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How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

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Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#161

Post by iSnow »

fencepost wrote: post #65

I'm generally not inclined to fully whitelist anyplace because even if everything it loads today is safe, who's to say what's going to be loaded after the site gets hacked. That said, I tried to go through and do some allowing of requests and scripts for places I recognized, including whitelisting the site in Ghostery to keep it from interfering. After adding 19 separate exceptions in uMatrix for both whole domains a…

Could someone enlighten me why a lot of sites don't only pull in google analytics, but also a handful of other analytics sites like scorecaredresearch or chartbeat?

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#162

Post by merb »

Soon we will need to pay for every site we visit. That's aweful. I mean I have nothing against ads, when they are like the Google Ads, and I have nothing against not running a adblocker, when your site doesn't do 100-200 requests for a simple site with text.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#163

Post by lucaspiller »

grahamburger wrote: post #126
mkriss wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a good open source "Little Snitch" alternative?

Wireshark or even tcpdump will get you most of the way there, I think.

Little Snitch doesn't just show you traffic, but also allows to block requests per domain per application.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#164

Post by sedatk »

fencepost wrote: post #65

I'm generally not inclined to fully whitelist anyplace because even if everything it loads today is safe, who's to say what's going to be loaded after the site gets hacked. That said, I tried to go through and do some allowing of requests and scripts for places I recognized, including whitelisting the site in Ghostery to keep it from interfering. After adding 19 separate exceptions in uMatrix for both whole domains a…

> who's to say what's going to be loaded after the site gets hacked

when a site gets hacked, you get malicious content regardless you block ads or not.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#165

Post by franciscop »

Let me take another view on this. Adblocking is on the rise according to, basically, everywhere. I've installed it recently in my family computers since it'll protect them from many nasty stuff besides the ads. However, they are surely not able to add any site to the whitelist (they just know they don't get advertising).

Furthermore, with population aging, I think that for the next 10-30 this will make the adoption even stronger. So let's say that it keeps going on until most of the people use some adblock. What is the situation then? Let's explore one option:

No one sees advertising/tracking on the web. Newspapers, magazines and others have either adapted or died. So, for Wire's example, allowing for an ad-sponsored site makes no sense since most of the people use adblocking so there's not much public left. Now I don't know anything about paid online magazine, but I've read that their numbers are not so great.

So who's left?

- Websites that do it for free to scratch an itch such as codinghorror and Joel on Software.

- Corporate blogs that act like news press to improve the brand. This could include Tesla's blog, SpaceX's news, etc.

- Blogs that make it a content strategy so you buy their product such as GrooveHQ.

- Personal or professional review sites with referral links.

This is arguably a stronger change than when printed papers went online or when they went mobile, since their business model remained unchanged. It's a change of business model, so they will have to adapt somehow.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#166

Post by jes5199 »

jbclements wrote: post #70

I geniunely do feel bad for magazines that are trying to figure out how to survive in a world of ad-blockers. I suspect that many hard-working journalists will lose their jobs as magazines like Wired go out of business. I personally subscribe to several newspapers, and I worry about them, too, and what's going to happen to journalism in this country (USA, sorry for my chauvinism). BUT! I want to KILL the free interne…

gift economy?

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#167

Post by sweezyjeezy »

jacquesm wrote: post #88
alexbecker wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I generally hate being advertised to, there are certainly times when advertising has shown me things I didn't know existed but wanted to buy as soon as I did. Especially in the case of books.

I don't think we are using the word 'need' in the same way.

The thread changed from wants to needs about four replies ago.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#168

Post by viraptor »

danneu wrote: post #152
viraptor wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think so... I signed up for flattr ( https://flattr.com/ ) with some credit shortly after they launched. Over half a year, I found one website ( https://lightspark.github.io/ ) I went to which wanted to receive my money (and they did). Everybody else served ads (which I blocked). Hell, putting a bitcoin address on my blog gave me actual couple of cents. :)

Clicking on a Gittip/Flattr/Patreon badge or looking up a donation Bitcoin address are always worth a sad chuckle. That you've given out a whole schmeckle in a year isn't much of a counterpoint. It's like when someone would tip you $0.002 on Reddit back when people still used CoinTip: insult for the receiver while making the giver feel like they made a difference -- altogether a net negative for the world.

I wouldn't judge B addresses by looking them up. I cycle mine once in a while, I'm pretty sure others do too.

Why are you being so negative about donations? Some pick up, some don't. I don't see anything negative about even minimal donation. It means someone actually cared enough to do anything. I'd be happy to receive a $0.002 tip for some content I created - and not because it makes any difference to my account.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#169

Post by hsod »

tristor wrote: post #149
ariwilson wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There's no war. It's simple. I choose what I allow to run on my computer. End of story. It's the height of arrogance that all of these companies, both the publishers and the ad tech firms, think they can do whatever they want to users with no recourse. I bought the computer to serve my needs, I have control over how it functions to do so.

But if your usage of your computer that you bought depends on their servers, it seems they would have some sort of say in how you use it.

That is, they can negotiate with you using your desire to access their servers as leverage.

You can refuse to negotiate, in which case they can take steps to block your access to their server. You can use technological means to get around that, but then they can adjust their own technology to block your new strategy.

And then you're in a war.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#170

Post by TheLogothete »

rosser wrote: post #66
aaron695 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment doesn't make any sense? Don't view ads. Wired doesn't care about you. You contribute nothing back anyway. So by making it a little harder, at least some of those people with morals will be pushed in the right direction to pay or white list ads for free content.

people with morals Nice. You might take a moment to consider that some of us who block ads are more concerned about the morality (read: more or less utter lack thereof) of the a̶d̶v̶e̶r̶t̶i̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ trackers than we are the revenue some arbitrary site may or may not lose from missing our impressions before you start casting stones wildly about like that. I'd probably be very willing to consider whitelisting sites who…

So pay for WIRED. What's the problem?
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