12 ms·

Some ad-blockers are tracking you, shaking down publishers, and showing you ads

117 points by edward 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- dkopi 11y ago
  Sometimes. And sometimes the product is simply free because First time entrepreneurs feel insecure and are afraid to ask users for money. Business models are difficult. Getting free users to become paid users is a science in its own. You might be the product. Or you might just be a free rider helping a company grow until they feel confident enough to ask you to pay, subscribe or upgrade.
- cballard 11y ago
  Yes - for example, Linux distributions are notable for selling people into slavery.
- nkozyra 11y ago
  Open source at least brings the prospect of free-as-in-speech applications to reality. It's not a guarantee, but the community can have a direct and active role in the direction.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  There is a difference between free (gratis) and free (libre). It is possible to make money by giving things away, but such strategies are much more fragile when the giveaway item is libre. If you piss off your "customers"--or even just fail to please them enough--someone may just fork your free item and bleed away your audience. Facebook is gratis, and not easily replicated. Therefore it can engage in far more objectionable behavior in monetizing its user base than AdBlock Plus, which is libre. If ABP sells out its users, the users just uninstall it and put uBlock Origin in its place. Or they download the source, cut out the part that causes offense, and re-release it as AdBlock Minus.
kazinator 11y ago
> Adblock Plus comes off the worst of the lot. The company charges publishers fees to allow their ads through its filters, based on criteria about size and placement. Lie. Adblock Plus is a FOSS ad-blocker. It has a whitelist of "acceptable ads" that is enabled by default. You can turn it off, and since the thing is open source, you can clone your own version in which that is the default. I haven't heard that anyone has to pay ABP (or can pay) to be on this list. There was/is some controversy, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversy_over_ad_filtering_and_ad_whitelisting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversy_over_...
- djur 11y ago
  I'm curious if any evidence has ever been offered that the "Acceptable Ads" program is corrupt. It seems to me that literally the moment it was announced people characterized it as an offer to be bribed, but _as described_ I don't see anything wrong with the program.
  - hartator 11y ago
    Sure, they didn't got any money from that. (!) Ref: http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/06/google-and-others-reportedly-pay-adblock-plus-to-show-you-ads-anyway/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/06/google-and-others-reportedl...
  - lost_name 11y ago
    Granted, it's unlikely that they would say anything if they were extorting people as you describe... but from just the other day: https://adblockplus.org/blog/acceptable-ads-explained-monetization https://adblockplus.org/blog/acceptable-ads-explained-moneti... Discussion (somewhat lacking): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11182174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11182174
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - futunet 11y ago
elorant 11y ago
Wired's final prediction is that all the ads will disappear into sponsored content within a decade. I’m surprised that Wired made such a prediction because to me it sounds awfully wrong. For starters, whatever is going to happen it will happen much sooner than a decade. Ad blocking adoption has already reached 35% in some countries. At 50%-60% the industry is doomed. Not to mention fake ad impressions which already amount to one quarter of all traffic. I also find it odd that the only outcome they see is sponsored content. We already have that, it’s called native advertising and it sucks. If advertisers can have a saying on the content then the quality will go south pretty fast. What about micropayments? What about serving ads from the publisher’s domain? What about stopping the damn profiling which is the root of the problem? It seems that the online publishing industry is in a bit of a shock from the way things are moving and can’t think originally.
- r3bl 11y ago
  Wired's prediction is even more annoying because they've started begging me to turn off my adblocker last time I visited them a couple of days ago (proof[0]). If that's the future, why are they not going for it completely before their competitors? Seems like a good strategy to me if they believe in that, doesn't it? I avoided the adblocking discussions so far, but now that I think about it, I do think that having my adblocking software on actually helps the maintainers of websites. Since I have never clicked on an ad on the Internet intentionally (I only have Internet access for about 7-8 years, Adblock was already a thing back then and I have discovered it before anyone else I know personally), I have never purchased a thing from the Internet after clicking on an ad in my life (having only a European debit card that's not supported by the US-based services kind of helps me out in this case, but it is a huge disadvantage in every other case). By not seeing them, I'm actually improving their click rate a bit, ain't I? [0] - https://twitter.com/r3bl_/status/704041375562596352 https://twitter.com/r3bl_/status/704041375562596352
  - wernercd 11y ago
    > Wired's prediction is even more annoying because they've started begging me to turn off my adblocker last time I visited them a couple of days ago Forbes "30 under 30": They don't let you read articles if you adblock... "To read this, you must disable". They create an article security nerds want to read... which then serves up a pop-under adware to steal passwords. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160111/05574633295/forbes-site-after-begging-you-turn-off-adblocker-serves-up-steaming-pile-malware-ads.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160111/05574633295/forbe... I lost my compassion after that one. (I didn't get bit... but I had disabled adblock for one or two of their articles temporarily... not again)
bsder 11y ago
Um, is AdBlock Plus not obeying the "Allow some non-intrusive advertising" checkbox? If so, that's a scandal. However, if they only show ads to people who leave the box checked, I really don't see the problem.
Confiks 11y ago
I'm using Disconnect from https://disconnect.me https://disconnect.me, which is working alright for me. While not marketed as an ad-blocker (but rather as a tracker-blocker), I effectively see no ads at all. As far as I know, it doesn't track you in any way.
adwf 11y ago
I tend to think of ABP a bit like the Advertising Standards Agency in the UK. They essentially enforce a minimum standard upon advertisers, whilst collecting administrative fees in exchange. Long-term this is actually better for advertising agencies and websites supported by ads, as it'll help stop people just blocking ads completely. But people rarely think long-term anymore...
skybrian 11y ago
This could be done in a legitimate way. Suppose there were an AdFixPlus plugin with the mission of cleaning up advertising on the Internet by making sure every website conforms to an acceptable advertising policy that forbids intrusive ads. Users install it for free and advertisers pay for it. It seems like that should be fine so long as both the users and the advertisers know what's going on, and there are alternative plugins with different policies out there. Websites can forbid to serve users who turn off too many ads and users can refuse to visit websites that serve too many ads. But both sides would gain if some compromise can be reached. So it seems like a competitive market should evolve towards something that looks quite like this, with a middleman of some sort setting some reasonable rules, rather than one side deciding by fiat how it's going to be. Of course ad networks and publishers do some of this already. They have policies about not accepting all ads. The constant negotiation about which ads are okay to show is part of the reason why Internet advertising is so complicated. But they are less focused on what the user wants since the user can't choose between ad networks; only the advertiser and publisher can.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >forbids intrusive ads. Users install it for free and advertisers pay for it This is a great idea, but eventually comes full circle. Advertisers will pay more to have more access until they push it too far. Then someone builds a meta-AdFixPlus.
  - skybrian 11y ago
    Or alternatively, competition for users (or the threat of it) from some other plugin that does the same job, but better.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
Boing Boing runs "native advertising"--ad copy barely disguised as legitimate reviews to bypass ad blocking--every day, under the byline "Boing Boing Store". It's depressing to see them pretending they still have any moral high ground here.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  So does the New York Times, and Fox News, and any number of legitimate news sources.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    First, appeal-to-authority doesn't make "native advertising" any less shitty or deceptive; and second, neither of those currently has a front-page article denouncing something that they themselves do every day.
- reddiric 11y ago
  Comcast (a BB sponsor) is holding a contest in which you design your own virtual apartment in "Comcast Town." They invited Boing Boing to judge but, even more fun, they asked us to suggest some Boing Boing furniture that people could use to decorate their pads! Above is the living room I designed. (I'm obviously not eligible to win. Sniff, sniff.) Notice the steampunk computer, carnivorous plant, and Flying Spaghetti Monster statue. I think the illustrator did a terrific job. In fact, I wish it was my real living room! The grand prize winning design gets a real-world room remodel, 40-inch HDTV, a new laptop, and a digital phone. I'm just helping select the ten finalists -- then it's up to The People. http://boingboing.net/2009/04/23/boing-boing-apartmen.html http://boingboing.net/2009/04/23/boing-boing-apartmen.html
bpg_92 11y ago
They are evolving!
downandout 11y ago
The shakedown model just seems so scummy to me. There has to be a better way to monetize ad blockers. I suppose it doesn't matter though, as most advertising will simply become sponsored content/native advertising anyway, which will negate the need for ad blockers. We see it today on the web, but we have also seen it on TV for even longer as their answer to DVR-based commercial skipping. Take a show like Nightline, which is just an infomercial for every project that ABC and its parent company (Disney) want to promote, masquerading as a news broadcast. That format is likely a sign of things to come both on TV and the web.
- 13thLetter 11y ago
  > The shakedown model just seems so scummy to me. There has to be a better way to monetize ad blockers. Is it necessary to monetize them at all? An ad blocker isn't so complex that it couldn't be run as a free-as-in-beer software project.
ruipgil 11y ago
uBlock Origin (and uMatrix) are the only ad blockers that I trust and that I advise. The developer has strong ethics and, needless to say, they are open source. ABP made a name for themselves as one of the first and best players, but they have turned too shady.
- smonff 11y ago
  >uBlock Origin (and uMatrix) are the only ad blockers that I trust and that I advise. The developer has strong ethics and, needless to say, they are open source. It makes the difference. Ghostery was interesting in it's first days, , especially with the http://knowyourelements.org http://knowyourelements.org site (now offline) as an educationnal item about trackers, but when you learn about it's business model, it is quite scary... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery
  - rpgmaker 11y ago
    The company that owns Ghostery, Ghostery, Inc. (previously Evidon), plays a dual role in the online advertising industry. Ghostery blocks marketing companies from gathering website user information, but it makes money from selling page visit, blocking and advertising statistics to corporations globally, including corporations that are actively engaged in collecting user information to target ads and other marketing messages to consumers. Customers include advertising industry groups like Better Business Bureau (BBB) and the Direct Marketing Association, parts of the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA).[9] These agencies then use those reports to monitor how Online Behavioral Advertisers operate and, when needed, refer them to the Federal Trade Commission.[10] Ghostery also offers data to university students, researchers and journalists to support their work. According to some journalists, Ghostery is not transparent in how it collects data from users or what that data is used for. Other journalists have claimed that Ghostery sells user data to advertisers to better target their ads.[11] Ghostery, Inc denies this, asserting that Ghostery does not collect any information that could be used to identify users or target ads specifically at individual users. To support their assertion, the company made the source code open for review in 2010, but after 2010 further source have not been released.[12] In February 22, 2016 Ghostery, Inc released new EULA for Ghostery browser extension, as proprietary closed-source product.[1] Very shady indeed. Looking for alternatives now... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery#Business_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery#Business_model
dotrnd 11y ago
I'm another uBlock Origin user because I don't like the compromise that ABP has become. What I'm thinking about doing is writing a bit of software external to the browser that does something akin to what alot of us *nix users did before HTML5, which was to symlink Flash, in particular .macromedia and .adobe to /dev/null. This allowed the viewing of Flash content without the site being allowed to "write" LSOs to your HDD. Worked beautifully. I'm thinking the same sort of thing can be done with ads, tracking, etc., using a subscription model similar to what most ad blockers use. To whit, you surf a given site, yet see no ads and tracking, etc, is disallowed but the site doesn't notice. What say you, HN?
- unexistance 11y ago
  hah, I'm sold at "symlink Flash, in particular .macromedia and .adobe to /dev/null" :D so, does it mean something like a /dev/null for browsers?
- ikeboy 11y ago
  You'd need to download scripts and run them in the background if they send info back to tell if it's blocked. That would defeat part of the purpose of the blocking. Tracking is easily blocked by deleting cookies after you leave the site/browser.
jrapdx3 11y ago
Seems like the time for each of us to create a policy re: websites that try to coerce us into turning off the ad blocker. Personally, I strongly dislike such attempts to manipulate me, when a site makes demands of this kind, accordingly my policy is just going elsewhere. There's no site I have so great a need to visit that I will put up with it. I can't think of instances where the content was unavailable elsewhere, or if not available I couldn't live without it. The sites insisting that I subject myself to their ad abuse are likely to find their viewership evaporate. I can't see how how those enterprises will survive, considering that the internet will very likely always provide alternatives that visitors find more acceptable.
- rhino369 11y ago
  I think it's totally fair game to coerce me into turning off my ad blocker. That's how they monetize. That's how I'm supposed to "pay" for the content. I choose to use a blocker because I don't like ads. But if someone wants say "hey, the deal is ads or nothing" I think it's a pretty fair bargain. Currently the ad blockers (my self included) are free loading off the system. The internet only works because most people are willing to suck it up and watch the ads in my stead.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    I'd be happy if the entire ad-supported content industry burned to the ground. Make excellent content, and charge me for it. There's your system.
  - jrapdx3 11y ago
    Of course it's a valid choice to go along with turning off ad blockers, that's always up to the individual. It might well be better, and less hazardous, to pay for content than be subject to ads. This issue comes up re: science journals and whether it's appropriate to keep articles behind steep paywalls. The trend increasingly favors "open access" rather than having such important content restricted and inaccessible to the community at large. It's a different thing when talking about buying material items online, in that case it's clear what one is getting for the money. By comparison is the content of most websites really worth paying for? Mostly I'd say the answer is "no", and that's the reason I would rarely choose to pay for content. Ads are a way sites try to extract payments from sellers or third parties, but ultimately it's paid by site visitors one way or another. Since I choose not to pay directly because the marginal entertainment value isn't worth it to me, why would I go along with paying indirectly? I think it's perfectly legitimate to use an ad blocker. No one is obligated to put up with ads just because sites want to make money. If sites refuse to serve content because of ad blocking, the visitor's loss is negligible vs. sites taking substantial risk of losing viewers and jeopardizing site viability altogether. Sites have choices too. They can "clean up their act", police the ads they run, demand the ad servers/agencies eliminate ad-malware and intrusive tracking, etc. Choosing to monetize subscriptions, well, good luck with that, competition is ferocious, and subscribers probably sparse. Perhaps the internet was not really built to be "monetized" by the kind of ads we're talking about. Edit: grammar
tanv_nadkarni 11y ago
One more point. While Ad-blockers are getting popular the tech industry could indeed innovate to become ad-blocker-blockers. I guess ad-blockers work by looking at the domain names of the content. Why not use IP address alone to serve ads ? Why use JS embeds code to serve ads and not render it through server itself? Even JS based ads could provide challenge response based callbacks to render content only after ad is loaded.
- RamshackleJ 11y ago
  yeah... feels like an arms race. While things like security and freedom of information warrant technical innovation to ensure human rights its gonna be a hard sell to convince smart people to make more ads. "Why don't we just innovate and make unexploitable software that does exactly what we want with no unintended consequences" : )
- seanp2k2 11y ago
  I'm already one step ahead and using CIDR blacklists + peer guardian. Keeps a lot of malware from installing or working too.
- nickhalfasleep 11y ago
  I think this is the answer. You can imagine content plugins that inject into server side CMS (RoR, Drupal, django on top of Apache, Nginx, etc..) that add ad elements, and scramble the div / css tags such that it looks uniform, yet has a semi-random naming scheme that would be hard to defeat.
scoot 11y ago
We need an ad-blocker blocker.
officialchicken 11y ago
Didn't Mondo 2000 -> hotwired -> wired "invent" the once-ubiquitous 468x60 format ad-banner? And now they're complaining... Frankenstein's karma.
bediger4000 11y ago
You know what? I don't care. I'm going to continue to use ad blockers like uBlock and Privacy Badger that are non-corporate. I will set up any network I'm in charge of with a DNS that has doubleclick.com as 127.0.0.1, and also many others. The web was better in the early days, when it wasn't full of corporate dreck. If all the ad-supported BS websites fail, then so be it. I'd rather have just a few websites run by people for their own motives, than have a plethora of websites run by marketeers, propagandists and corporate executives.
- yyin 11y ago
  "I will set up any network I'm in charge of with a DNS that has doubleclick.com as 127.0.0.1, and also many others." You mean doubleclick.net? Alas, that's a typo that would let the ads in. Like you I redirect doubleclick and "many others". But not to localhost. I like to log all the requests either via pflog or a socket logger. Useful for examining what apps are trying to do from my device over the network. Sometimes I redirect certain domains to my own httpd and serve my own "fake" resources (placeholders for in-app ads, etc.). You say "any network I'm in charge of". What if there were a DNS caching server reachable from anywhere that blocked these ad servers for you? That is, what if there was a "public DNS" like 8.8.8.8 or 208.67.222.222 except not run by a company that sells ads or "security services"? What if there was a turnkey ad-blocking DNS caching server solution that one could run on any suitable hosting provider virtual machine instance? Would anyone be interested in such a thing? I have had this personal DNS idea for many years, ad blocking is becoming much more popular only recently. I think users controlling their own DNS is a key step toward taking back the www from the "corporate dreck". Maybe blocking ads is the stimulus for such a change.
  - click170 11y ago
    I've been pondering this myself recently, and decided to explore setting up my DNS-level adblocking in Bind using RPZ instead of my hosts file. It was quite easy, and I now even use nsupdate to block new ad domains that show up so that I don't have to restart my DNS server to add new names to block. I pondered making my server publicly available but had concerns about bandwidth, and other potential legal shenanigans. That said I couldn't put my finger on what exactly I'd get in trouble for if I made it public, so perhaps it's just FUD?
SFjulie1 11y ago
I made web sites front and back. I made ads. I know how they works. Even in an iframe or whatever limitations you put, it is impressive how ads are NOT sandboxable. I have made different ads talks on a same web page and dl/upload data that I would not trust an ad myself I did not wrote it. You should really write one. You would understand why cybercriminal loves them as not only a vector of infection, but also of datatheft. I can even navigate your history in vanilla JS where I can store information to communicate too. Yes, it is ugly but no one watch their history, do they? I mean, it is when animated an arbitrary eval of js that have access to your DOM, and with some works quite more.
efaref 11y ago
The ad-blocker-blockers are annoying, and my usual response is to just go elsewhere. I'm not turning on advertising for anyone. That being said, I'd happily pay a small ($5-10/mo) subscription if it enabled all (or a large number of) these sites again. Alledgedly my eyeballs are work millicents to advertisers: I'd like to buy all the advertising space I'm being shown at that price. I don't think an adblock company could do it, as it would be too much like a protection racket, but surely someone could set up a subscription-based service for "ad-free content", where sites that took part got a slice of your flat subscription fee. A bit like microtransactions, except not microtransactions.

117 points by edward 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dkopi 11y ago
Sometimes. And sometimes the product is simply free because First time entrepreneurs feel insecure and are afraid to ask users for money. Business models are difficult. Getting free users to become paid users is a science in its own. You might be the product. Or you might just be a free rider helping a company grow until they feel confident enough to ask you to pay, subscribe or upgrade.
cballard 11y ago
Yes - for example, Linux distributions are notable for selling people into slavery.
nkozyra 11y ago
Open source at least brings the prospect of free-as-in-speech applications to reality. It's not a guarantee, but the community can have a direct and active role in the direction.
logfromblammo 11y ago
There is a difference between free (gratis) and free (libre). It is possible to make money by giving things away, but such strategies are much more fragile when the giveaway item is libre. If you piss off your "customers"--or even just fail to please them enough--someone may just fork your free item and bleed away your audience. Facebook is gratis, and not easily replicated. Therefore it can engage in far more objectionable behavior in monetizing its user base than AdBlock Plus, which is libre. If ABP sells out its users, the users just uninstall it and put uBlock Origin in its place. Or they download the source, cut out the part that causes offense, and re-release it as AdBlock Minus.

kazinator 11y ago

> Adblock Plus comes off the worst of the lot. The company charges publishers fees to allow their ads through its filters, based on criteria about size and placement. Lie. Adblock Plus is a FOSS ad-blocker. It has a whitelist of "acceptable ads" that is enabled by default. You can turn it off, and since the thing is open source, you can clone your own version in which that is the default. I haven't heard that anyone has to pay ABP (or can pay) to be on this list. There was/is some controversy, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversy_over_ad_filtering_and_ad_whitelisting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversy_over_...

djur 11y ago
I'm curious if any evidence has ever been offered that the "Acceptable Ads" program is corrupt. It seems to me that literally the moment it was announced people characterized it as an offer to be bribed, but _as described_ I don't see anything wrong with the program.
- hartator 11y ago
  Sure, they didn't got any money from that. (!) Ref: http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/06/google-and-others-reportedly-pay-adblock-plus-to-show-you-ads-anyway/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/06/google-and-others-reportedl...
- lost_name 11y ago
  Granted, it's unlikely that they would say anything if they were extorting people as you describe... but from just the other day: https://adblockplus.org/blog/acceptable-ads-explained-monetization https://adblockplus.org/blog/acceptable-ads-explained-moneti... Discussion (somewhat lacking): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11182174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11182174
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- futunet 11y ago

elorant 11y ago

Wired's final prediction is that all the ads will disappear into sponsored content within a decade. I’m surprised that Wired made such a prediction because to me it sounds awfully wrong. For starters, whatever is going to happen it will happen much sooner than a decade. Ad blocking adoption has already reached 35% in some countries. At 50%-60% the industry is doomed. Not to mention fake ad impressions which already amount to one quarter of all traffic. I also find it odd that the only outcome they see is sponsored content. We already have that, it’s called native advertising and it sucks. If advertisers can have a saying on the content then the quality will go south pretty fast. What about micropayments? What about serving ads from the publisher’s domain? What about stopping the damn profiling which is the root of the problem? It seems that the online publishing industry is in a bit of a shock from the way things are moving and can’t think originally.

r3bl 11y ago
Wired's prediction is even more annoying because they've started begging me to turn off my adblocker last time I visited them a couple of days ago (proof[0]). If that's the future, why are they not going for it completely before their competitors? Seems like a good strategy to me if they believe in that, doesn't it? I avoided the adblocking discussions so far, but now that I think about it, I do think that having my adblocking software on actually helps the maintainers of websites. Since I have never clicked on an ad on the Internet intentionally (I only have Internet access for about 7-8 years, Adblock was already a thing back then and I have discovered it before anyone else I know personally), I have never purchased a thing from the Internet after clicking on an ad in my life (having only a European debit card that's not supported by the US-based services kind of helps me out in this case, but it is a huge disadvantage in every other case). By not seeing them, I'm actually improving their click rate a bit, ain't I? [0] - https://twitter.com/r3bl_/status/704041375562596352 https://twitter.com/r3bl_/status/704041375562596352
- wernercd 11y ago
  > Wired's prediction is even more annoying because they've started begging me to turn off my adblocker last time I visited them a couple of days ago Forbes "30 under 30": They don't let you read articles if you adblock... "To read this, you must disable". They create an article security nerds want to read... which then serves up a pop-under adware to steal passwords. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160111/05574633295/forbes-site-after-begging-you-turn-off-adblocker-serves-up-steaming-pile-malware-ads.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160111/05574633295/forbe... I lost my compassion after that one. (I didn't get bit... but I had disabled adblock for one or two of their articles temporarily... not again)

bsder 11y ago

Um, is AdBlock Plus not obeying the "Allow some non-intrusive advertising" checkbox? If so, that's a scandal. However, if they only show ads to people who leave the box checked, I really don't see the problem.

Confiks 11y ago

I'm using Disconnect from https://disconnect.me https://disconnect.me, which is working alright for me. While not marketed as an ad-blocker (but rather as a tracker-blocker), I effectively see no ads at all. As far as I know, it doesn't track you in any way.

adwf 11y ago

I tend to think of ABP a bit like the Advertising Standards Agency in the UK. They essentially enforce a minimum standard upon advertisers, whilst collecting administrative fees in exchange. Long-term this is actually better for advertising agencies and websites supported by ads, as it'll help stop people just blocking ads completely. But people rarely think long-term anymore...

skybrian 11y ago

This could be done in a legitimate way. Suppose there were an AdFixPlus plugin with the mission of cleaning up advertising on the Internet by making sure every website conforms to an acceptable advertising policy that forbids intrusive ads. Users install it for free and advertisers pay for it. It seems like that should be fine so long as both the users and the advertisers know what's going on, and there are alternative plugins with different policies out there. Websites can forbid to serve users who turn off too many ads and users can refuse to visit websites that serve too many ads. But both sides would gain if some compromise can be reached. So it seems like a competitive market should evolve towards something that looks quite like this, with a middleman of some sort setting some reasonable rules, rather than one side deciding by fiat how it's going to be. Of course ad networks and publishers do some of this already. They have policies about not accepting all ads. The constant negotiation about which ads are okay to show is part of the reason why Internet advertising is so complicated. But they are less focused on what the user wants since the user can't choose between ad networks; only the advertiser and publisher can.

forgetsusername 11y ago
>forbids intrusive ads. Users install it for free and advertisers pay for it This is a great idea, but eventually comes full circle. Advertisers will pay more to have more access until they push it too far. Then someone builds a meta-AdFixPlus.
- skybrian 11y ago
  Or alternatively, competition for users (or the threat of it) from some other plugin that does the same job, but better.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

Boing Boing runs "native advertising"--ad copy barely disguised as legitimate reviews to bypass ad blocking--every day, under the byline "Boing Boing Store". It's depressing to see them pretending they still have any moral high ground here.

cbd1984 11y ago
So does the New York Times, and Fox News, and any number of legitimate news sources.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  First, appeal-to-authority doesn't make "native advertising" any less shitty or deceptive; and second, neither of those currently has a front-page article denouncing something that they themselves do every day.
reddiric 11y ago
Comcast (a BB sponsor) is holding a contest in which you design your own virtual apartment in "Comcast Town." They invited Boing Boing to judge but, even more fun, they asked us to suggest some Boing Boing furniture that people could use to decorate their pads! Above is the living room I designed. (I'm obviously not eligible to win. Sniff, sniff.) Notice the steampunk computer, carnivorous plant, and Flying Spaghetti Monster statue. I think the illustrator did a terrific job. In fact, I wish it was my real living room! The grand prize winning design gets a real-world room remodel, 40-inch HDTV, a new laptop, and a digital phone. I'm just helping select the ten finalists -- then it's up to The People. http://boingboing.net/2009/04/23/boing-boing-apartmen.html http://boingboing.net/2009/04/23/boing-boing-apartmen.html

bpg_92 11y ago

They are evolving!

downandout 11y ago

The shakedown model just seems so scummy to me. There has to be a better way to monetize ad blockers. I suppose it doesn't matter though, as most advertising will simply become sponsored content/native advertising anyway, which will negate the need for ad blockers. We see it today on the web, but we have also seen it on TV for even longer as their answer to DVR-based commercial skipping. Take a show like Nightline, which is just an infomercial for every project that ABC and its parent company (Disney) want to promote, masquerading as a news broadcast. That format is likely a sign of things to come both on TV and the web.

13thLetter 11y ago
> The shakedown model just seems so scummy to me. There has to be a better way to monetize ad blockers. Is it necessary to monetize them at all? An ad blocker isn't so complex that it couldn't be run as a free-as-in-beer software project.

ruipgil 11y ago

uBlock Origin (and uMatrix) are the only ad blockers that I trust and that I advise. The developer has strong ethics and, needless to say, they are open source. ABP made a name for themselves as one of the first and best players, but they have turned too shady.

smonff 11y ago
>uBlock Origin (and uMatrix) are the only ad blockers that I trust and that I advise. The developer has strong ethics and, needless to say, they are open source. It makes the difference. Ghostery was interesting in it's first days, , especially with the http://knowyourelements.org http://knowyourelements.org site (now offline) as an educationnal item about trackers, but when you learn about it's business model, it is quite scary... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery
- rpgmaker 11y ago
  The company that owns Ghostery, Ghostery, Inc. (previously Evidon), plays a dual role in the online advertising industry. Ghostery blocks marketing companies from gathering website user information, but it makes money from selling page visit, blocking and advertising statistics to corporations globally, including corporations that are actively engaged in collecting user information to target ads and other marketing messages to consumers. Customers include advertising industry groups like Better Business Bureau (BBB) and the Direct Marketing Association, parts of the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA).[9] These agencies then use those reports to monitor how Online Behavioral Advertisers operate and, when needed, refer them to the Federal Trade Commission.[10] Ghostery also offers data to university students, researchers and journalists to support their work. According to some journalists, Ghostery is not transparent in how it collects data from users or what that data is used for. Other journalists have claimed that Ghostery sells user data to advertisers to better target their ads.[11] Ghostery, Inc denies this, asserting that Ghostery does not collect any information that could be used to identify users or target ads specifically at individual users. To support their assertion, the company made the source code open for review in 2010, but after 2010 further source have not been released.[12] In February 22, 2016 Ghostery, Inc released new EULA for Ghostery browser extension, as proprietary closed-source product.[1] Very shady indeed. Looking for alternatives now... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery#Business_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery#Business_model

dotrnd 11y ago

I'm another uBlock Origin user because I don't like the compromise that ABP has become. What I'm thinking about doing is writing a bit of software external to the browser that does something akin to what alot of us *nix users did before HTML5, which was to symlink Flash, in particular .macromedia and .adobe to /dev/null. This allowed the viewing of Flash content without the site being allowed to "write" LSOs to your HDD. Worked beautifully. I'm thinking the same sort of thing can be done with ads, tracking, etc., using a subscription model similar to what most ad blockers use. To whit, you surf a given site, yet see no ads and tracking, etc, is disallowed but the site doesn't notice. What say you, HN?

unexistance 11y ago
hah, I'm sold at "symlink Flash, in particular .macromedia and .adobe to /dev/null" :D so, does it mean something like a /dev/null for browsers?
ikeboy 11y ago
You'd need to download scripts and run them in the background if they send info back to tell if it's blocked. That would defeat part of the purpose of the blocking. Tracking is easily blocked by deleting cookies after you leave the site/browser.

jrapdx3 11y ago

Seems like the time for each of us to create a policy re: websites that try to coerce us into turning off the ad blocker. Personally, I strongly dislike such attempts to manipulate me, when a site makes demands of this kind, accordingly my policy is just going elsewhere. There's no site I have so great a need to visit that I will put up with it. I can't think of instances where the content was unavailable elsewhere, or if not available I couldn't live without it. The sites insisting that I subject myself to their ad abuse are likely to find their viewership evaporate. I can't see how how those enterprises will survive, considering that the internet will very likely always provide alternatives that visitors find more acceptable.

rhino369 11y ago
I think it's totally fair game to coerce me into turning off my ad blocker. That's how they monetize. That's how I'm supposed to "pay" for the content. I choose to use a blocker because I don't like ads. But if someone wants say "hey, the deal is ads or nothing" I think it's a pretty fair bargain. Currently the ad blockers (my self included) are free loading off the system. The internet only works because most people are willing to suck it up and watch the ads in my stead.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  I'd be happy if the entire ad-supported content industry burned to the ground. Make excellent content, and charge me for it. There's your system.
- jrapdx3 11y ago
  Of course it's a valid choice to go along with turning off ad blockers, that's always up to the individual. It might well be better, and less hazardous, to pay for content than be subject to ads. This issue comes up re: science journals and whether it's appropriate to keep articles behind steep paywalls. The trend increasingly favors "open access" rather than having such important content restricted and inaccessible to the community at large. It's a different thing when talking about buying material items online, in that case it's clear what one is getting for the money. By comparison is the content of most websites really worth paying for? Mostly I'd say the answer is "no", and that's the reason I would rarely choose to pay for content. Ads are a way sites try to extract payments from sellers or third parties, but ultimately it's paid by site visitors one way or another. Since I choose not to pay directly because the marginal entertainment value isn't worth it to me, why would I go along with paying indirectly? I think it's perfectly legitimate to use an ad blocker. No one is obligated to put up with ads just because sites want to make money. If sites refuse to serve content because of ad blocking, the visitor's loss is negligible vs. sites taking substantial risk of losing viewers and jeopardizing site viability altogether. Sites have choices too. They can "clean up their act", police the ads they run, demand the ad servers/agencies eliminate ad-malware and intrusive tracking, etc. Choosing to monetize subscriptions, well, good luck with that, competition is ferocious, and subscribers probably sparse. Perhaps the internet was not really built to be "monetized" by the kind of ads we're talking about. Edit: grammar

tanv_nadkarni 11y ago

One more point. While Ad-blockers are getting popular the tech industry could indeed innovate to become ad-blocker-blockers. I guess ad-blockers work by looking at the domain names of the content. Why not use IP address alone to serve ads ? Why use JS embeds code to serve ads and not render it through server itself? Even JS based ads could provide challenge response based callbacks to render content only after ad is loaded.

RamshackleJ 11y ago
yeah... feels like an arms race. While things like security and freedom of information warrant technical innovation to ensure human rights its gonna be a hard sell to convince smart people to make more ads. "Why don't we just innovate and make unexploitable software that does exactly what we want with no unintended consequences" : )
seanp2k2 11y ago
I'm already one step ahead and using CIDR blacklists + peer guardian. Keeps a lot of malware from installing or working too.
nickhalfasleep 11y ago
I think this is the answer. You can imagine content plugins that inject into server side CMS (RoR, Drupal, django on top of Apache, Nginx, etc..) that add ad elements, and scramble the div / css tags such that it looks uniform, yet has a semi-random naming scheme that would be hard to defeat.

scoot 11y ago

We need an ad-blocker blocker.

officialchicken 11y ago

Didn't Mondo 2000 -> hotwired -> wired "invent" the once-ubiquitous 468x60 format ad-banner? And now they're complaining... Frankenstein's karma.

bediger4000 11y ago

You know what? I don't care. I'm going to continue to use ad blockers like uBlock and Privacy Badger that are non-corporate. I will set up any network I'm in charge of with a DNS that has doubleclick.com as 127.0.0.1, and also many others. The web was better in the early days, when it wasn't full of corporate dreck. If all the ad-supported BS websites fail, then so be it. I'd rather have just a few websites run by people for their own motives, than have a plethora of websites run by marketeers, propagandists and corporate executives.

yyin 11y ago
"I will set up any network I'm in charge of with a DNS that has doubleclick.com as 127.0.0.1, and also many others." You mean doubleclick.net? Alas, that's a typo that would let the ads in. Like you I redirect doubleclick and "many others". But not to localhost. I like to log all the requests either via pflog or a socket logger. Useful for examining what apps are trying to do from my device over the network. Sometimes I redirect certain domains to my own httpd and serve my own "fake" resources (placeholders for in-app ads, etc.). You say "any network I'm in charge of". What if there were a DNS caching server reachable from anywhere that blocked these ad servers for you? That is, what if there was a "public DNS" like 8.8.8.8 or 208.67.222.222 except not run by a company that sells ads or "security services"? What if there was a turnkey ad-blocking DNS caching server solution that one could run on any suitable hosting provider virtual machine instance? Would anyone be interested in such a thing? I have had this personal DNS idea for many years, ad blocking is becoming much more popular only recently. I think users controlling their own DNS is a key step toward taking back the www from the "corporate dreck". Maybe blocking ads is the stimulus for such a change.
- click170 11y ago
  I've been pondering this myself recently, and decided to explore setting up my DNS-level adblocking in Bind using RPZ instead of my hosts file. It was quite easy, and I now even use nsupdate to block new ad domains that show up so that I don't have to restart my DNS server to add new names to block. I pondered making my server publicly available but had concerns about bandwidth, and other potential legal shenanigans. That said I couldn't put my finger on what exactly I'd get in trouble for if I made it public, so perhaps it's just FUD?

SFjulie1 11y ago

I made web sites front and back. I made ads. I know how they works. Even in an iframe or whatever limitations you put, it is impressive how ads are NOT sandboxable. I have made different ads talks on a same web page and dl/upload data that I would not trust an ad myself I did not wrote it. You should really write one. You would understand why cybercriminal loves them as not only a vector of infection, but also of datatheft. I can even navigate your history in vanilla JS where I can store information to communicate too. Yes, it is ugly but no one watch their history, do they? I mean, it is when animated an arbitrary eval of js that have access to your DOM, and with some works quite more.

efaref 11y ago

The ad-blocker-blockers are annoying, and my usual response is to just go elsewhere. I'm not turning on advertising for anyone. That being said, I'd happily pay a small ($5-10/mo) subscription if it enabled all (or a large number of) these sites again. Alledgedly my eyeballs are work millicents to advertisers: I'd like to buy all the advertising space I'm being shown at that price. I don't think an adblock company could do it, as it would be too much like a protection racket, but surely someone could set up a subscription-based service for "ad-free content", where sites that took part got a slice of your flat subscription fee. A bit like microtransactions, except not microtransactions.