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Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

As others will be quick to point out, HN does have ads in the form of job postings for YCombinator startups that are delivered inline with the links on the front page. That said, it's relatively unobtrusive. And of course, the existence of HN is a large part of the marketing for YCombinator itself. Personally, I'll commend dang for doing a high-effort job at moderation, and tolerating all the dunking on Paul Graham that we do.

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> As others will be quick to point out, HN does have ads in the form of job postings for YCombinator startups that are delivered inline with the links on the front page.

The way all ads should be? :)

Succinct, relevant and unobtrusive

The ads should be clearly marked as ads, in my opinion.

I hate when social media sites hide ads by making them look like regular posts. It’s a dark pattern.

They're marked as job postings which is really what they are. Nobody will look at them unless they're looking for a job and if so, why not?

It's a very different story from ads on other social networks imo.

And non-tracking!

But ... these job postings are difficult to discern from other posts. At least Google puts "Ad" in front of ads ...

A giveaway is that you can't comment on them :)

Nor do they have points, you can't upvote or flag them. They do stick out a bit and are easy to ignore.

You can hide them though.

There are several userscripts to block those.

<https://github.com/brownie-in-motion/hn-adblock>, discussed: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31597486>

Another: <https://gist.github.com/pxeger/4aed4baaa87028a2ecc6441a84a1f...>

(I've used neither.)

I've briefly looked into managing these through CSS alone. Not obviously that I can tell, though the text of job listings should match the pattern:

  <company> (YC <class> ) Is Hiring <position>

I think CSS can act based on content, but need to look at selectors for that.

SO suggests not: <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1520429/is-there-a-css-s...>

HN doesn't assign a distinctive class to these posts, though the "votelinks" class is missing, which can be used to highlight the listings. E.g.:

  /* HN startup job ads */

  .athing td:nth-of-type(2):not(.votelinks) {
      background: #fcc;
  }

  .athing td:nth-of-type(2):not(.votelinks):before {
      content: "Ad";
      position: relative;
      left: 0.4em;
      color: #000;
  }

(Other properties might be set.)

I'd need to futz with this some more to see if the entire entry could be dropped, though I'd prefer to simply have them stand out, I think...

If you are using ublock, you can use these filters

    news.ycombinator.com##.athing:not(:has(.votelinks))
    news.ycombinator.com##.athing:not(:has(.votelinks)) + tr
    news.ycombinator.com##.athing:not(:has(.votelinks)) + tr + tr

Putting an ad with text color #FEFEFE on a white background doesn't do much.

FTC actually has guidelines and rules for online advertising. Here’s a doc from them saying that the ads should be clearly marked as ads: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/plain-language/bu...

Strange it doesn’t seem to be respected on HN.

Lots of stuff isn't. They don't let you delete your account or delete old comments.

> and tolerating all the dunking on Paul Graham that we do.

Who wouldn't enjoy some friendly ribbing of their boss's boss? :)

Jeff Bezos should consider a haircut

It is done with a lot for respect for the reader, and in a non intrusive way.

There's no profiling or targeting of users. Everyone sees the same ads.

True, but those job ads are text-only and unlikely to contain malware. Normal web ads are the opposite in both regards.

Not sure jobs are the only form of advertising. Sometimes I feel like some domain names like substack are pumped up

Ads that I won't see unless I actually have interest in them? That's not very web 5.0...

Those ads are also very likely to be relevant to HN users relative to typical internet ads.

I use hckrnews.com and everyone else should too. Not seeing those ads is a nice side effect

There should be a way to remove all ads from HN on the account level.

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