The adblocking revolution is months away • Hacker News Board

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#111

Post by threeseed » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:47 PM UTC

Mikushi wrote: post #94

Luc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, aren't your comments as much an example of Apple bias as what you're commenting on, but with the sign reversed?

So looking at facts is a bias now? How about all the different ways Apple breaks the web for its own sake? Things like the HTTP Protocol are fundamentally broken by Apple, and this is not ok. They are a despicable company, a dragon only interested in increasing its cash reserves. I do not understand the support they are getting from the developer community, they shit on them constantly, make their life difficult, and…

I've never understood this.

Safari is just a wrapper around WebKit which is an open source project with many contributors. Yes the engine may be deficient in some areas or make choices not supported by other engines but I have never seen any malicious intent to destroy the web or undermine the standards.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#112

Post by Mahn » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:47 PM UTC

zubspace wrote: post #80

cognivore wrote: post #39

>> If the site generates the ad, it’s suddenly a lot harder to block. Seems to me that this is the loophole in the entire ad-block plan. Seems like it'd be relatively straightforward to make a system that pulls in the ads from various sources, brings them locally, and then displays them from the website's domain. Seems so obvious I'd think someone is already doing it.

What I would love to see is putting this whole advertising market into the hands of the webmasters. A system installed on the webserver, where the webmaster offers ad-space which can be bought directly by the advertiser. Ads will be hosted from the same url as the page. I believe, this could be a win-win situation for the website owner and the advertiser. - More revenue for websites - Better adds, because webmasters…

Except this wouldn't work well when you are an advertiser looking to advertise on hundreds of medium size sites simultaneously. That's one of the reasons middlemen like ad networks exist in the first place, so that you don't have to contact, negotiate and set up advertising with every single site individually.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#113

Post by soylentcola » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:48 PM UTC

fvdessen wrote: post #2

I've been a happy Android user for a long time, but mobile ads are so bad that I'm seriously considering switching to iOS just for the adblocking.

If you don't feel like enabling superuser (root) on the devices you own for system-wide ad blocking, Firefox for Android lets you install AdBlock Plus/Edge/etc. like any other extension and works quite well in my experience. When they stopped allowing those addons in mobile Chrome I started using mobile Firefox as my main browser and have been perfectly satisfied.

But yeah, if you don't mind setting it up so you can grant superuser permissions to something like Adfree Android, you get system-wide ad blocking which also gets rid of ads in most apps. Still, I haven't bothered in a while because good apps don't include really obnoxious ads and the good ones that offer free versions with unobtrusive ads deserve to make some money. If they're truly good apps, then I sorta feel bad when I don't even notice I'm using the free version because ads are blocked. There are a handful of apps where I fired them up on a new device before setting up Adfree and was reminded that I really ought to just shell out the $2-3 for the full version.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#114

Post by coldpie » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:48 PM UTC

kuni-toko-tachi wrote: post #84

"People are getting p*ssed off with the huge data loads pages impose without their consent" This is an absurd statement. Users know that many sites are ad-supported. Whether they like it or not is independent of that, but consent is given by visiting them. Complaining that sites need ad revenue to support their operations is childish. The fair solution is not ad-blocking tools, but a general browser settings that say…

Lol, did you just censor the word "pissed"?

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#115

Post by robmcm » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:48 PM UTC

blinkingled wrote: post #73

robmcm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the start of an arms race. I expect by the time this launches there will be tools provided by the ad-networks to detect blockers and allow the content provider to block access.

Exactly - that will hurt the UX like nothing else ever has. If people find out web sites don't work on their phone or tablet - the dumping of that platform to the competitor will be rather quick. Partly why Windows Phone didn't fly was IE - the websites looked crap compared to WebKit based browsers. Microsoft had to do unprecedented stuff like emulating WebKit to get over it.

They will only break if people have manually installed an ad blocker. I imagine this will be the vast minority of users, but will give the content owners and ad networks a reason to think about what they are doing to the UX of their website.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#116

Post by lifty » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:48 PM UTC

dmritard96 wrote: post #102

lifty wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theoretically, you could shift the responsibility of displaying ads and tracking users to the publishers, with requirements to publish back to the ad networks granular information about every impression. The ad networks could then check for cheating by randomly accessing the publishing website to make sure all the requests are reported back by the publishers.

Right, its basically just inserting the publisher as a man in the middle and coming up with a decent enough validation scheme. And I don't think the current system is perfect, so the bar not be any higher - seems like right now its easy to fake impressions with scrapers/virtual devices etc.

Indeed, there are many things that could be improved about the current system. I am personally hoping that the uptake in ad blocking software will lead publishers to diversify their revenue streams and find better ways to monetize their content. Companies like Blendle are making great progress in that direction and I hope we will see more innovation in that space.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#117

Post by JustSomeNobody » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:49 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #13

vilmosi wrote: post #5

The overall article is of good quality but it reeks of Apple bias I personally find distasteful. >>> User experience is what Apple puts above pretty much everything else, and they’ve decided that they don’t like it the experience available through the ad-supported web, and so they’re going to do something about it. The reason Apple does this is to push content creators away from the Web and into native apps. Apple ge…

That's too simple. Apple (and others) have relentlessly tried to optimize power saving. People like phones with a good battery time, plus I assume that there can be significant cost saving if you can use smaller capacity batteries. They have probably come to a point where a significant amount of power use during mobile browsing is caused by ads (both rendering and the extra network use that it incurs). Blocking ads c…

I would venture to say that the relentless push to move as much as possible to the client has much more impact on battery life than the handful of ads we typically see.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#118

Post by tonyblundell » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:49 PM UTC

hellofunk wrote: post #83

tonyblundell wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web is 20 years old. I think if this was going to happen, it would have happened by now. Outside of a few niches, people just aren't willing to pay to read websites. What I could see happening is premium content being bundled by ISPs. Pay for X package from Y ISP, get content from A, B and C websites. Kind-of like how TV channels are bundled. In all likelihood though, I think advertising will continue as is. Adve…

Before the web, it was quite standard for nearly everyone to pay for their daily newspaper. People obviously have no problem paying a little for the news. Take away quality free content, and natural human interest will lead to a successful pay model, possibly.

True, but I don't think it necessarily follows that they'd pay for the same content digitally.

One thing the web has shown us is that people still value tangible things differently to non-tangible things.

You also have to consider the reason's people paid for newspapers... it might have been the only way to get reliable content... to purport a certain image, social status or political allegiance... to keep in-line with peers - did you see this? did you read that?.. simply to pass time.

If you have a smartphone and five minutes to waste, you can cover all those bases without paying for a news article. You can use Facebook, Reddit, Youtube and discussion forums for subjects that interest you, for example.

Remember in the 90s when online store catalogues were pretty much just uploads of print catalogues - designed with pages of content and no search functionality. Or when people tried to make 'online malls' - directories of stores people might want to use in one visit, like they would a brick and mortar mall? They didn't work because the analog to digital conversion isn't just a straight upload process. It's much more complicated than that.

People interact with and consume digital content different to paper content. Just uploading and charging a few pence to read isn't going to work IMHO.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#119

Post by soylentcola » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:49 PM UTC

pakled_engineer wrote: post #47

fvdessen wrote: post #2

I've been a happy Android user for a long time, but mobile ads are so bad that I'm seriously considering switching to iOS just for the adblocking.

If you have SU/root, or build your own system.img you can use a hosts file to kill 99.9% of all in-app ads or apparently Adblock Plus has this feature too. The only time my hosts file failed was some simple weather app that refused to work when it detected no access to it's ad server so I rewrote it myself. If you don't have root you can build your own VPN that can kill all ad traffic, a service that offers this must…

Another option is to use something like AdFree Android which includes a hosts file/blacklist that is frequently updated if you don't feel like making your own.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#120

Post by mrweasel » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:49 PM UTC

alecco wrote: post #6

Good. The 2015 web sucks for mobile. Advertising is out of control and there's never going to be regulation to control. Thank you Apple! Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9940202

I don't necessarily disagree, but there's also the possibility that mobile (and touch) is just a generally worse interface for navigation and content that a laptop or desktop PC.

It has been a while since I used a phone or even an iPad for anything, the quality of the interface seems more like a gimmick or something that you would only use as a last resort. To me touch is the part that doesn't work, combined with the small screen size.