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UBlock Origin

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Re: UBlock Origin

#111

Post by DatBear »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #80
gpvos wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking Google Analytics is the main point of any blocker I would consider using.

Many sites rely on Google Analytics to be able to do their own promotions and sponsorships, which is the only way they make money other than ads. By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor. So, you use the site resources, don't see ads and don't add to their user/page view numbers. Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to…

>blocking GA may break your ability to actually use the site at all (many travel sites, for instance).

What? How does that even work? If GA goes down, their site just stops working until it's back up?

Re: UBlock Origin

#112

Post by dhimes »

frik wrote: post #56
arbitrage wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of a business is to come up with a plan to get people to give it money for a service. If your entire business plan is to get someone else to give you money because people completely unrelated to and uninterested in it happen to be using your service, it's not really a good plan. I'm ecstatic about the seemingly new increase in paid-for content. If it means the long dark era of scatter-shot shotgun cre…

Would you like to go back to Internet stoneage where you had to pay per page view in Microsoft Network '95 (MSN v1) or Germany's BTX from 1980s. Would you like to subscribe on hundreds of websites to access their paywall? The WWW got popular because it's friction-free and many sites are paid by advertisement money. At the moment many ad networks are just stubborn (bad ads) and greedy taking big chunk of the ads money…

Speaking for myself, ads don't bother me so much. Tracking does. And serving me ads on content I have already paid for really fucking does.

Like purchasing a movie dvd and being coerced to watch previews for other movies before getting to the one I want. grrrrr.

Re: UBlock Origin

#113

Post by malchow »

746F7475 wrote: post #98
fridek wrote: post #35

Honest question - what business model for free content do you see other than ads? I understand all the privacy and distraction issues related, but increasingly many news sites I read feature only paid content. I suppose it's connected to the rise of ad blocking. At the moment I'm not hosting any content of such kind myself, but I wanted to publish a game and I'm facing the same question. Should I sell my soul to the…

Set up code on your site that detects that I'm using adblocker(s) and I won't visit your site. It really is that simple. Either you bite the bullet and accept that some of us don't want random 3rd party code running on our browsers or you gate us away. We won't hold it against you. I would prefer to have option in uBlock that notified me if I was about to enter a site that didn't want me viewing their content if I ha…

"I would prefer to have option in uBlock that notified me if I was about to enter a site that didn't want me viewing their content if I had adblock enabled, so I could avoid those sites."

I suspect such a feature would do serious harm to the adblocking business. They do not want to surface the latent discontent that writers and publishers feel.

If it were as simple as the publisher pushing a button and blocking adblockers, and for adblock users it was as simple as pushing a button to notify you that you are heading to a site that had such anti-adblock penalites, the result across the web would be pretty uniform: you wouldn't get to go to any high quality websites.

They'd flip the switch, and 90% of adblock users will whitelist what they really do want to see --- whether it's The Economist, The New York Times, or whatever. Surfacing the idea of publishers implementing anti-adblock measures could actually reduce the adblocking footprint.

Re: UBlock Origin

#114

Post by gpvos »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #80
gpvos wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking Google Analytics is the main point of any blocker I would consider using.

Many sites rely on Google Analytics to be able to do their own promotions and sponsorships, which is the only way they make money other than ads. By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor. So, you use the site resources, don't see ads and don't add to their user/page view numbers. Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to…

Too bad for them. They should use same-domain analytics instead. Otherwise they have no chance with me.

Re: UBlock Origin

#115

Post by forgottenpass »

frik wrote: post #56
arbitrage wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of a business is to come up with a plan to get people to give it money for a service. If your entire business plan is to get someone else to give you money because people completely unrelated to and uninterested in it happen to be using your service, it's not really a good plan. I'm ecstatic about the seemingly new increase in paid-for content. If it means the long dark era of scatter-shot shotgun cre…

Would you like to go back to Internet stoneage where you had to pay per page view in Microsoft Network '95 (MSN v1) or Germany's BTX from 1980s. Would you like to subscribe on hundreds of websites to access their paywall? The WWW got popular because it's friction-free and many sites are paid by advertisement money. At the moment many ad networks are just stubborn (bad ads) and greedy taking big chunk of the ads money…

Would you like to subscribe on hundreds of websites to access their paywall?

I don't rely on hundreds of ad-supported websites now. If all the ad-supported websites I use went behind paywalls, I'd be fine with that.

I'd pay for google and one or two more news orgs in addition to the ones I'm subscribed to. The rest of the websites I depend on and don't pay for are non-profits and/or don't run ads in the first place.

The WWW got popular because it's friction-free and many sites are paid by advertisement money.

Yes, and I guess I don't care. I was online before then, we can go back to that small world again. The web's popularity is largely an explosion in the equivalent of cable TV networks. If adblockers push them out, oh well.

Re: UBlock Origin

#116

Post by gpvos »

untog wrote: post #106
pikzen wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>which is the only way they make money other than ads. Yeah. > So, you use the site resources Yeah. >don't see ads Yeah. > don't add to their user/page view numbers. Yeah. >Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to analyze UI/price sensitivity/promos/etc Yeah. Well you know what ? I wouldn't be doing this if ads provider didn't abuse…

It's my computer, I pick what I want to display and which code I want to execute. If you really wanted to take a principled stand you just wouldn't use those web sites. Ad blockers are just lazy activism.

The sites are being lazy and/or cheap by using GA. They can use piwik instead. As long as they are lazy, I have an equal right to be lazy.

Re: UBlock Origin

#117

Post by gpvos »

DatBear wrote: post #111
JohnTHaller wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many sites rely on Google Analytics to be able to do their own promotions and sponsorships, which is the only way they make money other than ads. By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor. So, you use the site resources, don't see ads and don't add to their user/page view numbers. Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to…

>blocking GA may break your ability to actually use the site at all (many travel sites, for instance). What? How does that even work? If GA goes down, their site just stops working until it's back up?

Actually, because of this, I tend to temporarily disable blocking at the moment of payment, because there are too many redirects and reloads happening at that time to reliably use a blocker. It partially defeats blocking, but at least they aren't tracking me during regular browsing.

Re: UBlock Origin

#118

Post by bhouston »

gpvos wrote: post #114
JohnTHaller wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many sites rely on Google Analytics to be able to do their own promotions and sponsorships, which is the only way they make money other than ads. By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor. So, you use the site resources, don't see ads and don't add to their user/page view numbers. Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to…

Too bad for them. They should use same-domain analytics instead. Otherwise they have no chance with me.

They also block the popular on-domain analystics including piwik, or at least they did.

Re: UBlock Origin

#119

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

pikzen wrote: post #102
JohnTHaller wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many sites rely on Google Analytics to be able to do their own promotions and sponsorships, which is the only way they make money other than ads. By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor. So, you use the site resources, don't see ads and don't add to their user/page view numbers. Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to…

>which is the only way they make money other than ads. Yeah. > So, you use the site resources Yeah. >don't see ads Yeah. > don't add to their user/page view numbers. Yeah. >Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to analyze UI/price sensitivity/promos/etc Yeah. Well you know what ? I wouldn't be doing this if ads provider didn't abuse…

I agree absolutely. That's why I use piwik on my sites.

Unfortunately, uBlock blocks piwik all the same.

Re: UBlock Origin

#120

Post by beagle3 »

h43k3r wrote: post #47
beagle3 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you think you'll make from ads? Chances are, much, much less than you expect. There are exceptions (e.g. plentyoffish.com), but people I know who run popular niche sites (in the low millions of page views per month, a few tens-of-thousands unique) are happy when they manage to make $1,000/month from ads.

I support your arguments of free content, but there are some sites on the internet that will serve you spam if you don't use a ad blocking software. I unblock ads on the free websites that I use frequently which present ads in a nice way. Some websites do show a popup that they earn from ads and it would be great if you could turn off your ad blocker and I mostly comply with that. The reason for this is that these si…

You probably wanted to reply to GGP. I am of the opinion content should be free or paid. I let ads through only if they come from the same website.

My problem with the non-annoying ads is that they still enable tracking and lrofiling which I do not like.

I think I've had Adblock+request policy/policeman running since forever - recently switched to ublockO+umatrix

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