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Adblocking: How about Nah?

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Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#521

Post by greycol »

HenryBemis wrote: post #518
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…

That would imply ethical (actual) use of this tag. I cannot thing that any advertiser would ad this, just as they ignore the "Do not track". I fear that we will never we able to rely on the ad-makers honesty, as the hunt for the bottom-line never ends. It looks like this will be a war we will continue fighting with AdB+, NoScript, uBlock(s), hosts, and other tools. It has been a cat and mouse game. The tech changes,…

Sure but then it becomes much more morally/ethically easy to justify running ad blockers (while allowing through).

Hell at that stage Mozilla could probably justify rolling ad blocking lists in as a default as long as they allow the labeled ads through.

As you say the game will go on but maybe it the will be a more pleasant one to play.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#522

Post by scomp »

wybiral wrote: post #129
RHSeeger wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... effectively, they are http://money.com/money/4506297/how-retailers-track-you/

I don't use any of the methods they mention there (although I know that they can use my credit card info to track me as well). But, yeah, I'm still offended by that. It doesn't justify the widespread behavior on the internet to me, they're both bad.

You may not use the CCTV in stores but I can assure you it is using you.

Source: I set up this tracking for a retailer.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#523

Post by beezischillin »

Ny main gripe lately is with YouTube.

YouTube's gotten a lot more shitty about it, too. I wouldn't block ads on there but they treat their creators like crap and they treat me like crap. Nowadays if I don't block them I get two ads in a row and if I don't skip the first one, I have to wait on the second one, too. And often some ads go on for minutes. The longest I've seen was a 50 minute ad. Or ads that scream at you, as loudly as possible. Especially when you're trying to enjoy more laid-back content. Ugh.

And a lot of that revenue doesn't go towards paying the creators their proper share. I would gladly pay for an ad-free YouTube but they're dead-set on shafting creators, making their lives as miserable as possible. Random demonetisations, horrible handling of fair use, etc. All this without ANY kind of proper support. If I pay for a service or rely on something to make a living, I expect to be able to at least somehow talk to a human being, etc. They've gotten more and more and more hostile towards creators and users. So now they get the Brave-treatment (since they fiddle with adblock on Safari, I use Brave just to watch YouTube. If they detect adblock and can get through it, you get actively punished with longer and more frequent ads.)

Little wonder that most small people without VC investment backing them have looked for alternatives to this, they understand how sites that host content being hostile towards the userbase is a race to the bottom. With off-site patronage and superchat and burnt-in ads they're in control. Sadly you do have to be of a audience certain size to take advantage of these but they're far more pleasant for everyone involved (except the firms that host the content).

For sites in general that model seems to be viable, too. But you do depend on your audience for this which can be a good thing generally as often it seems to keep the content more honest. The content that panders is very often just going to slowly die off.

I would be okay with ads if they weren't disgustingly obnoxious and consistently trying to intrude in my life and take my data.

Lots of bigger websites have an insane quantity of ads, some even have their entire backgrounds replaced with clickable ads. One accidental misclick and you're pissed off. There are sites where the occasional ad is sometimes interrupted by content.

I simply can't take it. Performance-hogging, data-stealing, annoying, time-wasting ads. They're everywhere.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#524

Post by themacguffinman »

shawnz wrote: post #368
themacguffinman wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure how you could make that argument and ignore the fact that the declarative API is technically simpler and its battery benefits are apparent from that aspect alone.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#525

Post by shawnz »

themacguffinman wrote: post #524
shawnz wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure how you could make that argument and ignore the fact that the declarative API is technically simpler and its battery benefits are apparent from that aspect alone.

It's not apparent that the benefits are significant in any way. They could be minuscule and therefore not worth sacrificing important user experience features like adblocking over.

It could also be that because of the reduced expressiveness of the adblocker, more ads are missed, and you might therefore end up with a net increase in the amount of code that has to be executed by the browser. So the declarative API could actually lead to a performance decrease in practice.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#526

Post by catotheyoungest »

dennisy wrote: post #507

I love reading the views people have about digital advertising on HN, and as someone who works in the space I often agree that they are not providing a great experience and the tracking is too much, but what is the alternative for monetisation of content on the web?

Your business model is your problem. Have you ever heard of having a day job?

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#527

Post by catotheyoungest »

TravisLS wrote: post #338

Is it necessary that ad blockers be totally all-or-nothing in their approach? Pop-up blockers didn't kill all ads. They just killed pop-ups. If it's really the privacy violations that are the problem, and not the user experience of seeing a bunch of ads, why not find a middle ground? Make an ad blocker that just dishonors cookies, clears localStorage, etc for the ad domains, rather than blocking the requests altogeth…

> Is it necessary that ad blockers be totally all-or-nothing in their approach?

Yes, it is. Publishers and advertisers have overstepped time and time again. They must be reminded of their place, and nothing short of grabbing them by the scruff of the neck and rubbing their noses in the mess they made will suffice.

> But at least you could give the publishers the ability to make some money from ads served to you.

I could, but why should I? The publishers had a chance to be reasonable, and they just kept pushing. I'm done being reasonable. The publishers should be glad they aren't facing the Internet Death Penalty[1].

1: http://catb.org/jargon/html/I/Internet-Death-Penalty.html

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#528

Post by catotheyoungest »

ben509 wrote: post #416
TravisLS wrote: post #338

Is it necessary that ad blockers be totally all-or-nothing in their approach? Pop-up blockers didn't kill all ads. They just killed pop-ups. If it's really the privacy violations that are the problem, and not the user experience of seeing a bunch of ads, why not find a middle ground? Make an ad blocker that just dishonors cookies, clears localStorage, etc for the ad domains, rather than blocking the requests altogeth…

Adblock Plus has their "acceptable ads" feature[1] so it's already a thing. But there was some controversy around it, which I don't recall well enough to give a fair hearing. Also, Firefox has a good deal of tracker blocking[2] built in that tries to go after browser signature recognition. I think the problem with that is it can break some sites, though I have it on and don't see a lot of problems. Beyond that, many…

> Adblock Plus has their "acceptable ads" feature[1] so it's already a thing. But there was some controversy around it, which I don't recall well enough to give a fair hearing.

You can pay the makers of Adblock Plus to have your ads declared "acceptable". However, I do not want somebody else deciding for me which ads are "acceptable".

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#529

Post by catotheyoungest »

sadness2 wrote: post #360

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.

> It provides a counter-offer, rather than just "No.", whereby advertisers can feed you unambiguous and untracked ads.

That ship sailed in 2001, hit an iceberg, and sank with all hands.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#530

Post by taf2 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #455
taf2 wrote: post #377

So there is a technical solution to ad delivery that is pretty hard to impossible to block that is serve everything from the same domain. It’s very possible today and even desirable with http/2. You can configure this with cloud front and multiple origins or using service workers with cloudflare... I’d guess it’s only a matter of time before this becomes the more common way to deliver content and ads as one origin...

There are obstacles to this, for advertisers. Tracking impressions (something advertisers seem to want) is facilitated by third-party servers. Self-served ads defeat this and raise fraud concerns. Standardised advertising units (display sizes) mean that blocking elements strictly on dimensions is possible. One of my early userContent.css stylesheets, borrowing from online souces, did just this, and was highly effecti…

That is why the edge computing - changes this trust issue... It's just a matter of time before you have a advertising module you can install in cloud flare as a service worker implementation that both parties can trust... this with obfuscation could make it really hard to block and pretty viable for advertisers... let alone the fact that you can shift the analytics into the cloud edge servers... this both eliminates the argument of speed to access the content and removes your ability to block it. I see this as the future of adtech...
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