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Adblocking: How about Nah?

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Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#151

Post by [deleted] »

jplayer01 wrote: post #86
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…

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…

[deleted]

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#152

Post by tjpnz »

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…

>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.

I would be more than happy to accept that and I do see it from time to time. But I still won't be disabling my adblocker - allowing ads served from DoubleClick et el is just far too dangerous from both a security and privacy perspective. Even if they're not responsible for the actual ad content they're at the very least complicit in all of it.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#153

Post by dvtrn »

nkozyra wrote: post #136
Waterluvian wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This describes AdSense in general - the original point was some text ads. But as the article points out, we acclimate to stimulus, so any ad that's welcomed and successful will lose engagement over time. Which is why we get either very creative compelling advertising or advertising that attempts to trick us. The entire thing is fundamentally broken, of course, and nobody seems to have a monetization strategy beyond s…

But as the article points out, we acclimate to stimulus, so any ad that's welcomed and successful will lose engagement over time. Which is why we get either very creative compelling advertising or advertising that attempts to trick us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jYMQx2RuVs

Relevant (and somewhat humorously self-aware) take on the matter from youtube channel Wisecrack-which is a channel that likes to look at the deeply classically philosophical aspects of how we react and inform ourselves through the lens of modern media.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#154

Post by tossAfterUsing »

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…

> as far as forbidding embedded JS altogether

I do this on my iOS device. It's a bit of a pain to not have JS enabled in safari, but I can always share a page from Safari --> Duckduckgo's browser which i have installed for just such occasions.

Settings > Safari > Advanced > Javascript off

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#155

Post by aembleton »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #34
dontbenebby wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence my use of NoScript https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoScript

It's crazy Steve Gibson (of all people) calls this too impractical to use. If you're a total tech-novice, sure, but as a power user it's fine. I'm blocking ycombinator.com right now. I can still submit this. If something doesn't work, just click the icon and trust its domain. If pictures don't show, trust a CDN. Amazon, Paypal, 99% of sites work with an initial adjustment of trust settings.

If you blanket trust a CDN, doesn't this allow bad actors to still send JS to your browser? Anyone could use that CDN.

I found uMatrix easier to use and more configurable than NoScript.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#156

Post by lukaa »

Podcast ads are usually read by podcasters themseleves they don't track nobody sometimes they are even funny and if they are not to long, I don't skip them. So they are great example how all ads should be made.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#157

Post by komali2 »

SapporoChris wrote: post #131
amelius wrote: post #55

Did anyone ever investigate what benefits ads have to a population? It seems like a net loss to me, because ads are used to make people consume more than they need; ads make people buy the product with the biggest advertising budget instead of the best product; and while ads may make the internet "free", we are still paying for those ads indirectly. Why then, doesn't the government bring advertising to a halt? At lea…

I worked briefly in a marketing department as programmer. Learned the following there. The benefit of advertising is to inform the consumer of products they may not be aware of. "Messa thinks Messa might have Mesothelioma!" Most of the time advertising is a waste of time, and there certainly are better ways of learning about products. However, the function of informing consumers of products they may not be aware of i…

To a minimalist advertising could almost be construed as a form of psychic attack on ones value system.

Imagine firing off hundreds of ads at a vegan about how eating meat is good. That's essentially what all the "buy this shit" ads are doing to someone who explicitly buys as little as they can to get by.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#158

Post by jefftk »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #134
jefftk wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 would only do business with companies you trust to not cheat. Or just charge flat rates.

>You would only do business with companies you trust to not cheat.

That massively increases the barrier to entry. Right now you can make a new site, sign up with an ad network, and start showing ads. No one involved needs to trust you (much) since the ad network is in a good position to detect cheating. Remove that, and big trusted publishers (NYT, FB, Google) are still fine, but smaller ones wouldn't be able to demonstrate to the ad network or advertiser that they should be trusted.

> Or just charge flat rates.

Adverse selection will kill you.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#159

Post by ori_b »

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.

(Too late to edit: The bit about Firefox revenue should read 'almost entirely' -- they have some negligible revenue streams, but the vast majority of income is dependent on Google)

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#160

Post by backpropaganda »

derefr wrote: post #139
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…

> small Heh, do you really think that static ads would be a small portion of the page? Look at small local newspapers for what a business driven by revenue from non-targetable ads looks like. The ads take up more than half the page!

Small ads on the web are still more targeted than newspaper ads, since web ads appear on specific websites which are of interest to the user. If I visit a motorcycling forum, I should get motorcycling ads, and they can be effective even if they're small.
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