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Re: No adblocker detected

#81

Post by ryandrake »

charcircuit wrote: post #74
ryandrake wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not any kind of contract. A contract (even an unwritten "social" one) implies at the very least some kind of agreement, some meeting of the minds. There is no meeting of the minds on the web: Your browser simply says "Hey, give me this content," then the server says, "Here's what I'd like you to show," and finally the browser decides what out of that stream of bytes gets shown. There's no agreement by the user i…

>Your browser simply says "Hey, give me this content," The technical details do not matter. Social contacts are about societal expectations, not about your personal ones. Do you think a thief has a meeting of the minds about not stealing something from a shop keeper? It's not the theifs world view that matters here. Similar to your example the physics of the world say it's possible for a human to pick up an item with…

I disagree that there is a societal expectation in this case. If I request HackerNews, it will start sending me bytes. There is no societal expectation around what I do with those bytes. Maybe I'll have my browser render them as-is. Maybe I'll strip out the HTML and render them as plain text in a green 80x24 terminal. Maybe I'll drop every second character and print out the result as wall art.

Or (back on topic) when I'm watching cable TV and they send an ad over the wire. There's no societal expectation that I watch that ad. I could hit the mute button. I could get up to take a piss or grab a beer. I could record the broadcast and watch it later, fast forwarding through the ads.

This is not like a store where there's a clear societal expectation that I don't go in and rob them. I don't think anyone would equate leaving the sofa during a commercial with robbery.

Re: No adblocker detected

#82

Post by bigfudge »

charcircuit wrote: post #76
kergonath wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a social contract. They track me whether I use their services or not, on websites that are completely unrelated. I do not get a choice, not to mention the monopolies they built (yeah, fuck YouTube). These ads eat up my resources and affect my battery life. There is no more honour involved as when someone pays the mob for protection. I strongly reject this argument. I am bound by honour but they can do anyth…

Your choice is to stop giving that place traffic.

When sites like these host a large part of our culture, I think it’s reasonable to think about non compliance because the alternative is essentially to become a digital hermit and not to be able to understand the world one is in. I never agreed to have all public spaces for Dr age ad-supported, for example. These illegal monopolies have made it impossible to talk to large chunks of the population without either watching ads or using an ad blocker. That feels wrong.

Re: No adblocker detected

#83

Post by oneshtein »

charcircuit wrote: post #76
kergonath wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a social contract. They track me whether I use their services or not, on websites that are completely unrelated. I do not get a choice, not to mention the monopolies they built (yeah, fuck YouTube). These ads eat up my resources and affect my battery life. There is no more honour involved as when someone pays the mob for protection. I strongly reject this argument. I am bound by honour but they can do anyth…

Your choice is to stop giving that place traffic.

This is exactly what my ad blocker does.

Re: No adblocker detected

#84

Post by pea »

ksynwa wrote: post #36

I am extremely insulated from ads online and have been for about a decade. Once in a while I have to browse on a device that does not have an ad blocker or most of the times does not even let you install one. Seeing a website that is SEoptimised and heavily ad supported feels like walking into a crack den. That this is the normal experience for the vast majority of users is sad.

I wonder if you could spend a few million on promoting adblockers to justify a short position on Google or Meta.

Re: No adblocker detected

#85

Post by specproc »

throwawaygmbno wrote: post #51
toastercat wrote: post #41

I'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of ads and I don't have a lot of respect for the modern ad networks. However this culture of expecting websites to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly. There is an unwritten social contract here. Websites are willing to host and organise a vast number of content because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may freeload…

This is a fine social contract for the independent blogger just sharing their thoughts on the Internet and maybe hoping to get a few dollars for their server cost. Mega corporations that have been sucking up personal data for a couple decades now are not people. There is no social contract with them. They just sell your data. If you know what they are doing, know how to block it, and refuse to, you are complicit in m…

For so many arguments, I'm also thinking copyright here, the framing is always about the little guy. These laws/practices are there to protect/enable small businesses and content creators.

The reality is very much the opposite, they're about maximising revenue for monopolies. I see no social contract here.

Re: No adblocker detected

#86

Post by flomo »

est wrote: post #3

I wish browsers could just provide a way to disable javascript after page `onload`. Perhaps only enables js when user clicks something.

Maybe this has changed, but ad scripts used document.write(), which runs immediately (before onLoad or etc). A big reason they are slow.

Re: No adblocker detected

#87

Post by safety1st »

MaxikCZ wrote: post #77
safety1st wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, hang on. Your comment is fair minded, but to be fair we have to consider the context. The context is that the courts have found Google holds two illegal monopolies within the online adtech market [1], the remedy for which has yet to be determined. Furthermore the DoJ has sued Meta for holding one as well and that trial is now underway. [2] I don't know about you, but to me, if the counterparty breaches a contra…

This is the best counterargument I have hard so far. Saving it and using it next time someone brings that up, hope you dont mind I stole it without generating $0.000000001 of ad revenue in compensation.

Dang I'll just have to pay for 0.00000001ml of my morning coffee some other way! Thanks and please share by all means. One of my siblings rightly points out how terrible modern online ads are: autoplay, clutter, surveillance, intrusion, malware, etc.

They're totally right of course and my question is - how bad would all this be if the biggest ad market maker wasn't an actual literal convicted-by-multiple-courts criminal with the second biggest market maker not far behind? What if these guys had just followed the existing laws that are on the books?

Well I don't know but I bet it would be better somehow and the only way to find out is to finally start enforcing the law.

I'm sure ads would be better somehow if there were fewer criminals involved. One obvious theory is that Google is underpaying the publishers and the publishers have resorted to dirtier tricks in response. Another is that Google implements stuff everyone else hates because hello monopoly, where else are you going to go? Maybe the lawbreakers cause the slop.

Re: No adblocker detected

#88

Post by daemonologist »

charrondev wrote: post #4

> but if you use external CSS, it’s quite common for the request to fail resulting in an unstyled page That’s a pretty crazy statement. How often do you see loading a CSS stylesheet fail to load? Most sites are completely unusable without their stylesheets and I don’t recall the last time I saw a stylesheet fail to load.

A few times a month for me. (Some combination of Comcast, a Qualcomm NFA765 on Linux, and ad-block. Probably mostly the second thing.)

Re: No adblocker detected

#89

Post by somenameforme »

toastercat wrote: post #41

I'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of ads and I don't have a lot of respect for the modern ad networks. However this culture of expecting websites to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly. There is an unwritten social contract here. Websites are willing to host and organise a vast number of content because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may freeload…

Sites are using ads to be anti-competitive, such that you literally cannot compete with them on price because their price is $0. I'm rather surprised that we haven't seen the emergence of a site where you are literally paid to use it, because that business model is 100% viable.

And the reason that business model is viable is because people don't realize how literally valuable their attention is. And most people also think they're not heavily affected by advertising. Sites are actively exploiting this to deter competition. I would not be, in the least bit, sad to see this state of affairs end.

Re: No adblocker detected

#90

Post by charcircuit »

ryandrake wrote: post #81
charcircuit wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Your browser simply says "Hey, give me this content," The technical details do not matter. Social contacts are about societal expectations, not about your personal ones. Do you think a thief has a meeting of the minds about not stealing something from a shop keeper? It's not the theifs world view that matters here. Similar to your example the physics of the world say it's possible for a human to pick up an item with…

I disagree that there is a societal expectation in this case. If I request HackerNews, it will start sending me bytes. There is no societal expectation around what I do with those bytes. Maybe I'll have my browser render them as-is. Maybe I'll strip out the HTML and render them as plain text in a green 80x24 terminal. Maybe I'll drop every second character and print out the result as wall art. Or (back on topic) when…

>There is no societal expectation around what I do with those bytes

Yes, there is. If you had a group of 100 people and asked what google.com should look like and showed them how Chrome renders the page and your 80x24 modification does that all 100 would say that yours is not expected. You are still too hung up on these technical details of how things are implemented than how the average person thinks of these things.

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