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Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

imlefthanded.com

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Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#111

Post by acdha »

TheIronMark wrote: post #51
reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel zero guilt about ad blocking. There was some period of discussion on the subject back in like 2003 but the ad companies went to war against human civilization and there's been no going back. It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash and an entire generation has now reached adulthood knowing nothing but that hustle touching every bit of media they ever interact with. W…

Quoted post unavailable.

I have complicated feelings on this — content creators need to be paid for their work but the ad networks have done a ton of collateral damage, too: I've had major sites like nytimes.com or youtube.com send me malware via Google's ad network, and ads make the web significantly slower and less reliable. I avoided using an ad blocker for years but installed Firefox Focus everywhere a while back after getting tired of ads breaking things or using half of my data plan and 45 seconds to deliver a crappy 32kb JPEG along with 8MB of JavaScript.

The big thing we need is some kind of action against Google: they currently are the best positioned to penalize operators of sites slowed by ads but the search team isn't going to cut into their ad business and Chrome is going to continue slow-walking attempts to make browsers restrict ad networks. It'd also be nice if there was liability for malware delivered by ads — something like they have to pay a fine up front and try to recover it from their advertiser, forcing them to actually vet people first.

What I'd like would be publishers self-hosting ads — forcing them to take more responsibility for the security risks — and more effort into alternative payment mechanisms. I liked the idea of Google Contributor but one big challenge for that is that even a less half-hearted version probably wouldn't generate enough money to be viable because most people consider ads a reasonable cost for free content.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#112

Post by denton-scratch »

itvision wrote: post #42

I also have NoScript installed - it significantly decreases the amount of crap your web browser fetches and renders and thus makes browsing faster and consume less energy. And as mentioned by blakesterz in Private mode I have both uBlock Origin and NoScript disabled because multiple websites refuse to work otherwise.

By default I visit with NoScript enabled. It usually works fine. Sometimes it doesn't, so I selectively enable scripts. As often as not, it doesn't help.

If it's at all hard to make the site work for me, I give up - it's not as if there's a shortage of websites to visit. I know when I'm not welcome.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#114

Post by perryizgr8 »

gundmc wrote: post #98
perryizgr8 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried this, but it didn't work on the vast majority of videos I watch. They always seemed to have some or the other product placement inside. So I stopped paying, and installed a couple of adblockers.

How do adblockers help with native product placement? Or are you saying you might as well not pay for premium if you'll still have to deal with the product placement anyway?

A combination of ublock origin and sponsorblock will make youtube completely ad free. Even the in video adverts are gone.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#115

Post by xfz »

hateful wrote: post #47
zuminator wrote: post #7

I've had YouTube Premium since its inception. Whenever I'm around someone else who puts on a free-tier version of YouTube its rather shocking how frequent and intrusive the commercial ads are.

I ran ad blocking on Youtube for years, and I've been a Premium member since it came out (as Red back then). I can't stand ads and avoid them like the plague. Some ads still sneak into my world though. My current peeve is when going to a restaurant and they have "the game" on full blast. I'm perfectly fine with people watching/listening to the game - and half the time the restaurant is considered a "sports bar", so I…

I would eat elsewhere if at all possible. You might not have many options though, or maybe you're with a group of people who love advertising.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#116

Post by xyst »

Quigglez wrote: post #97

Open ended question, is there a solution? Inherently people trying to make money from their website either have to charge people directly with money for access or indirectly by having them see/hear ads. Advertisers inherently want their ads to be seen/heard, which means there is pressure to make their ads more intrusive. Yet the more intrusive the ads become, the more annoyed the person accessing the content becomes…

yea - it's called offering a product that is actually useful. Not this clickbait bullshit we see now.

"Cops hate these 10 tips that save you money. #6 will surprise you"

"Take a quiz to find out which Taylor Swift boyfriend you are"

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#117

Post by tasha0663 »

Tenoke wrote: post #63
zuminator wrote: post #7

I've had YouTube Premium since its inception. Whenever I'm around someone else who puts on a free-tier version of YouTube its rather shocking how frequent and intrusive the commercial ads are.

In all fairness, if the rest of us didn't run adblockers, they probably wouldn't need to be so aggressive with the ads for those that currently don't.

You've put the cart ahead of the horse. Ad-blockers took off once they started throwing animated banners at us. Punch the monkey, win an ipod.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#118

Post by diffeomorphism »

red_trumpet wrote: post #40
titzer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adblock Plus, uOrigin, and ghostery lite don't require basically any configuration. Just install the browser extension and enable it.

Just a reminder that Adblock Plus has a pretty shady business model.

What is supposed to be shady about it?

Their definition of "acceptable" seems straightforward and paying for certification seems like a pretty standard business model.

If they were to bend their definition for money, that woukd be shady. Do they?

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#119

Post by coldpie »

Quigglez wrote: post #97

Open ended question, is there a solution? Inherently people trying to make money from their website either have to charge people directly with money for access or indirectly by having them see/hear ads. Advertisers inherently want their ads to be seen/heard, which means there is pressure to make their ads more intrusive. Yet the more intrusive the ads become, the more annoyed the person accessing the content becomes…

> Open ended question, is there a solution?

Well, let's find out. Ads suck all of the air out of the room. If you provide your content through another business model, someone else can just copy your content and slap ads on it and make a few bucks. And because search engines function on those same ads, they're incentivized to send you to the spam sites instead of the real source of the content. If we kill ads as a business model, then we can start to explore other business models and find out what actually works.

> Inherently people trying to make money from their website either have to charge people directly with money for access or indirectly by having them see/hear ads.

No. There are other options. One example is the Patreon model. I pay for several creators who do not gate their content to payment. They make their content available to everyone, for free. I could view their content for free, but I want to encourage them to continue creating, so I pay them for it. Is it a viable option for every situation? I don't know. But the mere existence of ad-based business models means it's very difficult to explore non-ad-based solutions. For this, and a whole host of other reasons, using an ad-blocker is more ethical than not.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#120

Post by anonymousab »

pea wrote: post #109

An interesting thought experiment is how feasible and expensive would it be to run a large-scale PR and marketing campaign to get that 25% of adblockers to 50%, and how would this disrupt the current hegemony. If you were given the task "Remove $1BN of ad revenue. Here is $100M to spend.", how would you do it? I'd imagine it could be reasonably high leverage.

> and how would this disrupt the current hegemony.

You would immediately see many more billions spent on making it illegal wherever it's feasible to do so. And, of course, an accelerated push to 1) neuter the ability for browsers to block content, how they block content, and what content they can block and 2) a push towards big bundles and blobs of content that can't feasibly be adblocked in realtime with the way current extensions work.

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