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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

#321

Post by [deleted] »

BoorishBears wrote: post #138
yeahsure wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going through the trouble of clicking/closing a few ads is not the same as having your information being added to an ever-growing file that major corporations have on everyone. And you can't say "just don't visit the site" because pretty much every site does this. You might as well say "just quit the internet" which obviously is not a solution.

Why isn’t it a solution? It’s not true that every site does this, but yes, most are funded by the model that relies on your information being sold and used to build a profile of you. If you don’t support that model why buy into the system? After all, the content minus ads was still written and designed to drive ad revenue. Any conflict of interest between driving ad revenue and conveying information (ie. uninformativ…

[deleted]

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

#322

Post by ravenstine »

Y'know, you could not force multiple tracker scripts and obtrusive ads on me.

Stupid bastards.

The sad part is that anti-adblocking may work in their favor because the average person isn't going to go as far as to stop using certain websites or turn off JavaScript. It may get to that point with me, though. I already refuse to use most websites that try to block my ad blocker, autoplay videos, open modals too early, etc.

It's not about ads, but the types of ads that are presented. There would be backlash if the types of ads we see on the internet were equally as plastered everywhere in real life, but for some reason we've just got to deal with it on the web.

I generally don't disdain people for doing things for a living, but I'd openly thumb my nose at developers and anyone else involved in thwarting adblockers and tracking blockers. Talk about a sisyphean job that helps nobody except one of the slimiest industries to exist.

A lot of people would be willing to pay for web content; Patreon and the wealth of content on YouTube are a testament to this. But websites that let you pay to remove ads have a problem, and it's that they don't use a unified system to manage subscriptions. The user is somehow supposed to manage what sites they're subscribed to. It'd make more sense if news sites, for example, could integrate with a service where you could manage your subscriptions to these sites as well as more content.

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

#324

Post by pmlnr »

saguro wrote: post #241
Buge wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How about by manipulating your facebook news feed and exposing you to a carefully selected series of images and headlines to sway your opinion on political topics without you even realizing. How about identifying which youtubers your children are impressionable to, and then approaching them to push unhealthy food products? How about using your porn browsing habits and location history to figure out when you start che…

> Because if it ever became a legal case and they were made to disclose how they use the data, there'd be a fucking uproar

"General Data Protection Regulation" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...

The sad truth: nobody cares. There won't be an uproar. There are/were countless blog entries on how your data is abused, and nobody cares. _Oh, look, a site where I can showcase my vanity and have followers like some kind of celebrity!_ - this is the reality.

I'd love to make people realize how bad it is. I'd really want to know where are the people who donated enough to the Mozilla foundation to supports a 2-page ad in the New York Times in print for Firefox back in 2004. I'd really like to know what makes people listen, but I honesty have no idea.

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

#325

Post by QAPereo »

_0ffh wrote: post #263
klibertp wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Manually inspect every CDN domain loaded on every page that you visit? Basically, yes, see uMatrix. It's not for non-web-devs, I feel, but if you can easily recognize unnecessary connections it works pretty well.

> It's not for non-web-devs, I feel I don't know. I'm not a web dev (x), and I went from "dafuq?" to "I get it, this is so cool" in two minutes flat. Let's just say it sure helps if you're a technical person, not j. random user. (x) but engineer/CS, tbh edit: remove accidental markup

Same here, and I’m not an engineer or CS. uMatrix is IMO something a bright child could work out through trial and error.

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

#326

Post by kstrauser »

thinkMOAR wrote: post #222
mobilemidget wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Little snitch! (OSX) https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html no i don't work for or get paid in anyway by little snitch, i just love the product.

You beat me to it, but I was going to mention LS too.

Imaging you start off with Safari being unable to connect to anything. Little Snitch is running in Alert Mode and it asks you to decide on every outbound network connection. You visit Facebook. LS asks if Safari can talk to facebook.com on port 443. You say "yes, always". What about "server893.ads.facebook.com:443"? You say "make that .ads.facebook.com and block it forever". Do this through the few dozen prompts you'll get on this first visit when you visit a resource-heavy domain. Now hit reload and pick up a few more (like maybe this time you'll get a connection to a video CDN that you didn't see last time). Repeat until the requests taper off to nothing.

Now put Little Snitch into "Silent Deny" mode and enjoy your Safari that can only view ad-free Facebook.

Note: I don't really recommend doing this because I'd rather be doing almost literally anything else, but if I had to set up a social media kiosk for a relative, that's how I'd go about it.

I do highly enjoy telling Little Snitch to deny connections to all the non-port-80/443 ad trackers. I can't imagine a single legitimate reason why I'd want Safari to connect to moatads.com:843.

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

#327

Post by yeahsure »

BoorishBears wrote: post #138
yeahsure wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going through the trouble of clicking/closing a few ads is not the same as having your information being added to an ever-growing file that major corporations have on everyone. And you can't say "just don't visit the site" because pretty much every site does this. You might as well say "just quit the internet" which obviously is not a solution.

Why isn’t it a solution? It’s not true that every site does this, but yes, most are funded by the model that relies on your information being sold and used to build a profile of you. If you don’t support that model why buy into the system? After all, the content minus ads was still written and designed to drive ad revenue. Any conflict of interest between driving ad revenue and conveying information (ie. uninformativ…

Not every site does it, but most of them do have tracking of some kind (at least google analytics). I refuse to give up these information in exchange for access to content.

If me blocking ads/tracking results in some company shutting down, then so be it. But maybe others will jump in to fill that gap and try something different like, say, a subscription fee, in which case I'll happily pay.

But if I/we just stop using those sites that I truly enjoy, then if/when they shut down others might be afraid to go into that market because they might think there's not enough interest in it.

All of this is just a guess, obviously.

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

#328

Post by trophycase »

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…

People won't pay 99 cents for an app because it's nearly impossible to evaluate it's quality from the beginning.

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

#329

Post by dhimes »

dhimes wrote: post #311
rplnt wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As I've said many times I don't mind ads Have you seen the web without an ad blocker though?

I definitely agree that some sites are better than others. I guess I should clarify- in principle I don't mind the concept of showing me ads to pay for a site. I do mind the concept of tracking me. In my view site-related ads have a higher probability of being relevant to me than search-engine ads.

Came back to add: For the first time ever, I was watching a youtube vid that was interrupted to play an ad.

Ugh. I hope it doesn't go that way. I don't even know what the ad was for.

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

#330

Post by belorn »

wdn wrote: post #318

Without adblocking, the web is unusable for most sites. Full page ads, video ads that follow you while you scrolling, popup, malwares, bitcoin mining, tracking, etc... TBH, the only solution is browser makers put out an ad acceptable standard. However, with Google's revenue base on ads, I doubt there will be any change to it until someone come along and disrupted the browsers.

Its like email. Email without spam filters is unusable for most people. Scams, fraud, malware, targeting of vulnerable people in society. At some point people have enough and the market falls into even further decay. The web is where email were before 2000, still somewhat usable without a blocker but has reached the breaking point for a lot of users.

The major difference between email and web advertisement is that the web has so much more money invested into the system, so the browsers and the biggest advertisement system that exist is trying to save the market by ad acceptable standard. Will be interesting to see if they can do what email advertisement could not. Personally I doubt it, as email, scam, and fraud is remains something which the publishers refuse to take responsibility when distributing. Practically every country in the world has advertisement laws, except that none of them is followed on the web.

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