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German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

arstechnica.com

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Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#151

Post by belorn »

briandear wrote: post #70
id wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sounds absurd at first sight Yes, companies paying their fair share of taxes is absurd.

Please define "fair share." That is such a loaded term because it implies that the only benefit of a company to people is in the tax revenue it provides a government. We could reframe that argument to say that Google should provide a fair share of jobs to the unemployed. Billions of revenue but far fewer employees than some companies half the size. Clearly Google isn't hiring a 'fair share' of workers right? We can r…

Fair share would be the same percentage as a competing company would pay, regardless of size. Anything less or more would be unfair government interaction in the market.

If we are looking at the net economic contribution to the economy, a small one-person company shouldn't pay any taxes. All the revenue goes back to the economy in employment of that single person. The economy is far better off with that person than without them.

Taxing net-negative contributors would however be a bit weird. Taxing social security would be counter productive, and having people in the military paying for their own equipment would likely spell the end of having a military. Having politicians pay for the privilege of being a politician would be an interesting concept, but I never heard of such system ever existing.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#152

Post by Zren »

skybrian wrote: post #127
ryuuchin wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's only if people agree with your ideology. You don't even have to do that. It behaves exactly the same as ABP if you use the same filter lists. It's just also happens to be more efficient than ABP.

It's not the same. Advertisers can negotiate with AdBlock Plus about what reasonable advertising should be. If we all choose our own block lists there is nobody for them to negotiate with. The war between ad blockers and advertisers continues forever. That's not to say AdBlock Plus does a great job (I don't know) but some people think collective bargaining is a good thing. For more read about countervailing power. ht…

> behaves exactly the same as ABP if you use the same filter lists

He mentioned that uBlock can use the same "reasonable" filter list as ABP, it's just better to use uBlock since it's more efficient.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#153

Post by senior_james »

Adblocking has indirectly created many of these fake news sites we see today and will only create a more cluttered and product-filled user experience.

Most news sites rely only on advertising for income. Real reporting and investigation costs money. Since their main money source is now drying up, news is starting to become hearsay, rumors, and things you see on Twitter (anything you can find from the comfort of an office chair). This quickly leads to a race to the most clicks, which may or may not be factual.

We also are now starting to see blogs and many other news sites switch from advertisements on the side or top (which can be blocked) to entirely sponsored articles written around a product or service. We've always had sponsored articles, but not as prevalent as it is now.

Real journalism costs money. When you remove the only way to fund it, we end up with what we have now: fake news passing as real journalism and fake articles which are actually advertisements.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#154

Post by fucking_tragedy »

skybrian wrote: post #127
ryuuchin wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's only if people agree with your ideology. You don't even have to do that. It behaves exactly the same as ABP if you use the same filter lists. It's just also happens to be more efficient than ABP.

It's not the same. Advertisers can negotiate with AdBlock Plus about what reasonable advertising should be. If we all choose our own block lists there is nobody for them to negotiate with. The war between ad blockers and advertisers continues forever. That's not to say AdBlock Plus does a great job (I don't know) but some people think collective bargaining is a good thing. For more read about countervailing power. ht…

> Advertisers can negotiate with AdBlock Plus about what reasonable advertising should be

How they reconcile this with the name "AdBlock" I'll never know.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#155

Post by summarite »

dumb-saint wrote: post #120
morgante wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to get out of your box. Stop assuming you speak for everyone with such ridiculous statements as "the only thing people want from such a program is to block all ads and trackers." I don't give a single hoot about tracking and want quality ads. Do I not exist?

> I don't give a single hoot about tracking and want quality ads. Do I not exist? Sure, people have all sorts of weird fetishes.

Interestingly you accuse the other side of being unreasonable when you are the one confusing reason and ideology. Good ads are not bothersome or harming you in a significant way. I prefer to see some ads rather than see sites that i benefit from go bankrupt.

Id prefer a tiny payment option - €5- 10 a year would give any news publisher more gain from having me as a user than bombarding me with ads (just the same way it works for Wikipedia) - but that option in most cases doesn't seem to exist. Or the flattr option to directly reward qualitative reporting and recreate good incentives (quality over clickbait).

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#156

Post by summarite »

ryao wrote: post #86
grive wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is important to use uBlock origin and not uBlock. The latter was an error. Otherwise, it is impossible: the blacklist are the same, the capabilities are the same, the only difference being that ABP will allow some ads by design.

ABP uses measurably more memory and CPU time too.

Which for any modern device isn't really a big deal...

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#157

Post by swinglock »

cm2187 wrote: post #80
ryuuchin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason for still using ABP is because you haven't heard of uBlock.

What's the best solution for iOS?

I don't know if it's the best but Adguard is both free and excellent.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#158

Post by TeMPOraL »

koolba wrote: post #125
guntars wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not just about showing an ad to the user, it's about knowing which user to show that ad. The ad networks track you across the web, and in the process learn a great deal about your demographics and interests. This alows businesses to target you specifically. Spiegel can only track you across their own site which might not tell them much about you, making the ad space less valuable.

> Because it's not just about showing an ad to the user, it's about knowing which user to show that ad. The ad networks track you across the web, and in the process learn a great deal about your demographics and interests. This alows businesses to target you specifically. Sure if you're not clearing your cookies, obfuscating your User-Agent, and rotating your IP address regularly. All that aside, the real baseline of…

> I wonder if that even matters. They already know what article I'm reading and possibly what other articles I've read (again assuming logged in / tracking cookies / etc). Should be more than enough.

I agree. I mean, I would react much better to ads relevant to what I'm actually reading just now than to random crap based on stuff pulled out of some tracking database.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#159

Post by majewsky »

briandear wrote: post #59
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #15

Since this submission relates to blocking ads and trackers, I think it's worth bringing up that uBlock Origin [0] is better than Adblock Plus in (all?) ways (see the README for more details). I migrated to it a few years ago and overall I've been very happy with the outcome. I'm opposed to all tracking that isn't opt-in by default. I haven't thought about the topic at great lengths, so there may be cases which I'm fa…

I get your point, but opposed to ads? You lost me there. How do people find out about your product?

This is the age of social media. As a consumer, if at all, I have the problem of finding out about too many products per time.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#160

Post by colejohnson66 »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #154
skybrian wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the same. Advertisers can negotiate with AdBlock Plus about what reasonable advertising should be. If we all choose our own block lists there is nobody for them to negotiate with. The war between ad blockers and advertisers continues forever. That's not to say AdBlock Plus does a great job (I don't know) but some people think collective bargaining is a good thing. For more read about countervailing power. ht…

> Advertisers can negotiate with AdBlock Plus about what reasonable advertising should be How they reconcile this with the name "AdBlock" I'll never know.

Supposedly non intrusive ads that are out of your way
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