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Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

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Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#221

Post by stevesearer »

derefr wrote: post #219
zeta0134 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've maintained for a long time that the ad networks themselves are the problem, not advertising as a whole. There is a place for video advertising (around content that is also video), there is a place for audio advertising (on the radio, around podcasts, on music services), and there is even a place for animated, interactive advertisements, on sites that are expected to dance and move anyway, like online games. The…

> ad networks themselves are the problem, not advertising as a whole I would perhaps say that it's the way that ad networks interact with content sites that's the problem. With the current "automated just-in-time auction of the eyeballs of the person-we-identified-using-the-site's-metrics, with the site itself just providing the rectangle of space to slot the result into" model, content providers are essentially enti…

As a publisher, I've made the decision to sell advertising in monthly blocks like a magazine would as opposed to an eyeball-based auction system. Anecdotally, I think this deters me from trying to maximize how much money can be made off of every eyeball that visits my website.

I also sell and self-host my own advertising which can only be non-animated jpgs/pngs which gives me ultimate judgement. There is a barrier to entry on this style of ad sales, but overall I feel like it has been worthwhile pursuit so far in the 3 or so years I've been doing it.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#222

Post by Kadin »

QuadrupleA wrote: post #186

I definitely hate ads like anyone, but it should be acknowledged that ads serve a purpose too, of creating an economy for free content and giving people an avenue to get some income in exchange for their efforts, and possibly be able to devote their full attention to a free project and not have to support themselves with other income. Ads give creators some incentive to create stuff - although the income generally is…

I've been on the Internet since before advertising became common, and I am not convinced that advertising is the only, or even a good, model for funding either content or infrastructure.

The move to advertising as the basis for the Internet has hidden, at least from most users, the cost of running a website and putting content online, which is frankly quite low compared to what it used to be, both in terms of actual money and the time/effort/experience required.

While in the mid/late 90s running a website could be a financially risky proposition (there are all sorts of semi-funny horror stories about people who ran labor of love sites that got Slashdotted and ended up with hundreds of dollars in bandwidth bills), today you can stand up a VPS on a Gigabit connection that's capable of serving orders of magnitude more users than most sites will ever see for a few bucks a month. I don't think that is necessarily a bad entry point for a communications platform that lets you talk to a significant percentage of the global population in one shot.

I'm not convinced that having the dominant model be "labor of love" as opposed to "make $$ off advertising" is necessarily worse or would result in less quality content. The advertising-driven model has given us clickbait and even machine-written garbage articles, link farms, etc., none of which would really exist under a publisher-pays model. There are significant hidden costs to the ad-based model, which are externalized on all players, including hard-to-define costs of privacy in terms of the way major players are incentivized to build detailed dossiers on users in order to improve ad targeting.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#223

Post by staunch »

One thing is for certain, ad blocking is going to become more and more prevalent and never less.

The end game for ad blocking is to all but eliminate advertising. An ad blocking client could, ultimately, just block any domain that has aggressive anti-ad block features.

With enough users doing this, new sites that are ad free would quickly replace the old ad driven sites. Some of the ad driven sites would modernize.

Ads are a failed path. By eliminating ads we open the door to novel solutions. Only a cynical fool could believe technology isn't up to solving this minor problem. There are already a dozen potential solutions waiting for the incentives to change.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#224

Post by derefr »

stevesearer wrote: post #221
derefr wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ad networks themselves are the problem, not advertising as a whole I would perhaps say that it's the way that ad networks interact with content sites that's the problem. With the current "automated just-in-time auction of the eyeballs of the person-we-identified-using-the-site's-metrics, with the site itself just providing the rectangle of space to slot the result into" model, content providers are essentially enti…

As a publisher, I've made the decision to sell advertising in monthly blocks like a magazine would as opposed to an eyeball-based auction system. Anecdotally, I think this deters me from trying to maximize how much money can be made off of every eyeball that visits my website. I also sell and self-host my own advertising which can only be non-animated jpgs/pngs which gives me ultimate judgement. There is a barrier to…

It can be done relatively simply when you make direct deals with ad agencies or cross-promotion deals with other product companies. The problem is that no ad network wants to be a part of it; and for the little guy, ad networks are the only thing with economies-of-scale large enough to be interested in purchasing your nearly-worthless ad-space.

Thus my view: we need a "catalogue of creative, you pick what you run"-style ad network, so that the little guys have somewhere to turn instead of acquiescing to the existing networks and ending off with their sites showing chumboxes[1].

[1] https://theawl.com/a-complete-taxonomy-of-internet-chum-de0b...

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#225

Post by StavrosK »

Achshar wrote: post #183
joshuamcginnis wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should whip up a little community-driven service that would serve all known ad network hosts.

So we'll have ublock/adblock without the parts that block the ads.

Exactly. We could just import that list into our blocker.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#226

Post by laumars »

time4tea wrote: post #217
laumars wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a shell script to manage dnsmasq running on my FreeBSD home server. It's not sophicated but equally it's written specifically for my server so no very portable either. I did think about writing something to share but projects like Pi-hole have done a better job serving the community than i could have. So i just share the sources i use instead incase any like-minded sysadmins find it useful.

You could also use py-hole which is a simple apt install of a bit of python that does the dnsmasq file creation and update. Its pre alpha but may work for you https://github.com/time4tea-net/py-hole

Thanks for the recommendation but the shell script i have works good enough and has been for a few years now. Plus the container (FreeBSD jail to be precise) is pretty low footprint so while i don't have an issue with Python itself, it's an additional package I don't really need.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#227

Post by antisthenes »

strictnein wrote: post #66
dmbass wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from the article: > Our code is completely open, but piping to bash can be dangerous. For a safer install, review the code and then run the installer locally.

The compounds in this medicine are public knowledge, but taking them could be dangerous. For a safer experience, review all medical literature pertaining to these compounds before consuming.

I actually do just that whenever I decide to self-medicate with a new drug. Were you being facetious?

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#229

Post by time4tea »

mirimir wrote: post #10

Porting this to FreeBSD/pfSense would be cool.

As I also mentioned in another comment above, you might find some value in py-hole, which is a pi-hole implemented in python.

You can just apt-install it.

Its pre-alpha, but it might work for you...

https://github.com/time4tea-net/py-hole

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#230

Post by Kaedon »

staunch wrote: post #223

One thing is for certain, ad blocking is going to become more and more prevalent and never less. The end game for ad blocking is to all but eliminate advertising. An ad blocking client could, ultimately, just block any domain that has aggressive anti-ad block features. With enough users doing this, new sites that are ad free would quickly replace the old ad driven sites. Some of the ad driven sites would modernize. A…

How do you imagine sites that are ad free would appear? What's their business model? I don't think that's a given, especially since most users won't pay (see the rise of freemium style apps vs paid ones in the app store).
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