Hacker News Reader

Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

How blatant bullshit from Taboola is "acceptable" is beyond me. Our standards are really, really low if an acceptable ad merely means that it doesn't install malware or do sneaky things to your browser window.

Even before I learned about uBlock Origin, I installed an extension dedicated to removing Taboola ads. It's shocking how many people willingly tolerate that garbage.

View on HN

taboola and similar are what's known as a "chumbox". here's a taxonomy:

https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-intern...

This is why I have no qualms whatsoever about ad blocking or busting paywalls on mainstream news sites. If they have such poor editorial standards I doubt their own content is much more reliable.

Have a look at http://outline.com

This has been wonderful for me. Removes crap, kills paywalls.

That is so nice.

Taboola is generally known to be one of the less-shady ad platforms, amusingly enough. The fact you consider it to be particularly egregious, which I don't really disagree with, seems to reflect the state of affairs in the online advertising industry.

Not really, the whole industry knows Taboola and Outbrain are the lowest tier, barely above scammy affiliate links. There are of course worse networks like RevContent but nobody is mistaking Taboola for anything but shady.

I am so glad I have no idea what any of you are talking about. I have been using ublock origin from the day I heard of the possibility of adblock jumping shark.

I personally consider a native platform's shadiness by a mix of the kind of content they allow, the kind of content that ends up on there, and the amount of fraudulent traffic/clicks that advertisers get billed for.

Taboola and Outbrain at least have manual reviewers attempting to uphold a certain standard for content, though there is a ton of room for improvement. I've never noticed a lot of suspect traffic coming from these two, which is in stark contrast to networks like content.ad or adblade. Of course, Outbrain/Taboola don't compare to the big networks, but I've experienced a good balance of affordable and reasonable quality traffic, though this isn't always the case, as costs/quality can be quite variable over time.

Taboola, Outbrain and its ilk were what pushed me to install an ad blocker in the first place. I'd put up with ads for years, but these repetitive, misleading, intrusive ads were the final straw. The idea that they're "acceptable" is a joke.

I mirror this 100%. I really wanted to not use a blocker because I was trying to "support the industry". I even for a very short time attempted to build my own blacklist, but it quickly became easier to just block everything.

Now not only have I been using a blocker for a few years, I install one on any family/friends computers I am working on, and advocate for one whenever it comes up.

I don't know what it would take for me to come back now. Unfortunately it's a tragedy of the commons: a small number of sites/advertisers can completely ruin it for everyone -- and, I'd argue, already have.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com