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Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

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Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#451

Post by cortesoft »

mxkopy wrote: post #439
cortesoft wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think pointing out useless and intrusive advertising is the same as saying there should be no advertising at all. We can even agree that ALL current advertising is awful and should be abolished, but agree some form of promoting your product should be available.

Seems like you can't read. > Granted this might be different from ads that do just make you aware of a product. But this reasoning is looking more and more like justification rather than purpose. I have no problem with promoting a product, as long as it takes into account basic human empathy. But I guess if your bank account is directly correlated with product sales, you kind of forget about that.

Telling me I can’t read is not a very charitable response. I can read fine, I was assuming you were trying to respond to my original comment, where the very first thing I write is “I agree a lot of advertising is awful”.

My original comment was arguing that even if a lot of advertising today is bad, that doesn’t mean we should get rid of all advertising. I don’t understand what your response has to do with that. Were you just agreeing with me?

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#452

Post by Johnny555 »

onion2k wrote: post #347
alexb_ wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% of users have no idea what any of this is.

Developer wages would crash through the floor and all the way down to the centre of the Earth if ad blockers really took off without users also accepting micropayments or subscriptions for web services at the same time. Maybe we should be a little bit glad that the main thing keeping massive amounts of money in tech is accepted by users. The key thing that most people in tech don't appear to grok very easily is that…

without users also accepting micropayments or subscriptions for web services at the same time

I think there's chicken and egg problem here -- users aren't going to use micropayments until there's a widely used micropayments platform that is also privacy protecting. I have no desire in using a micropayments platform that's really a cross-platform analytics engine that's even more invasive than Google since they can positively identify me through my payment method.

I have no problem paying for content, but don't want to pay through intrusive ad views, and don't to use a micropayments platform that tracks all of my browsing throughout the web.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#453

Post by somenameforme »

sam0x17 wrote: post #444
azemetre wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is some massive hyperbole and really makes me consider if online advertising should be abolished or massively kneecapped. Maybe we should ask users for money because the alternative has become some kafkaesque hellscape where people think it's totally normal to have a dozen ad trackers when attempting to buy shoes. These trackers have an enormous costs and maybe their externalities should be taxed and regulated.…

I think online advertising as we know it will be essentially dead by the end of the decade. Because most businesses are paying for google ads, you're basically paying a highway toll for the organic traffic you would get for free anyway, and advertisers haven't figured out the ruse. This whole idea that people search for A and are going to be willing to instead click on B if you put it at the top is super overblown --…

The people spamming bigger dick pills, viagra, and the like back in the day made money, and in some cases quite substantial amounts of it. They did so simply for the fact that even if 99.9999% of people didn't go for it, that 0.00001% was far more than enough to show a healthy profit after 'advertising' costs.

The point is that advertising won't end until the formula of additional_ad_driven_revenue > ad_costs becomes false. And we're a long ways away from that given how inordinately expensive advertising is relative to the costs incurred by the companies selling the advertising. And each time that equilibrium price goes lower, the potential market of advertisers who may purchase ads grows.

This logic suggests that, if anything, advertising will get even worse as ad revenues decline. Go low enough and we'll be right back to square one with Google Ads promoting big dick pills and viagra. That's to say nothing of the fact that as revenues decline, both Google and advertisers will be looking for ever more insidious and forceful ways to make you watch and make you consume. Imagine, for instance, the countless dystopias things like Google Nest could enable - if such products ever managed to gain widespread adoption.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#454

Post by denton-scratch »

sofixa wrote: post #420
denton-scratch wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not responsible for Youtube's business plans. Don't they pay executives a lot of money to make their business plans for them?

And they have, as a consumer you can choose ads or Premium. Some want neither, so out of curiosity I'm asking, how do they see things if not those two options?

I have no idea how they see things, I'm not telepathic. I'm in the "want neither" camp; I put up with whatever I can't filter. The kind of stuff I look for on YT often doesn't seem to be monetized.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#455

Post by SoftTalker »

rhino369 wrote: post #403
onion2k wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developer wages would crash through the floor and all the way down to the centre of the Earth if ad blockers really took off without users also accepting micropayments or subscriptions for web services at the same time. Maybe we should be a little bit glad that the main thing keeping massive amounts of money in tech is accepted by users. The key thing that most people in tech don't appear to grok very easily is that…

A huge part of the reason society values those thing as practically zero is because they've nearly always been provided by companies for free. If the ad-supported model fell apart, people would eventual change their understanding of the value of those services. They'd probably pay a decent amount for it. But its a race to the bottom since someone will always offer ad-supported. It'll take an outside force (like ad-bl…

I pay $50/year for email, because it is broadly useful across many vendors, sites, and service providers.

I would not pay $0.50 for any walled garden social media account; I don't even have any with them being free. They are just too intrusive and too limited.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#456

Post by mtremsal »

pmontra wrote: post #137

For all the love I have for Blockada I'm not going to send my traffic through their cloud. I wonder if I can run something like PiHole on a VPS somewhere so that I can protect my devices both when I'm at home on WiFi and when I'm outside on 4G. I'll investigate but does anybody already experienced such a setup?

That's exactly the problem I had while traveling this month. I just posted about my setup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32512576 -- so far it's been great.

See also nextdns.io for a turnkey alternative.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#457

Post by zamadatix »

Spivak wrote: post #392
zamadatix wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A values based judgement goes both ways though - you shouldn't be using such a service in the first place if you knowingly can't conceive of an ethical way for it to operate. And that's a fair stance but few seem to actually care about values based judgement enough to actually stop using the services. That said this case isn't much of a moral mystery. YouTube offers a reasonable paid plan, most people just prefer ads…

Oh trust me I can conceive many ethical ways businesses could operate without ads. I think what you mean is that you shouldn’t use a service you know is unethical. But there are problems with that as a general rule. First being that there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism so that makes things difficult. Second, “voting with your wallet” is pointless, you’re much better off voting with your votes and ad blocke…

I'm not going to comment on capitalism as a whole or the like as that seems neither here nor there for this thread but I can see how someone with those views would have problems with pretty much any service anywhere in the current environment.

I'm not quite sure I follow how opting for the business model one doesn't find unethical is supporting unethical business models. It may not be attacking the business model they find unethical but that's a different claim. Unless of course we allow any connection with a service to taint the entire lot in which case I can again see how someone with those views would have problems with pretty much any service anywhere.

As for the conversation on shoes when you have a basic need sure, don't let people's ability to source needs get in the way of people bettering their working conditions. After all they don't really have a choice in forgoing either. That's not really relevant to people's desires to consume entertainment services though. Particularly when people are given their own agency on deciding what is the right way to fund it already or even to be able to not consume the want should there be nowhere to do so. In the end it may come down to whether you think it should be alright for people to operate on different morals than you so long as their choice is mostly limited to impacting them or if there is only one true set of morals everyone must be forced to follow by law.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#458

Post by kiririn »

Larrikin wrote: post #18
bloopernova wrote: post #5

Firefox for Android with ublock origin makes my mobile web browsing sane again. Highly recommended.

The experience is so awful when I browse on my iPad, instead of my Android phone with Firefox+UBlock. I really don't understand how most people can stand to browse with all the ads. The modern web is so much worse than the pop up ads of the old web.

HTML level content filtering is built into iOS Safari (so whatever Adblock app you use physically cannot access your browsing data)

iOS also has system-wide DNS ad blocking via DNS-over-HTTPS profiles, without needing any apps or on-device VPN hacks, and that works for all networks/cellular seamlessly.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#459

Post by amf12 »

danwee wrote: post #77
Larrikin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The experience is so awful when I browse on my iPad, instead of my Android phone with Firefox+UBlock. I really don't understand how most people can stand to browse with all the ads. The modern web is so much worse than the pop up ads of the old web.

> I really don't understand how most people can stand to browse with all the ads In my case, I browse a limited number of web sites that offer no ads (or a minimum amount). The moment I visit a web site with tons of ads, I just close it immediately and just ignore my original intention of visiting that website (e.g., this happens sometimes in HN: people link websites of newspapers, but I don't last in them more than…

For other websites, Chrome based browsers have a reader mode setting. I just use that.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#460

Post by matheusmoreira »

ipaddr wrote: post #400
matheusmoreira wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> social media, ad-driven news websites, etc are all things that users place practically zero value on > If you start asking users for actual money they suddenly decide that all these services represent no value and they'll live without them. So what you're saying is if we use ad blocking technology to kill off the advertising business model, we can also kill off social media and its addictive algorithms, clickbaitin…

Quoted post unavailable.

We don't need to ban anything. We just need to use technology to reduce their returns on investment as much as possible. Make it unprofitable to run ads. Lack of advertiser profits will put an end to social media and its friends.
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