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Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

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Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#161

Post by efdee »

nickjj wrote: post #86
efdee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who skip ads are, in general, just as susceptible to them as most other people. So yes, if they are forced to listen to it, they will, in general, buy more of these products. Advertising works because it is psychology. Nothing rational about it.

That's the thing though. We're not in a Black Mirror scenario where you're really forced to listen to ads (thankfully haha). If an ad plays, you can just flip to something else just like tons of people do on cable TV. If a podcast starts forcing ad plays then ad skippers will just switch to something else until the ad is done. If someone really doesn't want to listen to an ad then they will find ways to avoid it. Thi…

Fair enough, I misread your original comment and my reaction was to people who automatically skip ads (through some sort of adblocker). The idea was that when you have to do it manually, you'll do it less often than when it happens automatically, and you -will- hear the advertisements and, in general, it -will- lead to more sales.

People who furiously skip the ads manually will indeed remain unaffected.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#162

Post by efdee »

onemoresoop wrote: post #156
efdee wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't remember many young video creators before Youtube. You know what Youtube runs on, right? It's not just the creators who get money from ads.

Young video creators have been around but not at this scale because youtube or instagram props them up and makes them influencers. They have no life experience and yet are influencing millions of other young people. The sad part is that everything is shocking content to get their visitors up. This is broken imo and can’t lead to anything good. Of course, few of them become millionares

No platform, no audience(+). No audience, no creators(+).

(+) In general.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#163

Post by BAReF00t »

I used to block ads on ShoutCast, 15 years ago.

StreamRipper cut the streams by ID3 tag change and accompanying silence. My script just played the ripped MP3s, and ignored the ones with an ad-like ID3 title or that were too short to be a song. You could either pre-record and then skip backward and forward, or listen live and have nothing played back in the ex-ad gaps.

I even had a remote control with "keep current" and "keep previous" buttons, to put the songs into my archive.

Until the Content Mafia ruined everything to keep their cocaine flowing. :/ (I worked in there, and I have enough material, to testify on the cocaine abuse that dominate[ds] the industry.)

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#164

Post by ghego1 »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #15

Neat software, but I think this is less defensible than other ad blockers. With web ad blockers you protect against tracking, privacy violations and potentially malware and thus don't see "unacceptable ads". In contrast this seems to be about blocking ads just for the sake of blocking ads.

I don't see why blocking ads for the sake of blocking ads shouldn't be a good enough reason to block ads. As a user I'm not in charge of ensuring that the market works, and I'm certainly not required to ensure that corporations make a profit. It's their duty to do so, and companies making a profit out of ads have proven repeatedly that they will seek profits however feasible. The worst thing one might be doing by blocking ads is to breach some contractual agreement, assuming that one was ever undersigned. The only reason one should refrain from blocking ads for the sake of blocking ads would be if that was illegal. But I don't know of any criminal law that punishes such a behavior, and honestly I don't think it would easy to draft one. I certainly will block ads whenever possible, which in first place means paying for the services I like (entertainment, email, productivity, news, etc.). But when paying is not an option, and too often it is not, I simply quit the service (e.g. Facebook), or block the ads when even that won't work (surfing the web).

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#165

Post by snakeOyl »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #116
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is people are willing to pay for certain products with their attention, via ads, but not with money. 1. People who are adblocking are saying that they are not willing to pay with attention. You can only compare their relative willingness to pay with attention vs money when you provide both options fairly. 2. I don't take it as given that businesses have the right to make money however they want. There a…

> 1. People who are adblocking are saying that they are not willing to pay with attention. No. As a person who's adblocking, that is not what I'm saying. I'm perfectly willing to pay with attention; I'm not willing to pay with my data, I'm not willing to be tracked across sites, and I'm not willing to let my browser execute whatever garbage the ad network is sending down the pipe at me.

The alternative to advertising is paid subscription content. I don’t see how you’re going to achieve greater privacy by giving someone your credit card number.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#166

Post by brewdad »

buboard wrote: post #72
Intermernet wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that long ago. When I was in university in 1996 there were almost no ads. When I left university in 1999 there were a lot more. The quality of content didn't really increase in that time. Right now there are youtube channels that don't monetize, and have good content. There are soundcloud profiles, blogs and short stories that have no ads. Most of the advertised internet is garbage, but it's also by far the most…

That content is still there, with no ads. You can limit yourself to academic institution websites if you want.

Funny enough. Every time I visit my favored academic institution's athletics department website, I get asked to turn off my ad blocker.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#167

Post by onemoresoop »

efdee wrote: post #162
onemoresoop wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Young video creators have been around but not at this scale because youtube or instagram props them up and makes them influencers. They have no life experience and yet are influencing millions of other young people. The sad part is that everything is shocking content to get their visitors up. This is broken imo and can’t lead to anything good. Of course, few of them become millionares

No platform, no audience(+). No audience, no creators(+). (+) In general.

Youtube itself had lots of young creators before they started the monetizing game and they were creating content for free and a lot of it was good, honest and creative. Along with the monetization and aggressive promotion everything went into a shocking craze to increase the number of followers, the number of views and the volume of content. A lot of it is just crap.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#168

Post by imglorp »

amrrs wrote: post #41
dest wrote: post #3

Hello, author of Adblock Radio here. Thanks for posting this. I can answer questions if you have any. You can read more on the context of this project in this article: https://www.adblockradio.com/blog/2018/11/15/designing-audio...

I know we don't want to see / hear ads. But at the same time, these ads on the podcast are making livelihoods/income for those content creators and If we strip that off of them, saying I don't like ads but hey I do like your content. Where do you think we can have the line?

I'd like to give a shout out to one pod caster in particular that might be of interest to this audience: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com

There are ads, but they are spoken by the host in his normal tone. No loudness tricks, just one minute reading the copy. I suppose OP's tool won't detect this unless a human tags all the spots.

Second, the ads are focused to the audience and may actually be useful sometimes: hosting companies, SAS tools, etc.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#169

Post by willio58 »

amrrs wrote: post #41
dest wrote: post #3

Hello, author of Adblock Radio here. Thanks for posting this. I can answer questions if you have any. You can read more on the context of this project in this article: https://www.adblockradio.com/blog/2018/11/15/designing-audio...

I know we don't want to see / hear ads. But at the same time, these ads on the podcast are making livelihoods/income for those content creators and If we strip that off of them, saying I don't like ads but hey I do like your content. Where do you think we can have the line?

The line is different for all people. I love the concept of ad blockers in all forms of media. Why should I be forced to take in your ads? I can already skip them with a quick 2 or 3 taps of the skip button, why should I be forced to do that while I go about my day?

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#170

Post by sct202 »

throwawawathrow wrote: post #99
sct202 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will make content as a hobby, but you won't see people doing it on the level (frequency or quality) they have been today. Internet likes and shares are nice but if they won't pay the bills, and a lot of creators will prioritize their time accordingly.

I have a hard time believing that someone on HN, a crowd whose primary job involves using free software and whose primary hobby is reading Wikipedia articles , would just idly speculate about things against the most blatant contrary evidence. But then, this being HN, this sort of speculation is to be expected, heh.

Wikipedia is a great example. They have to go begging the world every few months to keep the greatest website in the world operating. HN (and dang's job) is funded by the excess of YCombinator, and the rest of us just show up to chat whenever.
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