21 ms·

Rise of Ad Blocking Is the Ad Industry's Fault, Says Outgoing FTC Commissioner

253 points by chopin 11y ago

Spooky23 11y ago
Online ads are pure garbage. It's amazing to me that I still actively seek out some legacy ads (flyers in the Sunday paper, Thursday car ads, Wednesday butcher ads) in the local paper. But except for the occasional Google organic result, I never, ever get any utility from online advertising. The closest thing is the ads in podcasts, which tend to be built around a story and are more compelling. I've looked at several of those advertisers and bought a couple.
- tomp 11y ago
  > It's amazing to me that I still actively seek out some legacy ads (flyers in the Sunday paper, Thursday car ads, Wednesday butcher ads) in the local paper Those are not ads. It's legitimate information that helps you, so you seek it out. The vast majority of ads are not informative, but rather use emotional manipulation to get you to buy stuff you don't need, or that you wouldn't buy otherwise.
  - recursive 11y ago
    Why do you think those aren't ads? > Advertising (or advertizing) is a form of marketing communication used to promote or sell something, usually a business's product or service. It sounds like it fits the bill to me.
    - tomp 11y ago
      The biggest difference, in my view, is that ads are forced upon you, whereas you seek out information yourself. E.g. if you browse a clothing magazine and you see a H&M or Zara branded page, that's an ad. But if you're looking through a catalogue of clothes, and there's a section with H&M clothing and a section with Zara clothing, that's information that you explicitly sought out. Another example are billboards and information boards. If it's in large print, so that you see it passing by, it's an ad. But if it's in small print, so you only see it if you intentionally approach the board to see what's new locally, that's information.
- irremediable 11y ago
  > The closest thing is the ads in podcasts, which tend to be built around a story and are more compelling. I've looked at several of those advertisers and bought a couple. This is a really good point. The only worthwhile ads I've seen on the Internet have been from podcasts.
chopin 11y ago
Malware is the #1 reason for me to use ad-blocking...
- amelius 11y ago
  For me, #1 is tracking, #2 is malware.
  - phineastcat 11y ago
    For me, #1 is the extra bandwidth cost (I have a crappy internet connection), #2 is malware, and #3 is tracking. My crappy internet connection is what originally pushed me to block ads. Everything's a lot more speedy when you're not loading all those extra scripts, images, and videos.
  - chopin 11y ago
    It comes close as a #2 for me (I care more for an uncompromised system than for tracking but YMMV). However, the article states that the state of affairs might be better for publishers if they didn't ignore DNT. I doubt that very much for these two reasons: 1. Malware 2. Intrusive ads, even the article site serves animated ads which distract from the content.
- Daneel_ 11y ago
  I'm completely with you on this one. I pay the bills doing computer forensics and defensive security, and the amount of times that I've seen clients compromised due to advertising networks serving malicious content is non-trivial. I'd recommend ad-blocking purely from this perspective. When you have a single user the attack surface isn't so bad, but across an organisation of several thousand people it quickly escalates.
- tremon 11y ago
  For me, distraction is the #1 reason. I started blocking ads as soon as it was possible (almost 15 years ago I guess), having been fed up with animated gifs. Next on my list was Flashblock, again because of distraction first. By then I had already permanently muted my browser. I started blocking javascript because my pc was getting old and sites just ran much smoother without it. First using the global "block javascript" flag, and when too many sites became unusable I switched to NoScript and now RequestPolicy. The tracking and security concerns are secondary to me; usability was my motivator. But by now, I'm so used to it, I never browse without protection. I literally feel dirty when I have to use IE or any other bare browser.
jld89 11y ago
Trackers are horrible. I don't want anyone to know what I am doing what sites I am visiting etc... What gives them the right to track? Besides of imposing banners to my face? They got what was coming to them. I am glad that the EFF is giving us tools to fight back. Consider donating to them!
- officialchicken 11y ago
  Please remember to include a link whenever you mention the EFF! https://supporters.eff.org/donate https://supporters.eff.org/donate
  - randunel 11y ago
    Why is that? I think there's nothing wrong with mentioning the EFF without linking to their donations page.
    - fucking_tragedy 11y ago
      If you support their message and cause, it's a reminder that they exist on donations from people like you. If you're thankful, it's a reminder to show thanks if you can/want to.
- a_imho 11y ago
  Sorry for going orthogonal, but I have been wondering about donating for quite a while. I really do like the EFF, has a good mission and most their statements are very much aligned with my pov. Except for some, like their financial statements e.g. https://www.eff.org/about/annual-reports-and-financials https://www.eff.org/about/annual-reports-and-financials Concerns like: 1. Their numbers don't add up, there is no corresponding arc to the Salaries and Benefits expense for instance (5,377 > 5,184) 2. Salaries and benefits jumped 20% past years, which might mean more employees, but also could be more benefits 3. What are Board Enrichment expenses? 4. I know nonprofit has subtle nuances in meaning, but how could they have 1M Net Investment Income? 5. Most importantly their Support and Revenue figures are double of the expenses, should I really donate them? I mean they can put it away for a rainy day, but is my money actually further any cause?
karterk 11y ago
For a very long time, I did not want to use ad blockers. I have used ads in the past to monetize some of my own projects, and I really did not want to stab the creators of quality content. However, last week I finally reversed my decision and started using ad blockers. Why? Frankly, many sites are just greedy. Banners were ugly enough (and I tolerated them) but many sites these days show ads that cover the content, and going as far as to hide the [x] button for a few seconds. And, I am not even talking about privacy and security issues. Businesses have to come up with better monetization strategies. Shoving ads on my face and making me accidentally click them is a net loss for everyone.
- adamt 11y ago
  I agree completely and like you for a long time I didn't use ad-blockers on morale grounds. Personally I don't get overly excited about the tracking/re-targeting, but what did bother me was how ridiculously intrusive the ads on some sites that totally destroyed my user experience, wasted my batteries and cellular data and at times prevented me from (on mobile) from getting to the content I actually wanted. With mobile it was also the stupid number of accidental clicks when scrolling, or pop ups with really small 'x' to close that and a non-zoomable viewport. Wasting my time (and somebody else's money) on ads I never wanted to click does't seem like a good or sustainable economic value add. Sometimes ads can be useful. On Google search sometimes the people who will pay for ads are sometimes a better signal than those that SEO their way to the top. Similarly I have discovered things of interest in Facebook & Twitter ads where they were relevant to me. It does seem that online advertising is in need of a bit of a 'reboot'.
  - thirdsun 11y ago
    Same here - I'm not that concerned about targeted ads, but if it means significant consequences for my bandwidth, security, performance or simply being able to use the site as intended, well, then I don't seem to have a realistic choice. That said, I think there's room for an adblocker that focuses on ads that are too intrusive and whitelists decent, static ads automatically. Currently I do that manually on a per site basis.
wiz21c 11y ago
I use adblocker. Now, the news sites I like say "sorry pal, adblocker means no news". I'm perfectly fine with that. It's just arms race. My freedom to remove the ads, their to put them. Everybody's free and I love it. Now I'll have to pay and that's fine : good content comes from work and work deserve money. But all of a sudden, as I'll pay, I'll become much more demanding. And so competition can work again...
- CuriouslyC 11y ago
  Just get a browser plugin like quick javascript switcher and disable javascript for sites that try to disallow adblocker users. It has worked for me every time.
- jld89 11y ago
  uBlock and no-script are good against paywalls
quanticle 11y ago
Interestingly enough, the page itself is an example of the very thing it criticizes: http://imgur.com/aQJvlG3 http://imgur.com/aQJvlG3. Almost half the screen is an ad when you load the page.
- timlyo 11y ago
  An animated ad, that blocks the page and plays music as well.
- esun 11y ago
  I have been using ad blockers for a long time I guess... I had no idea ads had gotten so big. That's gross.
mahranch 11y ago
Black and white thinking. Content creators still need to get paid. I'd be quite upset if my favorite sites had to shut down due to the rise of ad blocking and non-viable alternatives to ads (like "subscriptions", etc...)
- cm2187 11y ago
  But if their way to get paid is to track me across websites I have no moral problem with preventing it.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Content creator business models are not my problem. If they want to get paid, they need to figure that out. By globalizing their reach, most content shops entered into a race to the bottom where they cannot win. That's why you have these tiers of auctions for inventory that slide down the food chain in terms of quality as the price falls. Traditionally, successful media has been local, local, local in scope. That remains true, although everything is being reshuffled. Media outlets that remain alive have some sort of scope limitation that makes their ad inventory more valuable and reduces their exposure/dependency to Facebook.
- fucking_tragedy 11y ago
  Black and white thinking. Content creators can still get paid. They just need to figure out a business model that doesn't hijack my browsing session, use the limited mobile data I'm allotted and pay for each month to serve unwanted content, drain my battery, eat my CPU, track my reading/surfing/porn habits and potentially run malicious code on my machines.
  - ssharp 11y ago
    You seem to think content creators sit in some evil dungeon, plotting out ways to screw their readers with ads. That's not really it at all. There are a limited number of ad networks out there and publishers attach themselves to one or more of them. At that point, the publisher is largely clear of the process, unless they're negotiating custom deals of some sort, which happens with larger sites but is far less common than small sites. The people doing the tracking aren't the content sites -- it's the ad networks. As a publisher, I'm not privy to your personal details.
elorant 11y ago
Besides profiling I also use ad blocking because I hate the usability of most pages which are cramped with ads. It didn’t use to be like that a few years ago. From the moment advertisers decided that their ads should mainly appear above the fold, web page usability went downwards very fast. There are quite a few sites where you can’t see a single thing without scrolling down. I don’t ever recall advertising being so annoying online.
riprowan 11y ago
"You get what you pay for," is probably what my grandfather would have said about this problem.
imgabe 11y ago
It would be interesting to see if someone could endow an independent publication with enough money to keep it going, then put quality ad-free journalism behind a paywall. I'm thinking it would be something like "B Corporation". Not exactly a charity, but not necessarily trying to maximize profit either. Charge a high monthly price, maybe $50/month for immediate access to new articles, but after 1 month everything becomes freely available. Information will undoubtedly be copied and posted elsewhere anyway, the only thing you can realistically control is who gets access to it first. People who value up-to-date news that's guaranteed to be impartial would pay for early access to it, I think. Everyone else would still get to benefit from it as well, just slightly delayed.
- edent 11y ago
  The Scott Trust is the main financial backer for The Guardian - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited Is that the sort of thing you were thinking of?
  - takno 11y ago
    The Scott Trust isn't exactly a large endowment that can provide the news using the returns from investments. It's an independent ownership model which has enough cash reserves to cushion the Guardian for a while why they get back into profit. If they don't crack the problem of how to make money from the internet they are gone just the same as everybody else.
- rmc 11y ago
  The Guardian newspaper in the UK (y'know one of the newspapers Edward Snowden reached out to), are exactly that. Except you can read it for free online. You can consider signing up as a Guardian Member if you want to support them.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    You should watch Jacob Appelbaum's comments[1] about The Guardian. They may not deserve your support. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJValv4YQcY#t=78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJValv4YQcY#t=78
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Start fixing mobile first, you're killing precious battery life.
jgalt212 11y ago
If third party cookies were allowed, then sites like Business Insider would not be tempted to fire 50 (or more) resource hogging tracking pixels and scripts. The law of unintended consequences in full effect here.
- cpeterso 11y ago
  Besides Safari, which browsers block third-party cookies (when not using an ad blocker that would also block those 50 tracking pixels)?
  - chopin 11y ago
    Firefox, there is a setting for it. It's the first thing I do on a fresh install.
inanutshellus 11y ago
I recently ran into a cooking site that wouldn't serve up any actual recipes if the javascript of their ad generator wasn't found. Pretty clever... I'm surprised more sites don't do it.
sveri 11y ago
I started blocking ads when adblock plus was not even a thing. Not sure when that was exactly, 10 years ago or more? However, I did it when they started to add moving ads. There was a site that I regularly consumed (multiple times a day) and that I wanted to support. But, I was not able to focus on the content, everytime that blinking ad just distracted me. So I had the choice, stop using that site or blocking the ads. I started using adblock back then and everytime I have to use a computer without a blocker I thank myself for the wise decision back then. That said I would rather not consume anything anymore than allowing ads again. The things that I was and am really interested in, will be saturated by buying books and the people that put up stuff for free, like I do for certain things. Also I would pay for services I like. Byte.fm did it the right way I think. It's online radio, from the beginning on they never streamed ads and still do not do so today. Not long after I started to consume them I paid them and still do so today because I support services that explicitly do not use ads.
- tunap 11y ago
  I am of the same mind. I make payments/donations to sites I enjoy regularly and block ads wholesale. If Forbes will not let me read their content w/ an AdBlocker, then I will just not read, nor cite, their content. Simple as that. I have weened myself off of much infotainment over the years and as sites bork/discontinue their RSS feeds I will read even less web content. My life is more enjoyable with less noise on the ine, anyway.
tremon 11y ago
How fitting. A sidebar filled with animated gifs on a page lamenting the ad-industry's failed self-regulation. And it's not even a third-party ad...
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
I feel awful for using an ad blocker sometimes, but I sometimes have no choice. On my Windows 10 tablet, a feeble device with 1GB of RAM, the web is unusable without one.
CuriouslyC 11y ago
People question how we'll support content without ads, but I have to take a step back and wonder - is content that needs to be supported really that valuable? Might the world be a better place without it? People who are passionate about the subject they are writing on are going to publish regardless of ad revenue, assuming they get hits (writing stuff nobody reads is a fast track to burnout). Right now, in many cases these people are being crowded out by well SEO'd content mills. If the advertising dollars dry up, the content mills will die off, and that ecological niche will be freed up to be filled by people with passion. I for one welcome the idea of a return to a genuine internet, where everything isn't about monetization. The amount of content may go down, but the quality will almost certainly go way up, and there will be that much less garbage to wade through.
- klunger 11y ago
  No. You are basically saying that people should work for free if they are passionate about it. Professional writers cannot pay their bills with passion. Same with artists, musicians etc, and every other underpaid profession. Just because they (hopefully) like what they do, does not mean it is not work or does not have value.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    > Professional writers cannot pay their bills with passion Professional writers aren’t ad-financed. Look at Panama Papers. Not a single of the involved newspapers and broadcasters is ad financed: All are either tax or subscription financed. Btw, for just 19.99€ you can get full access to all articles about Panama Papers in the Süddeutsche if you don’t want to enter a 12-month subscription for the whole newspaper.
    - klunger 11y ago
      >Professional writers aren’t ad-financed. Wrong. While some outlets enjoy full state support or sufficient subscription revenue to not need advertisements, the VAST majority of publications get a significant portion of their revenue (which is the used to pay their staff writers and freelance contributors) from ads. Better known examples of such publications include: The New York Times, Wired, The Atlantic. In Norway, where I live, Aftenposten was given access to the Panama Papers for analysis and publication. Aftenposten is partially subsidized by the Norwegian government, but also dependent on ad revenue to survive.
SeanDav 11y ago
OT: > "...advertisers use to convince us to buy shit." Am I just an old fuddy duddy, or does the use of the word "shit" here jar with anyone else? I understand that many people talk this way, but feel that the written word should hold itself to a higher standard of grammar and vocabulary.
- beisner 11y ago
  You are just an old fuddy duddy. If I was reading this as prose, maybe I'd agree that an author could have been more creative with word choice. But in this kind of post, the message is vastly more important than the medium, and the use of the word 'shit' doesn't obscure the message.
  - SeanDav 11y ago
    I kind of suspected I am :)
wnevets 11y ago
The content that accompanies the worst kind of advertising tends to be the worst kind of content. If adblocking kills that kind of content I'm all for it. For example the number of sites that scrap stackoverflow and cram 30 different ads onto the page.
forrestthewoods 11y ago
Even legit sites serve malware. It's beyond their control. Ghostery makes money by telling sites what shit they're serving. Because they don't know. It's too many layers of dependency. There I block all ads all the time. No exceptions. Not even for "good" sites. The sooner everyone blocks ads the better. If sites go out of business then so be it. They'll evolve once forced; but not a moment sooner. http://www.csoonline.com/article/3044588/security/malvertising-campaign-hits-new-york-times-bbc-others.html http://www.csoonline.com/article/3044588/security/malvertisi...
stegosaurus 11y ago
The producers of content that I view not being financially secure is a problem. I've read a lot of useful stuff over the years, and I really want the people who made that possible to thrive. I don't particularly care about whether they can buy flash cars, but I do care about them being able to live without stress and continue to do the things they love and are best at. As far as I'm concerned, the problem looks like this: 1. Society isn't providing them with a way to live, so it's down to me (and others like me) to help out. Which leads to: 2. I'm not wealthy enough to feel like I can give back to them, or there's no reasonable interface to do so Which leads to: 3. Out of desperation, they try to force my hand by employing advertising (so that indirectly there's a cashflow). I'd rather work on #1 and #2 directly than look at #3. I'm not that interested in short term solutions, and advertising is a particularly ugly one.
- stegosaurus 11y ago
  To put it another way: I'm not sure that the creation and dissemination of knowledge works well as a capitalistic business. I'm not sure that it leads to optimal outcomes WRT the dissemination of said material. I don't know how we deal with the edge case of trading scarce resources like food and land for unlimited resources like data, but I don't think advertising is it. When you think about it, it's really quite odd. The deal is that you can view this web page, if in the abstract you commit to buying some portion of a physical item or service from someone else later on. To me, it feels a lot like an inefficient form of tax.
jasonkostempski 11y ago
DNT was never going to work and the failure of the Do Not Call list should have made it obvious. No one ever thought people would willingly accept being tracked in the first place. I'm sure everyone who ever worked on an ad network felt a little yucky with what they were doing at some point and got over it real quick or quit, leaving an industry full of people who already rationalized that what they were doing was OK. Seeing the DNT options in browsers bugs me almost as much as seeing those cookie warnings. Government is making this stuff even more annoying, just let the people figure it out. Side note, I'd love to see ad blockers add something to block those cookie warnings. Since literally no one on either side wants them, I'm sure website authors would be willing to agree on a de facto standard css class or something that would make them real easy to hide. Maybe it should be opt-in in case someone tries to go after the ad blockers for interfering with the cookie law.
- cpeterso 11y ago
  Perhaps DNT can be repurposed to bypass those EU cookie warnings by sending `DNT: 0` (Do Not Not Track).
Hjugo 11y ago
Is there a public whitelist (except the one from ABP) for ad networks which have non invasive, non tracking ads?
zzleeper 11y ago
What do you guys use as ad blockers on mobile? I use chrome on an android and it seems that I would need to switch to FF in order to have adblocking? (Which I might, as there are ads on Chrome that even make the cellphone vibrate and redirect to the store, amongst other things)
- Kenji 11y ago
  You can use a hosts file that redirects all the domains that serve garbage to 127.0.0.1. If you have rooted your phone, at least. There are plenty of good lists available in forums. Like this, you remove ads system-wide, even in apps.
- JeremyNT 11y ago
  I use and recommend Firefox with uBlock Origin. Firefox still has a few rough edges on Android, and some small number of sites exhibit pathological performance characteristics in Mobile FF, but it's certainly good enough to be your primary solution. I keep Chrome around for when sites have problems with Mobile FF, but I find myself reaching for it less and less over time.
- schlipity 11y ago
  Take a look at Netguard on Github. It emulates the hostfile via local loopback vpn and is able to fully adblock your android device without rooting it. It's also available on the playstore, but that functionality is disabled. Their releases: https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard/releases https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard/releases To enable adblocking: https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard/blob/master/ADBLOCKING.md https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard/blob/master/ADBLOCKING.md
zodPod 11y ago
While the discussion here on HN is good about this topic, I think the actual article missed the point completely. Sure, tracking is an important issue with ads but I really don't think Do Not Track made any sense nor would have made any difference. It's the continued, forceful intrusion into our minds that these ads make. Without ad blockers: I go to a page and, the first thing I see, is an overlay with a Ford Truck on it. Then I click the x that appeared after 25 seconds on that and I continue down the page. I manage to read half of the article in spite of the "Social Bar" that is blocking some of the text and then I see a "article continued after the jump" and an ad served right below it. I scroll past that to the rest of the content. I continue to lose track of the article that I'm reading because there's a giant flashy banner to the right side of my screen replaying some video with crazy motion and is following me as I scroll. THEN, I finally get to the bottom and I'm like "I liked that article. I should read more by these people!" and, instead of their content, there's a bunch of click bait bullcrap that leads to poorly written articles about topics that I don't care about at the bottom. I then proceed to leave the page in anger. With ad blockers: I go to a page and read an article. I get it done quickly and efficiently and am able to concentrate and take in all of the information. I get to the bottom and want to read more but I don't see any more from that site because it's all served through some scammy ad network and is blocked. I leave the site but I will return when I see another link from said site, for sure! None of that would have been changed by Do Not Track and THAT is the problem with ads today. (IMO at least..)
udhan 11y ago
Please do not serve content if you detect adblocker. I will decide if its worth it for me and may unblock advt. No obligations!

253 points by chopin 11y ago

Online ads are pure garbage. It's amazing to me that I still actively seek out some legacy ads (flyers in the Sunday paper, Thursday car ads, Wednesday butcher ads) in the local paper. But except for the occasional Google organic result, I never, ever get any utility from online advertising. The closest thing is the ads in podcasts, which tend to be built around a story and are more compelling. I've looked at several of those advertisers and bought a couple.

tomp 11y ago
> It's amazing to me that I still actively seek out some legacy ads (flyers in the Sunday paper, Thursday car ads, Wednesday butcher ads) in the local paper Those are not ads. It's legitimate information that helps you, so you seek it out. The vast majority of ads are not informative, but rather use emotional manipulation to get you to buy stuff you don't need, or that you wouldn't buy otherwise.
- recursive 11y ago
  Why do you think those aren't ads? > Advertising (or advertizing) is a form of marketing communication used to promote or sell something, usually a business's product or service. It sounds like it fits the bill to me.
  - tomp 11y ago
    The biggest difference, in my view, is that ads are forced upon you, whereas you seek out information yourself. E.g. if you browse a clothing magazine and you see a H&M or Zara branded page, that's an ad. But if you're looking through a catalogue of clothes, and there's a section with H&M clothing and a section with Zara clothing, that's information that you explicitly sought out. Another example are billboards and information boards. If it's in large print, so that you see it passing by, it's an ad. But if it's in small print, so you only see it if you intentionally approach the board to see what's new locally, that's information.
irremediable 11y ago
> The closest thing is the ads in podcasts, which tend to be built around a story and are more compelling. I've looked at several of those advertisers and bought a couple. This is a really good point. The only worthwhile ads I've seen on the Internet have been from podcasts.

chopin 11y ago

Malware is the #1 reason for me to use ad-blocking...

amelius 11y ago
For me, #1 is tracking, #2 is malware.
- phineastcat 11y ago
  For me, #1 is the extra bandwidth cost (I have a crappy internet connection), #2 is malware, and #3 is tracking. My crappy internet connection is what originally pushed me to block ads. Everything's a lot more speedy when you're not loading all those extra scripts, images, and videos.
- chopin 11y ago
  It comes close as a #2 for me (I care more for an uncompromised system than for tracking but YMMV). However, the article states that the state of affairs might be better for publishers if they didn't ignore DNT. I doubt that very much for these two reasons: 1. Malware 2. Intrusive ads, even the article site serves animated ads which distract from the content.
Daneel_ 11y ago
I'm completely with you on this one. I pay the bills doing computer forensics and defensive security, and the amount of times that I've seen clients compromised due to advertising networks serving malicious content is non-trivial. I'd recommend ad-blocking purely from this perspective. When you have a single user the attack surface isn't so bad, but across an organisation of several thousand people it quickly escalates.
tremon 11y ago
For me, distraction is the #1 reason. I started blocking ads as soon as it was possible (almost 15 years ago I guess), having been fed up with animated gifs. Next on my list was Flashblock, again because of distraction first. By then I had already permanently muted my browser. I started blocking javascript because my pc was getting old and sites just ran much smoother without it. First using the global "block javascript" flag, and when too many sites became unusable I switched to NoScript and now RequestPolicy. The tracking and security concerns are secondary to me; usability was my motivator. But by now, I'm so used to it, I never browse without protection. I literally feel dirty when I have to use IE or any other bare browser.

jld89 11y ago

Trackers are horrible. I don't want anyone to know what I am doing what sites I am visiting etc... What gives them the right to track? Besides of imposing banners to my face? They got what was coming to them. I am glad that the EFF is giving us tools to fight back. Consider donating to them!

officialchicken 11y ago
Please remember to include a link whenever you mention the EFF! https://supporters.eff.org/donate https://supporters.eff.org/donate
- randunel 11y ago
  Why is that? I think there's nothing wrong with mentioning the EFF without linking to their donations page.
  - fucking_tragedy 11y ago
    If you support their message and cause, it's a reminder that they exist on donations from people like you. If you're thankful, it's a reminder to show thanks if you can/want to.
a_imho 11y ago
Sorry for going orthogonal, but I have been wondering about donating for quite a while. I really do like the EFF, has a good mission and most their statements are very much aligned with my pov. Except for some, like their financial statements e.g. https://www.eff.org/about/annual-reports-and-financials https://www.eff.org/about/annual-reports-and-financials Concerns like: 1. Their numbers don't add up, there is no corresponding arc to the Salaries and Benefits expense for instance (5,377 > 5,184) 2. Salaries and benefits jumped 20% past years, which might mean more employees, but also could be more benefits 3. What are Board Enrichment expenses? 4. I know nonprofit has subtle nuances in meaning, but how could they have 1M Net Investment Income? 5. Most importantly their Support and Revenue figures are double of the expenses, should I really donate them? I mean they can put it away for a rainy day, but is my money actually further any cause?

karterk 11y ago

For a very long time, I did not want to use ad blockers. I have used ads in the past to monetize some of my own projects, and I really did not want to stab the creators of quality content. However, last week I finally reversed my decision and started using ad blockers. Why? Frankly, many sites are just greedy. Banners were ugly enough (and I tolerated them) but many sites these days show ads that cover the content, and going as far as to hide the [x] button for a few seconds. And, I am not even talking about privacy and security issues. Businesses have to come up with better monetization strategies. Shoving ads on my face and making me accidentally click them is a net loss for everyone.

adamt 11y ago
I agree completely and like you for a long time I didn't use ad-blockers on morale grounds. Personally I don't get overly excited about the tracking/re-targeting, but what did bother me was how ridiculously intrusive the ads on some sites that totally destroyed my user experience, wasted my batteries and cellular data and at times prevented me from (on mobile) from getting to the content I actually wanted. With mobile it was also the stupid number of accidental clicks when scrolling, or pop ups with really small 'x' to close that and a non-zoomable viewport. Wasting my time (and somebody else's money) on ads I never wanted to click does't seem like a good or sustainable economic value add. Sometimes ads can be useful. On Google search sometimes the people who will pay for ads are sometimes a better signal than those that SEO their way to the top. Similarly I have discovered things of interest in Facebook & Twitter ads where they were relevant to me. It does seem that online advertising is in need of a bit of a 'reboot'.
- thirdsun 11y ago
  Same here - I'm not that concerned about targeted ads, but if it means significant consequences for my bandwidth, security, performance or simply being able to use the site as intended, well, then I don't seem to have a realistic choice. That said, I think there's room for an adblocker that focuses on ads that are too intrusive and whitelists decent, static ads automatically. Currently I do that manually on a per site basis.

wiz21c 11y ago

I use adblocker. Now, the news sites I like say "sorry pal, adblocker means no news". I'm perfectly fine with that. It's just arms race. My freedom to remove the ads, their to put them. Everybody's free and I love it. Now I'll have to pay and that's fine : good content comes from work and work deserve money. But all of a sudden, as I'll pay, I'll become much more demanding. And so competition can work again...

CuriouslyC 11y ago
Just get a browser plugin like quick javascript switcher and disable javascript for sites that try to disallow adblocker users. It has worked for me every time.
jld89 11y ago
uBlock and no-script are good against paywalls

quanticle 11y ago

Interestingly enough, the page itself is an example of the very thing it criticizes: http://imgur.com/aQJvlG3 http://imgur.com/aQJvlG3. Almost half the screen is an ad when you load the page.

timlyo 11y ago
An animated ad, that blocks the page and plays music as well.
esun 11y ago
I have been using ad blockers for a long time I guess... I had no idea ads had gotten so big. That's gross.

mahranch 11y ago

Black and white thinking. Content creators still need to get paid. I'd be quite upset if my favorite sites had to shut down due to the rise of ad blocking and non-viable alternatives to ads (like "subscriptions", etc...)

cm2187 11y ago
But if their way to get paid is to track me across websites I have no moral problem with preventing it.
Spooky23 11y ago
Content creator business models are not my problem. If they want to get paid, they need to figure that out. By globalizing their reach, most content shops entered into a race to the bottom where they cannot win. That's why you have these tiers of auctions for inventory that slide down the food chain in terms of quality as the price falls. Traditionally, successful media has been local, local, local in scope. That remains true, although everything is being reshuffled. Media outlets that remain alive have some sort of scope limitation that makes their ad inventory more valuable and reduces their exposure/dependency to Facebook.
fucking_tragedy 11y ago
Black and white thinking. Content creators can still get paid. They just need to figure out a business model that doesn't hijack my browsing session, use the limited mobile data I'm allotted and pay for each month to serve unwanted content, drain my battery, eat my CPU, track my reading/surfing/porn habits and potentially run malicious code on my machines.
- ssharp 11y ago
  You seem to think content creators sit in some evil dungeon, plotting out ways to screw their readers with ads. That's not really it at all. There are a limited number of ad networks out there and publishers attach themselves to one or more of them. At that point, the publisher is largely clear of the process, unless they're negotiating custom deals of some sort, which happens with larger sites but is far less common than small sites. The people doing the tracking aren't the content sites -- it's the ad networks. As a publisher, I'm not privy to your personal details.

elorant 11y ago

Besides profiling I also use ad blocking because I hate the usability of most pages which are cramped with ads. It didn’t use to be like that a few years ago. From the moment advertisers decided that their ads should mainly appear above the fold, web page usability went downwards very fast. There are quite a few sites where you can’t see a single thing without scrolling down. I don’t ever recall advertising being so annoying online.

riprowan 11y ago

"You get what you pay for," is probably what my grandfather would have said about this problem.

imgabe 11y ago

It would be interesting to see if someone could endow an independent publication with enough money to keep it going, then put quality ad-free journalism behind a paywall. I'm thinking it would be something like "B Corporation". Not exactly a charity, but not necessarily trying to maximize profit either. Charge a high monthly price, maybe $50/month for immediate access to new articles, but after 1 month everything becomes freely available. Information will undoubtedly be copied and posted elsewhere anyway, the only thing you can realistically control is who gets access to it first. People who value up-to-date news that's guaranteed to be impartial would pay for early access to it, I think. Everyone else would still get to benefit from it as well, just slightly delayed.

edent 11y ago
The Scott Trust is the main financial backer for The Guardian - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited Is that the sort of thing you were thinking of?
- takno 11y ago
  The Scott Trust isn't exactly a large endowment that can provide the news using the returns from investments. It's an independent ownership model which has enough cash reserves to cushion the Guardian for a while why they get back into profit. If they don't crack the problem of how to make money from the internet they are gone just the same as everybody else.
rmc 11y ago
The Guardian newspaper in the UK (y'know one of the newspapers Edward Snowden reached out to), are exactly that. Except you can read it for free online. You can consider signing up as a Guardian Member if you want to support them.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  You should watch Jacob Appelbaum's comments[1] about The Guardian. They may not deserve your support. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJValv4YQcY#t=78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJValv4YQcY#t=78

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

Start fixing mobile first, you're killing precious battery life.

jgalt212 11y ago

If third party cookies were allowed, then sites like Business Insider would not be tempted to fire 50 (or more) resource hogging tracking pixels and scripts. The law of unintended consequences in full effect here.

cpeterso 11y ago
Besides Safari, which browsers block third-party cookies (when not using an ad blocker that would also block those 50 tracking pixels)?
- chopin 11y ago
  Firefox, there is a setting for it. It's the first thing I do on a fresh install.

inanutshellus 11y ago

I recently ran into a cooking site that wouldn't serve up any actual recipes if the javascript of their ad generator wasn't found. Pretty clever... I'm surprised more sites don't do it.

sveri 11y ago

I started blocking ads when adblock plus was not even a thing. Not sure when that was exactly, 10 years ago or more? However, I did it when they started to add moving ads. There was a site that I regularly consumed (multiple times a day) and that I wanted to support. But, I was not able to focus on the content, everytime that blinking ad just distracted me. So I had the choice, stop using that site or blocking the ads. I started using adblock back then and everytime I have to use a computer without a blocker I thank myself for the wise decision back then. That said I would rather not consume anything anymore than allowing ads again. The things that I was and am really interested in, will be saturated by buying books and the people that put up stuff for free, like I do for certain things. Also I would pay for services I like. Byte.fm did it the right way I think. It's online radio, from the beginning on they never streamed ads and still do not do so today. Not long after I started to consume them I paid them and still do so today because I support services that explicitly do not use ads.

tunap 11y ago
I am of the same mind. I make payments/donations to sites I enjoy regularly and block ads wholesale. If Forbes will not let me read their content w/ an AdBlocker, then I will just not read, nor cite, their content. Simple as that. I have weened myself off of much infotainment over the years and as sites bork/discontinue their RSS feeds I will read even less web content. My life is more enjoyable with less noise on the ine, anyway.

tremon 11y ago

How fitting. A sidebar filled with animated gifs on a page lamenting the ad-industry's failed self-regulation. And it's not even a third-party ad...

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

I feel awful for using an ad blocker sometimes, but I sometimes have no choice. On my Windows 10 tablet, a feeble device with 1GB of RAM, the web is unusable without one.

CuriouslyC 11y ago

People question how we'll support content without ads, but I have to take a step back and wonder - is content that needs to be supported really that valuable? Might the world be a better place without it? People who are passionate about the subject they are writing on are going to publish regardless of ad revenue, assuming they get hits (writing stuff nobody reads is a fast track to burnout). Right now, in many cases these people are being crowded out by well SEO'd content mills. If the advertising dollars dry up, the content mills will die off, and that ecological niche will be freed up to be filled by people with passion. I for one welcome the idea of a return to a genuine internet, where everything isn't about monetization. The amount of content may go down, but the quality will almost certainly go way up, and there will be that much less garbage to wade through.

klunger 11y ago
No. You are basically saying that people should work for free if they are passionate about it. Professional writers cannot pay their bills with passion. Same with artists, musicians etc, and every other underpaid profession. Just because they (hopefully) like what they do, does not mean it is not work or does not have value.
- kuschku 11y ago
  > Professional writers cannot pay their bills with passion Professional writers aren’t ad-financed. Look at Panama Papers. Not a single of the involved newspapers and broadcasters is ad financed: All are either tax or subscription financed. Btw, for just 19.99€ you can get full access to all articles about Panama Papers in the Süddeutsche if you don’t want to enter a 12-month subscription for the whole newspaper.
  - klunger 11y ago
    >Professional writers aren’t ad-financed. Wrong. While some outlets enjoy full state support or sufficient subscription revenue to not need advertisements, the VAST majority of publications get a significant portion of their revenue (which is the used to pay their staff writers and freelance contributors) from ads. Better known examples of such publications include: The New York Times, Wired, The Atlantic. In Norway, where I live, Aftenposten was given access to the Panama Papers for analysis and publication. Aftenposten is partially subsidized by the Norwegian government, but also dependent on ad revenue to survive.

SeanDav 11y ago

OT: > "...advertisers use to convince us to buy shit." Am I just an old fuddy duddy, or does the use of the word "shit" here jar with anyone else? I understand that many people talk this way, but feel that the written word should hold itself to a higher standard of grammar and vocabulary.

beisner 11y ago
You are just an old fuddy duddy. If I was reading this as prose, maybe I'd agree that an author could have been more creative with word choice. But in this kind of post, the message is vastly more important than the medium, and the use of the word 'shit' doesn't obscure the message.
- SeanDav 11y ago
  I kind of suspected I am :)

wnevets 11y ago

The content that accompanies the worst kind of advertising tends to be the worst kind of content. If adblocking kills that kind of content I'm all for it. For example the number of sites that scrap stackoverflow and cram 30 different ads onto the page.

forrestthewoods 11y ago

Even legit sites serve malware. It's beyond their control. Ghostery makes money by telling sites what shit they're serving. Because they don't know. It's too many layers of dependency. There I block all ads all the time. No exceptions. Not even for "good" sites. The sooner everyone blocks ads the better. If sites go out of business then so be it. They'll evolve once forced; but not a moment sooner. http://www.csoonline.com/article/3044588/security/malvertising-campaign-hits-new-york-times-bbc-others.html http://www.csoonline.com/article/3044588/security/malvertisi...

stegosaurus 11y ago

The producers of content that I view not being financially secure is a problem. I've read a lot of useful stuff over the years, and I really want the people who made that possible to thrive. I don't particularly care about whether they can buy flash cars, but I do care about them being able to live without stress and continue to do the things they love and are best at. As far as I'm concerned, the problem looks like this: 1. Society isn't providing them with a way to live, so it's down to me (and others like me) to help out. Which leads to: 2. I'm not wealthy enough to feel like I can give back to them, or there's no reasonable interface to do so Which leads to: 3. Out of desperation, they try to force my hand by employing advertising (so that indirectly there's a cashflow). I'd rather work on #1 and #2 directly than look at #3. I'm not that interested in short term solutions, and advertising is a particularly ugly one.

stegosaurus 11y ago
To put it another way: I'm not sure that the creation and dissemination of knowledge works well as a capitalistic business. I'm not sure that it leads to optimal outcomes WRT the dissemination of said material. I don't know how we deal with the edge case of trading scarce resources like food and land for unlimited resources like data, but I don't think advertising is it. When you think about it, it's really quite odd. The deal is that you can view this web page, if in the abstract you commit to buying some portion of a physical item or service from someone else later on. To me, it feels a lot like an inefficient form of tax.

jasonkostempski 11y ago

DNT was never going to work and the failure of the Do Not Call list should have made it obvious. No one ever thought people would willingly accept being tracked in the first place. I'm sure everyone who ever worked on an ad network felt a little yucky with what they were doing at some point and got over it real quick or quit, leaving an industry full of people who already rationalized that what they were doing was OK. Seeing the DNT options in browsers bugs me almost as much as seeing those cookie warnings. Government is making this stuff even more annoying, just let the people figure it out. Side note, I'd love to see ad blockers add something to block those cookie warnings. Since literally no one on either side wants them, I'm sure website authors would be willing to agree on a de facto standard css class or something that would make them real easy to hide. Maybe it should be opt-in in case someone tries to go after the ad blockers for interfering with the cookie law.

cpeterso 11y ago
Perhaps DNT can be repurposed to bypass those EU cookie warnings by sending `DNT: 0` (Do Not Not Track).

Hjugo 11y ago

Is there a public whitelist (except the one from ABP) for ad networks which have non invasive, non tracking ads?

zzleeper 11y ago

What do you guys use as ad blockers on mobile? I use chrome on an android and it seems that I would need to switch to FF in order to have adblocking? (Which I might, as there are ads on Chrome that even make the cellphone vibrate and redirect to the store, amongst other things)

Kenji 11y ago
You can use a hosts file that redirects all the domains that serve garbage to 127.0.0.1. If you have rooted your phone, at least. There are plenty of good lists available in forums. Like this, you remove ads system-wide, even in apps.
JeremyNT 11y ago
I use and recommend Firefox with uBlock Origin. Firefox still has a few rough edges on Android, and some small number of sites exhibit pathological performance characteristics in Mobile FF, but it's certainly good enough to be your primary solution. I keep Chrome around for when sites have problems with Mobile FF, but I find myself reaching for it less and less over time.
schlipity 11y ago
Take a look at Netguard on Github. It emulates the hostfile via local loopback vpn and is able to fully adblock your android device without rooting it. It's also available on the playstore, but that functionality is disabled. Their releases: https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard/releases https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard/releases To enable adblocking: https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard/blob/master/ADBLOCKING.md https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard/blob/master/ADBLOCKING.md

zodPod 11y ago

While the discussion here on HN is good about this topic, I think the actual article missed the point completely. Sure, tracking is an important issue with ads but I really don't think Do Not Track made any sense nor would have made any difference. It's the continued, forceful intrusion into our minds that these ads make. Without ad blockers: I go to a page and, the first thing I see, is an overlay with a Ford Truck on it. Then I click the x that appeared after 25 seconds on that and I continue down the page. I manage to read half of the article in spite of the "Social Bar" that is blocking some of the text and then I see a "article continued after the jump" and an ad served right below it. I scroll past that to the rest of the content. I continue to lose track of the article that I'm reading because there's a giant flashy banner to the right side of my screen replaying some video with crazy motion and is following me as I scroll. THEN, I finally get to the bottom and I'm like "I liked that article. I should read more by these people!" and, instead of their content, there's a bunch of click bait bullcrap that leads to poorly written articles about topics that I don't care about at the bottom. I then proceed to leave the page in anger. With ad blockers: I go to a page and read an article. I get it done quickly and efficiently and am able to concentrate and take in all of the information. I get to the bottom and want to read more but I don't see any more from that site because it's all served through some scammy ad network and is blocked. I leave the site but I will return when I see another link from said site, for sure! None of that would have been changed by Do Not Track and THAT is the problem with ads today. (IMO at least..)

udhan 11y ago

Please do not serve content if you detect adblocker. I will decide if its worth it for me and may unblock advt. No obligations!