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German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

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Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#171
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, as mentioned higher up, you might actually want to support ad-based sites. This is an easy way to do it with no effort. I use uBlock. But I approve of the existence and success of ABP and similar. People differ.

You can support ad-based sites with either tool by whitelisting a site. uBlock requires you to do this explicitly for each site you want to support through ad revenue. I suspect most novice users will never do this. ABP is now using their user base as leverage to extract payment from some sites to show ads by default. I don't think that is a good idea at first blush, but there may be arguments for the practice I have…

Theoretically, if the ads that were whitelisted were flagged enough or enough complaints were raised to ADP, this would be a financial signal to both ADP and the sites that the ads are unacceptable. I am not saying this is exactly how it goes as I haven't the slightest what goes on behind the closed doors at ADP (and use µblock0 myself); nor do I endorse the idea of using one company to coerce another, but I would imagine that it allows for at least a channel for more direct responses as to why an ad is not acceptable.

That is, I do not believe that other solutions have a very clear way for advertisers to determine what is and isn't acceptable; for the sake of argument, this puts aside the fact that some unacceptable aspects of ads should be common sense (loud noises, pop-unders, fake download links, etc). Basically when an adblocking user reaches the site, they have no means of communicating why they dislike the ads on that site - most of the time, it's just a blanket block that users never think about. So even if you really like a website and would love to support it through the ad revenue, your current options don't send a very clear signal as to what was disruptive and dislikable.

Again, I'm not saying I fully agree with this, but I think it's an argument that has some value, and reflects the greater difficulty with advertising in general; it's a one-way communication venue, and the few times that we as viewers are able to get a signal back to the other side, it's usually ignored until legislation gets involved. (See the CALM Act and it's overall ineffectiveness [1]) Basically there isn't really much control over what advertisers actually do, and even Truth in Advertising laws basically have no teeth except for extremely blatant falsehoods.

Adblocking is the first major way that viewers have been able to push back against advertising, and I'm with that 100% since I just think it's pointless in and of itself - it's wasteful in my opinion how much infrastructure exists out there just for the sake of providing advertisements. But I also understand that likely advertising isn't going away, so having some method to signal back clearly and directly to advertisers what is wrong with an ad is good in my mind. Said signal having some teeth to make sure they get the message is also important, else it's not much better than before. But not giving any indication as to what's wrong doesn't really help either. (I'm not blaming anyone but stubborn advertisers here, but I think it helps us as activists if we can make it 100% what we don't like about specific advertisements instead of just doing a blanket block).

[1] = https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/loud-commercials

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#172
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the free market can regulate this just fine Except that it doesn't. Not everybody is expert enough to evaluate the risks of trading their data. Even if everybody was an expert, Google and Facebook are quasi-monopolies that are hard to avoid due to network effect and peer pressure. They play major roles in modern society so regulating them /in some ways/ seems warranted.

I have never experienced peer pressure to use Google and have been asked to message someone on Facebook maybe twice. It sounds like you just like both services a lot and want the government to step in so you can have your cake and eat it too.

But FB uses shadow profiles and the like to track you anyway. You are still a part of their system even if you havent signed up.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#173
post #87

It seems to me that Spiegel looks at it from a ridiculous premise, that Internet somehow should provide a working business model for them. I just can't imagine how something like ABP could be illegal... I made a http request to get a public resources, and it is up to me how I will display it, I can filter everything but a text, or if I want I can render the page so only ads will be displayed. :-) I have no obligation…

It would be pretty sad if the web really can't provide a working business model for quality news.

I prefer ads rather than high-cost paywalls, and then ideally a "use as-free" option for a small sum (think android apps). I want to read diverse sources and can't cough up €50-160 for 10-20 different sites that i use more or less frequently. I'd pay €5-10 for each good site that i use frequently to see it ad free and am happy to accept unobtrusive and non-malicious ads on all other sites.

We can't act as if everything must be free and painless - then we'll end up with a truly broken internet. The ad pendulum swung far too much to one extreme with horrendous intrusive and malicious ads across the web, but if we let it swing too far the other way we'll end up with a truly dead web where only exploitative (virus-spewing, manipulative (eg paid/planted "news" and propaganda a la RT & Xinhua) and commercial sites continue to exist.

My impression is that if i want the internet to remain valuable i will have to accept 'good' ads or start coughing up funds myself.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#174
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sounds absurd at first sight Yes, companies paying their fair share of taxes is absurd.

Please define "fair share." That is such a loaded term because it implies that the only benefit of a company to people is in the tax revenue it provides a government. We could reframe that argument to say that Google should provide a fair share of jobs to the unemployed. Billions of revenue but far fewer employees than some companies half the size. Clearly Google isn't hiring a 'fair share' of workers right? We can r…

> We could reframe that argument to say that Google should provide a fair share of jobs to the unemployed. Billions of revenue but far fewer employees than some companies half the size. Clearly Google isn't hiring a 'fair share' of workers right?

Actually, you can take this argument to the end and arrive at the UBI model advocated by German economist Jörg Gastmann. His model has a sales tax (and no other taxes) that starts out absurdly high (e.g. at 200%), but well-paid employees are tax-deductible, to the point where you don't pay hardly any taxes at all if you employ about 7 employees per million € in revenue. Companies that don't need that much employees can instead pay a basic income to someone in order for them to count as employee. (There are some more rules, e.g. every person can only count as tax-deductible employee for one company, and a tax-deductible employee may not work more than 40 hours a week, but that's the basic gist.)

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#175
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just modify my `/etc/hsots` and block the ad hosted domains at the source. cat /etc/hosts | wc -l 34003

Did you automate that and how?

Here's how I automate that: https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/cce258...

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#176
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, as mentioned higher up, you might actually want to support ad-based sites. This is an easy way to do it with no effort. I use uBlock. But I approve of the existence and success of ABP and similar. People differ.

You can support ad-based sites with either tool by whitelisting a site. uBlock requires you to do this explicitly for each site you want to support through ad revenue. I suspect most novice users will never do this. ABP is now using their user base as leverage to extract payment from some sites to show ads by default. I don't think that is a good idea at first blush, but there may be arguments for the practice I have…

> I suspect most novice users will never do this.

I suspect most novice users will never install uBlock, because the article they read in will mention ABP. :)

It just depends on what makes sense for the individual, a default whitelist because you want to support some advertising (that is, if you thought about it at all), or default black everything.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#177

Since this submission relates to blocking ads and trackers, I think it's worth bringing up that uBlock Origin [0] is better than Adblock Plus in (all?) ways (see the README for more details). I migrated to it a few years ago and overall I've been very happy with the outcome. I'm opposed to all tracking that isn't opt-in by default. I haven't thought about the topic at great lengths, so there may be cases which I'm fa…

uBlock Origin for Microsoft Edge https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/ublock-origin/9nblgg...

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the same. Advertisers can negotiate with AdBlock Plus about what reasonable advertising should be. If we all choose our own block lists there is nobody for them to negotiate with. The war between ad blockers and advertisers continues forever. That's not to say AdBlock Plus does a great job (I don't know) but some people think collective bargaining is a good thing. For more read about countervailing power. ht…

> It's not the same. Advertisers can negotiate with AdBlock Plus about what reasonable advertising should be. If we all choose our own block lists there is nobody for them to negotiate with. The war between ad blockers and advertisers continues forever. We have very different opinions, because I don't see it as a bargaining situation. The reasonable and acceptable level of spam, web advertising, malware, and user tra…

Yes, this is a different political position. I don't want all advertising-supported websites to die, which is what would happen if you convinced everyone to do what you do.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure the advertisers would rather have ads than not, so I'd argue just the opposite - this will work for advertisers. And you can't block arbitrary and tags, so I don't understand your second assertion.

Ad blocking in general is an AI-complete problem, but there are still lots of low-hanging fruits left to be picked - like blocking tags based on class names ("ad", "sponsor.*"), on content (basically spam filtering), etc., all backed by crowdsourced list of per-domain entries.

> blocking tags based on class names

I would be surprised if uBO didn't do that. (Can't check right now because I use uMatrix; I care more about the tracking part than about the ad part.)

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not the same. Advertisers can negotiate with AdBlock Plus about what reasonable advertising should be. If we all choose our own block lists there is nobody for them to negotiate with. The war between ad blockers and advertisers continues forever. We have very different opinions, because I don't see it as a bargaining situation. The reasonable and acceptable level of spam, web advertising, malware, and user tra…

Yes, this is a different political position. I don't want all advertising-supported websites to die, which is what would happen if you convinced everyone to do what you do.

I don't want them to die either; I want them to adapt, or be replaced by sites that can adapt. There's no hard dichotomy between "sites that charge users" and "sites that run ads"; some sites do neither, and still manage to survive just fine by many other means.
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