Ad-blocking: a sign that web publishers don’t care about readers • Hacker News Board

Re: Ad-blocking: a sign that web publishers don’t care about readers

#71

Post by cookiecaper » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 9:01 PM UTC

striking wrote: post #6

It was inevitable that this would happen. I remember when Opera first added pop-up blocking and plenty of people got mad. This is the same thing: ads are burning energy, bandwidth, and our time. Now that consumers have been subjected to piles of abusive ads, they're just blocking all of the ads regardless of how bad they are.

The downside is that ads are going increasingly incognito, precisely to avoid things that explicitly filter them out. The basic act of renting an audience is not going to be stopped.

Re: Ad-blocking: a sign that web publishers don’t care about readers

#72

Post by effie » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 9:01 PM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #25

Kenji wrote: post #7

I'll be honest, I hate all ads, regardless of how good they are. I think it's creepy and fills my mind with things I do not want it to be filled with. For me, the entire debate is silly because it's my screen -> my decision what appears. I think it barely matters how good the ads are. I've only seen one single website that did ads right (they were perfectly embedded into a mosaic pattern of site functionality, things…

>For me, the entire debate is silly because it's my screen -> my decision what appears What a silly statement. Does the same logic also apply to your TV and radio? You are visiting a site that gives you content for free in return for viewing their ads. If you don't like that contract then don't visit the site and limit your browsing to sites that adhere to your personal contract.

There is no implied contract, only assumed/hoped for behaviour. The TV/radio/website operator emits freely accessible information to the world in the hope he will make money of it. There is no obligation on the receiver's part to behave as the operator wants.

Re: Ad-blocking: a sign that web publishers don’t care about readers

#73

Post by mtw » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 9:01 PM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #45

Animats wrote: post #37

The Mozilla Foundation has come out against ad blocking: "Content blocking software should focus on addressing potential user needs (such as on performance, security, and privacy) instead of blocking specific types of content (such as advertising)."[1] This is sad. Their slogan used to be "Work for mankind, not for the man". But the Mozilla Foundation is ad-funded. They currently have a deal with Yahoo to make Yahoo…

I’m sorry: I got so angry reading this, I accidentally downvoted you :/

Yet Apple puts huge ads in metro stations all over the world. They pick what's interesting for them - no ads on mac and iOS, and huge ad campaigns elsewhere

Re: Ad-blocking: a sign that web publishers don’t care about readers

#74

Post by joesmo » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 9:04 PM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #28

Ads will never go away and these ad blockers will soon become worthless if the advertising companies ever think they're a threat. There are so many easy ways to defeat ad blocking. This is why I despise Apple for trying to publicize web ad blocking while letting their ads be displayed in their little gated community. Apple is essentially ruining it for the people that do use ad blockers because we're going to reach a…

Please. Anything the advertisers can come up with is easily defeated on the ad-blocking side. The only way the ad companies can get in is to convince ad blockers to let them pay and not be filtered ... which isn't a very good plan when there are open source ad-blockers.

EDIT: If it was easy to bypass ad-blockers, the advertisers would already be doing it.

Re: Ad-blocking: a sign that web publishers don’t care about readers

#75

Post by shrikant » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 9:04 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #37

The Mozilla Foundation has come out against ad blocking: "Content blocking software should focus on addressing potential user needs (such as on performance, security, and privacy) instead of blocking specific types of content (such as advertising)."[1] This is sad. Their slogan used to be "Work for mankind, not for the man". But the Mozilla Foundation is ad-funded. They currently have a deal with Yahoo to make Yahoo…

I agree with their point.

Except of course, for the vast majority of "pleb Web", the best way to address those user needs is by blocking ads.

Re: Ad-blocking: a sign that web publishers don’t care about readers

#76

Post by striking » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #71

striking wrote: post #6

It was inevitable that this would happen. I remember when Opera first added pop-up blocking and plenty of people got mad. This is the same thing: ads are burning energy, bandwidth, and our time. Now that consumers have been subjected to piles of abusive ads, they're just blocking all of the ads regardless of how bad they are.

The downside is that ads are going increasingly incognito, precisely to avoid things that explicitly filter them out. The basic act of renting an audience is not going to be stopped.

Thank goodness there are rules against truly indistinguishable, native ads.

Because they mislead customers into thinking positive-leaning advertisements are actual reviews of products.

Re: Ad-blocking: a sign that web publishers don’t care about readers

#77

Post by JoshTriplett » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 9:06 PM UTC

greenyoda wrote: post #39

JoshTriplett wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how does a reporter pay their mortgage Some combination of charging up front for access (with only a few samples shown to people who don't subscribe), charging for timely access (see LWN, which provides articles 1-2 weeks earlier for subscribers), and patronage (if you want to see more investigative reports like this, pay me via Patreon).

I agree, but this implies that these reporters would need to write articles that are useful or interesting enough for someone to want to pay money for. And writing like that takes real work and talent to produce, very different from churning out 50 click-bait articles per day. Lots of writers and sites that survive on the ad-based model would probably die off if they had to switch to a pay-for-service model.

Everything you just said sounds like a great reason for the ad-based model to go away.

Re: Ad-blocking: a sign that web publishers don’t care about readers

#78

Post by jsnell » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 9:09 PM UTC

Kenji wrote: post #11

acdha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So … in your idealized 90s web, how does a reporter pay their mortgage? Storage space was never the expensive part even back then – it's always been the skilled humans who create things.

Back then there weren't so many worthless garbage news sites. So the reporter most likely worked for a real newspaper that printed and sold the thing.

Those "real" newspapers only existed due to the "creepy" ads that you hate. IIRC we're talking like a third of the revenue coming from ads a decade ago. There are few newspapers in the world that would be economically viable with just subscription revenue, now or then.

If advertising dies as business model, it won't be just the Buzzfeeds of the world that go with it. Of course nobody can force you to watch ads. But the people you're hurting by doing that are in fact the same people making the content you're actually viewing. Your glee about killing just the low quality content providers by blocking ads isn't justified.

Re: Ad-blocking: a sign that web publishers don’t care about readers

#79

Post by wutbrodo » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 9:12 PM UTC

striking wrote: post #6

It was inevitable that this would happen. I remember when Opera first added pop-up blocking and plenty of people got mad. This is the same thing: ads are burning energy, bandwidth, and our time. Now that consumers have been subjected to piles of abusive ads, they're just blocking all of the ads regardless of how bad they are.

> Now that consumers have been subjected to piles of abusive ads, they're just blocking all of the ads regardless of how bad they are.

Not really; they're blocking all ads except the ones that are unblockable: ads masquerading as content (sponsored posts, etc). It's inevitable to a degree; most people are willing to whine loudly and pretend they have the moral high ground about things that are immediately visible, but unable to think more than one step ahead about the consequences of their actions.

Paid content is, by and large, a miserable failure[1] (just look at the history of paid apps relative to ad-supported and IAP), and ad-blocking is on the rise as well. This is just pushing publishers to break one of the oldest rules (and for good reason), and break down the wall between ads and content.

[1] With minor exceptions like publications that have established a very strong brand with people of relatively high net worth. It's not a coincidence that the only publications I read regularly that moved to paywalls happen to be over a hundred years old (NYT, WSJ, Economist)

Re: Ad-blocking: a sign that web publishers don’t care about readers

#80

Post by krapp » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 9:12 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #65

krapp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube alone hosts a vast amount of content - everything from archival footage to MIT lectures to people's cat videos, and all of it more or less free. Just because you personally dislike Google doesn't mean the world is better off without the services it provides.

I’d prefer the Internet Archive and the many non-profit and/or academic sites which still exist to host that content. People’s own cat videos they should host themselves .

That's fine, but it's reasonable that not everyone who wants to put videos online necessarily also wants to pay for the space, bandwidth and maintenance of their own server. And I don't know whether or not the Internet Archive has the budget or infrastructure to really replace Youtube at scale without resorting to monetizing the videos themselves.

I agree with you in principle, because if people hosted their own content they would have more direct control over it, and decentralizing the web is usually a good thing. But in practical terms the result of that would probably be the removal of a great deal of video content from the web, or moving most of it to whatever next best option is after Youtube (probably Vimeo.)