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Am I missing something? If Der Spiegal doesn't want people to view their content while using an ad-blocker can't they detect and block those users (assuming tho

by tmnvix 10y ago

Am I missing something? If Der Spiegal doesn't want people to view their content while using an ad-blocker can't they detect and block those users (assuming those users also allow JS)?

supergreg 10y ago
It's a cat and mouse thing. If they add some js to check for ad blockers then ad blockers block that too. They could check over time if a user has seen as many ads as page views and block them then but users would just need to delete their cookies.
- tim333 10y ago
  Until recently I've not had problems using ad blockers but in the last month http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ has become good at telling if I'm using one and not returning content if so. I wonder if this is the start of a more general fight back. I guess as blockers stop ads downloading they just need to have something like an ad or an actual one and check if it's downloaded.
  - summarite 10y ago
    And you can be sure they pay a hefty sum for up-to-date anti-blocking software.
  - Snowe 10y ago
    Sometimes it's a good thing. Often it gives me a few moments to pause and realise I really didn't need to read that article anyway.
  - halfdgvfyjjuc 10y ago
    Daily telegraph has recently switched to a stronger freemium model with a lot of premium content only visible to subscribers.
matheusmoreira 10y ago
Sure, they can detect ad blockers and present a nag screen. The ad blocker can respond by defeating their detection feature. For example, it can delete the detection function before it even executes. They could circumvent that; ad blockers could nullify their fix; they could fix it again... This could go on forever. In my experience as an user, no website has ever beaten an ad blocker. It's like trying to secure a computer against an adversary with full physical access. The content has left the server and is on the user's machine. Nothing can stop a sufficiently determined user from consuming it, with or without ads. I answered a question on User Experience.SE about this: http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/96907/3437 http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/96907/3437 I tried to express just how big the power disparity between the developer and the user is. Looking back now, I think I came off as too extreme. I think the other answers are excellent; they address the UX aspects in a way I wasn't able to. Definitely learned from them.
- diafygi 10y ago
  I think back in the early days Hulu served their video and ads from the same url format, so you couldnt distinguish. That's not how they do it now, but back then it successfully defeated adblockers. For example, if you were watching a TV show, it would give you a playlist of video segments and ads, all having random urls (hulu.com/<uuid>). You couldn't tell which was an ad and which was the real video, so adblockers couldn't write rules to block them.
  - userbinator 10y ago
    VCRs with automatic ad-skipping (during playback or recording) appeared in the 90s, and had many orders of magnitude less processing power than even a typical smartphone today. They had to deal with ads embedded directly in the video stream, and worked reasonably well. Perhaps a similar approach will work very well with digital video today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_skipping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_skipping
- dTal 10y ago
  >It's like trying to secure a computer against an adversary with full physical access. It is literally that, in fact.

by tmnvix 10y ago

Am I missing something? If Der Spiegal doesn't want people to view their content while using an ad-blocker can't they detect and block those users (assuming those users also allow JS)?

supergreg 10y ago

It's a cat and mouse thing. If they add some js to check for ad blockers then ad blockers block that too. They could check over time if a user has seen as many ads as page views and block them then but users would just need to delete their cookies.

tim333 10y ago
Until recently I've not had problems using ad blockers but in the last month http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ has become good at telling if I'm using one and not returning content if so. I wonder if this is the start of a more general fight back. I guess as blockers stop ads downloading they just need to have something like an ad or an actual one and check if it's downloaded.
- summarite 10y ago
  And you can be sure they pay a hefty sum for up-to-date anti-blocking software.
- Snowe 10y ago
  Sometimes it's a good thing. Often it gives me a few moments to pause and realise I really didn't need to read that article anyway.
- halfdgvfyjjuc 10y ago
  Daily telegraph has recently switched to a stronger freemium model with a lot of premium content only visible to subscribers.

matheusmoreira 10y ago

Sure, they can detect ad blockers and present a nag screen. The ad blocker can respond by defeating their detection feature. For example, it can delete the detection function before it even executes. They could circumvent that; ad blockers could nullify their fix; they could fix it again... This could go on forever. In my experience as an user, no website has ever beaten an ad blocker. It's like trying to secure a computer against an adversary with full physical access. The content has left the server and is on the user's machine. Nothing can stop a sufficiently determined user from consuming it, with or without ads. I answered a question on User Experience.SE about this: http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/96907/3437 http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/96907/3437 I tried to express just how big the power disparity between the developer and the user is. Looking back now, I think I came off as too extreme. I think the other answers are excellent; they address the UX aspects in a way I wasn't able to. Definitely learned from them.

diafygi 10y ago
I think back in the early days Hulu served their video and ads from the same url format, so you couldnt distinguish. That's not how they do it now, but back then it successfully defeated adblockers. For example, if you were watching a TV show, it would give you a playlist of video segments and ads, all having random urls (hulu.com/<uuid>). You couldn't tell which was an ad and which was the real video, so adblockers couldn't write rules to block them.
- userbinator 10y ago
  VCRs with automatic ad-skipping (during playback or recording) appeared in the 90s, and had many orders of magnitude less processing power than even a typical smartphone today. They had to deal with ads embedded directly in the video stream, and worked reasonably well. Perhaps a similar approach will work very well with digital video today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_skipping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_skipping
dTal 10y ago
>It's like trying to secure a computer against an adversary with full physical access. It is literally that, in fact.