I wonder what the overlap between visitors to a site that would display this and visitors not already using an adblocker is. Then again I've seen developers with ads plastered all over their screens before, I'd like to believe it's a conscious decision on their part.
> but if you use external CSS, it’s quite common for the request to fail resulting in an unstyled page
That’s a pretty crazy statement. How often do you see loading a CSS stylesheet fail to load? Most sites are completely unusable without their stylesheets and I don’t recall the last time I saw a stylesheet fail to load.
I found it amusing that my proxy detected the "/ads/" in the URL and killed the connection automatically.
Of course highlighting this fact that the presence of an adblocker is detectable, unfortunately only results in escalating the cat-and-mouse game further.
I have also considered popularising a script that replaces the whole page's content with "JavaScript detected, please disable it to view this content and improve your security".
Instead of document.cookie consider document.localStorage since there’s verbiage around showing a notice on your site if you use cookies, etc, for tracking purposes. At least with local storage, you aren’t using cookies :P
Except it's not tracking. Remembering user preferences is the original goal of cookies, and doesn't come with any legal requirements.
The law is (paraphrasing) "You must use cookies or similar to be evil without permission". Advertising companies decided that instead of not being evil, they'd annoy users into giving permission.
> No adblocker detected. Consider using an extension like uBlock Origin to save time and bandwidth.
And attention and privacy.
This notice is a great idea.
I might remove the "like" from the notice, since "uBlock Origin" is good, but some others are questionable or even outright malware.
BTW, note that the `ublockorigin.com` Web site that is linked to isn't by Raymond Hill, leader of uBlock Origin. It looks well-intended, and is nicely polished UX, but good practice would be to be careful (since it doesn't appear to be under Hill's control, and is an additional point of potential compromise in what would be very valuable malware). Hill seems to operate from <https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock>. One link that isn't too bad to view <https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/README.md>. Another that isn't great but OK is <https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki>.
I am extremely insulated from ads online and have been for about a decade. Once in a while I have to browse on a device that does not have an ad blocker or most of the times does not even let you install one. Seeing a website that is SEoptimised and heavily ad supported feels like walking into a crack den. That this is the normal experience for the vast majority of users is sad.
The quality control of even mainline ad platforms is abysmal as well. Like on YouTube, I used to get deep-fakes of the Canadian prime minister trying to sell some crypto scam. You'd literally click through to a phishing site disguised as a Canada Revenue Agency page.
Indeed seeing ads almost feels like I’ve been physically assaulted. Using YouTube in our streaming devices reminds me of the old Cable days where you watch 2minutes of something and get slapped in the face with 5 minutes of ads.
It really feels like being assaulted. Watching chill content only to have some ad scream at you, does not make me want to buy your product. I actively go out of my way not to buy things advertised to me on YouTube.
"I am extremely insulated from ads online and have been for about a decade."
I am insulted by the so-called "modern" browser controlled and distributed by (a) companies that sell internet advertising services or (b) their business partners
The ad annoyances would not be possible but for these bloated, sluggish, omnibus programs enabling data collection, ads and tracking by default^1
Every time I have to use one of these programs to access the web it is a terrible experience. Never having visited a crack den, I cannot say whether it is similar. In any event, it's bad
Sometimes I use these browsers to access files offline or on own local network, such as MP4s and PDFs; I think maybe that is all they might be good for
As "ad blockers" depend 100% on the so-called "modern" browser I would be very surprised if "ad blockers" remain effective for much longer, maybe 5-10 years at most; I dislike making predictions but I believe the end of the "ad blocker" as browser extension is inevitable
Already this prediction is starting to come true in Chrome
1. "The message won't be shown in browsers that don't support JavaScript, because those don't need adblockers to begin with." Even just a browser that did not enable Javascript by default would suffice
I'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of ads and I don't have a lot of respect for the modern ad networks. However this culture of expecting websites to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly.
There is an unwritten social contract here. Websites are willing to host and organise a vast number of content because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may freeloaders resisting the ads then services won't host the content, and on the path to that the freeloaders are really just leeching off a system in an entitled way (unless their goal is to destroy the services they use in which case good on them for consistency and for picking a worthy target).
If people aren't going to be polite and accept that contract then fine, enforcement was always by an honour system. But strategically if a service's social contract doesn't work for someone then they shouldn't use that service - they'd just be feeding the beast. They should go make their own service work or investigate the long list of alternative platforms.
There is no social contract with any corporation, only legal contracts. If you want social contracts, you have to use the things that are owned and built by actual people with a reputation.
My eyeballs and attention are not for sale, I will pay you a reasonable fee for your effort but I will never watch ads and subject myself to tracking as payment, just like I won't provide you with sexual favours as payment, no matter how much you declare it to be "the social contract".
Its not my responsibility to make your stupid ass business model profitable.
If your business model is stupid, that's not my business. I don't run your accounting department, I'm not your CFO.
Figure it out, or don't. I don't have the time to handhold every corporation I interact with and make sure they're getting their money. They are not babies, and I am not their father.
> However this culture of expecting websites to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly.
No it isn't. Free websites exist: Wordpress, Blogger, Wix, Weebly etc. The only "ad" they show is a static banner for their own platform, not the giant scripts Google loads for Google Ads. Neocities and Digital Ocean are $5/mo for a custom domain and hosting, theme it anyway you like.
Most "content"-focused websites like Buzzfeed, The Verge, Gizmodo etc simply embed third party content (Youtube, Vimeo, Giphy, random poll generators) instead of hosting them on their domain. Much of their content is rehashing news articles with a paper-thin layer of "analysis" on top. Then they add metric tons of ads, and throw in affilliate link garbage "product reviews" on top.
This is the dropship-ification of the web and it pretty much killed the free website culture of the Geocities/Anglefire era.
Ad-supported services undercut honest ones by pretending they are free when you are paying for them indirectly. They are also incentivized to engage in other bad behavior like gaming SEO or wasting your time with low quality content that's designed to increase ad impressions instead of helping you. I do not recognize the social contract you are implying there is and would be happy if all ad supported sites shut down so that better ones (either actually free or paid honestly) could take their place.
I've come to feel that the unwritten social contract was broken decades ago when ad networks decided their best bet was to become data farms and to sell ads and private data to any bidder regardless of ethics (and morality and truth in advertising laws).
My only "ad blocker" is Firefox enhanced tracking protection and walling off Facebook (Meta, but their only app I still use is Facebook), Amazon, and Google logins to separate containers and/or apps and/or private browsing tools. I feel like this is a good ethical compromise still fills my part of the social contract. If a site wants to show me the most generic, untargeted ads, I welcome that.
They don't get my data for free, that's not part of an ethical relationship with ad networks in my mind. I am happiest to keep them in the dark and feed them junk and lies, that is all I think that they deserve.
It's fascinating how the ad networks respond to this. Several, like Admiral (to especially call out at least one offender) whine loudly that I'm using an ad blocker because they've confused targeting and tracker blocking with ad blocking and ask me to disable it. They don't even try to show ads. It seems pretty clear what their real slimy game is and I don't think they deserve to exist. Ads existed for centuries without tracking and privacy violations. Ad "common sense" up until about the 1980s was the broader the message and distribution the better; demographics and targeting was about saving money with the trade off of losing potential audiences. The more you target an ad the less you benefit from people that didn't even know your product might apply to them, or to people that might buy it for others or as gifts. "Everyone knew that."
Google is nasty in its own ways. ReCaptchas get worse. YouTube ads have several levels of hell, including interruptions in parts of videos it shouldn't interrupt, all sorts of racist and intellectually disgusting groups (including but not limited to allowing outright scams, platforming disinformation, and spreading malware) it allows to buy ads, and how much it allows those groups to serve 30 minute/1 hour/2+ hour videos as "ads". It's amazing how many ads I've felt I had to report from hate groups alone. All of that seems to background radiation for everyone with access to Google's ad networks, but the less tracking data you have the fewer targeted ads you see and the more the mask off greed feeds you terrifying things that make you wonder how humanity is okay with all this and why Google isn't seen as more of a greedy, evil company for how much of this stuff they fail to vet and continue to associate their brand with.
Show me old family friendly TV advertising staples like Clorox ads and whatever the latest cereal fad is, please, I don't mind. That's a written social contract that worked for a long time, especially because it had rules like Truth in Advertising laws and followed ethics boundaries like brand contamination by association with criminals and liars. Targeted advertising is and was a mistake. Ad networks believing private data was their new playground and revenue gold mine was a mistake. Neither of those, I think fit the old social contracts about ad-subsidized content, and I think all we can do is send a message that both of them break the spirit of the contract and it is past time for a change/fix.
But that's also maybe just me and a personal crusade at this point. I don't see a lot of people going to the sort of privacy minded extremes I have and also still not install an actual ad blocker. But that's how I'm trying to square the ethics dilemma of appreciating ad-subsidized content, but also understanding that the internet is no longer safe without some sort of privacy-minded safeguards that companies like Admiral and Google are going around and calling "ad blocking", because it is starting to interfere with their real, more lucrati...
Ironically a content blocker on iOS Safari blocks this page from loading at all, I’m guessing because of the /ads/ in the URL rather than the domain. I didn’t see the notice on iOS after disabling the content blockers, but that’s probably because of the not enough space/off to the side constraint?
It's bad enough we got extra work for those who use adblockers.
Wasting peoples' time and attention for not using one (out of personal choice or necessity) feels like overreach.
It's also deeply paternalistic: Even if it is meant well - and I assume that's the case here - it implies the site operator knows better than the user what is good for them.
Finally, this will also lower the guards of less technical users for installing random plug-ins on website demand.
From a subjective gut feeling: Please do not do this. Let people decide what they need, and what they don't need.
Even CERN would advice everyone to use ad-blocker [1] for a safer internet experience. I am sure ads as it is today wasn't part of the web plan when it started.
Big tech has slowly convinced us that it is their right to violate us. Because they give us so much for free. But they also take things away from us, without our knowledge and consent, they manipulate us, they make barriers between us en the information we need. They change the human condition for the worse.
We do not have to feel guilty to act against them.
Btw, yesterday Chromium told me Ublock Origin is no longer supported. Well, thank you, now I know why I wasn't using Chromium for anything other than MS365 stuff. It's working just fine on Firefox.
> Unfortunately, I have no way to detect DNS based blocking short of loading an actual ad.
Before that point I'd already spotted that limitation, but there might be an easy solution: get a domain added to a common block list used by DNS based blockers. If you get the right content from a resource on a host with that name (or the other test passes, so we test for both forms of blocker) show the message.
Of course there will be false positives if the page goes down or if they're is some other network issue, but no test like this will be perfect.
Anyone want to save me the research to find out the easiest way to get a domain on the lists? I have no objection to sacrificing a few £ per year on a name to use and I've got spare resource to serve the pile of tiny requests that'll go through because people aren't running a blocker.
EDIT: as a secondary note, I wouldn't just flip between “display:none” and “display:block” on one element upon detection result. That might cause visual disturbance in many page layouts as things load. I would leave a block of the same positioning and size properties in the flow in either case, either blank or with a message like “You'll be pleased to know that your ad blocker seems to be working.”, perhaps leaving the space blank (but still in the flow with the same dimensions) initially so an incorrect message isn't displayed if something (scripting being disabled client-side for instance) stops the tests running at all.
I think getting a domain is well worth the effort. If you set up the domain and write a small blog post I'm sure HN will be willing to help add the domain to every blocklist imaginable. If you do, I also think it's worth adding a donate button.
Bug report: There's a typo in the actual popup as shown to me, it says "extention". Consistently enough, the typo is present in the code snippet in the article:
if (!document.cookie.includes("notice-shown")) {
document.getElementById("ad-note-hidden").id = 'ad-note';
document.getElementById("ad-note-content-wrapper").innerHTML = "No adblocker detected. " +
"Consider using an extention like <a href=https://ublockorigin.com/>uBlock Origin</a> to save time and bandwidth." +
" <u onclick=hide()>Click here to close.</u>";
}
> If you want to support your favorite authors: send then money. A dollar helps more then viewing ads ever would.
This isn't really true. I ran an ad-supported site at one point with my content, just a small banner at the top of each page. The ads paid for a significant portion of my monthly rent. Getting a few dollars from the occasional viewer would not, since 99.99+% of people are not going to do that.
I don't like viewing ads, but let's not pretend like they don't make money for content creators. They absolutely do.
I love it. But in the spirit of today's Internet, you should make this message an obnoxious pop-up that requires dismissal with a tiny "X" button that is dark-grey-on-black and placed tactically so as to be the least accessible. The touch target on touch devices should be tiny and slightly off. The pop-up should also fail completely on iPads, covering all the content with a dark overlay but giving the user no way to proceed.
45 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 71.7 ms ] threadPerhaps only enables js when user clicks something.
That’s a pretty crazy statement. How often do you see loading a CSS stylesheet fail to load? Most sites are completely unusable without their stylesheets and I don’t recall the last time I saw a stylesheet fail to load.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/22/fbi-ad-blocker/
https://web.archive.org/web/20230219020056/https://www.ic3.g...
Of course highlighting this fact that the presence of an adblocker is detectable, unfortunately only results in escalating the cat-and-mouse game further.
I have also considered popularising a script that replaces the whole page's content with "JavaScript detected, please disable it to view this content and improve your security".
The law is (paraphrasing) "You must use cookies or similar to be evil without permission". Advertising companies decided that instead of not being evil, they'd annoy users into giving permission.
And attention and privacy.
This notice is a great idea.
I might remove the "like" from the notice, since "uBlock Origin" is good, but some others are questionable or even outright malware.
BTW, note that the `ublockorigin.com` Web site that is linked to isn't by Raymond Hill, leader of uBlock Origin. It looks well-intended, and is nicely polished UX, but good practice would be to be careful (since it doesn't appear to be under Hill's control, and is an additional point of potential compromise in what would be very valuable malware). Hill seems to operate from <https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock>. One link that isn't too bad to view <https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/README.md>. Another that isn't great but OK is <https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki>.
It really feels like being assaulted. Watching chill content only to have some ad scream at you, does not make me want to buy your product. I actively go out of my way not to buy things advertised to me on YouTube.
Do companies even care anymore? Is everyone THAT desperate for advertising revenue?
I am insulted by the so-called "modern" browser controlled and distributed by (a) companies that sell internet advertising services or (b) their business partners
The ad annoyances would not be possible but for these bloated, sluggish, omnibus programs enabling data collection, ads and tracking by default^1
Every time I have to use one of these programs to access the web it is a terrible experience. Never having visited a crack den, I cannot say whether it is similar. In any event, it's bad
Sometimes I use these browsers to access files offline or on own local network, such as MP4s and PDFs; I think maybe that is all they might be good for
As "ad blockers" depend 100% on the so-called "modern" browser I would be very surprised if "ad blockers" remain effective for much longer, maybe 5-10 years at most; I dislike making predictions but I believe the end of the "ad blocker" as browser extension is inevitable
Already this prediction is starting to come true in Chrome
1. "The message won't be shown in browsers that don't support JavaScript, because those don't need adblockers to begin with." Even just a browser that did not enable Javascript by default would suffice
2. "exposed by" <-- so-called "modern" browser
When #2 is not used, there is no need for #1
That is, #2 creates the need for #1
If stop using #2, then "ads" problem is solved
There is an unwritten social contract here. Websites are willing to host and organise a vast number of content because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may freeloaders resisting the ads then services won't host the content, and on the path to that the freeloaders are really just leeching off a system in an entitled way (unless their goal is to destroy the services they use in which case good on them for consistency and for picking a worthy target).
If people aren't going to be polite and accept that contract then fine, enforcement was always by an honour system. But strategically if a service's social contract doesn't work for someone then they shouldn't use that service - they'd just be feeding the beast. They should go make their own service work or investigate the long list of alternative platforms.
If your business model is stupid, that's not my business. I don't run your accounting department, I'm not your CFO.
Figure it out, or don't. I don't have the time to handhold every corporation I interact with and make sure they're getting their money. They are not babies, and I am not their father.
No it isn't. Free websites exist: Wordpress, Blogger, Wix, Weebly etc. The only "ad" they show is a static banner for their own platform, not the giant scripts Google loads for Google Ads. Neocities and Digital Ocean are $5/mo for a custom domain and hosting, theme it anyway you like.
Most "content"-focused websites like Buzzfeed, The Verge, Gizmodo etc simply embed third party content (Youtube, Vimeo, Giphy, random poll generators) instead of hosting them on their domain. Much of their content is rehashing news articles with a paper-thin layer of "analysis" on top. Then they add metric tons of ads, and throw in affilliate link garbage "product reviews" on top.
This is the dropship-ification of the web and it pretty much killed the free website culture of the Geocities/Anglefire era.
My only "ad blocker" is Firefox enhanced tracking protection and walling off Facebook (Meta, but their only app I still use is Facebook), Amazon, and Google logins to separate containers and/or apps and/or private browsing tools. I feel like this is a good ethical compromise still fills my part of the social contract. If a site wants to show me the most generic, untargeted ads, I welcome that.
They don't get my data for free, that's not part of an ethical relationship with ad networks in my mind. I am happiest to keep them in the dark and feed them junk and lies, that is all I think that they deserve.
It's fascinating how the ad networks respond to this. Several, like Admiral (to especially call out at least one offender) whine loudly that I'm using an ad blocker because they've confused targeting and tracker blocking with ad blocking and ask me to disable it. They don't even try to show ads. It seems pretty clear what their real slimy game is and I don't think they deserve to exist. Ads existed for centuries without tracking and privacy violations. Ad "common sense" up until about the 1980s was the broader the message and distribution the better; demographics and targeting was about saving money with the trade off of losing potential audiences. The more you target an ad the less you benefit from people that didn't even know your product might apply to them, or to people that might buy it for others or as gifts. "Everyone knew that."
Google is nasty in its own ways. ReCaptchas get worse. YouTube ads have several levels of hell, including interruptions in parts of videos it shouldn't interrupt, all sorts of racist and intellectually disgusting groups (including but not limited to allowing outright scams, platforming disinformation, and spreading malware) it allows to buy ads, and how much it allows those groups to serve 30 minute/1 hour/2+ hour videos as "ads". It's amazing how many ads I've felt I had to report from hate groups alone. All of that seems to background radiation for everyone with access to Google's ad networks, but the less tracking data you have the fewer targeted ads you see and the more the mask off greed feeds you terrifying things that make you wonder how humanity is okay with all this and why Google isn't seen as more of a greedy, evil company for how much of this stuff they fail to vet and continue to associate their brand with.
Show me old family friendly TV advertising staples like Clorox ads and whatever the latest cereal fad is, please, I don't mind. That's a written social contract that worked for a long time, especially because it had rules like Truth in Advertising laws and followed ethics boundaries like brand contamination by association with criminals and liars. Targeted advertising is and was a mistake. Ad networks believing private data was their new playground and revenue gold mine was a mistake. Neither of those, I think fit the old social contracts about ad-subsidized content, and I think all we can do is send a message that both of them break the spirit of the contract and it is past time for a change/fix.
But that's also maybe just me and a personal crusade at this point. I don't see a lot of people going to the sort of privacy minded extremes I have and also still not install an actual ad blocker. But that's how I'm trying to square the ethics dilemma of appreciating ad-subsidized content, but also understanding that the internet is no longer safe without some sort of privacy-minded safeguards that companies like Admiral and Google are going around and calling "ad blocking", because it is starting to interfere with their real, more lucrati...
It's also deeply paternalistic: Even if it is meant well - and I assume that's the case here - it implies the site operator knows better than the user what is good for them.
Finally, this will also lower the guards of less technical users for installing random plug-ins on website demand.
From a subjective gut feeling: Please do not do this. Let people decide what they need, and what they don't need.
[1] https://home.cern/news/news/computing/computer-security-bloc...
We do not have to feel guilty to act against them.
Btw, yesterday Chromium told me Ublock Origin is no longer supported. Well, thank you, now I know why I wasn't using Chromium for anything other than MS365 stuff. It's working just fine on Firefox.
Before that point I'd already spotted that limitation, but there might be an easy solution: get a domain added to a common block list used by DNS based blockers. If you get the right content from a resource on a host with that name (or the other test passes, so we test for both forms of blocker) show the message.
Of course there will be false positives if the page goes down or if they're is some other network issue, but no test like this will be perfect.
Anyone want to save me the research to find out the easiest way to get a domain on the lists? I have no objection to sacrificing a few £ per year on a name to use and I've got spare resource to serve the pile of tiny requests that'll go through because people aren't running a blocker.
EDIT: as a secondary note, I wouldn't just flip between “display:none” and “display:block” on one element upon detection result. That might cause visual disturbance in many page layouts as things load. I would leave a block of the same positioning and size properties in the flow in either case, either blank or with a message like “You'll be pleased to know that your ad blocker seems to be working.”, perhaps leaving the space blank (but still in the flow with the same dimensions) initially so an incorrect message isn't displayed if something (scripting being disabled client-side for instance) stops the tests running at all.
It's like a leech, and they want you to think it's a symbiotic relationship.
Bug report: There's a typo in the actual popup as shown to me, it says "extention". Consistently enough, the typo is present in the code snippet in the article:
This isn't really true. I ran an ad-supported site at one point with my content, just a small banner at the top of each page. The ads paid for a significant portion of my monthly rent. Getting a few dollars from the occasional viewer would not, since 99.99+% of people are not going to do that.
I don't like viewing ads, but let's not pretend like they don't make money for content creators. They absolutely do.