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

You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

bearbin.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 633 posts

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#21

Post by yanderekko »

Why stop at ads though? I should just have a personalized algorithm that filters all real-world content I see, or otherwise sanitizes it for my consumption. For example, apply beauty filters to everyone around me so I don't have to deal with the unpleasantness of ugly people. Block out any noise that might trigger discomforting thoughts, like political opinions that I disagree with.

If it sounds dystopian, well.. once we're used to it, having to experience the ugliness of an unfiltered world would surely seem more dystopian. Right?

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#24

Post by interator7 »

IvanK_net wrote: post #20

I own a website www.Photopea.com, visited by 3 million people a month. Once in a while, I enable adblock detector, and do not allow usrers with adblocks use the service. I wish everyone was doing that. When you see someone willing to give you a car (or anything else), but they want money in exchange (i.e. sell it to you), you understand, that it is wrong to take the car without giving them money (i.e. stealing). But…

That's interesting, I use Photopea a lot. How did you start it, and what led you to going with ads/premium to unblock ads instead of charging premium for more features?

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#25

Post by p2detar »

IvanK_net wrote: post #20

I own a website www.Photopea.com, visited by 3 million people a month. Once in a while, I enable adblock detector, and do not allow usrers with adblocks use the service. I wish everyone was doing that. When you see someone willing to give you a car (or anything else), but they want money in exchange (i.e. sell it to you), you understand, that it is wrong to take the car without giving them money (i.e. stealing). But…

I hate ads and I never understood the „watch ads to get content“ business plan. Why not just provide demo content and ask users to pay for full access? By relying on ads for revenue, you basically invite adblockers. After all, if people didn’t like them, they wouldn’t exist.

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#26

Post by kiryin »

I strongly believe that advertising by definition is unethical in all of it's forms and "block" ads to the best of my ability, in real life as well. I do not view ads that reach me by mail, and as for billboards and posters I see around town, I make a note to avoid the products they advertise. I know this doesn't make a difference but it's an ideological thing. If my actions could in theory cause a tiny little dent in a graph somewhere, I make a point to do it.

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#27

Post by qybaz »

cuu508 wrote: post #19
qybaz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank the Lord reality (still) does not have cookie banners.

When you sign up for a store loyalty card, there's usually a form you fill out and sign. That's your "cookie consent".

I don't have a problem with accepting some ToS when I sign up to a service. My problem is this new law where you have to accept the ToS of every single website on the internet before you can use it, then the ad networks, the analytics services, etc. It would be like having to sign a ream of papers every time I enter a store.

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#28

Post by ThalesX »

IvanK_net wrote: post #20

I own a website www.Photopea.com, visited by 3 million people a month. Once in a while, I enable adblock detector, and do not allow usrers with adblocks use the service. I wish everyone was doing that. When you see someone willing to give you a car (or anything else), but they want money in exchange (i.e. sell it to you), you understand, that it is wrong to take the car without giving them money (i.e. stealing). But…

I don’t understand why you can’t just load traditional ads related to your business that no ad blocker would work out of the box against.

If I visit a website about cars, one could put up car ads because it’s obviously in my interests at this point.

I don’t visit websites that require me to block my adblocker for the simple reason that it means they have no other monetizable content apart from me, and as I didn’t even get to their magnet content yet I have no idea how the website feels, which makes me not so open to sharing my data fingerprint.

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#29

Post by smarx007 »

Flankk wrote: post #18
smarx007 wrote: post #7

But ads in real life do not prevent me from going on about my day. There is no analogy to interstitial pages with ads like in Forbes some time ago with the button Continue to your article: it would be infuriating if you had to view an ad before being able to use the subway ticketing system. You also don’t have ads on at the airport timetable screen. You don’t have pinkertons following you to learn your habits and sho…

The people writing articles at Forbes are on payroll. Ad blockers take food off their plate just to avoid a minor inconvenience. All you're doing is pushing these companies to either go subscription only or go bankrupt. Watch the level of entitlement of the people who will inevitably try defending their content theft. They can't win the argument and they always appeal to false moral virtues. They act like targeted ad…

I only visit Forbes when someone sends me a link and 9/10 times I get disappointed when I finish the article. When many of the resources I read put up paywalls, I ended up making 2 subscriptions to resources I trust/read most.

I think you are taking this in a wrong direction. The real-world analogy of what you say would be “look at all that food a person is getting for free, all they need to do is to watch ads for 1hr; watch the level of entitlement of people who watch those ads in sunglasses!”

Regarding theft: I don’t agree with the use of words like theft or piracy. Nobody loses an article and nobody is held at gunpoint to give one up. If you want, call it freeloading or schwarzfahren (literally black riding, ie riding without a ticket).

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#30

Post by sputr »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #14
sputr wrote: post #12

I wonder why society decided that advertising was so important, it was willing to let it completely dominate (and in my opinion destroy) our public spaces. People who need something will find it just fine without billboards. And people buying things they don't need is not exactly in the interest of society. So why should society pay for it? I've been working on a policy paper idea for my home country - Slovenia. Comp…

Presumably selling ad space on things like buses and bus stops helps pay for those services. I’m much more sympathetic to physical ads. I can just ignore it instead of waiting to click a skip button.

(1) Ads on busses

This is the obvious spin, that anyone trying to undermine such ideas would do. So I just checked the yearly (pre-pandemic) financial report for our bus service - the buses are COVERED in adverts. From what I can tell, those ads bring in less than 2% of all income.

The ads on bus stop were given in exchange for running the bike rental service, but that service isn't free to use, so the income can't be that great.

(2) Ignoring ads I have a feeling that "I can just ignore it" is the critical fallacy that will undermine ideas such as mine.

To know just how much they are affecting you, you have to go to a place with no ads.

Honestly, if you're using ad blocking on your computer - turn it off completely. The difference in physical ads is not as big (since action blocking popups are not a thing), but even discounting those, just the saturation of "things going on" is tiring. Ignoring things is an active action that requires energy and focus... why you are giving that away freely to someone trying to manipulate you ... I do not understand.

The fact that you use "waiting to click a skip button" as a comparison shows how normalized ads have become. The alternative to "fewer ads" isn't "ads being forced down your throat" but "no ads, at all".

Post reply on HN