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>> but I love seeing big corporations, used to bullying their way around, finding out that their old dirty tricks don't work in the new world. The problem with

>> but I love seeing big corporations, used to bullying their way around, finding out that their old dirty tricks don't work in the new world. The problem with that mindset is that people tend to think it's also OK to block the little guys who self-publish, or even places that have amazing or great content who deserve the ad impressions. People always say "Yeah, I unblock my favorite sites". Unfortunately, they're just 1 guy (and who knows if they actually do it). The other 99.999% of people do not unblock their favorite sites. They just don't give a shit. Even the rare few who may give a shit due to stronger empathy or morality will usually justify it away in their heads "Oh, I'm afraid of malware" or some other BS excuse which works to trick themselves into feeling better about blocking every ad.

sspiff 10y ago
Calling ad blocking to prevent malware infection a BS excuse is ridiculous. Ads are being used to distribute malware through reputable sites, and as an average Joe user you have no feasible way to identify which sites pose a threat. I agree that the current ad driven free content model vs no ads ever stance of the numerous ad blocking users are a problem for content creators big and small, but I feel it is up to them to develop a sustainable business model to defeat this stand-off without alienating or antagonizing their user base.
- Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
  Genuine question: is there any (or more than trace) ad-distributed malware that affects OS X, iOS or Linux? (Assuming Flash playback not enabled by default.)
- mahranch 10y ago
  > Calling ad blocking to prevent malware infection a BS excuse is ridiculous. There are other (quite simple) plugins to stop any malware from running (like noscript, etc) while at the same time, not having an adblocker even installed. The two are not mutually inclusive. Thus, it isn't ridiculous in the least. It's actually ridiculous to imply that if you have one, you must have the other. More importantly, these days, you only find malware ads (consistently) on real shady sites. When it makes it to big reputable sites, it actually makes the news because of how rare it has been. There are dozens of other ways to get malware (software downloads, etc) but you don't see people ceasing to download anything off the entire internet, they take a risk because they want the product. The risk is virtually identical -- it depends on where you go and what you do. > Ads are being used to distribute malware through reputable sites Sure, that has happened. But it's rare and again, it makes the news when it happens because of how rare it is. You make it sound like reddit.com, facebook.com or news.google.com serves up malware every other day. That just isn't the case. Not even close.
  - diffraction 10y ago
    Ok. Forget malware. How about malicious behavior? Stop Taboola and Outbrain from serving pornographic ads and I will gladly disable Adblock. Sorry, until your industry sets professional standards I will continue to block ads and not feel bad.
    - mahranch 10y ago
      > Sorry, until your industry sets professional standards your crying has zero emotional pull for me. Oh, sorry if I mislead you. I'm actually not in the industry at all. I used to be a publisher though, had my own website until I sold it. My comments were me empathizing and seeing things from the point of view of a content creator. That's for whom I argue.
  - WalterSear 10y ago
    Forbes doesn't run if noscript is enabled.
  - sspiff 10y ago
    > More importantly, these days, you only find malware ads (consistently) on real shady sites. > ... > Sure, that has happened. But it's rare and again, it makes the news when it happens because of how rare it is. I don't care how rare it is. It's common enough that this year alone, I've read about MSN, The New York Times, the BBC, the Dutch commercial broadcaster RTL, and other reputable sites distributing malware through major ad networks including Google. If ad networks can't get their act together and value my security, I have no problem helping myself and boycotting their business. I don't need to investigate how to protect myself and help their business succeed if they don't have to do a better job stopping malvertising. I am more than happy to support organizations and publishers when needed, and most of the content I consume today I either support through subscriptions, donations, or have switched to in-line advertising ("This article/edition/episode of <publication> has been made possible by <insert sponsor here>. <section about sponsor product>. <Actual content>.") But I have no love lost on advertising companies. I realize this can't work for everyone, but it's time to adapt or die. Ad blocking is here, and given the terrible (at times deservedly so) reputation and status of advertising, it isn't going away. People dislike ads, and telling them they can't have what they want without being force fed ads will only direct them elsewhere.
Silhouette 10y ago
Even the rare few who may give a shit due to stronger empathy or morality will usually justify it away in their heads "Oh, I'm afraid of malware" or some other BS excuse which works to trick themselves into feeling better about blocking every ad. Blocking ad networks because of malware is not a BS excuse. The only 0-day I ever got hit by, to my knowledge, was straight off a major ad network on a well-known and generally reputable site linked from a popular news/discussion site for geeks you may have heard of. If you've followed any links from HN today, it could have been you. If someone is then unwilling to share their content with me because I block their ads, I understand and don't pretend they owe me anything. But I don't turn off my security tools, for anyone, ever, and I consider content blockers to be security tools.
a_imho 10y ago
Why do you think being afraid of malware is BS? Why should I need to justify I like a cleaner browsing experience? Why should I feel bad about content blocking? Imho spreading the content blocking is stealing fallacy did more harm than good for anyone interested in ads. I see opting in as the way the market values content. People realized they can do without what they are fed and have the upper hand and somehow they are at fault?
- mahranch 10y ago
  > Why do you think being afraid of malware is BS? I never said that. I said it's a BS excuse. I think it's perfectly fine to be afraid of malware. But you can run a couple of plugins (like noscript, and uninstall java) and solve that problem without even installing an adblocker. Which means you can have ads without the malware if you actually wanted to make the effort to do so. So yes, it's an excuse since there are plenty of solutions which exist, some only requiring the download of a single plugin.
  - detaro 10y ago
    Are there any sites or site owners that complain about ad blockers, but not about noscript? Aren't they effectively the same for the purposes of this discussion? (I run uBlock and have it block all third-party JS with a few white-listed exceptions, but I suspect most people would describe that as an Adblocker. And it isn't necessarily wrong, since it blocks ads. Just not specifically.)
vinceguidry 10y ago
> people tend to think it's also OK to block the little guys who self-publish, or even places that have amazing or great content who deserve the ad impressions. Small players can be more nimble and work out much much better monetization strategies than display ads. Also ad blockers are only really capable of blocking the big networks. Plenty of small sites run their own platforms, evading the blocks. It's not a very well-known solution, but it's there.
- effie 10y ago
  Good point. Ad blockers seem to work by blocking abusive domains and scripts. This affects directly only the big ad companies that abuse your network bandwidth; any website owner can put on static ads on their site that are less likely to be blocked. That said, is there an adblocker that analyzes image files on site with some image recognition algorithms?
tux1968 10y ago
Life can be much _better_ without ads. The constant drumbeat of consumerism can have a very negative affect on people of a certain type. For those of us that are so affected, ad blocking is a _medical_ remediation. Nobody owes me anything, so I won't complain if a website turns me away, but I'll never apologize for for taking care of myself.
- mahranch 10y ago
  > Life can be much _better_ without ads. It's more complex than that, I'm afraid. People don't create content or innovate for free. I'm sure there are a rare few who do, but most people hope for the promise of a financial incentive. Having a financial incentive to innovate or create content is a good thing and life without ads would have a butterfly like effect on that innovation. I highly doubt the internet would resemble anything like it does today if ads didn't exist (people take for granted it would look exactly the same as it does now). Nope, without ads, I doubt the internet would have evolved much beyond 1997. And I remember the internet back in 1997. There was some neat things going on, not many ads, but practically zero content compared to today. Without ads to subsidize content, most of your favorite TV shows wouldn't exist, most of your favorite websites wouldn't exist (think google.com, youtube.com, etc)... After all, google.com doesn't make much if anything off their search engine, 97% of their revenue comes from their advertising department.
  - effie 10y ago
    > google.com doesn't make much if anything off their search engine, 97% of their revenue comes from their advertising department. The advertising on the search engine pages is 3% of their revenue?
    - mahranch 10y ago
      My percentange was incorrect, I was thinking of a different company. It's 89%. 89% of Google's revenue comes from their ads they display on their search results, and in their adchoices network. Source: https://www.quora.com/How-does-Google-earn-money https://www.quora.com/How-does-Google-earn-money
imgabe 10y ago
Malware, shmalware. This is my computer. I decide what gets downloaded to it and what doesn't. If a publisher has a way to make it impossible to download their content without ads, then fine. I'll most likely just pass. But as long as the two are separable, I have no moral responsibility to download anything or run any code that I don't want on my machine. If they want to charge for their content, then go ahead and charge and produce something valuable enough that people are willing to pay for it. 99.999% of articles online are just time-wasting bullshit that has nearly no practical influence on anything important in one's life.
bogomipz 10y ago
Really? How about general usability? I don't think anybody minds an ad or two on a page. But when you stretch out a small article to 4 pages and put an advertisement between every paragraph then that's a usability issue. There was a post on here yesterday about a Mercury New article and the article has more than 20 video ads on a single page. Oh and what planet are you from that worrying about malware is considered BS?
kinkdr 10y ago
I understand your point, and can feel your pain, but ultimately the greed of the advertisers lead to adblockers. Nobody would even bother developing a good adblocker if the advertisers were not using flash heavy, auto-play video and sound ads, malware, annoying modals, etc.. For the little guy you mention, being a little guy myself, I have no sympathy if he still wants to serve to the users whatever gets pushed by the ad network. He has to find other ways. How about self-hosting ads? If he doesn't trust the advertiser in his server, why would I trust him on my web-browser? Or non-intrusive ads? Adblockers usually allow non-intrusive ads, unless explicitly disabled.

sspiff 10y ago

Calling ad blocking to prevent malware infection a BS excuse is ridiculous. Ads are being used to distribute malware through reputable sites, and as an average Joe user you have no feasible way to identify which sites pose a threat. I agree that the current ad driven free content model vs no ads ever stance of the numerous ad blocking users are a problem for content creators big and small, but I feel it is up to them to develop a sustainable business model to defeat this stand-off without alienating or antagonizing their user base.

Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
Genuine question: is there any (or more than trace) ad-distributed malware that affects OS X, iOS or Linux? (Assuming Flash playback not enabled by default.)
mahranch 10y ago
> Calling ad blocking to prevent malware infection a BS excuse is ridiculous. There are other (quite simple) plugins to stop any malware from running (like noscript, etc) while at the same time, not having an adblocker even installed. The two are not mutually inclusive. Thus, it isn't ridiculous in the least. It's actually ridiculous to imply that if you have one, you must have the other. More importantly, these days, you only find malware ads (consistently) on real shady sites. When it makes it to big reputable sites, it actually makes the news because of how rare it has been. There are dozens of other ways to get malware (software downloads, etc) but you don't see people ceasing to download anything off the entire internet, they take a risk because they want the product. The risk is virtually identical -- it depends on where you go and what you do. > Ads are being used to distribute malware through reputable sites Sure, that has happened. But it's rare and again, it makes the news when it happens because of how rare it is. You make it sound like reddit.com, facebook.com or news.google.com serves up malware every other day. That just isn't the case. Not even close.
- diffraction 10y ago
  Ok. Forget malware. How about malicious behavior? Stop Taboola and Outbrain from serving pornographic ads and I will gladly disable Adblock. Sorry, until your industry sets professional standards I will continue to block ads and not feel bad.
  - mahranch 10y ago
    > Sorry, until your industry sets professional standards your crying has zero emotional pull for me. Oh, sorry if I mislead you. I'm actually not in the industry at all. I used to be a publisher though, had my own website until I sold it. My comments were me empathizing and seeing things from the point of view of a content creator. That's for whom I argue.
- WalterSear 10y ago
  Forbes doesn't run if noscript is enabled.
- sspiff 10y ago
  > More importantly, these days, you only find malware ads (consistently) on real shady sites. > ... > Sure, that has happened. But it's rare and again, it makes the news when it happens because of how rare it is. I don't care how rare it is. It's common enough that this year alone, I've read about MSN, The New York Times, the BBC, the Dutch commercial broadcaster RTL, and other reputable sites distributing malware through major ad networks including Google. If ad networks can't get their act together and value my security, I have no problem helping myself and boycotting their business. I don't need to investigate how to protect myself and help their business succeed if they don't have to do a better job stopping malvertising. I am more than happy to support organizations and publishers when needed, and most of the content I consume today I either support through subscriptions, donations, or have switched to in-line advertising ("This article/edition/episode of <publication> has been made possible by <insert sponsor here>. <section about sponsor product>. <Actual content>.") But I have no love lost on advertising companies. I realize this can't work for everyone, but it's time to adapt or die. Ad blocking is here, and given the terrible (at times deservedly so) reputation and status of advertising, it isn't going away. People dislike ads, and telling them they can't have what they want without being force fed ads will only direct them elsewhere.

Silhouette 10y ago

Even the rare few who may give a shit due to stronger empathy or morality will usually justify it away in their heads "Oh, I'm afraid of malware" or some other BS excuse which works to trick themselves into feeling better about blocking every ad. Blocking ad networks because of malware is not a BS excuse. The only 0-day I ever got hit by, to my knowledge, was straight off a major ad network on a well-known and generally reputable site linked from a popular news/discussion site for geeks you may have heard of. If you've followed any links from HN today, it could have been you. If someone is then unwilling to share their content with me because I block their ads, I understand and don't pretend they owe me anything. But I don't turn off my security tools, for anyone, ever, and I consider content blockers to be security tools.

a_imho 10y ago

Why do you think being afraid of malware is BS? Why should I need to justify I like a cleaner browsing experience? Why should I feel bad about content blocking? Imho spreading the content blocking is stealing fallacy did more harm than good for anyone interested in ads. I see opting in as the way the market values content. People realized they can do without what they are fed and have the upper hand and somehow they are at fault?

mahranch 10y ago
> Why do you think being afraid of malware is BS? I never said that. I said it's a BS excuse. I think it's perfectly fine to be afraid of malware. But you can run a couple of plugins (like noscript, and uninstall java) and solve that problem without even installing an adblocker. Which means you can have ads without the malware if you actually wanted to make the effort to do so. So yes, it's an excuse since there are plenty of solutions which exist, some only requiring the download of a single plugin.
- detaro 10y ago
  Are there any sites or site owners that complain about ad blockers, but not about noscript? Aren't they effectively the same for the purposes of this discussion? (I run uBlock and have it block all third-party JS with a few white-listed exceptions, but I suspect most people would describe that as an Adblocker. And it isn't necessarily wrong, since it blocks ads. Just not specifically.)

vinceguidry 10y ago

> people tend to think it's also OK to block the little guys who self-publish, or even places that have amazing or great content who deserve the ad impressions. Small players can be more nimble and work out much much better monetization strategies than display ads. Also ad blockers are only really capable of blocking the big networks. Plenty of small sites run their own platforms, evading the blocks. It's not a very well-known solution, but it's there.

effie 10y ago
Good point. Ad blockers seem to work by blocking abusive domains and scripts. This affects directly only the big ad companies that abuse your network bandwidth; any website owner can put on static ads on their site that are less likely to be blocked. That said, is there an adblocker that analyzes image files on site with some image recognition algorithms?

tux1968 10y ago

Life can be much _better_ without ads. The constant drumbeat of consumerism can have a very negative affect on people of a certain type. For those of us that are so affected, ad blocking is a _medical_ remediation. Nobody owes me anything, so I won't complain if a website turns me away, but I'll never apologize for for taking care of myself.

mahranch 10y ago
> Life can be much _better_ without ads. It's more complex than that, I'm afraid. People don't create content or innovate for free. I'm sure there are a rare few who do, but most people hope for the promise of a financial incentive. Having a financial incentive to innovate or create content is a good thing and life without ads would have a butterfly like effect on that innovation. I highly doubt the internet would resemble anything like it does today if ads didn't exist (people take for granted it would look exactly the same as it does now). Nope, without ads, I doubt the internet would have evolved much beyond 1997. And I remember the internet back in 1997. There was some neat things going on, not many ads, but practically zero content compared to today. Without ads to subsidize content, most of your favorite TV shows wouldn't exist, most of your favorite websites wouldn't exist (think google.com, youtube.com, etc)... After all, google.com doesn't make much if anything off their search engine, 97% of their revenue comes from their advertising department.
- effie 10y ago
  > google.com doesn't make much if anything off their search engine, 97% of their revenue comes from their advertising department. The advertising on the search engine pages is 3% of their revenue?
  - mahranch 10y ago
    My percentange was incorrect, I was thinking of a different company. It's 89%. 89% of Google's revenue comes from their ads they display on their search results, and in their adchoices network. Source: https://www.quora.com/How-does-Google-earn-money https://www.quora.com/How-does-Google-earn-money

imgabe 10y ago

Malware, shmalware. This is my computer. I decide what gets downloaded to it and what doesn't. If a publisher has a way to make it impossible to download their content without ads, then fine. I'll most likely just pass. But as long as the two are separable, I have no moral responsibility to download anything or run any code that I don't want on my machine. If they want to charge for their content, then go ahead and charge and produce something valuable enough that people are willing to pay for it. 99.999% of articles online are just time-wasting bullshit that has nearly no practical influence on anything important in one's life.

bogomipz 10y ago

Really? How about general usability? I don't think anybody minds an ad or two on a page. But when you stretch out a small article to 4 pages and put an advertisement between every paragraph then that's a usability issue. There was a post on here yesterday about a Mercury New article and the article has more than 20 video ads on a single page. Oh and what planet are you from that worrying about malware is considered BS?

kinkdr 10y ago

I understand your point, and can feel your pain, but ultimately the greed of the advertisers lead to adblockers. Nobody would even bother developing a good adblocker if the advertisers were not using flash heavy, auto-play video and sound ads, malware, annoying modals, etc.. For the little guy you mention, being a little guy myself, I have no sympathy if he still wants to serve to the users whatever gets pushed by the ad network. He has to find other ways. How about self-hosting ads? If he doesn't trust the advertiser in his server, why would I trust him on my web-browser? Or non-intrusive ads? Adblockers usually allow non-intrusive ads, unless explicitly disabled.