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LA Times and ads

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Re: LA Times and ads

#31

Post by tedunangst »

So in case you were looking for another reason to avoid the LA Times (or probably tronc papers in general), they're very spammy. I get tons of junk "newsletter" mail from them that I definitely didn't subscribe to, although they inevitably claim I did, and you can unsubscribe, but then they just invent new lists. And sell your address to others.

Sample from only a few days ago.

    From: "San Diego Union-Tribune" 
    Subject: We are proud to offer you Moonlighting - Hire or be hired!
    Received: from mta953.e.latimes.com (mta953.e.latimes.com [8.7.44.159]

    [Blah blah bullshit about their proud partner promoting a soulless gig economy.]

    This email was delivered because you registered for Email Membership at utsandiego.com
This is 100% false. I did create an account for latimes.com (who sent this shit) but not the San Diego paper. Not even close.

Re: LA Times and ads

#32

Post by vinnymac »

tedunangst wrote: post #17
cobookman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or on the flip side. Data caps will make people care about how much data their site uses. Cause customers will stop using data heavy sites as they have economic insentive not to. Making the web all around faster as no more 10MiB webpages, and making the industry move back to server side rendering.

"total data transferred: X MB ($y.zz)" should be part of a browsers standard status bar.

I know we can easily get some info from chrome dev tools and chrome://net-internals/#bandwith. It would be convenient for users if someone put together an extension that would display this information by default, or alternatively browsers just had a setting we could turn on.

Re: LA Times and ads

#33

Post by zkms »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #22

I develop software used by newspapers. This is a problem with the whole industry. It's amazing how much crap they load. These sites all use a third party "tag manager" (Google Tag Manager, Tealium, Piwik etc.) to manage the scripts they load: ads, analytics, trackers etc. The people who use the tag manager typically aren't techies, so they don't understand that adding another tag will cause the page to slow down. Typ…

The worst type of ad on newspaper sites are the disgusting "chumboxes" (by scumsuckers like "taboola" or "outbrain") that orbit at the bottom of pages and serve up images meant to be as simultaneously repulsive and fascinating as possible:

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

As long as these pages have ads that display utterly gross images (if you doubt me, click the above link) that make goatse look like pure mindbleach, i'll keep blocking JS and ads.

Re: LA Times and ads

#34

Post by excalibur »

SwellJoe wrote: post #19

I resisted using an ad blocker for many years; I kinda felt like if I wanted to use a site, I should be willing to trade for seeing their ads. I've changed my tune a couple of years ago, and this is a (small) part of the reason (but a bigger part of it now that I know how crazy usage for ads has gotten). I'm on mobile data nearly 100% of the time most months. 14GB costs me $50-$70 (depending on which network I'm on,…

I recently (past year) bit the bullet and began ad blocking myself. My primary concern is the recent proliferation of malicious content through the common ad networks. Supporting websites is great, but not at the expense of your own security.

Re: LA Times and ads

#35

Post by siddboots »

debt wrote: post #3

"They are also the most aggressive ad shoveling website I have ever seen. Their ad blocker blocker and paywall works, preventing me from reading articles." So their ad blocker blocker and their paywall kept you from reading the articles for free? Why don't you just pay them? It's just a shitty thing to do at this point. If they have high quality articles then what would require you to pay them? Do they need to be on…

This particular article is not behind a paywall. Instead, it blocks readers who are using a) adblock, b) private browsing mode, or c) tracking protection. Their online subscription gives you access to more content, but they don't claim anywhere that they will let me browse with the above enabled even if I do pay.

Re: LA Times and ads

#37

Post by wjossey »

tedunangst wrote: post #31

So in case you were looking for another reason to avoid the LA Times (or probably tronc papers in general), they're very spammy. I get tons of junk "newsletter" mail from them that I definitely didn't subscribe to, although they inevitably claim I did, and you can unsubscribe, but then they just invent new lists. And sell your address to others. Sample from only a few days ago. From: "San Diego Union-Tribune" Subject…

I whipped together https://getcovert.com to help address this problem for me. Currently it's a chrome plugin that allows me to generate a unique obfuscated "proxy" email address for sites I want to sign up for but don't want to expose my real email. If they ever sell it, redistribute it, or I want to shut them down, I just block that proxy email.

It's barely an alpha project and needs a ton of work to be functional, but just know you're not the only one who finds this frustrating and unacceptable.

Re: LA Times and ads

#38

Post by eli »

zkms wrote: post #33
lobster_johnson wrote: post #22

I develop software used by newspapers. This is a problem with the whole industry. It's amazing how much crap they load. These sites all use a third party "tag manager" (Google Tag Manager, Tealium, Piwik etc.) to manage the scripts they load: ads, analytics, trackers etc. The people who use the tag manager typically aren't techies, so they don't understand that adding another tag will cause the page to slow down. Typ…

The worst type of ad on newspaper sites are the disgusting "chumboxes" (by scumsuckers like "taboola" or "outbrain") that orbit at the bottom of pages and serve up images meant to be as simultaneously repulsive and fascinating as possible: https://theawl.com/a-complete-taxonomy-of-internet-chum-de0b... As long as these pages have ads that display utterly gross images (if you doubt me, click the above link) that make…

It made me sad when boingboing put one of those ad boxes on the site.

I work in digital media. I get why publishers do it. But, sheesh, if you're resorting these ads that insult your audience in exchange for pennies, I think you need to reexamine your approach.

Re: LA Times and ads

#39

Post by noir_lord »

excalibur wrote: post #34
SwellJoe wrote: post #19

I resisted using an ad blocker for many years; I kinda felt like if I wanted to use a site, I should be willing to trade for seeing their ads. I've changed my tune a couple of years ago, and this is a (small) part of the reason (but a bigger part of it now that I know how crazy usage for ads has gotten). I'm on mobile data nearly 100% of the time most months. 14GB costs me $50-$70 (depending on which network I'm on,…

I recently (past year) bit the bullet and began ad blocking myself. My primary concern is the recent proliferation of malicious content through the common ad networks. Supporting websites is great, but not at the expense of your own security.

I've been using adblockers since they where a thing (and DNS blocks longer than that) since back then you could rely on the adnetworks feeding your malware at some point.

I'm trying to think if I've ever clicked an advert on the internet intentionally and it's probably under half a dozen accidentally.

Re: LA Times and ads

#40

Post by Bahamut »

cobookman wrote: post #16
drawkbox wrote: post #8

This is why data caps are bad. Left open all month that could be 400+ GB of data used on your plan. Ad networks are being subsidized by data caps and personal/business broadband costs. Maybe if ad serving went through the main host and their own bandwidth then maybe ad networks would have a reason to control this abuse of transfer.

Or on the flip side. Data caps will make people care about how much data their site uses. Cause customers will stop using data heavy sites as they have economic insentive not to. Making the web all around faster as no more 10MiB webpages, and making the industry move back to server side rendering.

Or make use of things like service workers to cache pages locally.
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