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Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

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Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#281

Post by bunderbunder »

finid wrote: post #231
staunch wrote: post #223

One thing is for certain, ad blocking is going to become more and more prevalent and never less. The end game for ad blocking is to all but eliminate advertising. An ad blocking client could, ultimately, just block any domain that has aggressive anti-ad block features. With enough users doing this, new sites that are ad free would quickly replace the old ad driven sites. Some of the ad driven sites would modernize. A…

With enough users doing this, new sites that are ad free would quickly replace the old ad driven sites. And how will ad free sites supposed to pay writers to make and keep the site free? There are already a dozen potential solutions waiting for the incentives to change. Go ahead and list them...

My ideal would not be for all sites to go ad free. It would be for advertising to go back to following the model it does everywhere else: Places that sell space for advertising either sell it directly, or go with a 3rd party to handle the advertising, but still maintain some control over what ads are presented, how and when.

I have never found ads in buses and trains to be particularly obtrusive, and usually don't find them to be tasteless. Advertising in print media is fine, and oftentimes even useful. Advertising on TV and YouTube is generally tolerable.

The only place where ads really become toxic is when they're being served up through ad networks. As far as I can tell, nobody likes them. Users obviously hate them - adblockers are darn near ubiquitous nowadays, and it seems that folks have generally realized that most Web ads have more in common with junk mail and telemarketing than they do with other forms of marketing. Advertisers don't seem to like them much, either, or at least they don't like them enough to be willing to pay anywhere near the price that they'll pay for ads delivered any other way. And content providers have to be aware that they've made a Faustian bargain.

But consider the advertising on a site like knitty.com, which is tasteful and relevant. And it does it using a targeting model that's eminently sane and civilized, namely, placing ads on a site you pick based on knowing that their audience and your target market are one and the same. That's an online advertising model I can get behind.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#282

Post by foxylad »

malikNF wrote: post #272
Kadin wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on the Internet since before advertising became common, and I am not convinced that advertising is the only, or even a good, model for funding either content or infrastructure. The move to advertising as the basis for the Internet has hidden, at least from most users, the cost of running a website and putting content online, which is frankly quite low compared to what it used to be, both in terms of actual…

So if you are not convinced the advert driven model is not "the only, or even a good, model" what is then an alternative. I think the ad model needs to improve where the major players will start enforcing strict rules on what types of adverts are allowed for example, they could reject any advert that waste CPU cycles, reject ones using too much memory, ban buggy adverts. Plus, the number one concern these days, the p…

Subscriptions. My company only provides services via subscription, which means we can provide great support, continuous development, and no ads. Our customers love this.

You could argue that this doesn't solve your problem, because we have to identify you to tell if you have paid or not. But actually paying for a service radically alters the relationship - it's suddenly in our interests to keep your information private, because if we don't you'll stop paying us and move to competitors who can provide better privacy. So we're now on the same side on this issue.

The old adage that if it's free, YOU are the product is now understood by more and more people.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#283

Post by flukus »

foxylad wrote: post #282
malikNF wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you are not convinced the advert driven model is not "the only, or even a good, model" what is then an alternative. I think the ad model needs to improve where the major players will start enforcing strict rules on what types of adverts are allowed for example, they could reject any advert that waste CPU cycles, reject ones using too much memory, ban buggy adverts. Plus, the number one concern these days, the p…

Subscriptions. My company only provides services via subscription, which means we can provide great support, continuous development, and no ads. Our customers love this. You could argue that this doesn't solve your problem, because we have to identify you to tell if you have paid or not. But actually paying for a service radically alters the relationship - it's suddenly in our interests to keep your information priva…

This is great for a lot of things, but I find I suffer from "subscription fatigue" lately where I'm reluctant to sign up for anything new because the amount of subscriptions slowly gets out of control. It might work for netflix and other giants but I'm not sure if it's viable for smaller players.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#284

Post by nradov »

flukus wrote: post #283
foxylad wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscriptions. My company only provides services via subscription, which means we can provide great support, continuous development, and no ads. Our customers love this. You could argue that this doesn't solve your problem, because we have to identify you to tell if you have paid or not. But actually paying for a service radically alters the relationship - it's suddenly in our interests to keep your information priva…

This is great for a lot of things, but I find I suffer from "subscription fatigue" lately where I'm reluctant to sign up for anything new because the amount of subscriptions slowly gets out of control. It might work for netflix and other giants but I'm not sure if it's viable for smaller players.

I think there's a business opportunity for someone to build a subscription management service that acts as an intermediary between users and those smaller players. Make it easy for users to subscribe / unsubscribe, track free trial periods, provide customer service, etc.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#285

Post by nradov »

finid wrote: post #232
Kaedon wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you imagine sites that are ad free would appear? What's their business model? I don't think that's a given, especially since most users won't pay (see the rise of freemium style apps vs paid ones in the app store).

Proponents of adblockers are not thinking this thing through. It takes time (that's money) to create quality content that anybody would love reading. Heck, even content that's crappy takes time to create.

No actually I've thought it through and it wouldn't bother me at all if that content disappears or moves behind a paywall.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#286

Post by hermitdev »

dredmorbius wrote: post #251
Achshar wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we'll have ublock/adblock without the parts that block the ads.

ublock only acts on the browser(s) to which it's been added. PiHole, other DNS blockers, or firewall-type (CIDR-block) blockers defend all applications from either DNS-supported services (most of them), or direct network access (most of the rest). To bypass the second, you'd need apps which had, say, VNC or proxy access to somewhere, and I strongly suspect those proxies would be fairly trivial to add. I've been runni…

It would be nice for mobile browsers to support a blacklist/reporting of malicious ads. In particular I'm referring to the type that hijack the browser through redirects, preventing you from returning to the source page. I see these alot originating from major news sites. They're usually in the form of "Complete this 3 question Facebook survey to win an iPhone" or "Your device is infected!" The people originating these ought to be arrested for wire fraud.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#287

Post by Gaelan »

noja wrote: post #69
Gaelan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you've audited the source, a manual install isn't any better.

No. With a curl install, you cannot audit the source. You cannot know if you have been served the same content as someone else. You cannot look at version history, check a signed package, etc. etc. If someone wants to root just a few select machines, you would want people to do a curl install.

If you're going to manually audit the source, you can curl into a file then run bash on it. If you're not going to read the code anyway, there's no harm in curl|bash.
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