12 ms·
What's going on with Wired? This page has an autoplay video ad below the article text and an anti-AdBlock full-screen subscription nagger that pops up a few sec
by siddboots 10y ago
What's going on with Wired? This page has an autoplay video ad below the article text and an anti-AdBlock full-screen subscription nagger that pops up a few seconds after page load.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoPart of their war on adblockers. In the past the adblocker nag has popped after you scroll down, well an autoplay video will get you scrolling to find out where it is and blam they pop the adblocker. Of course none of that happens if you hit 'reader view' in Firefox, nice easy to read article. Its one of the reasons I've stopped reading Fortune and Wired web articles.
- guard-of-terra 10y agoWrong answer. I don't have an adblocker, yet I have too got an auto-play video with very loud sound.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoCollateral damage?
- Larrikin 10y agoDon't all of the major videos have mute buttons on the tabs. Firefox has had it for a while now
- bnolsen 10y agomute doesn't seem to stop the bandwidth hogging.
- arprocter 10y agoAlthough once the 'blocker' nag pops up reader view gives a cannot load message
- OJFord 10y agoNo anti-adblock message with uBlock. That video (assuming we're seeing the same one) seems to be a short Wired production; unrelated content rather than advert.
- mthoms 10y agoIt was a (very loud) Kayak ad for me. What a blatant user-hostile move. Pathetic. Oh well, Wired just got itself removed from my adblock whitelist (after only a couple weeks on it).
- guelo 10y agoI see the anti-adblock with my uBlock. Must be your filters. Edit: yep, I just activated the "Anti-Adblock Killer | Reek" filter and it's gone.
- WA 10y ago
- codedokode 10y agoViewed with JS disabled, no video, no pop ups.
- alex_young 10y agoJust block the JS. I looked around for a JS blocker, and found ScriptSafe, which makes the web really usable. I turn on JS for the servers I trust, and sites like Wired and NYT just feed me readable text without any ads.
- zenexer 10y agoSome of the more obnoxious sites won't let you read the full article (or any of the article, in some cases) without JS. Of course, you can just use some trickery to hide the overlay, but it gets pretty annoying.
- seba_dos1 10y agoFor such sites you keep the button "temporarily allow JS execution" somewhere handy in your browser UI, but for more obnoxious sites you'll probably quit after getting bored from long loading time after getting used to how fast everything else is with scripts disabled :P
- dazc 10y agoWhat's the advantage of using an add-on like ScriptSafe against just disabling JS in settings?
- seba_dos1 10y agoThe point is not to block JS completely, but to disallow it when not necessary (which it isn't for most of the time). There are plenty of legitimate uses of JS and keeping "allow JS on this domain now" button in accessible place is very handy. Plus of course you can lift the restrictions selectively for each domain. From my experience it usually takes one or two domains to allow in order to get the needed functionality, and the rest (usually around 10) can be kept blocked.
- sotojuan 10y agoYou can whitelist easier and quicker and in some blockers you can block specific ad or tracker domains only.
- tux1968 10y agoIf you happen to be using Firefox, setting the config variable: media.autoplay.enabled To false, disables auto play media everywhere.
- monochromatic 10y agoThanks, good tip. That should probably be the default, but oh well. edit: I just realized it also affects youtube in an annoying way (have to skip ahead a bit or the video won't play at all). Would be nice if I could whitelist that.
- tux1968 10y agoYeah, agree. You shouldn't have to skip ahead though, just double pump the play button. A greasemonkey script should be able to do it too.
- rorykoehler 10y agoIn chrome I blocked plugins by default under Settings>Show Advanced Settings>(Privacy section)Content Settings>Plugins Section
- kpao 10y agoSame reaction here... they made me feel guilty about using adblock, I was nice enough to disable it, then that unrelated video kept on playing, and they popped up another message saying thanks... Who's in charge of this? ugh...
- eru 10y agoMy adblocker blocks the nagger. But the video still plays.. I actually wonder how the coerce my Chrome to do that.
- unexistance 10y agonever noticed that, but I'm running uBlock + NoScript.
- aluhut 10y agoDidn't see the anti-AdBlock nagger with ublock O.
- spacehome 10y agoI'm running NoScript, and I saw no anti-AdBlock or video. It's becoming increasingly clear to me that NoScript is the only reasonable way to browse the web today. Random websites can't be entrusted to run javascript in a way that's not hostile to my interests.
- amelius 10y agoYou do realize that if everybody followed your example, they will at one point block NoScript too? Also, half of HN would be out of a job :)
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoSetting aside the why and wherefore; how would they block NoScript?
- echelon 10y agoImagine a world where all content is loaded over XHRs and the DOM serves only to load Javascript. This is becoming an increasingly prevalent pattern. I really miss the document-oriented web of the late 90's / early 00's.
- frigo_1337 10y agoHonest question: Why? I don't understand why people inherently dislike Javascript (aside from, y'know, creepy ad networks).
- ddalex 10y agoBecause we want the information to be free. If the web server is serving a document, you can do all sorts of stuff with it - you can index it, you can transform it, you can save it for later. If the web server is serving a DRM-ed program, that loads the human-viewable data over non-standard interfaces, all that breaks. Only humans in front of the web browser will be able to see the data. Or sufficiently dedicated people to run a headless browser to run the Javascript and re-build the content and work on the rebuilt DOM. But also we now need NoScript, JS blockers, 3rd party blockers, and the publishers invest in anti-adblocks. It's a neverending arms escalation between those who want to restrictively publish information, and those that want the information without restrictions. So all this JS-based workaround to try to DRM things only brings more work for everybody involved, with minimal results. NOTE: when I say DRM, I actually mean Digital Policy Enforcement - the publishers want to maintain their policies around access to their information (e.g. you cannot see this article without seeing this ad) using digital means. But DRM has a nicer twist to it - the uninformed may mistake the R for My Rights.
- codezero 10y agoHow's this for strange: I got a modal popup Thank You for not using an adblocker... so, distracted all the same.
- tudorw 10y ago2008
- nightski 10y agoHaven't read a single Wired article since. Can't say I have really missed much.
- tyfon 10y agoI clicked back instantly. It's idiotic to have a video spew out high volume sound automatically. Almost woke our one year old. So no more clicking on wired links for me!
- klibertp 10y agoThat's why I always have the sound muted in my laptop. I, of course, use an adblocker, but there are some sites I had to whitelist which cannot be trusted. Disabling the sound makes it much better: even if something decides to auto-play, so what? Most of the time I don't even notice when this happens: such videos are frequently at the bottom, and by the time I get there the video already stopped playing.
- imtringued 10y agoIt's also at the bottom of the page. Even if we assume I'm interested in their video I would have to manually restart it anyway just so I can see it from the beginning.
- 13of40 10y agoI down voted this because it's off-topic and is taking up the top half of the comment section.
- lucasnemeth 10y agoI have privacy badger from eff on, I don't even care about ads, as long as they don't track me. But that still shows up the subscription nagger. They should update: We get it: Tracking you through multiple pages without your permission is not why you’re here for. But Tracking you through multiple pages without your permission help us keep the lights on. Really. Find a better way to "keep the lights on". I wouldn't block ads if they would respect my privacy. Turned off JS to read the article.
- Jaruzel 10y agoI rarely visit Wired, so I have no issue circumventing their anti-adblock popup, as far as I am concerned those auto playing video stunts immediately put them in my little book of offensive websites. A little bit of investigation in the source shows that if you block 'www.wired.com/assets/load?*' with AdBlock (or your blocker of choice), then the page works fine, but without the annoying popup.
- _pmf_ 10y ago> What's going on with Wired? This page has an autoplay video ad below the article text and an anti-AdBlock full-screen subscription nagger that pops up a few seconds after page load. "Revenue is falling; quick, what should we do?" "Shut up and keep digging."
- megalodon 10y agoThanks for the warning, will not visit Wired again. Auto-play video ads, anti-adblock screens and clickbaity, capitalized titles are all diseases of the "modern" web and should be dealt with accordingly.
- davb 10y agoIt isn't just their website either. I noticed over the last few years that they've gone all-out on advertising in the magazine too. It's not just so bad in the US where the magazine is around $1.50 an issue on subscription, but in the UK it's around $3.50. I unsubscribed after a few years. It was so stuffed full of adverts, I just couldn't be bothered with it any more. Some months it would take 10+ pages of adverts to get to the first piece of content. And the worst was those glued-in cardboard ad pages in the middle - you can never really rip them out properly, and the magazine always inconveniently flops open at that page whenever you get close to it. They're just trying to monetise the pants off the brand, and it's a real shame. I loved Wired. Not it's just another Outbrain-laden, cardboard-stuffed piece of junk.
- ahalam 10y agoI figured that when publishers do that (autoplay) to you, you can respond back by blocking scripts for them.
- Overtonwindow 10y agoConsider using the browser Brave which strips all ads by default. When a site like Wired screws with me, I just use Brave.
- headShrinker 10y agoSometimes when I hit a nagger, for example Forbes, I can load the site from google search and the nagger is averted https://www.google.com/search?q=site://www.wired.com/2016/07/phones-fm-chips-radio-smartphone/ https://www.google.com/search?q=site://www.wired.com/2016/07...