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Adblock Plus now sells ads

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Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#241

Post by newscracker »

davedx wrote: post #80
tedmiston wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it would be ideal to live in a world without advertising. But if advertising is the cost we pay to monetize content like news, well, I'd rather accept that than other content models like paywalls.

What about opt in subscriptions? I am seriously considering a Guardian sub, but I keep my ad blocker on for their site too IIRC

I like the idea of subscriptions to pay content makers directly, but I do see two issues that don't seem to have solutions right now:

1. Subscribing to every content producer directly will be extremely expensive for people. Advertising, on the other hand, spreads the costs across a large population with some amount of invisibility on who, in the end, pays for what. Only some kind of aggregation like on cable TV or others (Netflix, Hulu, etc.) have some potential to survive and pay content producers somewhat well. I'd be interested in any large scale aggregations that come at a not-too-high price yet provides an ad free and flexible experience (time shifting, place shifting, cross platform, cross device).

2. In your case, even if you were to subscribe to The Guardian, I seriously doubt if it would stop tracking you. Web sites that provide content always have analytics for their own site, but they're also interested in learning a lot more about the visitor so that they can get more data points on what their focus should be in order to maximize their impact and money making potential (not necessarily in this order). I'm guessing a lot of sites that offer subscriptions continue to track their users even without showing ads. The only difference then with a paid subscription is that they have a real name (likely), a real address (likely, depending on the payment method), and an email address attached to the subscriber that they can connect to the user's behavior. It actually seems worse, that you would pay to subscribe and yet still have to use a tracker block (like Privacy Badger) or ad blocker (like uBlock Origin).

A company called Blendle has started working on micro-payments on a per article basis across several sites, but I personally don't find it friction-less to use and see that the price per article is actually high (so I end up ignoring the email notifications with headlines).

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#242

Post by [deleted] »

Sargos wrote: post #235
KORraN wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, uBlock Origin comes from original author of uBlock. Some time ago he said that he doesn't have time to develop Origin and passed project to other guy. Unfortunately, that guy didn't make any big changes in code (except adding himself as an author) and asked for donations. After quite big drama, original author came back, but he wasn't able to get back his project so he called it uBlock Origin.

Your comment is super confusing. Do you mean that he didn't have time to develop uBlock so then we went to make Origin? You wrote it the other way around. Which one does the original guy work on now, Origin?

[deleted]

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#243

Post by thr0waway1239 »

ilikepi wrote: post #210
thr0waway1239 wrote: post #164

A missing factoid via the corresponding WSJ article: http://www.wsj.com/articles/adblock-plus-is-launching-an-ad-... "Advertisers will not be able to target ads via the Acceptable Ads Platform using the granular behavioral data many have become accustomed too, however, to preserve user privacy and security. Rather, they’ll have a limited set of information with which to target their ads, including the domain on which…

> OK, so the "limited" set of information is already 5 pieces of information... Ehh...it'll probably be the useragent string and the result of geocoding the client IP address. This is fairly narrow (especially for obscure and/or out-of-date browsers), but I think calling it "unique" might be a stretch. I guess it would be highly dependent on the population of your city or town and on the popularity of the site itself…

This is what I used to think, but the diversity of the devices in the developing countries (for example) adds more specifics. Even in countries where there is a lot more homogeneity of devices - you mention HN for example, but if I install ABP on my device and visit multiple sites using the browser, remember that the list of sites is another little trail of breadcrumbs. That could only become significant if the advertisers themselves share this data amongst themselves and combine it with user-agent + geocoded address, but you can count on a service which will pop up to facilitate exactly that (assuming one doesn't already exist). Not to mention, what if these ad networks consolidate at some point in the future?

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#244

Post by chippy »

morgante wrote: post #194
rloc wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing to do if you haven't already. uBlock is open source and does the job. This all adBlock making money by blocking ads and then showing their own ads is becoming ridiculous and unethical. So what does Adblock stand for now ?

You're assuming that everyone shares your world view. I'm a happy Adblock Plus user and I like this move. Advertising, in general, does not bother me. I occasionally even find it valuable. Ads on sites like Google and Facebook are perfectly fine by me—I just don't want big, animated ads or (more frequently) broken ones which prevent me from reading content. In fact, I already go out of my way to disable ABP on sites…

> Contrary to what people on HN believe, advertising is not inherently evil.

Most people on HN make their living off advertising I would wager!

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#245

Post by draw_down »

I feel like there's a baseline assumption here that the people who make ad blockers would somehow be more ethical or "nicer" than the people who make websites that serve shitty ads that got us all to download ad blockers in the first place. But I don't see why that should be true.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#246

Post by draw_down »

Yuioup wrote: post #78

This is extortion, plain and simple. Essentially they're forcing advertisers to funnel all ad content through them. Good thing for uBlock Origin because otherwise they should be indicted to anti-competitive behavior. No, I don't like ads and I run uBlock Origin. I don't work for an advertising company and couldn't care less about ads. But what Adblock Plus is doing here is illegal.

Anticompetitive behavior, boy oh boy.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#247

Post by blakeyrat »

yellow_postit wrote: post #223

Is there a middle ground between block all ads and each user individually white-listing sites? Anyone which produced a curated list of "allowed" ads would hit a similar narrative.

I'd support a tool which gave me the opposite of that: I'd like to see the ads at first to give the benefit of the doubt, but then be able to blacklist the site if it turned out I didn't like them.

When I say "blacklist the site" I mean the domain I'm viewing the content on, not the domain the ads are being served on. Otherwise you're "punishing" poor sods who just happen to be using the same ad network as an abusive site.

I'm not sure any tool allows that right now. They all block-by-default and have a whitelist instead.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#248

Post by newscracker »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #127
cloudjacker wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I block ads because my niches are small enough communities that I only see ads about the last thing I googled And that's annoying in more ways than one, being reminded so blatantly that you are being tracked well enough to identify individually

Use startpage.com. I only ever use Google for image searches now.

I use startpage too, but it also has ads. It just claims not to log or track, which is better.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#249

Post by morgante »

beefield wrote: post #232
morgante wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that everyone shares your world view. I'm a happy Adblock Plus user and I like this move. Advertising, in general, does not bother me. I occasionally even find it valuable. Ads on sites like Google and Facebook are perfectly fine by me—I just don't want big, animated ads or (more frequently) broken ones which prevent me from reading content. In fact, I already go out of my way to disable ABP on sites…

> Contrary to what people on HN believe, advertising is not inherently evil. Most people are perfectly fine with ads so long as they're not invasive. I would guess most people have this idea (in most cases illusion) that advertisers are not able to manipulate them. I do not have that illusion, and I do not like people that are manipulating me for their own benefit. I do not know if they are evil, but I think it is fa…

> I would guess most people have this idea (in most cases illusion) that advertisers are not able to manipulate them.

I certainly don't pretend that advertising has no impact on me.

I also don't think I'm a mindless drone who does whatever advertisers say.

Advertising is not zero sum. It can be effective and good for the consumer. For example, I have Charles Schwab account because I once saw it in a magazine ad, did some research, and have been a happy customer ever since. Both Schwab and I won, even though they "manipulated" me into learning about their excellent offering.

> I do not have that illusion, and I do not like people that are manipulating me for their own benefit.

You should probably never leave your house then, because almost every person in the world is trying to (subtly) manipulate you. Manipulation isn't evil.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#250

Post by hubert123 »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #116

I hate ads, absolutely hate them. I hate them on TV. I hate them on billboards. I hate them on the net. If I want something, I decide I want it. I research it, and I make my choices based on multiple sources. Dancing clowns and phony sales do nothing but waste my time and annoy me. Having said that, we need some way forward, even if it's nothing but a small step. I propose that all advertisers voluntarily place ads (…

For many people, ads are content. You didnt know that u wanted a new Intel CPU until you saw the ad that told you it's 100% faster.
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