How we fought bad ads in 2015 • Hacker News Board

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#81

Post by seivan » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 9:11 PM UTC

eevilspock wrote: post #41

Paul_S wrote: post #14

How I fought bad ads in 2016 (in order of impact on usability/performance): http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ (transparent and no overhead, works on Android too!) https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock (a handful of websites will detect it - you can then switch to visual blocking for that domain to get around it, for FF: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... ) ht…

Agreed, all ads are bad. And let's call the advertising business model what it is: a get rich quick scheme. Undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you're offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that? Or make something "valuable" that no one is willing to pay for (WTF?), so again make it appear free. Only the tru…

I haven't finished reading all the posts you've referenced to but it seems like an interesting idea. My only concern is that you're not(?) suggesting an alternative for creating awareness on superior products? Ads at least gives the underdog a small chance. But I agree with the social "tax" we pay for "journalists" shoving ads down our throat and call it news.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#82

Post by marssaxman » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 9:16 PM UTC

mahranch wrote: post #79

eevilspock wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, all ads are bad. And let's call the advertising business model what it is: a get rich quick scheme. Undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you're offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that? Or make something "valuable" that no one is willing to pay for (WTF?), so again make it appear free. Only the tru…

As someone who tangentially works in the industry, you couldn't be more wrong. Ads literally subsidize the vast majority of content you consume on the internet. More importantly, ads subsidize and promote innovation. Without ads, we wouldn't have sites like youtube, facebook, reddit or pretty much every website that doesn't rely on donations (wikipedia, etc). It's interesting just how much of a disconnect young peopl…

I'd be totally OK with all that subsidy going away if it meant we didn't have to deal with ads anymore. We'll figure it out. People would put more effort into peer-to-peer sharing networks if it weren't for the fact that ad-subsidized "free" services based on giant datacenters are so good at undercutting them.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#83

Post by mike-cardwell » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

mahranch wrote: post #79

eevilspock wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, all ads are bad. And let's call the advertising business model what it is: a get rich quick scheme. Undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you're offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that? Or make something "valuable" that no one is willing to pay for (WTF?), so again make it appear free. Only the tru…

As someone who tangentially works in the industry, you couldn't be more wrong. Ads literally subsidize the vast majority of content you consume on the internet. More importantly, ads subsidize and promote innovation. Without ads, we wouldn't have sites like youtube, facebook, reddit or pretty much every website that doesn't rely on donations (wikipedia, etc). It's interesting just how much of a disconnect young peopl…

Without ads we would have developed alternative revenue streams or different styles of architecture which don't place all of the costs and power in the lap of centralised organisations. Ads have crippled innovation on the Internet, not promoted it.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#84

Post by Sir_Substance » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

billmalarky wrote: post #75

easong wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, yes, all ads are irrelevant to me. I have never purchased an item from an ad, and cut out ads form my life as much as possible. I run multiple layers of software to block advertising on all my devices, refuse to use services/apps that force one to use ads, and will leave a restaurant/airport lounge/other public area if they play content with advertising. I won't read print magazines because they have advert…

>And yet, somehow, I still manage to live a modern life of plenty. This lifestyle works for you precisely because the vast majority of the rest of the market does not live this way. Capitalist economies (where the consumers are individuals rather than one large buyer like the state) require products and services to get public awareness. The best way to achieve public awareness is through paid for mass communication.

>The best way to achieve public awareness is through paid for mass communication.

Justify that this is of value to the people.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#85

Post by Sir_Substance » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

billmalarky wrote: post #73

Sir_Substance wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You think all ads are irrelevant to you? Do you not use goods and services to raise your quality of life? There is no connection between these two statements, and the former is not the assertion I made.

Products and services cannot be successful in a market economy without raising public awareness.

"Successful" is such a poorly defined qualifier it makes your statement meaningless. I cannot argue against it, it would be like punching jelly.

Please define it concisely and accurately, using a quantifiable metric and no examples, so that I may either provide counter-examples to your statement or question the societal relevance of the metric you choose.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#86

Post by manyxcxi » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 9:41 PM UTC

eevilspock wrote: post #41

Paul_S wrote: post #14

How I fought bad ads in 2016 (in order of impact on usability/performance): http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ (transparent and no overhead, works on Android too!) https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock (a handful of websites will detect it - you can then switch to visual blocking for that domain to get around it, for FF: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... ) ht…

Agreed, all ads are bad. And let's call the advertising business model what it is: a get rich quick scheme. Undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you're offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that? Or make something "valuable" that no one is willing to pay for (WTF?), so again make it appear free. Only the tru…

I don't think all ads are bad- advertisement, at its basic core is letting people know about a product or service that you provide. This can be informative, educational, and even entertaining.

What IS bad, especially with respect to the 'net is the sheer volume, hostility, low quality, and threat to our safety that our current methods of advertising (ab)use. Why should an article on WSJ be megabytes of download? Why is every action I perform with default settings on public sites being tracked with an efficiency and persistence governments could only dream of? Why can't I opt out globally? Because of the hostility of the environment I think it is acceptable, fair, even responsible to do everything in our power to regain control of our identity and information.

The part everyone needs to figure out is, how can I find out about quality products and services in a way that is meaningful and safe. Maybe it is simply to do everything we can to make ads distasteful and rely on word of mouth and hunting for things when we need them, but there's probably a balance in there somewhere.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#87

Post by kolbe » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 9:43 PM UTC

gbasic wrote: post #10

Someone1234 wrote: post #9

Go to Google right now and search for "passport renew" I see twelve sites which offer the service with no affiliation. All they do is ask for sensitive personal information, charge you an additional fee (on top of the passport fee) and file on your behalf. Unfortunately I've had friends & family fall for this and similar scams (see also "birth certificate copy" "criminal record" "arrest record" "US travel authorisati…

What do you think are additional things that Google could do? I can imagine how hard this is to police. For example: - Let people mark different links as spam - Hire a larger team to police this

One thing that I can't prove, but is likely true, is that .gov links are highly undervalued by google rankings. There are many many cases where a government web site provides the most obvious best result, but the fact that they don't do SEO or pay google forces the result too far down the page.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#88

Post by izacus » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 9:50 PM UTC

mahranch wrote: post #80

CaptSpify wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is though: What can they reply with? "Do you feel you deserve the content for free?" is the only argument I ever hear, and that is so old and tired, it's not funny. I'd be interested in hearing/discussing a solid pro-ad argument, but I've yet to find one.

> a solid pro-ad argument, but I've yet to find one. That's because there is no argument to be had. Ads subsidize the vast majority of content on the internet, full stop. Just as they did TV stations before cable. That content wasn't free, those ad companies paid for their ad spots, which paid for those television shows. The same is true for the internet, without ads, the internet would look very, very different. Wit…

Only in a black and white fairy tale world.

There are myriad of other choices than just "ads like now" or "no ads". There are also other revenue streams, other forms of advertising, other forms of commerce. The way you picture the situation has nothing to do with reality of choices.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#89

Post by dhimes » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 9:58 PM UTC

mahranch wrote: post #79

eevilspock wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, all ads are bad. And let's call the advertising business model what it is: a get rich quick scheme. Undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you're offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that? Or make something "valuable" that no one is willing to pay for (WTF?), so again make it appear free. Only the tru…

As someone who tangentially works in the industry, you couldn't be more wrong. Ads literally subsidize the vast majority of content you consume on the internet. More importantly, ads subsidize and promote innovation. Without ads, we wouldn't have sites like youtube, facebook, reddit or pretty much every website that doesn't rely on donations (wikipedia, etc). It's interesting just how much of a disconnect young peopl…

No no no. Your grandmother grew up with free media: radio and television have always been free and ad-supported. In fact, the first thing that likely pissed her off was getting ads on her cable channels, because the "rich" folks paid for cable, which was ad-free (except, I believe, the broadcast channel, but we didn't have it so I'm not sure).

Internet advertising used to be done far less creepily. For example, you can do context-advertising: show me an ad for surfboards when I'm reading about surfing. I have no problem with that. You can guess that I'm interested in surfing if I'm reading the article. You don't need my shopping history for that.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#90

Post by angry-hacker » Thu, Jan 21, 2016, 10:09 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #9

Go to Google right now and search for "passport renew" I see twelve sites which offer the service with no affiliation. All they do is ask for sensitive personal information, charge you an additional fee (on top of the passport fee) and file on your behalf. Unfortunately I've had friends & family fall for this and similar scams (see also "birth certificate copy" "criminal record" "arrest record" "US travel authorisati…

Can reproduce the results for "passport renew" on Google.

And yes, bing is much worse, look at those ads (or are they search results? hard to make difference): http://imgur.com/a/l7mMv