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How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

wired.com

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Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#131

Post by melted »

ariwilson wrote: post #121
melted wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's completely unlike Google Contributor. Google Contributor keeps Google in the loop and only removes _Google_ ads if you win an auction. All other ads keep shitting all over your page. This would let you disable _all_ ads, yet still pay the publisher.

How do you propose to do this?

Fixed buffet-style fee would be difficult. Per-page micropayments, however, could be accomplished with some form of blockchain (probably not Bitcoin though, it's collapsing under its own weight as it is), perhaps with an extra layer of anonymization to get rid of tracking. The problem with micropayments is greed: publishers think their content is worth vastly more than it really is.

If I knew how to do buffet-style scheme for this without involving things like carrier billing and DNS tracking, I'd be working on my own startup RFN. This could undo the likes of Google and FB and make the web a much better, and much more private place.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#132

Post by eps »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #106

Interesting, what I would like though is "$1 a week on the weeks you read wired" so lets say I start with a $52 budget, read some stories this week, my balance drops by $1, if I read nothing for a month, nothing happens, then I go back and read some stories it goes down $1 for that week. The when it gets below $10 it sends me an email suggesting I top up, and if it gets below $5 then every time I read a story it remi…

It should be per-read, not per-week, but then it can't cost $1 a piece, more like few cents => we are back to micropayments, which proves to be a very hard nut to crack.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#133

Post by [deleted] »

isomorphic wrote: post #4

> So, in the coming weeks, we will restrict access to articles on WIRED.com if you are using an ad blocker. Good luck with that, Wired. The people-who-will-never-pay group will split into two: People who never visit your site again, and people who up the ante in the ad-blocking escalation. While you may think that you don't care about the people-who-will-never-pay group, the latter subgroup will release their improve…

[deleted]

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#135

Post by striking »

aaron695 wrote: post #124
jacquesm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some of those people with morals As opposed to those without morals who won't white list the trackers or pay up? As opposed to those moral upstanding citizens that run the advertising industry? I don't think that the 'morals' bit needs to be in there, in fact it would be stronger without.

They are asking, please stop using our content without giving something back. We need something from you to continue. Here are two options. Payment, or ads that we'll try and keep ok. The response is, we'll weaponize and win. Or excuses about how I don't contribute anything but might bring in someone who does, so how dare you. You are going to fail. These are not evidence based arguments. It's not to hard to block Ad…

We don't want to bet on their content being good enough that it's worth so much money.

And honestly, if there really is a wall that isn't casually circumventable, then I just won't read it. I don't care enough to pay.

If they curated some constantly brilliant content, I'd jump on paying them. But as it is, I rarely end up there anyway.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#136

Post by makeitsuckless »

If only publishers had put that much thought and effort in sneaking in increasingly bloated advertising in with http requests for content until the ratio ads/content was a 100/1, or in massively violating their readers privacy and becoming complicit in a world wide greed driven surveillance system.

Any ethical policy with regards to ad blocking should start with the word "sorry", followed by a lengthy apology for two decades of utterly unethical business strategies.

Instead, we just get another aggressively anti-consumer move in the privacy arms race.

No tracking if you pay up amounts to blackmail. Publishers like these won't get a penny from me until they apologize and give up tracking altogether. (Of course the fact that Wired hasn't been relevant since the late 90s makes this particular decision a lot easier...)

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#137

Post by marklgr »

aaron695 wrote: post #124
jacquesm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some of those people with morals As opposed to those without morals who won't white list the trackers or pay up? As opposed to those moral upstanding citizens that run the advertising industry? I don't think that the 'morals' bit needs to be in there, in fact it would be stronger without.

They are asking, please stop using our content without giving something back. We need something from you to continue. Here are two options. Payment, or ads that we'll try and keep ok. The response is, we'll weaponize and win. Or excuses about how I don't contribute anything but might bring in someone who does, so how dare you. You are going to fail. These are not evidence based arguments. It's not to hard to block Ad…

> Payment, or ads that we'll try and keep ok. The response is, we'll weaponize and win.

You really got to realize this is not about showing ads, ie. some plain jpg/gifs--which a lot of people would accept--but loading tons of tracking scripts that slow you down and violate your privacy. So yeah, I'm gonna protect against that, I don't deem it as an acceptable choice.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#138

Post by tacticus »

ariwilson wrote: post #122
tristor wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The best part is it doesn't even need to be blocked in the client. I'm running Pi-Hole: https://pi-hole.net/ with DNS Crypt: https://dnscrypt.org/ on a couple of Raspberry Pi 2s on my network acting as internal caching name servers. Sure, I also run uBlock, but I don't even see ads on mobile apps because they're all blocked via DNS long before the client even has to parse it.

Do you want to start a tit-for-tat war? Publishers could redirect ads using their sites as a proxy.

Which will be funny when they start serving malware directly from their servers.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#139

Post by [deleted] »

jordigh wrote: post #68
chrismcb wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For wired the point is the ad is for them to stay in business. For the company advertising the point of the ad is to sell something. Maybe it is something you want, maybe it is something you don't need,maybe it is showing you need. But this isn't a conspiracy for wired to sell you something you don't need.

It's not a conspiracy, but it's so annoying that nobody speaks about the ultimate purpose of ads. Their ultimate purpose is not Wired. Keeping Wired in business is just one more incidental. If our purpose is to keep Wired in business, there are other ways besides ads. So, let's talk about the ultimate purpose of ads. Do we endorse that purpose or not? That's the conversation I really want to be having.

[deleted]

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#140

Post by gottam »

They're very shortsighted. I only ever get to wired.com through things like links from HN so I'm not going to pay them money or disable my adblocker for the reasons they even list in their own article.

This means since I can't view their articles, I definitely won't be upvoting them on places like HN since I can't read them, and I'm sure others are in the same boat.

They could have done this in so many other ways, but they chose the way that was openly hostile to their viewers. Good luck declaring war on your own readerbase, wired.

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