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How we fought bad ads in 2015

108 points by finid 11y ago

dcneymh57 11y ago
Do you know if Adsense tried to make any agreement with ad blockers? Their ads are not so bad.
- AznHisoka 11y ago
  The content of their are OK, but their placement in a lot of blogs is not. Ruins the user experience tremendously.
  - kaybe 11y ago
    I also hate the heckling coming with ads unrelated to the site content. It's another significant load on my attention. If it was related to the site content, it might even be helpful.
- cpeterso 11y ago
  Yes: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay-adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboo... "Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Taboola are paying the owner of Adblock Plus to unblock ads on their websites at a fee of "30% of the additional ad revenues" they would have made were ads unblocked."
danieldk 11y ago
When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you’re interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want. They don't make anything easier. If I want something, I will get it, otherwise it's just annoying. It's great that they are working to make ads safer (which is obviously in their interest as well), but they have already lost me (and I guess many others). Even AdSense ads are obnoxious these days (see [1] for a taste). On mobile many websites are completely unusable because of ads. [1] https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/185666?hl=en https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/185666?hl=en
- bcook 11y ago
  I must disagree. Some ads do introduce me to new things that I am truly interested in.
  - pc86 11y ago
    The percentage has unfortunately decreased precipitously with the prevalence of retargeting.
  - gardano 11y ago
    Other than Ghostery, I guess my ad blocker is myself. If I see anything that resembles an ad, I avert my eyes. I suppose something subliminal is at work even so, but I imagine there are many more people like who just avoid even donating their eyeballs to an advertisement.
- boomzilla 11y ago
  There is value in advertising: as an information source and a mechanism to establish trust. The former value has been diminished by the internet (which some people call the information age). Advertising is still valuable for establishing trust between the two unknown parties though. Ads in Google work partly because of Google the brand name. Ads on Reddit r/HateSomething will not because, well, you know why. So it's in Google's interest to have good and safe ads (or the perception that they do).
  - kaybe 11y ago
    There is value in advertising for me when I do not know where to buy something I need, or what I need. That however is almost never true for consumer goods, only tech things we need for science. Heck, just knowing the suppliers puts you in some kind of secret club sometimes.
  - eevilspock 11y ago
    Trust? TRUST? I'm sorry, but are you saying that if I pay to have a claim that my product is best broadcast into everyone's eyeballs or ears, I'm establishing trust? Allow me to repost a previous comment of mine[1]: Whenever a debate about advertising pops up on HN, many people defend it as the necessary way for consumers to find out about good products. Healthy free markets depend on informed consumers, but to think that advertising results in informed consumers makes little sense. I find it strange that a community of logic and science oriented people can hold such a notion. When communities were small, reputation was king. If your town had two bakers, everyone knew which one was good and which one sucked. No amount of advertising would fool the townsfolk into going to the sucky one. But this doesn't scale to huge cities with tens, hundreds or thousands of choices. We can't know the reputation of such a wide array, and we can easily be fooled by advertising. Internet-based recommendation systems make the grapevine and reputation scalable. I hope we see more innovation. Yelp is a start, but it fails miserably because if I rate a place 5 because I love very authentic Thai food, and another person rates it a 1 because they are used to Americanized Thai, the restaurant gets a 3 (I'm simplifying for illustrative purposes). In other words, Yelp's rating is useless to both me and the other person. I'm hoping for a future where recommendation systems and collaborative filtering get so good that they render marketing and advertising useless. - [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10398290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10398290
xpda 11y ago
"In 2015, we stepped up our efforts to fight phishing sites, blocking nearly 7,000 sites as a result." One of the 7000 "phishing sites" they blocked was a page on my personal site (http://xpda.com/f18ebay/ http://xpda.com/f18ebay/) that has been there more than 10 years and has nothing to do with phishing. It's not an important or high-traffic page, but it was irritating nonetheless to be falsely accused by Google and, as a result, a several other web institutions.
- dfabulich 11y ago
  What is it? Is it supposed to be a parody? It honestly looks like the site is trying to impersonate a (silly) eBay listing.
  - wmeredith 11y ago
    Yeah, it may be a joke, but it's obviously intended to deceive, which is what they're after. Why would this need to be in their index?
- phonon 11y ago
  if you like it so much, save the page as a png and host that instead. http://imgur.com/2cshB5p http://imgur.com/2cshB5p
Someone1234 11y ago
Go to Google right now and search for "passport renew" I see twelve sites which offer the service with no affiliation. All they do is ask for sensitive personal information, charge you an additional fee (on top of the passport fee) and file on your behalf. Unfortunately I've had friends & family fall for this and similar scams (see also "birth certificate copy" "criminal record" "arrest record" "US travel authorisation" "US visa" et al), and sometimes they don't even file on your behalf (just take your money and run). These things have been going on YEARS, and I can find numerous examples in seconds with no research. When is Google going to put a stop to this? PS - It is disturbing how many less computer literate people have no concept of what is an advert and what is a result in a search engine. They'll just click the top thing, which is scary for the above examples. PPS - Bing is much MUCH worse. More scams, and ads are harder to spot (by design?).
- gbasic 11y ago
  What do you think are additional things that Google could do? I can imagine how hard this is to police. For example: - Let people mark different links as spam - Hire a larger team to police this
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    > What do you think are additional things that Google could do? Certain searches should NOT be monetised at all. When people are looking at entering sensitive personal information (e.g. passport, visa, birth certificate, arrest record, tax filing) it is too dangerous to allow adverts which may contain phishing scams into the mix. Too many people click ads thinking they're search results.
    - gbasic 11y ago
      Do you remember when ads were called out in gray? Now most non-techy people I know seem to click on the first entry (the ad), converting good SEO into a payment to Google.
  - AJ007 11y ago
Sir_Substance 11y ago
>When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you’re interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want. Dear marketing departments, I do not want relevant ads. I don't like unknown third parties influencing my decisions. If I must see ads, I'd rather see ads for tampons and sports cars and business real estate, because I'm not going to buy those things, so you're not manipulating me. Please stop perpetuating the lie that you're somehow doing me a favor with "relevant ads", they are exactly what I invest a lot of effort blocking.
- billmalarky 11y ago
  You think all ads are irrelevant to you? Do you not use goods and services to raise your quality of life? Don't tell me "I just google for something if I want to consume it," because truly innovative products and services are outside the realm of general imagination, that's what makes them innovative. And all the great products and services you learned about from word of mouth? Guess how your friends heard about them... Advertising is annoying as hell, but it has value.
  - hrktb 11y ago
    Not speaking for the parent, but I have a similar feeling. Imagine you are thinking about buying a car. You think about your needs, your budget, the different costs involved, the technical choices etc. You are then bombed with very relevant ads for some car X that is suitable for your needs. From that point, if you decide to go on searching for the best car matching your needs, you'll be comparing the models to the X car, and your vision will be tinted every time you see it in the results. Perhaps that X car is actually the one that fits your needs the best. But until you make a choice you'll have to make an effort to discard all the promotion and overselling surrounding X. You'll be spending energy to ignore information thrown at you because you need to think at it independantly to compare with the other choices. In this sense, I also feel relevant ads are pollution
  - alextgordon 11y ago
    The traditional way to buy a consumer good is in a store, then you can see the alternatives and pick the best one...
Paul_S 11y ago
How I fought bad ads in 2016 (in order of impact on usability/performance): http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ (transparent and no overhead, works on Android too!) https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock (a handful of websites will detect it - you can then switch to visual blocking for that domain to get around it, for FF: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... ) https://noscript.net/ https://noscript.net/ (overkill for some, a lot of hand tweaking required to keep the Internet working) Result: 0 (zero) explicit ads Long term result: more money being poured into covert marketing
- eevilspock 11y ago
  Agreed, all ads are bad. And let's call the advertising business model what it is: a get rich quick scheme. Undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you're offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that? Or make something "valuable" that no one is willing to pay for (WTF?), so again make it appear free. Only the truth is it isn't free. We all pay in the end. The lunch is not only not free, it's costing us more and its loaded with toxic crap. Admittedly I suck as a writer, but ever time I make my very strong case that advertising may be the primary evil of internet[1], I almost invariably receive a great number of silent downvotes. Upton Sinclair explains why: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237
  - Paul_S 11y ago
    My post keeps fluctuating too, it's a very controversial subject. Although I wish the downvoters would also leave a reply - it's the Internet, have your say.
    - CaptSpify 11y ago
      The thing is though: What can they reply with? "Do you feel you deserve the content for free?" is the only argument I ever hear, and that is so old and tired, it's not funny. I'd be interested in hearing/discussing a solid pro-ad argument, but I've yet to find one.
anon1385 11y ago
>Unwanted software I just visited the download.com page for Chrome and it has two ads served by Google. Both ads contain fake download buttons: http://i.imgur.com/eAATuwb.png http://i.imgur.com/eAATuwb.png Google ads are dangerous.
- will_hughes 11y ago
  afaict neither of those ads are by Google.
- nl 11y ago
  Theses aren't Google Ads. It's interesting that you thought they are. What made you think that?
  - Houshalter 11y ago
    Google's buttons are in the top right of the ads. Clicking on them will send you to a Google page about their ad program.
    - nl 11y ago
      I'm on mobile so I get Yahoo ads(!), but that icon looks like the IAB AdChoices icon to me: http://rocketfuel.com/wp-content/uploads/adchoicediagram.jpg http://rocketfuel.com/wp-content/uploads/adchoicediagram.jpg
      - Houshalter 11y ago
        That's really strange because clicking on that icon does send me to a Google page. You can see the website here: http://download.cnet.com/Google-Chrome/3000-2356_4-75205983.html http://download.cnet.com/Google-Chrome/3000-2356_4-75205983.... The website even claims the symbol is Google's: http://imgur.com/tWV4ROd http://imgur.com/tWV4ROd
        mohsinr 11y ago
eveningcoffee 11y ago
For me, they did not, as they introduced the video ads in my region. These ads push unrelated content in an unwanted way by aggressively interrupting the normal flow. This is not acceptable - Internet is not a TV. I think that the video ads are a huge detachment from the initial way Google handled the ads.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Video ads are what made me install AdBlock back. They totally destroy normal use flow and actually make YouTube less useful (unsuitable for playing music in the background, especially at a home party).
elorant 11y ago
Since I've installed uBlock Origin browsing the web is much more pleasing. I used to use AdBlock Plus but it ate a lot of RAM. Occasionally I might also turn JS off, although that sounds like an overkill and some sites don't work at all. I don't mind ads in general but profiling really gets under my skin. You search one thing on Google and then you're barraged by relevant ads all over the web. Thanks but no thanks. I liked the old days when ads were relevant to the content of the site I was visiting.
discreditable 11y ago
> With powerful new protections, we disabled more than 10,000 sites offering unwanted software, and reduced unwanted downloads via Google ads by more than 99 percent. Yet when I search for "download Firefox", the thing I see is malvertising. https://i.imgur.com/IRQ85fx.png https://i.imgur.com/IRQ85fx.png
- Klathmon 11y ago
  You can't just call it "malvertising" when it's just not what you wanted... I just went and downloaded the app from that add and compared the checksum against the APK on my phone of the same version (version 42.0.2, downloaded from Google Play) They both match. (Both SHA256 checksums are D0B5A524ABFD5AD9D73DFF4DA398423CB7B337797FBA0C039F3A44CAE259B4B0, if you want to verify it from me as well) So that site is providing an untampered download of firefox, so there is no "malware" anywhere. In fact that site (HTZapps) seems to be a curated list of "safe" apps available to download, an alternative app store much like fdroid or the amazon app store. It even follows the Adsense guidelines on their download page (clearly called out advertisements, no more than 3 on the page, only one above the fold, they don't interrupt the flow of the page, etc...)
  - endemic 11y ago
    I have to say, props for doing your homework. At first glance, however, you have to admit that "HTZapps" seems a bit dodgy.
    - Klathmon 11y ago
      Why? It's no more dodgy than "FDroid"... Their home page looks like what i'd expect an app store's home page to look like, full of apps. There's not even any ads on the home page! And besides, i don't care what it looks like "at first glance". if you are going to call out someone's website as "malware" then you'd better do your damn homework first.
  - discreditable 11y ago
    > You can't just call it "malvertising" when it's just not what you wanted... It's an advertisement which seeks to get users to download software from an unofficial source. The site does not provide links to the official sources. The advertiser has paid money to get users to go to their site instead of the official source. The advertiser seeks to misdirect users into visiting their site (which is loaded with ads) instead of the official one. I consider this misdirection to be malicious.
AndrewUnmuted 11y ago
Google could have fought bad ads in 2015 by not serving up such manipulative 20th century dreck in the first place.
- Flow 11y ago
  I know very little of how the ad business work, but everything on that blog seemed like "after the fact". Don't they look at the ad first then and approve it? They make it sound like they maybe run the ad through some automated tests and then just send it out. A decent human approver of ads would never approve an ad that looks like a big green button that says "Download now".
  - fixermark 11y ago
    They do not. The volume of ads Google deals with is far above the capacity of human reviewers.
DanBC 11y ago
I wish there was a way I could opt out of all alcohol and gambling ads. Especially when I'm watching Youtube videos with my child. And this article doesn't mention malgorithms. I do a bit of stuff around suicide prevention, and it's surprising how often rope sellers turn up after a search for [suicide rope], which feels suboptimal.
- spyder 11y ago
  http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1335134/youtube-kids-app-offers-child-safe-ads-shows http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1335134/youtube-k...
triangleman 11y ago
I'm glad to see that Google has eliminated those scammy "iYogi" tech support ads.
bpodgursky 11y ago
Christ people, shut up about adblockers. We get it, you use one. Congratulations, I don't care. But stop spamming every article related to ads with comments about it. Half of HN readers work in a company powered by ad-tech and some of us actually want discussion about the article in question.
- tomlock 11y ago
  I work in AdTech and find it hilariously ironic that you're finding the constant and unmitigated discussion of adblockers in an article that discusses the constant and unmitigated flow of malvertising and dark patterns. We built this prison.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    Bravo.
will_hughes 11y ago
What they still don't do, as far as I can tell, is make it possible to report malware type ads. On a clean system I was watching stuff on youtube and got some random malware ad being served up (not a video pre-roll ad, one of the banners that shows up in the video area). It was the typical "Drivers are out of date" type bullshit. I spent about 20 minutes trying to report that it was malicious,but couldn't find out how to do it. Clicking on the "Ad by Google" link just took me to a random Adsense marketing type page.
Houshalter 11y ago
Not surprised one bit to see most the hacker news comments are negative. But this is seriously impressive. They doing an impressive job to filter hundreds of millions of ads. And they are also taking a stand against stuff that isn't even illegal. Blocking BS alternative medicines, and supplements, for instance. I'm upset when I see ads for "airborne" on TV or in magazines.
csn 11y ago
What is up with the popup ads, by the way? I've been seeing them a lot lately when I enable JS, even on my bank's site. They were, in the past, tried with failure and all major browsers got a built-in blocker.
dredmorbius 11y ago
It's not clear that Google are taking this tack, but, as with content, I feel it's time to introduce the concept to the Web. Author and publisher accountability. Advertising providers, and advertising publishers, who forward "bad ads" are given a time-out. Perhaps 10 minutes for the first instance, but increasing durations for repeat ocurrences. Days, weeks, and months for gratuitious violations. Ad providers and publishers who find they're being timed out for violating standards are, likely, going to clean up their acts, and find ways to ensure that mistakes don't happen. Including direct vetting of content -- on their own if not by Google. This is in Google's interest, because, as with others on this thread, the way I fought bad ads in 2015 was to install 60,000 lines plus of /etc/hosts entries, uBlock origin, Ghostery, Privacy Badger, uMatrix, and, for added pleasure, Styleish, to rewrite site CSS myself. On all my own platforms. And across the desktops of users I administer for. Virtually all advertising is worthless, targeted advertising doubly so, and Google are in for hurt if they cannot reverse this perception. Meantime they're best positioned to buy themselves a few more years of time. The other end they could try fixing is to make the results of directed product search -- that activity that happens when people are actively seeking products or services -- not suck as abysmally bad as it does now. Boot camp for vendors of how you should, and shouldn't, write ad copy, take product images, etc., might not be out of the question. Not that Google's to blame for all of this (not in the least) -- Amazon's product search pages are as bad as any I've seen online (Ikea, by contrast, does well, the moreso because they showed me what I wanted to look for at the store). Or maybe it's time for a true Federated Retail initiative.

108 points by finid 11y ago

dcneymh57 11y ago

Do you know if Adsense tried to make any agreement with ad blockers? Their ads are not so bad.

AznHisoka 11y ago
The content of their are OK, but their placement in a lot of blogs is not. Ruins the user experience tremendously.
- kaybe 11y ago
  I also hate the heckling coming with ads unrelated to the site content. It's another significant load on my attention. If it was related to the site content, it might even be helpful.
cpeterso 11y ago
Yes: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay-adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboo... "Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Taboola are paying the owner of Adblock Plus to unblock ads on their websites at a fee of "30% of the additional ad revenues" they would have made were ads unblocked."

danieldk 11y ago

When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you’re interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want. They don't make anything easier. If I want something, I will get it, otherwise it's just annoying. It's great that they are working to make ads safer (which is obviously in their interest as well), but they have already lost me (and I guess many others). Even AdSense ads are obnoxious these days (see [1] for a taste). On mobile many websites are completely unusable because of ads. [1] https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/185666?hl=en https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/185666?hl=en

bcook 11y ago
I must disagree. Some ads do introduce me to new things that I am truly interested in.
- pc86 11y ago
  The percentage has unfortunately decreased precipitously with the prevalence of retargeting.
- gardano 11y ago
  Other than Ghostery, I guess my ad blocker is myself. If I see anything that resembles an ad, I avert my eyes. I suppose something subliminal is at work even so, but I imagine there are many more people like who just avoid even donating their eyeballs to an advertisement.
boomzilla 11y ago
There is value in advertising: as an information source and a mechanism to establish trust. The former value has been diminished by the internet (which some people call the information age). Advertising is still valuable for establishing trust between the two unknown parties though. Ads in Google work partly because of Google the brand name. Ads on Reddit r/HateSomething will not because, well, you know why. So it's in Google's interest to have good and safe ads (or the perception that they do).
- kaybe 11y ago
  There is value in advertising for me when I do not know where to buy something I need, or what I need. That however is almost never true for consumer goods, only tech things we need for science. Heck, just knowing the suppliers puts you in some kind of secret club sometimes.
- eevilspock 11y ago
  Trust? TRUST? I'm sorry, but are you saying that if I pay to have a claim that my product is best broadcast into everyone's eyeballs or ears, I'm establishing trust? Allow me to repost a previous comment of mine[1]: Whenever a debate about advertising pops up on HN, many people defend it as the necessary way for consumers to find out about good products. Healthy free markets depend on informed consumers, but to think that advertising results in informed consumers makes little sense. I find it strange that a community of logic and science oriented people can hold such a notion. When communities were small, reputation was king. If your town had two bakers, everyone knew which one was good and which one sucked. No amount of advertising would fool the townsfolk into going to the sucky one. But this doesn't scale to huge cities with tens, hundreds or thousands of choices. We can't know the reputation of such a wide array, and we can easily be fooled by advertising. Internet-based recommendation systems make the grapevine and reputation scalable. I hope we see more innovation. Yelp is a start, but it fails miserably because if I rate a place 5 because I love very authentic Thai food, and another person rates it a 1 because they are used to Americanized Thai, the restaurant gets a 3 (I'm simplifying for illustrative purposes). In other words, Yelp's rating is useless to both me and the other person. I'm hoping for a future where recommendation systems and collaborative filtering get so good that they render marketing and advertising useless. - [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10398290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10398290

xpda 11y ago

"In 2015, we stepped up our efforts to fight phishing sites, blocking nearly 7,000 sites as a result." One of the 7000 "phishing sites" they blocked was a page on my personal site (http://xpda.com/f18ebay/ http://xpda.com/f18ebay/) that has been there more than 10 years and has nothing to do with phishing. It's not an important or high-traffic page, but it was irritating nonetheless to be falsely accused by Google and, as a result, a several other web institutions.

dfabulich 11y ago
What is it? Is it supposed to be a parody? It honestly looks like the site is trying to impersonate a (silly) eBay listing.
- wmeredith 11y ago
  Yeah, it may be a joke, but it's obviously intended to deceive, which is what they're after. Why would this need to be in their index?
phonon 11y ago
if you like it so much, save the page as a png and host that instead. http://imgur.com/2cshB5p http://imgur.com/2cshB5p

Someone1234 11y ago

Go to Google right now and search for "passport renew" I see twelve sites which offer the service with no affiliation. All they do is ask for sensitive personal information, charge you an additional fee (on top of the passport fee) and file on your behalf. Unfortunately I've had friends & family fall for this and similar scams (see also "birth certificate copy" "criminal record" "arrest record" "US travel authorisation" "US visa" et al), and sometimes they don't even file on your behalf (just take your money and run). These things have been going on YEARS, and I can find numerous examples in seconds with no research. When is Google going to put a stop to this? PS - It is disturbing how many less computer literate people have no concept of what is an advert and what is a result in a search engine. They'll just click the top thing, which is scary for the above examples. PPS - Bing is much MUCH worse. More scams, and ads are harder to spot (by design?).

gbasic 11y ago
What do you think are additional things that Google could do? I can imagine how hard this is to police. For example: - Let people mark different links as spam - Hire a larger team to police this
- Someone1234 11y ago
  > What do you think are additional things that Google could do? Certain searches should NOT be monetised at all. When people are looking at entering sensitive personal information (e.g. passport, visa, birth certificate, arrest record, tax filing) it is too dangerous to allow adverts which may contain phishing scams into the mix. Too many people click ads thinking they're search results.
  - gbasic 11y ago
    Do you remember when ads were called out in gray? Now most non-techy people I know seem to click on the first entry (the ad), converting good SEO into a payment to Google.
- AJ007 11y ago

Sir_Substance 11y ago

>When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you’re interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want. Dear marketing departments, I do not want relevant ads. I don't like unknown third parties influencing my decisions. If I must see ads, I'd rather see ads for tampons and sports cars and business real estate, because I'm not going to buy those things, so you're not manipulating me. Please stop perpetuating the lie that you're somehow doing me a favor with "relevant ads", they are exactly what I invest a lot of effort blocking.

billmalarky 11y ago
You think all ads are irrelevant to you? Do you not use goods and services to raise your quality of life? Don't tell me "I just google for something if I want to consume it," because truly innovative products and services are outside the realm of general imagination, that's what makes them innovative. And all the great products and services you learned about from word of mouth? Guess how your friends heard about them... Advertising is annoying as hell, but it has value.
- hrktb 11y ago
  Not speaking for the parent, but I have a similar feeling. Imagine you are thinking about buying a car. You think about your needs, your budget, the different costs involved, the technical choices etc. You are then bombed with very relevant ads for some car X that is suitable for your needs. From that point, if you decide to go on searching for the best car matching your needs, you'll be comparing the models to the X car, and your vision will be tinted every time you see it in the results. Perhaps that X car is actually the one that fits your needs the best. But until you make a choice you'll have to make an effort to discard all the promotion and overselling surrounding X. You'll be spending energy to ignore information thrown at you because you need to think at it independantly to compare with the other choices. In this sense, I also feel relevant ads are pollution
- alextgordon 11y ago
  The traditional way to buy a consumer good is in a store, then you can see the alternatives and pick the best one...

Paul_S 11y ago

How I fought bad ads in 2016 (in order of impact on usability/performance): http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ (transparent and no overhead, works on Android too!) https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock (a handful of websites will detect it - you can then switch to visual blocking for that domain to get around it, for FF: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... ) https://noscript.net/ https://noscript.net/ (overkill for some, a lot of hand tweaking required to keep the Internet working) Result: 0 (zero) explicit ads Long term result: more money being poured into covert marketing

eevilspock 11y ago
Agreed, all ads are bad. And let's call the advertising business model what it is: a get rich quick scheme. Undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you're offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that? Or make something "valuable" that no one is willing to pay for (WTF?), so again make it appear free. Only the truth is it isn't free. We all pay in the end. The lunch is not only not free, it's costing us more and its loaded with toxic crap. Admittedly I suck as a writer, but ever time I make my very strong case that advertising may be the primary evil of internet[1], I almost invariably receive a great number of silent downvotes. Upton Sinclair explains why: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237
- Paul_S 11y ago
  My post keeps fluctuating too, it's a very controversial subject. Although I wish the downvoters would also leave a reply - it's the Internet, have your say.
  - CaptSpify 11y ago
    The thing is though: What can they reply with? "Do you feel you deserve the content for free?" is the only argument I ever hear, and that is so old and tired, it's not funny. I'd be interested in hearing/discussing a solid pro-ad argument, but I've yet to find one.

anon1385 11y ago

>Unwanted software I just visited the download.com page for Chrome and it has two ads served by Google. Both ads contain fake download buttons: http://i.imgur.com/eAATuwb.png http://i.imgur.com/eAATuwb.png Google ads are dangerous.

will_hughes 11y ago
afaict neither of those ads are by Google.
nl 11y ago
Theses aren't Google Ads. It's interesting that you thought they are. What made you think that?
- Houshalter 11y ago
  Google's buttons are in the top right of the ads. Clicking on them will send you to a Google page about their ad program.
  - nl 11y ago
    I'm on mobile so I get Yahoo ads(!), but that icon looks like the IAB AdChoices icon to me: http://rocketfuel.com/wp-content/uploads/adchoicediagram.jpg http://rocketfuel.com/wp-content/uploads/adchoicediagram.jpg
    - Houshalter 11y ago
      That's really strange because clicking on that icon does send me to a Google page. You can see the website here: http://download.cnet.com/Google-Chrome/3000-2356_4-75205983.html http://download.cnet.com/Google-Chrome/3000-2356_4-75205983.... The website even claims the symbol is Google's: http://imgur.com/tWV4ROd http://imgur.com/tWV4ROd
      - mohsinr 11y ago

eveningcoffee 11y ago

For me, they did not, as they introduced the video ads in my region. These ads push unrelated content in an unwanted way by aggressively interrupting the normal flow. This is not acceptable - Internet is not a TV. I think that the video ads are a huge detachment from the initial way Google handled the ads.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Video ads are what made me install AdBlock back. They totally destroy normal use flow and actually make YouTube less useful (unsuitable for playing music in the background, especially at a home party).

elorant 11y ago

Since I've installed uBlock Origin browsing the web is much more pleasing. I used to use AdBlock Plus but it ate a lot of RAM. Occasionally I might also turn JS off, although that sounds like an overkill and some sites don't work at all. I don't mind ads in general but profiling really gets under my skin. You search one thing on Google and then you're barraged by relevant ads all over the web. Thanks but no thanks. I liked the old days when ads were relevant to the content of the site I was visiting.

discreditable 11y ago

> With powerful new protections, we disabled more than 10,000 sites offering unwanted software, and reduced unwanted downloads via Google ads by more than 99 percent. Yet when I search for "download Firefox", the thing I see is malvertising. https://i.imgur.com/IRQ85fx.png https://i.imgur.com/IRQ85fx.png

Klathmon 11y ago
You can't just call it "malvertising" when it's just not what you wanted... I just went and downloaded the app from that add and compared the checksum against the APK on my phone of the same version (version 42.0.2, downloaded from Google Play) They both match. (Both SHA256 checksums are D0B5A524ABFD5AD9D73DFF4DA398423CB7B337797FBA0C039F3A44CAE259B4B0, if you want to verify it from me as well) So that site is providing an untampered download of firefox, so there is no "malware" anywhere. In fact that site (HTZapps) seems to be a curated list of "safe" apps available to download, an alternative app store much like fdroid or the amazon app store. It even follows the Adsense guidelines on their download page (clearly called out advertisements, no more than 3 on the page, only one above the fold, they don't interrupt the flow of the page, etc...)
- endemic 11y ago
  I have to say, props for doing your homework. At first glance, however, you have to admit that "HTZapps" seems a bit dodgy.
  - Klathmon 11y ago
    Why? It's no more dodgy than "FDroid"... Their home page looks like what i'd expect an app store's home page to look like, full of apps. There's not even any ads on the home page! And besides, i don't care what it looks like "at first glance". if you are going to call out someone's website as "malware" then you'd better do your damn homework first.
- discreditable 11y ago
  > You can't just call it "malvertising" when it's just not what you wanted... It's an advertisement which seeks to get users to download software from an unofficial source. The site does not provide links to the official sources. The advertiser has paid money to get users to go to their site instead of the official source. The advertiser seeks to misdirect users into visiting their site (which is loaded with ads) instead of the official one. I consider this misdirection to be malicious.

AndrewUnmuted 11y ago

Google could have fought bad ads in 2015 by not serving up such manipulative 20th century dreck in the first place.

Flow 11y ago
I know very little of how the ad business work, but everything on that blog seemed like "after the fact". Don't they look at the ad first then and approve it? They make it sound like they maybe run the ad through some automated tests and then just send it out. A decent human approver of ads would never approve an ad that looks like a big green button that says "Download now".
- fixermark 11y ago
  They do not. The volume of ads Google deals with is far above the capacity of human reviewers.

DanBC 11y ago

I wish there was a way I could opt out of all alcohol and gambling ads. Especially when I'm watching Youtube videos with my child. And this article doesn't mention malgorithms. I do a bit of stuff around suicide prevention, and it's surprising how often rope sellers turn up after a search for [suicide rope], which feels suboptimal.

spyder 11y ago
http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1335134/youtube-kids-app-offers-child-safe-ads-shows http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1335134/youtube-k...

triangleman 11y ago

I'm glad to see that Google has eliminated those scammy "iYogi" tech support ads.

bpodgursky 11y ago

Christ people, shut up about adblockers. We get it, you use one. Congratulations, I don't care. But stop spamming every article related to ads with comments about it. Half of HN readers work in a company powered by ad-tech and some of us actually want discussion about the article in question.

tomlock 11y ago
I work in AdTech and find it hilariously ironic that you're finding the constant and unmitigated discussion of adblockers in an article that discusses the constant and unmitigated flow of malvertising and dark patterns. We built this prison.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Bravo.

will_hughes 11y ago

What they still don't do, as far as I can tell, is make it possible to report malware type ads. On a clean system I was watching stuff on youtube and got some random malware ad being served up (not a video pre-roll ad, one of the banners that shows up in the video area). It was the typical "Drivers are out of date" type bullshit. I spent about 20 minutes trying to report that it was malicious,but couldn't find out how to do it. Clicking on the "Ad by Google" link just took me to a random Adsense marketing type page.

Houshalter 11y ago

Not surprised one bit to see most the hacker news comments are negative. But this is seriously impressive. They doing an impressive job to filter hundreds of millions of ads. And they are also taking a stand against stuff that isn't even illegal. Blocking BS alternative medicines, and supplements, for instance. I'm upset when I see ads for "airborne" on TV or in magazines.

csn 11y ago

What is up with the popup ads, by the way? I've been seeing them a lot lately when I enable JS, even on my bank's site. They were, in the past, tried with failure and all major browsers got a built-in blocker.

dredmorbius 11y ago

It's not clear that Google are taking this tack, but, as with content, I feel it's time to introduce the concept to the Web. Author and publisher accountability. Advertising providers, and advertising publishers, who forward "bad ads" are given a time-out. Perhaps 10 minutes for the first instance, but increasing durations for repeat ocurrences. Days, weeks, and months for gratuitious violations. Ad providers and publishers who find they're being timed out for violating standards are, likely, going to clean up their acts, and find ways to ensure that mistakes don't happen. Including direct vetting of content -- on their own if not by Google. This is in Google's interest, because, as with others on this thread, the way I fought bad ads in 2015 was to install 60,000 lines plus of /etc/hosts entries, uBlock origin, Ghostery, Privacy Badger, uMatrix, and, for added pleasure, Styleish, to rewrite site CSS myself. On all my own platforms. And across the desktops of users I administer for. Virtually all advertising is worthless, targeted advertising doubly so, and Google are in for hurt if they cannot reverse this perception. Meantime they're best positioned to buy themselves a few more years of time. The other end they could try fixing is to make the results of directed product search -- that activity that happens when people are actively seeking products or services -- not suck as abysmally bad as it does now. Boot camp for vendors of how you should, and shouldn't, write ad copy, take product images, etc., might not be out of the question. Not that Google's to blame for all of this (not in the least) -- Amazon's product search pages are as bad as any I've seen online (Ikea, by contrast, does well, the moreso because they showed me what I wanted to look for at the store). Or maybe it's time for a true Federated Retail initiative.