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

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 377 posts

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

#251

Post by mort96 »

musage wrote: post #223
true_religion wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, none of those examples are subtle. I'm not sure when the actual words fear, temptation, sin and guilt were redefined to be 'subtle' manipulation, and these words are literally used in the advertisements. Secondly, the indulgence food industry doesn't care about cultural inclinations in the way you argue. They didn't set up a culture of considering fatty or carb rich food bad for one's health, or sinful. They…

> Firstly, none of those examples are subtle. Who mentioned subtle? That's not even moving a goalpost, that's conjuring one out of thin air. > However the association of candy bars and decadence didn't come from advertisers originally. Again: so? The point is they use it. The point of many ads being "inherently psychologically abusive" stands, and I count the space wasted on sophistry to try and wriggle out of that a…

> Ads targeted at women almost universally target their vulnerabilities in subtle ways

That's who mentioned subtle.

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

#252

Post by Simon_says »

predakanga wrote: post #86
themistocle wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When reading we’re free to skip and skim. Vinyl, VHS, Cassette, CD, and DVD allow us to seek or rewind as we like. When I buy a PC, I can install any software I choose to. When browsing the web, I can accept or reject any served content. That’s not entitlement. Entitlement is the sentiment that users somehow owe advertising or web firms anything.

Not seeking to invalidate your point, but DVDs and Blurays can stop you from fast forwarding, most famously for the FBI anti-copying warning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_operation_prohibition

Thanks for the blast from the past. I haven't watched any non-pirated media for 10 years. It's a superior experience.

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

#253

Post by emptyfile »

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!)

Firefox is a LOT better since the Quantum update. Like, actually usable compared to Chrome.

A lot of websites will still look weird but still a million times better when you don't have popup windows poking your eye, also reading mode is a god send.

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

#255

Post by gorhill »

mobilemidget wrote: post #194
bradknowles wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL that the author of uBlock Origin reads HN. Cool! And thank you for your service to the Internet!

They all suck. Period. Block any outgoing connection you don't trust instead of simply taking some 3rd party list with URLs, unverified, no quality control etc, and only blacklist these KNOWN bad urls. Ad parties don't sit still, they don't keep their ads on the same url when they found out they are blocked or maybe already preventive rotate through new urls etc. In the end you'll end up with some bizar long list whi…

> They all suck. Period. Block any outgoing connection you don't trust instead of simply taking some 3rd party list with URLs, unverified, no quality control etc, and only blacklist these KNOWN bad urls.

uBlock Origin allows you to block yourself any outgoing connection to servers you do not trust, including working in default-deny mode if you want[1].

In any case, those filter lists are maintained by dedicated volunteers[2], their work is way under-appreciated, because contrary to what you state, these volunteers spend a whole lot of time ensuring everything work as expected so that in the end all non-technical users who wouldn't be able to deal with default-deny mode can also be protected.

* * *

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...

[2] https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commits/master https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/commits/master

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

#256

Post by Improvotter »

etatoby wrote: post #45
orbitingpluto wrote: post #39

Okay, here's a crazy idea for advertisers. Tie the advertisement to the type of content that the user is already there to read about. Then you can serve ads from the content web server and make it indistinguishable from content, completely unobtrusive, completely noninvasive, and maybe even welcome.

This. As a positive example, I like how many YouTube channels take 30 seconds out of a 10 minute video to talk about some company's product that might be of interest to their audience. Not an annoying video ad that has nothing to do with what I'm reading / watching, just the host talking about a product or service that their audience has a chance to be interested in.

I completely agree. I cannot stand some random YouTube ad that YouTube itself plays before videos because it's not relevant and I do not trust the people that are marketing it.

When I see someone I trust on YouTube recommend a product in a pre-roll ad or the like, then I don't really skip it and I do really keep those companies in mind in case I ever am looking for a product that they might offer.

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

#257

Post by InternetUser »

Buge wrote: post #123
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…

>to profile you and optimally manipulate your behavior to sell you shit. ...by showing you ads.

And the circle of capitalism...continues.

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

#258

Post by mort96 »

tdb7893 wrote: post #189
_ph_ wrote: post #181

I wish, instead of fighting Ad Blockers, they would try as hard to fix they way they run ads. Not to mention the sites, which only exist to display ads and practically don't have their own content except for clickbait headlines. A side comment: while blocking ads might reduce revenue for sites, it also means the advertiser has to pay for views by people who wouldn't click on the ads anyway.

The thing is that ad blockers don't often don't discriminate between acceptable ads and unacceptable ads and just block everything. Even if you put a lot of effort to make your ads better most people will just block them regardless.

Ad blockers generally _don't_ block acceptable ads. Acceptable ads, by my definition, are ads which are hosted by the website owner and doesn't include spyware; even a small banner ad from a third party ad platform is not acceptable, because regardless the size of the third party ad, it's part of the ad company's surveillance program.

Ads which take the form of an tag pointing to an image hosted on the same domain, aren't blocked (at least in my experience).

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

#259

Post by InternetUser »

danso wrote: post #83
intrasight wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is obviously the right solution. It's what print newspapers and magazines do. Why isn't there a quality first-party ad platform? Is there a business opportunity here?

Some non-legacy news sites do make ads first-party content, i.e. native advertising or sponsored content. BuzzFeed is probably the most prolific at it [0], with a great tech team and focus, but even BuzzFeed is floundering when it comes to revenue targets. I think Quartz [1] also does it well (though it's also part of the Atlantic media group. Newer outlets do it well too -- e.g. theoutline.com and axios.com -- but b…

That comment is a fantastically informed response piece in itself. Are you going to post it elsewhere?

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

#260

Post by tcd »

_ph_ wrote: post #205
tdb7893 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that ad blockers don't often don't discriminate between acceptable ads and unacceptable ads and just block everything. Even if you put a lot of effort to make your ads better most people will just block them regardless.

Yes, that is the collateral damage inflicted by participating at the current ad model far to long. However, for sites who really want to change, this isn't a real problem. First of all, if you don't serve ads via "ad networks" but as part of your hostet content, I don't think the ads are getting blocked by default. Also, if a site with true content and regular readers has a proper ad model, they can just ask their re…

Yeah, any site that pops-up "pls whitelist us!!" gets an instant X on the tab from me. It sucks, but I will never tolerate ads of any kind, no matter how good or bad. To me, they are done, along with tracking on the web (including mobile).

Oh, and before you scream at me, what about people that simply disable JS, which is basically how all of this works anyway.

I'm not entitled to a free web, I get that, but ads are a failing revenue model due to years of sustained abuse, and that damage is not going to be reversed ant time soon.

Post reply on HN