8 ms·

Ad blockers are part of the problem

68 points by NeutronBoy 10y ago

bluefox 10y ago
Guy is mad that ad blockers block his ads.
- ekidd 10y ago
  The guy is mad because he has a one-line, textual "sponsorship" banner that's very tasteful and understated, and because EasyList is blocking it with a rule targeted specifically at his site. As an EasyList user, I personally feel that EasyList is being a bit obnoxious here.
  - supergreg 10y ago
    Couldn't he submit a pull request with the rule out explaining his reasons?
    - johneth 10y ago
      He's tried. Nothing's happened.
    - __s 10y ago
      "Clearly, this is a mistake so I went ahead and filled out an acceptable ads application. That was now a couple of weeks ago and as of today, their false positive remains."
  - joesmo 10y ago
    I didn't know EasyList had advanced AI to differentiate between 'one-line, textual "sponsorship" banner' ads and other ads, nor that its stated goal was to block some ads but not others. I'm quite sure if the latter ever becomes true, it'll stop being used by reputable ad blockers. Until then, the list is working correctly in respect to this ad like it works correctly in respect to other ads.
- CountSessine 10y ago
  Did you read the article? He has a small sponsorship message, not an advertisement. And someone still submitted it to Easylist.
  - mrob 10y ago
    A sponsorship message is an advert. Easylist is working as intended. The "acceptable ads" program is an entirely separate whitelist and it makes no difference if the advert meets those criteria.
  - omginternets 10y ago
    It's still an ad. Calling it a sponsorship doesn't change that. Granted, it's an unobtrusive ad (at best), but it has every reason to be filtered out by a gosh-darn ad-blocker.
    - __s 10y ago
      Yet ABP seeks to not block 'acceptable ads' so your categorical line of thought here isn't one they claim to follow
      - omginternets 10y ago
        1. ABP does this as an option, and does this for financial gain [0]. 2. This is why I don't use ABP anymore. 3. This is about EasyList, which ABP uses, but the two should not be confused. EasyList seeks to block adverts. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/13/adblock-plus-launching-platform-to-sell-acceptable-ads https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/13/adblock-plu...
  - arkitaip 10y ago
    That's kinda silly even if people may technically view it as an ad.
arikrak 10y ago
One issue I've noticed on occasion is that Ad blockers can silently break websites, and the users don't know what's going on. This is a reason it would be better to reduce ad blocking and encourage websites to follow acceptable ad guidelines instead (though I work for a company that earns most of its revenue from advertising).
- cronjobber 10y ago
  I adblock. I scriptblock. It breaks a lot of sites. The size of the non-broken rest of the internet still is "infinite" for all practical purposes.
- ourmandave 10y ago
  I had to green light Walmart.com because the ad blocker broke their shopping cart. The blocked list was 6 files including an iframe. It's a sad day when you can't site-to-store a case of Cheez-wiz without being tracked.
- mhw 10y ago
  > One issue I've noticed on occasion is that Ad blockers can silently break websites Unfortunately the same can be said about the ads and their javascript, and with much higher frequency. I got sick of pages that randomly scroll back to the top after you've started to scroll down, or when you go back a page to follow a different link part way down the page. Using an ad blocker on iOS fixed the problem. Recently I did wonder whether the passage of time might have caused the ad networks to fix their code. I lasted about 10 minutes before I could confirm that nothing had changed and the blocker was reinstated.
  - arikrak 10y ago
    While some ads can cause UI nuisances, I was referring to more problematic issues, such as a not being able to checkout from websites and not knowing the cause.
bryanlarsen 10y ago
From the comments: > Dustin Moris Gorski > Yeah I understand your frustration. I think there are two separate issues. Your issue is that you follow all rules of EasyList and still get blocked, which is wrong. The second issue is the general issue that most consumers don't care how carefully ads have been selected. It still is an ad and we don't like any ads :)
omginternets 10y ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you want me to consume ads, give me ads I want to consume. Ultimately, ad-blockers aren't about blocking ads. They're about filtering out visual noise. Stop putting crap on my screen and FFS stop being-self righteous when I block said crap. In what world is blaming your users the right move? The customer is always right. troyhunt.com is part of the problem.
- CountSessine 10y ago
  troyhunt.com is part of the problem For displaying a small sponsorship message?
  - omginternets 10y ago
    Yes. It's not a scandalous example or anything, but it is representative of the fact that webmasters can't wrap their heads around "people will block things that degrade their experience, and if you can't make money in such an environment then it's your problem". He's part of the problem, although granted, the problem is minor on a cosmic scale.
- ekidd 10y ago
  > give me ads I want to consume. Going by your argument, a one-line black-on-beige text message saying "Sponsored by: $COMPANY_NAMES" is "crap". But even scientific papers often have lines saying "Sponsored by NSF grant #1234." PBS children's TV has a voice that says, "Sesame Street was sponsored by $COMPANY." And I have at least one or two GitHub repos containing a note in the README that says, "This work was sponsored by $CLIENT_NAME". To me, saying who's paying for work is as much a matter of giving proper credit and fully disclosing where the money is coming from. Personally, as an EasyList user, I'm a bit surprised that EasyList has a site-specific rule to block this particular "Sponsored by" message.
  - omginternets 10y ago
    >Going by your argument, a one-line black-on-beige text message saying "Sponsored by: $COMPANY_NAMES" is "crap". Yes. At best it's tolerable crap. >To me, saying who's paying for work is as much a matter of giving proper credit and fully disclosing where the money is coming from. There's a difference between disclosure and advertisement. The latter has the notion that the information should literally be advertised, that is, thrust upon the viewer. I don't care that a paper cites collaborators or donors, I just don't want it to be done in such a way that pollutes my experience of the content. That's a crucial distinction. >Personally, as an EasyList user, I'm a bit surprised that EasyList has a site-specific rule to block this particular "Sponsored by" message. As an EasyList user, I'm considering making a donation precisely because they do this. Again: ad-blockers are about improving the signal-to-noise ratio on a site and preserving my attentional resources. Ad-blockers aren't about blocking ads, per se.
rwmj 10y ago
In other news, websites aren't magazines. They are rendered on my computer using my CPU time in the way I choose them to be rendered.
- johneth 10y ago
  Come on. This type of ad is the most efficient possible - text only. Bandwidth isn't free for the host, either. The money has to come from somewhere. > the sponsor message is loaded by a request that returns a 242 byte response so we're talking 0.03% of the overall page size.
  - mhurron 10y ago
    > The money has to come from somewhere. It can't be that important, I don't see it in the troyhunt.com rss feed.
- fixermark 10y ago
  You're right. The secondary effect is that streams that need sponsorship dollars to exist will begin modifying the content of their stream itself. This seems worse to me, but it's clearly the direction the market is pushing ad-supported content: into the "bad old days" of advertisers getting editorial privilege.
nimbix 10y ago
I think it's only a matter of time before Google starts fighting back and asks ad blockers to allow AMP ads or face being kicked from the Chrome extensions store. AMP ads are relatively lightweight, built from a short list of approved components, and signed by a validation service, so all the usual arguments about why people are blocking ads go out the window. And Google certainly is in a position where they can start demanding a change like this.
- Retric 10y ago
  That could easily backfire and push people to other browsers.
- cronjobber 10y ago
  One of the usual arguments about why people adblock is tracking. These people don't use Chrome anyway.
  - tombrossman 10y ago
    Tracking is the primary reason I use an ad blocker. The ads themselves aren't that obtrusive to me since I won't install Adobe Flash and I use NoScript and Privacy Badger with Firefox. Even using someone else's machine I can tune ads out pretty quickly and focus on the page content. Troy uses Google Analytics on his site and has no privacy policy which means his site does not comply with the Google Analytics' Terms of Service.[0] When I queried this on social media, he dismissed it as 'legal arse covering'[1] and indicates to me that while he's undoubtedly a bright and talented guy, he still doesn't 'get it' when it comes to privacy. Not at all. Not everyone is wearing a tinfoil hat and worried that the big bad NSA is coming to drone them. Many of us are far more more concerned about corporate surveillance and data brokers tracking our online activity. [0]https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html [1]https://twitter.com/troyhunt/status/651723191144976384 https://twitter.com/troyhunt/status/651723191144976384 (Note I have a cronjob deleting most Tweets 30+ days old so my replies in that thread are gone. Old tweets are worthless and I see no need to preserve them...)
- ue_ 10y ago
matt4077 10y ago
I've been singing that song for a while... Overzealous adblocking may cost us dearly when it succeeds to cut off all revenue streams for quality content except subscriptions. I know HN takes a pretty critical view of "mainstream media", but I believe a world in which NYT/Wired/WSJ and similar have been successfully run out of business will be a very different one. They are among the last to have the resources to devote teams to investigate issues. There's nobody capable of replacing them. I with there were an Adblocker that takes this responsibility serious, blocking maybe video and ads over content, but not static images and text ads. For the commentator saying that "most consumers don't care how carefully ads have been selected. It still is an ad and we don't like any ads :)" I can only answer that problem started when you called yourself a "consumer". We need more citizen, less consumers.
- TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
  > I've been singing that song for a while... Overzealous adblocking may cost us dearly when it succeeds to cut off all revenue streams for quality content except subscriptions. I find it hard to believe that a personal blog by a MS MVP, who does a lot of traveling and presenting, drives so much traffic that he can't afford a mid-tier Wordpress instance out of his lunch money, so using his example as one where "the little guy" needs advertising to stay alive is dubious. I've been saying for a long time now that the kind of clickbait-y, listicle-y, content-free "content" that is supported purely by advertising needs to go away anyhow. The entire "industry" of hiring "writers" to research trending words, and then write 100-word articles to post to aggregator sites so that they move up the search rankings -- purely to drive ad revenue -- needs to die a quick, agonizing death.
  - calferreira 10y ago
    >I find it hard to believe that a personal blog by a MS MVP, who does a lot of traveling and presenting, drives so much traffic that he can't afford a mid-tier Wordpress instance out of his lunch money, so using his example as one where "the little guy" needs advertising to stay alive is dubious. Are you judging him on his money capacity so you can justify blocking ads on his page ? I might be mistaken but it looks like it. People seem to find themselves with moral superiority to block content on webpages for reasons they seem fit. The thing is, if you're using an ad blocker on all the time, how can you argue that your blocking something for a reason, if you haven't seen any ads yet ? If someone writes click bait, or you don't like the content or whatever, just close your web browser and in the future don't visit that website. If everyone did that, we forced people to write better content because it would be quality that would drive visits. Since most people just visit the websites, they can read the articles or content but block the ads. It seems that what is wrong is not the content but the ads, so advertisers and ad platforms make changes so they can circumvent these issues and ad blockers do the same. It's a war and it will get us nowhere.
NoGravitas 10y ago
I think it's perfectly legitimate for ad blockers to block even tasteful sponsorship notices. That said, his sponsorship notice is really good, in just about every possible way it could be. Just a text link with the name and motto of the business, overlaid on the hero image in muted colors. It reminds me of NPR sponsorship messages. Given a reasonable way of recognizing this kind of sponsorship message, I'd unblock them generally.
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  Can't agree or we're not going to progress back to an acceptable median. Locally hosted, tracking free, messages of sponsorship or static images of some relevant tool or service should be reserved for an Easylist "hard line" optional file that I opt into. The default lists should be removing, with extreme prejudice, items that carry cross site tracking and attention grabbing overlays, sound and animations. There'll always be some who go into options and tick everything. I don't much like adblock's approach to taking money for letting acceptable ads through either. We might be able to achieve some level of sanity if sites like stackoverflow, troyhunt or the ad network that was trying to do it right got some benefit for trying to be ethical about it.
  - NoGravitas 10y ago
    I agree that it would make a lot of sense to pull ads that meet this set of criteria into a separate blocklist, and that ad-blockers should not enable that list by default.
paol 10y ago
Classic example of collateral damage. No one would have objected to his sponsorship message by itself, but in a world where advertisers and blockers are involved in no-holds-barred arms race this kind of thing is inevitable.
kriro 10y ago
The problem is that it's too much hassle for people with ad blockers to white list the good guys...and there's very little incentive to do so (you feel better by supporting someone for their work which isn't really actionable). Additionally it's sensible to run an ad blocker by default because of all the crap that's out there so the "good guys" suffer from the bad practices of all the "bad guys".
princeb 10y ago
wonder if one way is to get your CMS to insert a big bolded line "this blog post was made possible by So-And-So Company" into the beginning of each post content? just add a db hook or stored procedure or something. If you're going to go full minimalist message anyway... just make it part of the content. adblock can't block part of the content without blocking all the content, can they?
forgotpwtomain 10y ago
> Deliberately modifying sites like mine which are making a conscious effort to get us away from the very things about ads that led to ad blockers in the first place makes them part of the problem This is entirely disingenuous. Add-blockers aren't modifying sites like yours, they are allowing users to control what content their machines access and display. While it's silly for your single-line sponsored banner to be blocked, your complaint should be about easy-list, furthermore users are free to modify their lists to block the content that they want to block. If you will, uMatrix without configuration breaks plenty of reasonable sites and it takes some work to get everything working. And I'm definitely not going to stop using it while bloggers like you feel the need to serve me third-party Javascript assets which send my IP / usage information to a tracker. Edit: Would one of the at least three people that down-voted care to offer a comment?
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  I'm normally a very pro-blocker person but this story is shedding bad light on what is an important movement among Internet users in terms of protecting our investments and our safety. > This is entirely disingenuous. Add-blockers aren't modifying sites like yours, they are allowing users to control what content their machines access and display. When this blocker trend started it was because the ads in use were obstructive to the user experience, damaging to our machines and later on, using up our data plans for things we didn't intend to download. Trey's solution here is to provide a sponsor message that is tailored visually to the content it surrounds, is not intrusive to the UX, and is extremely lightweight (just a few bytes of text). If the blocking community insists this is fair game to block, then the publishers have no reason to even attempt working with us. There are a lot of scummy advertisers out there and very good reason to be paranoid, but we cannot use that as justification to throw someone else under the bus who is clearly trying to meet us in the middle.
  - forgotpwtomain 10y ago
    > There are a lot of scummy advertisers out there and very good reason to be paranoid, but we cannot use that as justification to throw someone else under the bus who is clearly trying to meet us in the middle. I'm not throwing Troy under the bus, as a matter of fact uBlock has 'toggle cosmetic filtering for the site' and I've turned it off to allow this sponsor message to be shown. But I will note that Troy is still serving tracking code from his site and I have no intention to stop using an Add-blocker for his livelihood or anyone else's. Could the curated lists be improved? Yes, I conceded that position in my above post as well. But the whole-scale attack on 'Add-Blockers' by someone serving tracking code is, as I have said totally disingenuous. It's not about 'the level of intrusiveness' it's about 'my right to control what code/content is executed/displayed on my machine'.
firegrind 10y ago
Troy tell us that "it doesn't directly impact me", so let's close this issue as not a problem.
seqizz 10y ago
There is no such thing as 'ad blocking'. The web is a pull medium, not a push medium. I merely decline to request ads. - Anonymous
yladiz 10y ago
I would like to know the statistics of people using Adblock Plus versus the other adblockers like Ublock and Ghostery (not on troyhunt.com but on a more general level). In any case, the argument Hunt makes here is valid; the ad that is being blocked on his site is pretty unobtrusive, is simple, and I would guess does not track the user like so many other ads/ad companies do. However, the title of the article, "Ad blockers are part of the problem," doesn't reflect reality. Yes, in this case, whoever is updating the block list is specifically targeting an okay ad, but in general ads are nasty, track users, and are generally terrible. The reality is that the author really can't be mad at ad blockers without really, really being mad at the ad companies that cause people to use ad blockers in the first place. Sure, in this case, it sucks that the ad is being targeted and is due to a bad actor. And yes, Hunt has every right to be mad at this bad actor and Adblock Plus for, through inaction, being okay with it. But the issue is not with ad blockers, it's with most ad companies being horrible and consumers rejecting the horrible ad companies. I think if the ads were less obtrusive and didn't track you (I have heard on multiple occasions across various cities that people are either joking about or freaked out about looking up some product and now seeing all of their ads target some variation of that product) the amount of casual people using ad blockers would go down.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  > The reality is that the author really can't be mad at ad blockers without really, really being mad at the ad companies that cause people to use ad blockers in the first place. That's my policy. You can't spit and shit into a well and then complain that me drinking bottled water is bad for the well-owners' source of revenue and environmentally unfriendly.
kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
I don't block ads. I block zero day vectors through untrusted Javascript. If the ad networks would get their act together and stop sending executable payloads I would consider whitelisting them.
- Nadya 10y ago
  Over the years, the NY Times has delivered malware multiple times. In 2009 it turned your computer into a slave in the Bahama botnet and just recently it served ransomware, along with some other high-profile, high-traffic websites. Third party (Javascript-based) ads should be blocked for security concerns if nothing else. As for the sponsorship banner that Troy is talking about - it's still an ad. A rather minimal, tasteful ad - but an ad at the end of the day. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising [1] http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/big-name-sites-hit-by-rash-of-malicious-ads-spreading-crypto-ransomware/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/big-name-sites-hit-b... E: So jsnell's post does not seem insane, after finishing my full read of Troy's post I figured out why the parent post had been downvoted: almost nothing to do with the article. I then removed my line questioning why from my post.
  - jsnell 10y ago
    The comment was probably downvoted since it had nothing to do with the original post, and might as well have been posted based on just reading the title. The post does not suggest that people should not use ad blockers. It's lamenting that even a custom ad that's as technically benign as possible (text only, no tracking, no JS, not part of an ad network, unobtrusive) is getting blocked. And not just blocked as a side effect, but in a targeted manner. If someone really is only interested in blocking malware rather than in blocking ads, they should be furious that his ad blocker is over-reaching like this and blocking something totally harmless. While if they actually don't want to see ads, at least be honest about it.
sp332 10y ago
While I'm sympathetic to Troy, his solution does strike me as a bit backwards. I'd much rather pay for the site as a visitor and get no ads than as a sponsor who pollutes everyone else's experience on the site.
lmm 10y ago
I held off installing an adblocker for a long time. But now that I've gone to the trouble of installing one (because the web was simply unusable otherwise), I use it mercilessly. I don't have time to vet hundreds of sites because maybe one or two have acceptable ads. I just turn them off, all of them.
elementalest 10y ago
I would white list a few sites I regularly visit that don't have; excessive/obtrusive/annoying ads, ad services that track me, or a potential avenue for malware from ads. Problem is, for me, there are almost no sites like this. Honestly, the ball is in their court. Its the ad industries problem to fix, not ours.
tmptmp 10y ago
I'd like to suggest to people like Troy to put some sponsor links/images (with plain non-tracking links) inline in the content. Explain this decision right at the beginning of the articles. As a reader, I will support such move (unless the content creator becomes greedy and starts putting many ads, of course I am not talking about Troy here) and ad blockers mostly cannot do anything to it. It'd be a win-win for both the content creators and the readers. Ad blockers are here to stay and that's good in general.
supergreg 10y ago
More than ad blockers they have become annoyance blockers for me. I'm always adding sidebars and other stuff to either my adblocker, to remove them; or to stylish, which allows you to add CSS to the site, when I just want the annoyance to be less annoying (smaller font, less flashy colors, move aside so the main content can get the main spot in the page).
lorenzfx 10y ago
While it may be tastefully done, it's still advertisement and therefore deserves a place on EasyList. I'm willing to pay for interesting content, but really don't want to see any adverts (1. they steal attention, 2. you pay for the advert when/if you buy a product). I'd love to some more more innovation in (mirco)payment options, all I see instead is "innovation" in ads.
joesmo 10y ago
No, they're not. The author is running an ad and is complaining about it being blocked. If he really wanted to run this ad, he should make a random CSS class name for it that changes with every page render and try to fight the ad blockers like Forbes does. At least then I wouldn't have to read this whiny complaint about programs actually working like they're supposed to.

68 points by NeutronBoy 10y ago

bluefox 10y ago

Guy is mad that ad blockers block his ads.

ekidd 10y ago
The guy is mad because he has a one-line, textual "sponsorship" banner that's very tasteful and understated, and because EasyList is blocking it with a rule targeted specifically at his site. As an EasyList user, I personally feel that EasyList is being a bit obnoxious here.
- supergreg 10y ago
  Couldn't he submit a pull request with the rule out explaining his reasons?
  - johneth 10y ago
    He's tried. Nothing's happened.
  - __s 10y ago
    "Clearly, this is a mistake so I went ahead and filled out an acceptable ads application. That was now a couple of weeks ago and as of today, their false positive remains."
- joesmo 10y ago
  I didn't know EasyList had advanced AI to differentiate between 'one-line, textual "sponsorship" banner' ads and other ads, nor that its stated goal was to block some ads but not others. I'm quite sure if the latter ever becomes true, it'll stop being used by reputable ad blockers. Until then, the list is working correctly in respect to this ad like it works correctly in respect to other ads.
CountSessine 10y ago
Did you read the article? He has a small sponsorship message, not an advertisement. And someone still submitted it to Easylist.
- mrob 10y ago
  A sponsorship message is an advert. Easylist is working as intended. The "acceptable ads" program is an entirely separate whitelist and it makes no difference if the advert meets those criteria.
- omginternets 10y ago
  It's still an ad. Calling it a sponsorship doesn't change that. Granted, it's an unobtrusive ad (at best), but it has every reason to be filtered out by a gosh-darn ad-blocker.
  - __s 10y ago
    Yet ABP seeks to not block 'acceptable ads' so your categorical line of thought here isn't one they claim to follow
    - omginternets 10y ago
      1. ABP does this as an option, and does this for financial gain [0]. 2. This is why I don't use ABP anymore. 3. This is about EasyList, which ABP uses, but the two should not be confused. EasyList seeks to block adverts. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/13/adblock-plus-launching-platform-to-sell-acceptable-ads https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/13/adblock-plu...
- arkitaip 10y ago
  That's kinda silly even if people may technically view it as an ad.

arikrak 10y ago

One issue I've noticed on occasion is that Ad blockers can silently break websites, and the users don't know what's going on. This is a reason it would be better to reduce ad blocking and encourage websites to follow acceptable ad guidelines instead (though I work for a company that earns most of its revenue from advertising).

cronjobber 10y ago
I adblock. I scriptblock. It breaks a lot of sites. The size of the non-broken rest of the internet still is "infinite" for all practical purposes.
ourmandave 10y ago
I had to green light Walmart.com because the ad blocker broke their shopping cart. The blocked list was 6 files including an iframe. It's a sad day when you can't site-to-store a case of Cheez-wiz without being tracked.
mhw 10y ago
> One issue I've noticed on occasion is that Ad blockers can silently break websites Unfortunately the same can be said about the ads and their javascript, and with much higher frequency. I got sick of pages that randomly scroll back to the top after you've started to scroll down, or when you go back a page to follow a different link part way down the page. Using an ad blocker on iOS fixed the problem. Recently I did wonder whether the passage of time might have caused the ad networks to fix their code. I lasted about 10 minutes before I could confirm that nothing had changed and the blocker was reinstated.
- arikrak 10y ago
  While some ads can cause UI nuisances, I was referring to more problematic issues, such as a not being able to checkout from websites and not knowing the cause.

bryanlarsen 10y ago

From the comments: > Dustin Moris Gorski > Yeah I understand your frustration. I think there are two separate issues. Your issue is that you follow all rules of EasyList and still get blocked, which is wrong. The second issue is the general issue that most consumers don't care how carefully ads have been selected. It still is an ad and we don't like any ads :)

omginternets 10y ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you want me to consume ads, give me ads I want to consume. Ultimately, ad-blockers aren't about blocking ads. They're about filtering out visual noise. Stop putting crap on my screen and FFS stop being-self righteous when I block said crap. In what world is blaming your users the right move? The customer is always right. troyhunt.com is part of the problem.

CountSessine 10y ago
troyhunt.com is part of the problem For displaying a small sponsorship message?
- omginternets 10y ago
  Yes. It's not a scandalous example or anything, but it is representative of the fact that webmasters can't wrap their heads around "people will block things that degrade their experience, and if you can't make money in such an environment then it's your problem". He's part of the problem, although granted, the problem is minor on a cosmic scale.
ekidd 10y ago
> give me ads I want to consume. Going by your argument, a one-line black-on-beige text message saying "Sponsored by: $COMPANY_NAMES" is "crap". But even scientific papers often have lines saying "Sponsored by NSF grant #1234." PBS children's TV has a voice that says, "Sesame Street was sponsored by $COMPANY." And I have at least one or two GitHub repos containing a note in the README that says, "This work was sponsored by $CLIENT_NAME". To me, saying who's paying for work is as much a matter of giving proper credit and fully disclosing where the money is coming from. Personally, as an EasyList user, I'm a bit surprised that EasyList has a site-specific rule to block this particular "Sponsored by" message.
- omginternets 10y ago
  >Going by your argument, a one-line black-on-beige text message saying "Sponsored by: $COMPANY_NAMES" is "crap". Yes. At best it's tolerable crap. >To me, saying who's paying for work is as much a matter of giving proper credit and fully disclosing where the money is coming from. There's a difference between disclosure and advertisement. The latter has the notion that the information should literally be advertised, that is, thrust upon the viewer. I don't care that a paper cites collaborators or donors, I just don't want it to be done in such a way that pollutes my experience of the content. That's a crucial distinction. >Personally, as an EasyList user, I'm a bit surprised that EasyList has a site-specific rule to block this particular "Sponsored by" message. As an EasyList user, I'm considering making a donation precisely because they do this. Again: ad-blockers are about improving the signal-to-noise ratio on a site and preserving my attentional resources. Ad-blockers aren't about blocking ads, per se.

rwmj 10y ago

In other news, websites aren't magazines. They are rendered on my computer using my CPU time in the way I choose them to be rendered.

johneth 10y ago
Come on. This type of ad is the most efficient possible - text only. Bandwidth isn't free for the host, either. The money has to come from somewhere. > the sponsor message is loaded by a request that returns a 242 byte response so we're talking 0.03% of the overall page size.
- mhurron 10y ago
  > The money has to come from somewhere. It can't be that important, I don't see it in the troyhunt.com rss feed.
fixermark 10y ago
You're right. The secondary effect is that streams that need sponsorship dollars to exist will begin modifying the content of their stream itself. This seems worse to me, but it's clearly the direction the market is pushing ad-supported content: into the "bad old days" of advertisers getting editorial privilege.

nimbix 10y ago

I think it's only a matter of time before Google starts fighting back and asks ad blockers to allow AMP ads or face being kicked from the Chrome extensions store. AMP ads are relatively lightweight, built from a short list of approved components, and signed by a validation service, so all the usual arguments about why people are blocking ads go out the window. And Google certainly is in a position where they can start demanding a change like this.

Retric 10y ago
That could easily backfire and push people to other browsers.
cronjobber 10y ago
One of the usual arguments about why people adblock is tracking. These people don't use Chrome anyway.
- tombrossman 10y ago
  Tracking is the primary reason I use an ad blocker. The ads themselves aren't that obtrusive to me since I won't install Adobe Flash and I use NoScript and Privacy Badger with Firefox. Even using someone else's machine I can tune ads out pretty quickly and focus on the page content. Troy uses Google Analytics on his site and has no privacy policy which means his site does not comply with the Google Analytics' Terms of Service.[0] When I queried this on social media, he dismissed it as 'legal arse covering'[1] and indicates to me that while he's undoubtedly a bright and talented guy, he still doesn't 'get it' when it comes to privacy. Not at all. Not everyone is wearing a tinfoil hat and worried that the big bad NSA is coming to drone them. Many of us are far more more concerned about corporate surveillance and data brokers tracking our online activity. [0]https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html [1]https://twitter.com/troyhunt/status/651723191144976384 https://twitter.com/troyhunt/status/651723191144976384 (Note I have a cronjob deleting most Tweets 30+ days old so my replies in that thread are gone. Old tweets are worthless and I see no need to preserve them...)
ue_ 10y ago

matt4077 10y ago

I've been singing that song for a while... Overzealous adblocking may cost us dearly when it succeeds to cut off all revenue streams for quality content except subscriptions. I know HN takes a pretty critical view of "mainstream media", but I believe a world in which NYT/Wired/WSJ and similar have been successfully run out of business will be a very different one. They are among the last to have the resources to devote teams to investigate issues. There's nobody capable of replacing them. I with there were an Adblocker that takes this responsibility serious, blocking maybe video and ads over content, but not static images and text ads. For the commentator saying that "most consumers don't care how carefully ads have been selected. It still is an ad and we don't like any ads :)" I can only answer that problem started when you called yourself a "consumer". We need more citizen, less consumers.

TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
> I've been singing that song for a while... Overzealous adblocking may cost us dearly when it succeeds to cut off all revenue streams for quality content except subscriptions. I find it hard to believe that a personal blog by a MS MVP, who does a lot of traveling and presenting, drives so much traffic that he can't afford a mid-tier Wordpress instance out of his lunch money, so using his example as one where "the little guy" needs advertising to stay alive is dubious. I've been saying for a long time now that the kind of clickbait-y, listicle-y, content-free "content" that is supported purely by advertising needs to go away anyhow. The entire "industry" of hiring "writers" to research trending words, and then write 100-word articles to post to aggregator sites so that they move up the search rankings -- purely to drive ad revenue -- needs to die a quick, agonizing death.
- calferreira 10y ago
  >I find it hard to believe that a personal blog by a MS MVP, who does a lot of traveling and presenting, drives so much traffic that he can't afford a mid-tier Wordpress instance out of his lunch money, so using his example as one where "the little guy" needs advertising to stay alive is dubious. Are you judging him on his money capacity so you can justify blocking ads on his page ? I might be mistaken but it looks like it. People seem to find themselves with moral superiority to block content on webpages for reasons they seem fit. The thing is, if you're using an ad blocker on all the time, how can you argue that your blocking something for a reason, if you haven't seen any ads yet ? If someone writes click bait, or you don't like the content or whatever, just close your web browser and in the future don't visit that website. If everyone did that, we forced people to write better content because it would be quality that would drive visits. Since most people just visit the websites, they can read the articles or content but block the ads. It seems that what is wrong is not the content but the ads, so advertisers and ad platforms make changes so they can circumvent these issues and ad blockers do the same. It's a war and it will get us nowhere.

NoGravitas 10y ago

I think it's perfectly legitimate for ad blockers to block even tasteful sponsorship notices. That said, his sponsorship notice is really good, in just about every possible way it could be. Just a text link with the name and motto of the business, overlaid on the hero image in muted colors. It reminds me of NPR sponsorship messages. Given a reasonable way of recognizing this kind of sponsorship message, I'd unblock them generally.

anexprogrammer 10y ago
Can't agree or we're not going to progress back to an acceptable median. Locally hosted, tracking free, messages of sponsorship or static images of some relevant tool or service should be reserved for an Easylist "hard line" optional file that I opt into. The default lists should be removing, with extreme prejudice, items that carry cross site tracking and attention grabbing overlays, sound and animations. There'll always be some who go into options and tick everything. I don't much like adblock's approach to taking money for letting acceptable ads through either. We might be able to achieve some level of sanity if sites like stackoverflow, troyhunt or the ad network that was trying to do it right got some benefit for trying to be ethical about it.
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  I agree that it would make a lot of sense to pull ads that meet this set of criteria into a separate blocklist, and that ad-blockers should not enable that list by default.

paol 10y ago

Classic example of collateral damage. No one would have objected to his sponsorship message by itself, but in a world where advertisers and blockers are involved in no-holds-barred arms race this kind of thing is inevitable.

kriro 10y ago

The problem is that it's too much hassle for people with ad blockers to white list the good guys...and there's very little incentive to do so (you feel better by supporting someone for their work which isn't really actionable). Additionally it's sensible to run an ad blocker by default because of all the crap that's out there so the "good guys" suffer from the bad practices of all the "bad guys".

princeb 10y ago

wonder if one way is to get your CMS to insert a big bolded line "this blog post was made possible by So-And-So Company" into the beginning of each post content? just add a db hook or stored procedure or something. If you're going to go full minimalist message anyway... just make it part of the content. adblock can't block part of the content without blocking all the content, can they?

forgotpwtomain 10y ago

> Deliberately modifying sites like mine which are making a conscious effort to get us away from the very things about ads that led to ad blockers in the first place makes them part of the problem This is entirely disingenuous. Add-blockers aren't modifying sites like yours, they are allowing users to control what content their machines access and display. While it's silly for your single-line sponsored banner to be blocked, your complaint should be about easy-list, furthermore users are free to modify their lists to block the content that they want to block. If you will, uMatrix without configuration breaks plenty of reasonable sites and it takes some work to get everything working. And I'm definitely not going to stop using it while bloggers like you feel the need to serve me third-party Javascript assets which send my IP / usage information to a tracker. Edit: Would one of the at least three people that down-voted care to offer a comment?

FussyZeus 10y ago
I'm normally a very pro-blocker person but this story is shedding bad light on what is an important movement among Internet users in terms of protecting our investments and our safety. > This is entirely disingenuous. Add-blockers aren't modifying sites like yours, they are allowing users to control what content their machines access and display. When this blocker trend started it was because the ads in use were obstructive to the user experience, damaging to our machines and later on, using up our data plans for things we didn't intend to download. Trey's solution here is to provide a sponsor message that is tailored visually to the content it surrounds, is not intrusive to the UX, and is extremely lightweight (just a few bytes of text). If the blocking community insists this is fair game to block, then the publishers have no reason to even attempt working with us. There are a lot of scummy advertisers out there and very good reason to be paranoid, but we cannot use that as justification to throw someone else under the bus who is clearly trying to meet us in the middle.
- forgotpwtomain 10y ago
  > There are a lot of scummy advertisers out there and very good reason to be paranoid, but we cannot use that as justification to throw someone else under the bus who is clearly trying to meet us in the middle. I'm not throwing Troy under the bus, as a matter of fact uBlock has 'toggle cosmetic filtering for the site' and I've turned it off to allow this sponsor message to be shown. But I will note that Troy is still serving tracking code from his site and I have no intention to stop using an Add-blocker for his livelihood or anyone else's. Could the curated lists be improved? Yes, I conceded that position in my above post as well. But the whole-scale attack on 'Add-Blockers' by someone serving tracking code is, as I have said totally disingenuous. It's not about 'the level of intrusiveness' it's about 'my right to control what code/content is executed/displayed on my machine'.

firegrind 10y ago

Troy tell us that "it doesn't directly impact me", so let's close this issue as not a problem.

seqizz 10y ago

There is no such thing as 'ad blocking'. The web is a pull medium, not a push medium. I merely decline to request ads. - Anonymous

yladiz 10y ago

I would like to know the statistics of people using Adblock Plus versus the other adblockers like Ublock and Ghostery (not on troyhunt.com but on a more general level). In any case, the argument Hunt makes here is valid; the ad that is being blocked on his site is pretty unobtrusive, is simple, and I would guess does not track the user like so many other ads/ad companies do. However, the title of the article, "Ad blockers are part of the problem," doesn't reflect reality. Yes, in this case, whoever is updating the block list is specifically targeting an okay ad, but in general ads are nasty, track users, and are generally terrible. The reality is that the author really can't be mad at ad blockers without really, really being mad at the ad companies that cause people to use ad blockers in the first place. Sure, in this case, it sucks that the ad is being targeted and is due to a bad actor. And yes, Hunt has every right to be mad at this bad actor and Adblock Plus for, through inaction, being okay with it. But the issue is not with ad blockers, it's with most ad companies being horrible and consumers rejecting the horrible ad companies. I think if the ads were less obtrusive and didn't track you (I have heard on multiple occasions across various cities that people are either joking about or freaked out about looking up some product and now seeing all of their ads target some variation of that product) the amount of casual people using ad blockers would go down.

pavel_lishin 10y ago
> The reality is that the author really can't be mad at ad blockers without really, really being mad at the ad companies that cause people to use ad blockers in the first place. That's my policy. You can't spit and shit into a well and then complain that me drinking bottled water is bad for the well-owners' source of revenue and environmentally unfriendly.

kevin_thibedeau 10y ago

I don't block ads. I block zero day vectors through untrusted Javascript. If the ad networks would get their act together and stop sending executable payloads I would consider whitelisting them.

Nadya 10y ago
Over the years, the NY Times has delivered malware multiple times. In 2009 it turned your computer into a slave in the Bahama botnet and just recently it served ransomware, along with some other high-profile, high-traffic websites. Third party (Javascript-based) ads should be blocked for security concerns if nothing else. As for the sponsorship banner that Troy is talking about - it's still an ad. A rather minimal, tasteful ad - but an ad at the end of the day. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising [1] http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/big-name-sites-hit-by-rash-of-malicious-ads-spreading-crypto-ransomware/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/big-name-sites-hit-b... E: So jsnell's post does not seem insane, after finishing my full read of Troy's post I figured out why the parent post had been downvoted: almost nothing to do with the article. I then removed my line questioning why from my post.
- jsnell 10y ago
  The comment was probably downvoted since it had nothing to do with the original post, and might as well have been posted based on just reading the title. The post does not suggest that people should not use ad blockers. It's lamenting that even a custom ad that's as technically benign as possible (text only, no tracking, no JS, not part of an ad network, unobtrusive) is getting blocked. And not just blocked as a side effect, but in a targeted manner. If someone really is only interested in blocking malware rather than in blocking ads, they should be furious that his ad blocker is over-reaching like this and blocking something totally harmless. While if they actually don't want to see ads, at least be honest about it.

sp332 10y ago

While I'm sympathetic to Troy, his solution does strike me as a bit backwards. I'd much rather pay for the site as a visitor and get no ads than as a sponsor who pollutes everyone else's experience on the site.

lmm 10y ago

I held off installing an adblocker for a long time. But now that I've gone to the trouble of installing one (because the web was simply unusable otherwise), I use it mercilessly. I don't have time to vet hundreds of sites because maybe one or two have acceptable ads. I just turn them off, all of them.

elementalest 10y ago

I would white list a few sites I regularly visit that don't have; excessive/obtrusive/annoying ads, ad services that track me, or a potential avenue for malware from ads. Problem is, for me, there are almost no sites like this. Honestly, the ball is in their court. Its the ad industries problem to fix, not ours.

tmptmp 10y ago

I'd like to suggest to people like Troy to put some sponsor links/images (with plain non-tracking links) inline in the content. Explain this decision right at the beginning of the articles. As a reader, I will support such move (unless the content creator becomes greedy and starts putting many ads, of course I am not talking about Troy here) and ad blockers mostly cannot do anything to it. It'd be a win-win for both the content creators and the readers. Ad blockers are here to stay and that's good in general.

supergreg 10y ago

More than ad blockers they have become annoyance blockers for me. I'm always adding sidebars and other stuff to either my adblocker, to remove them; or to stylish, which allows you to add CSS to the site, when I just want the annoyance to be less annoying (smaller font, less flashy colors, move aside so the main content can get the main spot in the page).

lorenzfx 10y ago

While it may be tastefully done, it's still advertisement and therefore deserves a place on EasyList. I'm willing to pay for interesting content, but really don't want to see any adverts (1. they steal attention, 2. you pay for the advert when/if you buy a product). I'd love to some more more innovation in (mirco)payment options, all I see instead is "innovation" in ads.

joesmo 10y ago

No, they're not. The author is running an ad and is complaining about it being blocked. If he really wanted to run this ad, he should make a random CSS class name for it that changes with every page render and try to fight the ad blockers like Forbes does. At least then I wouldn't have to read this whiny complaint about programs actually working like they're supposed to.