14 ms·

Ad Blocking Irony

236 points by driverdan 11y ago

putlake 11y ago
The author makes an assumption that the cause of the bad scroll was the ad at the top of the page. I have seen many pages on mobile and tablet that have broken scrolling like this, and many have nothing to do with ads. I have also seen reflow and scroll problems related to how custom web fonts are loaded, or to social sharing widgets.
- FanaHOVA 11y ago
  If the problem was related to something else it'd surely replicate on other NYT pages though.
  - g1n016399 11y ago
    That's true, but the video and related article doesn't confirm this. All we know is that the guy couldn't scroll down on the page. There's no indication right now that the ad is actually at fault.
    - minikites 11y ago
      I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, I think he does know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoi_Vinh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoi_Vinh > Khoi Vinh is a graphic designer, blogger, and former Design Director for The New York Times, where he worked from January 2006 until July 2010.
      - reagency 11y ago
        With that technical and journalistic pedigree, I expect him to be able to explain the issue and investigative details
    - gress 11y ago
      We do know for certain that the ad is at fault. We can see that the ad is what is flickering into blocking the text. We also know that the NYT doesn't have a flickering block on every page.
  - draw_down 11y ago
    By the same token, if the problem was the ad, this would happen for everyone who it was served to.
    - berdario 11y ago
      It's also possible (and quite likely) the the faulty ad wouldn't cause exactly the same problems on other websites, due to the way in which it'll interact with the page, the size of the viewport of the browser, etc.etc.
- reagency 11y ago
  Social sharing widgets are ads.
- gregwtmtno 11y ago
  For what it's worth, I've had this same issue on NYT site. I also assumed it was an ad causing the problem because refreshing the page to allow a different ad to load fixed it. (I don't block ads on NYT.)
- gregwtmtno 11y ago
  For what it's worth, I've had this same issue on NYT site. I also assumed it was an ad causing the problem because refreshing the page to allow a different ad to load fixed it. (I don't block ads on NYT.)
- copsarebastards 11y ago
  You make an assumption that the author didn't confirm that the cause of the bad scroll was the ad at the top of the page. It's not extremely difficult to discover what piece of script is scrolljacking; frequently all you have to do is Ctrl+F for scroll events.
jrs235 11y ago
I helped a friend try to figure out why he couldn't click a tab (team) on a fantasy football management site. Everything worked fine for me. I asked him if he had an ad blocking plug in and if so try disabling it. He said he didn't have one. Finally we setup a remote session so i could see his actual screen. Turns out he was using an older computer and monitor, his resolution was lower than I would ever care for but it turned out that a banner ad just above the tabs was causing the problem. I discovered it was that because after I installed uBlock and ads were blocked everything worked as it should. The Ad broke the site usability.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Happens all the time to me - fullscreen ads that require me to click on something to dismiss them. I won't click on an ad for any reason, so I have to close the page and go somewhere else. Ads are completely out of hand.
  - 1000hz 11y ago
    I've taken to popping open the devtools and deleting the offending DOM elements when this happens.
    - kps 11y ago
      And if it's a site I visit more than once, creating a 'display: none' CSS override. Same for the floating headers that break paging, and similar annoyances. (I use the Stylish browser extension.)
      - lawl 11y ago
        That works well until you get to sites that randomize the id/class/whatever of the element or automatically reinsert it once you kill it. At that point i usually look for a different site. Urgh. I wouldn't mind ads if the weren't that fucking annoying.
      - chapium 11y ago
dingo_bat 11y ago
I think Apple deliberately cripples the browser on ipad. It really has the worst browsing experience. My android phone displays pages better. I think they want to drive people towards making an app for every website. For eg, how many of you use an app to browse hn? Even though the website is so lean and fast, it is horrible to use on an ipad.
- gress 11y ago
  Can you give us any details of what you mean by 'horrible' or 'worst'?
  - dingo_bat 11y ago
    Scrolling has a lot of issues. The behavior seen in the video is common on many websites. And then there are some pages which simply won't load. I do not have examples offhand, though. Facebook is a really laggy and glitchy affair, even though the screen size is enough to display the full website.
    - arm 11y ago
      That doesn’t happen to me on my iPad Air running iOS 7. A big part of that might be because I have the iPad connect to a proxy server which blocks a huge swath of ad servers though.
- draw_down 11y ago
  Oh, I do it all the time. It seems fine...
- reagency 11y ago
  HN is horroble on Android too, because the HN powers refuse to create a mobile layout.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    HN is actually pretty great on the Android default browser on an older Samsung phone. My only complaint is the vote button placement and size. Other browsers like Firefox and Chrome completely fail at reflowing HN.
kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
The further irony is that Vimeo is still stuck in the 20th century and doesn't serve HTML5 video.
- AceJohnny2 11y ago
  Yes, they do. http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/07/vimeo-new-video-player/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/07/vimeo-new-video-player/
- madars 11y ago
  It does use <video> tag for me. Maybe you have an outdated browser?
- bobajeff 11y ago
  No. Can confirm they do in fact serve HTML5 video as I was able to watch the video in Chrome for Android.
- brobinson 11y ago
  I don't have Flash installed and was able to watch the video without issue in Firefox.
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  Actually they do, and their html5 player is BROKEN in my browser. There is no way to seek, even touching slider resets video position to the beginning.
roymurdock 11y ago
Can someone explain to me why this whole ad blocking fiasco has blown up in the past 3 days? Why was iOS's inclusion of ad blocking capabilities the turning point in what seemed to be an already-unstoppable movement towards a return to sanity for the web? Why is everyone so scared of ad shops/website owners having to change their business models? I don't understand the hype.
- vortico 11y ago
  I should add that if you had control over the software you use (similar to the classic idea of a human programming a machine), then this debate would not exist. Those willing to use adblockers would install or create them, and nobody would have to wait on Apple to be excited about using them.
  - gaius 11y ago
    Apple hasn't included ad blocking - they have merely provided APIs for ad blocking software to run on iOS devices. You still have to go to the app store and download one. But these APIs didn't exist before so ad blocking was impossible on iOS.
    - seanp2k2 11y ago
      Impossible without a jailbreak or e.g. the willingness to set up Privoxy on your home net and configure it to proxy your wifi traffic. There are ways, but this will be a million times easier.
- mineshaftgap 11y ago
  A large portion of the upper end of the market is running iOS. Real money is at stake.
- minikites 11y ago
  My thought is that it's because a big company is behind it and we would see the same thing if Microsoft did it for IE or (in bizarro land) if Google did this with Chrome.
bigtunacan 11y ago
I think the real irony is Apple blocking ads in the web browser when most apps in the App Store are a non stop barrage do ads Apple profits from. I use ad blockers, but something about Apple building this in strikes me as unethical and anti competitive.
- Eric_WVGG 11y ago
  nitpick: Apple is not blocking ads, nor did they build an ad blocker into the browser. They gave users the ability to add them (which brings iOS Safari closer to feature parity with desktop browsers, incidentally). I have no idea what this "non stop barrage of ads in the App Store" is you referred to.
  - MisterBastahrd 11y ago
    You're completely oblivious to the number of freemium apps that have ads built into them?
    - Eric_WVGG 11y ago
      Mostly. Whenever possible I use apps that cost money (get what you pay for, etc.) "help, doctor, it hurts when I do this"
  - pgeorgi 11y ago
    They don't give users the ability to also filter iAd.
    - bigtunacan 11y ago
      Exactly. I don't have a problem with Apple letting users block ads, but in fairness then the same should go for the App Store. Of course that won't happen since Apple profits from those ads.
    - rdsnsca 11y ago
      iAds are in app ads only, and AFAIK the new blockers don't block any in app ads.
erickhill 11y ago
I'm guessing this post only renders if I go disable Peace. Whoops!
Kenji 11y ago
It is not just ironic, it's silly. The entire discussion about ad blocking is silly. Why should it be immoral to render a horrible way of monetization useless? Ad blockers are doing the world a favour by sending a strong signal "this far and no further". There are many ways to cleanly embed plain images into websites in a non-obstructive way. Appropriate images. The ad industry has to learn or die, this is evolution and its result is improvement.
- lee 11y ago
  The only problem with this is that ad blocking is kind of indiscriminate. There are obviously obnoxious ads out there, those that use popups, use audio, video, or dialog boxes that block out the main content. But on the other hand, there are non-intrusive ads that are text or simple image based ones. Those ads get hit in the cross-fire of ad-blocking. Most of the sites that are producing content charge nothing from the user except for in the form of advertising. That's not a big ask most of the time. It's like Google providing this amazing service, of cataloging and indexing THE ENTIRE INTERNET and providing relevant and fast search results to everyone, and all they ask is that users are displayed simple text ads. It's not a big ask for the service they provide. I realize you can whitelist sites with ad-block. BUT, if you are going to a webpage to read and ingest content, I would argue that morally the transaction is to disable ad-block to view the content.
downandout 11y ago
So far the ad blocking experience on iOS has been a little rocky. 1) Several of them that I have tested break basic functionality - videos not playing etc. 2) Adblock Plus, the leader in this space, decided to get greedy and not launch a blocker, but rather an entire browser, which I suspect most people will not embrace. I certainly won't, but I'd love ABP on my iOS Safari. 3) Peace, the most popular of the ad blockers, was removed after the author had an attack of conscience [1]. 4) The ABP folks have decided to offer to pay those rolling out iOS adblockers for using their "acceptable ads" list. Sort of like a reverse adsense - basically extortion revenue sharing [2] . [1] http://www.wired.com/2015/09/popular-ad-blocker-pulled-ios-app-store/ http://www.wired.com/2015/09/popular-ad-blocker-pulled-ios-a... [2] http://bgr.com/2015/09/17/ios-9-ad-blocking-scandal-adblock-plus/ http://bgr.com/2015/09/17/ios-9-ad-blocking-scandal-adblock-...
bad_user 11y ago
Dear community, please stop up-voting junk like this. I would really appreciate it. Thanks,
- vortico 11y ago
  Watching the video demonstration was entertaining and funny, regardless of how useful or vital the statement is to things that matter today.
snarfy 11y ago
There is an assumption that any advertisement is good. Where are the studies that show ad backlash?
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
I've forgotten much of the early part of the 2000s, were people getting all upset about pop-up blocking back then?
- EarthLaunch 11y ago
  Not this much, because journalists were still stuck on paper, techies weren't attention-seeking altruists, popup windows were more annoying, and extensions were more niche (IE was still big).
- Khaine 11y ago
  Many people were. Don't forget about all the brouhaha over doubleclick and its efforts to track you. I remember people (techy) being concerned about it. Personally, I remember running proxmitron to block ads and tracking junk, and adding functionality to websites back in the day. Nothing has really changed in the last 15 years.
mpgarate 11y ago
This kind of problem is what led me to create http://justread.mpgarate.com/ http://justread.mpgarate.com/ Paste a link to an article, get a minimal version to read. Source code: https://github.com/mpgarate/justread/ https://github.com/mpgarate/justread/ Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8319903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8319903
- vezycash 11y ago
  Thanks man. I use it all the time. It's been a lifesaver. I use it for sites with so tiny fonts, it's impossible to read without zooming the page. And content sites / articles that take forever to load on my slow bandwidth. It even helps for sites that start playing videos automatically - wasting my precious bandwidth.
  - emir_ 11y ago
    There is a "read mode" on Firefox for desktop and Android that does this? You can set the font face and size and then every time you open an article, just click the "read mode" button and it will display the article all nice and clean. Safari does this too on desktop and iPhone.
- sabrinaleblanc 11y ago
  Definitely sad that tools like this need to exist so we can read an article in peace.
- mastax 11y ago
  Thank You, I've been looking for a barebones reading mode app for years, but they all want you to sign up for an account and add it to your reading list and yadda yadda. This is just what I needed.
revelation 11y ago
No idea why this is always portrayed as "ad-blocking". I just see it as an API for blocking all kinds of crazy, annoying stuff websites now do. Frontend rockstars have no one but themselves to blame for requiring people to strictly regulate content on websites to make them show actual content in an agreeable fashion. Recently, I had a website pop up a fullscreen "Rotate your device" banner. There are no words to express the anger and hatred that consumed me in an instant.
curiousjorge 11y ago
I think we are witnessing an industry being phased out. Ads to power your free mobile app or websites? Ads that slowly overtime have become more aggressive, in your face because advertisers 'dont know why ppl wont click on my poker site ad'. uBlock is such a sweet sweet slap in the face of such advertisers. I'd love to see small text ads that are relevant to my search or content. Giant banner with flash and won't disappear? Forget about it.
- manigandham 11y ago
  Ad industry is definitely not getting "phased out".
  - curiousjorge 11y ago
    I take it that you aren't in the industry.
    - manigandham 11y ago
      I am. I've built 2 ad platforms from scratch and now on my 3rd building both the tech and company this time. There's a lot of complexity to this industry and it certainly isn't anywhere close to dying.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
cpeterso 11y ago
Instead of blocking ads, what if browsers "tamed" ads by making only displaying the first frame of animated GIF ads? I don't think people mind ads as much as the crazy annoying ads (which seem to have gotten a lot worse in the last couple months).
- digi_owl 11y ago
  While i have noscript installed for general streamlining of my browsing experience, I long since dug up a gif control extension for Firefox because i got tired of the "joke" gifs that was floating around. https://github.com/simonlindholm/toggle-gifs https://github.com/simonlindholm/toggle-gifs Sadly since then many sites etc has moved to gifv, basically a webm with a different name.
bernardlunn 11y ago
How many people on this thread make their living (directly or indirectly) and feel the cognitive dissonance to their experience as users/consumers of free content?
Mister_Snuggles 11y ago
I read the linked article, watched the video, then followed the link to the New York Times article. For some reason, the CSS and/or JavaScript didn't load, so not only did I not get any ads, I got completely unstyled content. That was somewhat ironic too.
manigandham 11y ago
Always interesting reading these ad (blocking) threads. As someone who's worked in the industry for a while and now working on change, some thoughts: 1) Content costs money to produce. No way around that. Only option is pay directly or indirectly (via ads). What we need is better facilitators of both. 2) Ads are not going anywhere. The industry is not "in trouble" or imploding. There are dozens of ways around adblock and much of adtech is actually run behind the scenes server-to-server. It's not impossible to bring it 100% server-side and serve the final page as a mix of content + ads. This is effectively what happens with native apps already and there's an increasing amount of sponsored content. Content consumption is way up with billions of ad clicks, video plays and articles read everyday. The ad industry is stronger than ever. 3) Blame for the current situation is shared by all. Publishers should have better standards. Ad networks should use better formats and engineering. Advertisers should buy better stuff and know where/what is actually running. Just follow the money - buyers > networks > pubs with about a dozen layers in the middle, everyone trying to make the people who pay them happy. Users are not in this chain unfortunately. 4) Payments are not a magical solution. Most people do not want to pay, even if you might and the web is too granular for site-specific subscriptions which requires a scalable 3rd party. This is VERY hard to do considering the mechanics of the internet but there are things in the works like Google's Contributor program. Sadly results have NOT been great because any amount of money adds friction and most editorial/news content does not provide replay value like a music track would, but there is promise with network scale, bundling and the option to choose the level of ads/payment involved as your browse. 5) Browsing via ads is far more anonymous than payments, which involve credit cards which means name, address, birthdays, purchase history, credit history, etc. Contrary to lot of FUD, ad networks usually rely on 3rd party companies for data and they mostly focus on wide demographics and interests. If you're worried about privacy, then look at Google and Facebook who are both the de facto leaders in adtech primarily because of all the data users willing give them. Those are the companies that know who you really are on every device. 6) Finally I just want to say that the industry is not stupid or clueless, it's just massive (150B+) with lots of politics and back-room deals. Any industry this size usually takes years or decades to adapt and there's still a lot to figure out so change will be slow but ultimately the old guard will be retired and better stuff will come along. It's accelerating now so that's a good sign. I know everyone thinks they can do better with some brilliant idea and flip things around instantly but it's just not that simple. Please remember there are plenty of smart, talented, hard-working people (just like you!) that are working on this. I promise we will figure it out.

236 points by driverdan 11y ago

The author makes an assumption that the cause of the bad scroll was the ad at the top of the page. I have seen many pages on mobile and tablet that have broken scrolling like this, and many have nothing to do with ads. I have also seen reflow and scroll problems related to how custom web fonts are loaded, or to social sharing widgets.

FanaHOVA 11y ago
If the problem was related to something else it'd surely replicate on other NYT pages though.
- g1n016399 11y ago
  That's true, but the video and related article doesn't confirm this. All we know is that the guy couldn't scroll down on the page. There's no indication right now that the ad is actually at fault.
  - minikites 11y ago
    I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, I think he does know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoi_Vinh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoi_Vinh > Khoi Vinh is a graphic designer, blogger, and former Design Director for The New York Times, where he worked from January 2006 until July 2010.
    - reagency 11y ago
      With that technical and journalistic pedigree, I expect him to be able to explain the issue and investigative details
  - gress 11y ago
    We do know for certain that the ad is at fault. We can see that the ad is what is flickering into blocking the text. We also know that the NYT doesn't have a flickering block on every page.
- draw_down 11y ago
  By the same token, if the problem was the ad, this would happen for everyone who it was served to.
  - berdario 11y ago
    It's also possible (and quite likely) the the faulty ad wouldn't cause exactly the same problems on other websites, due to the way in which it'll interact with the page, the size of the viewport of the browser, etc.etc.
reagency 11y ago
Social sharing widgets are ads.
gregwtmtno 11y ago
For what it's worth, I've had this same issue on NYT site. I also assumed it was an ad causing the problem because refreshing the page to allow a different ad to load fixed it. (I don't block ads on NYT.)
gregwtmtno 11y ago
For what it's worth, I've had this same issue on NYT site. I also assumed it was an ad causing the problem because refreshing the page to allow a different ad to load fixed it. (I don't block ads on NYT.)
copsarebastards 11y ago
You make an assumption that the author didn't confirm that the cause of the bad scroll was the ad at the top of the page. It's not extremely difficult to discover what piece of script is scrolljacking; frequently all you have to do is Ctrl+F for scroll events.

jrs235 11y ago

I helped a friend try to figure out why he couldn't click a tab (team) on a fantasy football management site. Everything worked fine for me. I asked him if he had an ad blocking plug in and if so try disabling it. He said he didn't have one. Finally we setup a remote session so i could see his actual screen. Turns out he was using an older computer and monitor, his resolution was lower than I would ever care for but it turned out that a banner ad just above the tabs was causing the problem. I discovered it was that because after I installed uBlock and ads were blocked everything worked as it should. The Ad broke the site usability.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Happens all the time to me - fullscreen ads that require me to click on something to dismiss them. I won't click on an ad for any reason, so I have to close the page and go somewhere else. Ads are completely out of hand.
- 1000hz 11y ago
  I've taken to popping open the devtools and deleting the offending DOM elements when this happens.
  - kps 11y ago
    And if it's a site I visit more than once, creating a 'display: none' CSS override. Same for the floating headers that break paging, and similar annoyances. (I use the Stylish browser extension.)
    - lawl 11y ago
      That works well until you get to sites that randomize the id/class/whatever of the element or automatically reinsert it once you kill it. At that point i usually look for a different site. Urgh. I wouldn't mind ads if the weren't that fucking annoying.
    - chapium 11y ago

dingo_bat 11y ago

I think Apple deliberately cripples the browser on ipad. It really has the worst browsing experience. My android phone displays pages better. I think they want to drive people towards making an app for every website. For eg, how many of you use an app to browse hn? Even though the website is so lean and fast, it is horrible to use on an ipad.

gress 11y ago
Can you give us any details of what you mean by 'horrible' or 'worst'?
- dingo_bat 11y ago
  Scrolling has a lot of issues. The behavior seen in the video is common on many websites. And then there are some pages which simply won't load. I do not have examples offhand, though. Facebook is a really laggy and glitchy affair, even though the screen size is enough to display the full website.
  - arm 11y ago
    That doesn’t happen to me on my iPad Air running iOS 7. A big part of that might be because I have the iPad connect to a proxy server which blocks a huge swath of ad servers though.
draw_down 11y ago
Oh, I do it all the time. It seems fine...
reagency 11y ago
HN is horroble on Android too, because the HN powers refuse to create a mobile layout.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  HN is actually pretty great on the Android default browser on an older Samsung phone. My only complaint is the vote button placement and size. Other browsers like Firefox and Chrome completely fail at reflowing HN.

kevin_thibedeau 11y ago

The further irony is that Vimeo is still stuck in the 20th century and doesn't serve HTML5 video.

AceJohnny2 11y ago
Yes, they do. http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/07/vimeo-new-video-player/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/07/vimeo-new-video-player/
madars 11y ago
It does use <video> tag for me. Maybe you have an outdated browser?
bobajeff 11y ago
No. Can confirm they do in fact serve HTML5 video as I was able to watch the video in Chrome for Android.
brobinson 11y ago
I don't have Flash installed and was able to watch the video without issue in Firefox.
rasz_pl 11y ago
Actually they do, and their html5 player is BROKEN in my browser. There is no way to seek, even touching slider resets video position to the beginning.

roymurdock 11y ago

Can someone explain to me why this whole ad blocking fiasco has blown up in the past 3 days? Why was iOS's inclusion of ad blocking capabilities the turning point in what seemed to be an already-unstoppable movement towards a return to sanity for the web? Why is everyone so scared of ad shops/website owners having to change their business models? I don't understand the hype.

vortico 11y ago
I should add that if you had control over the software you use (similar to the classic idea of a human programming a machine), then this debate would not exist. Those willing to use adblockers would install or create them, and nobody would have to wait on Apple to be excited about using them.
- gaius 11y ago
  Apple hasn't included ad blocking - they have merely provided APIs for ad blocking software to run on iOS devices. You still have to go to the app store and download one. But these APIs didn't exist before so ad blocking was impossible on iOS.
  - seanp2k2 11y ago
    Impossible without a jailbreak or e.g. the willingness to set up Privoxy on your home net and configure it to proxy your wifi traffic. There are ways, but this will be a million times easier.
mineshaftgap 11y ago
A large portion of the upper end of the market is running iOS. Real money is at stake.
minikites 11y ago
My thought is that it's because a big company is behind it and we would see the same thing if Microsoft did it for IE or (in bizarro land) if Google did this with Chrome.

bigtunacan 11y ago

I think the real irony is Apple blocking ads in the web browser when most apps in the App Store are a non stop barrage do ads Apple profits from. I use ad blockers, but something about Apple building this in strikes me as unethical and anti competitive.

Eric_WVGG 11y ago
nitpick: Apple is not blocking ads, nor did they build an ad blocker into the browser. They gave users the ability to add them (which brings iOS Safari closer to feature parity with desktop browsers, incidentally). I have no idea what this "non stop barrage of ads in the App Store" is you referred to.
- MisterBastahrd 11y ago
  You're completely oblivious to the number of freemium apps that have ads built into them?
  - Eric_WVGG 11y ago
    Mostly. Whenever possible I use apps that cost money (get what you pay for, etc.) "help, doctor, it hurts when I do this"
- pgeorgi 11y ago
  They don't give users the ability to also filter iAd.
  - bigtunacan 11y ago
    Exactly. I don't have a problem with Apple letting users block ads, but in fairness then the same should go for the App Store. Of course that won't happen since Apple profits from those ads.
  - rdsnsca 11y ago
    iAds are in app ads only, and AFAIK the new blockers don't block any in app ads.

erickhill 11y ago

I'm guessing this post only renders if I go disable Peace. Whoops!

Kenji 11y ago

It is not just ironic, it's silly. The entire discussion about ad blocking is silly. Why should it be immoral to render a horrible way of monetization useless? Ad blockers are doing the world a favour by sending a strong signal "this far and no further". There are many ways to cleanly embed plain images into websites in a non-obstructive way. Appropriate images. The ad industry has to learn or die, this is evolution and its result is improvement.

lee 11y ago
The only problem with this is that ad blocking is kind of indiscriminate. There are obviously obnoxious ads out there, those that use popups, use audio, video, or dialog boxes that block out the main content. But on the other hand, there are non-intrusive ads that are text or simple image based ones. Those ads get hit in the cross-fire of ad-blocking. Most of the sites that are producing content charge nothing from the user except for in the form of advertising. That's not a big ask most of the time. It's like Google providing this amazing service, of cataloging and indexing THE ENTIRE INTERNET and providing relevant and fast search results to everyone, and all they ask is that users are displayed simple text ads. It's not a big ask for the service they provide. I realize you can whitelist sites with ad-block. BUT, if you are going to a webpage to read and ingest content, I would argue that morally the transaction is to disable ad-block to view the content.

downandout 11y ago

So far the ad blocking experience on iOS has been a little rocky. 1) Several of them that I have tested break basic functionality - videos not playing etc. 2) Adblock Plus, the leader in this space, decided to get greedy and not launch a blocker, but rather an entire browser, which I suspect most people will not embrace. I certainly won't, but I'd love ABP on my iOS Safari. 3) Peace, the most popular of the ad blockers, was removed after the author had an attack of conscience [1]. 4) The ABP folks have decided to offer to pay those rolling out iOS adblockers for using their "acceptable ads" list. Sort of like a reverse adsense - basically extortion revenue sharing [2] . [1] http://www.wired.com/2015/09/popular-ad-blocker-pulled-ios-app-store/ http://www.wired.com/2015/09/popular-ad-blocker-pulled-ios-a... [2] http://bgr.com/2015/09/17/ios-9-ad-blocking-scandal-adblock-plus/ http://bgr.com/2015/09/17/ios-9-ad-blocking-scandal-adblock-...

bad_user 11y ago

Dear community, please stop up-voting junk like this. I would really appreciate it. Thanks,

vortico 11y ago
Watching the video demonstration was entertaining and funny, regardless of how useful or vital the statement is to things that matter today.

snarfy 11y ago

There is an assumption that any advertisement is good. Where are the studies that show ad backlash?

GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago

I've forgotten much of the early part of the 2000s, were people getting all upset about pop-up blocking back then?

EarthLaunch 11y ago
Not this much, because journalists were still stuck on paper, techies weren't attention-seeking altruists, popup windows were more annoying, and extensions were more niche (IE was still big).
Khaine 11y ago
Many people were. Don't forget about all the brouhaha over doubleclick and its efforts to track you. I remember people (techy) being concerned about it. Personally, I remember running proxmitron to block ads and tracking junk, and adding functionality to websites back in the day. Nothing has really changed in the last 15 years.

mpgarate 11y ago

This kind of problem is what led me to create http://justread.mpgarate.com/ http://justread.mpgarate.com/ Paste a link to an article, get a minimal version to read. Source code: https://github.com/mpgarate/justread/ https://github.com/mpgarate/justread/ Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8319903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8319903

vezycash 11y ago
Thanks man. I use it all the time. It's been a lifesaver. I use it for sites with so tiny fonts, it's impossible to read without zooming the page. And content sites / articles that take forever to load on my slow bandwidth. It even helps for sites that start playing videos automatically - wasting my precious bandwidth.
- emir_ 11y ago
  There is a "read mode" on Firefox for desktop and Android that does this? You can set the font face and size and then every time you open an article, just click the "read mode" button and it will display the article all nice and clean. Safari does this too on desktop and iPhone.
sabrinaleblanc 11y ago
Definitely sad that tools like this need to exist so we can read an article in peace.
mastax 11y ago
Thank You, I've been looking for a barebones reading mode app for years, but they all want you to sign up for an account and add it to your reading list and yadda yadda. This is just what I needed.

revelation 11y ago

No idea why this is always portrayed as "ad-blocking". I just see it as an API for blocking all kinds of crazy, annoying stuff websites now do. Frontend rockstars have no one but themselves to blame for requiring people to strictly regulate content on websites to make them show actual content in an agreeable fashion. Recently, I had a website pop up a fullscreen "Rotate your device" banner. There are no words to express the anger and hatred that consumed me in an instant.

curiousjorge 11y ago

I think we are witnessing an industry being phased out. Ads to power your free mobile app or websites? Ads that slowly overtime have become more aggressive, in your face because advertisers 'dont know why ppl wont click on my poker site ad'. uBlock is such a sweet sweet slap in the face of such advertisers. I'd love to see small text ads that are relevant to my search or content. Giant banner with flash and won't disappear? Forget about it.

manigandham 11y ago
Ad industry is definitely not getting "phased out".
- curiousjorge 11y ago
  I take it that you aren't in the industry.
  - manigandham 11y ago
    I am. I've built 2 ad platforms from scratch and now on my 3rd building both the tech and company this time. There's a lot of complexity to this industry and it certainly isn't anywhere close to dying.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

cpeterso 11y ago

Instead of blocking ads, what if browsers "tamed" ads by making only displaying the first frame of animated GIF ads? I don't think people mind ads as much as the crazy annoying ads (which seem to have gotten a lot worse in the last couple months).

digi_owl 11y ago
While i have noscript installed for general streamlining of my browsing experience, I long since dug up a gif control extension for Firefox because i got tired of the "joke" gifs that was floating around. https://github.com/simonlindholm/toggle-gifs https://github.com/simonlindholm/toggle-gifs Sadly since then many sites etc has moved to gifv, basically a webm with a different name.

bernardlunn 11y ago

How many people on this thread make their living (directly or indirectly) and feel the cognitive dissonance to their experience as users/consumers of free content?

Mister_Snuggles 11y ago

I read the linked article, watched the video, then followed the link to the New York Times article. For some reason, the CSS and/or JavaScript didn't load, so not only did I not get any ads, I got completely unstyled content. That was somewhat ironic too.

manigandham 11y ago

Always interesting reading these ad (blocking) threads. As someone who's worked in the industry for a while and now working on change, some thoughts: 1) Content costs money to produce. No way around that. Only option is pay directly or indirectly (via ads). What we need is better facilitators of both. 2) Ads are not going anywhere. The industry is not "in trouble" or imploding. There are dozens of ways around adblock and much of adtech is actually run behind the scenes server-to-server. It's not impossible to bring it 100% server-side and serve the final page as a mix of content + ads. This is effectively what happens with native apps already and there's an increasing amount of sponsored content. Content consumption is way up with billions of ad clicks, video plays and articles read everyday. The ad industry is stronger than ever. 3) Blame for the current situation is shared by all. Publishers should have better standards. Ad networks should use better formats and engineering. Advertisers should buy better stuff and know where/what is actually running. Just follow the money - buyers > networks > pubs with about a dozen layers in the middle, everyone trying to make the people who pay them happy. Users are not in this chain unfortunately. 4) Payments are not a magical solution. Most people do not want to pay, even if you might and the web is too granular for site-specific subscriptions which requires a scalable 3rd party. This is VERY hard to do considering the mechanics of the internet but there are things in the works like Google's Contributor program. Sadly results have NOT been great because any amount of money adds friction and most editorial/news content does not provide replay value like a music track would, but there is promise with network scale, bundling and the option to choose the level of ads/payment involved as your browse. 5) Browsing via ads is far more anonymous than payments, which involve credit cards which means name, address, birthdays, purchase history, credit history, etc. Contrary to lot of FUD, ad networks usually rely on 3rd party companies for data and they mostly focus on wide demographics and interests. If you're worried about privacy, then look at Google and Facebook who are both the de facto leaders in adtech primarily because of all the data users willing give them. Those are the companies that know who you really are on every device. 6) Finally I just want to say that the industry is not stupid or clueless, it's just massive (150B+) with lots of politics and back-room deals. Any industry this size usually takes years or decades to adapt and there's still a lot to figure out so change will be slow but ultimately the old guard will be retired and better stuff will come along. It's accelerating now so that's a good sign. I know everyone thinks they can do better with some brilliant idea and flip things around instantly but it's just not that simple. Please remember there are plenty of smart, talented, hard-working people (just like you!) that are working on this. I promise we will figure it out.