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Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

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Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#171

Post by BoorishBears »

jonahx wrote: post #169
BoorishBears wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d argue you’re pretty much just ignoring my larger points and nitpicking very specific excerpts and ignoring the context of them to make a point that’s not entirely new in the thread then appealing to emotion with what was supposed to be jarring commentary but just comes across as ranting. I mean you spent something like 70% if your commenting trying to dissect half of a sentence in my comment. And, I don’t appreci…

The answer to your question is: Because of hyperlinks (ie, the way the web works), it's not practical to tell people "hey, you clicked on the link, you agreed to pay them via advertising". A publicly accessible page is like a public space in that way. If a company doesn't want to offer free access to content that costs them money to produce, they can create a login system and a paywall.

Which question?

If the one in the comments several levels up from this one, isn't this just a variation of the HTTP Status Code 200 argument? (which I explain why I don't support in other comments)

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#172

Post by BoorishBears »

saguro wrote: post #167
BoorishBears wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d argue you’re pretty much just ignoring my larger points and nitpicking very specific excerpts and ignoring the context of them to make a point that’s not entirely new in the thread then appealing to emotion with what was supposed to be jarring commentary but just comes across as ranting. I mean you spent something like 70% if your commenting trying to dissect half of a sentence in my comment. And, I don’t appreci…

I mean, you're using moralistic arguments to defend a clearly immoral market actor whose entire business model revolves around abusing lack of regulations to collect and sell consumer information without their knowledge or informed consent. You're defending a business entity whose entire existence is against your personal interest. In market terms, you are not a rational actor maximizing self interest. If you're not…

Again you spend so many words to say so little to address the actual topic at hand and instead shift the topic. This time to... doubling down on saying I'm brainwashed?

Ok, I'm brainwashed, thanks.

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#173

Post by alykhalid »

zzleeper wrote: post #155
gorhill wrote: post #90

In the paper, this excerpt: > We choose Adblock as it is one of the most popular. It is also possible to use Adblock Plus or uBlock, as the way they operate is exactly the same — HTTP filters and HTML element hiding. AdBlock in the Chrome store uses Adblock Plus filtering engine[1], so to say the way these two "operate is exactly the same" makes sense. However uBlock Origin uses its own code base, and is far better e…

What would you recommend for mobile? Browsing on Android with Chrome is a nightmare, and the last time I tried FF it was a bit sluggish (although it did allowed me to install extensions!)

Have you tried Firefox focus[0]. I use it on a daily basis and I am quite happy with it.

[0]https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/mobile/

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#174

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

BoorishBears wrote: post #158
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a bit more nuanced than that and ultimately comes down to a lack of regulation of what third party advertisement companies should be allowed to do without full disclosure. It is reasonable to expect a free lemonade stand to print ads on the cups and have sales people around trying to initiate conversations with you while you consume your free beverage. Peeling off the ads and yelling at the sales people…

I agree that sites should be more direct with what they're tracking, and would support regulation around that, but this thread is really about people claiming they're fully aware of what is being tracked and just don't want it to be tracked. I think your analogy makes it easy to see why people support it if you take it a little further. For free lemonade? A layperson would say of "Of course that's too far!". But now…

Right, I agree that it is a bit hypocritical to use a free site on a regular basis with ad-blocking enabled if you have full knowledge about its advertisement and tracking practices, and you know that their business model depends on it.

I think you are right that the problem comes down to valuing personal data and content. How many $ is your data worth to e.g. Google vs. how many $ would you need to get paid in order to give up your privacy? There is probably a discrepancy here, which is why people are getting mad.

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#175

Post by [deleted] »

BoorishBears wrote: post #172
saguro wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you're using moralistic arguments to defend a clearly immoral market actor whose entire business model revolves around abusing lack of regulations to collect and sell consumer information without their knowledge or informed consent. You're defending a business entity whose entire existence is against your personal interest. In market terms, you are not a rational actor maximizing self interest. If you're not…

Again you spend so many words to say so little to address the actual topic at hand and instead shift the topic. This time to... doubling down on saying I'm brainwashed? Ok, I'm brainwashed, thanks.

[deleted]

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#176

Post by stewbrew »

edanm wrote: post #152
stewbrew wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't lose billions because some people hide annoying stuff that makes their pages esesstially unusable and have no extra benefit because ... I personally don't think this kind of online marketing actually works. I cannot imagine someone actually buying something because of some meaningless text snippet, a stupid blinking image or a video clip.

Do you really trust your personal opinion on this, versus literally an entire billion dollar industry which has an enormous incentive to get this right, and which thinks this as business DOES work?

The point is, they don't lose anything because of me hiding their ads.

There are other ways for advertisers to sneak into my world, but this kind of online advertisement is not one of them.

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#177

Post by strken »

BoorishBears wrote: post #166
strken wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like some content. I am willing to pay ten times[0] the revenue ads would generate, potentially more, to see the content without ads. I want to pay for only the content I read, and not a monthly sum. Why am I unable to pay, and what incentives would change the system so that I can pay, other than using an ad blocker? [0] Say a website has a CPM of $5 and displays 10 ads to each user, such that a single impression f…

>what incentives would change the system so that I can pay, other than using an ad blocker? That's really simple, more people need to be willing to pay. I mean, I say in other parts of the page that I can't pay what the content is worth, but I'm actually not sure that's true for myself. But it is true for the general public. And it's not they can't because they can't afford it, but rather, they don't want to. So we c…

I think it's not about monetary cost, but about attention. If you had an opt-out payment model where users are automatically charged a capped amount that they can later refund, or even a paywall with a "Pay with Ads-B-Gone" button, users would accept much more readily.

Or maybe an emotional approach like the Guardian or Patreon would work better.

The point here, though, is that you can both like the content and want to support the creator yet choose to block ads.

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#178

Post by SilasX »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #96
joering2 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't that it was slow for me; I got i9 with 64 ram and things speed up tremendously from my last i7... the huge problem is insecurity! Lots of website have no control over what ads are popping up! Drudge Report is probably the most frightening! All the time popups of "outdated" Adobe Flash (that I dont have at all), installation of recent updates of Windows 7 (even tho Im on Win 10)... recently I had some sort o…

Drudge Report is probably the most frightening! That particular site is highly functional without allowing any JavaScript at all. All links work. All non-advertising images load. By default I just don't allow JS. Thank you NoScript. Many sites that won't display anything without JS can be viewed by View -> Page Style -> No Style.

This x1000. Any site can circumvent ad blockers by just doing ads like Drudge. So if they want, they can always show ads. The problem is that they want to do more.

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#179

Post by sametmax »

BoorishBears wrote: post #117
saguro wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use an ad blocker for a much simpler reason. I do not consent to having my behavior analyzed. Calling these things `ads` is deliberately misleading. The primary purpose of these things isn't to show you an ad, its to record everything you do on every site you visit, so then that data can be correlated to your credit history and other real world sources to profile you and optimally manipulate your behavior to sell y…

If you don’t consent why view their content? And I’d like an answer for once other than the super literal “Because their server returned the status code 200” Because sure, it did, but if we’re turning this into an ideological discussion of how you feel you haven’t given permission, why even feed the system with your view. Even using an ad blocked you’re still adding views to the page, and the powers that be will simp…

When you arrive on most sites with ads, they don't make you to accept anything. They don't give you a term of service to read. You just click, and download the code, and it executes. It's an implicit contract, which means they sell your data without your consent, as most people don't understand what's going on.

Actually, even when you understand what's going on, the sheer number of things to check to get the full picture make it unpractical.

Your argument make sense if a website clearly make you click on a term of service like google does. In that case, you accepted a clear, explicit contract. Either consent or leave.

But that's not what happen with most services.

And because of that, it makes sense to use an ad blocker. You just prevent sites to make you pay a price that they don't disclose.

Another thing is:

- what they are doing is immoral

- what we are doing is not illegal

So the reason we should stop doing this for sites that DO disclose what they do is morality. But there is little incentive to be seek morality when playing with an immoral player. So there is not scenario here, where not using an adblock is a good strategy.

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#180

Post by baddox »

duncan-donuts wrote: post #116
saguro wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use an ad blocker for a much simpler reason. I do not consent to having my behavior analyzed. Calling these things `ads` is deliberately misleading. The primary purpose of these things isn't to show you an ad, its to record everything you do on every site you visit, so then that data can be correlated to your credit history and other real world sources to profile you and optimally manipulate your behavior to sell y…

I hate to be that guy, but I'm going to guess you probably _do_ consent just by accessing certain sites. I'm sure if you read the terms they disclose that. I'm not saying that's right, and I also have a similar stance of trying not to be profiled, but don't delude yourself thinking your ad blocker is stopping organizations from gathering your metadata.

It is literally nonsensical to tell someone who is explicitly not consenting that they are in fact implicitly consenting.
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