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Adblockers: The Only Way Out

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Re: Adblockers: The Only Way Out

#31

Post by vitd »

kbenson wrote: post #17
chias wrote: post #9

Unless the advertising landscape changes drastically from what it is today, I will never not use an ad-blocker, and I reject the notion that it is somehow unethical: for over a decade and a half the online advertising industry has been exploiting every technical loophole or shenanigan it has been able to find in order to degrade my experience, security, privacy for the sake of their bottom line; the comparatively rec…

The argument isn't that it's unethical to not watch ads, it's that it's unethical to not watch the ads but still take what they offer in exchange. Any industry would be up in arms with people walking away with their goods without paying. It's really not that different than the MPAA or RIAA, especially in that since we don't like them, we feel justified in behavior that normally we wouldn't take. Does the RIAA being a…

>The argument isn't that it's unethical to not watch ads, it's that it's unethical to not watch the ads but still take what they offer in exchange.

And that argument is completely and utterly bogus. When you broadcast your radio or TV signal over the airwaves, I can watch or listen just to the content and switch it off, mute it, fast forward it, etc. during the ads. I have no obligation to watch or listen to them and I don't.

It's no different when you put a publicly accessible file on an open server. There are no restrictions on anyone downloading that file and not downloading other unrelated files just so you get paid. If you don't want users doing that, find a different way to get paid.

>Does the MPAA doing shitty things mean we should steal movies from them, or that we should boycott them? How is viewing content without seeing ads any different? Two wrongs don't make a right.

That's a complete non-sequitir. None of this is the same as pirating goods from the RIAA and MPAA. Those are not publicly available pieces of content that anyone can access. You have to break encryption and other similar anti-circumvention tools to watch them without paying.

Re: Adblockers: The Only Way Out

#32

Post by LoSboccacc »

chasing wrote: post #6
LoSboccacc wrote: post #2

Quite optimistic views there. Most content doesn't have a real monetary value beyond generating views. There won't be an acceptable ads consortium, advertisers will only get more ruthless or die.

> Most content doesn't have a real monetary value beyond generating views. There won't be an acceptable ads consortium, advertisers will only get more ruthless or die. Let's hope that sort of content dies. I mean: 10 Reasons I Hope That Kind of Content Dies -- #6 Will Blow Your Mind!!

One day I'll just talk viral the whole day and see what happen next.

Re: Adblockers: The Only Way Out

#33

Post by vitd »

cwyers wrote: post #24

I was with the article up until "This will clearly favor micro-payment systems." No, no it won't. People have been predicting micropayment for decades now. To call the attempts "failures" would be kind. Patronage (like Patreon, for instance) and bundling are much better bets.

I use lots of micropayment systems - Netflix, Apple Music, Spotify, etc. Seems like they're on the rise right now.

Re: Adblockers: The Only Way Out

#34

Post by BeefySwain »

Goronmon wrote: post #29
elipsey wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really does seem like a race to the bottom at this point, but it's a releif to see that we're starting to move past calling people theives for ad blocking. Except for the scolding, this situation reminds of the days shortly before everyone had popup blocking built in to browsers; for normal people the internet is broken, and for us, it's hard to realize how awful it is until we use grandma's computer, and get a ho…

...it's hard to realize how awful it is until we use grandma's computer, and get a horrifying reminder of how the other half lives. I don't run an ad-blocker and I don't run into too many problems. I avoid sites that annoy me with ads, it's pretty simple. I actually have the reverse outlook that you have. I feel like most people over-exagerrate the ad problem to more easily justify running an ad-blocker.

If you honestly believe that then you should try to associate with more technically illiterate. The web is a metaphorical minefield of malware. The average internet user can't download chrome without installing two or three pieces of adware along the way.

Re: Adblockers: The Only Way Out

#35

Post by nemothekid »

vitd wrote: post #31
kbenson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument isn't that it's unethical to not watch ads, it's that it's unethical to not watch the ads but still take what they offer in exchange. Any industry would be up in arms with people walking away with their goods without paying. It's really not that different than the MPAA or RIAA, especially in that since we don't like them, we feel justified in behavior that normally we wouldn't take. Does the RIAA being a…

>The argument isn't that it's unethical to not watch ads, it's that it's unethical to not watch the ads but still take what they offer in exchange. And that argument is completely and utterly bogus. When you broadcast your radio or TV signal over the airwaves, I can watch or listen just to the content and switch it off, mute it, fast forward it, etc. during the ads. I have no obligation to watch or listen to them and…

>When you broadcast your radio or TV signal over the airwaves, I can watch or listen just to the content and switch it off, mute it, fast forward it, etc. during the ads. I have no obligation to watch or listen to them and I don't.

He said it was unethical, not impossible. Likewise if there is a public fruit stand on the side of the road with no one around, and the owners expect people to take fruit and leave money - sure theres no restrictions to stop you from stealing all the food and the money, but if you do, just because there are no restrictions doesn't mean its not unethical.

Re: Adblockers: The Only Way Out

#36

Post by ef4 »

nemothekid wrote: post #35
vitd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The argument isn't that it's unethical to not watch ads, it's that it's unethical to not watch the ads but still take what they offer in exchange. And that argument is completely and utterly bogus. When you broadcast your radio or TV signal over the airwaves, I can watch or listen just to the content and switch it off, mute it, fast forward it, etc. during the ads. I have no obligation to watch or listen to them and…

> When you broadcast your radio or TV signal over the airwaves, I can watch or listen just to the content and switch it off, mute it, fast forward it, etc. during the ads. I have no obligation to watch or listen to them and I don't. He said it was unethical, not impossible. Likewise if there is a public fruit stand on the side of the road with no one around, and the owners expect people to take fruit and leave money…

Did you really just make the argument that getting up to go to the bathroom during a broadcast TV commercial is the same thing as stealing fruit?

Re: Adblockers: The Only Way Out

#37

Post by jwe »

vitd wrote: post #33
cwyers wrote: post #24

I was with the article up until "This will clearly favor micro-payment systems." No, no it won't. People have been predicting micropayment for decades now. To call the attempts "failures" would be kind. Patronage (like Patreon, for instance) and bundling are much better bets.

I use lots of micropayment systems - Netflix, Apple Music, Spotify, etc. Seems like they're on the rise right now.

I might be wrong but I don't think those are services that can be characterised as micropayment like e.g. Flattr is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment for more).

Re: Adblockers: The Only Way Out

#38

Post by a3n »

chias wrote: post #9

Unless the advertising landscape changes drastically from what it is today, I will never not use an ad-blocker, and I reject the notion that it is somehow unethical: for over a decade and a half the online advertising industry has been exploiting every technical loophole or shenanigan it has been able to find in order to degrade my experience, security, privacy for the sake of their bottom line; the comparatively rec…

> Unless the advertising landscape changes drastically from what it is today, I will never not use an ad-blocker, and I reject the notion that it is somehow unethical:

I go to a site. That site hands me over to a completely different network. My target site's owner has no idea what's running on that other network.

My target site exposed me to danger.

No thank you.

Re: Adblockers: The Only Way Out

#39

Post by Animats »

"all ecosystem components ... will need to congregate and come up with acceptable ad formats..."

That's the ad industry's fantasy - that they can come up with "acceptable ad formats" which will be allowed through ad blockers. This comes from the AdBlock sellout - you can now pay to get through AdBlock. But AdBlock isn't the only game in town.

Ad servers can fight back. HTTP 2 will probably be used as a tool to fight ad blocking. When it all comes in through one pipe, it's harder to identify ads. We'll probably see ad insertion at the CDN level, with the ad stream integrated with the content stream into one HTTP 2 bundle. Cloudflare may already be doing this.[1]

Then we'll need better ad blockers. Current ad blockers are rather dumb. They mostly use some huge file of regular expressions to recognize ads. Those files are maintained by humans, and they're always a behind changes in ad formats. Systems that automatically recognize ads, regardless of format, are needed. Ad blockers of the future must work more like machine-learning spam filters.

[1] https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/infolinks

Re: Adblockers: The Only Way Out

#40

Post by logfromblammo »

Advertisers will never be able to overcome the fact that humans have free will.

With sufficient mental training, any person can add an ad blocker to their own brain. The mind of such a person instantly disengages the instant it detects an unsolicited sales pitch.

Having conceived the end goal, we now imagine such tools as may be helpful to achieve it. Perhaps it is useful to build a tool that blocks the most intrusive and annoying advertisement on Earth from the senses of the human whose internal ad-blocker is not yet perfected. Expand the tool such that progressively less annoying ads are blocked for those with progressively less perfect anti-ad discipline. Continue until the tool allows one with no training whatsoever to have the same ad-free existence as the adblock monk.

Once the person has chosen to not attend to unwanted ads, there is no countermeasure any advertiser can take. The human is the ultimate arbiter over the thoughts that enter its own brain. Whatever cannot be blocked can be ignored. It is the desire to ignore that leads to the blocking.

The traditional method to alter the desires of the consumer--advertising--is not likely to affect a desire that specifically targets advertising. You can't get people to pay attention to ads again by advertising for the practice of advertising.

All you can do is stop the bleeding, by immediately curtailing all practices that led people to start tuning out ads in the first place.

At this point, if you want me to attend to ads, you will have to pay me, directly. I will open one end of a channel that leads to me. If the cash stops coming through, I'll close it. If the cash that comes through is insufficient to compensate for the peace of mind I would otherwise have by closing it, I'll close it. I will then take that cash, and spend it on whatever it is that I would like to be ad-supported. Maybe I will spend a little on something that was advertised. Maybe not.

An advertiser might ask, "what guarantee do we have that you will actually pay attention to the advertising we push through that channel?" And my answer is that no advertiser ever had any such guarantee in the entire history of mankind. Even my own spouse peppers a seemingly unending stream of words with frequent "are you listening?" pings. If my own spouse cannot trust that I am paying attention at all times, no advertiser stands a chance. And as I find those pings to be annoying, anyone else that asks the same thing is likely to be told, "I was, but now I no longer will be."

Advertisers are just going to have to accept that most of what they do is a waste of money and effort. They are broadcasting seeds with a low germination rate, with no way to test beforehand which ones will ever sprout. If you don't throw them all out there, all the sterile seeds along with the fertile, nothing will ever grow.

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