Poll: Do you use an adblocker?
Do you use an adblocker?
Rant:
It is sure getting out of hand in a big way: it is not uncommon for tech news sites to send you 1.5 MB of crap surrounding a simple 200 word story.
I am getting so tired of that. Specially on mobile. My iPad has a 250 MB data limit, so with 10 pages like that I am already on 50% of my cap. Which is ridiculous.
Maybe it is time for some serious server-side proxy filtering. Like moving things like AdBlock and Ghostery to the server side?
(minor nitpick: it would take roughly 83 pages, not 10, to reach 50% of your 250MB limit)
[edit on my own math. heh]
Their parent company - Evidon - is suspicious. The FAQ on the site is choke-full of weasel words and wishy-washy statements on how they are not an "ad company" but rather an "ad assurance company". Skimpy on actual details too. They have changed their About summary now, but not long ago it basically said that they are in business of delivering better advertisement experience to the advertisers. Just ask yourself if instead of being tracked by multiple entities, you are OK with being tracked by one that gets your data resold to others. They are not a non-profit, so - as cliche as it sounds - you are their product.
For an example of what GhostRank makes possible, see http://www.knowyourelements.com/
For more information on Ghostery, Evidon and GhostRank, see http://www.ghostery.com/faq
I've used it for some time, quite happy to have it block the numerous tracker things that otherwise spy on me and/or add bulk to my downloads.
I've never noticed anything in their privacy policies that gave me concern, and I'm normally quite picky about such things.
First:Thanks very much to everyone that uses Ghostery here! This thread has been a great read for us.
Aaron is correct.. Ghostery works in the same way NPR works, only with data. Users can opt into data collection in Ghostery's options. Also, even if they do, we go to great lengths to make sure that all of the data are anonymous and only used in aggregate.
The extension will never collect anything if you don't volunteer it. The data are used in all sorts of ways to make the internet a better place, and to help us make money. For instance, website owners can use the data to see what 3rd party scripts are running on their sites and eliminate them. This saves load time, prevents data leakage to leeches, and - most importantly - allows them to provide a layer of privacy for their users.
The BBB also uses aggregated Ghostery data to monitor self-regulatory efforts - thanks to our awesome panel volunteers we can literally "track the trackers."
More info: http://mygho.st/D
My contact if you have any questions: adam _ at ghostery _dotcom
I know some of the people at Evidon rather well. They provide a mechanism that allows individuals to opt-out of behaviorally-targeted advertising via an icon in the advertisement. In other words, the company makes it easier for individuals not to be tracked.
You might not be paying Evidon directly - the ad networks that use their tools do that - but that doesn't mean you're the product. 'Keeping the FTC off your ass' is the product. Since the FTC is a pain, that product's worth a fair amount of money.
As far as I know, all Ghostery collects (if you opt-in) is which trackers appear on which page. It's a simple way for large organizations too screwed up to know which tags are on which pages (in other words, most large organizations) figure out if they're complying with the FTC regulations.
See, this is what happens when your ads are just that wrong side of obnoxious and you piss off the 1% - they might just have the power to make sure ANOTHER 10% don't see your crappy ad, either. And that 10% thank me for it. Every so often they get to see what a festering cesspool the internet is without a filtering proxy between them and it, and by God they thank me.
Roughly how large is a TechCrunch page with Ghostery?
Example:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/03/siri-experiencing-its-first...
Without: 275 requests, 2.85 MB transferred
With: 76 requests, 1.72 MB transferred
Here is the shocker: ACTUAL ARTICLE SIZE: 163 words, 971 bytes. That is a 0.034% of what was actually downloaded.
I know that browsers cache stuff. But a lot of these are dynamic resources that get loaded anyway. There is also the fact that caching on both the iPad and Android is horrible. So this really adds up on a mobile device.
Most sites are pretty good with providing iPhone compatible content, which is magnitudes smaller than the desktop version.
For example the techrunch page from my previous comment comes in at 33 requests and 122 KB when I set Safari to "Mobile Safari iOS 4.3.3 iPhone".
If only Safari on the iPad supported extensions :-/
I also use NoScript, FlashBlock, RefControl, RequestPolicy plugins for precisely the same reason: I'm not visiting a page to read some garbage hosted somewhere else (i.e., the pretty pictures and styling you've hosted elsewhere, for some reason), nor for you to do fun things with scripts, nor to see anything move (and, incidentally, spy on me).
The web has become increasingly about hawking wares and doing so based upon observing behavior. I don't like the idea, even if it _could_ tell me about something which I would like to buy: if I _need_ something, I'll hunt for it. If I don't actually _need_ something, though, I don't want to have the equivalent of a dirty-old-man offering me candy from the back of his van if only I'd step inside for awhile. And I certainly don't want that dirty-old-man following me around, observing me, to find out what my favorite kinds of candy are, so that he can entice me into being a statistic.
It's very easy to voluntarily blind yourself to ads. Plus, if I see something egregious on my employer's site, I can let them know.
I use Ghostery to see who's buying data from whom.
1) No flashing ads. No flash ads (cpu time is mine!) No ads that blur content with ads. And I will turn off ad blocking on your site. If ads have sound and I can't block it I will never visit the site. This is why arstechnica has ads turned off for me, autoplaying video and sound.
BTW I will not turn off blocking of the +1 button or Like or whatever. I just don't wanna be tracked.
2) Don't give free content. Make me pay for it. If I like it I would.
3) I've been using the internet since 1990 and how many items have I purchased from an ad? 0.
You might. 99% of the population would not.
I would bet you anything that far more of the general population would use ad blockers if they knew ad blockers existed, and if installation and use of an ad blocker could be made very simple and understandable to them.
And, being the contrarian he is, he didn't install one after I told him how to find them on the intertubes. Go figure. :-)
Nice in theory, but there are many markets where only 1 company will win, and it WILL be the ad-supported model. That's just how the math works.
So you do block ads, only with your brain ;) Fair enough, but can I ask why this is more courteous than blocking them in the browser? Are ad loads generally causing money to flow? I was under the impression that click-throughs cause revenue, rather than ad loads?
Agencies have gotten very clever at measuring the indirect effect of ads; most of them don't get a direct click, of course, but you can still look at things like how likely someone was to search for your company's brand name the week after they saw the ad.
Do you mind if I ask which companies are your favorite?
Plus I've found an extensionless firefox is much less crashy than one with any number installed (and yes, I know chrome exists, but I prefer the way firefox interacts with the high contrast bright-colours-on-black type desktop colour schemes I prefer to use)
I don't think advertising is inherently evil (though I respect that some may disagree), I think the problem is that we're still in the early days of Internet advertising. The technique isn't quite there yet.
Examples of passive ads: music discovery [pandora], news aggregation [HN], etc versus active ads: traditional ads (TV/radio/internet/magazine) and active product-pushing.
As an aside, I am aware that Pandora has ads which is kind of mind boggling - they are actually providing free advertising to the music companies by letting me discover new music, yet they still have to pay royalties, so they are forced to use ads.
Maybe in the advertiers' and their bosses' deluded minds.
I'd estimate that 90% of ads I saw were lying either directly or by omission. They don't add value, they try to trick you in to buying crap you don't need, that's often no better (or even worse) than the competition, products that can even be harmful (like various prescription drugs that you'd often be better off not taking in the first place).
The people that peddle this crap are slime. But I'm not at all surprised that a large contingent of HN members would defend them and try to justify their miserable, lying, parasitic existence. After all, many of them own companies which depend on advertising. So they try to apply some moral balm and pretend that they're "adding value".
However, I don't think it's fair to say that "HN members defend them" since (as of this comment), there is a 2:1 ratio of blockers vs. non-blockers. OTOH, this survey doesn't distinguish users who block ads AND use them on their own sites.
Ads generate $billions online. They work.
1% of the online population block ads. It's not really a problem outside places like HN where the majority detest ads.
That would be solicited.
There are only a handful of industries (like movies and tv shows) which take a fair bit of money to create high quality content (though overwhelming majority of the time the money's wasted on utter garbage). Books, stories, news, and music can be created and distributed on a shoestring budget. They don't need the ad-supported creation or distribution model to thrive. The days of content shortages are practically over.
Then there are some of the webcomics I like, which has no alternative. If I want to read Penny Arcade, substituting another comic won't help.
So do you not read the NY Times, Washington Post, or any online newspaper that has ads? Do you not read print newspapers because they have ads?
Advertisers, corporations, and the government have a corrupting influence on the media. I'd much rather the media be 100% listener-supported, like Pacifica Radio is. Then there'll be a lot less conflict of interest.
Yes. A thousand times, yes.
As it turns out, we're already inefficiently paying for our online content. Where do you think the dollars for ad budgets come from?
I like to think of it as the country's largest privatized hidden tax system, funding socialized content.
I would have imagined you visiting every website with at least two browser at the same time, at least one of them blocking all ads and then some.
But seriously, does this mean there isn't even any point in trying to find a way to give people who use ad blocking something which would almost never be blocked, and yet could still be considered advertising if not blatantly so?
Are users of ad blocking just a complete and total void from an advertising perspective?
For example I know reddit sometimes has games in their ad banner, that's a way to encourage people to turn off add blocking.
And some TV advertisers are designing adds which still look good at Tivo fast forward speed.
What I cannot accept is ad networks, social networks and anlytics tools tracking me all across the internet. Unfortunately tracking, advertising and analytics are too intertwined to be more selective. At least I haven't found a way yet...
It breaks a lot of sites at first but once you've used it for a while, allowing connections to CDN's and such, it isn't that bad. It's probably a case of paranoia, but now I feel "exposed" without it.
In blocking only a few sources, this takes care of nearly all ads on the Internet, with the notable exceptions of Google's and Facebook's ads. These I don't mind. I don't interact with them either, but I see no obligation to.
The online ad ecosystem is out of control with surveillance: data collection, tracking, device fingerprinting, aggregation, de-anonymization, etc. (and data volumes).
HTTP_DNT=1
Can I have a peek at your /etc/hosts
I have flashblock, adblock with the antisocial filter. Still I see the damn twitter buttons. Is there a way to remove them and g+?
How do I prevent google from tracking me?
To prevent those annoying widget buttons, use NoScript or Ghostery. Of course NoScript's white list method is more secure but I like Ghostery's blacklist approach more. It's tiresome to have to constantly click on NoScript to allow Javascript running
Then I used AdBlock and NoScript.
Then I stopped using AdBlock. What a shock that was. NoScript would still catch the nasty stuff and block those talking Flash ads, but it was much less noticeable.
I don't use an adblocker now because it makes me feel out of touch with the reality of the regular user. I've been reconsidering lately, due to the proliferation of web crapware like Facebook like and Tweet buttons.
Ideally, I'd like something that blocks the incessant tracking of my web usage, uses aggressive caching and placeholders to boost performance but still lets me see the web as the regular users see it.
Sorry internet, but a few obnoxiously bad apples spoil the bunch. Websites I visit frequently I subscribe to (e.g. Ars Technica), but the massive amount of poor, distracting, or annoying ads, the poor layouts that are 60% ads and 40% content, and the pages that take literally 10-20 times longer to load because of all the (slow) external resources? Not worth it.
Once the bits leave the server, they're available to rewrite as the user sees fit. And I have no problem with doing so in an automated way, to remove content that I know I will never be needing.
I don't mind SEEING ads, but I am certainly not going to wait for them.
1.) Speeds up the web dramatically
2.) Increases privacy (Ad networks track users across sites)
3.) Improves security (Ad networks have been known to serve malware)
It's my browser, my computer, and my network connection. Damned straight I'm going to exert my preferences over them.
Your crappy business model is your problem.
I do opt out of Google's targeted advertising, and I definitely use Facebook Disconnect. All of my searches also originate from DDG, even if I throw a !g on the query every now and then.
It's a case of having a finer control over the behavior of your web browser. Once upon a time, you had only rudimentary control, and had to use your eyes to ignore extraneous information. Adblocking gives us a little more automation. It's my hope that in the near future browsers will be able to parse the "real" content out of web pages in order to present it and only it to the user. Wouldn't that be nice? No more sidebars, no more banners or popups or buttons or other garbage, just paragraphs of text you want to read, pictures you want to see, and videos you want to watch, undiluted.
There are a few more now that detect that you block ads and politely ask you to disable it to conserve their business model. I gladly oblige.
But for every well run site politely asking you to view their un-scammy non-crappy ads, there must be 100 full of whatever advertising program offers the most money, linking to all kinds of information stealing, questionable ethically companies.
When your business model, advertising, begins to threaten the safety of my system, you better believe I'm blocking it!
All of these make browsing a lot speedier on my DSL connection. However, I'll admit they can also be a pain in the tuckus when wanting to log in, or a site requires JavaScript to view content. Still, I consider them worth it for "tracking" considerations alone.
It would be interesting to know how many devs consider NoScript users when designing websites. (I personally think it's too much effort).
With this policy, I have an awesome track record on my systems with regards to the number of "problems" that have installed themselves on my computer (number = zero, and I do not have AV installed, though I like to temporarily install several AVs and sanity check once every couple years or so; their overhead, constant updates, etc, just are not worth my time).
I don't use NoScript, and have never had anything install itself on any of my machines (to my knowledge at least - and as a dev I actively monitor CPU/Memory so hopefully would notice).
It breaks the Internet a lot at first, but it gets better once you've used it for a while, allowing what makes sense. Nowadays I feel "exposed" without it.
I've had people argue that I probably do actually see them and they're affecting me, but it's certainly not affecting my spending habits, as I don't really buy much of anything.
Edit: Oh, there is one specific type of ad I find highly annoying and could possibly justify blocking... anything that makes noise without asking my permission. I tend to always have headphones on and have the volume up pretty good when I'm web surfing, and any stupid ad that starts talking or playing a jingle is annoying as f!#k. Fortunately they seem to be fairly rare. Enough so that the pain hasn't been enough to push me to install an ad-blocker anyway. But if more of those started to appear, I'd totally look for a way to block them.
I don't feel this is particularly evil - just trying to get by...
I did start using Facebook Disconnect though.
Browsing for anything other than a few minutes without these is impossible for me anymore.
I decided to keep using adblock but with an empty filter to which I will add offending sites instead of just disabling everything.
Edit - at work on Windows I use SRWare Iron which is an awesome Chrome derivative running Fanboy's Adblock list at http://fanboy.co.nz/adblock/iron.html
My solution for sites with crazy ad banners/skyscrapers (too colorful, too much movement or - worst of all - play sound) is simply to stop visiting them. Sidenote: If I tend to somehow return over and over again they get an entry in /etc/hosts).
And yes, pop-ups are blocked (as it's default in Chrome)
Lesson so far: If you want to reach the HN community, don't bother with a web advertising campaign.
For example, how many people will admit to having read about the place that was giving out free cows as a signing bonus?
One ad I see all the time is Chargify (another is the local airline that absolutely plasters me with ads, as it seems it's the one that bought the Uruguayan market on Google adsense)
I allow the Google text ads, though :)
Otherwise I use a HOSTS file to block ads. Works great for Mac OSX as well as Windows 7.
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
which does the usual trick of 127.0.0.1-ing all kinds of unwanted URLs.
Some people seem to find my Github mirror of the hosts file useful:
I wouldn't use one of those AdBlock subscriptions though. Sure, maybe now you won't be "tracked" by as many ad networks, but you're allowing your web experience to be edited by some unknown party. Most configurations don't even show you what you're missing.
Just these two are enough to deal with the most annoying ones, the rest of the ads don't bother me too much.
An example of "tragedy of the commons", perhaps?
* Lenovo x120. It's not technically a netbook as it's more powerful than one, but it's still weak in the grand scheme of personal computers.
I find that I subconsciously don't visit websites with too many ads anymore, so it's not much of a problem.
I also disable plugins (click 2 flash/java/shockwave/etc).
I read news, though I don't read any particular newspaper, and news links often lead to pages with ads, but those pages are not sites I visit on a regular basis.
It's very possible I visit sites with ads that I did not see. I don't look for them. If ads catch my eye it's a big sign not to visit that site anymore.
It gives interesting insights and idea about do's and don'ts.
Judging from the results here so far, it's pretty clear that a large amount of HNers are in that minority.
About 65% of HN use an adblocker. The general online population, only about 1% use an adblocker.
HN is heavily heavily biased away from advertising. HN also mistakenly probably thinks it's because they're "early adopters" or more "technical". The truth is more like HN is in a bubble, anti-mainstream etc. If you did a poll on here to find out how many people watched American Idol, you'd probably find similar results - but that wouldn't mean HNers were 'ahead of the curve', it'd just mean HNers aren't "mainstream".
Get out of your bubble HN. Do what your potential users do - view ads. Maybe even buy a TV as well!
Many, many, many moons ago I ran across a page which reported on user display resolution setting as reported via javascript. At a time when low-end equipment generally supported at least 800x600 and likely 1024x768 display, over 50% of users showed 480x640. Which was the Windows default at the time.
Changing your display resolution takes 2-3 clicks: right click on Desktop, display settings, resolution. And "OK". And this was too much for people.
The lesson was: people don't change defaults. So, oh you devs: choose really sane defaults.
As for me? I've hacked my environment a lot over the several decades I've been using it, and I hack it a little bit more every day. Why? Because I become more productive in it, and it becomes more useful to me.
I've always been a hacker, tweaker etc. But I can't imagine how anything would work without advertising. And it's not something I find annoying or have trouble filtering out. It's like if you're walking down a street, and you see all the shop signs... If you're not interested, just keep walking.
- Patronage. It's how the arts survived for the first 2-3000 years of civilization.
- Mechanical royalties / automated syndication. It's how musical performances are licensed currently.
- Live performance. Asses in seats.
- Mixed-model revenues. The Economist splits its revenue share roughly into thirds of subscriptions, ads, and bespoke services (the Economist Intelligence Unit).
- Memberships. Public broadcasting, Consumer Reports, and similar systems rely on contributions and pledges.
- Mandatory licensing -- the BBC television tax model. I'm not arguing that it's a free market system, however it's demonstrably worked and fairly well for nearly 85 years.
There are a lot of models. Mass-market advertising applied well to mass-media broadcasting. It's been heavily pursued online, though advertising rates (low), click-through metrics (phenomenally low), technical means of avoidance (readily available if not widely applied), audience dispersal (high) all suggest it's not exactly a resounding success.
I'm not so convinced HN is as anti-corporate as you claim, though I'd color myself that way. It's that there's a very high level of technical expertise -- far more than is necessary to be aware of and successfully deploy ad blocking. Without both factors, you'll find low utilization of same, even with a high anti-corporate bent -- which isn't all that rare, really.
I'll stand by my first point: the general public is fearful and highly ignorant of the technology they use in general. Show me some stats to the contrary and I might find this conversation more interesting.
And for that I offer in place of unsolicited advertising:
- Classifieds
- Directories
- Brochures
- Information centres
- Expos
- Local bulletins
- Store signage
- Word-of-mouth
- Sponsored events
- Trade publications
Of course these may well not have the bang-for-buck of unsolicited ads, but I dream that one day the visual pollution of third-party advertising will not be as accepted.
HN is not "heavily anti-corporation".
Plenty of HN users own their own corporations and defend/praise them constantly. The majority of HN users be against working for most big corporations, because so many HN users are involved in the startup scene, which is dominated by small corporations. But that doesn't mean they're against big corporations per se, and I'm sure plenty HN users are dreaming of being bought out by big corporations, or even working for the likes of Microsoft or Google, which are not exactly small. Most HN users are willing, eager participants in the corporate economy. Many are even libertarians, who staunchly defend capitalism every chance they get.
Also, I don't think HN is "anti-advertising", just against viewing ads on their own machines. I would bet if I ran another poll asking how many HN users are against advertising as such, only a small minority would come forward.
Finally, I've seen no indication that HN is "anti-mainstream". HN is not a meeting place for some kind of underground subculture. With a few exceptions, the people here seem to be relatively mainstream, conforming, well off individuals.