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Extraordinarily annoying Forbes anti-ad-blocker wall. Can't even proceed into site without disabling ad blocker. Ick.

by Bud 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dsjoerg 11y ago
You want to read an article for free, they want you to see their article with ads. It's a negotiation, and you are free to say no and just not read the article. I thought it was tastefully done. They even mentioned they were running a "light ads" site. Why would they want to serve their pages to people using ad-blockers anyway? What would you prefer they have done?
- paulpauper 11y ago
  It's not like they don't have enough ads on the article pages themselves. I'm sure they are extremely profitable with all those ads plastered everywhere, with enough ads that it slows the browser. I hope LinkedIn and Quora contributors gains more traction, because the user experience is much better for the reader. Facebook is another example of a company that is extremely profitable while running ads that are not too obtrusive or annoying.
- LesZedCB 11y ago
  My ad-blocker is run to prevent tracking as well. I want them to not track either.
  - pfooti 11y ago
    FWIW, I block pretty much everything ghostery can block and can interact with the Forbes site just fine.
  - dbg31415 11y ago
    I disabled ad-block but left tracking-blocker on and it still wouldn't let me in. At that point I figured it wasn't worth it. They want to lose visitors, fine. What they're forgetting is that people who have ad blockers also share and post links to various networks... they aren't just shutting out the ad-blockers, they're shutting out anyone the ad-blockers may be friends with. It's retarded, but it's their prerogative. Incidentally, here's a great host file blocker for programs that run ads but don't support ad-block plugins. http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts
- fencepost 11y ago
  I'd rather they serve their ads from their own server, then I'd never encounter their ad-blocker-blocker. I'm not actually running an adblocker, I'm running RequestPolicy and NoScript. Forbes.com and forbesimg.com are allowed as are requests between them, but I'm not going to go through and individually allow requests out to multiple other sites just to see which one is serving ads (though I suspect it's the permanently-marked-untrusted doubleclick.net).
- rlongstaff 11y ago
  After disabling my adblocker to visit the site I was greeted with an auto-play video (with sound) that took up half the page. This is not what I would term 'ad light'.
colinbartlett 11y ago
Forbes is one of those sites from which I really don't feel bad about blocking ads. And now, with their new anti-ad-blocker wall, I don't feel bad about not visiting them at all. They really earned it by having one of the most consistently obnoxious web surfacing experiences for many years. Their ad interstitials are so insulting that I'd rather just give my eyeballs to some other publications.
pmontra 11y ago
Yes, very annoying. I wrote on the spot this very crude one liner to bypass it. Not an example of software engineering, sorry. I'm sure people here can rewrite it in their language of choice. URL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisabrownlee/2015/12/24/tsa-body-scan-just-say-no-leading-expert-says/ ruby -e 'require "json";require "net/http"; puts JSON.parse(Net::HTTP.get(URI(ENV["URL"])).lines.map { |line| line.match(/fbs_settings.content = ({.+})/) }.compact.first[1])["body"]' > tmp.html; firefox tmp.html; rm tmp.html Edit: broken into multiple lines for readability.
HappyTypist 11y ago
Looks like an A/B test.
ikeboy 11y ago
With umatrix, just needed to allow forbesimg.com and it worked.
imglorp 11y ago
I hit it twice and it let me in.
nashashmi 11y ago
If you are persistent, there is a workaround. Quite interesting tidbit of information once you figure it out.
forbescontent 11y ago
Here is the content: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/036287be55553676f49d https://gist.github.com/anonymous/036287be55553676f49d

Extraordinarily annoying Forbes anti-ad-blocker wall. Can't even proceed into site without disabling ad blocker. Ick.

by Bud 11y ago

Extraordinarily annoying Forbes anti-ad-blocker wall. Can't even proceed into site without disabling ad blocker. Ick.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dsjoerg 11y ago

You want to read an article for free, they want you to see their article with ads. It's a negotiation, and you are free to say no and just not read the article. I thought it was tastefully done. They even mentioned they were running a "light ads" site. Why would they want to serve their pages to people using ad-blockers anyway? What would you prefer they have done?

paulpauper 11y ago
It's not like they don't have enough ads on the article pages themselves. I'm sure they are extremely profitable with all those ads plastered everywhere, with enough ads that it slows the browser. I hope LinkedIn and Quora contributors gains more traction, because the user experience is much better for the reader. Facebook is another example of a company that is extremely profitable while running ads that are not too obtrusive or annoying.
LesZedCB 11y ago
My ad-blocker is run to prevent tracking as well. I want them to not track either.
- pfooti 11y ago
  FWIW, I block pretty much everything ghostery can block and can interact with the Forbes site just fine.
- dbg31415 11y ago
  I disabled ad-block but left tracking-blocker on and it still wouldn't let me in. At that point I figured it wasn't worth it. They want to lose visitors, fine. What they're forgetting is that people who have ad blockers also share and post links to various networks... they aren't just shutting out the ad-blockers, they're shutting out anyone the ad-blockers may be friends with. It's retarded, but it's their prerogative. Incidentally, here's a great host file blocker for programs that run ads but don't support ad-block plugins. http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts
fencepost 11y ago
I'd rather they serve their ads from their own server, then I'd never encounter their ad-blocker-blocker. I'm not actually running an adblocker, I'm running RequestPolicy and NoScript. Forbes.com and forbesimg.com are allowed as are requests between them, but I'm not going to go through and individually allow requests out to multiple other sites just to see which one is serving ads (though I suspect it's the permanently-marked-untrusted doubleclick.net).
rlongstaff 11y ago
After disabling my adblocker to visit the site I was greeted with an auto-play video (with sound) that took up half the page. This is not what I would term 'ad light'.

colinbartlett 11y ago

Forbes is one of those sites from which I really don't feel bad about blocking ads. And now, with their new anti-ad-blocker wall, I don't feel bad about not visiting them at all. They really earned it by having one of the most consistently obnoxious web surfacing experiences for many years. Their ad interstitials are so insulting that I'd rather just give my eyeballs to some other publications.

pmontra 11y ago

Yes, very annoying. I wrote on the spot this very crude one liner to bypass it. Not an example of software engineering, sorry. I'm sure people here can rewrite it in their language of choice. URL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisabrownlee/2015/12/24/tsa-body-scan-just-say-no-leading-expert-says/ ruby -e 'require "json";require "net/http"; puts JSON.parse(Net::HTTP.get(URI(ENV["URL"])).lines.map { |line| line.match(/fbs_settings.content = ({.+})/) }.compact.first[1])["body"]' > tmp.html; firefox tmp.html; rm tmp.html Edit: broken into multiple lines for readability.

HappyTypist 11y ago

Looks like an A/B test.

ikeboy 11y ago

With umatrix, just needed to allow forbesimg.com and it worked.

imglorp 11y ago

I hit it twice and it let me in.

nashashmi 11y ago

If you are persistent, there is a workaround. Quite interesting tidbit of information once you figure it out.

forbescontent 11y ago

Here is the content: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/036287be55553676f49d https://gist.github.com/anonymous/036287be55553676f49d