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How we fought bad ads in 2015

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Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#41

Post by eevilspock »

Paul_S wrote: post #14

How I fought bad ads in 2016 (in order of impact on usability/performance): http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ (transparent and no overhead, works on Android too!) https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock (a handful of websites will detect it - you can then switch to visual blocking for that domain to get around it, for FF: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... ) ht…

Agreed, all ads are bad.

And let's call the advertising business model what it is: a get rich quick scheme. Undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you're offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that? Or make something "valuable" that no one is willing to pay for (WTF?), so again make it appear free.

Only the truth is it isn't free. We all pay in the end. The lunch is not only not free, it's costing us more and its loaded with toxic crap.

Admittedly I suck as a writer, but ever time I make my very strong case that advertising may be the primary evil of internet[1], I almost invariably receive a great number of silent downvotes. Upton Sinclair explains why:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

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[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#42

Post by eevilspock »

boomzilla wrote: post #7
microtonal wrote: post #3

When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you’re interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want. They don't make anything easier. If I want something, I will get it, otherwise it's just annoying. It's great that they are working to make ads safer (which is obviously in their interest as well), but they have already lost me (and I guess many others). Even AdSense ads are obnoxious these days…

There is value in advertising: as an information source and a mechanism to establish trust. The former value has been diminished by the internet (which some people call the information age). Advertising is still valuable for establishing trust between the two unknown parties though. Ads in Google work partly because of Google the brand name. Ads on Reddit r/HateSomething will not because, well, you know why. So it's…

Trust? TRUST? I'm sorry, but are you saying that if I pay to have a claim that my product is best broadcast into everyone's eyeballs or ears, I'm establishing trust?

Allow me to repost a previous comment of mine[1]:

Whenever a debate about advertising pops up on HN, many people defend it as the necessary way for consumers to find out about good products. Healthy free markets depend on informed consumers, but to think that advertising results in informed consumers makes little sense. I find it strange that a community of logic and science oriented people can hold such a notion.

When communities were small, reputation was king. If your town had two bakers, everyone knew which one was good and which one sucked. No amount of advertising would fool the townsfolk into going to the sucky one.

But this doesn't scale to huge cities with tens, hundreds or thousands of choices. We can't know the reputation of such a wide array, and we can easily be fooled by advertising. Internet-based recommendation systems make the grapevine and reputation scalable. I hope we see more innovation. Yelp is a start, but it fails miserably because if I rate a place 5 because I love very authentic Thai food, and another person rates it a 1 because they are used to Americanized Thai, the restaurant gets a 3 (I'm simplifying for illustrative purposes). In other words, Yelp's rating is useless to both me and the other person.

I'm hoping for a future where recommendation systems and collaborative filtering get so good that they render marketing and advertising useless.

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[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10398290

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#43

Post by gardano »

bcook wrote: post #4
microtonal wrote: post #3

When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you’re interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want. They don't make anything easier. If I want something, I will get it, otherwise it's just annoying. It's great that they are working to make ads safer (which is obviously in their interest as well), but they have already lost me (and I guess many others). Even AdSense ads are obnoxious these days…

I must disagree. Some ads do introduce me to new things that I am truly interested in.

Other than Ghostery, I guess my ad blocker is myself. If I see anything that resembles an ad, I avert my eyes.

I suppose something subliminal is at work even so, but I imagine there are many more people like who just avoid even donating their eyeballs to an advertisement.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#44

Post by Paul_S »

eevilspock wrote: post #41
Paul_S wrote: post #14

How I fought bad ads in 2016 (in order of impact on usability/performance): http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ (transparent and no overhead, works on Android too!) https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock (a handful of websites will detect it - you can then switch to visual blocking for that domain to get around it, for FF: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... ) ht…

Agreed, all ads are bad. And let's call the advertising business model what it is: a get rich quick scheme. Undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you're offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that? Or make something "valuable" that no one is willing to pay for (WTF?), so again make it appear free. Only the tru…

My post keeps fluctuating too, it's a very controversial subject. Although I wish the downvoters would also leave a reply - it's the Internet, have your say.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#45

Post by cpeterso »

dcneymh57 wrote: post #2

Do you know if Adsense tried to make any agreement with ad blockers? Their ads are not so bad.

Yes: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboo...

"Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Taboola are paying the owner of Adblock Plus to unblock ads on their websites at a fee of "30% of the additional ad revenues" they would have made were ads unblocked."

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#46

Post by CaptSpify »

Paul_S wrote: post #44
eevilspock wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, all ads are bad. And let's call the advertising business model what it is: a get rich quick scheme. Undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you're offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that? Or make something "valuable" that no one is willing to pay for (WTF?), so again make it appear free. Only the tru…

My post keeps fluctuating too, it's a very controversial subject. Although I wish the downvoters would also leave a reply - it's the Internet, have your say.

The thing is though: What can they reply with? "Do you feel you deserve the content for free?" is the only argument I ever hear, and that is so old and tired, it's not funny.

I'd be interested in hearing/discussing a solid pro-ad argument, but I've yet to find one.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#47

Post by Klathmon »

discreditable wrote: post #34

> With powerful new protections, we disabled more than 10,000 sites offering unwanted software, and reduced unwanted downloads via Google ads by more than 99 percent. Yet when I search for "download Firefox", the thing I see is malvertising. https://i.imgur.com/IRQ85fx.png

You can't just call it "malvertising" when it's just not what you wanted...

I just went and downloaded the app from that add and compared the checksum against the APK on my phone of the same version (version 42.0.2, downloaded from Google Play)

They both match. (Both SHA256 checksums are D0B5A524ABFD5AD9D73DFF4DA398423CB7B337797FBA0C039F3A44CAE259B4B0, if you want to verify it from me as well)

So that site is providing an untampered download of firefox, so there is no "malware" anywhere.

In fact that site (HTZapps) seems to be a curated list of "safe" apps available to download, an alternative app store much like fdroid or the amazon app store.

It even follows the Adsense guidelines on their download page (clearly called out advertisements, no more than 3 on the page, only one above the fold, they don't interrupt the flow of the page, etc...)

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#48

Post by DanBC »

I wish there was a way I could opt out of all alcohol and gambling ads. Especially when I'm watching Youtube videos with my child.

And this article doesn't mention malgorithms. I do a bit of stuff around suicide prevention, and it's surprising how often rope sellers turn up after a search for [suicide rope], which feels suboptimal.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#49

Post by [deleted] »

gbasic wrote: post #10
Someone1234 wrote: post #9

Go to Google right now and search for "passport renew" I see twelve sites which offer the service with no affiliation. All they do is ask for sensitive personal information, charge you an additional fee (on top of the passport fee) and file on your behalf. Unfortunately I've had friends & family fall for this and similar scams (see also "birth certificate copy" "criminal record" "arrest record" "US travel authorisati…

What do you think are additional things that Google could do? I can imagine how hard this is to police. For example: - Let people mark different links as spam - Hire a larger team to police this

[deleted]
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