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

361–370 of 549 posts

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#361

Post by grepthisab »

kweks wrote: post #349
DoubleGlazing wrote: post #148

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…

I'm browser crypto mining. There's a direct link between the time a user is engaged, and the amount of money a publisher earns. The relationship is direct between reader and publisher; making quality content becomes important again, there's no adoption friction, and ad networks become a thing of the past. It's no wonder Google blocked browser mining quick-smart.. it had the potential to bring down the entire house of…

Stop spreading this nonsense.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#362

Post by thomas »

What a weird phrase: “how about nah”. Is this a reference to something I’m totally missing out on? I can barely pay attention to that point the article make when it’s framed in such an odd and unclear context.

I get wanting to have style to your writing but not at the expense of clarity.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#363

Post by minitech »

manigandham wrote: post #326
ohithereyou wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is down to human behavior. Some content has zero or negative value.

Who gets to judge the value of content? And how can it have "negative value"? Regardless, the action of consuming the content itself means that it has inherent value. I believe whether it's worth it is a decision for the user instead of dictated by someone else.

> Who gets to judge the value of content?

The user. That’s the context – the user deciding who gets their money.

> And how can it have "negative value"?

Zero value, plus the time it took to find out that it had zero value.

> Regardless, the action of consuming the content itself means that it has inherent value.

Not really.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#364

Post by grepthisab »

person_of_color wrote: post #356
catotheyoungest wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you asking about blocking ads on a smartphone? Or on a desktop/laptop? The answer depends on your platform, you see.

Both?

Blokada on Android + PiHole on wifi. In the really occasional instances where I'm away from wifi and Blokada is down, it's night and day.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#365

Post by slang800 »

jgeada wrote: post #357

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.

There's a browser extension that does that: https://adnauseam.io

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#366

Post by prostoalex »

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…

> Automatic micropayments with a daily allowance seem like a much superior solution.

How do you ensure some content quality that goes beyond a headline and a catchy teaser paragraph?

Kindle Unlimited had this problem when they started distributing payouts based on pages read, which led to a proliferation of books with catchy first page, instructions to skip to the last page and a bunch of junk in between.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#367

Post by chronic84920 »

lolinder wrote: post #333
j_m_b wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like such a rational comment, but it is based on the naive idea that ads can be effectively targeted simply based on content. You're never going to have ads that people are willing to pay for (i.e. a certain threshold click-through rate) without some sort of direct targeting. For example, you can't tell if your article on basic car maintenance is being read by a 30 year old male who might be interested in…

When I turned 25 I started getting nothing but hard soda ads from YouTube. I don't drink. I went and disabled personalized advertising, and for the first time in years I started seeing ads that tempted me to click through, ads from tech companies about tech. Why the difference? Because YouTube started showing me ads related to the content I'm actually watching rather than based on their faulty neural network profile…

> Why try to hijack my attention (difficult when I'm trying to solve a car problem) when you could instead subtly redirect my attention to an ad for a local mechanic?

If there's only space for one ad, do they show you an ad for tools, exterior mechanic, engine mechanic, or a new car ad? All are valid options for both you and the advertiser.

This is where invasively tracking your online behavior can help you.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#368

Post by shawnz »

themacguffinman wrote: post #321
bangonkeyboard wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify: Safari was already beating Chrome on battery life before _Safari's_ extension API was neutered.

What's your point? That Chrome now can't adopt Safari's extension API to save battery life because...? Improving Chrome's battery life by adopting a simpler extension API helps close the gap. That's a significant benefit whether or not Safari did it first or whether Chrome still has room for improvement.

The grandparent was implying that Safari's better battery life justifies their decision to use the declarative API. But that was already the case before they adopted the declarative API, so it's not obvious that the declarative API has anything to do with that success. Maybe it's just a minor improvement, or maybe it isn't an improvement at all.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#369

Post by slang800 »

jedberg wrote: post #96

For many many years I resisted installing an ad-blocker. As someone who worked at a website that made the bulk of it's revenue from ads, it felt hypocritical, and also, I wanted to make sure that the experience of our website was bearable without ad blocking, by forcing myself to experience it every day. I gave up about two years ago. The web just go so bad I had to install ad-block. My computer would spin like a jet…

> If advertisers want to advertise to me, that's fine. I understand they need to make money.

I feel sad just reading that. Advertisers are paid to deliver targeted psychological manipulation to you, and yet you feel ashamed for making their work less profitable. It's like observing some kind of digital stockholm syndrome.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#370

Post by manigandham »

minitech wrote: post #363
manigandham wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who gets to judge the value of content? And how can it have "negative value"? Regardless, the action of consuming the content itself means that it has inherent value. I believe whether it's worth it is a decision for the user instead of dictated by someone else.

> Who gets to judge the value of content? The user. That’s the context – the user deciding who gets their money. > And how can it have "negative value"? Zero value, plus the time it took to find out that it had zero value. > Regardless, the action of consuming the content itself means that it has inherent value. Not really.

I believe that's what I said, but to be clear: yes it should be up the individual, however if you look at most people's actions then their demand and willing consumption of content does not align with what they can or will pay for.

For example, blocking ads (even though most know that is the trade-off for the content) instead of refusing to visit the site. If the content has no value, why visit the site at all? Surely not ever pageview has zero value?

Post reply on HN