I don't mind ads. I block because they can and have been used as vectors for drive-by and zero-day attacks, even on otherwise reputable sites. I enable ads back on sites I trust thoroughly.
Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
491–500 of 580 posts
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#492If we took the name "Brendan Eich" and replaced it with "Comcast" more of us would find this entirely loathsome. Indeed it is a very loathsome business model. People have taken exception to it when ATT and Comcast inject ads into your browsing experience and when Adblock Plus removes and then reinjects them. Why is this not hijacking the web, extorting publishers with buy into yet another ad network and then trying t…
I'm not sure Mr. Eich is liked any better than Comcast.
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#493I will repeat this one more time, because Eich seems to be missing the point.[1] I don't adblock for privacy, security, or speed. Those are just nice-side effects. I adblock because I do not want to be manipulated into buying things I do not need. I wonder what would happen if, as a society, we said, "enough, no more ads". Would it really be the capitalist apocalypse that the ad industry is trying to make us believe…
"Those are just nice-side effects."
For me, not being baited into buying stuff is a nice side effect.
I block ads because it's fun to see how badly Google, Apple, Microsoft, apps and websites want data about computer users. It's a game (I would guess that's how they see it); one that forces the user to be vigilant about networking.
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it interesting the level of monetary value we put on most written content on the web (nothing) vs the time we spend reading said valueless content? Is it truly so valueless, or is it only valueless because similar content isn't worth anything? I click on the links I click on because I think they'll have more value to me than the rest of them, but I'm still not to the threshold of reaching any monetary value, on…
What you are describing is called Flattr. It was launched in 2010 and never went anywhere, like every other micropayment service.
That is not correct. Blendle in the Netherlands is growing in leaps and bounds and has 250000 users who PAY to read good content. https://launch.blendle.com/
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#495I will repeat this one more time, because Eich seems to be missing the point.[1] I don't adblock for privacy, security, or speed. Those are just nice-side effects. I adblock because I do not want to be manipulated into buying things I do not need. I wonder what would happen if, as a society, we said, "enough, no more ads". Would it really be the capitalist apocalypse that the ad industry is trying to make us believe…
"Enough, no more ads" == "Enough, no free speech"
So no ads for Greenpeace? Your favorite political party? Your favorite union? Your favorite website?
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I write blog posts from time to time and I do it for pleasure because I enjoy writing about things that interest me and sharing it with others. I do the same thing, but I realized a while back there is a flaw in this model. It means the available creative works—which in turn effectively means the engine of culture—is determined almost entirely by people who are well-off enough to have the free time to do that. I do…
Which significant cultural works have been ad-funded?
Do you think no TV shows were significant cultural works before the creation of cable TV?
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#497I will repeat this one more time, because Eich seems to be missing the point.[1] I don't adblock for privacy, security, or speed. Those are just nice-side effects. I adblock because I do not want to be manipulated into buying things I do not need. I wonder what would happen if, as a society, we said, "enough, no more ads". Would it really be the capitalist apocalypse that the ad industry is trying to make us believe…
I do not want to be manipulated into buying stuff I don't need either. Yet advertising is how free websites stay free, they also collect data and sell it.
I don't mind some ads, but some websites go overboard on ads and have more ads than content.
What really annoys me are pop-up ads or ads that launch a new web browser window.
Then there are ads that play some video and has someone talking in it.
Then there are free download sites but some of the download buttons are ads that download adware stuff. Only one download button is the correct one.
I can resist most ads, and I really cannot afford to buy things I see advertising for.
I use UBlock Origin because some sites started to detect Adblock and refuse to show content.
This Brave web browser is just the next in a line of ad blockers it is a web browser with an ad blocker built in.
Advertising has gotten out of control and I pity the person without some sort of ad blocker that doesn't know any better and clicks on ads to get tool bars and other stuff installed.
In order to combat ad blockers some sites have gone behind a paywall and need an account with a subscription to view content. Going back to the newspaper business model of subscribers and away from the free website paid for with ads.
Some advertising like Adsense are not so bad, I don't mind those ads so much because they are not annoying.
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean you're just taking it to conspiracy levels now. Priming is indeed a thing but those kinds of associations are very short-lived. I don't know of any priming effect that lasts for months and years or at least I haven't read any study that indicates that. If advertisers really knew what they were doing there wouldn't be so much advertising spam. They are just blasting the speakers as loudly as they can and then t…
I'm baffled that you feel this way. I actually worked on some of the science behind it when I was in grad school. Here was one of the well-known projects in the field at that time: http://ilab.usc.edu/publications/doc/Itti_Baldi06nips.pdf > There are also many other kinds of psychological manipulation research. For example, this article from Gamasutra talks about techniques for monetization in games, and this is obvi…
You can be as baffled as you want. My circle of friends is pretty evenly split between people that buy name brand things and those that couldn't care less about any branded products. So either advertisers have figured out how to target those that are susceptible to their kind of priming or they're shooting in the dark.
Reading the abstracts in order:
> The concept of surprise is central to sensory processing, adaptation, learning, and attention. Yet, no widely-accepted mathematical theory currently exists to quantitatively characterize surprise elicited by a stimulus or event, for observers that range from single neurons to complex natural or engineered systems. We describe a formal Bayesian definition of surprise that is the only consistent formulation under minimal axiomatic assumptions. Surprise quantifies how data affects a natural or artificial observer, by measuring the difference between posterior and prior beliefs of the observer. Using this framework we measure the extent to which humans direct their gaze towards surprising items while watching television and video games. We find that subjects are strongly attracted towards surprising locations, with 72% of all human gaze shifts directed towards locations more surprising than the average, a figure which rises to 84% when considering only gaze targets simultaneously selected by all subjects. The resulting theory of surprise is applicable across different spatio-temporal scales, modalities, and levels of abstraction.
Nothing to do with priming. Novelty seeking is not priming and I would expect this result to be true given what I know about people in general and bits and pieces of evolutionary psychology. Do ads try to be novel? Sure. I guess that is one way to grab attention but I don't see any connection between that and long-term manipulation that you talk about.
> A coercive monetization model depends on the ability to “trick” a person into making a purchase with incomplete information, or by hiding that information such that while it is technically available, the brain of the consumer does not access that information. Hiding a purchase can be as simple as disguising the relationship between the action and the cost as I describe in my Systems of Control in F2P paper.
Again, tricking someone is not the same as priming them for the long term. This is the same stuff casinos do so catering to short-term heuristics and tricking a person hardly qualifies as what you laid out in your original comment.
> The current study applied a “mixture-amount modeling” statistical approach—used most often in biology, agriculture, and food science—to measure the impact of advertising effort and allocation across different media. The authors of the current paper believe advertisers can use the mixture-amount model to detect optimal advertising-mix allocation changes as a function of their total advertising effort. The researchers demonstrated the use of the model by analyzing Belgian magazine and television data on 34 advertising campaigns for beauty-care brands. The goal is to help advertisers maximize desirable outcomes for campaign recognition and brand interest.
Sounds interesting but is more about optimizing exposure than anything else. No claims about long term cognitive effects and rightfully so.
Anyway, my bafflement should not be surprising.
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#499I will repeat this one more time, because Eich seems to be missing the point.[1] I don't adblock for privacy, security, or speed. Those are just nice-side effects. I adblock because I do not want to be manipulated into buying things I do not need. I wonder what would happen if, as a society, we said, "enough, no more ads". Would it really be the capitalist apocalypse that the ad industry is trying to make us believe…
> I will repeat this one more time, because Eich seems to be missing the point.
Do you get the impression that you, and people whose values are identical to your own, are their only potential customer?
I have no problem with ads, as long as they are not obnoxious and don't slow me down the site a lot. I accept the tradeoff. Some ads I actually like (such as an ad for a movie that seems interesting). It's not that rare for me to see an ad on YouTube that says "Skip Ad" and I watch it through till the end.
I don't even mind some targeting and tracking, I just wish I had more control over it. Amazon does it, to show me things that they think I am interested in based on what I have looked at. It's not bothersome to me when they get it right. Although I was never as big on shopping as some people, I don't tend to mind looking at things I might like to own.
Call it manipulation if you want....ok. I personally enjoy having a web that is mostly free, and don't begrudge people that try to make a living at producing content for me.
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get your point, and it is a good one. We have a micro payments channel to publishers, frictionless and anonymous, under construction, for folks who want no ads and who will pay. Other users than you will be able to mix and match, too: better and more private ads on sites they don't support, with a revenue share to these users that they can spend on sites they do. We aren't saying "only ads". We do see ads as a nece…
Hey Brendan, Just wanted to throw my $0.02 out there. A browser company will obviously be the next google. Advertising makes no sense as a monetization strategy in any capacity. World wide web is an RSS feed and browsers currently only a feedparser not reader. What new browser will solve ============ * crawlers are being banned and info is mich more protected. * ads are being blocked more aggressively. * corpus of si…
your english isnt the greatest but the points are reasonably sound.
in particular discovery is terrible - its worst - much worse than the altavista days. People don't seem to realize that 99.9% of the people see 0.0..1% of the content, always the same content, for all.
a browser that block all ads, trackers, etc can indeed provide the user data for a fee, since the browser always has access to all the data. not sure how it would access its own crawl index though, ie where does the index comes from? Right now, its google...