6 ms·

How I fought bad ads in 2016 (in order of impact on usability/performance): http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ (transparent

by 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.
    - zanny 11y ago
      Here is one - the alternative to ads everyone proposes is people pay for their content directly. Except there are catastrophic barriers to entry for such a business model: * You need to bind real world money to online browsing, somehow. This means you need some kind of blunt "want to see the content? Pay X money, here are paypal and CC info links". * People who do not have access to these tools - there is still a sizable chunk of America without a bank account, and often without access to credit cards - are thus cutoff from most web services. * The Internet was predominantly built on principles of no barrier information exchange. Putting a paywall up is implicitly putting up a barrier to knowledge, which has deeper effects than just bottom lines on culture. I would absolutely a lot of sites currently ignoring monetiziation and just using ads as a surrogate are making a mistake. I also recognize advertising is predatory and while I am arguing ads open up the Internet to the poor advertising also disproportionately harms the poor by manipulating them into making superfluous purchases they cannot afford. But I also cannot condone a paywalled experience where you need to pay $3 to watch youtube, or $2 a month for Facebook, or $1 a month to use Twitter. Rent seeking is one of the great threats to civilization in our current era and the fundamental is that all these websites build value off of their exclusivity guaranteed by the state, thus making them the ultimate renteers of the services they offer because by definition nobody else can compete with them at being youtube or facebook or twitter - you can just make alternative products meant to fill the same niche. Its like using hand soap as a substitute for bar soap because someone owns the rights to physical bars of soap. It can do the same job but its not the same product. Which is why I am extremely wary of pushing a paywalled Internet as a solution. Now, there are absolutely alternatives to both models - Wikipedia demonstrates an annual fundraiser model akin to Kickstater or Patreon class crowdfunding to keep things running without ads or paywalls - but at the same time there are tons of comments about how Wikipedia should use ads so people don't have to feel guilty about not contributing when they don't have the money to do so while Wikimedia runs the large banner ads in December. Its the same psychological manipulation as ads, except possibly more benign since its from the project itself. In a perfect world, all our software endeavors would be paid for before we even start writing them so that the code could be free and the servers run forever without worrying about money, but that model doesn't align with western shareholder-value driven markets at all. The whole point is to make something at fixed cost and extract potentially endless revenue from the monopoly IP gives you. For better or worse, that is how this economy is operating now.
- lazaroclapp 11y ago
  This is not quite as straightforward, though. One advantage of our ad supported internet is that quality of access to ad-supported services varies very little with one's wealth. A teenager in Mexico (or India, or... you get the idea) with a low end smartphone, coffee shop wi-fi and no credit card gets the exact same Google, Youtube and Facebook services than a Silicon Valley VC with a Mac Book Pro and a huge bank account. Now, I am not saying I like the surveillance economy, and I don't, by any means, enjoy ads. I also think we are risking a lot by the erosion of privacy as a value in our societies in the name of ad targeting. But I thought I'd point out there are social ills associated with pay services as well. Freemium is another option, but it quickly becomes about finding a balance between providing a good enough free service that people want to use and thus promote it, and yet crappy enough that enough will upgrade to the pay version. Note: My paycheck or the future of my current workplace does not depend on ads ;)
  - Retric 11y ago
    As to Mexico, language barriers are still a thing. However, the real cost is the content that's not created. If an author is paid by the book then they tend to be of reasonable length. When paid by the page, you get content that never really ends. Compare MMO's with single player games and generally MMO's last much longer, but are less fun while your playing. Advertising driven content is similarly insidious. You don't want people to spend a lot of time reading or thinking, just click click click.
    - lazaroclapp 11y ago
      Most of the platforms that I mentioned are not language specific. It is trivial to use Google, Youtube or FB in Spanish, and the internet has ample content in Spanish, even in U.S. owned services (how could there not be, with 470 million speakers?). Also, sure, some content works better when each copy is paid. But my point is that a lot of the software platforms themselves: a) seem to be doing quite well on ad revenue, b) wouldn't necessarily be better for most people if they charged fees instead. Again, this applies to software services (search engines, email servers, social networks), more so than produced content itself (books, movies, games). As far as I know, the only real contender for traditional sales in the content space is crowdfunding[1]. News (investigative journalism in particular) is an interesting third case, where it is not clear whether ad supported or subscription are viable at all long term. [1] Anecdotally, some of my favorite games and comics are crowdfunded, one of my favorite "tv" shows, but none of my favorite movies or books. Even though crowdfunding a book should not be expensive at all.
- mahranch 11y ago
  As someone who tangentially works in the industry, you couldn't be more wrong. Ads literally subsidize the vast majority of content you consume on the internet. More importantly, ads subsidize and promote innovation. Without ads, we wouldn't have sites like youtube, facebook, reddit or pretty much every website that doesn't rely on donations (wikipedia, etc). It's interesting just how much of a disconnect young people have with this topic (in my experience, older people are skeptical of all the free content on the 'net. My grandmother thought she was going to get a bill from youtube for watching so many videos and not having to pay anything up front). Perhaps it's one of the reasons why they call our generation "the entitled generation". We've always had free content on the internet so we don't appreciate or understand how the people who create that content get paid.
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    I'd be totally OK with all that subsidy going away if it meant we didn't have to deal with ads anymore. We'll figure it out. People would put more effort into peer-to-peer sharing networks if it weren't for the fact that ad-subsidized "free" services based on giant datacenters are so good at undercutting them.
    - mahranch 11y ago
      You're missing the point, perhaps missing the scale. You don't understand just how vital ads are to the internet. Content itself wouldn't exist for you to view. There would be very little (nothing at all) for you to P2P. The internet would essentially be the IRC. People don't write in-depth articles for the hell of it. They expect to get paid.
      - marssaxman 11y ago
        Most of what I'm interested in using the internet for worked just fine before ads came along: better, in some cases, because volunteer efforts didn't have to compete with advertising budgets.
  - mike-cardwell 11y ago
- seivan 11y ago
  I haven't finished reading all the posts you've referenced to but it seems like an interesting idea. My only concern is that you're not(?) suggesting an alternative for creating awareness on superior products? Ads at least gives the underdog a small chance. But I agree with the social "tax" we pay for "journalists" shoving ads down our throat and call it news.
  - eevilspock 11y ago
    Thanks. For an alternative, see my other comment on this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10946879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10946879. And please also see this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10949265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10949265
- manyxcxi 11y ago
  I don't think all ads are bad- advertisement, at its basic core is letting people know about a product or service that you provide. This can be informative, educational, and even entertaining. What IS bad, especially with respect to the 'net is the sheer volume, hostility, low quality, and threat to our safety that our current methods of advertising (ab)use. Why should an article on WSJ be megabytes of download? Why is every action I perform with default settings on public sites being tracked with an efficiency and persistence governments could only dream of? Why can't I opt out globally? Because of the hostility of the environment I think it is acceptable, fair, even responsible to do everything in our power to regain control of our identity and information. The part everyone needs to figure out is, how can I find out about quality products and services in a way that is meaningful and safe. Maybe it is simply to do everything we can to make ads distasteful and rely on word of mouth and hunting for things when we need them, but there's probably a balance in there somewhere.
- jasonlotito 11y ago
  > all ads are bad You realize you are a hypocrite for saying this, right? You cannot on one hand say all ads are bad, and be an advertiser yourself without being a hypocrite. This is probably what leads to the down votes.
- nl 11y ago
  I suspect you are being downvoted because you are wrong ("all ads are bad" is a pretty extreme position. There are numerous examples I can think of where they are pretty useful. For example I'm interested if a band I'm listening to is coming to town, etc etc..) Additionally your points are badly argued. I can't follow your argument that advertising is a get rich scheme at all. You seem to be arguing that advertising makes people offer dodgy business models, but the two don't seem to relate at all. For example one area where buyer hostile business models is very common is in enterprise software, and those sales rely very little on advertising and instead on relationships. In summary, your complaints about being downvoted seem unjustified.
dredmorbius 11y ago
For the technically adept, consider swapping uMatrix for NoScript. It does everything NS does, and more. Though at the cost of a more complex interface, and a few more failure modes. This includes: Scripts, cookies, CSS, XHD, frames, and other elements, on a host-by-host, or domain, basis, with optional default rules.

by Paul_S 11y ago

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.
  - zanny 11y ago
    Here is one - the alternative to ads everyone proposes is people pay for their content directly. Except there are catastrophic barriers to entry for such a business model: * You need to bind real world money to online browsing, somehow. This means you need some kind of blunt "want to see the content? Pay X money, here are paypal and CC info links". * People who do not have access to these tools - there is still a sizable chunk of America without a bank account, and often without access to credit cards - are thus cutoff from most web services. * The Internet was predominantly built on principles of no barrier information exchange. Putting a paywall up is implicitly putting up a barrier to knowledge, which has deeper effects than just bottom lines on culture. I would absolutely a lot of sites currently ignoring monetiziation and just using ads as a surrogate are making a mistake. I also recognize advertising is predatory and while I am arguing ads open up the Internet to the poor advertising also disproportionately harms the poor by manipulating them into making superfluous purchases they cannot afford. But I also cannot condone a paywalled experience where you need to pay $3 to watch youtube, or $2 a month for Facebook, or $1 a month to use Twitter. Rent seeking is one of the great threats to civilization in our current era and the fundamental is that all these websites build value off of their exclusivity guaranteed by the state, thus making them the ultimate renteers of the services they offer because by definition nobody else can compete with them at being youtube or facebook or twitter - you can just make alternative products meant to fill the same niche. Its like using hand soap as a substitute for bar soap because someone owns the rights to physical bars of soap. It can do the same job but its not the same product. Which is why I am extremely wary of pushing a paywalled Internet as a solution. Now, there are absolutely alternatives to both models - Wikipedia demonstrates an annual fundraiser model akin to Kickstater or Patreon class crowdfunding to keep things running without ads or paywalls - but at the same time there are tons of comments about how Wikipedia should use ads so people don't have to feel guilty about not contributing when they don't have the money to do so while Wikimedia runs the large banner ads in December. Its the same psychological manipulation as ads, except possibly more benign since its from the project itself. In a perfect world, all our software endeavors would be paid for before we even start writing them so that the code could be free and the servers run forever without worrying about money, but that model doesn't align with western shareholder-value driven markets at all. The whole point is to make something at fixed cost and extract potentially endless revenue from the monopoly IP gives you. For better or worse, that is how this economy is operating now.
lazaroclapp 11y ago
This is not quite as straightforward, though. One advantage of our ad supported internet is that quality of access to ad-supported services varies very little with one's wealth. A teenager in Mexico (or India, or... you get the idea) with a low end smartphone, coffee shop wi-fi and no credit card gets the exact same Google, Youtube and Facebook services than a Silicon Valley VC with a Mac Book Pro and a huge bank account. Now, I am not saying I like the surveillance economy, and I don't, by any means, enjoy ads. I also think we are risking a lot by the erosion of privacy as a value in our societies in the name of ad targeting. But I thought I'd point out there are social ills associated with pay services as well. Freemium is another option, but it quickly becomes about finding a balance between providing a good enough free service that people want to use and thus promote it, and yet crappy enough that enough will upgrade to the pay version. Note: My paycheck or the future of my current workplace does not depend on ads ;)
- Retric 11y ago
  As to Mexico, language barriers are still a thing. However, the real cost is the content that's not created. If an author is paid by the book then they tend to be of reasonable length. When paid by the page, you get content that never really ends. Compare MMO's with single player games and generally MMO's last much longer, but are less fun while your playing. Advertising driven content is similarly insidious. You don't want people to spend a lot of time reading or thinking, just click click click.
  - lazaroclapp 11y ago
    Most of the platforms that I mentioned are not language specific. It is trivial to use Google, Youtube or FB in Spanish, and the internet has ample content in Spanish, even in U.S. owned services (how could there not be, with 470 million speakers?). Also, sure, some content works better when each copy is paid. But my point is that a lot of the software platforms themselves: a) seem to be doing quite well on ad revenue, b) wouldn't necessarily be better for most people if they charged fees instead. Again, this applies to software services (search engines, email servers, social networks), more so than produced content itself (books, movies, games). As far as I know, the only real contender for traditional sales in the content space is crowdfunding[1]. News (investigative journalism in particular) is an interesting third case, where it is not clear whether ad supported or subscription are viable at all long term. [1] Anecdotally, some of my favorite games and comics are crowdfunded, one of my favorite "tv" shows, but none of my favorite movies or books. Even though crowdfunding a book should not be expensive at all.
mahranch 11y ago
As someone who tangentially works in the industry, you couldn't be more wrong. Ads literally subsidize the vast majority of content you consume on the internet. More importantly, ads subsidize and promote innovation. Without ads, we wouldn't have sites like youtube, facebook, reddit or pretty much every website that doesn't rely on donations (wikipedia, etc). It's interesting just how much of a disconnect young people have with this topic (in my experience, older people are skeptical of all the free content on the 'net. My grandmother thought she was going to get a bill from youtube for watching so many videos and not having to pay anything up front). Perhaps it's one of the reasons why they call our generation "the entitled generation". We've always had free content on the internet so we don't appreciate or understand how the people who create that content get paid.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  I'd be totally OK with all that subsidy going away if it meant we didn't have to deal with ads anymore. We'll figure it out. People would put more effort into peer-to-peer sharing networks if it weren't for the fact that ad-subsidized "free" services based on giant datacenters are so good at undercutting them.
  - mahranch 11y ago
    You're missing the point, perhaps missing the scale. You don't understand just how vital ads are to the internet. Content itself wouldn't exist for you to view. There would be very little (nothing at all) for you to P2P. The internet would essentially be the IRC. People don't write in-depth articles for the hell of it. They expect to get paid.
    - marssaxman 11y ago
      Most of what I'm interested in using the internet for worked just fine before ads came along: better, in some cases, because volunteer efforts didn't have to compete with advertising budgets.
- mike-cardwell 11y ago
seivan 11y ago
I haven't finished reading all the posts you've referenced to but it seems like an interesting idea. My only concern is that you're not(?) suggesting an alternative for creating awareness on superior products? Ads at least gives the underdog a small chance. But I agree with the social "tax" we pay for "journalists" shoving ads down our throat and call it news.
- eevilspock 11y ago
  Thanks. For an alternative, see my other comment on this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10946879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10946879. And please also see this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10949265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10949265
manyxcxi 11y ago
I don't think all ads are bad- advertisement, at its basic core is letting people know about a product or service that you provide. This can be informative, educational, and even entertaining. What IS bad, especially with respect to the 'net is the sheer volume, hostility, low quality, and threat to our safety that our current methods of advertising (ab)use. Why should an article on WSJ be megabytes of download? Why is every action I perform with default settings on public sites being tracked with an efficiency and persistence governments could only dream of? Why can't I opt out globally? Because of the hostility of the environment I think it is acceptable, fair, even responsible to do everything in our power to regain control of our identity and information. The part everyone needs to figure out is, how can I find out about quality products and services in a way that is meaningful and safe. Maybe it is simply to do everything we can to make ads distasteful and rely on word of mouth and hunting for things when we need them, but there's probably a balance in there somewhere.
jasonlotito 11y ago
> all ads are bad You realize you are a hypocrite for saying this, right? You cannot on one hand say all ads are bad, and be an advertiser yourself without being a hypocrite. This is probably what leads to the down votes.
nl 11y ago
I suspect you are being downvoted because you are wrong ("all ads are bad" is a pretty extreme position. There are numerous examples I can think of where they are pretty useful. For example I'm interested if a band I'm listening to is coming to town, etc etc..) Additionally your points are badly argued. I can't follow your argument that advertising is a get rich scheme at all. You seem to be arguing that advertising makes people offer dodgy business models, but the two don't seem to relate at all. For example one area where buyer hostile business models is very common is in enterprise software, and those sales rely very little on advertising and instead on relationships. In summary, your complaints about being downvoted seem unjustified.

dredmorbius 11y ago

For the technically adept, consider swapping uMatrix for NoScript. It does everything NS does, and more. Though at the cost of a more complex interface, and a few more failure modes. This includes: Scripts, cookies, CSS, XHD, frames, and other elements, on a host-by-host, or domain, basis, with optional default rules.