Quite optimistic views there. Most content doesn't have a real monetary value beyond generating views. There won't be an acceptable ads consortium, advertisers will only get more ruthless or die.
It really does seem like a race to the bottom at this point, but it's a releif to see that we're starting to move past calling people theives for ad blocking. Except for the scolding, this situation reminds of the days shortly before everyone had popup blocking built in to browsers; for normal people the internet is broken, and for us, it's hard to realize how awful it is until we use grandma's computer, and get a horrifying reminder of how the other half lives.
If someone's business model relies on exploiting security flaws on the client, they shouldn't expect to trade on that forever.
I don't use an ad blocker (because I want to experience the web that most users do), but it feels like the annoying ad problem has gotten much, much worse in just the last 1–2 months.
...it's hard to realize how awful it is until we use grandma's computer, and get a horrifying reminder of how the other half lives.
I don't run an ad-blocker and I don't run into too many problems. I avoid sites that annoy me with ads, it's pretty simple. I actually have the reverse outlook that you have. I feel like most people over-exagerrate the ad problem to more easily justify running an ad-blocker.
If you honestly believe that then you should try to associate with more technically illiterate. The web is a metaphorical minefield of malware. The average internet user can't download chrome without installing two or three pieces of adware along the way.
> Most content doesn't have a real monetary value beyond generating views. There won't be an acceptable ads consortium, advertisers will only get more ruthless or die.
Let's hope that sort of content dies.
I mean:
10 Reasons I Hope That Kind of Content Dies -- #6 Will Blow Your Mind!!
Its interesting that my local newspaper is primarily a social network for people I don't care about.
A concert review by someone I don't care about, a theater review by someone I don't care about, a probably paid restaurant review by someone I don't care about.
They do a heavy business in reselling a Reuters feed, corporate press releases, and government press releases, but I don't need any of that, or I get it from the source.
Its quite possible "news" as a filler product is obsolete.
That's a good thing. There are a lot of things in life that constitute "make work". There's armies of writers and researchers out there who are working on creating filler content. They shouldn't be working on that junk. Advertisers don't need to be tracking damn near everything because much of the time that data and analysis is completely ignored.
I think ads are the clearest sign that our society has generated a lot of make-work to keep people busy. Depressing.
How does it tell the ads and content apart? Short of having some sort of flagging system with a user base, I don't think there is a technical way to do this.
One would have to serve a different document structure to each request so that static filters stop working, but then ad blockers would start using heuristics to determine which elements on the page are likely to be ads and so the cycle continues.
Increasingly, I'm finding myself using Stylish to nuke page elements that are irritating or terrible. Unless they make the ad content indistinguishable from the real content, they can't force me to look at their ads (or the parts of their sites that I find useless, distracting, or aggravating).
Wouldn't that necessarily lead to an increase in ad quality? If I proxy ads through my server, that increases my costs, which increases what I would have to make from the ads, which means the advertisers will have to see a higher return from their campaigns to justify the higher cost.
Unless the advertising landscape changes drastically from what it is today, I will never not use an ad-blocker, and I reject the notion that it is somehow unethical: for over a decade and a half the online advertising industry has been exploiting every technical loophole or shenanigan it has been able to find in order to degrade my experience, security, privacy for the sake of their bottom line; the comparatively recently the phenomenon of ad-blockers -- a technical measure on the other side of the fence -- has the industry up in arms with cries that they're unethical. Really?
If your business model relies on technical tricks whose ethics are in a very dark-grey area, you do not get to play the ethics card when I use a technical trick to protect myself from you.
Yes there are "nice" ads and content creators that need to monetize, and it's sad that they get caught in the crossfire. But I'm not willing to sacrifice my security and privacy for the benefit of those. It's like saying "yeah uncle Bob gets drunk and beats us but his buddy is a really nice guy just trying to get by". Sorry Bob, you're not welcome in my home.
The argument isn't that it's unethical to not watch ads, it's that it's unethical to not watch the ads but still take what they offer in exchange. Any industry would be up in arms with people walking away with their goods without paying. It's really not that different than the MPAA or RIAA, especially in that since we don't like them, we feel justified in behavior that normally we wouldn't take. Does the RIAA being a shitty organization mean that we should steal (music) from their constituents, or that we should boycott them? Does the MPAA doing shitty things mean we should steal movies from them, or that we should boycott them? How is viewing content without seeing ads any different? Two wrongs don't make a right.
Now, to clarify, I'm not expecting anyone to stop using ad-blockers. That's stupid, there are very real reasons why they are useful, but acting like there's no ethical problem with the current situation, IMO, is ridiculous. The first step to fixing the problem in a sustainable way is acknowledging the problem in it's entirety, and that includes our part. Otherwise whichever side convinces enough politicians first gets a temporary advantage, until it sways the other way, or we finally get better legislation. Why not aim for a good compromise from the beginning, so everyone wins?
> It's like saying "yeah uncle Bob gets drunk and beats us but his buddy is a really nice guy just trying to get by". Sorry Bob, you're not welcome in my home.
Yet you keep using his summer home for vacation. Perhaps cutting off contact would send a clearer signal?
These sites should block users who are ad blocking rather than allow the users in and place a guilt trip on them. How am i supposed to know when i click on a random link that the owner of the page has a unwritten expectation that i should view their ads?
Unfortunately (for this situation) ad-blockers are starting to enter a war, where they try to remove adverts while keeping websites functional. It would be nice to have an agreed way for websites to say "No ads? Go away", but I imagine most sites would choose to activate it, so ad-blockers would ignore it anyway, similar to do-not-track.
Sometimes I read webpages with /usr/bin/curl. Sorry, but you aren't going to convince anyone that I am somehow morally obligated to copy the <img> URLs to a computer with a graphical web browser to see some ads.
Much like how the "first-sale doctrine" limits a publisher's rights over a work after a copy first changes hands, you do not get to dictate how the client renders your HTML or if they choose to run your javascript after you've voluntarily handed the files over to them in the HTTP request.
If your business suffers because of this, well, that's what happens to business models based on magical thinking and a misunderstanding of copyright.
You are the one who introduced "moral obligation", and "dictating" to the conversation, please don't invent words I did not use.
I simply said it would be nice for website owners to express their opinion on ad-blocking (some are pro, some are anti), and then users could choose to use that information.
If this gets into a war, it won't be hard for website authors to start sending you webpages where you have to call the javascript for the content (with ads) to appear -- some websites already do. I would suspect however those who write ad blockers will be more motivated to block ads, than websites will be to write ad-blocker-blocers.
Well, if a site displays ads, the expectation is that you will view them, or if not view them, they will at least be presented. I think to say otherwise is disingenuous.
Yes, sites should block users that use ad-block if they care, but the ecosystem isn't to the point that something like that is tenable for most sites. I'm not fighting against ad-blockers here, I'm fighting against the entitlement that I see exhibited. I think it's counter-productive.
>The argument isn't that it's unethical to not watch ads, it's that it's unethical to not watch the ads but still take what they offer in exchange.
And that argument is completely and utterly bogus. When you broadcast your radio or TV signal over the airwaves, I can watch or listen just to the content and switch it off, mute it, fast forward it, etc. during the ads. I have no obligation to watch or listen to them and I don't.
It's no different when you put a publicly accessible file on an open server. There are no restrictions on anyone downloading that file and not downloading other unrelated files just so you get paid. If you don't want users doing that, find a different way to get paid.
>Does the MPAA doing shitty things mean we should steal movies from them, or that we should boycott them? How is viewing content without seeing ads any different? Two wrongs don't make a right.
That's a complete non-sequitir. None of this is the same as pirating goods from the RIAA and MPAA. Those are not publicly available pieces of content that anyone can access. You have to break encryption and other similar anti-circumvention tools to watch them without paying.
>When you broadcast your radio or TV signal over the airwaves, I can watch or listen just to the content and switch it off, mute it, fast forward it, etc. during the ads. I have no obligation to watch or listen to them and I don't.
He said it was unethical, not impossible. Likewise if there is a public fruit stand on the side of the road with no one around, and the owners expect people to take fruit and leave money - sure theres no restrictions to stop you from stealing all the food and the money, but if you do, just because there are no restrictions doesn't mean its not unethical.
No, and I don't understand how you can honestly make that conclusion without being purposely obtuse. Intent is a huge factor of this (as is what is ethical), one is being purposely malicious (actively blocking ads, purposely taking money), and the other is just someone using the bathroom.
> How is viewing content without seeing ads any different?
It's very different, because the MPAA and RIAA do not (and do not claim to) give their content away for free. You can't (claim to) give things away for free and then argue that it was unethical that people didn't quid-pro-quo somehow. To clarify something in my original comment that some people further down the comment chain seem to be misunderstanding, when I said
> If your business model relies on technical tricks whose ethics are in a very dark-grey area, you do not get to play the ethics card when I use a technical trick to protect myself from you.
I am not only referring to the advertising industry. If you are a content publisher and you use any of the vast majority of ad networks to meet your bottom line, then your business model relies on technical tricks whose ethics are in a very dark grey area, and I have no qualms using technical tricks to protect myself from you or those you chose to trust with displaying content on your website.
I respect the opinions of content creators who believe that ad-blockers are unethical, and if you run a site that says "if you use an ad blocker please do not use this site" then I respect that opinion too and will stop using your site. But if you run a website on which you claim to offer your content for free while surreptitiously violating (or allowing others to violate) my security and privacy (especially without even warning me first), then I have no qualms consuming your content for the asking price and not viewing your ads. I have yet to see an argument against this point of view that has any merit, but I am of course willing to change my opinion if and when I do.
Where are you getting this "you claim to offer your content for free" from? Most sites don't make a claim the content is free, but people like to assume it is and take it. It doesn't put the providers in a good light that it's become the norm that there's an unspoken agreement going on that they are benefiting from, but it's not any better on the consumer side, as taking something without confirming it's actually free isn't appropriate either.
What we have here is an unspoken agreement about a transaction taking place, and both sides are interpreting it in their best interests without confirming that's okay for the other side. Everyone's an asshole in this scenario, which I think fairly accurately describes reality.
To put this in relatable terms, it's like walking down a country road and coming upon a crate of apples. While they don't say they are free, they look kind of free, and you're hungry. You take one, and all of a sudden a guy jumps out from behind a tree and demands that you owe him a favor and some info about yourself for eating his apples. He's a scumbag, it's obvious, for trying to engineer a scenario where he can solicit business from people that might otherwise pass him by, but the passerby that partakes without confirming that it's actually free isn't without fault either.
Now, we see that some people are pretty good at just ignoring the shop keeper, and they keep reaping the benefits of free apples. Sure, the owner of the apples is an asshole, but the other people are still stealing his apples, and regardless of how much an asshole he is, that's not okay. At this point, both parties are acting in bad faith. Unfortunately, the problem is muddied by the facts that people decided long ago, primarily due to these shady guys and small favors, that apples just aren't worth paying money for anymore, and rarely the guys that own the apples even sell your info and/or favors to really shady people, so it's often safer to ignore them and give them nothing.
P.S. Yes, this conflates the content creator and the ad network, but that's not really the point of this.
> To put this in relatable terms, it's like walking down a country road and coming upon a crate of apples. While they don't say they are free, they look kind of free, and you're hungry.
This, I think, is where you and I disagree: the web was founded on the free exchange of information, where when you put something online, it's free (and then later, it's free unless you ask money for it via paywall etc). So it's more like deciding that an unspoken transaction is taking place and it should benefit you in some way if I pick up a sofa that you left on the curb. Yes I am benefiting from this furniture, and yes it's something I could have paid for elsewhere and you could have chosen to sell. And if I see you while I'm picking it up I may thank you. But that's as far as my obligation will go, and if you try telling me about how unethical i'm being by cleaning the couch before I use it (and in so doing throwing away the flyers you've stuffed under the cushions without reading them) then I will think you're being a little ridiculous.
I think I'm pulling the metaphor a little far here and I apologize for that, but I stand firm on the opinion that if you put a resource up on the internet, and you do not claim otherwise, then I have no obligation to you for consuming it. And the other thing is I have never seen a site that asks me not to use it if I block ads, a request I fully respect. Only ones that whine about how I should be less unethical and allow unknown third parties to violate my privacy and security and themselves make the lions' share of the profits so that the website can scrabble a few dimes themselves, a request that I do not respect in the least.
> This, I think, is where you and I disagree: the web was founded on the free exchange of information, where when you put something online, it's free
That is definitely where we disagree. The web is a medium. Ascribing freedom to it is a fallacy, regardless of how it was first developed and used. It would not be where it is today without commercial interest at every level, and to me it's obvious that when a business is on the web, their purpose is not to give you free stuff, it's to make money[1]. I think to assume otherwise it to delude oneself. In other words, the internet doesn't have an opinion on whether it should be used for free things or not.
> And the other thing is I have never seen a site that asks me not to use it if I block ads, a request I fully respect.
Depending on how you interpret the message, I have. I've seen messages where the ads would be saying "We support this site with advertising, without thatrevenue we can't continue. Please don't block our ads." You can choose to either interpret that as them whining, or you can choose to interpret it as them expressing their wishes that ads be viewed on the site, and to use it with an ad blocker is against their wishes.
1: For that matter, nothing is free, ever. There is always an intended purpose, and an intended gain for the exchange. That gain may not be directly from the other party, and may not be financially based. For example, the gain could be the opinion of the other party or society in general (social capital, fame), a long play on later financial gain (establishing relationships), or the feeling of doing something useful for society or specific others (personal esteem), etc. If you can't determine why something is being offered, then you should be wary.
> Unless the advertising landscape changes drastically from what it is today, I will never not use an ad-blocker, and I reject the notion that it is somehow unethical:
I go to a site. That site hands me over to a completely different network. My target site's owner has no idea what's running on that other network.
I'd agree if you are saying that's no coincidence? The profit from the ads on the target site are the fuel to push its content to the top of results over better or more relevant content with less financial motivation or efficiency.
In other words, blocking ads on a large scale causes a readjustment that is not necessarily bad for the overall ecosystem since most of that money is actively winning a zero sum game against better content with less (desperate) backing.
Ads are a very bad hack to the problem of getting people to spread news of a product through word-of-mouth. Things like the AeroPress get lots of sales and I've only seen them sitting on a shelf in a coffee shop, being talked about online, etc.
The ads I see for New Relic, PagerDuty, PyCharm, etc. are relevant to me but they are not actionable. They would be relevant and actionable if I am consciously looking for these products as part of a report that will kick-start the procurement process.
All the books I've bought in the last year were based on recommendations from blogs and podcasts.
I block ads for one reason--they can and have been used to deliver malicious content, quite frequently too, even on otherwise reputable sites who are using a third-party ad provider. It's not worth the risk.
I'm not surprised by the low number (9%) who felt a little bit of guilt installing ad blocking technology. If you feel guilty, you probably aren't using a blocker, hence the low number.
I feel no guilt, personally. I began using an ad blocker after receiving a nasty bit of Flash based malware via an ad served by one of the major ad networks (I can't recall who, but I want to say it was via MSN at the time). That was it for me. The moment viewing ads on otherwise-safe sites became a threat, I started blocking without guilt. Because it was an advertising network, it wasn't just as simple as saying "I'll block ads on site xyz"
I feel guilty that the content I enjoy isn't receiving any funds from me to continue making that content, but I'm not convinced ads are the correct solution to that problem.
I was with the article up until "This will clearly favor micro-payment systems."
No, no it won't. People have been predicting micropayment for decades now. To call the attempts "failures" would be kind. Patronage (like Patreon, for instance) and bundling are much better bets.
I might be wrong but I don't think those are services that can be characterised as micropayment like e.g. Flattr is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment for more).
Right, those are macropayments -- pay once, and you have access to all content covered by the service for the month. That's bundling, and it reduces the friction/cognitive load required to decide if each microtransaction is worth it -- every song/movie/etc. is "free" after the initial payment, so you don't spend time worrying about whether or not this particular song is worth 0.05 cents or whatever, you decide that Spotify as a whole is worth the subscription fee and then you consume as much music as you want without further worry.
(The OTHER common thread to all those examples is that none of those actually make enough money to pay for the absolute cost of the content they offer -- with the exception of some Netflix originals and Spotify-exclusive tracks and what have you, the vast majority of the content on those subscription services is licensed to those platforms at some MARGINAL cost, and the cost of actually making that content has already been paid for by theatrical showings, TV rights fees, album sales, etc. They're not really sustainable models as they exist right now once theaters, TV channels and album sales start to die out, which is where the sort of content that is being talked about here already is at -- content that needs to cover the ABSOLUTE cost of creation through online revenues.)
Honestly I think the increased use of adblockers is pushing us towards a situation where we will get our content from a "walled garden" like Apple News, Google Play Newsstand, or, in the near future, some sort of Facebook integrated news reader.
"all ecosystem components ... will need to congregate and come up with acceptable ad formats..."
That's the ad industry's fantasy - that they can come up with "acceptable ad formats" which will be allowed through ad blockers. This comes from the AdBlock sellout - you can now pay to get through AdBlock. But AdBlock isn't the only game in town.
Ad servers can fight back. HTTP 2 will probably be used as a tool to fight ad blocking. When it all comes in through one pipe, it's harder to identify ads. We'll probably see ad insertion at the CDN level, with the ad stream integrated with the content stream into one HTTP 2 bundle. Cloudflare may already be doing this.[1]
Then we'll need better ad blockers. Current ad blockers are rather dumb. They mostly use some huge file of regular expressions to recognize ads. Those files are maintained by humans, and they're always a behind changes in ad formats. Systems that automatically recognize ads, regardless of format, are needed. Ad blockers of the future must work more like machine-learning spam filters.
Advertisers will never be able to overcome the fact that humans have free will.
With sufficient mental training, any person can add an ad blocker to their own brain. The mind of such a person instantly disengages the instant it detects an unsolicited sales pitch.
Having conceived the end goal, we now imagine such tools as may be helpful to achieve it. Perhaps it is useful to build a tool that blocks the most intrusive and annoying advertisement on Earth from the senses of the human whose internal ad-blocker is not yet perfected. Expand the tool such that progressively less annoying ads are blocked for those with progressively less perfect anti-ad discipline. Continue until the tool allows one with no training whatsoever to have the same ad-free existence as the adblock monk.
Once the person has chosen to not attend to unwanted ads, there is no countermeasure any advertiser can take. The human is the ultimate arbiter over the thoughts that enter its own brain. Whatever cannot be blocked can be ignored. It is the desire to ignore that leads to the blocking.
The traditional method to alter the desires of the consumer--advertising--is not likely to affect a desire that specifically targets advertising. You can't get people to pay attention to ads again by advertising for the practice of advertising.
All you can do is stop the bleeding, by immediately curtailing all practices that led people to start tuning out ads in the first place.
At this point, if you want me to attend to ads, you will have to pay me, directly. I will open one end of a channel that leads to me. If the cash stops coming through, I'll close it. If the cash that comes through is insufficient to compensate for the peace of mind I would otherwise have by closing it, I'll close it. I will then take that cash, and spend it on whatever it is that I would like to be ad-supported. Maybe I will spend a little on something that was advertised. Maybe not.
An advertiser might ask, "what guarantee do we have that you will actually pay attention to the advertising we push through that channel?" And my answer is that no advertiser ever had any such guarantee in the entire history of mankind. Even my own spouse peppers a seemingly unending stream of words with frequent "are you listening?" pings. If my own spouse cannot trust that I am paying attention at all times, no advertiser stands a chance. And as I find those pings to be annoying, anyone else that asks the same thing is likely to be told, "I was, but now I no longer will be."
Advertisers are just going to have to accept that most of what they do is a waste of money and effort. They are broadcasting seeds with a low germination rate, with no way to test beforehand which ones will ever sprout. If you don't throw them all out there, all the sterile seeds along with the fertile, nothing will ever grow.
>>At this point, if you want me to attend to ads, you will have to pay me, directly. I will open one end of a channel that leads to me. If the cash stops coming through, I'll close it. If the cash that comes through is insufficient to compensate for the peace of mind I would otherwise
have by closing it, I'll close it.
+1000 This is the same conclusion that I've reached. Advertisers must pay us. There is no way that the free-ride that advertisers have been getting is going to continue.
We control what enters our minds, not advertising companies. If they want to pitch products or services to us then they can pay for "qualified leads" : those people who explicitly allow them to advertise by first being paid.
We have the means to enable this (even somewhat anonymously) with bitcoin. Once the advertisers get over the initial disconnect with their current system, they (at least the enlightened ones) will understand that this helps them too. Instead of desperately hoping that someone out of millions will carefully consider their message, they can get a much higher response by advertising to the people who are more likely to be receptive.
Queue the pundits who will claim that the reason advertising is supposedly effective is that you cannot physically ignore the brain washing. They always pop up to claim that no matter how strongly you believe that advertising's manipulation does not affect you, it does. That your subconscious sucks it all in, regardless of the effort your conscious mind makes to filter it out.
I go out of my way to stop purchasing products whose advertisements I see too often, or who use emotional advertising that has nothing to do with their product. One example: I stopped buying Dove products the very first time I saw one of their "real beauty" campaign ads. Bloody hell, you're only selling soap. What on Earth makes advertising people think that stroking the egos of people with body image issues would work? Perhaps it works on a lot of people, but I sure as hell am not one of them.
I think that may actually be more advertising for the advertising industry. Let's see the results of the comparison between the control group and the experimental group.
I don't think any such data exists, particularly among those who have consciously decided to ignore the ads.
Company: Why should we pay you if people are ignoring the ads?
Admen: Because they work *better* if you aren't paying attention.
Company: Really?
Admen: Absolutely!
Company: We're not sure about that...
Admen: Ladies and gentlemen, mister Kevin Nealon.
Mr. Subliminal: I get that you have concerns
(keep paying us)
about the effectiveness of subliminal advertising,
(it really works)
but you should take a look at this chart
(totally legit)
showing what appears to be ad budget on the x axis
(sex axis)
and product sales on the y axis
(why not buy more ads?).
As you can see,
(really just a model's ass)
more ads mean more sales. So in conclusion,
(buy more ads)
your company should definitely buy more ads from us.
Company: We'd like to increase our advertising budget.
I block ads because I don't like the idea of ads. I'm tired of the constant attempts to persuade me this way or that. I want my attention span back. Plus, the vast majority of content on the web just isn't worth putting up with ads for. I don't even read the content any more, the comments are much more informative and entertaining. ;)
In my opinion, the "news" / "blog" agencies have already innovated on this by just blending content with advertising with notoriously click-baity articles like "top 12 ways your cat wants you dead" where every single bullet point is a cleverly worded advertising for cat neutering, cat food, or whatever.
I suspect Facebook already does something similar via automating the hundreds of millions of dead accounts in their system. My suspicions were triggered because a decade ago when FB was still fresh, I created a page for my dog (now passed away), and very recently, it shared a "funny" video. So either my dog is using facebook from beyond the grave, or fb has automated his account.
I'm thinking aloud and obviously taking a negative purist view here, but does anyone else wonder, if in 20-30 years, if civilisation has actually advanced any, if we'll look back at ads in the same way we now seem to be treating tobacco, sugar, alchol etc. etc. ie a poison, but in this case of the mind rather than the body [1] [2]?
I mean all that mind bogglingly dark patterny/cynical gameplay we engage in everytime we watch one.
And there's also all the negative, misery inducing, pressure when you realise, even if you sold the house and spent it all on plastic surgery you wouldn't be anywhere near as attractive or thin as the size zero model they've just tried to use to sell you the gadget you probably don't need, that you probably can't afford that was likely made by some "exploited" person from resources that probably aren't sustainable and then shipped halfway round the world. And then you go and buy it anyway and hate yourself for being gullible and buying something you probably can't afford... just so you can support some guy who's just doing his job but secretly hates himself for engaging in a zero-sum game with the rest of mankind and persuading you to buy something you... every time he sits down at his desk so he can buy his kids new ipads for christmas when they'd arguably be better off without anyway [3].
Another nash equilibrium in a world crying out for socially optimal solutions [4] or just an another inevitable inefficiency of capitalism [5].
I mean what ever happened to the Just In Time philosophy. We've ran with it on the supply side so stuff is cheaper than it should be, but every day i get bombarded by tens of emails from companies investing a lot of effort in trying to kiddology me into buying stuff which i thankfully just filter away (as i do with the rest of it - ad-blockers, don't watch live tv or listen to radio stations with ads, don't buy into the whole sky pay for stuff and then also have to watch ads). It's almost like a stupid tax.
At the end of the day I'm just not going to buy your <unnecessary> thing so stop wasting my time/sanity/electricity/bandwidth and yours. It's not as though, for example, if i want to buy a new tent (which so far i've done about every 5 years) or do a canvas (probably twice a year) i can't just wait ten minutes for the next millets sale or photobox offer (i mean when does photobox not have a sale on for something they just keep increasing the base price of anyway). And anyway i'd probably be better going somewhere that had spent slightly less on their kiddology so their quality sucked less.
I entirely get why people do it, the "good" of the website/service/... i provide hopefully outweighs the "evil" of the mechanisms i go to try and support it, but if you didn't "need" the money, would anyone go anywhere near an ad-broker?
I can't help but think if we factored money out of this whole equation, this whole pyramid of snafu would collapse and we can move onto a slightly more healthy, enlightened society? Is this the best we can do? Would basic income help [6]? Or do i have to wait for likely societal collapse to a lower energy level to render this whole thing moot (see Tainter)?
On the flip side of this, I ran a startup that absolutely could not have existed without targeted Web advertising. Our first product was an add-in for collaborating on PowerPoint presentations, and we were able to economically target ads towards people who were actually searching for "PowerPoint collaboration" or similar keywords. I don't see how we could have found those people, or they could have found us, in a more effective or direct way.
Is there some sort of odd 'bubble' thing going on here? Is there anyone out there who doesn't work at an advertising company that cares about this? Are people on HN simply playing devil's advocate?
I don't know anyone who cares for advertising or for the relevant business models one jot. Considering it 'unethical' to block ads is simply laughable. I don't want them to exist at all!
When I browse the web I don't want random blobs of capitalism shoved down my throat at every opportunity. I don't want an SUV. I don't even want to know such a thing exists.
The 'paying for content' angle is so far off the mark it makes me feel as if I have some sort of mental illness. I can't even think of the words to describe how the statement isn't even 'wrong', it's just nonsense.
Allowing Mega Big Corp to bombard my brain so that an artist can eat is a broken paradigm. What gives them the right? Lots of people like Mega Big Corp, so I should be battered into submission until I fall in line too? They have 'money'? I don't want 'money' on my Internet. It wasn't like this, before.
I don't care about how 'obtrusive' your advertising is. I don't care what colour it is, whether it's animated, what font you use. I don't want it. Just like when I take a walk in the forest I don't want cars.
I don't care how 'unethical' you feel me blocking adverts is, either. Use your men with guns; and forcibly lock me in a box. Prevent me from doing it. Then we'll see who's 'unethical'.
edit: WRT 'not going to the sites'; it's just not a realistic option, is it? The equivalent for TV would be not watching it. The equivalent for living in a city (ex. London bus ads, tube ads, billboards on roads, etc) would be not living in a city.
If you don't want to consume advertising there is no choice left. It's either block ads, try to cognitively block ads, or simply don't interact with society/culture any more. (I actually do try to limit myself to ad-free sites, not out of an ethical compulsion, but because often they're just better in general; e.g. HN, Wikipedia, forums/mailing lists, etc)
62 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadIf someone's business model relies on exploiting security flaws on the client, they shouldn't expect to trade on that forever.
I don't run an ad-blocker and I don't run into too many problems. I avoid sites that annoy me with ads, it's pretty simple. I actually have the reverse outlook that you have. I feel like most people over-exagerrate the ad problem to more easily justify running an ad-blocker.
Let's hope that sort of content dies.
I mean:
10 Reasons I Hope That Kind of Content Dies -- #6 Will Blow Your Mind!!
A concert review by someone I don't care about, a theater review by someone I don't care about, a probably paid restaurant review by someone I don't care about.
They do a heavy business in reselling a Reuters feed, corporate press releases, and government press releases, but I don't need any of that, or I get it from the source.
Its quite possible "news" as a filler product is obsolete.
I think ads are the clearest sign that our society has generated a lot of make-work to keep people busy. Depressing.
advertisers sending promotions trough iphone exploits
If your business model relies on technical tricks whose ethics are in a very dark-grey area, you do not get to play the ethics card when I use a technical trick to protect myself from you.
Yes there are "nice" ads and content creators that need to monetize, and it's sad that they get caught in the crossfire. But I'm not willing to sacrifice my security and privacy for the benefit of those. It's like saying "yeah uncle Bob gets drunk and beats us but his buddy is a really nice guy just trying to get by". Sorry Bob, you're not welcome in my home.
Now, to clarify, I'm not expecting anyone to stop using ad-blockers. That's stupid, there are very real reasons why they are useful, but acting like there's no ethical problem with the current situation, IMO, is ridiculous. The first step to fixing the problem in a sustainable way is acknowledging the problem in it's entirety, and that includes our part. Otherwise whichever side convinces enough politicians first gets a temporary advantage, until it sways the other way, or we finally get better legislation. Why not aim for a good compromise from the beginning, so everyone wins?
> It's like saying "yeah uncle Bob gets drunk and beats us but his buddy is a really nice guy just trying to get by". Sorry Bob, you're not welcome in my home.
Yet you keep using his summer home for vacation. Perhaps cutting off contact would send a clearer signal?
Much like how the "first-sale doctrine" limits a publisher's rights over a work after a copy first changes hands, you do not get to dictate how the client renders your HTML or if they choose to run your javascript after you've voluntarily handed the files over to them in the HTTP request.
If your business suffers because of this, well, that's what happens to business models based on magical thinking and a misunderstanding of copyright.
I simply said it would be nice for website owners to express their opinion on ad-blocking (some are pro, some are anti), and then users could choose to use that information.
If this gets into a war, it won't be hard for website authors to start sending you webpages where you have to call the javascript for the content (with ads) to appear -- some websites already do. I would suspect however those who write ad blockers will be more motivated to block ads, than websites will be to write ad-blocker-blocers.
Yes, sites should block users that use ad-block if they care, but the ecosystem isn't to the point that something like that is tenable for most sites. I'm not fighting against ad-blockers here, I'm fighting against the entitlement that I see exhibited. I think it's counter-productive.
Is this a serious question?
And that argument is completely and utterly bogus. When you broadcast your radio or TV signal over the airwaves, I can watch or listen just to the content and switch it off, mute it, fast forward it, etc. during the ads. I have no obligation to watch or listen to them and I don't.
It's no different when you put a publicly accessible file on an open server. There are no restrictions on anyone downloading that file and not downloading other unrelated files just so you get paid. If you don't want users doing that, find a different way to get paid.
>Does the MPAA doing shitty things mean we should steal movies from them, or that we should boycott them? How is viewing content without seeing ads any different? Two wrongs don't make a right.
That's a complete non-sequitir. None of this is the same as pirating goods from the RIAA and MPAA. Those are not publicly available pieces of content that anyone can access. You have to break encryption and other similar anti-circumvention tools to watch them without paying.
He said it was unethical, not impossible. Likewise if there is a public fruit stand on the side of the road with no one around, and the owners expect people to take fruit and leave money - sure theres no restrictions to stop you from stealing all the food and the money, but if you do, just because there are no restrictions doesn't mean its not unethical.
It's very different, because the MPAA and RIAA do not (and do not claim to) give their content away for free. You can't (claim to) give things away for free and then argue that it was unethical that people didn't quid-pro-quo somehow. To clarify something in my original comment that some people further down the comment chain seem to be misunderstanding, when I said
> If your business model relies on technical tricks whose ethics are in a very dark-grey area, you do not get to play the ethics card when I use a technical trick to protect myself from you.
I am not only referring to the advertising industry. If you are a content publisher and you use any of the vast majority of ad networks to meet your bottom line, then your business model relies on technical tricks whose ethics are in a very dark grey area, and I have no qualms using technical tricks to protect myself from you or those you chose to trust with displaying content on your website.
I respect the opinions of content creators who believe that ad-blockers are unethical, and if you run a site that says "if you use an ad blocker please do not use this site" then I respect that opinion too and will stop using your site. But if you run a website on which you claim to offer your content for free while surreptitiously violating (or allowing others to violate) my security and privacy (especially without even warning me first), then I have no qualms consuming your content for the asking price and not viewing your ads. I have yet to see an argument against this point of view that has any merit, but I am of course willing to change my opinion if and when I do.
What we have here is an unspoken agreement about a transaction taking place, and both sides are interpreting it in their best interests without confirming that's okay for the other side. Everyone's an asshole in this scenario, which I think fairly accurately describes reality.
To put this in relatable terms, it's like walking down a country road and coming upon a crate of apples. While they don't say they are free, they look kind of free, and you're hungry. You take one, and all of a sudden a guy jumps out from behind a tree and demands that you owe him a favor and some info about yourself for eating his apples. He's a scumbag, it's obvious, for trying to engineer a scenario where he can solicit business from people that might otherwise pass him by, but the passerby that partakes without confirming that it's actually free isn't without fault either.
Now, we see that some people are pretty good at just ignoring the shop keeper, and they keep reaping the benefits of free apples. Sure, the owner of the apples is an asshole, but the other people are still stealing his apples, and regardless of how much an asshole he is, that's not okay. At this point, both parties are acting in bad faith. Unfortunately, the problem is muddied by the facts that people decided long ago, primarily due to these shady guys and small favors, that apples just aren't worth paying money for anymore, and rarely the guys that own the apples even sell your info and/or favors to really shady people, so it's often safer to ignore them and give them nothing.
P.S. Yes, this conflates the content creator and the ad network, but that's not really the point of this.
This, I think, is where you and I disagree: the web was founded on the free exchange of information, where when you put something online, it's free (and then later, it's free unless you ask money for it via paywall etc). So it's more like deciding that an unspoken transaction is taking place and it should benefit you in some way if I pick up a sofa that you left on the curb. Yes I am benefiting from this furniture, and yes it's something I could have paid for elsewhere and you could have chosen to sell. And if I see you while I'm picking it up I may thank you. But that's as far as my obligation will go, and if you try telling me about how unethical i'm being by cleaning the couch before I use it (and in so doing throwing away the flyers you've stuffed under the cushions without reading them) then I will think you're being a little ridiculous.
I think I'm pulling the metaphor a little far here and I apologize for that, but I stand firm on the opinion that if you put a resource up on the internet, and you do not claim otherwise, then I have no obligation to you for consuming it. And the other thing is I have never seen a site that asks me not to use it if I block ads, a request I fully respect. Only ones that whine about how I should be less unethical and allow unknown third parties to violate my privacy and security and themselves make the lions' share of the profits so that the website can scrabble a few dimes themselves, a request that I do not respect in the least.
That is definitely where we disagree. The web is a medium. Ascribing freedom to it is a fallacy, regardless of how it was first developed and used. It would not be where it is today without commercial interest at every level, and to me it's obvious that when a business is on the web, their purpose is not to give you free stuff, it's to make money[1]. I think to assume otherwise it to delude oneself. In other words, the internet doesn't have an opinion on whether it should be used for free things or not.
> And the other thing is I have never seen a site that asks me not to use it if I block ads, a request I fully respect.
Depending on how you interpret the message, I have. I've seen messages where the ads would be saying "We support this site with advertising, without thatrevenue we can't continue. Please don't block our ads." You can choose to either interpret that as them whining, or you can choose to interpret it as them expressing their wishes that ads be viewed on the site, and to use it with an ad blocker is against their wishes.
1: For that matter, nothing is free, ever. There is always an intended purpose, and an intended gain for the exchange. That gain may not be directly from the other party, and may not be financially based. For example, the gain could be the opinion of the other party or society in general (social capital, fame), a long play on later financial gain (establishing relationships), or the feeling of doing something useful for society or specific others (personal esteem), etc. If you can't determine why something is being offered, then you should be wary.
I go to a site. That site hands me over to a completely different network. My target site's owner has no idea what's running on that other network.
My target site exposed me to danger.
No thank you.
In other words, blocking ads on a large scale causes a readjustment that is not necessarily bad for the overall ecosystem since most of that money is actively winning a zero sum game against better content with less (desperate) backing.
The ads I see for New Relic, PagerDuty, PyCharm, etc. are relevant to me but they are not actionable. They would be relevant and actionable if I am consciously looking for these products as part of a report that will kick-start the procurement process.
All the books I've bought in the last year were based on recommendations from blogs and podcasts.
We're at peak ads on the internet.
I feel no guilt, personally. I began using an ad blocker after receiving a nasty bit of Flash based malware via an ad served by one of the major ad networks (I can't recall who, but I want to say it was via MSN at the time). That was it for me. The moment viewing ads on otherwise-safe sites became a threat, I started blocking without guilt. Because it was an advertising network, it wasn't just as simple as saying "I'll block ads on site xyz"
No, no it won't. People have been predicting micropayment for decades now. To call the attempts "failures" would be kind. Patronage (like Patreon, for instance) and bundling are much better bets.
(The OTHER common thread to all those examples is that none of those actually make enough money to pay for the absolute cost of the content they offer -- with the exception of some Netflix originals and Spotify-exclusive tracks and what have you, the vast majority of the content on those subscription services is licensed to those platforms at some MARGINAL cost, and the cost of actually making that content has already been paid for by theatrical showings, TV rights fees, album sales, etc. They're not really sustainable models as they exist right now once theaters, TV channels and album sales start to die out, which is where the sort of content that is being talked about here already is at -- content that needs to cover the ABSOLUTE cost of creation through online revenues.)
The main feed already acts like this, only the news stories are those false sensationalist articles being shared by people that believe them.
That's the ad industry's fantasy - that they can come up with "acceptable ad formats" which will be allowed through ad blockers. This comes from the AdBlock sellout - you can now pay to get through AdBlock. But AdBlock isn't the only game in town.
Ad servers can fight back. HTTP 2 will probably be used as a tool to fight ad blocking. When it all comes in through one pipe, it's harder to identify ads. We'll probably see ad insertion at the CDN level, with the ad stream integrated with the content stream into one HTTP 2 bundle. Cloudflare may already be doing this.[1]
Then we'll need better ad blockers. Current ad blockers are rather dumb. They mostly use some huge file of regular expressions to recognize ads. Those files are maintained by humans, and they're always a behind changes in ad formats. Systems that automatically recognize ads, regardless of format, are needed. Ad blockers of the future must work more like machine-learning spam filters.
[1] https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/infolinks
With sufficient mental training, any person can add an ad blocker to their own brain. The mind of such a person instantly disengages the instant it detects an unsolicited sales pitch.
Having conceived the end goal, we now imagine such tools as may be helpful to achieve it. Perhaps it is useful to build a tool that blocks the most intrusive and annoying advertisement on Earth from the senses of the human whose internal ad-blocker is not yet perfected. Expand the tool such that progressively less annoying ads are blocked for those with progressively less perfect anti-ad discipline. Continue until the tool allows one with no training whatsoever to have the same ad-free existence as the adblock monk.
Once the person has chosen to not attend to unwanted ads, there is no countermeasure any advertiser can take. The human is the ultimate arbiter over the thoughts that enter its own brain. Whatever cannot be blocked can be ignored. It is the desire to ignore that leads to the blocking.
The traditional method to alter the desires of the consumer--advertising--is not likely to affect a desire that specifically targets advertising. You can't get people to pay attention to ads again by advertising for the practice of advertising.
All you can do is stop the bleeding, by immediately curtailing all practices that led people to start tuning out ads in the first place.
At this point, if you want me to attend to ads, you will have to pay me, directly. I will open one end of a channel that leads to me. If the cash stops coming through, I'll close it. If the cash that comes through is insufficient to compensate for the peace of mind I would otherwise have by closing it, I'll close it. I will then take that cash, and spend it on whatever it is that I would like to be ad-supported. Maybe I will spend a little on something that was advertised. Maybe not.
An advertiser might ask, "what guarantee do we have that you will actually pay attention to the advertising we push through that channel?" And my answer is that no advertiser ever had any such guarantee in the entire history of mankind. Even my own spouse peppers a seemingly unending stream of words with frequent "are you listening?" pings. If my own spouse cannot trust that I am paying attention at all times, no advertiser stands a chance. And as I find those pings to be annoying, anyone else that asks the same thing is likely to be told, "I was, but now I no longer will be."
Advertisers are just going to have to accept that most of what they do is a waste of money and effort. They are broadcasting seeds with a low germination rate, with no way to test beforehand which ones will ever sprout. If you don't throw them all out there, all the sterile seeds along with the fertile, nothing will ever grow.
+1000 This is the same conclusion that I've reached. Advertisers must pay us. There is no way that the free-ride that advertisers have been getting is going to continue. We control what enters our minds, not advertising companies. If they want to pitch products or services to us then they can pay for "qualified leads" : those people who explicitly allow them to advertise by first being paid.
We have the means to enable this (even somewhat anonymously) with bitcoin. Once the advertisers get over the initial disconnect with their current system, they (at least the enlightened ones) will understand that this helps them too. Instead of desperately hoping that someone out of millions will carefully consider their message, they can get a much higher response by advertising to the people who are more likely to be receptive.
I go out of my way to stop purchasing products whose advertisements I see too often, or who use emotional advertising that has nothing to do with their product. One example: I stopped buying Dove products the very first time I saw one of their "real beauty" campaign ads. Bloody hell, you're only selling soap. What on Earth makes advertising people think that stroking the egos of people with body image issues would work? Perhaps it works on a lot of people, but I sure as hell am not one of them.
I don't think any such data exists, particularly among those who have consciously decided to ignore the ads.
I suspect Facebook already does something similar via automating the hundreds of millions of dead accounts in their system. My suspicions were triggered because a decade ago when FB was still fresh, I created a page for my dog (now passed away), and very recently, it shared a "funny" video. So either my dog is using facebook from beyond the grave, or fb has automated his account.
I mean all that mind bogglingly dark patterny/cynical gameplay we engage in everytime we watch one. And there's also all the negative, misery inducing, pressure when you realise, even if you sold the house and spent it all on plastic surgery you wouldn't be anywhere near as attractive or thin as the size zero model they've just tried to use to sell you the gadget you probably don't need, that you probably can't afford that was likely made by some "exploited" person from resources that probably aren't sustainable and then shipped halfway round the world. And then you go and buy it anyway and hate yourself for being gullible and buying something you probably can't afford... just so you can support some guy who's just doing his job but secretly hates himself for engaging in a zero-sum game with the rest of mankind and persuading you to buy something you... every time he sits down at his desk so he can buy his kids new ipads for christmas when they'd arguably be better off without anyway [3].
Another nash equilibrium in a world crying out for socially optimal solutions [4] or just an another inevitable inefficiency of capitalism [5].
I mean what ever happened to the Just In Time philosophy. We've ran with it on the supply side so stuff is cheaper than it should be, but every day i get bombarded by tens of emails from companies investing a lot of effort in trying to kiddology me into buying stuff which i thankfully just filter away (as i do with the rest of it - ad-blockers, don't watch live tv or listen to radio stations with ads, don't buy into the whole sky pay for stuff and then also have to watch ads). It's almost like a stupid tax.
At the end of the day I'm just not going to buy your <unnecessary> thing so stop wasting my time/sanity/electricity/bandwidth and yours. It's not as though, for example, if i want to buy a new tent (which so far i've done about every 5 years) or do a canvas (probably twice a year) i can't just wait ten minutes for the next millets sale or photobox offer (i mean when does photobox not have a sale on for something they just keep increasing the base price of anyway). And anyway i'd probably be better going somewhere that had spent slightly less on their kiddology so their quality sucked less.
I entirely get why people do it, the "good" of the website/service/... i provide hopefully outweighs the "evil" of the mechanisms i go to try and support it, but if you didn't "need" the money, would anyone go anywhere near an ad-broker?
I can't help but think if we factored money out of this whole equation, this whole pyramid of snafu would collapse and we can move onto a slightly more healthy, enlightened society? Is this the best we can do? Would basic income help [6]? Or do i have to wait for likely societal collapse to a lower energy level to render this whole thing moot (see Tainter)?
</more ranty than i intended>
[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/litost/15113770968/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhjCrL40JIM
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGab38pKscw
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jILgxeNBK_8
[5]
I don't know anyone who cares for advertising or for the relevant business models one jot. Considering it 'unethical' to block ads is simply laughable. I don't want them to exist at all!
When I browse the web I don't want random blobs of capitalism shoved down my throat at every opportunity. I don't want an SUV. I don't even want to know such a thing exists.
The 'paying for content' angle is so far off the mark it makes me feel as if I have some sort of mental illness. I can't even think of the words to describe how the statement isn't even 'wrong', it's just nonsense.
Allowing Mega Big Corp to bombard my brain so that an artist can eat is a broken paradigm. What gives them the right? Lots of people like Mega Big Corp, so I should be battered into submission until I fall in line too? They have 'money'? I don't want 'money' on my Internet. It wasn't like this, before.
I don't care about how 'obtrusive' your advertising is. I don't care what colour it is, whether it's animated, what font you use. I don't want it. Just like when I take a walk in the forest I don't want cars.
I don't care how 'unethical' you feel me blocking adverts is, either. Use your men with guns; and forcibly lock me in a box. Prevent me from doing it. Then we'll see who's 'unethical'.
edit: WRT 'not going to the sites'; it's just not a realistic option, is it? The equivalent for TV would be not watching it. The equivalent for living in a city (ex. London bus ads, tube ads, billboards on roads, etc) would be not living in a city.
If you don't want to consume advertising there is no choice left. It's either block ads, try to cognitively block ads, or simply don't interact with society/culture any more. (I actually do try to limit myself to ad-free sites, not out of an ethical compulsion, but because often they're just better in general; e.g. HN, Wikipedia, forums/mailing lists, etc)