Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adblocking: How about Nah?

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 549 posts

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#351

Post by la_barba »

intopieces wrote: post #316
la_barba wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "we" do you mean only people who agree with you? Or do you accept that in a democratic society there can be ads? Personally, I don't block ads on principle. I simply don't visit websites that feature blaring over the top ads or otherwise feature annoyances. When you block ads you are explicitly signalling that you are receiving something of value by visiting the website. I prefer to not send that signal.

>When you block ads you are explicitly signalling that you are receiving something of value by visiting the website. This is not the case. I have visited thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of websites in which the content was not valuable to me, and I blocked those ads, too. When I block ads, I send the signal that my attention is not for sale, and moreover, the content creators' business model is not my conce…

You think you're doing that, but in reality the site thinks they're hot shit, and people just are annoyed with the ads.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#352

Post by klez »

zrm wrote: post #116
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…

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.

Blocking third party JavaScript will have the unwanted consequence of blocking CDNs as well, so at least you need some whitelist that allows those scripts.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#353

Post by la_barba »

cameronbrown wrote: post #334
intopieces wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When you block ads you are explicitly signalling that you are receiving something of value by visiting the website. This is not the case. I have visited thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of websites in which the content was not valuable to me, and I blocked those ads, too. When I block ads, I send the signal that my attention is not for sale, and moreover, the content creators' business model is not my conce…

Except you're also blocking their analytics scripts, so you don't send any signal at all.

You don't need scripts to know who visited your website. Scripts can potentially tell you how many are blocking your ads though. But its always a cat and mouse game. I prefer to simply avoid sites that show shitty ads.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#354

Post by nkrisc »

zug_zug wrote: post #344
kelnos wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. I would go so far as to vote for a representative who wanted to pass a law restricting what is legal advertisement. I believe undisclosed ads should be illegal, I would ban music in ads, I would ban color in ads, I would ban sexuality in advertisement, I would ban appeals to emotions in ads. If a product truly makes the life of the purchaser better, then no gimmicks are needed to sell it.

I would also ban all "puffery" in advertising, a.k.a. lies that are ok because they're unverifiable.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#355

Post by Baeocystin »

ralphm wrote: post #282
Baeocystin wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Blendle has stopped pay-per-article, moving to subscriptions entirely.

Are you sure about that? I literally received their daily digest which has the price-per-article, as expected, just a few hours ago. Maybe they are now offering both?

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#357

Post by jgeada »

I think we’re going to need adclickers: similar to adblockers except they put the ad in a sandbox and click it. As long as this registers as a click, someone somewhere will want to be paid and sooner or later the whole ad economy nightmare will implode.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#358

Post by grepthisab »

kweks wrote: post #347

I still firmly believe that in-browser crypto mining could solve internet advertising problems fairly for both parties. 1. As a user, you set your preference: no mining - ads will show instead. No ads, there will be some mining. 2. The longer a user stays on a page, ie the more engaging the content is, the more money the publisher earns. In theory, this would trigger a natural correction for dark publishing patterns:…

It's so negligible for creators as to be meaningless. If it's meaningless except (maybe) to those who are so ultrapopular as to derive value from it, what good is it to normal people?

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#359

Post by minitech »

kweks wrote: post #347

I still firmly believe that in-browser crypto mining could solve internet advertising problems fairly for both parties. 1. As a user, you set your preference: no mining - ads will show instead. No ads, there will be some mining. 2. The longer a user stays on a page, ie the more engaging the content is, the more money the publisher earns. In theory, this would trigger a natural correction for dark publishing patterns:…

Gigantic waste of energy. Why drain my battery to not see ads when I can just use an adblocker? Ignoring these, why reward longer content, content I happen to keep in the background, or content I happen to leave in the foreground while away over more valuable content?

Donating directly is a much nicer solution for me, and there’s so much room for improvement there too in the areas of privacy, fees, and convenience. (In a world where in-browser mining were a good idea, an out-of-browser miner could provide the equivalent for this kind of manual donation.)

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#360

Post by sadness2 »

Breaking this cycle of blocker-blocker-blockers is what makes me actually like Adblock Plus's "Acceptable Ad" options. It provides a counter-offer, rather than just "No.", whereby advertisers can feed you unambiguous and untracked ads.
Post reply on HN