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This is great, now wealthy tech/content moral apologists can pay for the content they want while the rest of us can get on with our lives about using ad-blocke

This is great, now wealthy tech/content moral apologists can pay for the content they want while the rest of us can get on with our lives about using ad-blockers. Most of those properties, New York Times, Washington Post, Vox, Business Insider are currently making a profit, so why is there this moral outrage that they are not getting paid? These businesses are not charities, they are not owed your money when they choose to display free content with easily blocked ads, they are businesses.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago
You really think they'll continue to make money when inevitably adblocker software on any browser becomes as ubiquitous as messenger or camera software on a phone? That's the whole issue. The current ad model isn't really sustainable in that light. There's no outrage they're not getting paid, there is concern that extrapolating current trends, they won't get paid a few years down the line and will either shut down or enforce changes that radically change the internet for the worse. You can either get a closed market where every piece of content is paid for like Netflix and you start to see all kinds of lock-in effects that drive monopolies (if I switch from this vendor to a slightly better one I can't transfer my music/files/videos/articles etc, so I'd rather stay with what I have), as well as putting a price floor on information that used to be free with inconvenience for potentially hundreds of millions who can't afford the digital subscription, which radically changes the internet. Or you can get a different compensation model for content, like paying not to see ads without having to subscribe to a particular business's content, or buy their content pieces on their platform. This is what that is. Or you simply believe that the rapid growth of ad blockers will taper off fairly quickly and never constitute a significant threat. Possible but I think pretty naive.
- mahranch 11y ago
  > Or you simply believe that the rapid growth of ad blockers will taper off fairly quickly and never constitute a significant threat. Possible but I think pretty naive. A third option that I think is the most likely (because it's already begun to happen): Programs & plugins for websites that serve ads up natively from the local website. This means there's no call to a third party. It means there would be nothing to block and the ad gets through. If the ad is a simple image or gif file, an ad blocker would have no way to tell what it is. It wouldn't know if it's a picture of a cat with a piece of bread on its head or an ad for denture cream. This is because the picture is coming from the website you're visiting and could have a name like cute-cat.jpg. It basically nullifies the host file for ad blockers. That's what I think is going to happen. All the big ad companies (cough, google) need to do is revamp their ad network slightly and ad blockers become significantly less useful overnight. I'm not saying it would make ad blockers 100% obsolete, far from it. They'd still be useful. But a lot, and I mean a lot more ads would get through that wouldn't have before. If even 40% more get through, that's still a huge number.
  - Nicholas_C 11y ago
    I could see text/pattern recognition playing a huge part in the ad blocker functionality if ads are served the way you describe.
  - jdiez17 11y ago
    You're saying that there's going to be an arms race between advertisers and ad blockers and you assume advertisers are going to win by fuzzing the definition of "ad". Is that a good thing? It sounds like a local maximum to me, like native advertising, and not really a step in the right direction. In The Ideal World ad blockers wouldn't exist because we'd all be happy paying our fair share to content creators. This seems pretty far off from the current status quo, but running an ad blocker today is only adding fuel to the fire. If advertisers step up their game and ads become unblockable, we might be closing the door to a better solution and be stuck with ads forever.
    - mahranch 11y ago
      > Is that a good thing? A very good thing, actually. For starters, nobody minds ads. They subsidize content. Without ads, the internet wouldn't exist in its current iteration. What people are against are malicious ads and the like. If an ad is a simple gif or jpg (picture), there can be no maliciousness. It makes ads relatively safe again. And content creators actually make money, incentivizing better and more content. Everyone wins.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

You really think they'll continue to make money when inevitably adblocker software on any browser becomes as ubiquitous as messenger or camera software on a phone? That's the whole issue. The current ad model isn't really sustainable in that light. There's no outrage they're not getting paid, there is concern that extrapolating current trends, they won't get paid a few years down the line and will either shut down or enforce changes that radically change the internet for the worse. You can either get a closed market where every piece of content is paid for like Netflix and you start to see all kinds of lock-in effects that drive monopolies (if I switch from this vendor to a slightly better one I can't transfer my music/files/videos/articles etc, so I'd rather stay with what I have), as well as putting a price floor on information that used to be free with inconvenience for potentially hundreds of millions who can't afford the digital subscription, which radically changes the internet. Or you can get a different compensation model for content, like paying not to see ads without having to subscribe to a particular business's content, or buy their content pieces on their platform. This is what that is. Or you simply believe that the rapid growth of ad blockers will taper off fairly quickly and never constitute a significant threat. Possible but I think pretty naive.

mahranch 11y ago
> Or you simply believe that the rapid growth of ad blockers will taper off fairly quickly and never constitute a significant threat. Possible but I think pretty naive. A third option that I think is the most likely (because it's already begun to happen): Programs & plugins for websites that serve ads up natively from the local website. This means there's no call to a third party. It means there would be nothing to block and the ad gets through. If the ad is a simple image or gif file, an ad blocker would have no way to tell what it is. It wouldn't know if it's a picture of a cat with a piece of bread on its head or an ad for denture cream. This is because the picture is coming from the website you're visiting and could have a name like cute-cat.jpg. It basically nullifies the host file for ad blockers. That's what I think is going to happen. All the big ad companies (cough, google) need to do is revamp their ad network slightly and ad blockers become significantly less useful overnight. I'm not saying it would make ad blockers 100% obsolete, far from it. They'd still be useful. But a lot, and I mean a lot more ads would get through that wouldn't have before. If even 40% more get through, that's still a huge number.
- Nicholas_C 11y ago
  I could see text/pattern recognition playing a huge part in the ad blocker functionality if ads are served the way you describe.
- jdiez17 11y ago
  You're saying that there's going to be an arms race between advertisers and ad blockers and you assume advertisers are going to win by fuzzing the definition of "ad". Is that a good thing? It sounds like a local maximum to me, like native advertising, and not really a step in the right direction. In The Ideal World ad blockers wouldn't exist because we'd all be happy paying our fair share to content creators. This seems pretty far off from the current status quo, but running an ad blocker today is only adding fuel to the fire. If advertisers step up their game and ads become unblockable, we might be closing the door to a better solution and be stuck with ads forever.
  - mahranch 11y ago
    > Is that a good thing? A very good thing, actually. For starters, nobody minds ads. They subsidize content. Without ads, the internet wouldn't exist in its current iteration. What people are against are malicious ads and the like. If an ad is a simple gif or jpg (picture), there can be no maliciousness. It makes ads relatively safe again. And content creators actually make money, incentivizing better and more content. Everyone wins.