Not if your browser extension is blocking the remote Javascript code that's used for displaying the ads.
And even if you did manage to reverse-engineer an extension to send a "ads loaded" token to the site, their ad network would update their code a week later. That's why folks call it an arms race.
They'd probably run a suite of microbenchmarks in the sandbox and use that performance profile to fingerprint you. That might be an improvement over the status quo, but I think the basic rule is that if you let tracking scripts phone home, you lose.
The scripts these user detect that you've blocked the ad load. So, there are now adblock lists that block the block detectors. So, there are not adblock detector block detectors. It's an arms race.
Run a browser without adblock in virtual or headless setup with JS on (so that they can e.g. measure size of loaded images) with custom extension that will in read-only way (all code has to be in anonymous function so that it doesn't leak global variables, no changes to dom, no timers or intervals) extract articles and send them somehow out of this virtual so that you can read them. Extracting code would have to be tailor made for each site. IMHO doable. Alternative is copy paste article title to the Google and find news outlet that doesn't block the adblock.
Not with current technology because all ad blocking does is blocking hosts. So a site can tell if parts of the code have loaded/executed or not. In order to go completely stealth you'd have to let the page load everything and then just don't show it. But that's way more complicated and besides a bit pointless because part of the reason for ad blocking is to make sites load faster by removing all that bloatware. That, or we move ad blocking out of the browser and into the OS where sites have absolutely no access whatsoever.
>That, or we move ad blocking out of the browser and into the OS where sites have absolutely no access whatsoever.
Interesting concept. Asking as a layman: is this possible? Is the browser sandboxed enough away from the OS that this is a difficult problem? Is that why we haven’t seen solutions that implement this approach?
Possible yes, probable not so much. Building extensions is simpler than building desktop apps. For one you need only JavaScript. While if you move in the OS you'd have to support different versions of systems (you have Windows, OSX, Android, IOS, Linux) and it is much more cumbersome than in the browser.
>That, or we move ad blocking out of the browser and into the OS where sites have absolutely no access whatsoever.
that's probably overkill. all you need to do is move the adblocking part further back into the rendering pipeline (ie. outside of the DOM) so that javascript can't detect it.
What does "move ad blocking out of the browser and into the OS" even mean?
As long as you have websites built by JavaScript, trying to do perfect adblocking is solving the halting problem. Can't do that, but we should start fixing the most obvious, glaring abuses (JS need not be able to tell if something actually loaded, no 3rd party host resource, certainly no 3rd party scripts. If I'm putting foo.com in as the address, my browser should only be talking with foo.com)
You can't turn off third party JS. What if I have an Intranet that's loading an external API. It could be anything from a chat session to analytics. You do that and you break the web.
Well, it's feasible if you fork the web instead. If a significant number of people want draconian measures to be taken, and they converge on a search engine that can exclude the non-compliant, then the new standards have a chance of catching on.
Suppose I say I just want to eliminate javascript entirely - that's not feasible to enforce, but if I could just search the non-javascript pages out there, then a new way of doing things can be bootstrapped.
Uhm, external analytics is exactly what we're trying to break here. And if you need an external API, have whoever is serving the Intranet page load that - that's how it's been forever. Websites loading data through JS from 20+ endpoints on a single page is very much a recent disease.
I run all of my browsers (including mobile) with all 3rd party scripts blocked by default. Most sites that you care to casually consume will work without issue. Anything that uses a payment provider or google to login needs 2 greylist rules (which are mind-numbingly simple to click on once).
I can set it up for people that don't understand what they are doing (and I have) and they will not notice anything in almost every case.
As such, I conclude that this generalisation is grossly overstated and you probably haven't tried it to see if what you are saying is correct.
I don't see how moving to an even higher level of abstraction would help. At the OS level you can basically only block hosts (unless you're inspecting packages but that seems excessive).
Doing what uBlock origin does by loading dummy versions of common tracking scripts is a lot more effective.
The reason I use an ad blocker is not to see intrusive ads. I've whitelisted a site and told Safari to immediate go in reader view mode for the site. It's a decent compromise.
yes, but it will have to operate outside the DOM. currently adblock killer/detection scripts relies on the fact that resources/scripts fail to load (both can be detected), or an element isn't showing (the nag message is hidden under the place where the ad should be). if your browser is dutifully rendering the ads as intended, but blocks it out in the frame buffer, there's nothing the site can do. no such adblocker exists as of yet.
Which means you loose a lot if the benefits of an ad blocker, and thus makes it worthwhile to instead invest in the arms race: You have to watch a black screen for the duration of video ads, ads that pop up overlaying content still get in your way, you loose the bandwidth/memory/CPU capacity for loading and rendering them.
You could setup something at the network level, which zaps requests before they even make it to your computer. Pi-hole [1] works well. Still using it in conjunction with browser-based ad blockers though, but it works for all devices on your network, even smart TVs and Rokus.
I've found that asking nicely without being intrusive gets better results. At PortableApps.com, if you block ads, I have it set to show a single unobtrusive message using the same fonts, colors, and backgrounds as the rest of the site in the area where the first ad would appear. The message says "Please Help Support Us: Please consider white-listing us or making a donation so we can keep bringing you awesome apps. If you recently donated, thank you!" It's designed so that when it appears after detecting that the ad isn't shown, it doesn't make the page jump size/layout wise. In the text, 'white-listing us' links to instructions to whitelist the site and 'making a donation' links to our donations page. The detection script even cleans up the bits of background from hiding the other ads so the page still looks clean.
It helps that I have the site setup to only show a single ad above the fold for the majority of users and don't allow popovers, popunders, overlays, sound, etc.
Eventually, I'd like to add an option to display a message for donation accounts or something similar, but recurring payments and Drupal don't really play well anymore. The only supported add-on in existence is now Recurly. They're pricing was $1,200 a year but they switched it to "Ask for a Quote" (aka expensive but we don't want to say), so it's not something we'd be able to afford for the number of users.
Hi, and thanks for posting the content provider viewpoint. While you're here, I have a question. I'd consider white-listing, but am not willing to white-list ad networks and trackers since they also get misused as a malware vector.
Would you consider hosting your own ads? Is that still a thing? Trust isn't transitive, so it's still a problem even if we're OK with you in particular.
My thinking is that the most difficult part is creating a website where people want to advertise specifically, then connecting with those people, with the easiest part being the actual negotiation stage.
For those looking to jump into direct sales and self-hosting, my suggestion is to create a second position of an ad unit you sell through a network and try to sell that without removing your existing ad network unit. Then work to contact the people who advertise on your site through the network and try to sign them up directly.
Chances are you can save them money while still bringing in more revenue as you no longer share revenue with the network.
At https://officesnapshots.com we’ve sold and hosted our own ads for the last 5 years. It seems to work well for all involved (us, readers, advertisers).
And I see those ads with uBlock Origin installed, congratulations, you're doing it right! I've seen this on one other site in probably the past 10 years. I think it was a custom furniture site I couldn't afford anything on but I was so surprised to see ads and that they weren't tracking me, I emailed just to cheer them on.
We're not big enough for the time and effort to make hosting the ads ourselves work. We can't even pay someone to manage our online ads the way things normally work with larger publishers so, like the vast majority of smaller publishers, have to go the automated route of Google AdSense or similar. We've worked on other funding ideas including donations, merchandise, and the like, but these only work for a very small niche of publishers.
Side note: Tracking is an unfortunate reality in today's market. We use Google Analytics for statistics because anyone that even thinks about partnering in any way wants to see that. They don't trust your internal stats as a general rule, since you could easily fake them. So, anyone that fully blocks tracking (Google Analytics et al) is looked at as sunk cost since you don't count as a user in terms of potential partnerships and you cost money in terms of machine time and bandwidth.
I'm personally not a fan of this sort of tracking and wish there was another commercially viable option. I make donations available for folks who want to support the site directly. Even though we have a passionate community and many of them make donations, the unfortunate reality is that without the ads, I'd have to shut the site down. Either that or turn it into a paid commercial product, vastly shrinking the userbase but increasing the revenue, just to keep it going. I'm exploring some paid options, but many of them require a decent sized upfront capital investment that I don't currently have access to.
Slightly off topic, but as someone who works at a company that uses Drupal for e-commerce sites, I'm surprised there isn't a good (free) module for recurring payments. Definitely sounds useful though - I'll have to bring it up sometime.
There were a handful of them but they've all been abandoned and are listed on the Drupal site as such, complete with the requisite 'our security update and notification policy doesn't apply to this' warnings.
I don't see ads and I don't see your message.. I didn't even realise you were ad supported. Which means my adblocker is working right! But also means unfortunately that I sometimes don't get to unblock websites which I do want to support. Just donated.
I would feel much more inclined to donate generally if I could see how much a service needs to operate and how much they have so far raised. Then I can see a direct path of my meagre contribution. I don't know why this info needs to be secret for a free service (though there might be a good reason).
Aside:I wonder if anyone on HN know if its possible I wonder to whitelist and sandbox a site which uses an ad network like adsense? As I generally block networks as a matter of course. (not so much because it stops them tracking me personally.. just because I think they shouldn't be tracking).
If you're looking at the homepage, you won't see it there. I wanted the homepage to be clean. Click through into, say, features, and you should see the message in the upper left below the main navigation (on desktop).
It doesn’t come off as shaming to me, but rather as begging. Like begging, but without the human element to engender empathy or pity, so you’re just left with disgust. The internet, from “please give us a buck so we can stay up!” to endless crowdfunding resembles nothing quite so much as a collection of beggars rattling their cups and with their stories written on cardboard.
If that’s your “business model” then good luck with that, but I don’t feel shame or pity. I’d like to unblock sites, but white listing only makes sense if you can trust whatever they use to serve ads. Unless they’re hostinf their own ads, I’m disinclined to trust their third party providers and trackers, even if I like and trust the site.
I submit that it more resembles a collection of street entertainers. Each performs their art for anyone who cares to pay attention, and puts out a tip jar, hoping to make enough money to make it worth continuing to do this instead of giving up and getting a job denying insurance claims or whatever.
To content publishers; It's not the ads I have a problem with, it's the spy-ware tracking behaviour associated with the ads you show is the reason why I'm using an "ad" blocker.
Oh, for me it's totally the ads I have a problem with. They're distracting and I didn't visit the site to see them. I'm not surprised that publishers have resorted to moral appeals to support the business model they've chosen, but I'm not swayed by those appeals either.
HNers complain about having to subscribe to both Netflix and Hulu. What options does my 10 year old collaborative writing forum for mostly teens have?
Now that my ad revenue has died over the years, all that’s left is the charity of me paying out of my pocket. Then we’ll be left with centralized sites like Reddit.
I see it as consumers telling the companies that they went too far. They let the ads take over too much of every page, let them be way too much in your face and let Spyware and other shit in. You simply used up your good-will and need to build it up again if you want to use this as an business model.
The only place I've ever seen ads actually work and not be too annoying is in podcasts. They are more personal there and still isn't too much in the way. I've genuinely followed up on some companies podcasts I trust has had ads for. I have no idea how to make that work on the internet though.
I’ll block everything with zero sense of shame until sites realize they have to switch to non-tracking/invasive ads.
I have zero concern for whether sites think “dumb ads” is a viable business model or not. Obviously I also don’t mind if a big fraction of sites just go under because of it. If your day job is to do work for a company that is funded in any way involving modern “adtech” at any stage, I’m not very sorry for your job loss.
I don’t mind ads covering 75% of the page, ads bloating downloads etc. I mind ads that invade my privacy and ads masquerading as non-ads
Except the content, of course -- that, you expect to consume for free.
This is the digital equivalent of saying to a musician, or film actor: because of the existence of a technology that allows me to consume your content for free (Napster / torrents / pirate bay / ad-blockers), I will shed all of my ethics and freely consume all of your music / movies, while at the same time I hope you never get paid and further, I hope the record label / movie studio you work for, goes out of business, all because you dared to show me an ad.
Instead, you're saying it to a reporter, journalist or author. But the message is the same.
And your final sentence is nonsensical. Generally, ads don't pretend they aren't ads. It's content that "masquerades" as a non-ad. http://brandsandfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/HouseOf... Heck, HN is an ad for YCombinator masquerading as a news site / discussion forum.
There's plenty of content available for "free." There's also plenty of music available for free by musicians who play or donate. There's an assumption in your comment that all content requires some sort of compensation and I don't think that's true, and certainly not necessary for a strong society.
I think this may influence your other assumption that it's unethical to freely consume content. The article author uses the example of walking through a city and refusing to look at billboards, but still taking in the view of beautiful architecture. Do you abandon ethics to view architecture?
Imagine if the business models of all the businesses in those buildings depended on you looking at the ads. Would you abandon ethics to walk down the street?
I think there are some people who are ambivalent if every record label and movie studio shuts down. I don't really care as there is lots of art that is created by people who like giving it away for free. Ever since the start of the net, I've structured my livelihood to specifically avoid being in the business of extracting income from IP. So I think I'm pretty well hedged against people going against their behavior to pay for my IP.
I think reporters can be compensated in much better ways than ads, and I actually think that journalism will be better off if not ad supported. Part of the problem we have now is because ads and truth aren't really aligned with the same incentives so I see lots of news sites going more toward ads.
a) Plenty of free content? I assume you won't ever be watching another feature film or television show. Free concerts do exist, but they are pretty few and far between (and highly financed via ads and commercial sponsors -- the stagehands and techs don't work for free).
b) Billboard analogy is invalid because you cannot "not see" a billboard. Of course you don't have to act upon it, and can try to ignore it, but the billboard did make an impression in your brain, like it or not. With ad-blocking, it never has the opportunity to make the impression.
>> lots of art that is created by people who like giving it away for free
c) doubt it, people sometimes HAVE to give their work away for free -- to get attention, publicity, an audience -- but they would almost always prefer to be paid.
> Except the content, of course -- that, you expect to consume for free.
I’ll happily consume it regardless, yes. If there is a paid subscription - good. Dumb ads - good. Blocked tracking ads - good, and I’m not sorry I’m killing their business.
The key here is of course that I find the idea of showing me a shoe ad because I googled “shoes” last year a much more serious ethical offense than downloading without paying for it.
> all because you dared show me an ad
No, again, I don’t mind ads. I mind my information used as a commodity in the process.
And yes - exactly - I can consume content for free and I will, while not caring whether content creators (journalists etc) lose their jobs, because no one watches the ads. And I’m not sorry, and not finding it unethical (not even cynical).
The ads-masquerading-as-non-ads I was thinking of was native ads in news and products pushed by instagram influencers etc.
Sounds like Google sold you out -- you should probably stop using Google Search. How would a news site know what you Googled, unless Google sold or shared that information?
You Google “shoes”, You land on a shoe manufacturers site, said site has either ad’s or user tracking software from Tech Gaint A (Note: Tech Giant A isn’t Google, intact they are arch rivals). TGA sets a cookie on your browser with a UID and makes a note about you having some interest in shoes. Anyway, these are not the shoes you are looking for so you back out and search some more.
The next day you visit “All Sports News” (or something) and they serve ads from TGA. TGA’s ad see’s the UID cookie, checks your profile and shows you an ad for shoes.
So yeah you go, how a news site could serve you ads about something you searched for on Google (or any other search engine) without that search engine selling you out.
Not saying Google are “Holier than thou”, yeah they have their own ad network and will profile what you search and serve you ads based on your search unless you opt-out of everything. Just saying it’s possible that Google didn’t sell them out.
What's the difference? So a shoes site sold you out instead of Google. In both cases, it wasn't the news site who did, but that's who you're taking free content from.
I don't think that's a very fair argument. GP is paying for internet access. GP is accessing information, published on the public WWW, which is what GP paid to do. GP has the right to decide what information they want to download from the public network.
Why is GP under any ethical obligation to consume ads? Were you shaming people in the 90s who muted their TVs when commercials came on? Why is it GP's responsibility to make someone's business model work?
Why are you conflating movie piracy with ad blocking? It's completely different, from a legal and ethical standpoint. And GP didn't even mention piracy.
Yes, journalism is in trouble. Yes, it's an important industry that fills an invaluable role in society. But print media has been beholden to advertising so long, that it doesn't even know how to sell its product anymore. And that's not GP's fault.
Nobody is obligated to consume ads. I also believe it is fine to go to the bathroom during tv commercials or to turn down the radio when ads come on. Or to click the 'close' button on an online ad. And of course nobody is required to act upon the ads in any way. But in my opinion, there's a big difference between ads that you have to take some action to ignore, and applying some technology that passively, without any user action, completely eliminates all ads so there is no opportunity for them to make an impression. I see a very large distinction between the two, your line may be different.
Yes, I believe ad-blocking (assuming it works) is equivalent to piracy. In both cases, you are consuming someone's work (a song, a movie, an article) without compensating them in any way, enabled by technology, and without attempting to obtain the approval of the content provider.
Here's the bottom line: You have no obligation to view ads. You can distinguish between OK ads and not-OK ads in your head. Whatever. But if you refuse to accept a site's ad policy, here is your only ethical remedy: DON'T VISIT THE SITE. Reading the article entirely ad-free is no different than going to a restaurant and not paying the bill, or sneaking into a concert without buying a ticket, or watching a movie you downloaded for free via torrent. You are consuming someone's work, without any remuneration or compensation.
In today's reality expecting compensation through the form of ad-views while simultaneously posting said work freely is just an idiot's game. Don't post it freely on the open web, a place where it is common for browsers and users to use technology to customize the way they consume the data presented to them, if you don't want it viewed in a customized (ads removed, text only, style-modified, etc) way- whether it's for security, bandwidth saved, performance, or the ability to be able to actually read the article without being constantly annoyed and driven away from the content by things pulling my attention, or all of the above.
Attention is a valuable resource and not one I'm going to give freely to ads that try to STEAL it from me. Computer performance and bandwidth savings are also valuable to me. My ISP gives me a cap. Expecting me to download tens of MB of data for KB of content is a no-go. Blocking ads and scripts can also be extremely beneficial for those that need accessibility.
If you want compensation, require it, put up a paywall. If your site dies because that business model is not sustainable, good riddance. It's time the ad model dies and dies permanently without a tear shed for its demise.
If only some Big Bank would create a secure micropayment experiment, we could experimentally determine whether that could supplant the tracking&ads regime. (At least, for those users that despise ads ... targeted or not.)
If the potential rewards for hackers could be kept minimal, it'd not attract interest.
The NYTimes has kept their site reasonable, but I don't want to subscribe. I like the idea of paying per-item, not bulk. That lets users encourage the kind of content (and authors) they want to see more of, while generating revenue for the content that Big Papers must provide (regardless of popular interest).
WHY this topic is always off-the-radar mystifies me.
I had hopes for Millicent back around the turn of the century (man I sound old), and my employer at the time had me working on setting it up as a payment system for mp3 downloads. But it just kind of vanished. It's astonishing that all these years later there is still no widely used fractional-cent micropayment system.
What I find just as bad are autoplaying videos popping up somewhere at the side or sometimes even staying at the edge of the screen when you scroll. They usually don't get blocked by adblockers and are just as annoying as pop-up ads with sound.
I installed a domain block addon just for ensuring I never accidentally visit one of these sites again. There are 1000+ other sites reporting about the same news, I can live without a couple of them.
This is extra annoying on mobile. Often a quarter of the screen is taken up by a persistent menu bar that I'll never use, half by an autoplaying video that I'll never watch, leaving just a quarter of the screen space for the actual content I was looking for.
They may never get a chance to convert the visiter into a customer again. Personally I’ve noted in my head sites that for example give no option to disable tracking cookies. So now when I see news articles from such domains I don’t even bother clicking.
Bit of a silly analogy but think about it like a brick and mortar store getting pissed off at you for not looking at the display company X are paying them for.
If they can not prove that enough customers are interacting with the display though sales or information requests they won’t be able to sell the space for as much next time. So the B&M has an incentive to get you to engage with the display and you just walk right on past it... Shame on you...
So you manager of the store says that you can not browse the rest of his store until you agree to looking at the display.
Dunno about you but I wouldn’t want to visit that store again.
My point is instead of trying to turn them into customers you are turning them away at the front door without given them a chance to become customers. Sure some (most) won’t actually buy anything and just browse around but putting up such a barrier will make sure they won’t become a customer.
They may never get a chance to convert the visiter into a customer again.
If they don’t turn into a subscription website and remain advertiser based, how will they ever “convert” you? Would you ever be convinced to whitelist their site?
Sites like Amazon and other webstores run ad's on their sites. Forums and the like have often had a "turn ads off" payment option without killing access to adblockers or the free users. Many Content creators also have merch and other rev income streams other than just ad's.
There are, in order of importance to me, exactly three reasons why I run an ad blocker:
1. Compromised ad networks are one of the most common ways malware is delivered these days. There's been at least one major ad network compromised a year every year for the last 5 years. I don't trust ad network providers to secure their software, which means I cannot trust any website which uses the ad networks.
2. Ads are as much about tracking as they are about promoting. A specific website may get minimal tracking information but the ad networks above the sites are following me around the internet, and the websites are enabling the ad networks by buying into a centralized tracking system. This shows a disdainful and disrespectful attitude towards my privacy. By ignoring this downside to their revenue model, websites are downstreaming their revenue problems onto random passers-by.
3. Most websites really are taking the piss with the amount of ads they show, and it makes their websites load slowly and look like poop, especially on phones.
Website owners are starting to focus on #3 and that's nice, but if 2 and 1 aren't dealt with it doesn't matter. Solve the security problem, solve the panopticon problem and solve the aesthetics problem, and then we can talk. Until then, I'm blocking all ads and no amount of shaming will make be care about the problems this causes to people relying on shitty business models.
And by the way, solve it as a group. There are billions of websites out there, I don't have enough care in me to bother maintaining a list of good-acting sites and periodically audit them to make sure they haven't relapsed. Obviously I'm just going to block all ads universally, you're a very entitled person if you think I should find enough time in the day to do otherwise. If you're running a site that meets these criteria then great, you're now a community leader. Go put pressure on your peers until enough of them change that I can feel comfortable uninstalling my addons globally.
I don’t mind sites that detect my adblocker and refuse to load. It’s their right to control access to their system based on user behavior. I also don’t mind not accessing their content. There are plenty of alternatives.
One of the french IT news website I read detects adblockers and replace the space of the ad with a message saying, basically, « This space was supposed to be an ad. We respect the fact you block it, consider making a donation » (or something like that, it’s not showing on my phone right now so I guess it’s for the desktop version)
I find this very smart. Not intrusive and a bit incentive.
I don't think they detect the ad blocker here - they just put that image underneath the image/iframe of the ad, so that if the top image is blocked, the bottom image is visible.
Recently, I encountered arguments to let websites access around one percent of your CPU resources to mine a cryptocurrency, obviously in the users consent. I think this might be a reasonable solution to the "uncreative capitalist". In my situation, I know I could easily spare one percent in exchange for no ads, but I'm sure not everyone would be in that situation.
Safari/iOS adblockers need to use a specific Safari content blocking format which is different from the classic ABP format. Presumably the extra work to support this format (and the content blocking extension API) discourages some vendors.
Notifications are required as it is the only way to notify the app, and users, when we release updates to our ad blocking rules. Otherwise we would need to release an app update every time a blocking rule needs to change. We update the ad blocking rules generally weekly.
What is the value of content offered on a site that would not have existed if not for AdTech life support?
AdTech made it possible and easy revenu has become the main reason to publish online. Publish anything and generate revenue through click baiting, content farms etc.
AFAIC there’s no problem if these types of sites will go under, including sites I visit regularly like huffpost, thedailybeast and haartez - which mix some quality content with huge amount of fluff and spam.
This model does not work. I’m not going to buy a subscription in order to have adfree experience while being served sponsored content and law quality translations (haaretz has a horrible reputation in that respect) or intentionally provocative content meant to incite rather that encourage debate (again, haaretz.co.il is really shameless in that respect).
If a site takes to something I perceive as "shaming" or pestering, its more of an incentive to leave the site - not to disable the ad/tracking blocker.
I don't disagree that content providers need ways to monetize, and that hosting and bandwidth expenses become problematic them costs exceed revenue, but its interesting that this particular business segment seems to use techniques that most other online businesses would consider toxic to _conversions_.
After all, in a time where the end user has some level of control over how their eyeballs can be monitored (however limited), any shaming of potential revenue sources seems counterintuitive.
One of many of the comments on the article itself absolutely nails it:
"The real failure of adblock shaming is that, on the occasions where I've complied, I then rediscover why I use adblock -- and turn it back on immediately."
92 comments
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] threadAnd even if you did manage to reverse-engineer an extension to send a "ads loaded" token to the site, their ad network would update their code a week later. That's why folks call it an arms race.
That's funny as first adblockers on Firefox used to just hide divs. Browser was still downloading flash object and images, but was not displaying them
Interesting concept. Asking as a layman: is this possible? Is the browser sandboxed enough away from the OS that this is a difficult problem? Is that why we haven’t seen solutions that implement this approach?
that's probably overkill. all you need to do is move the adblocking part further back into the rendering pipeline (ie. outside of the DOM) so that javascript can't detect it.
As long as you have websites built by JavaScript, trying to do perfect adblocking is solving the halting problem. Can't do that, but we should start fixing the most obvious, glaring abuses (JS need not be able to tell if something actually loaded, no 3rd party host resource, certainly no 3rd party scripts. If I'm putting foo.com in as the address, my browser should only be talking with foo.com)
Suppose I say I just want to eliminate javascript entirely - that's not feasible to enforce, but if I could just search the non-javascript pages out there, then a new way of doing things can be bootstrapped.
I can set it up for people that don't understand what they are doing (and I have) and they will not notice anything in almost every case.
As such, I conclude that this generalisation is grossly overstated and you probably haven't tried it to see if what you are saying is correct.
Doing what uBlock origin does by loading dummy versions of common tracking scripts is a lot more effective.
Lose == !Win
[1] https://pi-hole.net
That's definitely an opinion one is entitled to.
It helps that I have the site setup to only show a single ad above the fold for the majority of users and don't allow popovers, popunders, overlays, sound, etc.
Eventually, I'd like to add an option to display a message for donation accounts or something similar, but recurring payments and Drupal don't really play well anymore. The only supported add-on in existence is now Recurly. They're pricing was $1,200 a year but they switched it to "Ask for a Quote" (aka expensive but we don't want to say), so it's not something we'd be able to afford for the number of users.
Would you consider hosting your own ads? Is that still a thing? Trust isn't transitive, so it's still a problem even if we're OK with you in particular.
For those looking to jump into direct sales and self-hosting, my suggestion is to create a second position of an ad unit you sell through a network and try to sell that without removing your existing ad network unit. Then work to contact the people who advertise on your site through the network and try to sign them up directly.
Chances are you can save them money while still bringing in more revenue as you no longer share revenue with the network.
Side note: Tracking is an unfortunate reality in today's market. We use Google Analytics for statistics because anyone that even thinks about partnering in any way wants to see that. They don't trust your internal stats as a general rule, since you could easily fake them. So, anyone that fully blocks tracking (Google Analytics et al) is looked at as sunk cost since you don't count as a user in terms of potential partnerships and you cost money in terms of machine time and bandwidth.
I'm personally not a fan of this sort of tracking and wish there was another commercially viable option. I make donations available for folks who want to support the site directly. Even though we have a passionate community and many of them make donations, the unfortunate reality is that without the ads, I'd have to shut the site down. Either that or turn it into a paid commercial product, vastly shrinking the userbase but increasing the revenue, just to keep it going. I'm exploring some paid options, but many of them require a decent sized upfront capital investment that I don't currently have access to.
I would feel much more inclined to donate generally if I could see how much a service needs to operate and how much they have so far raised. Then I can see a direct path of my meagre contribution. I don't know why this info needs to be secret for a free service (though there might be a good reason).
Aside:I wonder if anyone on HN know if its possible I wonder to whitelist and sandbox a site which uses an ad network like adsense? As I generally block networks as a matter of course. (not so much because it stops them tracking me personally.. just because I think they shouldn't be tracking).
If that’s your “business model” then good luck with that, but I don’t feel shame or pity. I’d like to unblock sites, but white listing only makes sense if you can trust whatever they use to serve ads. Unless they’re hostinf their own ads, I’m disinclined to trust their third party providers and trackers, even if I like and trust the site.
No thanks.
That said, if I visit a site often, then I’ll consider unblocking. But if it’s a one-time visit, nope, gonna block.
But ad networks and the sites that host ads won't jump to compensate you for that.
Umm, yeah...
Other than pure rent-seeking every single thing under the sun could be considered a "socialist cudgel" by this logic.
I honestly don't understand how they are trying to further their argument by using this quote in the article.
HNers complain about having to subscribe to both Netflix and Hulu. What options does my 10 year old collaborative writing forum for mostly teens have?
Now that my ad revenue has died over the years, all that’s left is the charity of me paying out of my pocket. Then we’ll be left with centralized sites like Reddit.
I guess is the utopia that HNers envision.
The only place I've ever seen ads actually work and not be too annoying is in podcasts. They are more personal there and still isn't too much in the way. I've genuinely followed up on some companies podcasts I trust has had ads for. I have no idea how to make that work on the internet though.
I have zero concern for whether sites think “dumb ads” is a viable business model or not. Obviously I also don’t mind if a big fraction of sites just go under because of it. If your day job is to do work for a company that is funded in any way involving modern “adtech” at any stage, I’m not very sorry for your job loss.
I don’t mind ads covering 75% of the page, ads bloating downloads etc. I mind ads that invade my privacy and ads masquerading as non-ads
Except the content, of course -- that, you expect to consume for free.
This is the digital equivalent of saying to a musician, or film actor: because of the existence of a technology that allows me to consume your content for free (Napster / torrents / pirate bay / ad-blockers), I will shed all of my ethics and freely consume all of your music / movies, while at the same time I hope you never get paid and further, I hope the record label / movie studio you work for, goes out of business, all because you dared to show me an ad.
Instead, you're saying it to a reporter, journalist or author. But the message is the same.
And your final sentence is nonsensical. Generally, ads don't pretend they aren't ads. It's content that "masquerades" as a non-ad. http://brandsandfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/HouseOf... Heck, HN is an ad for YCombinator masquerading as a news site / discussion forum.
I think this may influence your other assumption that it's unethical to freely consume content. The article author uses the example of walking through a city and refusing to look at billboards, but still taking in the view of beautiful architecture. Do you abandon ethics to view architecture?
Imagine if the business models of all the businesses in those buildings depended on you looking at the ads. Would you abandon ethics to walk down the street?
I think there are some people who are ambivalent if every record label and movie studio shuts down. I don't really care as there is lots of art that is created by people who like giving it away for free. Ever since the start of the net, I've structured my livelihood to specifically avoid being in the business of extracting income from IP. So I think I'm pretty well hedged against people going against their behavior to pay for my IP.
I think reporters can be compensated in much better ways than ads, and I actually think that journalism will be better off if not ad supported. Part of the problem we have now is because ads and truth aren't really aligned with the same incentives so I see lots of news sites going more toward ads.
b) Billboard analogy is invalid because you cannot "not see" a billboard. Of course you don't have to act upon it, and can try to ignore it, but the billboard did make an impression in your brain, like it or not. With ad-blocking, it never has the opportunity to make the impression.
>> lots of art that is created by people who like giving it away for free c) doubt it, people sometimes HAVE to give their work away for free -- to get attention, publicity, an audience -- but they would almost always prefer to be paid.
I’ll happily consume it regardless, yes. If there is a paid subscription - good. Dumb ads - good. Blocked tracking ads - good, and I’m not sorry I’m killing their business.
The key here is of course that I find the idea of showing me a shoe ad because I googled “shoes” last year a much more serious ethical offense than downloading without paying for it.
> all because you dared show me an ad
No, again, I don’t mind ads. I mind my information used as a commodity in the process.
And yes - exactly - I can consume content for free and I will, while not caring whether content creators (journalists etc) lose their jobs, because no one watches the ads. And I’m not sorry, and not finding it unethical (not even cynical).
The ads-masquerading-as-non-ads I was thinking of was native ads in news and products pushed by instagram influencers etc.
The next day you visit “All Sports News” (or something) and they serve ads from TGA. TGA’s ad see’s the UID cookie, checks your profile and shows you an ad for shoes.
So yeah you go, how a news site could serve you ads about something you searched for on Google (or any other search engine) without that search engine selling you out.
Not saying Google are “Holier than thou”, yeah they have their own ad network and will profile what you search and serve you ads based on your search unless you opt-out of everything. Just saying it’s possible that Google didn’t sell them out.
Why is GP under any ethical obligation to consume ads? Were you shaming people in the 90s who muted their TVs when commercials came on? Why is it GP's responsibility to make someone's business model work?
Why are you conflating movie piracy with ad blocking? It's completely different, from a legal and ethical standpoint. And GP didn't even mention piracy.
Yes, journalism is in trouble. Yes, it's an important industry that fills an invaluable role in society. But print media has been beholden to advertising so long, that it doesn't even know how to sell its product anymore. And that's not GP's fault.
Yes, I believe ad-blocking (assuming it works) is equivalent to piracy. In both cases, you are consuming someone's work (a song, a movie, an article) without compensating them in any way, enabled by technology, and without attempting to obtain the approval of the content provider.
Here's the bottom line: You have no obligation to view ads. You can distinguish between OK ads and not-OK ads in your head. Whatever. But if you refuse to accept a site's ad policy, here is your only ethical remedy: DON'T VISIT THE SITE. Reading the article entirely ad-free is no different than going to a restaurant and not paying the bill, or sneaking into a concert without buying a ticket, or watching a movie you downloaded for free via torrent. You are consuming someone's work, without any remuneration or compensation.
Attention is a valuable resource and not one I'm going to give freely to ads that try to STEAL it from me. Computer performance and bandwidth savings are also valuable to me. My ISP gives me a cap. Expecting me to download tens of MB of data for KB of content is a no-go. Blocking ads and scripts can also be extremely beneficial for those that need accessibility.
If you want compensation, require it, put up a paywall. If your site dies because that business model is not sustainable, good riddance. It's time the ad model dies and dies permanently without a tear shed for its demise.
If the potential rewards for hackers could be kept minimal, it'd not attract interest.
The NYTimes has kept their site reasonable, but I don't want to subscribe. I like the idea of paying per-item, not bulk. That lets users encourage the kind of content (and authors) they want to see more of, while generating revenue for the content that Big Papers must provide (regardless of popular interest).
WHY this topic is always off-the-radar mystifies me.
I installed a domain block addon just for ensuring I never accidentally visit one of these sites again. There are 1000+ other sites reporting about the same news, I can live without a couple of them.
Bit of a silly analogy but think about it like a brick and mortar store getting pissed off at you for not looking at the display company X are paying them for.
If they can not prove that enough customers are interacting with the display though sales or information requests they won’t be able to sell the space for as much next time. So the B&M has an incentive to get you to engage with the display and you just walk right on past it... Shame on you...
So you manager of the store says that you can not browse the rest of his store until you agree to looking at the display.
Dunno about you but I wouldn’t want to visit that store again.
My point is instead of trying to turn them into customers you are turning them away at the front door without given them a chance to become customers. Sure some (most) won’t actually buy anything and just browse around but putting up such a barrier will make sure they won’t become a customer.
If they don’t turn into a subscription website and remain advertiser based, how will they ever “convert” you? Would you ever be convinced to whitelist their site?
1. Compromised ad networks are one of the most common ways malware is delivered these days. There's been at least one major ad network compromised a year every year for the last 5 years. I don't trust ad network providers to secure their software, which means I cannot trust any website which uses the ad networks.
2. Ads are as much about tracking as they are about promoting. A specific website may get minimal tracking information but the ad networks above the sites are following me around the internet, and the websites are enabling the ad networks by buying into a centralized tracking system. This shows a disdainful and disrespectful attitude towards my privacy. By ignoring this downside to their revenue model, websites are downstreaming their revenue problems onto random passers-by.
3. Most websites really are taking the piss with the amount of ads they show, and it makes their websites load slowly and look like poop, especially on phones.
Website owners are starting to focus on #3 and that's nice, but if 2 and 1 aren't dealt with it doesn't matter. Solve the security problem, solve the panopticon problem and solve the aesthetics problem, and then we can talk. Until then, I'm blocking all ads and no amount of shaming will make be care about the problems this causes to people relying on shitty business models.
And by the way, solve it as a group. There are billions of websites out there, I don't have enough care in me to bother maintaining a list of good-acting sites and periodically audit them to make sure they haven't relapsed. Obviously I'm just going to block all ads universally, you're a very entitled person if you think I should find enough time in the day to do otherwise. If you're running a site that meets these criteria then great, you're now a community leader. Go put pressure on your peers until enough of them change that I can feel comfortable uninstalling my addons globally.
I find this very smart. Not intrusive and a bit incentive.
- Slowness in web page loading, rendering and UI responsiveness due to excessive ad embeds and excessive usage of Javascript
- Losing their privacy by being tracked by ad networks and analytics code; especially across sites and across devices
- Auto-playing videos and animations which are excessive and distract from the actual content
It's likely that if the adtech industry had self-regulated earlier and shown some restraint then adblockers would never have become popular.
For those interested, our adblock product is available for iOS and macOS from https://www.magiclasso.co/
I wonder if I'm in the minority, but I really hate any auto-playing video.
Why are iOS adblockers for Safari so rare? The major ones (uBlock and ABP) don’t support Safari.
Why do I have to enable notifications to use the app? The explanation given by the welcome screen doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Edit: it looks like ABP does in fact support iOS safari now
Notifications are required as it is the only way to notify the app, and users, when we release updates to our ad blocking rules. Otherwise we would need to release an app update every time a blocking rule needs to change. We update the ad blocking rules generally weekly.
AdTech made it possible and easy revenu has become the main reason to publish online. Publish anything and generate revenue through click baiting, content farms etc.
AFAIC there’s no problem if these types of sites will go under, including sites I visit regularly like huffpost, thedailybeast and haartez - which mix some quality content with huge amount of fluff and spam.
This model does not work. I’m not going to buy a subscription in order to have adfree experience while being served sponsored content and law quality translations (haaretz has a horrible reputation in that respect) or intentionally provocative content meant to incite rather that encourage debate (again, haaretz.co.il is really shameless in that respect).
I don't disagree that content providers need ways to monetize, and that hosting and bandwidth expenses become problematic them costs exceed revenue, but its interesting that this particular business segment seems to use techniques that most other online businesses would consider toxic to _conversions_.
After all, in a time where the end user has some level of control over how their eyeballs can be monitored (however limited), any shaming of potential revenue sources seems counterintuitive.
"The real failure of adblock shaming is that, on the occasions where I've complied, I then rediscover why I use adblock -- and turn it back on immediately."