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“We're considering banning domains that require users to disable ad blockers”

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Re: “We're considering banning domains that require users to disable ad blockers”

#151

Post by Dylan16807 »

ryan-c wrote: post #145
chris_wot wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any legal action taken over malware served up from add on a website. But if it were to happen, the website is who is sue, because it is within their responsibility to ensure that ads and/or content should not cause harm to a visitor.

> it is within their (the website) responsibility to ensure that ads and/or content should not cause harm to a visitor. I don't think that's been established. With the current state of advertising on the internet, it's not even possible to do this. In general, websites use advertising networks which do not allow them to proactively vet the content. Even if they did, no amount of vetting can guarantee the content is b…

>exploits in image parsers, font parsers, video parsers, audio parsers, etc. come out fairly often.

Exploits in jpg/png are very rare.

At worst, all you have to do is make the ad network [re]compress the image.

Re: “We're considering banning domains that require users to disable ad blockers”

#152

Post by krapp »

morgante wrote: post #139
krapp wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, but there are valid reasons to object to paywalled content being posted to a news aggregator like HN other than wanting everything free. Content not available for everyone to read leads to low quality conversations dominated by complaints about the paywall. Unfortunately, people still complain even when there is a workaround. Showing partial content then asking for payment to read the rest seems like a d…

> Showing partial content then asking for payment to read the rest seems like a dishonest tactic, and it kind of is. How is that dishonest? The alternative would be far worse (demanding payment without a preview of what you're paying for). The problem with posting paywalled content isn't posting paywalled content. It's the entitled people who can't even be bothered to use well-known workarounds and instead completely…

>The alternative would be far worse (demanding payment without a preview of what you're paying for).

"dishonest" may be too strong, perhaps just misleading - paywalled articles are often designed to appear as free articles. With a proper preview the reader would know as soon as they arrive that they will be expected to pay to read. I understand why sites prefer to hook you with partial content first, but that practice can appear deceptive.

>The problem with posting paywalled content isn't posting paywalled content. It's the entitled people who can't even be bothered to use well-known workarounds and instead completely derail discussions on political grounds.

I agree with you there - no one can post content from Wired anymore without someone starting a thread about the paywall. If you're not willing to read the article you should just not participate in the discussion about it.

Re: “We're considering banning domains that require users to disable ad blockers”

#153

Post by Grue3 »

slig wrote: post #97
esoteric_nonces wrote: post #82

Maciej (HN handle 'idlewords') has an interesting take on this that I'm struggling to find in my history right now. The basic idea is that all of the data these companies collect is still ultimately useless in practice. We still don't have advertising that is even close to being relevant. But the data retains its toxic qualities (of being a database of every action I take on the Internet and some in the real world).…

Do you use YouTube while logged in? In my experience, the content recommendation on YouTube is the best. I've been learning about electronics and watching a few videos about it. Now YouTube recommends me new content and channels that are extremely relevant. My brother is into guitars, and his frontpage is all about that.

I use Youtube while logged in. The recommendations are total trash. It takes accidentally viewing one wrong video and all your recommendations become related to that one video.

Re: “We're considering banning domains that require users to disable ad blockers”

#154

Post by bweitzman »

realityking wrote: post #144
Zelmor wrote: post #22

Same should go for HN, really. Paywalls and adwalls are a great way to make me not even read the article and thread. Yet, they make frontpage due to buzz.

How do you propose content producers earn their income, if you think neither ads nor paywalls are acceptable?

There's nothing wrong with paywalls and ads. It's annoying when sites with paywalls are posted to public forums since any number of people are not going to be able to join the discussion, but this isn't the site's fault. I think sometimes people forget that they pay for certain websites when they submit. Plus it turns the forum into an advertisement which is not really the intended use.

Likewise, ads are fine in theory but the implementation is absolutely horrible.

Re: “We're considering banning domains that require users to disable ad blockers”

#156

Post by wlesieutre »

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #45
tomp wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they are malicious. They're serving the high-profit ads, which obviously includes malware, where they could be serving low-profit, safe (but boring) ads. That's equivalent to pharmacists selling illegal drugs (heroin, cocaine) simply because they obviously make them more profits.

In this case, high-profit ads include dynamic content (JavaScript or Flash). Safe (but boring) ads would simply be an image or text link with no tracking capabilities that doesn't use CSS hacks to interrupt your page reading. It just sits up there saying, "If you want it, check this out."

Javascript and Flash ads are the more immediately dangerous ads, but you can still distribute malware over image and text links. You just move from exploiting browser vulnerabilities to exploiting user trust, like all of the imitation VLC download pages that have popped up over the years.

We'd be better off with only static image/text ads, yes, but malware distribution by means of poorly vetted advertising wouldn't totally vanish.

Re: “We're considering banning domains that require users to disable ad blockers”

#157

Post by ikeboy »

dragonwriter wrote: post #148
ikeboy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer: we accept a far higher cost of medicine and medical treatments in exchange for regulations. Go compare costs between us and other countries. We don't accept paying for content to avoid ads that may be dangerous.

> The answer: we accept a far higher cost of medicine and medical treatments in exchange for regulations. Go compare costs between us and other countries. The countries that pay less than us often are at least as highly regulated when it comes to medicine, medical treatments, and their delivery, so while we certainly are paying a lot more for those things, I don't think that the argument that we do so "in exchange fo…

https://mises.org/blog/how-government-regulations-made-healt...

>Today, the U.S. and Canada have less than 25 doctors and 30 hospital beds (per 10,000 population), compared to over 35 and 50, respectively, in most countries in continental Western Europe. Mark Pearson, head of Division on Health Policy at The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), discussed possible reasons the U.S. spends more than two-and-a-half times per person more than most developed nations in the world, including relatively rich European countries: “The U.S. has fewer physicians and fewer physician consultations relative to its population. The U.S. also has fewer hospital beds for its population size and shorter average stays in hospital relative to other countries. Indeed, the lower numbers of physicians could help explain why they cost more; there is less competition for patients.”

Are the specific things pointed to there as a cause of a US doctor shortage all found in other countries, but without a shortage?

Definitely tort law which increases malpractice costs is far more of a factor in the US market.

Re: “We're considering banning domains that require users to disable ad blockers”

#158

Post by billmalarky »

Tiquor wrote: post #42
bryanlarsen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In any case since the sites are still able to use curated self hosted ads (ie not JavaScript redirects to externally hosted providers) they are able to sell static ad space to make money even with adblockers enabled." Ad blockers don't just block external ads, they use CSS rules to block internal ads as well. So the only way to avoid ad blockers is to make advertisement completely indistinguishable from content. Ima…

This thread and the Reddit thread amaze me with the level of ignorance, but complete confidence in that ignorance, displayed in relation to how ads and ad blockers work.

Bryanlarson is correct. The adblock plus extension also will block any image file with "advertisement" in the filename for example.

Re: “We're considering banning domains that require users to disable ad blockers”

#159

Post by agrona »

MBCook wrote: post #122
deprave wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about "only applies to /r/technology" - we've been there before. Remember when ad blockers were mostly prevalent among techies and visitors to tech sites? Yeah, well, that changed. It may start with /r/technology, but I'm pretty sure it won't end there...

This discussion is specifically from the mods of /r/technology. Will other parts of Reddit follow suit? Maybe. But right now it's just /r/technology.

A mod of /r/sports (~6M users? is that right?) said

>Send me your automoderator rule once it's done, we'll add it our sub as well.

Seems likely to spread pretty quickly.

Re: “We're considering banning domains that require users to disable ad blockers”

#160

Post by [deleted] »

dredmorbius wrote: post #141
slig wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you use YouTube while logged in? In my experience, the content recommendation on YouTube is the best. I've been learning about electronics and watching a few videos about it. Now YouTube recommends me new content and channels that are extremely relevant. My brother is into guitars, and his frontpage is all about that.

YouTube recommendations have been improving , and I do find a lot of material of interest, which says something as my interests are obscure. But, and this is a big but: YouTube doesn't provide the options to either dismiss any given suggestion, nor to block specific channels. There's sufficient crap on YouTube that both are essential. I've been campaigning for both features for some time now. Google's recently implem…

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