5 ms·

Three to become first European network to block ads

40 points by s_dev 11y ago

s_dev 11y ago
This is illegal under EU law:https://blog.pagefair.com/2015/despite-the-hype-isp-adblocking-is-a-no-go-in-europe/ https://blog.pagefair.com/2015/despite-the-hype-isp-adblocki... What makes it illegal is Deep Packet Inspection.
- cr3ative 11y ago
  I can't spot a reference to DPI or Shine in the article, but they could block ads somewhat effectively without DPI using DNS blacklists, for example.
  - s_dev 11y ago
    Apparently: Li Ka Shing (owner of Hutchison Whampoa -> owner of Three) is also investor in Shine Seems to be true: http://uk.businessinsider.com/digicel-becomes-first-mobile-carrier-to-sign-up-shine-ad-blocker-2015-9?r=US&IR=T http://uk.businessinsider.com/digicel-becomes-first-mobile-c...
- lhopki01 11y ago
  Almost certainly done by host blacklisting. Even ad blockers on computers usually do this. It's just easier.
  - JoshTriplett 11y ago
    Browser-integrated adblockers can do better, because they have access to the page content. Host-based blacklists don't work as well; they can only handle hosts that serve ads and nothing else, not hosts that serve both ads and non-ads. But yeah, host-based blacklisting is the only approach with a hope of working outside the browser. Transparently proxying web traffic wouldn't (and shouldn't) work with HTTPS, and is an incredibly bad idea even with HTTP.
eCa 11y ago
> But although the company said it plans to roll out the technology internationally, it is not yet clear when Irish customers will feel the benefit. [emphasis added] Interesting wording on an ad-supported site.
malsun 11y ago
I guess I'm fine with it as long as it's opt-in - by that I mean, so long as the customer has to actively look for the option. If all ISPs did this by default then a lot of content on the web would disappear several months down the line.
- jlarocco 11y ago
  "If all ISPs did this by default then a lot of content on the web would disappear several months down the line." Good. I don't think most of that would be missed much.
  - ziszis 11y ago
    What depends on ads? Top sites and apps: Facebook, Google, New York Times, Gmail, Podcasts (that are increasingly ad supported), Google Maps, etc. Most of the content that trends on hn. Long tail of content that lets you get an answer to just about anything on Google. I think some of these would be missed.
    - malsun 11y ago
      There's also services like Blogger, which I don't think have advertising, but since Google is probably the biggest player in the ad industry then I guess its existence relies on ads. Even web browsers like Firefox indirectly rely on ad money.
    - jlarocco 11y ago
      All of those services would do just fine charging for their service if they had to. Especially if their competition started doing it too. I was referring to all the shit that wouldn't survive, like blog spam, scam/malware parked domains, etc. That crap makes up a huge part of the Internet, and nobody will miss it. Web advertising is on the same level as spam as far as I'm concerned. They both depend on gullible and ignorant people who don't know any better clicking through. Just look at Google search result ads today vs 5 or 10 years ago. It's harder and harder to tell the difference between ads and results because they need to trick people.
ziszis 11y ago
Right now there is a free rider problem with internet content. If this becomes more prevalent the market will have to adjust to deal with free riders. If you believe that content creators have a right to earn money there are two ways that can happen: 1) directly - you pay directly for the content that you want to consume or 2) indirectly - you see ads or sell your data in some way. I wonder what people will choose if these are the choices. Right now you can ignore paywalls because relatively few sites employ them and they aren't robust.
- easytiger 11y ago
  If a huge proportion of the internet economy stopped existing, the only real losers would be the big ad firms like google. I think we can all happily live without 99% of youtube's shit
  - awesomepantsm 11y ago
    If you blocked 99% of ads though, youtube couldn't exist. It would have to become pay to watch. Don't be stupid.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      I've said it before, and I'll say it again, though the last time I said it people thought I was a complete loon and down-modded me to oblivion: If we had real, viable micropayment services, where you could click a mouse button and spend $0.002 to read an in-depth news article or $0.008 to watch a YouTube video (these amounts are probably more than the content owners are getting per-impression from the ad networks), I think ads would mostly die out and these sites would be self-supporting.
      - iofj 11y ago
        Unfortunately there's 2 things that make this more complex and far more expensive. 1) any pricing that did this would have to replace ctr * ad_pricing(keyword, site) * (1 + VAT) + admin_cost(for keeping track of a billion customers) + cost per transaction from banks (2% + 0.25$ is typical) So to replace a 1% CTR 5$ keyword ad (anything relating to financials, insurance or credit cards) we're talking a "micro"payment of at least 0.25 + 0.050.2 1.21 = 0.31 EUR. This is ignoring a number of costs (such as chargebacks). (assuming 21% VAT) And here's how the money gets divided up in such a scenario: Bank: 17 cents Government: 10 cents Site owner: 4 cents Lowering the amount the site owner gets doesn't really reduce the amount the user pays. Anything less than about 30 cents is a non-starter. If you paid the site owner nothing, it would be 28 cents. If we go through ad networks instead, and companies pay for ads through bank transactions, bank gets nothing (aside from the fees on business accounts on both sides, which aren't per-transaction costs), and the government gets 8% (assuming 33% profit margin for the ad network, which is high, and 25% corporate tax). If you "avoid" tax like most ad networks do, the government gets very little, 1-2% at most. 2) Starting this up requires violating a Nash-equilibrium. A huge number of people need to seriously damage their own business in order to make this happen before it can happen. And that's ignoring problems that this would allow governments, banks, courts, ISPs and ... to block content based on controlling the financial system (which is a necessity to combat tax fraud anyway, blocking payments because either courts or governments don't agree with the transaction is something that constantly happens). You could of course try to get the government to drop 90% of their VAT for internet transactions, and banks to stop charging for payments, and ... but good luck with that.
njharman 11y ago
I'm all for ad blocking. But I'm even more for net neutrality. ISP blocking ads is tiny step away from "blocking all ads expect the ones ISP is paid to let through" and selectively blocking any other kind of content. ISPs are utilities, not censors, nor cops. Someone else mentioned "opt-in" which would not violate net-neutrality and I support.
- s_dev 11y ago
  I'm shocked at some of the answers in this thread: http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/denis-o-brien-s-digicel-takes-on-google-and-facebook-1.2373553 http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/denis-o-brien-... People think this is some sort of fancy "Ad Block Plus" -- it's not. Basically the ISPs want Google and Facebook to give them revenue because they "transport" their packets that are ads. This is an affront to net neutrality. Three will block ads and then charge Google/FB to let them through.
  - Kurtz79 11y ago
    "People think this is some sort of fancy "Ad Block Plus" -- it's not." Uh... http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/02/over-300-businesses-now-whitelisted-on-adblock-plus-10-pay-to-play/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/02/over-300-businesses-...
    - s_dev 11y ago
      A browser plug-in modifying/controlling traffic. Acceptable. An ISP modifying/controlling traffic. Dangerous precedent. What makes it different in my view is that in one scenario the end user is in control in the other the ISP is in control.
      - qb45 11y ago
        > An ISP modifying/controlling traffic. Dangerous precedent. Some ISPs have already been adding ads. The only precedent here is that those guys are removing them instead. Maybe we will live to see times when ads injected by ISP1 end up filtered by ISP2 and replaced with others by ISP3, all within a single TCP stream :)
est 11y ago
the next thing you know, your political opinion became filtered like ads.
SamiTriki 11y ago
This is not true, the french mobile operation Free Mobile already started doing since early 2013 http://www.numerama.com/magazine/24803-free-propose-aussi-le-blocage-de-la-publicite-sur-free-mobile.html http://www.numerama.com/magazine/24803-free-propose-aussi-le...

40 points by s_dev 11y ago

s_dev 11y ago

This is illegal under EU law:https://blog.pagefair.com/2015/despite-the-hype-isp-adblocking-is-a-no-go-in-europe/ https://blog.pagefair.com/2015/despite-the-hype-isp-adblocki... What makes it illegal is Deep Packet Inspection.

cr3ative 11y ago
I can't spot a reference to DPI or Shine in the article, but they could block ads somewhat effectively without DPI using DNS blacklists, for example.
- s_dev 11y ago
  Apparently: Li Ka Shing (owner of Hutchison Whampoa -> owner of Three) is also investor in Shine Seems to be true: http://uk.businessinsider.com/digicel-becomes-first-mobile-carrier-to-sign-up-shine-ad-blocker-2015-9?r=US&IR=T http://uk.businessinsider.com/digicel-becomes-first-mobile-c...
lhopki01 11y ago
Almost certainly done by host blacklisting. Even ad blockers on computers usually do this. It's just easier.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  Browser-integrated adblockers can do better, because they have access to the page content. Host-based blacklists don't work as well; they can only handle hosts that serve ads and nothing else, not hosts that serve both ads and non-ads. But yeah, host-based blacklisting is the only approach with a hope of working outside the browser. Transparently proxying web traffic wouldn't (and shouldn't) work with HTTPS, and is an incredibly bad idea even with HTTP.

eCa 11y ago

> But although the company said it plans to roll out the technology internationally, it is not yet clear when Irish customers will feel the benefit. [emphasis added] Interesting wording on an ad-supported site.

malsun 11y ago

I guess I'm fine with it as long as it's opt-in - by that I mean, so long as the customer has to actively look for the option. If all ISPs did this by default then a lot of content on the web would disappear several months down the line.

jlarocco 11y ago
"If all ISPs did this by default then a lot of content on the web would disappear several months down the line." Good. I don't think most of that would be missed much.
- ziszis 11y ago
  What depends on ads? Top sites and apps: Facebook, Google, New York Times, Gmail, Podcasts (that are increasingly ad supported), Google Maps, etc. Most of the content that trends on hn. Long tail of content that lets you get an answer to just about anything on Google. I think some of these would be missed.
  - malsun 11y ago
    There's also services like Blogger, which I don't think have advertising, but since Google is probably the biggest player in the ad industry then I guess its existence relies on ads. Even web browsers like Firefox indirectly rely on ad money.
  - jlarocco 11y ago
    All of those services would do just fine charging for their service if they had to. Especially if their competition started doing it too. I was referring to all the shit that wouldn't survive, like blog spam, scam/malware parked domains, etc. That crap makes up a huge part of the Internet, and nobody will miss it. Web advertising is on the same level as spam as far as I'm concerned. They both depend on gullible and ignorant people who don't know any better clicking through. Just look at Google search result ads today vs 5 or 10 years ago. It's harder and harder to tell the difference between ads and results because they need to trick people.

ziszis 11y ago

Right now there is a free rider problem with internet content. If this becomes more prevalent the market will have to adjust to deal with free riders. If you believe that content creators have a right to earn money there are two ways that can happen: 1) directly - you pay directly for the content that you want to consume or 2) indirectly - you see ads or sell your data in some way. I wonder what people will choose if these are the choices. Right now you can ignore paywalls because relatively few sites employ them and they aren't robust.

easytiger 11y ago
If a huge proportion of the internet economy stopped existing, the only real losers would be the big ad firms like google. I think we can all happily live without 99% of youtube's shit
- awesomepantsm 11y ago
  If you blocked 99% of ads though, youtube couldn't exist. It would have to become pay to watch. Don't be stupid.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    I've said it before, and I'll say it again, though the last time I said it people thought I was a complete loon and down-modded me to oblivion: If we had real, viable micropayment services, where you could click a mouse button and spend $0.002 to read an in-depth news article or $0.008 to watch a YouTube video (these amounts are probably more than the content owners are getting per-impression from the ad networks), I think ads would mostly die out and these sites would be self-supporting.
    - iofj 11y ago
      Unfortunately there's 2 things that make this more complex and far more expensive. 1) any pricing that did this would have to replace ctr * ad_pricing(keyword, site) * (1 + VAT) + admin_cost(for keeping track of a billion customers) + cost per transaction from banks (2% + 0.25$ is typical) So to replace a 1% CTR 5$ keyword ad (anything relating to financials, insurance or credit cards) we're talking a "micro"payment of at least 0.25 + 0.050.2 1.21 = 0.31 EUR. This is ignoring a number of costs (such as chargebacks). (assuming 21% VAT) And here's how the money gets divided up in such a scenario: Bank: 17 cents Government: 10 cents Site owner: 4 cents Lowering the amount the site owner gets doesn't really reduce the amount the user pays. Anything less than about 30 cents is a non-starter. If you paid the site owner nothing, it would be 28 cents. If we go through ad networks instead, and companies pay for ads through bank transactions, bank gets nothing (aside from the fees on business accounts on both sides, which aren't per-transaction costs), and the government gets 8% (assuming 33% profit margin for the ad network, which is high, and 25% corporate tax). If you "avoid" tax like most ad networks do, the government gets very little, 1-2% at most. 2) Starting this up requires violating a Nash-equilibrium. A huge number of people need to seriously damage their own business in order to make this happen before it can happen. And that's ignoring problems that this would allow governments, banks, courts, ISPs and ... to block content based on controlling the financial system (which is a necessity to combat tax fraud anyway, blocking payments because either courts or governments don't agree with the transaction is something that constantly happens). You could of course try to get the government to drop 90% of their VAT for internet transactions, and banks to stop charging for payments, and ... but good luck with that.

njharman 11y ago

I'm all for ad blocking. But I'm even more for net neutrality. ISP blocking ads is tiny step away from "blocking all ads expect the ones ISP is paid to let through" and selectively blocking any other kind of content. ISPs are utilities, not censors, nor cops. Someone else mentioned "opt-in" which would not violate net-neutrality and I support.

s_dev 11y ago
I'm shocked at some of the answers in this thread: http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/denis-o-brien-s-digicel-takes-on-google-and-facebook-1.2373553 http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/denis-o-brien-... People think this is some sort of fancy "Ad Block Plus" -- it's not. Basically the ISPs want Google and Facebook to give them revenue because they "transport" their packets that are ads. This is an affront to net neutrality. Three will block ads and then charge Google/FB to let them through.
- Kurtz79 11y ago
  "People think this is some sort of fancy "Ad Block Plus" -- it's not." Uh... http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/02/over-300-businesses-now-whitelisted-on-adblock-plus-10-pay-to-play/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/02/over-300-businesses-...
  - s_dev 11y ago
    A browser plug-in modifying/controlling traffic. Acceptable. An ISP modifying/controlling traffic. Dangerous precedent. What makes it different in my view is that in one scenario the end user is in control in the other the ISP is in control.
    - qb45 11y ago
      > An ISP modifying/controlling traffic. Dangerous precedent. Some ISPs have already been adding ads. The only precedent here is that those guys are removing them instead. Maybe we will live to see times when ads injected by ISP1 end up filtered by ISP2 and replaced with others by ISP3, all within a single TCP stream :)

est 11y ago

the next thing you know, your political opinion became filtered like ads.

SamiTriki 11y ago

This is not true, the french mobile operation Free Mobile already started doing since early 2013 http://www.numerama.com/magazine/24803-free-propose-aussi-le-blocage-de-la-publicite-sur-free-mobile.html http://www.numerama.com/magazine/24803-free-propose-aussi-le...