Adblocking: How about Nah? • Hacker News Board

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#121

Post by RHSeeger » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

wybiral wrote: post #110

intopieces wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll gladly accept those on a webpage so that the content creator can make a bit of cash. Why do you feel like your attention should be for sale? There should be no advertising on the web. Content should be free or cost money, and the cost should be transparent. Advertisements are just socially accepted psychological manipulation. We can do better.

That's a completely different discussion though. Personally I'm not offended by seeing a brand placement if it helps the content creator and is transparent (meaning I know it's an ad, and it's not collecting data about me). Bringing it to a physical example, if I walk into a store and see a product placement or physical sign advertisement, I'm not that offended by it. But if they started fingerprinting me and taking…

I mean... effectively, they are http://money.com/money/4506297/how-retailers-track-you/

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#122

Post by deanclatworthy » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #119

deanc wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Good point. I guess it’d kill PPC. I’m not sure how advertisers detect fraud but maybe you can check the limited info sent along with the request and do whatever heuristics you do as usual.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#123

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

beatgammit wrote: post #54

guscost wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, you can build any program with a Turing-complete language.

But you can't build a pop-up if you don't have access to create new windows, yet you can still be turing complete. For example, WASM is Turing complete, but it can't create popup windows because it has no access to the DOM. I think JavaScript should have to request access to use browser APIs, and you should be able to disable access to any of all of them. For example, I should be about to disable: - network access (d…

That would be a usability nightmare.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#124

Post by undershirt » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #5

gergles wrote: post #3

Regrettably, nobody bothers to mention that JavaScript is really what's to blame for all of this. If unnecessary use of JavaScript earned the same sort of derision that "best viewed in IE 6" banners did, we wouldn't be where we are today. That genie is too far gone to put back in the bottle, but that's the real problem with the online advertising 'ecosystem'. JavaScript enabled pop-up ads, it enables tracking, it ena…

JavaScript enables functionality in the same way that cars enable transportation. They aren't the only solution. And there would be far less injury, death, and pollution if we all just didn't use automobiles. The world would be a safer, cleaner place. And a small fraction of people would be happy with it. JavaScript is the same. We'd have a cleaner, safer web without it. And only a small fraction of people would be h…

> The world would be a safer, cleaner place. And a small fraction of people would be happy with it.

You might be missing how expectations change after the introduction of a technology. I wouldn’t guess that people would be unhappy about not having cars before the car was even invented.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#125

Post by jrimbault » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #119

deanc wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You don't ? And you get paid less by click but you also have more clicks ? (also cf NYT)

This way you also avoid the arms race between ad networks, ad blockers and clickbot farms.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#126

Post by wybiral » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #119

deanc wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can make the same argument about podcasts, television, radio, magazines, billboards, etc. At some point you rely on statistics that someone is giving you in all of those mediums but they still made money.

I've personally made much more money producing content (YouTube and podcasts) by directly working with brands than I ever have from Adsense anyway so I'm not convinced that the advertisers "paying more" is helping content creators much to begin with. Patreon seems to be a symptom of that.

Edit: Also, on the subject of advertisers paying less. Isn't part of the problem the fact that adtech giants like Google are saying "look, we have this awesome tracking and targeting tech so you can pay less for ads to reach your target audience". Thus reducing the potential ad money that those people would pay into potential revenue for content creators to reach their audience?

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#127

Post by saagarjha » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #97

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…

Remember Gmail ads from like 2006? They were very minimal and on point. I was so optimistic thag the future of advertising was that.

Unfortunately they didn’t need to use JavaScript to track you because they already had access to a wealth of information about you from your email…

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#128

Post by tlibert » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

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.

I actually think if he was more transparent the piece would have been significantly better. For example, "At BoingBoing we rely on these systems as well. Why? The simple fact is we have virtually no alternatives to the adtech status-quo and our choice is either to participate in the system as it is or go out of business. This is why I'm calling on likeminded publishers to...". Instead he passes himself off in a disingenuous way, and people reading his words could reasonably assume that his own site was perhaps better, when in reality it far exceeds the mean for the amount of tracking on a website.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#129

Post by wybiral » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

RHSeeger wrote: post #121

wybiral wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a completely different discussion though. Personally I'm not offended by seeing a brand placement if it helps the content creator and is transparent (meaning I know it's an ad, and it's not collecting data about me). Bringing it to a physical example, if I walk into a store and see a product placement or physical sign advertisement, I'm not that offended by it. But if they started fingerprinting me and taking…

I mean... effectively, they are http://money.com/money/4506297/how-retailers-track-you/

I don't use any of the methods they mention there (although I know that they can use my credit card info to track me as well).

But, yeah, I'm still offended by that. It doesn't justify the widespread behavior on the internet to me, they're both bad.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#130

Post by nico_h » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

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.

It could be a good feature for Mozilla to be the best privacy protector. Firefox used to be the fastest, if they can be fast and the most private, they might be able to regain some mindshare and maybe market share. There’s just the problem of most of the funding coming from Google.