological discussion of how you feel you haven’t given permission, why even feed the system with your view.
Even using an ad blocked you’re still adding views to the page, and the powers that be will simply view you as a customer, albeit one they’re being cheated out of with a pesky ad blocked.
To me you are consenting the moment you decide to use services and websites that cost millions of dollars to maintain and expecting and paying little to nothing compared to the real cost of those services. If you used paid sites you’d see less ads (maybe not no ads because often times the cost you pay still isn’t the “real cost” of that service”) and my guess is this tracking would seem a lot less intrusive.
Example: Sometimes I use sites to watch foreign films that show several tabs of ads for each click. You need to click on each hyperlink about 3 times, each time opening a new ad, some of which are the “Update flash” malicious type. I don’t ad block them (anymore, for a short while I used ad-block on sites like this and then thought better if it) because hosting 100s of HD movies costs money.
Sometimes I run out of patience and instead of playing up my entitlement and just saying “I deserve this because reasons” I just... close the page. If no one views the videos, no money will be made, and either the hosting service will shape up, or it will close. There won’t be an arms race of anti-ad-blocker vs ad-blocked.
That's not how consent works, if it was then I would just claim that by establishing a connection to my computer, the remote website consents to my rules including ad blocking. My computer is mine, I have the right to display the content sent to my computer however the fuck I want. If my doing so ends up putting some company out of business because their tracker revenue dries up, that's perfectly fine, that's literally the free market at work and the consumers signaling to providers that this business model is not viable.
I'm not obliged to be a source of revenue to these companies.
Your response is just a variation of the “They returned status code 200” argument which I explain as really just supporting the system albeit half-heartedly.
If you really hate them so much (I mean, you’re fine with them going out of business so at least, you don’t love them or rely on them) why even make the request? Why put their filthy ad-tracking blood money funded content on your PC. If it’s so repulsive to you on such a deep level but you also don’t rely on it or need it or care if it goes away, why even get near it?
Edit: And I’ll add my take on it. I think you want to have your cake and eat it too and the “their server responded with content” argument is just trying to romanticize the concept. I honestly don’t have a problem with people trying to fight ad blockers, my issue is when they try to paint it as anything more than wanting something they act like is absolute poison for less than it costs to make. It’s like I give you a bite of my sandwich and you decide to lick the whole thing because “I can consume it how ever I want”. Sure you can, and I willingly gave you the sandwich, but I’m not going to be able to give you bites of my sandwich if you insist on licking them and leaving them unpalatable for me. If you really don’t like my sandwich why not refuse my offer and show me that the sandwich is flawed, not the conditions I’m offering you a bite under.
Consumers becoming so brain washed, so accepting of the advertising status quo that they actually defend it even though everything about it is against their personal interests.
> I don’t understand the entitlement
There is no entitlement, it's a right. I am exercising my right as the operator of this PC to connect to content providers and display their content however the fuck I want within the confines of the law. The law doesn't give them any right to extract revenue from me if I choose to opt out. If they have a problem with that, they have the right try to block me within the confines of the law. And I have the right to bypass that block within the confines of the law.
Let me put it another way. Your sentiment is way more pliant and ethical than the sentiment of the guys who run the ad industry. Your job history, drinking habits, sex habits, food preferences, mental health, personal aspirations, etc - all of this stuff is up for sale to anyone in the advertising circles. The only thing missing is your credit card number and name/address so it's not 'technically' PIA even though correlating all of it back to you is trivial and everyone knows it. I thought I was paranoid about ads, and then I landed a job in the ad industry and realized my worst paranoia was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what actually goes on.
Don't defend the guys who are fucking you, stand up for your rights.
And, I don’t appreciate being called brainwashed... this is barely a step above ranting about sheeple.
You points about my profile I guess are supposed to be alarming but are not news to me. I’m fine with all of that being for sale. Correlating it back to a person is trivial... until you try and do it at scale and evaluate the risk vs reward. Risk is very very high and gets exponentially higher at scale, and reward is almost nonexistent until you do it at scale. And are guards that add enough friction to make it not worthwhile often.
Sure there are cracks in the system, but seeing as I can’t pay what the content I consume is worth, I accept the risk gladly.
You're defending a business entity whose entire existence is against your personal interest. In market terms, you are not a rational actor maximizing self interest. If you're not brain washed, what are you?
Just like businesses would be irrational if they didn't use every legal tax 'loophole' to make sure they pay no tax, you are irrational if you don't use available legal avenues to get the content you want for the lowest price - in this case, viewing it with ad blockers. If that means content providers go out of business, that's okay. New ones will show up with new business models that are actually viable. The free market expects individuals to maximize their self-interest within the confines of the law. If you're not doing that, you're just harming yourself for no meaningful reason whatsoever.
Ok, I'm brainwashed, thanks.
If they can't make it, then it's no excuse to resort to creepy stuff like tracking and profiling people without their consent, or with them ignoring the extent or implications of it. It's nothing short of abusing people, and it being the last card not to get out of business is hardly an excuse.
You made a free mall analogy in another comment: if businesses can't run free mall without abusing customers, then don't run free malls; it's not like people always expected free malls, it's just that some companies began to offer products/content cheaper and cheaper, and now they hit rock-bottom. Whose fault is it? The customer for asking, or the businesses to enter a race to the bottom, and then going full unethical?
Again, I get your points, but don't track me, my friends or my family.
The problem is we don’t have a protocol for signaling that they want to track you before you load the content and its tracking.
So you get the content, the tracking code, and detection for anti-ad/tracking plugins.
If they detect anti-ad plugins they say “We did give you the content, but we see you don’t have the form of payment we want so please don’t view it”
At that point, to me, neither side has done anything wrong. Would it be preferable if they could give you the “please don’t view it” message upfront? Definitely. But instead they let you opt out.
Once you decide to modify the paywall away and view the content you still haven’t done anything wrong but you’re saying “I want to view content paid for by showing people ads that was also designed to drive ad engagement but I don’t deserve to have to view ads so I’ll ignore your paywall since it’s my computer and you let me have the content” ... which is fine. And also won’t solve the actual underlying problem. Instead we just get an arms race of ad-block vs anti-ad-block (which anti will lose) and content creators hoping ad-blocking doesn’t reach critical mass.
The alternative is to turn down the content by going away. That sends the message that you won’t support the model. Bonus points if you pay someone willing to take your money in exchange for not tracking you since the most effective way to disrupt the market right now is to fund those trying to break out of the current model.
Well, tracking my mother who doesn't know enough about ad-blockers or the implications of being tracked is already wrong, to me. Collecting detailed personal information on people for commercial purposes should be strictly regulated, at the very least when it's done automatically.
> That sends the message that you won’t support the model.
We should send the most effective and unambiguous kind of messages: I like that content, but not the ad/tracking that you put on your site. That's much clearer than not visiting the site altogether (they might think they just have to change their content, or their marketing or sth). Some media are not fully aware of the crap they run, because it's run by a third-party, and the decision was made by another department etc. I don't necessarily want to send a bad signal to everyone there.
Not the OP, but the "brainwashed" angle applies to more than just ads.
Anyone with a Gmail account is effectively selling my communication with them to Google for a free service. And you bet that when told about this very few would see it that way. Consumers _are_ as guillable as they are ignorant. These new "established" online norms - be it tracking, profiling, ads, what have you - would've never flown in their physical form, but here we are in a world where Gmail, WhatsApp, Android phones, Google Analytics, etc. are considered gold standards of modern tech.
No sane person, if explained the exact ramifications of these "free services", would've agreed to any of them just 15 years ago. But they do now, giddily at that. Pray tell how this is anything but a brainwashing.
And all the downvotes just tell me people aren’t confident enough in their counter arguements to let them stand against a comment that isn’t intentionally de-emphasized.
And the fact you think I’d change my mind over downvotes, even in part, tells me something about you.
If a company doesn't want to offer free access to content that costs them money to produce, they can create a login system and a paywall.
If the one in the comments several levels up from this one, isn't this just a variation of the HTTP Status Code 200 argument? (which I explain why I don't support in other comments)
It is reasonable to expect a free lemonade stand to print ads on the cups and have sales people around trying to initiate conversations with you while you consume your free beverage. Peeling off the ads and yelling at the sales people would make you an entitled hypocrite. However, if the same sales people would also secretly take a creep photo of you, write down your preference of lemonade and take note of your clothing and body type and compile all of it into a personal file on you to be sold and shared with other businesses in the whole world? Wouldn't you start to question whether they take a bit too much in exchange of that free lemonade?
I would accept it if they wrote the conditions on a sign before entering, but that is not how most free sites today operate. The fact that the tracking is completely automated somehow makes it seem less intrusive to many people, but it is just as creepy as someone spying on you in person.
I think your analogy makes it easy to see why people support it if you take it a little further.
For free lemonade? A layperson would say of "Of course that's too far!". But now imagine a mall where everything is free. Everything. Suddenly laypeople start asking "Well can they at least tell me they're taking the picture?", "Can they write down the answers after I checkout instead of holding up the lines to do that?"
I think we need to sit down and seriously evaluate what content is worth. I feel like we reached our current predicament because people just seriously undervalue content, and advertising became the last bastion of value generation. It's similar to how IAP became the only smart way to generate revenue since people feel 5$ for a solid app with indefinite support is just too much. yet IAP ends up being a lot more intrusive than upfront payment.
I think you are right that the problem comes down to valuing personal data and content. How many $ is your data worth to e.g. Google vs. how many $ would you need to get paid in order to give up your privacy? There is probably a discrepancy here, which is why people are getting mad.
[0] Say a website has a CPM of $5 and displays 10 ads to each user, such that a single impression from a user without an ad blocker earns 5c. 50c is entirely reasonable, particularly if a user can refund clickbait.
That's really simple, more people need to be willing to pay.
I mean, I say in other parts of the page that I can't pay what the content is worth, but I'm actually not sure that's true for myself. But it is true for the general public.
And it's not they can't because they can't afford it, but rather, they don't want to. So we can make it easier to pay, for example. We can try and explain what advertising is doing. But in the end, I don't see a change happening.
People just seriously undervalue content.
People won't pay 99 cents for an app, so the market switched to IAP and suddenly people were gladly be nickled and dimed for more than 99 cents with intrusive applications designed from the ground up to drive IAP.
It's not like content generators wouldn't rather just take your money. I'm sure they don't love the hoops they have to jump through (it cost money to implement those ads too) to get inconsistent ad revenue that is often not very transparent and rife with pitfalls.
But until enough people to at least cover the cost of content are willing to pay, we'll see ads be king.
Or maybe an emotional approach like the Guardian or Patreon would work better.
The point here, though, is that you can both like the content and want to support the creator yet choose to block ads.
But if the creator only offers ads as a method of payment and you consume their content while blocking their ads, regardless of what you want to do, you aren’t paying them for their content.
At that point your options are to continue consuming the content (and preferably not post comments vilifying the content creator driven to using ads like the original comment I responded to above does, which I take exception to) or to not consume the content, signaling to the content creator that something isn’t working about their ad-based model.
Am i expected to pay to 50 different sites? That quickly becomes unmanageable.
Maybe something like radio stations have is required for the internet. Where the artists get paid based on how often a radio station plays their song.
You’re expected to find some number of sites X that let you pay to access ad-free content that total to an amount you find palatable and limit yourself to those.
It’s not trivial, and it’s inconvenient. The sites like that are relatively few and far between.
But it means you’re making a sacrifice to support sites that are trying to break out of the model that you don’t support.
If enough people do that, the incentive forms to make paying for content upfront and ad-free and suddenly the market will solve the problem of 50 sites wanting payment, be it through easier payment mechanisms or “share cropping”
There are apps that had thousands of downloads and great reviews that failed because of peoples in unwillingness to pay for them.
How will you know you’re going to like a news story before you pay to read it?
The metrics you have are the same as any other type of content, word of mouth, reviews, past performance of the content creator.
People will spend 10$ on a movie ticket when critics and reviewers are split on if it’s a good movie. They’ll spend 20$ to try a new dish they might not like on the recommendation of a single person, even an impartial waiter. But they don’t value apps so they don’t pay for them. People will go to app developers with their brilliant idea and act shocked when they get a 5 figure estimate because they figure app development is a dime a dozen.
Likewise I doubt many people appreciate the true cost of the content they consume.
Because you like the content?
If it's genuinely decent content it should encourage the middleman who owns the delivery system to look for more honest and up front sources of income. If it's crap, bottom feeder content then it's no great loss if adblockers drive it out of business is it?
And you can't say "just don't visit the site" because pretty much every site does this. You might as well say "just quit the internet" which obviously is not a solution.
It’s not true that every site does this, but yes, most are funded by the model that relies on your information being sold and used to build a profile of you.
If you don’t support that model why buy into the system? After all, the content minus ads was still written and designed to drive ad revenue. Any conflict of interest between driving ad revenue and conveying information (ie. uninformative clickbait) in the content is still affecting the end result even if you never see the ads.
Why not compile a list of sites that don’t track you and offer paid services that can provide what you’re looking for?
Will you be limited? Very! Will you be feeding the system you apparently have deep seated qualms about? No! And if it means that much to you, I think you should be very happy.
If the system is broken enough that enough people go that route, companies will chase the money. If users are willing to pay enough to cover the real, un-intrusive-ad-tracking-subsidized cost of content, companies will jump for joy at not having to deal with ad networks and pay people to optimize for ads and just take your money directly.
If me blocking ads/tracking results in some company shutting down, then so be it. But maybe others will jump in to fill that gap and try something different like, say, a subscription fee, in which case I'll happily pay.
But if I/we just stop using those sites that I truly enjoy, then if/when they shut down others might be afraid to go into that market because they might think there's not enough interest in it.
All of this is just a guess, obviously.
Block all ads?
> That’s robbing sites of needed advertising click-dollars!
Click all ads?
> That’s robbing advertising companies of needed attention!
This is totalitarian capitalism: it’s not good enough to accept being tracked everywhere, spied on, and burdened with processing advertising. Not good enough even to click every ad. You must love the ads in your heart. It’s your duty, citizen!
Block all the ads?
That’s robbing sites of needed dollars.
Click all the ads?
That’s robbing advertisers of needed dollars.
The end game in both cases is ads become worth less, or worthless. It doesn’t matter which side of the scale you tip to cause that.
It’s so easy to understand what’s wrong with AdNauseam if you look into the spirit of the tool. The problem isn’t clicking every ad, it’s clicking every ad with the intent to throw a wrench in advertising.
If it worked well enough the end result would just be ads are worthless and sites lose money, just like if you block their ads.
To use an inexact metaphor, if I am selling gas no one is obligated to fill up at my station. Fuel efficient cars are not “robbing” me. People who take public transit are not ripping me off. My job as a businessman is to make money. Consumers owe nothing to me. If the gas I sell is leaded and no one wants to buy it, I have no right to complain.
If I cut out every ad from my copy of the yellow pages no one has a right to complain. Adblocking is no different.
Advertising has to wake up.
Actually, even when you understand what's going on, the sheer number of things to check to get the full picture make it unpractical.
Your argument make sense if a website clearly make you click on a term of service like google does. In that case, you accepted a clear, explicit contract. Either consent or leave.
But that's not what happen with most services.
And because of that, it makes sense to use an ad blocker. You just prevent sites to make you pay a price that they don't disclose.
Another thing is:
- what they are doing is immoral
- what we are doing is not illegal
So the reason we should stop doing this for sites that DO disclose what they do is morality. But there is little incentive to be seek morality when playing with an immoral player. So there is not scenario here, where not using an adblock is a good strategy.
Because they want to allow things like indexing they serve the content and the "paywall" (payment being you allowing ads) in one swoop. Yes it's on your computer and you control your computer so you can get rid of their paywall, but you can also do that to software that requires a license key to activate, yet we don't seem to defend cracked software the same way.
Maybe if we reimplemented the internet today we'd allow browsers to send an "Allows Ads" header and have an HTTP Status Code for "I only accept clients who accept ads".
I mean, even Google doesn't actually make you click on a term of service to search.
> - what they are doing is immoral > - what we are doing is not illegal
Only one of these is a factual statement. Ad-blocking is not illegal, and of course it shouldn't be.
But what they're doing is extracting value out of their content. You can argue it's immoral, but it's not a factual statement in the sense your other statement is.
> But there is little incentive to be seek morality when playing with an immoral player. So there is not scenario here, where not using an adblock is a good strategy.
What you're saying to me is pretty much "if they won't play fair why should I". Which is fine logic, I just think if you're going to follow that line of thought, don't trumpet it from the rooftops like it's some sort of interesting proposal. To me they're desperate to generate value from content people won't pay upfront from and leaning on unfortunate tactics, and you're saying I won't pay at all. Neither side is right, yet only one side seems to be really proud about what it's doing
Again, my point isn't that Ad Blocking shouldn't be allowed, and I'm not here to convince anyone to uninstall their ad-blocker. My point is if you don't like ad-driven content, the "moral high ground" isn't to say "yeah well why'd their server return status code 200 and let me download the assets?". The moral high ground is to decline to use their services. Except that'd take actual inconvenience, curating the minority services that aren't ad-driven. So it's much easier to just say that ad blocking is "taking a stand" instead of admitting it's really just "having your cake and eating it to"
Aren't we talking about someone explicitly blocking the content they object to?
I also don't quite buy the argument that a view on a page relieved of all ads is somehow funding bad behaviour.
And I completely don't follow the argument that viewing content somehow obligates you to contribute to their morally bankrupt revenue system. If this means the end for web pages relying on morally questionably ad companies then I'd consider that a success.
Ever since newspapers, the social contract has been that they serve content and I become a reader they can sell advertising space for me to look at. They can't suddenly change that contract and expect everyone to automatically agree.
Hopefully I can answer your question.
I use an adblocker all the time. I make no exceptions, and I have never whitelisted any site. If I notice something managed to sneak through a filter, I send a pull request to add it to the filter.
I know I'm robbing the content hosts of their ad-based revenue. So why do I keep doing it?
Because I fucking hate ads of any kind. I want all ad-based revenue streams to dry up permanently. And I put a lot of effort into that. Fuck ads. They can burn in hell.
...by showing you ads.
How about identifying which youtubers your children are impressionable to, and then approaching them to push unhealthy food products?
How about using your porn browsing habits and location history to figure out when you start cheating on your significant other, how about offering you divorce lawyers before you even realize you need one.
How about figuring out when you become isolated and lonely by looking at changes in the volume of texts and phone calls and IMs you exchange, and then selling that primarily to dating and sex chat websites.
Ever wondered why these websites are silently deploying anti-adblock functionality rather than trying to bring the matter through the legal system? Because if it ever became a legal case and they were made to disclose how they use the data, there'd be a fucking uproar. This is exactly what happened in the EU and that's why advertisers had their balls cut off in that region. So now they've opted to support the destruction of net neutrality and bolster DRM laws so they can shoehorn advertisements and anti-adblock under DRM instead.
People need to get 100% clear on something: there are very smart people getting paid very generous salaries whose job is to find ways to distort and manipulate laws and public perception to prevent consumers from asserting their rights against having their behavior manipulated. I don't think it's an understatement to say that these groups are a major threat to the wellbeing of the people, right up there with war and climate change. Ajit Pai is a textbook example of this pattern. He's not stupid, he's not an asshole. He's a smart person who has been tasked with a goal that goes against the public good. And he's done a good job at that task.
"General Data Protection Regulation" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...
The sad truth: nobody cares. There won't be an uproar. There are/were countless blog entries on how your data is abused, and nobody cares. _Oh, look, a site where I can showcase my vanity and have followers like some kind of celebrity!_ - this is the reality.
I'd love to make people realize how bad it is. I'd really want to know where are the people who donated enough to the Mozilla foundation to supports a 2-page ad in the New York Times in print for Firefox back in 2004. I'd really like to know what makes people listen, but I honesty have no idea.
Yes, they leak data like a sieve. But I don't see they using that data, except for defrauding people I buy stuff from.
I don’t buy things I don’t have a pre existing need for based on advertising, or really in general. If anything ads make me less likely to buy something based on the associated irritation.
My political beliefs have not been swayed by my Facebook feed. I think if anything Facebook has made people more hardline to their existing beliefs by feeding them that there is mass agreement with them.
You rolled off into unsupported tinfoil hat land for a bit. Soon to be divorced men isn’t a big enough market to go after.
And if your kid wants gummy bears, that’s on you for buying them.
How do you know if you're being silently manipulated? That's kind of the point of silent manipulation - you don't know it's happening.
Maybe you think you wanted that product, but in reality subtle ad exposure made you desire it.
If advertisers would agree to some behavior standards, I’d happily re-enable ads. Somebody has to pay for content.
* simple text-only ads
* give the advertisers the tools to generate text content that is minimally distracting, maximally invasive, maximally creepy, and maximally personally-identifying
"$35,000 in debt, unemployed, recently dumped and insecure about your male sexual identity? You deserve this special price on Axe Body Spray..."
The buzz alone would get people to turn off their ad-blockers just to see what content gets generated for them.
AFAICT an ad from Google is chosen based on the reams of data Google has about me, but the content of the ad seems generic (or at least seems like it's meant to come off as generic so as not to creep me out).
The hypothetical adtech I'm describing would of course choose the ad based similarly on reams of data about me, but the content of the ad would itself also be worded using invasive data about me.
Google ad: "get some cheap technical degree"
Creeperville Ad: "climb out of your 35,000+ debt with a technical degree"
There are even more convincing examples wrt pornography but I'd rather not go down that rabbit hole.
I also happen to run a blog (no where near a major website) but my thought process is, you should write because you want to spread what you've learned with others, not create a platform for the sole purpose of making money.
To me, having a visitor on your site is a privilege. Why would you go out of your way to interrupt and attempt to manipulate them, yet that's what so many large sites do. There's other ways to make money rather than tormenting your users.
A site can disable access to those using adblock, and it's reasonable to choose to avoid those websites.
The normal way, unfortunately is with ads, even though nobody likes them.
My preferred solution of voluntarily pay what you want ... probably takes a bit more time, to become established.
I know that's not applicable to every writing industry, but those other industries have different ways to generate income too.
I have the privilege to have content creators to visit, not the other way around. There is 8 billions potential visitors, there's can only be less than that potential content creator. Visiting takes no time, creating takes so much more time (if it wouldn't, well I wouldn't even read your stuff, I would do it myself).
> There's other ways to make money rather than tormenting your users.
Sure, but what does it have to do with me visiting your website? I'm there for a single reason, read what you got. Except if you directly sell me what you write using a paywall, if you have a sideline, than what you do is ADVERTISING, which let me remind you, you don't like (I don't either). At least using advertising on the side of what you read, the text is no longer an advertisement, just what's beside it (which is clearly labeled and clearly ads).
Since the explosion of adblocker and the effect was increased after the Youtube Adpocalypse, there is so much more sponsored content produced, it's disgusting. I can live with some of it but currently, it just becomes worse and worse.
"Your terms are acceptable."
I think that is precisely what those sites want. They would probably prefer not to waste bandwidth on a user they can't monetize.
It's getting to a point where you need to actively monitor every network request the site makes. It's despicable and I have nothing but ill will for the data scientists, software engineers, and product managers who participate in this.
I’m sure quite a number of people got nice bonuses and promos for bringing some of that revenue back.
While I personally avoid FB and use DDG, most folks can't or aren't allowed to (no extensions).
There are other ways for advertisers to sneak into my world, but this kind of online advertisement is not one of them.
Ad supported content provides a wealth of information for people who otherwise wouldn't have access to it.
How do other businesses do it? By providing goods and services the customer wants at a fair price. Radical I know, it’s only worked for like, thousands of years...
Ads provide wealth redistribution. Resources are given to poor people subsidized by rich people.
Don’t kid yourself. If the major platforms could exclude those who aren’t in their advertisers demographics they wouldn’t waste a single server on them.
I'm old enough to remember a service, which added a footer into your IE5 and showed ads constantly, and in exchange, you got paid, with actual money. (Pocket money level, of course; unfortunately I can't recall service names, this was pre-2000.)
Getting a service for viewing ads - that is fine.
Telling me it's free then showing me ads - that's just plain dishonestly and/or lying, so don't tell me not to block ads: I never agreed to them explicitly.
And as for information access: Wikipedia, one of the most well known source of information, is running on donations - subscriptions, really. It is viable. Makes no money for investors though and serves and actual purpose, like a library.
They had this huge background ad covering my whole screen with a bit of conent in the middle (which also has inlined ads of course). They served the background image from the root of their main domain, new url was generated with each request (there seemed to be no pattern that I could match), scripts requesting and displaying the ad were inlined, and the ad itself couldn't be easily hidden as it was attached directly to the <body> somehow. I played with blocking it for a few minutes and then just gave up and used different website.
They went back to regular ads after the election, but I know they are saving this crap for later. Oh, and they also do pop-up asking you to disable the ad blocker.
Tie the advertisement to the type of content that the user is already there to read about. Then you can serve ads from the content web server and make it indistinguishable from content, completely unobtrusive, completely noninvasive, and maybe even welcome.
As a positive example, I like how many YouTube channels take 30 seconds out of a 10 minute video to talk about some company's product that might be of interest to their audience.
Not an annoying video ad that has nothing to do with what I'm reading / watching, just the host talking about a product or service that their audience has a chance to be interested in.
I like how many podcasts have ads with predictable lengths, so I can skip them with the "fast forward" button without hearing them. NPR is 4 skips; Slate is 8-10. It seems like "deep learning" should have figured this out by now.
No tracking of my habits was required, and all parties involved probably got detailed-enough feedback as to their campaign's effectiveness.
When I see someone I trust on YouTube recommend a product in a pre-roll ad or the like, then I don't really skip it and I do really keep those companies in mind in case I ever am looking for a product that they might offer.
> trust
This is the key feature. The advertiser risks trusting that the promoter will show their product in a positive light. The promoter risks their own reputation on the quality of their endorsements.
This element of risk hopefully serves as an incentive to maintain a high quality of both the product and the endorsement. Bad manufacturers and poor quality (or scandalous) services should lose access to trustworthy endorsers with (hopefully) large audiences. Good manufacturers and high quality services won't want to associate with cheap shills.
The only problem I see is that places like YouTube are not optimizing for quality endorsers. Their focus on engagement is driving away people that try to create quality; may have already left. Those that remain are becoming increasingly formulaic, uninspired, risk-adverse, and "advertiser safe".
[1] Which is required by law![2] This probably also means disclosing if you got a free copy for review purposes[3] of a product that would otherwise cost money or have a non-monetary value. The disclosure must also be "clear and conspicuous"[4].
[2] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/04/ftc-s...
[3] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...
[4] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...
I work with a publisher on these sorts of things (I am not an ad network, though). Some of those networks have strict prohibitions against showing ads on pages featuring certain types of content, and so we've had to build our own system to display ads on those pages which work with networks which are fine with that content. The publisher does sell its own ad spaces to interested local parties, but these are usually accompanied by periodical ad sales because the company ultimately makes more money selling ads through networks.
They're all creepy and they're all unwelcome.
This sounds like an argument for sponsored content. At least with the current ad strategy, it can be relatively easy for a user distinguish ads from content. How do we distinguish a YouTube video that ends with the statement "this video was brought to you by [sponsor not relevant to the content]" and a YouTube version of an infomercial?
> make it indistinguishable from content
I kind of hate the idea of having marketing-planted material appearing indistinguishable from real content. Most of that is the general distrust I have towards large organizations in general.
That said, one could argue that all content is "marketing-planted" even when it's not an ad. There's always an agenda or at least bias. That's a fair point. Carry on good sir.
I may learn of a new product by seeing an ad, and in that sense it worked, but never by clicking on it.
The point being there is absolutely no reason for any ad to have javascript associated with it.
I agree, but it will be ugly. These "ad" companies are really surveillance companies who can currently print money by selling ads. When the bubble pops, they'll still have all of their surveillance data, but will be forced to sell it in different and sleazier ways. Think credit reporting that is technically not "credit reporting," job applicant screening based on web histories, reporting on political dissidents, etc. FB/GOOG will get seriously evil as they collapse.
that's up to tampermonkey but maybe it's possible that google wouldn't like it since it would let userscripts access extension apis
what tampermonkey does is inserting the script into the page in a script tag to isolate it from the extension[1] and let it access variables defined by scripts on the page, but if scripts are blocked on the page it just doesn't run
i made my own custom js manager (with no userscript api support) that lets you choose if the script should be ran in the extension or page context (defaults to extension which works with scripts blocked) but i don't know if it's in good enough state to put on the internet and i've never really made things for anyone but myself
[1] https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/content_scripts#exec...
Show me nothing, nothing at all, until I make the effort to ask the question "what products are available for $need?"
If I'm on a website and begin searching, give the site the ad revenue.
This is a pretty wild claim. Most ads I see are relatively tame (like the “Build on AWS” and iPhone X ads I see around San Francisco), and I don’t see them “exploiting sex or basic instinct.”
This then extends to other industries. Chocolate is heavily marketed to women as a "decadent" "indulgence" for those times you want to let loose the strictures of life. So the diamond industry cooks up a way to sell crap brown diamonds specifically to women as a way to treat themselves with "chocolate" ice. No man required so you can express your feminism in full force. Go girl power!
This changes the very language we use. Decadent no longer has its original meaning of severe depravity any more because advertisers co-opted it in the mid-70's to apply whenever you eat a candy bar. Now it's just a bon mot women's pulp lit. sprinkles in every few paragraphs regardless of the topic.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=decadent+choco...
Secondly, the indulgence food industry doesn't care about cultural inclinations in the way you argue. They didn't set up a culture of considering fatty or carb rich food bad for one's health, or sinful. They'd be happy if everyone considered eating cake to be a wonderful thing, that rich, famous, inspirational people do in great quantities.
> Decadent no longer has its original meaning of severe depravity any more because advertisers co-opted it in the mid-70's to apply whenever you eat a candy bar.
Sin based language has been fading in intensity for generations. We have a show on the Disney channel celebrating "evil" during Christmas.
However the association of candy bars and decadence didn't come from advertisers originally. Gluttony is a deadly sin, and for puritan American settlers indulging in such pleasures of the flesh outside of special holy days would have been seen as downright decadent.
Who mentioned subtle? That's not even moving a goalpost, that's conjuring one out of thin air.
> However the association of candy bars and decadence didn't come from advertisers originally.
Again: so? The point is they use it. The point of many ads being "inherently psychologically abusive" stands, and I count the space wasted on sophistry to try and wriggle out of that as further damage caused by it.
That's who mentioned subtle.
Only the really good ones though. Most are just annoying and boring.
Isn't that basically Google (at least before they bought DoubleClick)?
I run an ad/analytic blocker, and I will never turn it off. I also understand that content creation and hosting costs money. If you're not a company that I already give money to (bank, insurance, other meat space service) then I accept the ad-for-content relationship and choose not to view the content.
The biggest problems are that I can't scale randomly adding domains to a host file, and it's difficult to know the intent of content creators/owners regarding ads.
It would be nice to have a signal, maybe a html tag in the header or something to state the intent regarding ads. I would set my browser/an extension to honor it and block access to content instead of accepting ads.
(numbers completely made up on the spot)
Hey big web sites, here is the solution, and I won’t even charge you for it: stop making terrible user experiences. I am not trying to block your ad; I am blocking your carelessly-written malware-laden code, your obnoxious pop-ups, your auto-playing videos, your shove-in-my-face-at-the-worst-time messages, your unreasonable consumption of my mobile data, and everything that is making a simple article difficult to load.
I’ll even tell you how to fix this: make more simple text ads, or images that are not animated and not peppered with distracting colors. Make the first paragraph of every article a nice little blurb telling me more about a company that pays you to advertise for them. Put some cute ads in muted colors inline with the content. Create a couple simple links to things that cost money that could support you (apps, T-shirts or whatever). In short, don’t be a complete jerk to the people you apparently “need” to help maintain the costs of your site.
I've only ever done a little ad banner work so I don't know how it is for "large" sites, but I assume the people writing and maintaining the code are not the ones actually selling or creating the ads. I assume those decisions are made between sales and the client.
If a single website -- say, your local or regional news site -- overhauled its ad experience to become more user-friendly, how would you even notice, if their ad server was added to your ad blocker's blacklist?
(or is that what this article is about? fiine i'll read tfa)
Though I probably would trust it more if it were directly embedded in the site.
Of the legacy outlets, New York Times is in the forefront as it is in most digital categories (the creators of D3, Backbone, and other tech have been on the payroll), but most of their gains seem to have come from digital subscriptions, with digital advertising still nowhere close to offsetting the loss in print ad revenue [2]
I'm guessing the reason why native advertising hasn't been the status quo is related to inertia and the timing of seismic change in the industry. When I was in j-school many years ago, the professors were fond of saying that newspapers was basically money printers with profit margins only rivaled by the cocaine trade -- though this was only the case after TV and radio crushed the industry, to the point that most cities became one-newspaper monopolies.
At around the time of the digital boom, i.e. 90s and mid-200s, regional and local newspapers were floundering and bigger players figured it be wise to swoop them up and turn one-city monopolies into regional monopolies. The NYT famously bought the Boston Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion -- and then sold it for $70m in 2013 [3]. McClatchy had become the 3rd biggest publisher after buying the Knight-Ridder chain for $4.5 billion in 2006 [4] and racking up $2B in debt as the entire industry was facing double digit drops in revenue. And all of this was about the time when publishers realized (too late) that Craigslist had effectively decimated everyone: classified ads were once as much as 20-25% of a newspaper's revenue. All this is to say that the news business definitely had the money to blow on innovation [5], but by the time they realized how fucked the Internet was going to make things, they weren't in a position of confidence and stability. There was some efforts -- I think cars.com was a bright spot for McClatchy and Tribune [6] -- but all too little and too late.
The shitty ads that I see news sites serving up seem to me to be a symptom of legacy inertia and existential panic -- going with DoubleClick and other shitty 3rd-party ads probably seemed like the most efficient solution. Remember that most of these companies still have significant print ad departments, because these ads still make way more money than digital. And then there's the traditional firewall between the editorial and ad departments. I worked at a McClatchy newspaper as a reporter and a developer and there were many problems arising from the fact that digital operations were basically under the business side, and effectively in an entirely different building.
I think the other problem is that ads are fundamentally a different experience in print than they are on the web (and for TV and radio). Newspapers have a whole page to work with for ad layout, and ads can come in all kinds of sizes and formats, from full-page ads to small bottom corner ads to tiny classifieds. When newspapers were rolling in money, they were also the primary places for the average citizen to find out things like stock prices, government auctions/notices, apartment rentals, and local sales and events. My parents (Vietnamese refugees) weren't much into reading English publications, but we subscribed to the local newspaper's weekend edition because it was chock full of ads and coupons. Ads were a destination -- arguably, for the average person, they were more valuable and desired than the newspaper's actual editorial content, in the way that people might watch the Super Bowl just for the ads.
In today's web environment, is there any normal mindset in which people actively seek out ads (other than looking them up on YouTube if you missed the Super Bowl)? The kind of native advertising that BuzzFeed et. al seem to have the most success with are advertorials that don't seem like ads. Unfortunately, this creates its own conflict with news-minded organizations.
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/12/buzzhome/
[1] https://nypost.com/2017/11/16/buzzfeeds-revenue-to-fall-70m-...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/business/media/new-york-t...
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/business/media/new-york-ti...
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/business/media/06paper.htm...
[5] http://archives.cjr.org/feature/the_newspaper_that_almost_se...
[6] http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-cars-spinoff-0908-...
Perhaps another reason is that you lose the ability to track users through third-party cookies?
Lack of independent impression counting
AKA
Advertising companies are afraid website owners (and everybody else who can do it) are going to steal from them.
That's not how online advertising works. If a user doesn't like ads, they block all ads indiscriminately. Changing ads doesn't do anything, because users will always block ads regardless of their quality, at least until the vast majority of ads are "acceptable" -- and even then, many demographics will continue blocking anyway. What is "acceptable", anyway? Make the ad small enough and/or dumb enough that it is no longer worth anything to the advertiser?
> stop making terrible user experiences.
There are plenty of websites with acceptable UX (or UX that isn't practically made worse by ads) that use ads. How many of them are on your whitelist? Do you even know which sites are showing ads if you use an adblocker?
> I’ll even tell you how to fix this: make more simple text ads, or images that are not animated and not peppered with distracting colors.
While this is a reasonable request, it doesn't change the fact that many/most people now have an adblocker on their browser.
There's no doubt this problem has been exasperated by malicious ad creatives. But the onus of correcting the problem lies in the hands of BOTH adblocker developers AND the online ads industry (including publishers, exchanges, and advertisers.)
We have a serious economic problem in which we can't fund things that we want and need. Instead of making advertising "less bad", we should be looking into alternative ways to fund sites and services. Advertising in it's current form simply needs to go.
For a few years it was normal to have relatively successful small sites with good writing and regular readers. They've largely been driven out by the economics of clickbait. I'd like to help that come back by breaking the rigid nexus between traffic and revenue.
Adblock/flattr are doing something very similar. Google Contributor was, but seems to have morphed into a prepaid micropayment scheme. Patreon splits the middle.
I still think the model where a single subscription fee is distributed amongst participating sites/services/apps approximately according to usage is the best overall model.
Using ad/tracking blockers is the morally correct choice if you want the market to handle this.
Have you seen the web without an ad blocker though?
In my view site-related ads have a higher probability of being relevant to me than search-engine ads.
Ugh. I hope it doesn't go that way. I don't even know what the ad was for.
There is a single site I use regularly that is ad ridden, and I use Brave for it basically exclusively. I can see that they accept Brave Payments as well, so I don’t feel too bad about it.
It took one site for me to start using ad-blockers.
Facebook: they persistently were showing me ads for online MBA programs when I already had completed a better brick-and-mortar one.
I recall that I tried complaining and got no response. For some psychological reason, that did it. I installed an ad-blocker on my and my wife's laptops and never looked back.
If the big sites had been more conscientious about their ad strategy (and specifically allowing people more control over what shows up on their screens) we might not be in an escalating technological war over ads.
incognito: 4.4mb, 7000ms scripting, 365 requests, onload: 7600ms
with uMatrix (no third party shit): 612kb, 190ms of scripting, 56 requests, onload: 500ms
this is on a 300MBit connection
Also, I'm not sure where the irony is here. They're talking about anti-adblocking, so it's hardly ironic that they use advertisements themselves.
congratulations!
- you now have 70 new tracking cookies
- a degraded battery
- have exceeded your bandwidth allotment
- probably some malware payload that exfiltrated your contacts via a 0-day XSS
- almost certainly slower UI/scrolling performance
the irony of degrading people's experience [via popups, countdowns, etc] who refuse to load slow and annoying ads.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/27/thousands-of-major-sites-a...
Stupid bastards.
The sad part is that anti-adblocking may work in their favor because the average person isn't going to go as far as to stop using certain websites or turn off JavaScript. It may get to that point with me, though. I already refuse to use most websites that try to block my ad blocker, autoplay videos, open modals too early, etc.
It's not about ads, but the types of ads that are presented. There would be backlash if the types of ads we see on the internet were equally as plastered everywhere in real life, but for some reason we've just got to deal with it on the web.
I generally don't disdain people for doing things for a living, but I'd openly thumb my nose at developers and anyone else involved in thwarting adblockers and tracking blockers. Talk about a sisyphean job that helps nobody except one of the slimiest industries to exist.
A lot of people would be willing to pay for web content; Patreon and the wealth of content on YouTube are a testament to this. But websites that let you pay to remove ads have a problem, and it's that they don't use a unified system to manage subscriptions. The user is somehow supposed to manage what sites they're subscribed to. It'd make more sense if news sites, for example, could integrate with a service where you could manage your subscriptions to these sites as well as more content.
TBH, the only solution is browser makers put out an ad acceptable standard. However, with Google's revenue base on ads, I doubt there will be any change to it until someone come along and disrupted the browsers.
The major difference between email and web advertisement is that the web has so much more money invested into the system, so the browsers and the biggest advertisement system that exist is trying to save the market by ad acceptable standard. Will be interesting to see if they can do what email advertisement could not. Personally I doubt it, as email, scam, and fraud is remains something which the publishers refuse to take responsibility when distributing. Practically every country in the world has advertisement laws, except that none of them is followed on the web.
funny you should call out google for this, as in february chrome will start blocking ads (including google's) on websites that violate the policies defined here: https://www.betterads.org/standards/
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/12/better-ads
- We miss the old internet of independent creators.
- We love ad blockers.
The rise of the second has in no small part injured the first. Money is a big incentive for independent creators, and removing it from the equation has a chilling effect.
And had an overlay with a countdown.
They will keep it honest for the first 24 hours of rolling it out.
Then it will creep from "during those 10 seconds" to "the entire time".
A side comment: while blocking ads might reduce revenue for sites, it also means the advertiser has to pay for views by people who wouldn't click on the ads anyway.
Oh, and before you scream at me, what about people that simply disable JS, which is basically how all of this works anyway.
I'm not entitled to a free web, I get that, but ads are a failing revenue model due to years of sustained abuse, and that damage is not going to be reversed ant time soon.
However, the need for a list of contractors for works is also required, but things like yellow pages is sort of dead, and if you offer services - eg. you're a freelance photographer, designer, etc. - you need to make yourself visible somehow.
Ads which take the form of an <img> tag pointing to an image hosted on the same domain, aren't blocked (at least in my experience).
Advertisers love to scare old people in every way, and then peddling them scam solutions and pills.
(I know there are many more sites these days rendering simple static content with JS, possibly in an attempt to defeat/confuse others like me --- but my solution for them is either Google's text-only cache, or the Back button. Chances are I can find the same or even better content elsewhere; forcing me to jump through hoops ensures I'm not coming back.)
(Edit: note that even though you may not look at it directly, it is still effective)
you don't need a provider to help detect ad blocking in most cases. just serve a script from your server called `ads.js` that modifies some global js variable or does an ajax post to some endpoint indicating it was served....or "pixel.gif".
Set up a small piece of editorial content and embed some affiliate links into it.
While I completely agree with you on both points, I'm afraid both things that are mutually exclusive :(
It's not the ads themselves that make me run to the blockers. It's their creepiness and tracking. If they're just images shown same to everybody, then I'm okay.
May be the ad companies can sell harmless image ads that content publishers can serve from the same domain as the content is. No tracking, no user customizations. The user knows what they click. Why would millions of people working at ad companies go out of business in the above scenario?
The ines that are writing creepy user tracking code will have to go. But, I don't sympathize with them. They will find some Tyler's meaningful to do with their skills.
Imho, just because millions are doing/depending on the creepy stuff doesn't justify their presence.
Anti-ad blocking also seems like a possible application for machine learning, to distinguish clients that are blocking ads and those that are not.
In a battle between the two it seems like the anti-ad blocking side will win. They have resources (big companies with lots of money and server farms, versus small developers and browser-adons) and incentive (earning money versus improving my web experience).
I use an ad-blocker but I am not optimistic about the future of ad-blockers.
I'm not entirely sure AI is currently fit to solve cat-and-mouse games such as ad blocking.
I am still optimistic about ad-blocking. Because the client system has the final say for how websites are displayed.
And if you are wondering why they haven't already, it's because google/stackoverflow/reddit etc. are already providing the service for 'free'. So as soon as they shut down, someone else will make an alternative.
They exist already. They're mostly horrible.
I pretty religiously use DDG, but even then I probably use the !g operator every third search or so.
Reddit's already almost entirely open-source IIRC. People have used it to make alternatives. Check out Voat, you can see the alternative in action (you might not like what you find, though).
Voat is bad becuase of the users. Not becuase it is an alternative to Reddit. If all Reddit users switched to coat, it would have a pretty similar culture and content, becuase it will have the same users.
I also use ddg but I haven't used a !g in over a year.
And not a lot of effort goes into them because there's no money to be made off e.g. a Reddit clone without doing the same things Reddit is doing. A vicious cycle.
> If there's no alternative, then they will drastically improve.
Ah yes, monopolies (virtual or otherwise) are well-known for drastically improving their products.
> Voat is bad becuase of the users. Not becuase it is an alternative to Reddit.
Alternatives are often created by people with strong viewpoints, e.g. Voat.
> If all Reddit users switched to coat, it would have a pretty similar culture and content
This makes a lot of assumptions, namely that the admins of Voat wouldn't quash that (and there's little reason to believe they wouldn't).
The problem with Reddit alternatives like Voat; was that there were no responsible moderators who would censor the absolutely indefensible.
In other words: Welcome to the same problem the Internet has known since use-net. Hell. Since the BBS days.
What I'm not ok with is third party content from who knows where downloading who knows what script. And trackers. And putting so much junk on a page that I can't access the real content in a timely fashion. Get rid of all that and I'm happy to forgo my ad blocker.
I use an ad blocker because ad networks serve malware. I'm sure they don't mean to, but they do, so I block them. I'm no longer concerned with their intent, but concerned with what is actually happening.
Trust? Me pay for it? Pass.