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

Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 963 posts

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#71

Post by penagwin »

antoineMoPa wrote: post #35

I dont get why people use spotify instead of listening to free online radios from anywhere in the world. As a bonus, its like travelling. There are ads, but they target other people than you so its not even annoying (you will not be influenced to buy a car at a dealership in another country). Note that if you are the kind who likes targeted ads, this does not apply to you.

Radio stations at least around the midwest here in the US only seem to play ~20 different songs, and it gets really repetitive, really fast, just ask anybody working retail.

Plus the genre's are rather limited, it's usually one or two pop stations (with 90% song overlap), one or two country, maybe NPR or something in a podcast format, etc. Meanwhile all of the ads.

Personally I'm on the student plan, and for what I like the listen to it's a steal for 5$ (and free hulu?) Any of the alternatives, deezer, apple music, etc would likely work too, but I can't imagine only using fm radio stations.

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#72

Post by 00deadbeef »

antoineMoPa wrote: post #35

I dont get why people use spotify instead of listening to free online radios from anywhere in the world. As a bonus, its like travelling. There are ads, but they target other people than you so its not even annoying (you will not be influenced to buy a car at a dealership in another country). Note that if you are the kind who likes targeted ads, this does not apply to you.

Because radio is a totally different experience to having playlists of songs that I like and want to listen to

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#75

Post by excalibur »

isostatic wrote: post #8

I assume this only applies to the free version of spotify

+1. This only seems to be applicable to free accounts, but that doesn't mean that's the way it's written. Anyone want to bite the bullet and read the legalese?

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#76

Post by wjdp »

krn wrote: post #11

What about the Brave browser[1], which works at the application level? Or Blokada[2], which works at the OS level? Or Pi-Hole[3], which works at the network level? [1] https://brave.com [2] https://blokada.org [3] https://pi-hole.net

I run Pi-Hole on my home network, while I pay for premium I guess I'm OK. But will anyone who uses this network with Free get banned?

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#77

Post by dspillett »

dessant wrote: post #13

They allow advertisers to run JS on your device, and ads are a trendy way to deliver malware. People are using ad blockers not just to hide annoyances and to improve performance, but to protect themselves from bad actors. https://spotifyforbrands.com/en-US/ad-experiences/ > JavaScript or iFrame Tags: All third-party tags and tracking URLs need to be in https format. I was on the fence about this because there is a le…

> People are using ad blockers not just to hide annoyances and to improve performance, but to protect themselves from bad actors.

This is why I started blocking ads at the network level last year, after resisting blocking them at all for so long before that. A number of popular sites (imgur.com being the worst offender, but certainly not the only one) hosting adverts that attempted drive-by downloads, tried to access cameras or microphones (luckily caught by permissions blocks elsewhere), played obnoxious loud audio, played high-res bandwidth chewing video, opened pop-ups or pop-unders, and so forth.

Serve the adverts from your own domains and agree to take responsibility for any damage done by code/other served from your domains, and we can talk. Otherwise: no ads. Ban me from your site or application for that if you wish.

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#78

Post by minikites »

If the service Spotify uses to host/serve ads get hacked and delivers malware to my computer, they should be held responsible for the cost and time spent addressing the malware. If I actually brought this up with them, I assume I would be laughed out of their office. Spotify can't have it both ways.

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#79

Post by bootlooped »

YayamiOmate wrote: post #43
sinstein wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone mentioned in another comment, I don't think they will care about how the ads are being blocked. As long as you are bypassing ads, you are in breach of their TOS.

Yea, but there is no way to distinct why ads don't reach the target, and as it's worded, they can't block service for technical difficulties but for intentional behaviour. I haven't seen even if they specified whether it must be the account user or not. E.g. your network host or isp can do it. So that seems interesting, unless they can do it on a whim anyways and dont have to prove anything. Though they could just sa…

> they can't block service for technical difficulties but for intentional behaviour

They can block service for whatever reason they want.

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#80

Post by bmaupin »

Anyone know if there's a host file blacklist for malicious domains only? Most of the ones I've seen block all ads.

The first time I experienced a malicious ad in Spotify on my Linux machine, I started blocking them via my hosts file [1]. I was only hoping to block malicious sites but it ended up giving me a completely ad-free experience in Spotify.

As a free user I accept that I will be exposed to ads in exchange for not paying for the service, but they seriously need to do a better job vetting for malicious ads.

[1] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Post reply on HN