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Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

I block ads on the web because web advertising networks proved that they had no respect for user privacy, lacked security controls around their ad delivery, and were targeting using data that they probably shouldn’t have had access to.

Podcasts do not suffer from this. It’s much harder to identify a user, the ads aren’t software, just audio, so security is better and there’s not much way to see who is listening to the ads other than voucher codes/referral links (which are inherently opt-in).

Yes I can always skip ads. Do I feel any security or privacy need to automate doing this? No.

If/when podcast advertising goes the way of web advertising, then there will be an eager market for this product, but until then let’s enjoy unobtrusive, respectful ads from hosts we trust, with targeting done broadly by podcast rather than personally identifiable information.

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I agree. On the web, I've actually stopped using a real ad blocker over the past few years and just use EFF's privacy badger. That only sets out to block tracking, but coincidentally enough it effectively blocks most nuisance ads.

With podcast ads that are just inlined in the audio stream and based only on content, not user tracking, I'm perfectly happy to either listen to them if they're interesting or tap the 30 second skip button if they're not. (I probably only bother fishing my phone out to tap the 30 second skip button 15% of the time. They're more frequently interesting me enough for me to do a web search for the company that's advertised.)

Yeah podcasts are one of the few domains I don't find ads intrusive and can't be bothered to care to skip them. Often I find they are more useful and better targeted than web ads, I might not go as far as saying I'm interested in hearing them but it never feels "in the way" of the content I want.

> I block ads on the web because web advertising networks proved that they had no respect for user privacy, lacked security controls around their ad delivery, and were targeting using data that they probably shouldn’t have had access to.

You may have this stance, but most people doesn't, even though your argument is the one that you hear the most, it's just that people that doesn't care about stealing content takes argument from all around to justify themselves.

I wish people would just avoid content that doesn't fit their criteria instead of just acting like we deserve that content for free. I got an auto playing video ads twice over Engadget and I stopped going there quickly after informing them about it.

Couldn't agree more.

I block ads on the web due to the invasive tracking and targeting. I'm not opposed to ethical, reasonable ad space which is why I don't tear ad pages out of magazines when they arrive. If news sites would run their ad infrastructure focused on presentment rather than tracking I would grant them an exception to my ad blocker. While they outsource ad space to adtech and use their platform as a method to execute arbitrary code on my computing devices the block stays up.

Podcast ads tend to be non-intrusive, are much harder to track and are non-executable. I listen to some very niche podcasts and am happy for the hosts to receive compensation for their creation, especially since it doesn't come at the expense of my privacy.

I'm not sure if it's by design, but I find the majority of podcast adverts are 30 or 60 seconds. And audio players all have a "skip 30 seconds" button. I hop over the adverts, the podcast developer gets paid, everyone is happy except the person telling me I need something I don't need.

Podcast ads suffer from the same issue as most other ads, which is that they're primarily lies intended to manipulate your emotions and influence you to act in ways that are against your self interest.

You know, sometimes that's true, but sometimes they really do just communicate what a product is and why you might want it. There are a couple podcasts I listen to where the ads are almost uniformly worthwhile — for someone, if not for me. Podcasts with obstreperous or manipulative ads tend not to be worth listening to anyway; good podcasters value their audiences too much to insult them.

I agree with Jason completely

That is indeed an issue with advertising, but it's not the same issue as with most other ads; at least not the one most people object to, which is the privacy and security violations of comprehensive tracking of personal information delivered via exploitable, executable code.

I believe most people object ads because they find them annoying, people who worry about privacy and security as the main reason are a minority (maybe more expressive in HN, but not in the general population of ad block users).

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