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LA Times and ads

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Re: LA Times and ads

#111

Post by x0x0 »

donohoe wrote: post #107

I see this all the time. No regard for mobile users that are paying for data plans. To me the big reason to have ad-blocker is data, not just UX. I'm focused on getting a mobile article page down from 20+ seconds on 4G with 300+ requests and page-weight of 2MB+ (mostly ads). Right now, on CI environment it is averaging 2.1s, 350K in size, Sadly, Hearst doesn't own the LAT so it won't help them.

Since you're paying them nothing at all, it's not exactly like you're a customer, is it? I'm not sure why regard for people offering to pay them nothing at all would be a high priority for the LA Times, but ymmv.

Re: LA Times and ads

#112

Post by anigbrowl »

lozaning wrote: post #30
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you reward a website for using dark patterns like autoplaying video ads, popups, 14 bloody GiB of data pushing ads and tracking and bullshit into your browser?

Are any of those really dark patterns? Annoying and shitty... sure. None of the above are meant to trick you, they're just a nuisance.

And that is reason enough. If I am paying for something you better not treat me that way because I will stop paying.

Re: LA Times and ads

#113

Post by anigbrowl »

lozaning wrote: post #30
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you reward a website for using dark patterns like autoplaying video ads, popups, 14 bloody GiB of data pushing ads and tracking and bullshit into your browser?

Are any of those really dark patterns? Annoying and shitty... sure. None of the above are meant to trick you, they're just a nuisance.

And that is reason enough. If I am paying for something you better not treat me that way because I will stop paying.

Re: LA Times and ads

#114

Post by NelsonMinar »

uxp wrote: post #109
greglindahl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a terrible methodology, and makes the headline pretty inaccurate. (Edit: looks like the blog headline isn't inflammatory at the moment: did you change it, or did the HN poster insert the 24-hour figure?) I'm against bad ads as much as everyone else, but I don't think using a terrible methodology to criticize them is a good idea. Making clear what you measured would be much better, and actually leaving the thin…

In the time since I read the linked article, I opened the LA Times site and navigated to a story, opened my network console, and read some comments on HN about the article. Safari says it's been about 12 minutes. It's requested over 1000 resources (it pegged 999+ at ~2 minutes). It's downloaded 88.4 Megabytes of data. It appears to be continually firing pixels from a multitude of places (openX and doubleclick are com…

Your measure pencils out to 10 GB/day. Someone else here found 7 GB/day. Perhaps it's a Safari vs Chrome thing.

(In case the sarcasm is not clear: the problem is that it's anywhere over 0.01 GB.)

Re: LA Times and ads

#115

Post by SwellJoe »

throdowngoblow wrote: post #44
SwellJoe wrote: post #19

I resisted using an ad blocker for many years; I kinda felt like if I wanted to use a site, I should be willing to trade for seeing their ads. I've changed my tune a couple of years ago, and this is a (small) part of the reason (but a bigger part of it now that I know how crazy usage for ads has gotten). I'm on mobile data nearly 100% of the time most months. 14GB costs me $50-$70 (depending on which network I'm on,…

> I should be willing to trade for seeing their ads. So did you spend time looking at them ads on purpose of guilt???

I think maybe you're reading too much into it. I made no mention of "guilt". I merely stated that I was willing to trade seeing ads (not explicitly taking time to look at them or click them) for free access to content...when those ads were much less intrusive and privacy-invading and bandwidth intensive than they are now. Ad networks have since convinced me that was a mistake, but I feel no guilt about using an ad blocker.

Re: LA Times and ads

#116

Post by imron »

rinze wrote: post #56
wjossey wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I whipped together https://getcovert.com to help address this problem for me. Currently it's a chrome plugin that allows me to generate a unique obfuscated "proxy" email address for sites I want to sign up for but don't want to expose my real email. If they ever sell it, redistribute it, or I want to shut them down, I just block that proxy email. It's barely an alpha project and needs a ton of work to be functional,…

Isn't this solution similar to putting "+unique_string" before the @ part in (for example) Gmail addresses?

Fastmail has a feature where if your email is bob@example.com you can create any email address of the pattern randomsite@bob.example.com and it will deliver it to you. It's very convenient for things like this.

Re: LA Times and ads

#117

Post by megous »

mos_basik wrote: post #85
megous wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's no good. You're still sending your primary address, before the +. They can remove or modify anything after +, and you'll still receive the email. I'm slowly transitioning for having a random 20 char generated alias email for every service/use and there's no chance anyone will hit a real mailbox by chance. If alias leaks, I can either abandon the service and block it, or change the registered email for the serv…

That sounds great, but the problem I see with the n-address approach is when you do actually want to search for a received email but you don't want to remember what inbox it went to. I can see workarounds - like feed them all to a gmail box and filter them into their own folders. Or load them all into a native email client as separate accounts. I felt that way about using a password manager and generating random pass…

I store aliases (+ info about the service I provided them to) in the database and use simple PHP script to manipulate the db from the web.

On the mail server side, I have postfix set up to read the database and deliver everything for a valid address to a single mailbox.

It should be workable with any service that will allow you to setup aliases for a single mailbox. If they allow to set it using API, that would allow for automation.

On the sending side, given that I haven't yet found a need to communicate too frequently with any of the services I use via email, I have a simple PHP form to send email with the specified alias address set as From on the envelope and inside the email.

Re: LA Times and ads

#118

Post by wjossey »

mos_basik wrote: post #85
megous wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's no good. You're still sending your primary address, before the +. They can remove or modify anything after +, and you'll still receive the email. I'm slowly transitioning for having a random 20 char generated alias email for every service/use and there's no chance anyone will hit a real mailbox by chance. If alias leaks, I can either abandon the service and block it, or change the registered email for the serv…

That sounds great, but the problem I see with the n-address approach is when you do actually want to search for a received email but you don't want to remember what inbox it went to. I can see workarounds - like feed them all to a gmail box and filter them into their own folders. Or load them all into a native email client as separate accounts. I felt that way about using a password manager and generating random pass…

Hi Mos- That's basically what getcovert is meant to be. I forward all of your email along to your singular email address (so no multi-mailbox), but the site never sees your real email.

Re: LA Times and ads

#119

Post by mp3geek »

Sites will use the disguise of "Native Ads" to make these links look like standard web page links, and they'll do every attempt to avoid being blocked or hidden.

Using base64 images, websocket/blob: injections, third-party scripts, natively hosting the images on the site and using also webRTC to also inject.

Its a long fight of countering/re-countering, and until website developers listen to its users these type of ads aren't acceptable.

/Fanboy from Easylist here

Re: LA Times and ads

#120

Post by danbruc »

anigbrowl wrote: post #108
danbruc wrote: post #90

But how many users would actually be willing to pay for the content they consume in order to get rid of ads and tracking and excessive data volume consumption? And how much would they be willing to pay? It seems like they would have to be willing to pay at least an amount comparable to the average ad revenue per user and page view, whatever that actually is. Just blocking ads is certainly justifiable in the current s…

Lots would if it weren't so inconvenient. I read articles from maybe 100 different news sources in a typical month but realistically I don't want 100 newspaper and magazine subscriptions, or 100 different subscription offers or website accounts. Why isn't there something like a Netflix for News that just gives me news free of visual cruft and takes care of distributing the revenue from what I read in approximately ac…

Lots would if it weren't so inconvenient.

I am not really sure about that. About 10 % of all Internet users are currently using an ad blocker. So 90 % are okay with ads or don't care or whatever. Further I would estimate that users would have to pay between $5 and $10 per month to pay for the content they consume to provide an income for sites comparable to that of ads. Maybe 1 % of the ad blocker users - number pulled out of thin air - would be willing to replace their ad blocker with a monthly payment of $10 if this would would work frictionless, if you could magically convince the entire Internet to create some Netflix equivalent.

In the end that would be 0.1 % of the Internet users which seems not really a huge incentive to bring such a Netflix equivalent into existence.

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