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Adblocking: How about Nah?

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Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#211

Post by majewsky »

cbluth wrote: post #201
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…

Consumer: im blocking all ads for reason x Advertiser: dont block my ads because the business depends on it Consumer: here's a solution that works for me Advertiser: but then that solution doesn't work for me Consumer: i don't care, im still blocking all ads until I feel like i don't have to

Consumer: I block ads for reason X.

Publisher: Don't block ads or I will go out of business.

Consumer: Then please allow me to contribute in some other way (subscription, Patreon, microtransactions).

Publisher: Hm, I dunno, that sounds like work.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#212

Post by pvg »

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…

These are all interesting questions for advertisers but it's not obvious the burden of addressing advertisers' problems should be dumped on users with next to no informed consent, as is the case now.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#213

Post by Baeocystin »

sgeisler wrote: post #177
jefftk wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this since you work on ads: are ads actually essential in the software industry, or could we do just fine without them? The industry would definitely adapt, but I don't think it would be more favorable to society. Here's what I would expect to happen if we stopped letting third party ad networks detect ad fraud: * Facebook, Youtube, Reddit, etc and other huge sites are alr…

> There's a massive drive to consolidation: people don't want to have a lot of subscriptions to manage. Imo subscriptions aren't viable at all. For me to subscribe to something I need strong evidence that I will use it enough. Automatic micropayments with a daily allowance seem like a much superior solution. They remove the friction of making the subscribe decision and keep the content creators in check by only payin…

There is a company called Blendle that offers a curated source of news/op-ed/etc to read, where you pay some fraction of a dollar per read, usually in the 10-25¢ range. If you feel the article wasn't worth it, you can click a link to get an immediate refund, no questions asked.

I like the idea, and I do use their service. They have plenty of room to improve- the articles they pick tend to almost always have a certain political slant, and I find more puff than meat more often than I think a curated service should offer.

But. It's a real attempt at a new model, and they're trying. I do get enough value out of it to keep using them to the few-dollars-a-month level, and I hope they improve their system over time.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#214

Post by majewsky »

air7 wrote: post #163
jacobobryant wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really care if ads stop being profitable. If ads stopped being a good source of revenue, the tech industry would adapt, and my guess is that the end result would be much more favorable to society. I'm working on an early-stage startup right now, and I'm certainly not going to use ads as part of my revenue model. Google might not be too happy about an outcome like that, but I'm not overly concerned about Googl…

In recent years we, conscious consumers, shot down several viable business models that could have replaced ads such as data collection for trend analysis and crypto mining in the browser. They were met with outright hostility. Perhaps justifiably so, but we have to keep in mind that any producable "value" will have to "hurt" in some way. We have to give something in exchange for "free" services. Yet the focus is only…

> data collection for trend analysis

Of course that's going to be met with the same hostility. It's 99.9% the same thing.

> crypto mining in the browser

Of course that's going to be met with similar hostility. Climate change is even more present in the public consciousness.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#215

Post by catotheyoungest »

I've been blocking ads ever since I learned that I could stop seeing DoubleClick ads by blocking their domain in /etc/hosts.

I won't ever apologize for doing so. As far as I'm concerned, any advertisement that depends on JavaScript is malware, and I think that my right to protect myself online outweighs the need of publishers to turn a profit.

IMO, profits are like respect. They must be earned, and if the only way you can turn a profit is by spying on people then maybe you shouldn't be in business in the first place. If the only way you can get me to use your product is by giving it away and selling my data, then maybe your product shouldn't exist?

As far as I'm concerned, the data I generate by using a search engine should be treated with the same care as my medical records. It should not be mined or traded. It should not be kept longer than 30 days.

And if that breaks the internet, so be it. You brought this on yourselves.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#216

Post by kartan »

elindbe2 wrote: post #66
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…

IMO the first place to start implementing ad bans is in public spaces, which I hear is common in Europe. I don't have to watch TV so I don't see TV ads. I don't listen to the radio much so I don't listen to radio ads. I can use an ad blocker on the web, yet for some reason the public spaces I inhabit (and help pay for) are full of ads.

> I hear is common in Europe

It is not. I have seen a ramp-up in the amount of advertisement everywhere. Maybe poorer countries like Romania - I have been just to Bucharest - are not so affected. But, Sweden, or Spain, - the countries that I spend more time - are just installing more and more advertisements everywhere.

Gambling advertisements are quite common in Stockholm. I remember specially one telling people to buy lottery tickets because they live sucks and the only lottery can save them from their horrible lives. It was disgusting.

Cities have a high amount of cognitive pollution.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#217

Post by michaelmrose »

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…

Your industry doesn't itself create value it maximizes the value of other industries by connecting customers and creators. The ultimate equilibrium might see your industry having to do more with less.

Ultimately the world did everything it does now without internet marketing and ultimately could do so again.

A sizable share of a smaller pie is better than all of nothing. Essentially your concern is both correct and irrelevant.

Nobody cares if Google has to make less money to have a less crappy internet the same way nobody cares if the newspaper industry makes less money.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#218

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#219

Post by themacguffinman »

bangonkeyboard wrote: post #186
hombre_fatal wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see that given the choice between declarative rules vs. a "onRequest(req)" handler, almost every developer would just opt for the latter because it's more general and open-ended. And there's no pressure from users to choose the more restrictive but performant option because people basically have zero insight into what's killing their battery, much less which competitor is better in that regard. Given the gulf b…

> Given the gulf between Safari vs Chrome battery performance, I'm not all that convinced that the declarative api is pure downside like HN cynicism and Twitter outrage might suggest. Safari was already beating Chrome on battery life before its extension API was neutered. This is post hoc revisionist rationalization.

So obviously the correct response from the Chrome team is to continue avoiding an approach that is known to save battery life /s

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#220

Post by sib »

opencl wrote: post #208
askosh wrote: post #196

There are more countries besides United States. I don't know why people here always refer to it as if it were the only ruler of the internet. It's not. In fact it does a piss poor job at playing its part.

I think the US is relevant here because it's where most of the big ad serving companies are based.

It also represents about 50% of the global advertising market (ad spending), so if the market changes there, it effects the rest of the world (for good and bad).
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