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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

#181

Post by Falkon1313 »

iSnow wrote: post #161
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?

Sure. Every analytics company tries to differentiate themselves by claiming that they do something the others don't and showing off some pretty charts.

The marketers buy the hype and want all of that. "If I take this pretty chart from here, and that table that from there, and these numbers from over here, I can make a really impressive report!"

And they want to make sure that they're collecting all the data they could possibly be collecting (because they never know when they might suddenly need the last 6 months data about something they never thought of), even though they don't know what queries they want to be able to make.

So they make the developers add all of them, end up with tons of data but very little information, and start talking about 'this big data thing' that could maybe give them answers even though they still don't know what questions they want to ask. And to use it, you just have to add this little snippet of javascript...

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#182

Post by HappyTypist »

paradox95 wrote: post #14
outside1234 wrote: post #7

> we will restrict access to articles on WIRED.com if you are using an ad blocker well, i will restrict my viewing of WIRED.com then. Like completely.

Since they aren't making any money from your visits to their site anyways I doubt they will be losing a lot of sleep.

Actually, this can almost completely wipe out Wired from google search results.

One metric that is used to rank sites is the bounce rate. If ad blocking users simply go back to Google and look for another result, then they will get penalised by Google.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#183

Post by [deleted] »

mkriss wrote: post #119
monkmartinez wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is crazy what kinds of BS you find when you run something like Little Snitch for OSX. On a fresh install of Firefox before I've had a chance to download adblock, there are two dozen popups requesting outbound connections... most of the time, I have NO idea who is behind the request or what these request really want. This is just the start page... news pages are even worse. Run some apps with Little Snitch turned o…

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

[deleted]

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#184

Post by SCdF »

jordigh wrote: post #32

> We know that there are many reasons for running an ad blocker, from simply wanting a faster, cleaner browsing experience to concerns about security and tracking software Sigh, again, these are just the incidentals of ads. I wish everyone was just completely honest about what ads are for: they are ploys to manipulate viewers into buying things that they did not need until they watched that ad. Ads are not some goodw…

> they are ploys to manipulate viewers into buying things that they did not need until they watched that ad.

I think those ads definitely exist-- , but I think as well ads can just be a company with a thing, making sure you're aware of that thing.

I presume you enjoy at least some movies. I also presume you have missed movies that you would have enjoyed, because the trailer or whatever never made it to you. Getting that movie trailer or poster to you, and only getting those trailers or posters of movies that you'd like to you, is definitely advertising, but I don't think it's negative advertising.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#185

Post by keeperofdakeys »

mkriss wrote: post #119
monkmartinez wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is crazy what kinds of BS you find when you run something like Little Snitch for OSX. On a fresh install of Firefox before I've had a chance to download adblock, there are two dozen popups requesting outbound connections... most of the time, I have NO idea who is behind the request or what these request really want. This is just the start page... news pages are even worse. Run some apps with Little Snitch turned o…

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

Try umatrix, it's available for both firefox and chrome, and allows you to do whitelisting of third party domains for each domain you visit.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#186

Post by TheLogothete »

digbyloftus wrote: post #158
funkysquid wrote: post #69

I don't use an ad blocker, but I'm thinking of installing one just for wired, if only to see how they implement this. And because I don't support hiding content from people who don't want to pay with their eyeballs and privacy, or maybe can't pay with money.

You don't support people not giving their work away for free? I could understand the privacy argument but "some people can't afford that businesses product so fuck that business" seems ridiculous.

Gee, people want to feed their kids? FUCK THEM. Stuff it, greedy capitalist pigs.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#187

Post by colmvp »

merb wrote: post #162

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.

Mobile usage keeps rising and apps that have a lot of engagement like Facebook garner incredible amounts of revenue from companies wanting to advertise on that platform.

The subsequent effect is media ranging from Wired to my local newspapers continue to lose ad dollars that are funneled to Google/FB. Just as an example, Buzzfeed smartly made an incredible Facebook video brand in order to help increase their reach, value to advertisers (via sponsored content) which helps fund real journalism (akin to the role of comics/crosswords for newspapers decades ago). Month after month, excellent journalists who used to work for national newspapers leave or are let go because of decreasing revenue, whereby they end up moving to Buzzfeed News.

It really irks me that Facebook and Google has so much clout over the advertising industry.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#188

Post by klunger »

I actually think this is a reasonable move for them. They have to pay their staff and keep the lights on while producing their content. It is kind of entitled and ridiculous for readers to think the party of well-researched, well-written and insightful content for free could go on forever. You either should have to pay for it explicitly with a subscription fee, or consent to ads and tracking. Yes, there is a lot of mediocre fluff/stuff there, but there is easily $1/week worth of high quality content imho.

And, if you do not want to partake, then don't. No one is making you read Wired. But, I strongly suspect that publishers that want to keep producing high quality content without running themselves into the ground, as ad blockers become more prevalent, are going to go down this road. The folks here that saying "Ad blockers or bust!" are going to be left with increasingly fringe and lower quality content in the future.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#189

Post by peteretep »

isomorphic wrote: post #4

> So, in the coming weeks, we will restrict access to articles on WIRED.com if you are using an ad blocker. Good luck with that, Wired. The people-who-will-never-pay group will split into two: People who never visit your site again, and people who up the ante in the ad-blocking escalation. While you may think that you don't care about the people-who-will-never-pay group, the latter subgroup will release their improve…

I have found out that I try and access a Forbes article about once a week from my cellphone. I've also found that I don't care about any of the links enough to whitelist it. I haven't shared a Forbes link with anyone since then.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#190

Post by pdkl95 »

msoad wrote: post #9

I wonder why content website don't use Canvas rendering in order to block all ad-blockers. You either see the canvas, with ads in it or don't see anything at all. There need to be a compatible ad-network as well. Accessibility is going to be an issue but if you can solve all of that there is a startup idea right there!

As I've said in the past here on HN, the key feature for this will be webassembly. When it becomes possible to easily compile a "custom" version of freetype and do all the rendering into a canvas element, and send the entire "webapp" (really: document with ads) down in a binary blob, everybody that currently depends on advertising will switch to it.
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