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Comment by Steltek | Hacker News Reader

But what if this publisher never did that? Ad blockers are taking off because of Internet-wide abuses (malware, privacy, gross obnoxiousness). It's a tragedy of the commons. Publishers never got together to regulate themselves so users are now doing it for them.

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Why can't we have content based ads that are non-intrusive like television and old print media? Yeah they still interject in the middle of content, but not with the same level of deceit as what some ads and sponsored links do on web media.

I would disable my adblocker for sites that have ad campaigns not based on "gross obnoxiousness", privacy intrusions, and disregard for if an advertising party is serving up malware. I even miss advertising because I'm not exposed to things I might otherwise be interested in, but I won't accept it in the current form.

From my POV, it's a race to the bottom. One publisher offered video ads so other publishers felt pushed to do the same.

There was a medium post here a few days ago about the eponymous extension "Adblock". Adblock offered advertisers a paid program ("Acceptable Ads") where their ads would be vetted and whitelisted. The blog post focused on the ethical and legal quandry of double dipping income (users and advertisers) but what you're talking about isn't unheard of.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16997272

I get that it's a race to the bottom, but lets redefine the bottom I guess. I'm afraid that as publishers react to the public being anti ads, we'll all forget the reasons ads became such an issue. We'll get more paywalls where self regulated respectable advertising may suffice.

Maybe that model won't work for some reason, I'd like to see some publishers talking about it though! It's either full on the google/fb tracking train or expensive monthly paywall.

The thing is, a paywall isn’t going to work out for most publishers either, because they’re not worth the money. Most “content” out there is marginal at best, deceptive clickbait at worst. Putting up a paywall is more likely to just end in people calling that bluff.

I for one, wouldn’t pay $20 for a month of Bloomberg, never mind $40. I won’t really miss them either. If Buzzfeed puts up a paywall... ok that’s fine, good even! Of course this assumes that people don’t just rapidly figure out ways to pirate content, and they will. Try to track me, I’ll use uMatrix. Try to paywall me, and I’ll remember how little you’re worth. The NYT and FT can paywall, and a few others are worth the money... most aren’t. How many sites would you be willing to pay for rather than just forget exist in a week?

There’s always piracy lurking in the background, waiting for companies to be venal or stupid enough to make the hassle of pirating less onerous than the legal option.

Exactly. In the old days of the web, the ads were banners on sites that had related content. Just like newspapers. Clickable is actually good.

Google had the idea to monetize search based on the hypothesis that if people are searching then they're looking to buy something. That didn't really work out: conversion rates are super low, even for free stuff- apparently less than direct mail. So things got more and more intrusive. And spammy. It's time to stop. It's really really time to stop.

Google didn’t invent it, as “had the idea” implies. they did invent the auction format. please tell google’s investors how it didn’t work out ...

> non-intrusive like television

In which country?!?

I hardly see any regular TV because in 30m show, 20m are advertisements, and the remaining 10m have lots of product placements.

Ha ok that's true. Ad breaks are long, superimposed ads exist, and sponsored content is a thing. Maybe "less intrusive" or even "predictable" is better language. I'm thinking of moments where you're scrolling and you get a pop-up that you can barely figure out how to close. You go to click a link and the page moves, whether by accident or not, because of an ad loading there. Autoplay ads (and other videos) that make me instaclose, etc. TV is at least predictable.

Bit of an exaggeration. The average show is roughly 22-24 minutes per half hour with the rest going to advertisments.

Try to watch Portuguese TV on prime time, specially when soap operas or loved series are reaching their last episodes.

Quantity can be excessive, but a TV commercial break still guarantees N minutes of harmless unimportant content you can ignore. It only wastes time, and not always.

Instead, a computer ad costs you money for bandwidth, can be intrinsically annoying (e.g. playing sounds or manipulating the browser), and poses a direct risk of serious harm (malware, subscriptions, snooping/tracking, etc.).

I think the most egregious example is latter seasons of The Big Bang Theory clocking in at 16 minutes. That's ~50% ads.

Don't forget how they jack up the volume on the commercials.

Chrome is now starting to block the worst ad offenders but googles own ads (While not very obnoxious) are still out of line in terms of privacy abuse.

Publishers never got together to regulate themselves so users are now doing it for them.

Unfortunately, that may also prove to be a tragedy of the commons. If everyone blocks ads aggressively, ad-funded resources will need to find new business models or they won't be available any more.

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