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Adblocking: How about Nah?

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Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#491

Post by drawnwren »

_Understated_ wrote: post #200
wybiral wrote: post #67

I don't actually want to block ads. If you want to put a small text or image blurb anywhere on the page... Good for you. I'll gladly accept those on a webpage so that the content creator can make a bit of cash. But these companies are intentionally blurring the lines between advertisement and digital surveillance. You don't need to collect everything about my operating system, browser, monitors, GPU, every click I ma…

I have no issue with static, contextual ads (I had this conversation on here the other day in fact). Imagine reading something about, say, a particular lawnmower and the article has a link to that lawnmower at the top as an ad from Flymo with a discount. No tracking just a link to buy it with a tracking Id in the URL or something. Can someone answer me this: Are there studies, not funded by those who benefit from mas…

I agree with your sentiment, but there is far too much money in ad tracking for it to be ineffective. Internet advertising is a very metrics-driven enterprise

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#492

Post by acollins1331 »

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 not public places, you literally have to pay for a ticket to get past security.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#493

Post by Silhouette »

jefftk wrote: post #371
Silhouette wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recognize that other advertisers may have different goals, such as for large, brand-centric advertising campaigns. I'm not an expert on those so can't offer an informed opinion on any specifics. From a casual observer's point of view, I don't see how they're any worse off than the classic "everyone is wasting half of their ad budget, they just don't know which half" of the print/broadcast era. As you say, at least…

Try looking at it from the publisher's perspective. If their ad network can't detect fraud then of all the money the network brings in an increasing proportion will go to fraudulent publishers. Honest publishers will make less and less money and eventually give up on the ad network.

This does seem to assume that ad networks are the main or only way to support sites that rely on ads for their funding. I'm not sure why we should make that assumption, though.

We're talking about a built-in feature to safely and transparently include ad content from a third party in your own site. It seems possible that advertisers could set up standardised content to work with that feature. Then the kinds of hosts who make enough from advertising to be worth keeping it anyway could either delegate to an advertiser's own server or self-host. Payment could be either a direct transfer or use some new, simpler and more transparent service just to handle that aspect.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#494

Post by paulcole »

zcid wrote: post #82
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…

Even disregarding the many questionable aspects of consumerism, think about how many developers you know that have dedicated their entire ability to creating better advertising. The amount of brain power that has been spent on marketing (largely) unnecessary products to consumers is staggering. I hesitate to suppose where we could be if those abilities had been directed elsewhere, but I expect the world might be a mu…

I work in marketing/advertising.

I assure if you the industry disappeared tomorrow, I would certainly find some other way to continue making the world a much worse place.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#495

Post by pixelrevision »

I really wish there was some sort of proper monetization model for rss. The web has no reason to be this obnoxious pile of bloated unreadable spyware. I want to support more of these companies because I think what they do is important but it gets hard to justify 10 bucks a month for each of them. When I try and whitelist ads I often find I can’t even find content on the site anymore and my browser slows to a crawl.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#496

Post by petronio »

gorhill wrote: post #475
Thriptic wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ublock origin (in advanced mode), umatrix, and noscript each enable this functionality. Umatrix has the best UI of the three once you get used to it in my opinion. Go on YouTube and look for "the hated one" for great tutorials on JS blocking with umatrix and ublock origin.

> Ublock origin (in advanced mode) You can wholly block JavaScript in uBlock Origin without having to enable advanced mode, by using the per-site JavaScript master switch.[1] * * * [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...

Yes, but then it's all or nothing. In advanced mode you can have a global configuration to block all third party scripts and frames, and then allow scripts from specific domains (or neutralize the global deny for that domain, so that block lists still work). Particularly useful when you just want to move forward and Google's captcha is blocked, but don't want to allow all the other 50 scripts on the site.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#497

Post by dkersten »

okr wrote: post #230
dkersten wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I don’t care. It worked in print, it can work in digital. Adverts would bother me less if advertisers hadn’t proven again and again that they can’t be trusted and that they don’t care about my privacy. I also believe that advertisement is a cop out for a real business model and the lowest form of business. Besides, as Banksy said: “You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe t…

You say, "google makes a fortune and content creators make fuck all", then why do people still upload their content? That makes no sense to me at all. But besides that, i am all for more competition. Better user interfaces, better conditions, less censorship, i am for all of it. And to me it earns a lot of respect, that i can upload my 8k video to youtube, they distribute it potentially to millions of people, and i d…

Because for historic reasons, Youtube has a monopoly position on viewers and the content creators need those viewers, despite that they have to resort to other means, like Patreon, merchandise or product placements/sponsorship to make any money themselves.

This won't be the case forever, I hear more and more people (creators and viewers alike) complaining about Youtube, its monetisation and it recommendation algorithms.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#499

Post by stiray »

JD557 wrote: post #484
stiray wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still remember the web when I got my first modem. What the ads changed is the amount of various clickbaits, useless sites, sites "for fun", garbage of the internet. All this would be gone without ad revenue, there wouldnt be any sustainable bussiness model for them. Regarding usability of ads, in 20 years I never bought anything shown. When I need something I search for relevant product solving my need and I buy it…

> My personal expierience with one of the news sites (cant remember which it was) after GDPR was somehow refreshing. If you didnt agree, they disabled all javascript and throw you into same website but with only text and images relevant to the article. I loved it. That was probably NPR. Text version: https://text.npr.org/

Thank you very much for this. :) Yes, it was npr, and it is perfect example of quality content not needing megabytes of js content while still beeing usable. As a content. Not eye candy.

(Disclosure: I read book each week and I am thrilled by anything new I learn. I dislike pictures of cute animals and I do all communication with friends over the phone or going out.)

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#500

Post by chachachoney »

komali2 wrote: post #420
tlibert wrote: post #88

When I loaded the BoingBoing version of the article my browser contacted 53 third-party domains and a grand total of 373 cookies were set. The BoingBoing privacy policy does not mention "Do Not Track", usually a signal it is ignored, and it discloses nearly none of the third-parties. The cookie opt-out link goes to the NAI site which does not work on Safari because Safari won't allow the third-party cookies required…

I emailed him about this, and his response was essentially, it's not within the ability of publishers and their writers to get rid of these kinds of ads. Pop up ads went away because the consumers worked around them - that's why advertisers stopped demanding publishers put them on their sites. So, wanna get rid of tracking cookies, continue as a consumer to block them and make them pointless. Advertisers will then st…

>> it's not within the ability of publishers and their writers to get rid of these kinds of ads

Sounds like a failure of imagination.

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