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Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

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Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#101
post #25

Ok, I'll bite... what if an "ad" on a website is a bit of javascript that mines bitcoins using my GPU? Does this mean I have to let it do this? What if it does it while showing me an ad for something at the same time? How does running a bit of software on my computer concern anyone other than me? I am not a lawyer and I haven't read the court's rulings but this seems assinine!

> Ok, I'll bite... what if an "ad" on a website is a bit of javascript that mines bitcoins using my GPU? Does this mean I have to let it do this? Maybe. The Court has only ruled that the lower instance has to research the topic more, there is no clear answer yet. But it's really notable how incredible wild the judgment is. They are speaking about objectcode and bytecode, and which of them are protected by law or not.…

Genuinely, I won't care what the ruling is: my computer, my rules!

:)

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#102
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely is for me, but I'm probably twice your age and use the internet only leisurely. I don't do social media, I don't use a smart phone, so yeah, I'm certainly an edge case, but no internet would be fine for me easily.

I'm totally with you on this one. And I was an early tech adopter, using a dialup modem (long distance!) to get access to Usenet news. If a site has ads, and I can't block them, I'm not using that site.

The person I replied to didn't say they'll boycott a website, but rather "world wide web", as in the internet.

If you take a quick look at their activity on HN, you can see they are a prolific submitter/commenter. I find it a bit amusing that someone's whos active than 99% of the people who frequent HN can just simply quit internet (and not an ad-ridden website).

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#103

Does this make curl illegal? Wget?

These gotcha questions are a waste of time. "If I close my eyes whenever I see an ad will I go to jail?"

Obviously the one-click effortless and mainstream availability of adblocking is what they care about, not laborious methods accessible to just a few people with the ability and wherewithal.

If tooling is written around curl for this purpose that becomes accessible and mainstream and popular, yes that tooling would be treated like this.

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#104
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ok, I'll bite... what if an "ad" on a website is a bit of javascript that mines bitcoins using my GPU? Does this mean I have to let it do this? Maybe. The Court has only ruled that the lower instance has to research the topic more, there is no clear answer yet. But it's really notable how incredible wild the judgment is. They are speaking about objectcode and bytecode, and which of them are protected by law or not.…

Genuinely, I won't care what the ruling is: my computer, my rules! :)

Considering we are moving towards a Cyberpunk-esque world, I wouldn't bet too hard on this. Greed finds a way.

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#105

I can't judge the legal aspects. But a significant point here is that Adblock Plus allows you do pay them to get preferential treatment for your ads. I don't know how much this part affects the legal issues here, but for me that is quite a different situation than a pure ad blocker. There is a coercive element here, if your ad blocker is used widely enough and you take money for preferential treatment.

I would be in favor of some kind of vetting program, where you (the ad network) commit to ensuring your (customers') ads aren't scammy, e.g. advertising on software download sites with an ad that looks like a download button. Much like spam, if your ads get reported and they're verified as being in violation, you get taken off the whitelist.

Unfortunately, the main use case I have for 'ad blockers' isn't just blocking visual ads; it's blocking sometimes tens of megabytes of third-party javascript, tracking, analytics, etc., which is not just a huge privacy issue but also slows the page down tremendously.

I remember working at a company which hosted and maintained, for a client, a forum for A-level testing students in the UK, or something of the sort. Over the years, they had insisted on us adding more and more to the site; third-party widgets, trackers, analytics, etc. Each time, we pushed back because of the impact to page loads, which leads to increased bounce rate, lower time-on-site, and so on, but they were the customer and had the final say.

Then, suddenly, Google announced that it was going to start factoring page load times into pages' search ratings and, overnight, the client was frantically asking us how we could improve their page times because they were absolutely atrocious.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, a lot of techniques came around to improve page load times while still letting you load your page full of noisy cruft and garbage, so now we have pages that load nice and quick and then, over the next few seconds, ruin themselves with trash that ruins the experience. "Articles" where every paragraph break is punctuated with another ad, pages with pop-up after pop-up asking if you want to join the site, sign up for a newsletter, check out our substack.

This is the sort of reason why people gravitate towards a site's app, I suspect, but that just solves the loading time issue and prevents you from blocking trackers and ads.

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#106
post #85

Why should I as a user get exposed to garbage that I don't care about in addition to the actual content I'm interested in? Well, one possible answer is that the content provider only actually provides that content under the condition that I look at the ads. After all, a lot of content providers are businesses and they don't like to give out content for free. My stance has always been that for 99% of the stuff I consu…

I’m sympathetic to the idea that someone has to pay if they want to keep the site online. It costs money to create the site’s content, even if the marginal cost to deliver it to a visitor is approximately $0.00. But there’s an astounding amount of laziness in their approach. Seriously, renting rectangles on a site is the only way to get paid by non-paying visitors? Hogwash. For instance, they could be running affilia…

Most websites use ad networks, and typically have no idea which ads are being shown on their sites unless users complain about something egregious; as such, it tends to be the case that telling an ad network "here's a rectangle for you to show something" doesn't really affect a site's journalistic integrity.

If a site that reviews televisions was contracting directly with Sony to show ads then yes, that's definitely an issue, but if they're telling an ad network to pick some ads then (typically!) that's sufficiently arm's-length.

Meanwhile, affiliate links can be much more directly bad; use offer code SCAMTOBER for 25% off this thing that I can assure you I've tried and tested and given a fair review, and which will definitely not turn out to have been a scam. Click here to purchase this laptop that I was sent for free and rated 9/10 and I'll get a 5% cut of whatever you buy.

I guess this is where affiliate programs through retailers are slightly more trustworthy; if anything I buy from your Best Buy link gets you a 5% commission then it doesn't really matter all that much which laptop you recommend because you're getting a cut no matter what I buy. As soon as Alienware offers you a 10% commission on that $3500 laptop, though, things get dicey.

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#107
post #6

Who could possibly be in favor of this? Like sure industry lobbying is strong but could any politician really argue they're acting in the interest of their constituents with this?

It's Germany, certain parties are corrupt on higher levels, to the point of being harmful. They protect the interests of certain industries, even if it means burning down the country. The one suing here is Axel Springer, a well known misinformation-complex, with very strong political connections.

However, their budget is 1/10 of the state-sponsored propaganda machinery that is Germany's public broadcasting.

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#108

> We sincerely hope that Germany does not become the second jurisdiction (after China) to ban ad blockers. Given the other restrictions on internet use in China, it should have come as no surprise, but I had no idea this was the law of the land there.

The idea that people in an ostensibly communist country are forced to watch ads is ironic.

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#109

A friend raised what I consider a very valid point, that ad blockers are assistive technology for people with ADHD. They prevent the web from being an unusable mess of shiny distraction. And as such, in America, blocking ad blockers is a violation of the ADA. I’m being completely serious here and so is he. I can barely use the web without ad blockers. They make it possible for me to participate in online life. Remove…

I didn't have ADHD (or at least not diagnosed with it), but I tried to use Internet without adblocker and is unusable.

I suspect owners of those sites either don't visit them or use ad blocker themselves.

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sympathetic to the idea that someone has to pay if they want to keep the site online. It costs money to create the site’s content, even if the marginal cost to deliver it to a visitor is approximately $0.00. But there’s an astounding amount of laziness in their approach. Seriously, renting rectangles on a site is the only way to get paid by non-paying visitors? Hogwash. For instance, they could be running affilia…

Most websites use ad networks, and typically have no idea which ads are being shown on their sites unless users complain about something egregious; as such, it tends to be the case that telling an ad network "here's a rectangle for you to show something" doesn't really affect a site's journalistic integrity. If a site that reviews televisions was contracting directly with Sony to show ads then yes, that's definitely…

But random JavaScript and GIFs from who knows where, with no transparency about how they got there and whether the owner is getting paid to run that specific ad, are no less bad. Did they sell my data to target me personally? Is Acer paying them to run ads on a page about HP laptops? Who knows. That’s completely opaque and untrustworthy today. You have to assume all in-page ads are compromising today because they largely are.
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