I am having more and more trouble visiting sites I read because of advertising-related browser problems. Many sites simply kill my computer; I can barely close a browser to escape. Is this a good business strategy?
No, because I like to experience the web as it is, which is what most users experience. Yes, it sucks, but that's why I use Windows, too. You can't identify with users if you don't visit their neighborhoods.
> No, because I like to experience the web as it is, which is what most users experience.
Many users experience similar problems, so they are switching to ad blockers. Several sites reported 50%+ ad blocker usage, so if you're trying to view the web like other users, using ad blockers is probably fine now.
Because this is who users are. They will not ever visit Hacker News, and if they did, it might as well be in a foreign language. They will not install ad blockers. When the (insert your most hated Slavic/Asian country) mafia takes over their comp via a Facebook meme, they buy a new computer if they can afford it.
Are you a representative of the people in some way that requires you to make this great sacrifice?
Do you give up your income because most of the users don't earn as much income? Do you give up your food because some people don't have as much food? Do you refuse to study because most people know less about subject matter X than you could know if you studied it?
Would you rather identify with users (for whom the web is, indeed, becoming unbearable) or use the web? Unfortunately, it seems you can't do both at the same time.
Probably because it seems to be a snarky comment attached to a meaningful/useful comment, and adds little to the conversation. (Plus it isn't really very funny).
It's not snarky, I'm trying to get the average HN to acknowledge reality: grandma is the average user, not you. You haven't got a clue how she sees the web, and sneering at her and downvoting her idiocy won't help.
Adblock/uBlock works great. If you want to experience the web as it is, then yeah I agree, it sucks. No one has really figured out how to monetize content without ads yet because people won't pay for it, so thats where we are.
I'm sure Adblock works great. I'm interested in how the web works for people who don't care about technology, and it's a nightmare. Ad-supported software or web apps are a descending staircase of user-hate.
People will pay for content - but that content needs to be worth paying for.
Byron and anyone else who agrees the web is kinda fucked: I'm working on spinning up a group or website where we can figure out where the web is broken, propose principles for a healthy web, and promote solutions by anyone or any company that adheres to those principles.
You'd be lucky to find 1 in 1,000 to donate money out of kindness, even if you published an entire book on the Web and continued writing on matters of interest.
I would really have liked to say "replace money with x" but I have no idea what x should be.
Just the fact that you're right though, that we'd have a big problem if we just got rid of money, goes to show we really, really should find a way to get rid of money. Preferably without breaking everything else in the process, of course.
"Badly-done advertising is making the web unusable." That's better, but it still makes it sound like inanimate things are causing it.
"Advertisers are making the web unusable by trying ever-more-intrusive things to try to get us to pay attention."
But even that is only half the story, because people want to get paid for the stuff that they put on the web. You know, the parts that you're actually going there to try to find. So either someone needs to figure out how to get more money out of ads, without the ads ruining the experience (and with users desperately trying to ignore the ads, because it's not what they came for), or the model needs to change. This will probably less top-quality free content on the web.
Content has value, and creators should be paid. But ad-supported sites default to "the nightmare" because they are not tech-savvy: bad actors can use their ad-net to do bad things.
The problem for news content is the same problem facing software: what if this stuff just isn't that valuable?
Advertising as a way to get paid for whatever it is you are offering people isn't very honest, a way around your product not being valuable enough that people will pay for it. If you make it feel like it is free, people will go "But if it is free, what the hell, why not?" What they do not know is you are taking more from them than if you charged them straight up.
How is it not honest publishing well researched sociology articles for example and splashing an ad or two (Adsense) somewhere on the page. Just an example.
These articles get picked up by teachers and professors for students to study via search engines.
How is it not honest?
These articles have no chance of being commercialized in current world. No one would buy them and person behind them has no means to market...no money, no knowledge in marketing...maybe that person is not interested in commercialization of his/her product and just wants to earn a buck or two for coffee on each article...
How is it not honest?
Please don't generalize and project your view onto others.
That sounds great, if they don't grind my computer to a halt. But if you host a site that lets bad actors chuck evil spew into the web stream, it doesn't matter what your content is. You are bad by association.
Can you please give me an example of a web site that will grind computer to a halt. I am yet to encounter such web site with this old and weak computer of mine. I would really like to see it.
I run Thinkpad T61 (old, old) + Debian 7 and have 20+ tabs open in Firefox and rarely I see issues you are describing.
I have no adblocks or any other sh!t installed. I like to see ads and support people who are writing content. I know those ads are the only way they get compensated.
I'd love to tell you - but that would reveal what I like, right? And I don't want you to judge me based on that. I do know that it's ad-network related; bad scripts have nothing to do with the sites that host them. They just don't do the due diligence - a 24/7 job - to prevent the problems.
Again: what about grandma? The whole point of these shitty sites is to parasitize the non-technical. Their web experience is like you taking your car to an evil garage: "There's silver flakes in your fluid. You need a new transmission."
Serious suggestion: disable JS. I use surf/tabbed (suckless.org) and it makes the web great again. If I really need JS for a tab, I hit CTRL-SHIFT-s. Also, consider local dns caching/filtering: https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate
I bet there are firefox extensions to make a hotkey to enable JS.
It's periodically updated with the hostnames of all servers currently known to serve ads (almost all ad companies are locked to using hostnames, they for some/whatever reason don't use IPs).
I see no ads. When I do, I redownload the file, and I'm all set again. It's great.
This also blocks things like Google Analytics, which I personally appreciate too. If you want to track me, your web server has an access log somewhere, and if you want a second-by-second breakdown of my activity, distill a set of functions into your site's existing (hopefully well-optimized) JS codebase.
Remember, there are things ad servers cannot do because they're pushing a product designed to serve millions of customers, not integrate with every single site architecture.
I just thought of this, too - keep in mind that these are advertising companies we're talking about here. Their job is to sell product, and their second-layer job above that is to sell their own viability. I fear that our gullibility to being sold acid rainbows has started to go too far.
I can recommend Redmorph. It bundles everything that is in adblock/ublock and donottrack into one extension. Also comes with paid for proxy and VPN services if you're into that.
it's not just advertising anyway. What makes me close the tab is the popup with 'subscribe to our newsletter' (on my first visit) or other shit that is supposed to force me to click it, so that they can validate that I'm a human and not a bot.
51 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadMany users experience similar problems, so they are switching to ad blockers. Several sites reported 50%+ ad blocker usage, so if you're trying to view the web like other users, using ad blockers is probably fine now.
Are you a representative of the people in some way that requires you to make this great sacrifice?
Do you give up your income because most of the users don't earn as much income? Do you give up your food because some people don't have as much food? Do you refuse to study because most people know less about subject matter X than you could know if you studied it?
If you're not a Firefox user, https://www.mozilla.org/firefox
uBlock Origin exists for Chrome as well, but Google gets your lucky charms when you use Chrome, no matter what you configure to try to prevent it.
People will pay for content - but that content needs to be worth paying for.
Email me if you'd like to participate.
http://idlewords.com/six_fixes.htm http://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you....
http://practicaltypography.com/effluents-influence-affluence...
Just the fact that you're right though, that we'd have a big problem if we just got rid of money, goes to show we really, really should find a way to get rid of money. Preferably without breaking everything else in the process, of course.
"Badly-done advertising is making the web unusable." That's better, but it still makes it sound like inanimate things are causing it.
"Advertisers are making the web unusable by trying ever-more-intrusive things to try to get us to pay attention."
But even that is only half the story, because people want to get paid for the stuff that they put on the web. You know, the parts that you're actually going there to try to find. So either someone needs to figure out how to get more money out of ads, without the ads ruining the experience (and with users desperately trying to ignore the ads, because it's not what they came for), or the model needs to change. This will probably less top-quality free content on the web.
micheleincalifornia.blogspot.in/2015/11/surviving-and-thriving-amidst-adblocker.html
The problem for news content is the same problem facing software: what if this stuff just isn't that valuable?
If it is ad-supported it is not free: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773
Advertising as a way to get paid for whatever it is you are offering people isn't very honest, a way around your product not being valuable enough that people will pay for it. If you make it feel like it is free, people will go "But if it is free, what the hell, why not?" What they do not know is you are taking more from them than if you charged them straight up.
These articles get picked up by teachers and professors for students to study via search engines.
How is it not honest?
These articles have no chance of being commercialized in current world. No one would buy them and person behind them has no means to market...no money, no knowledge in marketing...maybe that person is not interested in commercialization of his/her product and just wants to earn a buck or two for coffee on each article...
How is it not honest?
Please don't generalize and project your view onto others.
You quickly realize how much useless scripts are loaded in the page. You'll also realize that these scripts sometimes add other scripts to that page.
For example, gizmodo.com filtered by Ghostery blocks 12 trackers. When it's disabled it detects 17 trackers.
https://www.ghostery.com/
I run Thinkpad T61 (old, old) + Debian 7 and have 20+ tabs open in Firefox and rarely I see issues you are describing.
I have no adblocks or any other sh!t installed. I like to see ads and support people who are writing content. I know those ads are the only way they get compensated.
Just to get more information. Can you tell me which sites are firing up your second fan?
My Firefox profile uses uMatrix, NoScript (scripts globally allowed), HTTPS Everywhere, and a good hosts file.
Kills 99.9% of germs.
I bet there are firefox extensions to make a hotkey to enable JS.
Info page: http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
Raw file: http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt
ZIP: http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.zip
It's periodically updated with the hostnames of all servers currently known to serve ads (almost all ad companies are locked to using hostnames, they for some/whatever reason don't use IPs).
I see no ads. When I do, I redownload the file, and I'm all set again. It's great.
This also blocks things like Google Analytics, which I personally appreciate too. If you want to track me, your web server has an access log somewhere, and if you want a second-by-second breakdown of my activity, distill a set of functions into your site's existing (hopefully well-optimized) JS codebase.
Remember, there are things ad servers cannot do because they're pushing a product designed to serve millions of customers, not integrate with every single site architecture.
I just thought of this, too - keep in mind that these are advertising companies we're talking about here. Their job is to sell product, and their second-layer job above that is to sell their own viability. I fear that our gullibility to being sold acid rainbows has started to go too far.
I can't even remember the last time a site did that, regularly or unintentionally with or without an adblock.
https://redmorph.com/