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Adblock Plus now sells ads

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Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#201

Post by Nadya »

morgante wrote: post #197
hnbroseph wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

counter point: blocking ads is self-defense and defense of others, including one's family. it is everyone's ethical duty to block all ads, because a non-trivial and unpredictable portion of ads contain hostile, abusive, invasive and/or subversive content. this can lead to loss of data, loss of time, loss of money and loss of privacy.

> it is everyone's ethical duty to block all ads, because a non-trivial and unpredictable portion of ads contain hostile, abusive, invasive and/or subversive content It is everyone's duty to burn all books, because a non-trivial and unpredictable portion of books contain hostile, abusive, invasive, and/or subversive content.

They meant it in terms of malware/viruses/tracking and probably could have phrased it better as "hostile payloads" or something similar. Books generally don't contain malware and those that do don't contain malware that will run on your computer when you open the book.

This is made apparent by:

>loss of data, loss of time, loss of money and loss of privacy.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#202

Post by philbo »

luxpir wrote: post #42

Just another anecdote to "ad" to the pile: In an effort to keep my Chromium/FF instances 'clean' I just use https-everywhere and uMatrix (since it came out - my trust in noscript and abp was waning a long way back). It's nice to block the vast majority of low-hanging trackers. I'm hoping that having FB, GA and myriad other tracking scripts auto-disabled circumvents some of their even smarter tracking methods (IP, coo…

As a NoScript user I'm curious what eroded your trust in it. Should I be looking at switching away from it for some reason?

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#203

Post by hnbroseph »

morgante wrote: post #197
hnbroseph wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

counter point: blocking ads is self-defense and defense of others, including one's family. it is everyone's ethical duty to block all ads, because a non-trivial and unpredictable portion of ads contain hostile, abusive, invasive and/or subversive content. this can lead to loss of data, loss of time, loss of money and loss of privacy.

> it is everyone's ethical duty to block all ads, because a non-trivial and unpredictable portion of ads contain hostile, abusive, invasive and/or subversive content It is everyone's duty to burn all books, because a non-trivial and unpredictable portion of books contain hostile, abusive, invasive, and/or subversive content.

i'm speaking to technical aspects, not advertising copy or imagery.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#204

Post by euske »

I think the problem here is to leave decisions about what's good/bad ads to other people (e.g. EasyList). I believe blocking technology itself is a user's right and should be allowed, but deciding what's good/bad for others is meddlesome. Individual users should make their own decisions about what should be blocked and what's not, as easily as possible.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#205

Post by morgante »

Nadya wrote: post #201
morgante wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is everyone's ethical duty to block all ads, because a non-trivial and unpredictable portion of ads contain hostile, abusive, invasive and/or subversive content It is everyone's duty to burn all books, because a non-trivial and unpredictable portion of books contain hostile, abusive, invasive, and/or subversive content.

They meant it in terms of malware/viruses/tracking and probably could have phrased it better as "hostile payloads" or something similar. Books generally don't contain malware and those that do don't contain malware that will run on your computer when you open the book. This is made apparent by: >loss of data, loss of time, loss of money and loss of privacy.

> loss of data, loss of time, loss of money and loss of privacy.

Not really. There are certainly plenty of books which will lose you money and time.

More importantly, if the sole concern is "hostile payloads" then the acceptable ads program should be exactly what you support. I'm fine with ads on sites like Facebook where I know it's not going to take over my computer or launch a massive popup, and I support ABP in pushing more publishers towards acceptable ads.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#206

Post by arjie »

cousin_it wrote: post #114

People talk about the ad blocking arms race, but they forget that advertising itself is an arms race. Often it doesn't even benefit the advertisers! For example, everyone would buy food even if it wasn't advertised, so the food industry as a whole might well be losing money on ads. (If you're feeling nitpicky, substitute "cheap food industry" for "food industry".) It's a kind of prisoner's dilemma situation where eac…

Blanket bans on advertising favour market incumbents. It's true that some companies will prosper through word of mouth but in the early adopter stage you need to reach those early adopters. If you're small and your early adopters are distributed, you'll die before you catch on through people talking about you.

I'd wager the net effect would be to entrench big brands.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#207

Post by chris_7 »

hnbroseph wrote: post #192
themartorana wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...if they allow the public to view their content, they cannot dictate how the content is viewed..." You could not be more wrong. I am having a hard time imagining any art installation, public park, etc., that does not have rules about how you use and consume it. Offering something to the public does not mean the method of consumption is suddenly a free-for-all. This is a ridiculous assumption that gets played out h…

ads during football cannot potentially harm people like ads on websites can, have and will continue doing. you can also change the channel or use a recording device to omit ads. also, i think the person you replied to was speaking more in terms of technical capability rather than some notion of quid pro quo.

Besides non-direct harm like Quicken's "let's do the 2008 mortgage thing again" ad from last year's Super Bowl, a television ad can cause direct physical harm through flashing light (epilepsy) or excessive volume.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#208

Post by datguacdoh »

davedx wrote: post #80
tedmiston wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it would be ideal to live in a world without advertising. But if advertising is the cost we pay to monetize content like news, well, I'd rather accept that than other content models like paywalls.

What about opt in subscriptions? I am seriously considering a Guardian sub, but I keep my ad blocker on for their site too IIRC

I actually use Google Contributor for this. On many sites that I visit all I get is a simple thank you message instead of an ad. The creator still gets paid and I don't have to see as many ads.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#209

Post by pmoriarty »

davedx wrote: post #80
tedmiston wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it would be ideal to live in a world without advertising. But if advertising is the cost we pay to monetize content like news, well, I'd rather accept that than other content models like paywalls.

What about opt in subscriptions? I am seriously considering a Guardian sub, but I keep my ad blocker on for their site too IIRC

The question is will there be enough people subscribing to keep these content providers alive by subscription only?

I'm a huge fan of The Atlantic's work. I don't remember reading a single article of theirs that I wasn't blown away by the quality and interest of. But I hesitate to subscribe because there's such a glut of free content out there, growing larger every day as the barriers to creating that content lower, and I'm not sure how many hours I could devote to reading The Atlantic's articles, compared to all the rest of the free content consumption I do.

A lot of people perform a similar economic calculation and decide it's just not worth it for them to subscribe, so all that's left for them is the ethical question -- whether to effectively donate on the honor system (or at least not use ad-blockers, if they're aware of them and know how to use them), and it's pretty obvious that any ethical qualms some people may have about consuming free content don't amount to much income for the content producers or content distributors.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#210

Post by ilikepi »

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #164

A missing factoid via the corresponding WSJ article: http://www.wsj.com/articles/adblock-plus-is-launching-an-ad-... "Advertisers will not be able to target ads via the Acceptable Ads Platform using the granular behavioral data many have become accustomed too, however, to preserve user privacy and security. Rather, they’ll have a limited set of information with which to target their ads, including the domain on which…

> OK, so the "limited" set of information is already 5 pieces of information...

Ehh...it'll probably be the useragent string and the result of geocoding the client IP address. This is fairly narrow (especially for obscure and/or out-of-date browsers), but I think calling it "unique" might be a stretch. I guess it would be highly dependent on the population of your city or town and on the popularity of the site itself. I might be one of just a handful of people who reads HN while laying in my bed at night on an iPhone 6S, but I'd expect quite a few people in a major metro area are hitting big media sites from Chrome on Windows.

EDIT: trivial wording tweak

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