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UBlock Origin

addons.mozilla.org

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Re: UBlock Origin

#211

Post by TylerE »

jedberg wrote: post #147
sbierwagen wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor. Well too bad. Maybe they should take the radical step of actually looking at their server logs .

When you run a website, you have two choices: spend a bunch of time implementing log analysis and paying for all the storage necessary, or using GA, which already exists and is free. If log analytics isn't my core business, why should I spend time implementing it?

Not to mention that GA much more elegantly handles the case of N > 1 webservers behind a front end.

Re: UBlock Origin

#212

Post by tho9Ohx1eo »

jedberg wrote: post #151

If people who made ad blockers were ethical, they would make their software easily detectable by the websites, so those websites could choose not to service those users.

If people who run ads were ethical users wouldn't resort to ad blockers.

See how easy that was? It's called bullshit logic.

Re: UBlock Origin

#213

Post by VieElm »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #209
VieElm wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recurring monthly payment doesn't track my activity does it. It just tracks that I've paid for something. Many sites offer PayPal so there's no personal information conveyed at all. I pay for a lot of Twitch subs. I am currently subbed to like 7 channels. I've also payed for the NYTimes and Washington Post through Amazon's payment system. I've paid for Ars Technica. I pay for Pandora. I pay for Reddit gold. I also…

I'm sure you're not seeking my approval, but it genuinely bemuses me that you're happy for your shopping purchases to be tracked by Amazon and PayPal, two giants with a history of privacy-insensitive behaviour, yet not for individual sites to run JS-based, self-hosted, same-domain analytics simply to count whether you're one or 10 unique users within a month.

I don't see how PayPal can track anything other than what I've spent money on. My bank can track that too. There's no control over this. I'm not sure there are any viable alternatives to Amazon or PayPal for what they do. There's very little inconvenience to run adblock, it would be a huge inconvenience to boycott major sites to avoid them knowing what kind of shampoo I buy.

Re: UBlock Origin

#214

Post by Zarel »

arbitrage wrote: post #46
fridek wrote: post #35

Honest question - what business model for free content do you see other than ads? I understand all the privacy and distraction issues related, but increasingly many news sites I read feature only paid content. I suppose it's connected to the rise of ad blocking. At the moment I'm not hosting any content of such kind myself, but I wanted to publish a game and I'm facing the same question. Should I sell my soul to the…

The whole point of a business is to come up with a plan to get people to give it money for a service. If your entire business plan is to get someone else to give you money because people completely unrelated to and uninterested in it happen to be using your service, it's not really a good plan. I'm ecstatic about the seemingly new increase in paid-for content. If it means the long dark era of scatter-shot shotgun cre…

An internet full of paid content is an internet that excludes many children and people in third-world countries, and in general more hostile to the poor than the wealthy. It's also an Internet that incentivizes sticking to a few sites you're used to rather than exploration of new things.

Is that really the internet you want?

Re: UBlock Origin

#215

Post by darkmighty »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #191
VieElm wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true, I'm perfectly willing to pay for content. I just don't want ads and I don't want to be tracked. Thanks to browser extensions I don't have to no matter how much that hurts your feelings. You say I'm entitled but it's actually you who isn't entitled to control how the software works on my computer. I'm perfectly willing to support business models that aren't terrible. Perhaps you might also consider us…

We show an ask for donations in place of the ads for users who block our ads (Simple, subtle, using the same colors and fonts as the rest of the site so it isn't distracting). A handful of users do donate. The vast majority do not. Interestingly, the users who donate are also the ones most likely to whitelist our site. Most (but not all) users today feel entitled to content, games, music, etc for free and get mad whe…

The respondents have a solid point. You can't criticize them blocking ads, if they're willing to see degrading service because of it. What we lack that would be ideal is full transparency from the site's point of view to know which user is blocking ads and, if they choose so, prevent that user from viewing any content. It should be illegal to 'fake' watching ads just to get the content.

This imbalance is indeed a big problem imo: essentially any scheme from the site is permitted to be circumvented without giving them knowledge: this can create an unhealthy market dynamics where ads get more aggressive (to generate more revenue per user), every user installs ad blocking software (note that once installed, most users won't ever uninstall ad blockers), and websites are eventually forced to chose from only two models: mediocre service (low operational costs) or paywall.

I personally would gladly accept targeted minimalist ads, which I would prefer to having to pay to access most sites. Nowadays I use an ad blocker though since some ads are far too intrusive for my liking.

I think the whole internet industry needs urgently to discuss mechanisms for this problem though.

Re: UBlock Origin

#217

Post by VieElm »

darkmighty wrote: post #215
JohnTHaller wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We show an ask for donations in place of the ads for users who block our ads (Simple, subtle, using the same colors and fonts as the rest of the site so it isn't distracting). A handful of users do donate. The vast majority do not. Interestingly, the users who donate are also the ones most likely to whitelist our site. Most (but not all) users today feel entitled to content, games, music, etc for free and get mad whe…

The respondents have a solid point. You can't criticize them blocking ads, if they're willing to see degrading service because of it. What we lack that would be ideal is full transparency from the site's point of view to know which user is blocking ads and, if they choose so, prevent that user from viewing any content. It should be illegal to 'fake' watching ads just to get the content. This imbalance is indeed a big…

Seriously if ads were just like unobtrusive text ads I would be ok with it. I have never minded advertisements in dead tree news papers and magazines (they also don't track users). Online ads are toxic.

Re: UBlock Origin

#218

Post by DanBC »

baddox wrote: post #197
DanBC wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're only blocking ads and analytics? You're not making any effort to avoid the sites that track?

Why avoid the sites that track if it's trivial to visit those sites without getting tracked?

Some of the ad-block using crowd say that this is not about getting the content and avoiding the ads - it's just about avoiding the ads. I've started asking people who use an ad-blocker if there are any sites they no longer visit.

Re: UBlock Origin

#220

Post by JohnTHaller »

tshaddox wrote: post #199
JohnTHaller wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We show an ask for donations in place of the ads for users who block our ads (Simple, subtle, using the same colors and fonts as the rest of the site so it isn't distracting). A handful of users do donate. The vast majority do not. Interestingly, the users who donate are also the ones most likely to whitelist our site. Most (but not all) users today feel entitled to content, games, music, etc for free and get mad whe…

Don't confuse the desire to not see ads with a feeling of entitlement. I fully support a website operator's right to detect that I am blocking ads and hide the content, or to make unblockable ads. I don't feel entitled to their resources. But if they do show content I'm interested in, I'll consume it. It's not at all a feeling of entitlement.

Most users don't share your sentiment. There are pre-bundled blocklists in most adblockers to block websites' JavaScript designed to detect adblockers and block content. uBlock includes two such lists by default. Adblockers vary whether these are enabled by default or must be enabled by the user.
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