4 ms·

>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

>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.

TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
> 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. No, that's to point out that good content doesn't NECESSARILY need an ad-revenue stream to exist. I'm old, and I still aggregate a lot of blogs via RSS. To me, that's still the best content on the internet. Reading those posts in an aggregator removes almost all of the advertising anyway, and certainly all the "bad" adverts. That reminds me... it was a good article. I should add him to my roll, and see what else he has to say...
- matt4077 10y ago
  You can't tell me with a straight face that bloggers could ever offer the depth and width of news that a serious newspaper gets you. Blogs are fine, especially for technical content. Political news needs people present for actual events, it needs investigation: calling around, requesting documents, FOIA requests, sometimes lawsuits with all the costs they involve. Brand names are also useful, as a quick proxy to judge reliability.
  - TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
    It's been a really bad day for my on HN, with people making strawmen out of my comments, and accusing me of saying things I did not say. That's not even remotely close to what I was saying, and I'm officially done with HN for awhile.
mcbits 10y ago
> 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 ? A few weeks ago, I was reading a long-form Guardian article (pretty sure it was linked from here) and it struck me that the page layout was super clean and readable. I wondered what it would look in its full ad-laden glory, so I disabled uBlock and refreshed the page. I was immediately redirected to a "Firefox needs an urgent security update!!" page that would have installed malware if I had run the script it was pushing. I hope they got paid handsomely for that first impression, because it was also the last. If a site wants to advertise to me, they can embed a static image, hosted on their own server, and I may or may not click the link. "Ad networks" can go sit on a sharp stick. Maybe it can be leveraged to pry their head out.
- calferreira 10y ago
  For me, that's the right way to do things.
- Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
  Unfortunately ad-blockers also block static images hosted on your own server. I run the community website for our small town. We have a (free) 'For sale' page where people can sell on/give away their unwanted goods, and upload pictures of them. It's enormously popular. Every month or two I get an email from someone saying they can't see the pictures that accompany the ads. "I can't see the ads." "Are you using an ad-blocker?" "Yes." "What do you think an ad-blocker does..."
  - mcbits 10y ago
    Yes, it wasn't clear, but I don't think ad blockers should be so agressive against harmless static ads. Being able to create custom rules should be enough. That was just an example of why I don't thinking browsing "shields down" by default is a valid option. Even the most reputable sites (and regardless of one's politics, the Guardian is reputable) are a minefield.

TheRealDunkirk 10y ago

> 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. No, that's to point out that good content doesn't NECESSARILY need an ad-revenue stream to exist. I'm old, and I still aggregate a lot of blogs via RSS. To me, that's still the best content on the internet. Reading those posts in an aggregator removes almost all of the advertising anyway, and certainly all the "bad" adverts. That reminds me... it was a good article. I should add him to my roll, and see what else he has to say...

matt4077 10y ago
You can't tell me with a straight face that bloggers could ever offer the depth and width of news that a serious newspaper gets you. Blogs are fine, especially for technical content. Political news needs people present for actual events, it needs investigation: calling around, requesting documents, FOIA requests, sometimes lawsuits with all the costs they involve. Brand names are also useful, as a quick proxy to judge reliability.
- TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
  It's been a really bad day for my on HN, with people making strawmen out of my comments, and accusing me of saying things I did not say. That's not even remotely close to what I was saying, and I'm officially done with HN for awhile.

mcbits 10y ago

> 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 ? A few weeks ago, I was reading a long-form Guardian article (pretty sure it was linked from here) and it struck me that the page layout was super clean and readable. I wondered what it would look in its full ad-laden glory, so I disabled uBlock and refreshed the page. I was immediately redirected to a "Firefox needs an urgent security update!!" page that would have installed malware if I had run the script it was pushing. I hope they got paid handsomely for that first impression, because it was also the last. If a site wants to advertise to me, they can embed a static image, hosted on their own server, and I may or may not click the link. "Ad networks" can go sit on a sharp stick. Maybe it can be leveraged to pry their head out.

calferreira 10y ago
For me, that's the right way to do things.
Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
Unfortunately ad-blockers also block static images hosted on your own server. I run the community website for our small town. We have a (free) 'For sale' page where people can sell on/give away their unwanted goods, and upload pictures of them. It's enormously popular. Every month or two I get an email from someone saying they can't see the pictures that accompany the ads. "I can't see the ads." "Are you using an ad-blocker?" "Yes." "What do you think an ad-blocker does..."
- mcbits 10y ago
  Yes, it wasn't clear, but I don't think ad blockers should be so agressive against harmless static ads. Being able to create custom rules should be enough. That was just an example of why I don't thinking browsing "shields down" by default is a valid option. Even the most reputable sites (and regardless of one's politics, the Guardian is reputable) are a minefield.