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

Why “just use Adblock” should never be a professional answer

christianheilmann.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 66 posts

Re: Why “just use Adblock” should never be a professional answer

#11

Post by hapless »

ankitoberoi wrote: post #3
dserban wrote: post #2

Oh, look, this again. > "ads are what makes the current internet work." No, they're not. The Internet was designed as a tool for enabling communication, not money-making. Without ads, a lot of the blog spam that exists today would go away and the Internet would be better off for it.

Yes and a lot of very talented people would not be able to focus on doing what they currently do full time (and love to do) as they'll have to worry about making money. OR As a content consumer, you'll have to pay for the content directly which is currently available for free. Yes, I know everyone hates ads and I'll probably get downvoted here too but - You should punish publishers who serve malware, popups, JS & oth…

The game theory considerations of not watching ads do not interest me nearly as much as not watching ads.

Re: Why “just use Adblock” should never be a professional answer

#12

Post by nitrogen »

ankitoberoi wrote: post #3
dserban wrote: post #2

Oh, look, this again. > "ads are what makes the current internet work." No, they're not. The Internet was designed as a tool for enabling communication, not money-making. Without ads, a lot of the blog spam that exists today would go away and the Internet would be better off for it.

Yes and a lot of very talented people would not be able to focus on doing what they currently do full time (and love to do) as they'll have to worry about making money. OR As a content consumer, you'll have to pay for the content directly which is currently available for free. Yes, I know everyone hates ads and I'll probably get downvoted here too but - You should punish publishers who serve malware, popups, JS & oth…

The web was great back when people wrote and published for the love. The web would undoubtedly survive a transition back to such a state.

Re: Why “just use Adblock” should never be a professional answer

#13

Post by j2kun »

btbuildem wrote: post #8

Whatever buddy. Make something of value and people will pay you for it. Or make useless amusements, and depend on ad revenue.

There are ways to get the best of both worlds. XKCD is free and ad-free (and a useless amusement, as are most things people want to pay money for).

Re: Why “just use Adblock” should never be a professional answer

#14

Post by spindritf »

There are so many problems with ads that I cannot in good conscience offer any other advice than "block 'em all."

• Ad networks can be, and are, used as a malware distribution vector. No one is vetting all the ads. Not the publishers, not the networks.

• They slow everything down. AdBlock and Ghostery make web browsing faster. Not to mention waiting 30s to watch a youtube video, or worse yet to realize that you didn't actually want to watch it.

• Ads are cognitive pollution. It's possible that mass marketing largely doesn't work, but I'm wary of assuming that "ads don't work on me." What if they do? As a matter of hygiene, it's better to avoid them. No, I don't avert my eyes away from billboards (ironic next gen Google Glass application) but I do skip TV commercials.

• Even if they don't work, they're at least distracting from stuff viewers actually care about.

Re: Why “just use Adblock” should never be a professional answer

#15

Post by ItendToDisagree »

ankitoberoi wrote: post #3
dserban wrote: post #2

Oh, look, this again. > "ads are what makes the current internet work." No, they're not. The Internet was designed as a tool for enabling communication, not money-making. Without ads, a lot of the blog spam that exists today would go away and the Internet would be better off for it.

Yes and a lot of very talented people would not be able to focus on doing what they currently do full time (and love to do) as they'll have to worry about making money. OR As a content consumer, you'll have to pay for the content directly which is currently available for free. Yes, I know everyone hates ads and I'll probably get downvoted here too but - You should punish publishers who serve malware, popups, JS & oth…

Don't some of the Adblock whitelists available with the plugin actually do this (Block known bad publishers but leave non-intrusive ads available)?

I'm not certain but I think there is even a checkbox for this in the options? I know I still see some of the Google search contextual ads and I use adblock.

Re: Why “just use Adblock” should never be a professional answer

#16

Post by cordite »

I admit that I've had useful ads related to databases and hosting. But most of the time, the ads have been too obscene.

I almost feel like puking when I use a public computer. Google has made it better with textual ads, but they still serve those flash ones the literally flash and try to entice the same kinds of things mobile games often cater to.

There's also the past where the computers that had kids that would click on these ads would end up infested. Overall, the web ad industry has made some really dumb mistakes in the past.

Re: Why “just use Adblock” should never be a professional answer

#17

Post by samastur »

randomflavor wrote: post #7

So you adblockers who think the internet should go back to 1994, never use Google? I think the article is spot on. Advertising does and has always supported media distribution technologies since we had media distribution. Today that technology is the web and mobile web, and it is a distributed technology. Either micropaymetns with a bitcoin like tech will be embedded in the browser for you to be ad free, or view ads…

No, there's a big assumption that those of us who use ad blockers would miss things that are now delivered "free with ads". That may be true for a lot of people, but it isn't for every one of us.

Re: Why “just use Adblock” should never be a professional answer

#18

Post by mdisraeli »

Irony - this developer, who seems to have a good understanding of ethics and web best practices, on a post about advert blocking, has a link at the bottom of their sidebar:

"Essay shark - paper writing service!"

This is labelled in the source as an ad. Comparing DNS and IP records suggest it is very unlikely they are related services. Chris also actively lists what they work on,which does not include Essayshark.

Essayshark do, however, appear to have an affiliate scheme. This raises interesting questions given the topic of the article.

Re: Why “just use Adblock” should never be a professional answer

#19

Post by cordite »

spindritf wrote: post #14

There are so many problems with ads that I cannot in good conscience offer any other advice than "block 'em all." • Ad networks can be, and are, used as a malware distribution vector. No one is vetting all the ads. Not the publishers, not the networks. • They slow everything down. AdBlock and Ghostery make web browsing faster. Not to mention waiting 30s to watch a youtube video, or worse yet to realize that you didn'…

The maleware distribution crap is definitely one of the biggest reasons for it. In the past, arbitrary JS could just be executed.
Post reply on HN