How we fought bad ads in 2015

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Jan 22, 2016, 12:12 AM UTC

billmalarky wrote: post #75

easong wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, yes, all ads are irrelevant to me. I have never purchased an item from an ad, and cut out ads form my life as much as possible. I run multiple layers of software to block advertising on all my devices, refuse to use services/apps that force one to use ads, and will leave a restaurant/airport lounge/other public area if they play content with advertising. I won't read print magazines because they have advert…

>And yet, somehow, I still manage to live a modern life of plenty. This lifestyle works for you precisely because the vast majority of the rest of the market does not live this way. Capitalist economies (where the consumers are individuals rather than one large buyer like the state) require products and services to get public awareness. The best way to achieve public awareness is through paid for mass communication.

Post by Nadya » Fri, Jan 22, 2016, 12:35 AM UTC

Nadya wrote: post #92

seangrant wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CNET and download used to be, sure. Maybe not so much anymore. I'm just saying official or not, if the checksum matches - it's not malicious. End of story. You're correct though in that just randomly picking mirrors is a bad idea. I seriously doubt your average person is utilizing checksums.

>I'm just saying official or not, if the checksum matches - it's not malicious. End of story. Well...it would take a particularly craft individual and far too much time, but spoofing a malicious MD5 checksum should be considered plausible. The chances of it being malicious, however, are drastically reduced to such a large degree as that it is safe to consider it negligible. (Note: I only make this claim about MD5 che…

Post by guyzero » Fri, Jan 22, 2016, 1:08 AM UTC

dhimes wrote: post #89

mahranch wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who tangentially works in the industry, you couldn't be more wrong. Ads literally subsidize the vast majority of content you consume on the internet. More importantly, ads subsidize and promote innovation. Without ads, we wouldn't have sites like youtube, facebook, reddit or pretty much every website that doesn't rely on donations (wikipedia, etc). It's interesting just how much of a disconnect young peopl…

No no no. Your grandmother grew up with free media: radio and television have always been free and ad-supported. In fact, the first thing that likely pissed her off was getting ads on her cable channels, because the "rich" folks paid for cable, which was ad-free (except, I believe, the broadcast channel, but we didn't have it so I'm not sure). Internet advertising used to be done far less creepily. For example, you c…

Post by madeofpalk » Fri, Jan 22, 2016, 1:30 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #100

mahranch wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a solid pro-ad argument, but I've yet to find one. That's because there is no argument to be had. Ads subsidize the vast majority of content on the internet, full stop. Just as they did TV stations before cable. That content wasn't free, those ad companies paid for their ad spots, which paid for those television shows. The same is true for the internet, without ads, the internet would look very, very different. Wit…

> It's a butterfly effect on a massive scale - you remove ads from the equation, the majority of what we know as the internet goes with it because they're directly responsible for the bulk of the innovation. And I say, bring it on. Majority of the Internet is crap. It'll be better to see it go. Most content that's actually valuable is treated either as a loss leader or simply cost to be covered from external sources.…

Post by will_hughes » Fri, Jan 22, 2016, 1:37 AM UTC

anon1385 wrote: post #26

>Unwanted software I just visited the download.com page for Chrome and it has two ads served by Google. Both ads contain fake download buttons: http://i.imgur.com/eAATuwb.png Google ads are dangerous.