Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We’re dropping Google Ads

groundup.org.za

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 617 posts

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#91

Post by paulcole »

dheera wrote: post #80
rootusrootus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It's just like any other kind of piracy. If the content isn't valuable enough to see with ads enabled, then the ethical answer is to not view the content at all.

I read newspapers without looking at the ads. I use highways and public transportation without looking at the billboards. I don't see how it's any different. I would say it should be arguably illegal to resell content with ads removed, but how something is rendered in my brain or inside the confines of my home is upto me to decide. There's nothing illegal about ripping out the ad pages before reading a magazine at ho…

>There's nothing illegal about ripping out the ad pages before reading a magazine at home.

Nope but hanging around the printing press and cutting out the ads in all your friends' papers seems unethical.

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#92

Post by [deleted] »

sp33k3rph433k wrote: post #42
reaperducer wrote: post #15

I've been on the fence about this for a while, and after reading what GroundUp wrote, I can't agree with them more. So I think it's time for me to dump Google Ads from my sites, as well. I send Big G three million ad impressions a month, and in return I get $150 and a bunch of visual dreck that makes the site look bad. $200, if I'm lucky. And this is all U.S. traffic on an award-winning news site. I only need to sell…

I'm working on something that will benefit people who have high traffic sites that don't want to show their users ads. The basics are here: http://www.trussapp.com/ -- it's not quite ready for production, but if it's something you might be interested in, I'm looking for beta users. cam@trussapp.com

[deleted]

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#94

Post by MaulingMonkey »

paulcole wrote: post #46
dheera wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My attitude toward ad blockers was always "meh". I have the right to render your bits and bytes however I wish. Using an ad blocker is just modifying the rendering algorithm, much the same way as I could use a French to Russian translator, something that increases font sizes, or throwing on a custom stylesheet. I can write my own web browser, if I wish. Some percentage of users will use ad blockers, and businesses sh…

> I have the right to render your bits and bytes however I wish. Legally I have no idea. But ethically/morally, I'd argue you don't. By visiting the site, you're entering into an agreement to exchange your ad views for content and you're breaking that agreement. Doesn't feel right to me.

> By visiting the site, you're entering into an agreement

No.

By replying to my browser, they're entering into an agreement to not waste my time, and give me lots of money. Oh, not that either? Hmm. Several sites detect that I'm using a malware blocker. I make no effort to obfuscate this. Some websites will ask me to turn it off, others will block me if I do not. That's fine - I've no obligation to them, they have no obligation to me. Neither of us entered into any kind of agreement.

Keep in mind - I'm even happy to unblock and click ads relevant to my interests and follow relevant affiliate links - to stuff I'm actually interested in. Webcomics in particular are my jam.

So I would likely not even bother with ad blockers if site owners were not routinely acting as a proxy for criminals in (attempting to) serve me malware, extortion-ware, pyramid schemes, and other scams - or peddling horrifically low quality untargeted advertizing that doesn't respect my time (think "same 30 second unskippable ad plays 5 times in a row" utter and other absolute garbage.)

> Legally I have no idea. But ethically/morally, I'd argue you don't

If you want to talk ethics and morals, just how ethical and moral is it to leave your computer open to joining a botnet - imposing so many externalities onto other parties not privy to your "agreement" in the form of DDoS attacks and proxying to obfuscate the origins of such criminals? I think these concerns far weightier than the ethical or moral concerns of depriving a website owner a few cents for selling my time, my attention, my browsing history, etc. (even if they've outsourced that messy work to an ad company who does so on their behalf.)

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#95

Post by nebabyte »

paulcole wrote: post #46
dheera wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My attitude toward ad blockers was always "meh". I have the right to render your bits and bytes however I wish. Using an ad blocker is just modifying the rendering algorithm, much the same way as I could use a French to Russian translator, something that increases font sizes, or throwing on a custom stylesheet. I can write my own web browser, if I wish. Some percentage of users will use ad blockers, and businesses sh…

> I have the right to render your bits and bytes however I wish. Legally I have no idea. But ethically/morally, I'd argue you don't. By visiting the site, you're entering into an agreement to exchange your ad views for content and you're breaking that agreement. Doesn't feel right to me.

> By visiting the site, you're entering into an agreement

If that were true, it'd be built into the protocol. "HTTP GET" would require an acknowledgement of the agreement you purport exists.

Instead, it just serves the page to any requestee who comes by it, even if automated. Doesn't exactly sound like an agreement to me.

Hell, a javascript popup would be a valid test for agreement compared to that.

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#96

Post by nebabyte »

paulcole wrote: post #62
mikestew wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By visiting the site, you're entering into an agreement to exchange your ad views for content and you're breaking that agreement. C'mon, you know better. What agreement? If your answer contains the word "unspoken", I'll let you in on the real definition of that word in this context: "non-existent". I didn't sign anything, no notice was posted. The only agreement I have is that I ask for data, and should your server d…

Society has many unwritten agreements. You don't like ads, I get it. You take without compensating because you want to. Don't just shrug and say, "no notice was posted." Own it. Say, "I felt like taking this so I took it."

> Society has many unwritten agreements

Well that's convenient. Next time someone does something I don't like, I'll be sure to tell them about the unwritten agreement they're violating.

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#97

Post by downrightmike »

hysan wrote: post #45
gruez wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Or invent a system by which 10% of the ad revenue gets cut out to the end user. That will incentivize people to unblock ads. microsoft tried that with bing rewards. i suspect it's not working well because i only heard of it in the context of botting it to get free money. the advertiser wants to spend as little money to gain as many sales, whereas the viewer (and blackhats) want to get as much money as possible. the…

Bing rewards actually got me to use Bing as my primary search engine for half a year. The rewards were enticing enough to convince me to give them a fair shot. There were some nice things in Bing, but after 6 months, I decided that the quality of their results just weren't good enough even with the rewards. Maybe if their search quality or features (ala DDG) were better, it would have worked. In the end, quality >> i…

I tried bing rewards, but the spamy emails of "hey get a few more points!" both were annoying and there really was no benefit to using their service. Never did redeem any points, so my mileage was varied.

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#98

Post by MaulingMonkey »

x0x0 wrote: post #65
shawkinaw wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to feel that way, and still have absolutely no problem with ads in and of themselves. But they are the ones who breached ethics and morals by tracking me around the web, tracking my search queries, running all sorts of terrible JavaScript, and generally being dicks. So I don't feel bad anymore.

Doesn't stop you from consuming their content though?

It does if they bother to stop me.

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#99

Post by cortesoft »

gruez wrote: post #25
dheera wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My attitude toward ad blockers was always "meh". I have the right to render your bits and bytes however I wish. Using an ad blocker is just modifying the rendering algorithm, much the same way as I could use a French to Russian translator, something that increases font sizes, or throwing on a custom stylesheet. I can write my own web browser, if I wish. Some percentage of users will use ad blockers, and businesses sh…

>Or invent a system by which 10% of the ad revenue gets cut out to the end user. That will incentivize people to unblock ads. microsoft tried that with bing rewards. i suspect it's not working well because i only heard of it in the context of botting it to get free money. the advertiser wants to spend as little money to gain as many sales, whereas the viewer (and blackhats) want to get as much money as possible. the…

20 years ago, my best friend's brother worked for a company trying this - it was called AllAdvantage. They paid you to watch ads, and paid you a bit for every person you referred who watched ads.

We of course botted immediately. I am shocked they went out of business.

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#100

Post by ac29 »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #27
mevile wrote: post #6

I always imagined that some website/mobile app/service would appear that would let you buy subscriptions for access to multiple publishers at once. I think people have a hard time spending $5 here a month $10 there a month, but would spend maybe $49 for a range of access to sites. I don't know why something like that hasn't taken off yet. You could pick the sites you want access to or they could do a pay out based on…

I started subscribing and paying for Blendle about a month ago. Their service shows me article summaries from otherwise expensive publications like The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Economist, etc. I can view a full article from $0.10 to about $0.50 without advertisements. I spend a little over a dollar a week and I get to occasionally read articles from sources that are expensive to buy a full sub…

>I can view a full article from $0.10 to about $0.50 without advertisements.

Thats at least an order of magnitude more expensive than its worth (to me), and 2 or 3 orders of magnitude more than they would make from ads. As an ad-blocking user who reads a lot of online content, I am in favor in the pay for content model, but it has to come at an appropriate price. A couple cents per reading minute is the high end of what most news/magazine/blog type writing is worth to me.

Post reply on HN