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What we break when we fix ad blocking

tonyhaile.com

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Re: What we break when we fix ad blocking

#61

Post by rm999 »

civilian wrote: post #38
rm999 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>everyone seems to frame the debate in the wrong terms ... when I'm in the middle of something I do not want to be told to pay someone else for goods I do not need ... I flat out refuse consumerist society whenever possible. I don't think this is a great way to frame the debate - we've been a consumerist society full of billboards and sales people for 100s of years before the internet was even invented. There has bee…

But ad blockers are a recent innovation in controlling advertising. Billboards... you can lobby your local city or state to pass laws against obnoxious billboards, but at some point it is someone else's property, and they'll be able to put some kind of advertisement there. Ad blockers let you edit your reality, immediately and easily. It's a big change and our historical acceptance doesn't carry over.

>you can lobby your local city or state to pass laws against obnoxious billboards, but at some point it is someone else's property

Such bans are completely possible and within the rights of a local jurisdiction - they're just extremely rare and not something society generally seems to care about. In actuality, branding and advertising is engrained in our culture. I hear friends talk about their favorite ads all the time - instead of the TV show the ads interrupted. I know a very large number of people who watch the Superbowl "just for the ads". I can't convince anyone who visits me in NYC to skip Times Square, because they really want to see that pit of blinking ads for themselves. Many moviegoers love how the theater wastes 15 minutes of their time playing previews (i.e. ads). I could go on and on with my biased examples :)

My point is that we are a consumerist society; anyone who has worked in advertising lives off of this fact and knows it's true. The real problem is internet advertisers took it way too far.

Re: What we break when we fix ad blocking

#62

Post by JulianMorrison »

amelius wrote: post #50
JulianMorrison wrote: post #34

There is an alternative to adverts. Its real, it's here, it works. That alternative is Patreon. In the Patreon model, you can support the creator directly, and their ability to produce content scales with that support. It's like a subscription, except you allow anyone else to free ride. A Patreon supported site could run no ads at all and still make a stable income. It would no longer be fighting its readers to force…

It seems that in the Patreon model, the creator is the central element, and not the content itself. This seems a bit weird, because it is the content I'm after, not the artist. It may be nice for fans who will buy anything from a particular artist, even if it is worthless when considering just the content. Also, this seems a lot like "branding & marketing" version 2.0. I don't like branding. And I don't want to like…

You pay the NYT for a subscription, not tip after the fact for content.

If you don't like what they make, you stop subscribing.

Re: What we break when we fix ad blocking

#63

Post by randcraw »

If ad blocking is a matter of right and wrong, then so is the invisible hand of any demand/supply driven system.

Blocking web-based ads is no different from TV viewers who walk out of the room, or record shows then skip over ads on playback, or mute the TV during ads. AFAIK, no TV advertisers have bemoaned that venerable practice.

If web ad purveyors want folks to browse differently then they must 1) improve their spam so people choose not to block it, or 2) change the physical way it's distributed.

To volubly complain is to sleight the invisible hand, which as you know, in the Land of the Free, is akin to giving olde Mr Smith the finger.

Re: What we break when we fix ad blocking

#64

Post by Erik816 »

bradleyjg wrote: post #19
jordigh wrote: post #4

I'm going to keep repeating this because everyone seems to frame the debate in the wrong terms. Ad blocking for me is not about speed or security. Those are just nice side effects. It is also not because I do not want to pay. I don't mind paying. It is because when I'm in the middle of something I do not want to be told to pay someone else for goods I do not need. I don't care how unobtrusive it is (well, if it's onl…

If you had a plugin that simply blanked the entire page if it contained advertising you'd be acting in a principled fashion aligned with your preferences. As it is you want to have your cake and eat it too. It may be legal and technically possible, but isn't ethical. I'm reminded of the debates that raged on the internet when Napster was around. All the people downloading music strenuously claimed that the industry m…

I can't agree with you that blocking adds on a webpage is unethical. I am accessing a website through a web browser that has the ability to modify the page before it is presented to me. How I choose to view the content that is made available on the open web is my business. If content producers don't want to make their content available in a format where ads can be blocked, they can simply stop doing so.

Re: What we break when we fix ad blocking

#65

Post by stock_toaster »

grey-area wrote: post #9

This flood of articles about blocking ads are all predicated on the assumption that making money with ads supports quality content, and that the internet as we know it would not exist without ads. Both of these assumptions are false - the internet didn't begin by being driven by ads, and it won't end that way, and ad-driven content is degraded by the ads when it starts to exist because of them. The intrusive ads whic…

Wholeheartedly agree.

Re: What we break when we fix ad blocking

#66

Post by avital1 »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #34

There is an alternative to adverts. Its real, it's here, it works. That alternative is Patreon. In the Patreon model, you can support the creator directly, and their ability to produce content scales with that support. It's like a subscription, except you allow anyone else to free ride. A Patreon supported site could run no ads at all and still make a stable income. It would no longer be fighting its readers to force…

From the Patreon wikipedia page:

> Artists set up a page on the Patreon website, where patrons can pledge to donate a given amount of money to an artist every time they create a piece of art, optionally setting a monthly maximum. Alternatively a fixed monthly amount can be pledged

So it either turns into a monthly subscription fee, or becomes another game for the ad-tech industry to solve.

Re: What we break when we fix ad blocking

#67

Post by Mz »

jordigh wrote: post #4

I'm going to keep repeating this because everyone seems to frame the debate in the wrong terms. Ad blocking for me is not about speed or security. Those are just nice side effects. It is also not because I do not want to pay. I don't mind paying. It is because when I'm in the middle of something I do not want to be told to pay someone else for goods I do not need. I don't care how unobtrusive it is (well, if it's onl…

More extremely, I flat out refuse consumerist society whenever possible. None of us needs to be manipulated into buying most of the things ads try to manipulate us to buy.

Yet, you are consuming someone else's writing as a minimum. I have taken ads off most of my websites and added a tipping option. I hope that turns out to be successful. I currently don't get enough traffic for it to support me outright. Most people on the web find that donate buttons do little or nothing. They turn to ads because it is a way to get paid.

What are you doing to try to solve the problem of monetizing the web some way other than ads? If you aren't doing anything to try to promote another monetization strategy, then you are basically promoting slavery in that you are expecting people to make the web happen without being paid for it. You are expecting people to work for free. Currently, many people do work for free, some of them in hopes that it will lead to money at some point. Some of them are quite bitter about it. (Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10234287)

I have been online about 17 years. I have steadily watched good, free content disappear and get replaced by something that helped pay the bills for the content providers. I also loathe consumerism. I live a spartan life and I expect to continue doing so. But the Internet is important to me and it needs to be monetized somehow.

I am not trying to be disrespectful to you and I apologize if it at all sounds that way. It is easy to say what we do not like about what we currently have. It is much harder to find a viable alternative. I don't know how else to start that dialogue and I think it is extremely important that it get started.

Re: What we break when we fix ad blocking

#68

Post by JulianMorrison »

avital1 wrote: post #66
JulianMorrison wrote: post #34

There is an alternative to adverts. Its real, it's here, it works. That alternative is Patreon. In the Patreon model, you can support the creator directly, and their ability to produce content scales with that support. It's like a subscription, except you allow anyone else to free ride. A Patreon supported site could run no ads at all and still make a stable income. It would no longer be fighting its readers to force…

From the Patreon wikipedia page: > Artists set up a page on the Patreon website, where patrons can pledge to donate a given amount of money to an artist every time they create a piece of art, optionally setting a monthly maximum. Alternatively a fixed monthly amount can be pledged So it either turns into a monthly subscription fee, or becomes another game for the ad-tech industry to solve.

A monthly subscription to having the artist or company make content. Not to the actual content itself. The subtlety here, is that if people are paying the artist to work, the work itself can be free or sold-at-cost if physical. So basically, you get what the web used to be before the bust - free content as far as the eye can see.

Re: What we break when we fix ad blocking

#69

Post by freshhawk »

jordigh wrote: post #4

I'm going to keep repeating this because everyone seems to frame the debate in the wrong terms. Ad blocking for me is not about speed or security. Those are just nice side effects. It is also not because I do not want to pay. I don't mind paying. It is because when I'm in the middle of something I do not want to be told to pay someone else for goods I do not need. I don't care how unobtrusive it is (well, if it's onl…

And when you add the spyware/malware issues along with a general stance of "I am always allowed to control what my computer does for me" it strikes me as textbook motivated reasoning to frame things as the author has.

It can get outright comical, part of this argument reads to me as a threat: "If you people don't start letting me run code that works against your interests in your browser we will start doing even more unethical stuff to get money".

I don't even disagree that the bad actors will get worse if their business model continues to fail. I just don't see that appeasement is a good solution in any way. And I just don't believe that anyone would find this convincing unless their livelihood depending on them believing it.

Re: What we break when we fix ad blocking

#70

Post by jamie_ca »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #20

This article assumes that advertisers can get more sophisticated than blockers - I don't agree. With good enough technology, any logo can be snipped out or scribbled over. Any inline, self hosted image can be recognized and removed. Perhaps in future, adblockers will comb through the text of pages and the frames of video and your hero will be drinking "soda" instead of . Heck, one of these days, I want ad blocking gl…

São Paulo, Brazil did just that[1] almost 10 years ago - outright banned outdoor advertising.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa

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