Comment by darkmighty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by darkmighty | Hacker News Reader

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The respondents have a solid point. You can't criticize them blocking ads, if they're willing to see degrading service because of it. What we lack that would be ideal is full transparency from the site's point of view to know which user is blocking ads and, if they choose so, prevent that user from viewing any content. It should be illegal to 'fake' watching ads just to get the content.

This imbalance is indeed a big problem imo: essentially any scheme from the site is permitted to be circumvented without giving them knowledge: this can create an unhealthy market dynamics where ads get more aggressive (to generate more revenue per user), every user installs ad blocking software (note that once installed, most users won't ever uninstall ad blockers), and websites are eventually forced to chose from only two models: mediocre service (low operational costs) or paywall.

I personally would gladly accept targeted minimalist ads, which I would prefer to having to pay to access most sites. Nowadays I use an ad blocker though since some ads are far too intrusive for my liking.

I think the whole internet industry needs urgently to discuss mechanisms for this problem though.

> It should be illegal to 'fake' watching ads just to get the content.

You mean, like, by-law illegal? Or just something more like "an illegal state" in a program? Because if we're talking about by-law, that's an awful sentiment and you should feel awful for expressing it.

If you mean by-program-state illegal, that's not actually too complicated: add a software dependency on your ad-generation or analytics code to all of your run-time code. You'll pay the corresponding cost in performance that any such paranoid solution is going to cost you anyway, and you'll be vulnerable to highly-targeted blacklisting of your ads anyway, but you can block those general ad rules and force ad-blockers to include arbitrary executable blacklist-code in their browsers, which is sufficient.

As a user you can always fake watching ads, there's no technical solution from the server side -- you have complete control of your browser (actually just controlling the display is sufficient). That's why websites don't even try to deny service for ad-block users -- it's a waste of time. So yes, I think a legal in the sense of law solution is the only way out. Unless you want to propose something like full DMR'd computers being the norm (essentially iOS everywhere), which I wouldn't want.

So you are saying it should be illegal for me to mute TV when ads are displayed? I must carefully listen to ads and periodically pass an exam to ensure that I indeed listened to them and not thought of other things. What a wonderful feature. For ad companies.

That's an extreme example, but I'll play along.

No, I what I mean is TV manufacturers/broadcasters, if they so chose, could make it so that if you use their TV and press the mute button, you accept the TV will inform the broadcaster -- who may deny you service in the future. They should be free to decide if the consumer who doesn't want to watch any ads can watch their content, or if he has to pay subscription.

As a consumer you're not being "forced" anything: you can always subscribe or not watch the channel. Ideally broadcasters would tolerate muting/black-screening many ads up to a point, and if they see you're automatically blocking every ad they may ask you to subscribe.

And you want it to be illegal to stop my TV from phoning home (or to make it phone home false info)? That's nightmarish!

False identity is already illegal. You don't have the right to fake you're not who you are for anything legally binding. Is the law currently nightmarish?

I don't think this is a necessity for TVs, I was just playing along the extreme example.

I meant you can stop your TV from phoning home, just don't complain if they stop providing you service. If you instead falsely convey you are watching their ads, that is what would be illegal. Ads are a form of payment so to speak, and by actively concealing it you are making a false payment -- I'd expect that to be illegal just like false identities are.

You can't be seriously arguing for that TV muting analytics thing! That'd be, in my opinion, a terrible invasion of privacy.

Also, what if people have their TV plugged into a separate sound system? They could always use the mute button on that. The only way around that would be to equip the TV with a microphone, to check if the expected sounds are in fact audibly in the room ... (I kid)

(Another thought, would they also block deaf people for using the mute button on their TVs? But maybe they could request a special permit or something ...) (again, I kid)

1) We are using TVs to extrapolate what's acceptable for the internet. Why not just argue about internet directly?

2) If you want to keep using the TV analogy, ad blockers are like distributing a device for automatically muting/blacking out every TV ad, for free. Do you think free over the air TV broadcasts would exist for very long if such a device were the norm?

Seriously if ads were just like unobtrusive text ads I would be ok with it. I have never minded advertisements in dead tree news papers and magazines (they also don't track users). Online ads are toxic.

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