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Adblocking: How about Nah?

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Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#431

Post by bn8t »

person_of_color wrote: post #345
catotheyoungest wrote: post #215

I've been blocking ads ever since I learned that I could stop seeing DoubleClick ads by blocking their domain in /etc/hosts. I won't ever apologize for doing so. As far as I'm concerned, any advertisement that depends on JavaScript is malware, and I think that my right to protect myself online outweighs the need of publishers to turn a profit. IMO, profits are like respect. They must be earned, and if the only way yo…

Best way to block ads in 2019?

In the browser: ublock origin

On the whole network: pi-hole

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#432

Post by rgppq112 »

stargrazer wrote: post #74
emptyparadise wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being Turing-complete seems a bit overkill for a hyperlinked document platform.

wait for WebAssembly to be ubiquitous in the browser. Another turing complete language, but faster and smaller.

In practice it will be slower and bigger. Everybody will be just compiling entire C++ frameworks to wasm. A web app needs to do something with images? Here is the entire ffmpeg compiled to wasm. Need a single widget from Qt? Here is the entire Qt compiled to wasm. I'm pretty sure nobody is going to carefully refactor existing C++ libs to select only the subset of features needed for web.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#433

Post by danielscrubs »

mlguy456 wrote: post #384
yoz-y wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except many ads are not directly linkable to purchases. Coca Cola won't track you to a local grocery store and an ad for a musical won't track you when you buy the ticket a week later.

It depends. Your credit card company knows what you bought and when, while the ad network knows the phone number linked to the PC where the ad was shown. Join the two tables and we can track you to the grocery store.

Do they though? They do know where and how much, but the cashiers commonly put in an amount manually into the credit card device.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#434

Post by yoz-y »

mlguy456 wrote: post #384
yoz-y wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except many ads are not directly linkable to purchases. Coca Cola won't track you to a local grocery store and an ad for a musical won't track you when you buy the ticket a week later.

It depends. Your credit card company knows what you bought and when, while the ad network knows the phone number linked to the PC where the ad was shown. Join the two tables and we can track you to the grocery store.

Even if this were done (I don’t think that either of the involved companies would or could share this detail of data) you still have a problem. What about ads that don’t work?

I have put an ad on your site, it took up space for some time. The ad was bad and nobody bought anything even though a hundred thousand people saw it. The publisher is still owed money because they did their part.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#435

Post by TeMPOraL »

18pfsmt wrote: post #291
dkersten wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best content I’ve found in recent years has been either on sites that don’t contain advertisement (because they’re someone’s personal hobby blog, for example, or HN) or from videos where the person was supported directly by fans through Patreon. Anecdotally, the advertisement-supported content is mostly garbage.

I believe your comment and Godel_unicode's are both correct, and I am pro-choice. Some people may prefer adverts over payment. I don't agree, but that is their choice. I can't stand to hear from NPR's underwriters any more, and will start singing songs loudly (I'm a bad singer to boot) when they come on. In other words, I am personally ad-adverse. My 80-something parents, however, don't even mute the channel, let alo…

Being pro-choice about advertising is like being pro-choice about influenza. Advertising is an infectious disease, it does not respect the choices of those who'd prefer to pay up front, and people underestimate its danger to young, old and weakened individuals.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#437

Post by mishu2 »

majewsky wrote: post #211
cbluth wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer: im blocking all ads for reason x Advertiser: dont block my ads because the business depends on it Consumer: here's a solution that works for me Advertiser: but then that solution doesn't work for me Consumer: i don't care, im still blocking all ads until I feel like i don't have to

Consumer: I block ads for reason X. Publisher: Don't block ads or I will go out of business. Consumer: Then please allow me to contribute in some other way (subscription, Patreon, microtransactions). Publisher: Hm, I dunno, that sounds like work.

I'm seeing more and more articles about online ads popping up. I also use an ad blocker (unlock origin on mobile, umatrix on desktop) for all my browsing just to make it bearable.

But I also see a lot of people saying they'd like to contribute to the sites they visit frequently. I built a proof of concept website to let everyone do just that:

https://www.propup.net

There are several similar concepts (Mozilla with Scroll, quid, even patreon et al), but I think mine reduces friction because signing up is as easy as on HN. Oh, and there's absolutely no tracking or selling of information to third parties.

Any feedback is welcome.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#438

Post by glangdale »

elindbe2 wrote: post #66
amelius wrote: post #55

Did anyone ever investigate what benefits ads have to a population? It seems like a net loss to me, because ads are used to make people consume more than they need; ads make people buy the product with the biggest advertising budget instead of the best product; and while ads may make the internet "free", we are still paying for those ads indirectly. Why then, doesn't the government bring advertising to a halt? At lea…

IMO the first place to start implementing ad bans is in public spaces, which I hear is common in Europe. I don't have to watch TV so I don't see TV ads. I don't listen to the radio much so I don't listen to radio ads. I can use an ad blocker on the web, yet for some reason the public spaces I inhabit (and help pay for) are full of ads.

Correct. It's awful here in Sydney. The local government a long time ago decided that it couldn't be bothered to put up and maintain infrastructure like bus shelters and the like, so they got JC Decaux to do it (a French company, whose maintenance trucks amusingly use an Australian flag as their major design motif) in exchange for plastering the whole city with ads.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#439

Post by glangdale »

giobox wrote: post #98
davidgay wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't any billboards along freeways in Switzerland, e.g.

There’s usually no shortage of public ads for Swiss watches at Zurich airport. There is for sure no ban on advertisements in public places.

Airports are never going to be high on the list of places sans billboards and are usually privatized space. I'm not too bummed out about airports and shopping centers, but I draw the line at public transit and actual fully public spaces like the streets of downtowns (which are choked in ads in Sydney now).

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#440

Post by Fiahil »

Ads are forbidden on my network. I'm running a strong pihole that forbid advertising domains, obnoxious tracking and well known malware sites. Sponsored search results do not work and some websites are inaccessible, but it's fine, we don't need them. Ads are "The Great Evil" I will teach my children to fight, in all their forms, before drugs and alcohol.

If you are running an ad-dependant website and struggle to make money as a result of the campaign people like me are running, then you'll have to adapt. If you fail to adapt and your website closes, it's fine : as a society, we didn't need your services.

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