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Adblocking: How about Nah?

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Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#111

Post by jedberg »

cblum wrote: post #87
ori_b wrote: post #25

Something is different in the arms race this time. Browser development is almost exclusively funded by advertising. Chrome, in the obvious way. Mozilla is funded entirely by Google. Safari is the only surviving exception.

> Mozilla is funded entirely by Google. Do you have a source for that?

There isn't a source, because Mozilla doesn't break it down. They just say that they get almost all their revenue from "search royalty payments", and their two biggest deals are with Google and Baidu. You just have to guess how much comes from Google (90% market share worldwide) vs Baidu (the biggest search engine in China, which is also the largest single internet market but not as well funded as the US market).

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#112

Post by theobeers »

nolok wrote: post #94
tlibert wrote: post #88

When I loaded the BoingBoing version of the article my browser contacted 53 third-party domains and a grand total of 373 cookies were set. The BoingBoing privacy policy does not mention "Do Not Track", usually a signal it is ignored, and it discloses nearly none of the third-parties. The cookie opt-out link goes to the NAI site which does not work on Safari because Safari won't allow the third-party cookies required…

Does that changes anything to the truth and validity of the points he is making, though ? Because if yes I would like to know what and how, and if no then this is an ad-hominem. Nobody said advertising wasn't paying the bills.

This is not ad hominem. It’s directly relevant. No attempt was made to avoid discussion of the issue at hand by attacking Doctorow. Let’s please keep our fallacies straight.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#114

Post by noisy_boy »

I never click on ads. Never ever. I get that every ad doesn't need to be clicked e.g. videos that mindlessly show you a product. But atleast there is no direct feedback going back on those in terms of ad placement effectiveness/click-rate etc. They can keep burning their money showing ads - I just won't provide them any feedback on whether/where their money was wasted vs well spent. Also the best way to kill them is for lesser and lesser people to click on them.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#115

Post by jplayer01 »

wybiral wrote: post #102
jplayer01 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, agreed. Ads are a great way to finance things where there is value in being accessible by everybody - I'm not happy about seeing podcast episodes locked behind Patreon walls, for example. While it's great these creators are gaining an additional revenue stream, it still means I or others are priced out of accessing their content. I don't have any natural right to access it, of course, but I prefer the open acces…

Podcasts are a great example. They've had to do advertising the old fashion way, by market research and trying to figure out which ad campaigns are more effective without mass surveillance. Often they use the strategy of widespread name recognition, which is why you can probably think of a mattress brand, and a recruiting platform off the top of your head. That's effective advertisement without tracking.

A podcast is a podcast. Some of the podcasts I listen to have put a bunch of content behind a Patreon paywall. The distinction whether it's an RSS feed isn't meaningful. I still don't have access.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#116

Post by zrm »

deanc wrote: post #89
wybiral wrote: post #67

I don't actually want to block ads. If you want to put a small text or image blurb anywhere on the page... Good for you. I'll gladly accept those on a webpage so that the content creator can make a bit of cash. But these companies are intentionally blurring the lines between advertisement and digital surveillance. You don't need to collect everything about my operating system, browser, monitors, GPU, every click I ma…

Agree. I’d go as far as forbidding embedded JS altogether which removes the attack vector for malware within advertising networks. The networks have proved time and time again they are not able to prevent distribution of malware, and this is the primary reason I use an adblocker. Maybe a new tag which points to a resource which can only serve an image, video or text. Absolutely no scripting. Pass along only the adver…

Another possibility would be to create ad blockers that do that, i.e. block third party javascript but not pure text or images. Then you get the same result, simple ads get through but ad scripts don't, so the people who use ads without scripts are the only ones who make money from them.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#117

Post by rifung »

cblum wrote: post #87
ori_b wrote: post #25

Something is different in the arms race this time. Browser development is almost exclusively funded by advertising. Chrome, in the obvious way. Mozilla is funded entirely by Google. Safari is the only surviving exception.

> Mozilla is funded entirely by Google. Do you have a source for that?

Only goes up to 2011 but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#118

Post by scarface74 »

wybiral wrote: post #102
jplayer01 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, agreed. Ads are a great way to finance things where there is value in being accessible by everybody - I'm not happy about seeing podcast episodes locked behind Patreon walls, for example. While it's great these creators are gaining an additional revenue stream, it still means I or others are priced out of accessing their content. I don't have any natural right to access it, of course, but I prefer the open acces…

Podcasts are a great example. They've had to do advertising the old fashion way, by market research and trying to figure out which ad campaigns are more effective without mass surveillance. Often they use the strategy of widespread name recognition, which is why you can probably think of a mattress brand, and a recruiting platform off the top of your head. That's effective advertisement without tracking.

You can subscribe to password protected podcasts in many players just by including the username and password in the url.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#119

Post by jefftk »

deanc wrote: post #89
wybiral wrote: post #67

I don't actually want to block ads. If you want to put a small text or image blurb anywhere on the page... Good for you. I'll gladly accept those on a webpage so that the content creator can make a bit of cash. But these companies are intentionally blurring the lines between advertisement and digital surveillance. You don't need to collect everything about my operating system, browser, monitors, GPU, every click I ma…

Agree. I’d go as far as forbidding embedded JS altogether which removes the attack vector for malware within advertising networks. The networks have proved time and time again they are not able to prevent distribution of malware, and this is the primary reason I use an adblocker. Maybe a new tag which points to a resource which can only serve an image, video or text. Absolutely no scripting. Pass along only the adver…

> Maybe a new tag which points to a resource which can only serve an image, video or text. Absolutely no scripting. Pass along only the advertiser ID and the bare minimum.

How would fraud detection work in this model? How do advertisers know the requests are coming from real users and not bots? Without assurance there, advertisers would pay much less, and publishers would earn much less.

(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself.)

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#120

Post by j605 »

wybiral wrote: post #102
jplayer01 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, agreed. Ads are a great way to finance things where there is value in being accessible by everybody - I'm not happy about seeing podcast episodes locked behind Patreon walls, for example. While it's great these creators are gaining an additional revenue stream, it still means I or others are priced out of accessing their content. I don't have any natural right to access it, of course, but I prefer the open acces…

Podcasts are a great example. They've had to do advertising the old fashion way, by market research and trying to figure out which ad campaigns are more effective without mass surveillance. Often they use the strategy of widespread name recognition, which is why you can probably think of a mattress brand, and a recruiting platform off the top of your head. That's effective advertisement without tracking.

Patreon gives you a private RSS feed so paid podcasts are indeed a possibility. It is similar to getting your private activity ATOM feed from Github for example.
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