Live data from Hacker News

Adblocking: How about Nah?

eff.org

241–250 of 549 posts

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#241

I'm amazed that all the interested parties haven't got together to flesh out a microtransaction standard. The whole ad-blocking debate would be moot if we could pay a few cents to read an article free of distracting ads. If you choose not to pay, you get the ads and don't get to complain about ad-blocker-blockers because you were offered an alternative. I know it has been attempted in the past with little success, bu…

We tried compensating users for every ad they see, using a browser extension (ClearCoin), but Google took it off the Chrome Web Store because extensions have to have a single purpose; ad blocking & replacing is apparently two purposes. Maybe they just didn't like us.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#242
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.

You mean, aside from the fact that we invented the internet? You are welcome.

What do you mean "we"? I'm American and can't take credit for what a few people invented decades ago.

What was your contribution to it, exactly?

Unless you did really create the internet, in which case thank you.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#243
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…

Agreed. I occasionally buy newspapers for ads.

I decided a few years ago to disable ad blocking for awhile. The result was frankly, a parade of shit. Google was probably best at showing the occasional relevant ad, mostly in GMail.

Beyond that, the automated crap that does the targeting tends to hit the lowest common denominator topic. What I actually do online barely registered, but if my kid used my laptop, it would immediately take over the ad experience.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#244

In the end, it's an arms race, and I don't think either side is giving up on it anytime soon. The only thing that concerns me is that one side has way too much money, while the other side has way too much time. Let's see who wins.

the point of the article is that the wars is over.

money won by enlisting the corrupt law makers. from now on, content will have DRM (e.g. netflix) and if any adblocker even tries to touch it, the creators can be jailed.

now if you want to create/contribute an adblock, besides time, you must have impeccable opSec or also be willing to do time in jail.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#245
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 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 helpi…

   Patron seems to be a symptom of that
Wouldn't Patreon be more an indicator of said symptopms?

I hate English sometimes, and its my native language.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#246

I'm amazed that all the interested parties haven't got together to flesh out a microtransaction standard. The whole ad-blocking debate would be moot if we could pay a few cents to read an article free of distracting ads. If you choose not to pay, you get the ads and don't get to complain about ad-blocker-blockers because you were offered an alternative. I know it has been attempted in the past with little success, bu…

It's been tried countless times. We tried as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19038540 The issue isn't the payment tech, it's human behavior. People don't want to or can't pay for all the content they consume.

Companies rewiring everybody to want everything for free with ad-supported models certainly doesn't help.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#247
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the major browsers which are non-US based? Hint: not the majority. The point the op was making had nothing to do with your response claiming the US is the "only ruler of the internet". Does the US do a poor job of regulation of monopolies in tech? You don't have to look hard to find supporters of that statement. But we're at a point in time where things are finally starting to bubble up and garner traction. Will i…

Opera!

Opela.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#248
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 do want to block ads. I hate advertising in all its forms. I despise the psychological games that advertisers play with our minds.

If I could wear a pair of contact lenses that blocked out billboards and other kinds of non-digital advertising, I would do so in a heartbeat.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#249
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…

> Subscriptions can be easily forgotten or aren't annoying enough to bother to cancel them even if the provided content isn't worth it anymore.

Which is precisely why companies prefer the subscription model. See gyms, cable TV, and insurance companies.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#250
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being Turing-complete seems a bit overkill for a hyperlinked document platform.

Yes! All the replies here are missing the point completely. It’s not that JavaScript is somehow uniquely bad among programming languages. It’s that the entire idea of putting a general purpose programming language into the system was a bad idea. 99% of my web browsing shouldn’t need it. Every site I visit uses it, but almost all of them could be built just fine without it.

The web has long-ago graduated beyond just serving up documents, and having a capable language and platform was key in enabling it.

There are downsides to everything, but we cant dismiss that positives that came from it.

Post reply on HN