It's a cool technical achievement, sure. But as a listener of many podcasts I do not support this at all. I love that podcasters can make a living or at least a little money while I listen for free.
Do not use it, then.
Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts
171–180 of 278 posts
Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts
#172Neat software, but I think this is less defensible than other ad blockers. With web ad blockers you protect against tracking, privacy violations and potentially malware and thus don't see "unacceptable ads". In contrast this seems to be about blocking ads just for the sake of blocking ads.
Why would you feel the need to defend it? It's your bandwidth. Your paying for it. Filter the content you access however you like with a clear conscience.
Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Closely study some ads sometimes, they are incredibly psychologically manipulative. Also, study the 101 of the domain. Like the famous Cialdini's book Influence: Science and Practice , or Cliff Ennico's How To Sell Anything To Anybody talks. Moral bankrupcy is in the very DNA of the practice, so no surprise that most ads just reflect this.
> Moral bankrupcy (sic) Ironic you'd bring up ethics in a discussion of ad blockers. Considering how radio & podcasts depend on sponsorship, isn't it unethical to remove ads that pay for the content? Effectively it is stealing. https://current.org/2019/09/podcast-sponsorship-revenues-con...
Yes. Radio and podcasts aren't entitled to their business model working, especially if their business model involves purposefully exposing their listeners to harmful material.
I believe ad blocking is ethically justified on the grounds that it's just defending yourself from other's unethical behavior, and that you're entitled to do so - claiming otherwise would imply you're supposed to be forced to sit through entirety of a performance. That would be absurd invasion of your autonomy.
Also note that you are not paying radio hosts/podcast authors through advertisements. The ad network is. The exact payout structure is complicated and agreed upon without involving me the listener, but it boils down to parties speculating that a fraction of ad impressions will turn into eventual boost in sales, and money flowing from advertisers, through networks, to publishers, based on that expectation. At no point was I consulted in this, so I feel no obligation towards participating in whatever deals these parties set up between themselves - doubly so given that I'm being harmed by those deals.
Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts
#174This is not a good thing.
Ad-blockers on the internet are justified because of invasive tracking. Radio and podcasts have no such thing, and ads are are central to their sustainability.
If you want to push the world to improve, you can't just rage blindly, you have to identify and move towards a solution that's sustainable for everyone. In the case of ad-supported businesses and services, this means non-tracking, non-intrusive advertisement (combined with subscription models, but that doesn't work for everything).
If you want to push back against tracking in ads, you have to support non-tracking ads. Otherwise there's no incentive for anything to change.
Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess not every single ad is about Brainwashing. If that's the case of your wish, then every single company on the planet would go bust because every company would be selling something to you through ads or pitches at some point. I hate Display ads because they're content heavy, irrelevant and suck my personal information. But podcast ads are not targetting nor using my cookie or phone id. It's just some content cr…
> But podcast ads are not targetting nor using my cookie or phone id. You say that, but there are products to allow dynamically insert personalised ads server side when you download a podcast.
Podcasts are RSS feeds. Not "like" RSS feeds, literally RSS feeds. There are are dynamic ad inserts on some (usually from bigger companies), but they're limited to GeoIP and time. The OP is absolutely correct in that podcast ads cannot use cookies or device IDs.
This is in large part why we're starting to see companies make "podcasts" that aren't podcasts at all, requiring proprietary players. At that point they really don't need to sell ads against their shows, because they're collecting data on you in a way that a podcast you're listening to on a typical podcast player absolutely cannot.
Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is people are willing to pay for certain products with their attention, via ads, but not with money. Given the choice of paying $1 for a podcast or pirating said podcast, sufficient number of people would not choose the first option to make it a viable business.
In fairness, $1 for a podcast episode is egregious. Almost no one would pay that. Piracy has gone down a lot in the past 15 years because content owners made reasonable decisions.
In general, people find it difficult to fairly value the enjoyment they get from consuming arts and entertainment, compared with other uses of their time.
A person who will gladly pay $15 for a table-service meal, and add a $3 tip to it, for roughly 60 minutes in a restaurant, or pay $12 per seat to watch a feature film lasting 90 to 180 minutes, will nonetheless complain bitterly when paying $1 for a 60-minute podcast or e-book novella, or grumble about a $20 ticket for all-day admission to a museum.
If you don't pay for the content you enjoy, you are driving the content creators into the unctuous arms of the advertisers, and forcing them to keep their day jobs. Paying direct to the creator is one of the best ways to support their art.
$1 per podcast episode is not egregious, presuming it contains some scripted content or guided improv and some production polish, like editing and foley. It does, however, limit the number of podcasts one person can follow on a median income.
It might be a better model to lower the price of the admission ticket for podcast followers, and then sell premium physical-goods merchandise using the brand trademarks once they are in the fold, for those who can afford to spend more. That is, charge $1/month or $10/year to listen, and also sell limited-edition t-shirts, or figurines of the characters, or laptop stickers, or autographed episode scripts, or backpack/keychain fobs. A higher cost to access the lowest tier of fandom also limits the growth of the fan-base, and having a big fan-base is where the money really is, not from the mass-market canonical art, but from the exclusive perks available to richer and more dedicated fans. The end-goal of building a brand is selling one or more Veblen goods, and one of the ways to get there is by accumulating so many fans that some small percentage will be willing and able to subsidize all the others.
Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 1. People who are adblocking are saying that they are not willing to pay with attention. No. As a person who's adblocking, that is not what I'm saying. I'm perfectly willing to pay with attention; I'm not willing to pay with my data, I'm not willing to be tracked across sites, and I'm not willing to let my browser execute whatever garbage the ad network is sending down the pipe at me.
The alternative to advertising is paid subscription content. I don’t see how you’re going to achieve greater privacy by giving someone your credit card number.
Civilized Internet economies have moved way past people giving every service or merchant their credit card numbers. There is a number of alternative payment schemes which share less information with the money recipient, and doesn't let them pull money off one's account.
Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's really not egregious. Just like $1/song is not egregious. $1/podcast episode (often 60 minutes or more) is some of the best time/$ value among a-la-carte entertainment products.
A song, ostensibly has a high level of repeatability. How often does one re-listen to a podcast within, say, 6 to 12 months? Maybe a year after, if it had a real impact?
A song is typically 3-6 minutes, while a podcast is typically 10x that. I think that delta probably can make the difference reasonable.
Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I block ads because I don't want to be conditioned to buy things I don't need or legitimately want. I don't want the mega rich to gradually chip away at my mind day by day, hour by hour in order to make themselves another fat pile of cash. If a site shows me some sad puppy image about me stealing their money by blocking their brainwashing, I just add their whole site to my filter. Content on the internet powered by a…
Well if you hate ads so much, then just pay for the damn radio.
He can't, because free-with-ads is the only option on the table.
Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts
#180Neat software, but I think this is less defensible than other ad blockers. With web ad blockers you protect against tracking, privacy violations and potentially malware and thus don't see "unacceptable ads". In contrast this seems to be about blocking ads just for the sake of blocking ads.
You have a point that radio ads are less hostile and invasive than more targeted advertisement, but that argument feels a bit like "It's less defensible to resist a stabbing, because it's better than getting shot"
Resisting psychological manipulation by entities that don't want the best for you remains highly defensible.
Media creators want what's best for the hand that feeds them.
Both advertisers and mediums that host advertisements are subjecting me to messages that are intentionally designed to influence my behavior, often in ways that 1) I did not ask for, and would not elect given a choice 2) are misleading 3) are interruptive or otherwise undermine the utility of whatever I'm watching/listening to.
There's a similar justification/motive outlined on the main site https://www.adblockradio.com/en/