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Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

forum.palemoon.org

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Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#21

Post by chuckdries »

userbinator wrote: post #6

From a quick glance at the thread it seems this "extension blacklist" can be quite easily disabled, and the discussion centers more around the position of the author. Perhaps he has a stake in ad companies too? It's not as if it's difficult to revert the change itself either, fork the project, and keep going: https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/Pale-Moon/commit/fe7... Because this extension causes direct and indi…

But it's distinctly passive with ad blockers. Sure, you want to read my content without supporting me (some publications prevent you from doing so, but mine does not). You're just affecting you. With AdNauseum, you are actively attacking our ability to make money off of other users. You're punishing me for writing content that you want to read.

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#22

Post by userbinator »

0xndc wrote: post #10
rocky1138 wrote: post #2

Can't people just compile their own version sans-censorship?

You can remove the "censorship" with a 30-second config change. I don't understand why the people on that forum are so up in arms about something this trivial.

It's more about the position of the Pale Moon maintainer in making this change, than the (lack of) difficulty in reverting it.

Even Mozilla currently allows it: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adnauseam/

Google, quite understandably, didn't: https://adnauseam.io/free-adnauseam.html

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#23

Post by googl3_angst »

chuckdries wrote: post #12
na85 wrote: post #7

That AdNauseam causes potential damage to people running ads and generating revenue from ads by devaluing clicks is a feature, not a bug. My understanding of the plugin is that it views advertising as universally bad, and that if a site cannot survive without ads, it must not be worth much at all, and deserves to die. I wholeheartedly agree with this view.

Why? I work at a newspaper, we've survived on ads for decades, the way we deliver them has just changed. Most newspapers are like this, are you saying we should not exist?

The recent push for AdNauseam seems to be from the 4chan, free speech crowd, as a reaction to Google efforts aimed at stifling politically incorrect speech on its platforms.

See https://ageofshitlords.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/4chan-...

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#24

Post by falcolas »

chuckdries wrote: post #12
na85 wrote: post #7

That AdNauseam causes potential damage to people running ads and generating revenue from ads by devaluing clicks is a feature, not a bug. My understanding of the plugin is that it views advertising as universally bad, and that if a site cannot survive without ads, it must not be worth much at all, and deserves to die. I wholeheartedly agree with this view.

Why? I work at a newspaper, we've survived on ads for decades, the way we deliver them has just changed. Most newspapers are like this, are you saying we should not exist?

And here I thought newspapers were sold via subscriptions and at a per-issue price.

Still costs me around $2.50 for a Sunday issue locally.

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#26

Post by na85 »

addicted wrote: post #13
na85 wrote: post #7

That AdNauseam causes potential damage to people running ads and generating revenue from ads by devaluing clicks is a feature, not a bug. My understanding of the plugin is that it views advertising as universally bad, and that if a site cannot survive without ads, it must not be worth much at all, and deserves to die. I wholeheartedly agree with this view.

So Google, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat have no value? Because those aren't just little sites, but entire companies that have value solely because of ads. Take away ads and they don't exist.

Companies that violate my privacy, track me and harvest my data to sell to advertisers so that Zuckerberg can buy all the mansions around his to protect his privacy?

I would be completely fine if Facebook and Google and whoever else ceased to exist.

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#27

Post by wongarsu »

>Generating this kind of traffic does not achieve its intended goal (providing protest against ad networks or causing advertising to fail for ad networks) since the ones punished are the publishers (those who rely on this revenue) and not the ad networks.

I don't think I follow? People don't like the ad networks and want them to change or fail. That's achievable by forcing change at either the advertiser, the network or the website owner. Decreasing the usefulness of ad networks to website owners accomplishes the same thing as hitting the ad effectiveness: it takes away business from the ad network. Which sounds exactly like the intended goal.

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#28

Post by chuckdries »

hbbio wrote: post #19

The motto of Pale Moon is "Your browser, Your way". But apparently not very so... The current ad system is broken and, although I understand Google decision to protect its own profits, I don't see why an open source project that aims to provide an unbiased browsing experience would follow suit.

You're hurting the publishers. I'm a software developer at a local newspaper. We've been dealing with floods of fake ad clicks for about a year now, and they severely hurt our bottom line. We don't even use an ad network a la google, we sell our own ads to local businesses and such. You're not sticking it to the man, you're punishing me and my colleagues and friends for writing content that you wanted to read. You're directly hurting us.

To be clear, I'm not sure a browser should have a say on this in general, but I understand the argument they make on a personal level.

EDIT:

1. I misread OP

2. I don't work directly with our ad handling, as I work with the editorial team and generally advertising and editorial are separate for a reason, but I went digging just for fun. We sell our ad space to individual businesses. Our ad sales team does approve every ad we run. We use Google Analytics and Chartbeat, and both the newsroom and ad team have access to those analytics. The ads we serve vary - one ad from a housing complex down the street is literally just an image with an affiliate link, but one ad from our the ASU Foundation appears to load content from doubleclick.net.

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#29

Post by 4bpp »

wnevets wrote: post #16

I've never heard of this fork before and Im not sure why its on the front page of HN.

My impression has been that it has commanded somewhat outsize (to its actual utility/userbase) attention ever since its conception, because the promise of an "optimised, bloat-free, classic" version of Firefox clearly is attractive to many outspoken technologists. It gets mentioned on HN periodically: https://www.google.com/search?q=pale+moon+site%3Anews.ycombi...

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#30

Post by na85 »

chuckdries wrote: post #12
na85 wrote: post #7

That AdNauseam causes potential damage to people running ads and generating revenue from ads by devaluing clicks is a feature, not a bug. My understanding of the plugin is that it views advertising as universally bad, and that if a site cannot survive without ads, it must not be worth much at all, and deserves to die. I wholeheartedly agree with this view.

Why? I work at a newspaper, we've survived on ads for decades, the way we deliver them has just changed. Most newspapers are like this, are you saying we should not exist?

Why can't you sustain your business from subscription fees?
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