141–150 of 282 posts
Effectively, this would make it impossible to tell ads from not-ads leading to a much worse experience for everyone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gaming streamers on Twitch seem to get quite a bit of donations. Streamers are personalities that connect with their audience and have a following. Surprisingly, movies and music are now available through subscription services, after many years of sharing for free. These services are successful because they are polished, convenient and legal. People are paying a lot for ebooks, in-game items and other virtual goods.…
> People are paying a lot for ebooks, in-game items and other virtual goods. Oh yes. Besides the small money drain Netflix and Spotify are, I've lost count on just how much money I spent buying e-books - legal, official e-books - just because of the convenience factor. > A decent article that makes you think for a bit? Not good enough, chances are they'll follow a popular author and his movement and put some money do…
Worst case is if this leads to "sponsored stories" where an article is about one thing and they sneak an infomercial in there for ad revenue but in a very subtle way such that it doesn't name a product even. Effectively, this would make it impossible to tell ads from not-ads leading to a much worse experience for everyone.
I would say that for once, the law is actually catching up with Internet activity that would clearly be illegal if done on a physical paper.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Advertisers will just lower their bids, so it mostly hurts the publishers of the websites you visit.
> Advertisers will just lower their bids, so it mostly hurts the publishers of the websites you visit. ... who will then have to revert to a more sane monetization scheme, which doesn't mess with their visitors' data.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My attention is more valuable than that. It's /my/ attention, I get to set the price, and I don't accept their offer. They're welcome to block me from their websites, if they feel that's not acceptable.
You set the price when you consume the content that you know is funded with ads. It is your attention which you are agreeing to trade for information or entertainment. >They're welcome to block me from their websites, if they feel that's not acceptable. This is more commonly happening now. Then we all have to deal with people complaining about that. Taking up /my/ attention which they are refusing to pay for. Pay me…
Give me a advertisement network which takes legal liability for what they advertise and follows local law, and we could start talking about what implicit deal exist when I visit a website. This mean no recording (data protection laws), no malware (anti-hacking laws), fair representation of the product, clear pricing, no alcohol, tobacco or advertisement towards minors, clear indication that its an advertisement, and the other rules that exist in advertisement laws here in Sweden. Tax laws involved are also always involved If there is a deal where service is provided in exchange for goods.
Good. I'm done being nice to advertisers. They are actively poisoning the internet in more ways than one. They had their chance to work out better ways to advertise, and they instead redoubled assaults on attention. This is getting installed on all of my browsers on all of my PCs. If your startup is advertising based, find a different model, or do without my business. I have no obligation to help you fund yourself or…
I'm out on this. 1. They say it's legally not click fraud. To me it sounds like regular fraud: "deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right". I'm not concerned with breaking the law I just don't want to act in the spirit of it. 2. This could hurt small startups that are very carefully managing an ad budget. They say the market will adjust, but until it does small startups take…
There is absolutely no criminal or civil statute nor legal principle in any American or European jurisdiction that binds users to respond to advertising in an accurate or forthright way.
To have such a law on the books would be utterly ridiculous: how could you ever prove in court that I did or didn't properly reflect my forthright intentions when I clicked on a "one weird trick" advertisement? And under what possible principle could I have implicitly contracted to give you an honest assessment of my interest in your advertisement?
Your proposition is perhaps one of the most insane ones I've ever heard argued about advertising, because it claims that you not only have a contractual right to knowledge of my consumerist tendencies, but -- amazingly -- that you believe that contract is with society writ large (i.e. where breach is a criminal fraud) rather than with you (i.e. civil breach) as a service provider.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Advertisers will just lower their bids, so it mostly hurts the publishers of the websites you visit. ... who will then have to revert to a more sane monetization scheme, which doesn't mess with their visitors' data.
I understand where you're coming from, but this seems an awfully aggressive way to send that message to websites that you presumably like and find useful. Merely blocking ads isn't enough?
I dislike ads as much as the next person (and indeed run uBlock on nearly every site), but I'd feel wrong using this because of the cost to the advertisers. It would be further lining the pockets of ad networks while increasing expenses for, at least in some cases, legitimate businesses. Sure, it's a bit of fighting fire with fire, but I'd rather not be an unnecessary expense for someone in my fight against intrusive…
Odds are that this addon doesn't actually trick the major advertisers whatsoever.
1. Any user/session that is seen clicking many ads across many different domains will quickly have their entire history ignored. You can bet that if your browser is seen clicking 1,000 ads across 10 domains in one day, that your assault will be completely ignored and have exactly zero effect against the network or its advertisers.
2. If the addon manually triggers click events on hidden elements, then the ad network likely has javascript detecting these clicks as invalid and ignoring those impressions. a) Any element that is not visible on screen has events ignored - it will check for display:none, visibility:hidden, as well as common off-viewport positioning, transparency tricks, etc. b) When you manually trigger a browser event on an element, no event object is passed to the event handler, meaning those events are easy to detect and dismiss.
Networks aren't guaranteed to implement #2, and any implementation may not be very sophisticated, but I'd bet a good penny that there is at least a basic client-side line of defense. If you manage to outsmart the client-side implementation, you're still very unlikely to outsmart the server-side analytics, where people who live and breathe this industry have spent over a decade writing software to analyze every ad click, specifically to not be fooled by such a naive attempt to hurt their business.