Comment by FirmwareBurner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FirmwareBurner | Hacker News Reader

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>You get what you deserve if you don't block ads.

I was with you until this piece. Not everyone is well educated enough on the nefarious nature of targeted online advertising and the technical processes of blocking them on each platform.

In some EU countries we have pretty strict regulations on what ads are allowed, where they're allowed and for what they're allowed, precisely because not everyone can "mentally ignore" them and people can be easily influenced.

So you can't just say "well, it's you're own fault you got addicted to opioids/gambling/drinking/smoking, so you get what you deserve", when the whole city is plastered with ads for such accessible addictions. "Got a tooth-ache? Ask your doctor about OxyContin." "Got trouble paying the bills? Get a loan with 500% interest rate from us on the spot." "Wanna look cool? Smoke Bullshit cigars."

Usually, the less educated and less well-off people are, the more vulnerable to nefarious and predatory advertising they tend to be, so it's the responsibility of us as a society to take legal steps of ensuring the regulation and blocking of targeted web ads at communal/societal level instead of leaving it to the individuals and the mercy of the "free market".

> I was with you until this piece. Not everyone is well educate enough on blocking ads.

The statement was directed to the audience, IE HN. I have confidence that everyone on HN is capable of installing those browser plugins and comprehending the complex clusterfuck that is uMatrix.

I don't have a solution for the less-technical folks right now. The best I can do is encourage people who ARE capable of responding reasonably to that message to help the people who don't. uBlock Origin is already pretty friendly, but uMatrix is a nightmare.

>The statement was directed to the audience, IE HN.

Unclear from your comment who the target audience was, but to me it would be equally inflammatory regardless. The non-tech-savvy users are a way bigger and more vulnerable target than just the HN userbase which is a microscopic minority on global level.

> Unclear from your comment who the target was, but to me it was equally inflammatory, regardless

Eh, agreed. Kinda detracts from the point. I've gotten pretty vehement about the topic over the last few years I guess.

Equally inflammatory to tell people who should know better that they'll keep getting what they deserve? How is it unclear who the audience is on HN?

Encouraging those who can to do is also a component of grassroots change. I don't think it took much charity to interpret their comment as being directed toward HN, and only a little more to imagine how pushing tech people to use/develop/polish ad blocking tools can result in the spread of such things.

Seems like you're working hard to be upset.

uBlock can become decently complicated too if you enable "I'm an advanced user" in the settings menu

I think it can be made to do the same things as uMatrix with advanced mode (I use medium mode on uBlock) - or am I wrong on this? Ive never used uMatrix before

Honestly, I admit I've never tried to make uBlock behave like uMatrix. A quick look at the UI suggests maybe (?). uMatrix allows me to granularly select types of resources like scripts, iframes, and images from every domain/subdomain on a page, though, and that UI didn't look like it was set up for that to be possible easily.

I think I actually started out with uMatrix first so I've mostly relied on it to do most of the heavy lifting.

> I don't have a solution for the less-technical folks right now. The best I can do is encourage people

They suggested regulation as is done in Europe. Perhaps that's worthy of consideration since hope and power users aren't stopping this problem

I think regulation is definitely part of the solution.

The problem we're facing is that adtech is a multibillion dollar industry with the will and means to actively research and develop new and exciting ways to bypass legislation.

I can't control the legislation beyond who I vote for, and none of the voting options I'm given seem aware of how the internet works, so I am left with the avenue of "Angrily tell people on the internet to stop doing that" and try to encourage attrition as much as I can.

Legislation can be written so that there is no bypass. Google's billions would not save them if tomorrow they embarked on building a private nuclear SLBM fleet.

>Legislation can be written so that there is no bypass.

It cant for existing profitable business models. You couldnt ban the google owned nuclear SLBM fleet if it already existed and represent the most profitable sector of the economy. Inertia exists and the more profitable the topics the harder it is to break from a central position. It would be economic suicide on a national level.

You would get some paper tiger checks and balances entrenching googles nuclear fleet monopoly.

>You couldnt ban the google owned nuclear SLBM fleet if it already existed and represent the most profitable sector of the economy.

Of course we can ban that. :laughs in EU:

There just isn't the political will behind it like it is on things like ICE cars or nuclear energy, because unlike the latter things, the politicians and voters don't understands it well enough to be outraged about it.

We can ban that on paper and pretend that the problem went away. We cant actually nuke large parts of the GDP.

edit: Saw your nuclear energy edit too late. Thats a great example for protectionism / having a frame for subsidies. We still require energy, that section of the GDP didnt just evaporate.

Car legislation is likewise just a driver for higher consumption.

You would need something equally profitable to do for the sub fleet supply chain to ban it.

> I don't have a solution for the less-technical folks right now

When I set a computer for any of my friends and family, I drop uBlock Origin on it and show them briefly how it works, usually using cnn or similar sites an example. It solves 99% of any computer problems they run into.

I just have them use Brave.

This is no solution.

There was a time when Chrome started to be bundled with every freeware out there. Most of the people where I did IT-Support ended up using chrome at some point. They didn't even realize when or how they changed a browser. Some didn't even know what a browser IS. They just open "the internet".

I had installed Firefox with proper protection before that.

Why isn't it a solution? It works pretty well for them, I don't get any calls or messages asking why something isn't doing what it's supposed to.

Good for you.

I ended up with a bunch of users who used chrome without adblocker, downloading crap.

In the end, I diverted the chrome shortcut to Firefox, which is good enough with ublock. Wouldn't install them, Brave. Don't want them to come back to me asking about that crypto custerfu.

I ignore the crypto thing exists as should every decent human being.

Ignoring it, won't make it go away.

Especially the way it started. It's till out there. The internet never forgets.

The best comparison I can think of is hygiene. Yes, it's a public safety issue that requires a collective solution, but it also requires individuals to understand, and ultimately take responsibility for their own self-care. The shared solutions would never work, or be taken seriously, unless individuals knew "I can't drink dirty water, I need clean water". You also 'get what you deserve' when you drink the untreated water downstream from the village.

There are however limits if you dont want a dysfunctional bureaucracy try to micromanage you. You will always have especially vulnerable sections of society (kids, addicts ...), but you still cant treat everyone like that. Especially as wanting something to be fixed doesnt influence how fixable it is. Ads are of course a giant security risk, but its a very profitable one. At best any solution coming through such a bureaucracy will in essence create monopolies that can afford regulatory capture and security theater.

This is really "our" problem. If the audience here doesnt find fixes its unrealistic to expect that of regulators. This is a systemic issue caused by the economic structure that cant be fixed by yet another law.

>but its a very profitable one.

If everyone blocked ads then it wouldn't be so profitable. The reason it's so profitable is that very few internet users actually have ad-blockers in place.

Your point of this requiring user action matches my point exactly.

There is a giant industry here. Any attempt at top down regulation will fail at that and get either regulatory captured or poked holes through for the big players.

Ad-tech is exclusively big players already anyway: Google & Meta. Let me play you the world's smallest violin for them.

And it's not like ad-tech is an important industry that's mandatory for a healthy society like healthcare, energy, transportations, education, environment, agriculture, etc. We can easily survive without them being so wealthy and powerful. We might even be in a happier place with them defanged, even if their shareholders wouldn't.

> Let me play you the world's smallest violin for them.

You miss my point completely and i am unsure how to reword it.

Yes they are exclusively big players already, thats why it wont work through top down regulation and requires user action.

We might be better off without them, but i dont see how that could ever happen through top down regulation. The economic and political incentives are way to strong and bureaucracies way to unwilling and incompetent. You cant destroy such profitable business models through regulation, they have to much pull here. At best you get regulatory capture. It will be another iteration of "safe/privacy on paper" allowing for higher profits and more entrenched monopolies for said megacorps.

Intention is not a valid metric, outcome is.

>thats why it wont work through top down regulation and requires user action

Wrong. Top down regulations definitely work. :laughs-in-EU: That's how we banned Apple's proprietary connector, ICE car sales starting 2030, and how (for better or worse) some countries banned nuclear. What makes you think we can't ban targeted ad-tech the same way?

There just isn't the political will behind it like it is on things like ICE cars or nuclear energy, because unlike the latter things, the politicians and voters don't understand it well enough to be outraged about it, so they keep slipping under the radar for now, but there's no guarantee this will go on forever.

Just realized we are having the same conversation twice. My bad. Pls see the other post, you cant actually nuke segments of the GDP, your examples function as economic drivers.

I agree, but have a simpler argument.

Nobody deserves to have their computer compromised - whether they block ads or not is irrelevant. Saying otherwise is victim blaming. It's the same as saying that a woman who walks down the street in attractive clothing deserves to be raped, and society is making some pretty strong statements about that sort of thinking these days.

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