341–350 of 617 posts
Ad networks regularly serve various forms of malware and spyware, as well as tracking beacons that put my data at risk of being stolen or misused. And once it's in a database somewhere, it's only a matter of time until it gets stolen and someone attempts to hijack accounts or steal an identity. It's funny how you never see the sites that whine about adblockers offer to accept legal responsibility for their complicity…
A variant of this that highlights the absurdity of that very nicely are auto-redirecting mobile ads. The two valid options according to the site (and anti-ad-blocker people) would be: 1) Don't open the site to begin with. 2) Open the site and instantly get redirected. Note how none of the options entails actually reading the content provided by the site. So if there is no valid way to consume the content, you could a…
I had a bit silly idea about financing of web services. Create beautiful, fast and very lean web serivce - "easy" part. It should be very lean - every page at most few hundred kB. Serve the website with useless bytes at front. Example: page weights 100kB - add 500kB of garbage to it at front. You can place them in html or js comment. You can add useless EXIF data to jpegs. You could place small number in every HTTP h…
It does not even make sense because it means there was basically zero mis-clicks. I don't know how they count a click-through but it seems to be more than just someone clicking on the ad.
Also I'm pretty tired of hearing how Google are the good guys and 'do no evil'. It's obvious through their latest YouTube scandals and AdSense they are literally stealing billions of dollars from individuals around the world.
Ad networks regularly serve various forms of malware and spyware, as well as tracking beacons that put my data at risk of being stolen or misused. And once it's in a database somewhere, it's only a matter of time until it gets stolen and someone attempts to hijack accounts or steal an identity. It's funny how you never see the sites that whine about adblockers offer to accept legal responsibility for their complicity…
Genuine question: has google ads been responsible for virus/malware in the past? I thought they were, while still annoying, safe from serving such content. So much that if they detect your site has malware they prevent it from serving their ads https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/1308246?hl=e... As such I went along with allowing google ads since it seemed like a good middle ground between not wanting to…
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"News" are bad for you and bad for democracy. "News" are not what we think about when we think about the word "news", ie, reporting about important issues in the world, put in perspective -- historical perspective, geographical perspective, etc. Actual news are, in essence, gossip. They destroy people's ability to think and reason. News agencies are the worst. They define the agenda, what is important and what isn't.…
You must not have read any good news. What you are talking about is known in the industry as human interest stories. That's not what real news is.
The problem is news agencies is the only way to get information. Spicer doesn't invite "regular dude Joe." We in an information desert.
Ad networks regularly serve various forms of malware and spyware, as well as tracking beacons that put my data at risk of being stolen or misused. And once it's in a database somewhere, it's only a matter of time until it gets stolen and someone attempts to hijack accounts or steal an identity. It's funny how you never see the sites that whine about adblockers offer to accept legal responsibility for their complicity…
Genuine question: has google ads been responsible for virus/malware in the past? I thought they were, while still annoying, safe from serving such content. So much that if they detect your site has malware they prevent it from serving their ads https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/1308246?hl=e... As such I went along with allowing google ads since it seemed like a good middle ground between not wanting to…
Almost every senior citizen I've ever had clean up malware for got it from a malicious search ad. And the tech support scams they continue to list take advantage of tons of people as well.
I've pointed out before that Google happily lists phone numbers of tech support scams on search terms for Windows tech support, but doesn't show ads at all if you look for Chromebook support, pointing you straight to their official contact.
As a note, if anyone would like to see examples of this in action, I can go get screenshots and example links and everything, it just takes a little while to put together, as I would prefer to offer evidence of what I see "today" rather than any past examples I might have.
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> Maybe micropayments can take care of that some day? Seriously, where's the Spotify of blogs?
Everyone needs to aggressively block ads so that there's more motivation to develop better monitization approaches.
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Moot argument. If everyone charged for their time creating content on the internet, you would buy the best quality content. Newspapers had this model for decades, worked for them.
Not really. It's a change in model that the internet has created, and one that's going to be nigh impossible to undo. If everyone charged for their work, you'd be right, but it's basically impossible to end up in that situation now. Because for everyone charging money there's ten who realise they can out compete them by offering it for free (either out of the 'kindness' of their heart or funded by venture capital). I…
One way to get the charge-for-content back might be to demonstrate how much privacy people are losing and to make some noise about it.