8 ms·

Axel Springer bans adblock users from Bild online

39 points by jhonovich 11y ago

sigmar 11y ago
>“Whoever does not switch off the adblocker or does not pay cannot see any content on Bild.de, as of now,” uBlock origin with default settings seems to load their "content" fine and without ads. If that changes, I'm sure one of the optional filters like "anti-adblock killer" will be updated accordingly
- arghh 11y ago
  ublock with latest chrome version here. site is blocked. i'm in germany
  - gorhill 11y ago
    The Firefox version of uBlock Origin supports inline script tag filtering, which allows to work around Bild's block (and other such attempts).[1] Chromium-based browser do not support inline script tag filtering, but you can still block all inline script tags at once, and the site will load fine, though with some broken functionality.[2] [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Inline-script-tag-filtering https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Inline-script-tag-fil... [2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/821#issuecomment-148908117 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/821#issuecomment-14...
danso 11y ago
FWIW, the Washington Post started doing this last month...and at some point they've apparently decided to stop doing it: http://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewzeitlin/the-washington-post-begins-blocking-ad-blockers#.kwY6X76g0 http://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewzeitlin/the-washington-post-b... > In one case, using Chrome with AdBlock on, the Post had a dialog box redirecting users to enter their email for a free six week subscription. The anti-AdBlock measures don’t seem comprehensive just yet — we were able to view articles after clicking through from a search results link in Firefox with the ad blocking software turned on. But when we clicked through to another article on the site, the redirect screen popped up.
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
Never heard of 'em. My gut tells me that by the holiday season we'll see more major sites blocking ad-blockers. And, of course, we'll just use different tools. Or better yet, change our browser signatures. After all, it's a courtesy to content providers for consumers to tell them what kinds of tools they're using. That courtesy can be rescinded. This entire spy vs. spy scenario makes me sad. I'm very sorry that the internet thought that folks walking by a storefront looking at your sales copy was a monetizable event. It is not. It was simply a fluke of the way the default technology was constructed. And now I fully expect to see large, well-funded players enter the fray -- on the side of content providers. That's also a bad thing. Going to be a lot of pain before this gets sorted out.
- keithpeter 11y ago
  Firefox with Noscript: big sign suggesting I switch Javascript back on. Terminal with w3m - all text visible including the 'skip to content' accessibility link at the top of each page. Appears to be full text of articles (my German is sadly quite limited). Yes, I agree, some kind of arms race will no doubt commence.
  - lordsper 11y ago
    Yeah, but the adblockers will win in the end. Worst case: we lose all bandwidth winnings, and have to simulate functioning ads to content distributors. P.S.: NoScript blocks the Javascript warning for me, unless I allow the bild.de domain. The adblock-blocker only works with NoScript fully disabled. I'm using Firefox with uBlock and NoScript.
    - PretzelFisch 11y ago
      True, we can always cut the ad's element out after they render.
- Canada 11y ago
  Megabyte songs, gigabyte videos, and games in the tens of gigabytes flow freely. And these guys think they're going to control how a couple kilobytes of text is viewed. Game on.
Mo3 11y ago
I'm sorry but who gives a shit about Bild. Pretty much everyone who reads this crap wouldn't understand what AdBlock does in the first place.
- arbitrage 11y ago
  You are sorely mistaken. The Bild is "the best-selling non-Asian newspaper and has the sixth-largest circulation worldwide." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild) A LOT of people give a shit about the Bild. The German people are also very technologically capable and highly privacy minded. The linked article cites that 30% of German users have some sort of adblocking software installed.
facetube 11y ago
Fix already available for ABP: https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=41068 https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=41068.
JoshMnem 11y ago
Good riddance.
Geekette 11y ago
War indeed. Well, since AdBlock introduced me to that addictive clean-browsing crack, I can't go back. I don't read Bild but as I've said before, most content I view online falls under entertainment anyway. So, being blocked on sites as an AdBlock user (like Forbes now does) can only cut my procrastination time short, which isn't a bad thing. Plus, ads are not the only way to make money online. So, if it isn't working for a company, then it's time to pursue another business model.
- zem 11y ago
  Agreed, when I click through to a site and see the content is blocked I just click back and move on, and 10 seconds later I've probably forgotten what I wanted to see there in the first place. I'm personally a fan of both adblocking and of sites rejecting people who use it (my personal line is that adblockerblockerblockers are going one step too far; if sites want to explicitly say "enable ads or don't view the content" I'm happy to play along). People simply going elsewhere in droves will perhaps spur more work into micropayments, which the ad-and-tracking model has sadly diverted attention and resources from, and perhaps more interest in user-created content with some sort of micropayment-based hosting cost recovery.
  - Geekette 11y ago
    Wonder how services like Blendle (content micropayments platform) will fare if such blocking increases. Interestingly enough, Blendle got investment from Axel Springer (Bild owner) and NYT last year[1]. [1]http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/10/05/blendle-is-up-to-something-big/ http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/10/05/blendle-is-up-to-someth...
- onion2k 11y ago
  So, if it isn't working for a company, then it's time to pursue another business model. For most businesses that isn't actually an option. You can only try something else if you have the necessary capital to fund a pivot, and few businesses do. The majority of sites you use won't try something else; they'll close down instead. That's fine, it happens to a large percentage of businesses, and they'll be replaced by new businesses trying new ideas. I'm pointing out that "Try a new business model" is rarely an option. "fail fast" is a startup maxim for a reason. If you don't discover what isn't working quickly you'll just plain fail.
Animats 11y ago
They're checking for "SMART AdServer" only. Fake that and it still works.
theoh 11y ago
Without confronting the massively pro-adblock crowd here head on, I just want to ask what the statistics are for Adblock use Internet-wide. Is it 10% of users or a much smaller figure?
- JabavuAdams 11y ago
  The article claimed 5%. 30% in Germany.
- putlake 11y ago
  I manage a consumer website with 4-5 million unique visitors a month, monetized solely via ads. About 25% of our desktop users use an ad blocker. The site's desktop audience is 56% U.S., 8% India, 7% UK, 5% Canada. When we detect the use of an ad blocker, we show a small appeal at the bottom to either whitelist the site or make a donation. Total donations received in the last 1 year: $0.
  - Zuider 11y ago
    Can you estimate how many visitors have opted to whitelist?
  - JacobJans 11y ago
    How do you measure ad block usage rates?
    - detaro 11y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10409429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10409429
detaro 11y ago
I'm happy about everything that decreases their reach even a tiny bit. Bild is the worst kind of "yellow press" and way to influential.
- igl 11y ago
  I am happy too. Anything taking views from this hate and lie spreading paper is good. Ad block should not even try to circumvent this.
hoers 11y ago
Why don't they just nicely ask their users to turn it off?
JacobJans 11y ago
The response to this by the members of this community is very interesting. On the one hand, there have been many calls and support for micropayments for content. Here is a publisher offering access to their articles for a low cost. The response? People want to "fix" the issue, instead of respecting the publisher. They are offering low cost way to view the content mostly ad-free. Isn't this what we should, as readers, hope for? An alternative to ads that is low cost, and still supports the publication? What am I missing here?
- godzillabrennus 11y ago
  Publishing written content is not a good business to be in these days. Just as a decade ago the music industry faced a cultural shift now the publishing industry is transitioning. The gist is that this kind of looked at as an entitlement not a service worth paying to have. Basically, the fourth estate is a zombie about to be put down unless something drastic happens.
  - tmalsburg2 11y ago
    That users feel entitled to free content and that there is no willingness to pay for content has always been a myth fabricated by an industry unwilling to face its own failure. I'm really surprised that there are still people who believe in this myth because there are now plenty of examples showing that it is quite possible to make serious money by selling content (Spotify, Netflix, iTunes store, New York Times, among many others).
    - thaumaturgy 11y ago
      The difficulty here is that people refer to "content" as though it's a commodity, and it's not. There's a huge difference between the market value of content provided by the New York Times and the content in a tabloid (even if it is a popular publication like Bild). With blogs and citizen journalism and everything else there are now millions of sources of "content", and content by itself has become almost value-less. I think good content is getting more and more valuable by contrast, although its market is probably shrinking.
boyter 11y ago
I was wondering about this the other day and thought someone here might know. How does one even determine if an ad blocker is running?
- putlake 11y ago
  An easy way to detect is to see if an ad div is visible and > 0px tall. Edit: Clarification: Most ad blockers collapse the divs where ads would have appeared. That's the tell I use to detect ad blockers. There are other, more sophisticated techniques but this is easy and works a good % of the time.
  - boyter 11y ago
    I suppose the next question is how does the ad blocker detect circumvention techniques? If you have experience in this I would love to read about some of it as it sounds fascinating.
equil 11y ago
I'd like to see a comprehensive history of adblocking. from webfree to adblock [0] to wherever we are today, because it seems like we're stuck in a cycle. Time and time again i see the web and it's users going through the same motions [1] [2]. It's the same arguments and the same experiments being tried, whose success and failure are as predictable as ever [3]. Today is just another day under the falling sky. [0] http://adblock.mozdev.org/ http://adblock.mozdev.org/ [1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/browser-makers-warned-against-ad-blocking/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/browser-makers-warned-against-a... [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20071011004456/http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com/index1.php http://web.archive.org/web/20071011004456/http://whyfirefoxi... [3] http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-d...
dingaling 11y ago
Fair play to them for trying, but this approach will only work for sites that host or create original content. If it's a site that just runs Reuters feeds or press releases with some 'editorialisation' then they'll likely feel the impact of the back-button. Recently I tried searching for details of the new Light.co camera. The first two pages of Google results were filled with exactly the same release, regurgitated on dozens of websites. None of them were useful to me, but it shows how much competition there is for eyeballs.
iolothebard 11y ago
Leider, kann ich nicht Deutsch lesen :-(
al2o3cr 11y ago
Should be interesting to see what Google makes of this; it seems to be flirting with crossing the line into "showing different content to visitors than the crawler", if the anti-adblock script runs for a Google referer.
- icebraining 11y ago
  The Google bot doesn't block ads, and it runs full JS nowadays, so I don't see why would it see the blocked version.
skissane 11y ago
I'm more than happy to pay for high quality content. For example, I pay for a subscription to LWN. But there are some things for life you'll take (in small doses) for free, but would never pay for - for me, tabloid journalism falls into that category.
rhabarba 11y ago
One more take for ad blockers actually improving the Web.

39 points by jhonovich 11y ago

>“Whoever does not switch off the adblocker or does not pay cannot see any content on Bild.de, as of now,” uBlock origin with default settings seems to load their "content" fine and without ads. If that changes, I'm sure one of the optional filters like "anti-adblock killer" will be updated accordingly

arghh 11y ago
ublock with latest chrome version here. site is blocked. i'm in germany
- gorhill 11y ago
  The Firefox version of uBlock Origin supports inline script tag filtering, which allows to work around Bild's block (and other such attempts).[1] Chromium-based browser do not support inline script tag filtering, but you can still block all inline script tags at once, and the site will load fine, though with some broken functionality.[2] [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Inline-script-tag-filtering https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Inline-script-tag-fil... [2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/821#issuecomment-148908117 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/821#issuecomment-14...

danso 11y ago

FWIW, the Washington Post started doing this last month...and at some point they've apparently decided to stop doing it: http://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewzeitlin/the-washington-post-begins-blocking-ad-blockers#.kwY6X76g0 http://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewzeitlin/the-washington-post-b... > In one case, using Chrome with AdBlock on, the Post had a dialog box redirecting users to enter their email for a free six week subscription. The anti-AdBlock measures don’t seem comprehensive just yet — we were able to view articles after clicking through from a search results link in Firefox with the ad blocking software turned on. But when we clicked through to another article on the site, the redirect screen popped up.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago

Never heard of 'em. My gut tells me that by the holiday season we'll see more major sites blocking ad-blockers. And, of course, we'll just use different tools. Or better yet, change our browser signatures. After all, it's a courtesy to content providers for consumers to tell them what kinds of tools they're using. That courtesy can be rescinded. This entire spy vs. spy scenario makes me sad. I'm very sorry that the internet thought that folks walking by a storefront looking at your sales copy was a monetizable event. It is not. It was simply a fluke of the way the default technology was constructed. And now I fully expect to see large, well-funded players enter the fray -- on the side of content providers. That's also a bad thing. Going to be a lot of pain before this gets sorted out.

keithpeter 11y ago
Firefox with Noscript: big sign suggesting I switch Javascript back on. Terminal with w3m - all text visible including the 'skip to content' accessibility link at the top of each page. Appears to be full text of articles (my German is sadly quite limited). Yes, I agree, some kind of arms race will no doubt commence.
- lordsper 11y ago
  Yeah, but the adblockers will win in the end. Worst case: we lose all bandwidth winnings, and have to simulate functioning ads to content distributors. P.S.: NoScript blocks the Javascript warning for me, unless I allow the bild.de domain. The adblock-blocker only works with NoScript fully disabled. I'm using Firefox with uBlock and NoScript.
  - PretzelFisch 11y ago
    True, we can always cut the ad's element out after they render.
Canada 11y ago
Megabyte songs, gigabyte videos, and games in the tens of gigabytes flow freely. And these guys think they're going to control how a couple kilobytes of text is viewed. Game on.

Mo3 11y ago

I'm sorry but who gives a shit about Bild. Pretty much everyone who reads this crap wouldn't understand what AdBlock does in the first place.

arbitrage 11y ago
You are sorely mistaken. The Bild is "the best-selling non-Asian newspaper and has the sixth-largest circulation worldwide." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild) A LOT of people give a shit about the Bild. The German people are also very technologically capable and highly privacy minded. The linked article cites that 30% of German users have some sort of adblocking software installed.

facetube 11y ago

Fix already available for ABP: https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=41068 https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=41068.

JoshMnem 11y ago

Good riddance.

Geekette 11y ago

War indeed. Well, since AdBlock introduced me to that addictive clean-browsing crack, I can't go back. I don't read Bild but as I've said before, most content I view online falls under entertainment anyway. So, being blocked on sites as an AdBlock user (like Forbes now does) can only cut my procrastination time short, which isn't a bad thing. Plus, ads are not the only way to make money online. So, if it isn't working for a company, then it's time to pursue another business model.

zem 11y ago
Agreed, when I click through to a site and see the content is blocked I just click back and move on, and 10 seconds later I've probably forgotten what I wanted to see there in the first place. I'm personally a fan of both adblocking and of sites rejecting people who use it (my personal line is that adblockerblockerblockers are going one step too far; if sites want to explicitly say "enable ads or don't view the content" I'm happy to play along). People simply going elsewhere in droves will perhaps spur more work into micropayments, which the ad-and-tracking model has sadly diverted attention and resources from, and perhaps more interest in user-created content with some sort of micropayment-based hosting cost recovery.
- Geekette 11y ago
  Wonder how services like Blendle (content micropayments platform) will fare if such blocking increases. Interestingly enough, Blendle got investment from Axel Springer (Bild owner) and NYT last year[1]. [1]http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/10/05/blendle-is-up-to-something-big/ http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/10/05/blendle-is-up-to-someth...
onion2k 11y ago
So, if it isn't working for a company, then it's time to pursue another business model. For most businesses that isn't actually an option. You can only try something else if you have the necessary capital to fund a pivot, and few businesses do. The majority of sites you use won't try something else; they'll close down instead. That's fine, it happens to a large percentage of businesses, and they'll be replaced by new businesses trying new ideas. I'm pointing out that "Try a new business model" is rarely an option. "fail fast" is a startup maxim for a reason. If you don't discover what isn't working quickly you'll just plain fail.

Animats 11y ago

They're checking for "SMART AdServer" only. Fake that and it still works.

theoh 11y ago

Without confronting the massively pro-adblock crowd here head on, I just want to ask what the statistics are for Adblock use Internet-wide. Is it 10% of users or a much smaller figure?

JabavuAdams 11y ago
The article claimed 5%. 30% in Germany.
putlake 11y ago
I manage a consumer website with 4-5 million unique visitors a month, monetized solely via ads. About 25% of our desktop users use an ad blocker. The site's desktop audience is 56% U.S., 8% India, 7% UK, 5% Canada. When we detect the use of an ad blocker, we show a small appeal at the bottom to either whitelist the site or make a donation. Total donations received in the last 1 year: $0.
- Zuider 11y ago
  Can you estimate how many visitors have opted to whitelist?
- JacobJans 11y ago
  How do you measure ad block usage rates?
  - detaro 11y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10409429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10409429

detaro 11y ago

I'm happy about everything that decreases their reach even a tiny bit. Bild is the worst kind of "yellow press" and way to influential.

igl 11y ago
I am happy too. Anything taking views from this hate and lie spreading paper is good. Ad block should not even try to circumvent this.

hoers 11y ago

Why don't they just nicely ask their users to turn it off?

JacobJans 11y ago

The response to this by the members of this community is very interesting. On the one hand, there have been many calls and support for micropayments for content. Here is a publisher offering access to their articles for a low cost. The response? People want to "fix" the issue, instead of respecting the publisher. They are offering low cost way to view the content mostly ad-free. Isn't this what we should, as readers, hope for? An alternative to ads that is low cost, and still supports the publication? What am I missing here?

godzillabrennus 11y ago
Publishing written content is not a good business to be in these days. Just as a decade ago the music industry faced a cultural shift now the publishing industry is transitioning. The gist is that this kind of looked at as an entitlement not a service worth paying to have. Basically, the fourth estate is a zombie about to be put down unless something drastic happens.
- tmalsburg2 11y ago
  That users feel entitled to free content and that there is no willingness to pay for content has always been a myth fabricated by an industry unwilling to face its own failure. I'm really surprised that there are still people who believe in this myth because there are now plenty of examples showing that it is quite possible to make serious money by selling content (Spotify, Netflix, iTunes store, New York Times, among many others).
  - thaumaturgy 11y ago
    The difficulty here is that people refer to "content" as though it's a commodity, and it's not. There's a huge difference between the market value of content provided by the New York Times and the content in a tabloid (even if it is a popular publication like Bild). With blogs and citizen journalism and everything else there are now millions of sources of "content", and content by itself has become almost value-less. I think good content is getting more and more valuable by contrast, although its market is probably shrinking.

boyter 11y ago

I was wondering about this the other day and thought someone here might know. How does one even determine if an ad blocker is running?

putlake 11y ago
An easy way to detect is to see if an ad div is visible and > 0px tall. Edit: Clarification: Most ad blockers collapse the divs where ads would have appeared. That's the tell I use to detect ad blockers. There are other, more sophisticated techniques but this is easy and works a good % of the time.
- boyter 11y ago
  I suppose the next question is how does the ad blocker detect circumvention techniques? If you have experience in this I would love to read about some of it as it sounds fascinating.

equil 11y ago

I'd like to see a comprehensive history of adblocking. from webfree to adblock [0] to wherever we are today, because it seems like we're stuck in a cycle. Time and time again i see the web and it's users going through the same motions [1] [2]. It's the same arguments and the same experiments being tried, whose success and failure are as predictable as ever [3]. Today is just another day under the falling sky. [0] http://adblock.mozdev.org/ http://adblock.mozdev.org/ [1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/browser-makers-warned-against-ad-blocking/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/browser-makers-warned-against-a... [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20071011004456/http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com/index1.php http://web.archive.org/web/20071011004456/http://whyfirefoxi... [3] http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-d...

dingaling 11y ago

Fair play to them for trying, but this approach will only work for sites that host or create original content. If it's a site that just runs Reuters feeds or press releases with some 'editorialisation' then they'll likely feel the impact of the back-button. Recently I tried searching for details of the new Light.co camera. The first two pages of Google results were filled with exactly the same release, regurgitated on dozens of websites. None of them were useful to me, but it shows how much competition there is for eyeballs.

iolothebard 11y ago

Leider, kann ich nicht Deutsch lesen :-(

al2o3cr 11y ago

Should be interesting to see what Google makes of this; it seems to be flirting with crossing the line into "showing different content to visitors than the crawler", if the anti-adblock script runs for a Google referer.

icebraining 11y ago
The Google bot doesn't block ads, and it runs full JS nowadays, so I don't see why would it see the blocked version.

skissane 11y ago

I'm more than happy to pay for high quality content. For example, I pay for a subscription to LWN. But there are some things for life you'll take (in small doses) for free, but would never pay for - for me, tabloid journalism falls into that category.

rhabarba 11y ago

One more take for ad blockers actually improving the Web.