5 ms·

I recently (past year) bit the bullet and began ad blocking myself. My primary concern is the recent proliferation of malicious content through the common ad ne

I recently (past year) bit the bullet and began ad blocking myself. My primary concern is the recent proliferation of malicious content through the common ad networks. Supporting websites is great, but not at the expense of your own security.

noir_lord 10y ago
I've been using adblockers since they where a thing (and DNS blocks longer than that) since back then you could rely on the adnetworks feeding your malware at some point. I'm trying to think if I've ever clicked an advert on the internet intentionally and it's probably under half a dozen accidentally.
- andai 10y ago
  I wonder sometimes, with the amount these advertisers know about me, how come they don't know I don't click on ads? It would increase their profits to not target me.
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    They do know you don't click on ads. They just show you ads for people who are going for exposure rather than clicks, because you count as an impression even if you can't be used to generate clicks.
    - chiefalchemist 10y ago
      True. But if you've never clicked doesn't that mean something? Even if the goal is impressions wouldn't you prefer someone who has shown to be influence-able over someone who isn't? (Hint: I would de-target non clickers.)
      - tripzilch 10y ago
        Yes, if online advertising was strictly a deal between the media (online newspapers etc) and the advertisers. But there's a useless middle-man industry that is the cause of all these problems: the ad-networks. They don't quite care that the impressions are no good to the advertisers, and they care only very little about the brand-damage to the media, caused by malware and bandwidth-waste. Or (dangerous) inconvenience to the consumers. We wouldn't have any of these issues if the media were just to strike deals with advertisers themselves (like newspapers used to) (or maybe hiring out to an advertising agency, but still keep full editorial control, no newspaper would regularly allow an ad agency to inject their content last-minute before press, without any editorial oversight). They would basically just self-host the ad banner, with a click-through link, self-hosted analytics for the advertisers, and everything would be fine. Ad blockers don't block self-hosted banners. No viruses, no malware, not as much privacy risk, no bandwidth wastage. The ad-networks are really bad for all parties involved.
      - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
        What makes you think people who don't click aren't influenced? Repeated spaced exposure seems to have an impact on people, even if they don't think it does.
wernercd 10y ago
Obligatory: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160111/05574633295/forbes-site-after-begging-you-turn-off-adblocker-serves-up-steaming-pile-malware-ads.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160111/05574633295/forbe...
matt4077 10y ago
Maybe we need smarter ad blockers. Publications right now have little incentive to improve their ads with regards to security, readers' resources or quality – because if the LA Times motivates you to install an ad blocker, the NYT is getting hit as well. The tragedy of the commoners, so to speak. If ad blockers would aggressively judge each publisher, ad network and/or advertiser and rewarded good behaviour by showing the ads, I could see publishers prioritising the user experience. I'm pretty sure the publishers and journalists themselves look at these websites with horror, and they'll jump at the chance to regain some quality. The adblock+ model is tangentially similar, but charging the publishers is simply too close to blackmail to be acceptable.
- bsder 10y ago
  > Maybe we need smarter ad blockers. And maybe we ad purveyors who don't suck. I occasionally do tech support on relative's computers and am appalled by how slow they are without an ad blocker. I'll go even more extreme, if my browsing experience on your site invokes more than your domain and a single CDN domain, you FAIL. If you want to serve ads, you should have to put your resources and the reputation of your domain at risk to serve them.
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  In other parts of the world they would find who is making those ads and who is in charge of those and burn their houses down or chop them with machetes. Suddenly the number of people willing to produce ads for clients and said clients is dramatically reduced. I'm not suggesting this kind of extreme response, my point is there's no punishment for putting up those ads so there's no incentive to behave correctly and we're stuck in a spiraling vicious cycle. Breaking this cycle and turn into a virtuous cycle requires a paradigm shift and I'm afraid this is not going to happen by itself. Moving away from ads as a business model means wiping out google, facebook and a few others big players so whatever effort to emerge a new business model will be resisted by those who have the power and can burn money for years without even noticing it. Until then I have two solution, the first is a combination of noscript[1] and ublock origin[2] in my browser and the the second is wallabag[3] which for the LAT page given as example gives this: http://share.pho.to/AegpU http://share.pho.to/AegpU [1]: http://noscript.net/ http://noscript.net/ [2]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock [3]: https://wallabag.org/en https://wallabag.org/en and https://wallabag.it/en https://wallabag.it/en

noir_lord 10y ago

I've been using adblockers since they where a thing (and DNS blocks longer than that) since back then you could rely on the adnetworks feeding your malware at some point. I'm trying to think if I've ever clicked an advert on the internet intentionally and it's probably under half a dozen accidentally.

andai 10y ago
I wonder sometimes, with the amount these advertisers know about me, how come they don't know I don't click on ads? It would increase their profits to not target me.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  They do know you don't click on ads. They just show you ads for people who are going for exposure rather than clicks, because you count as an impression even if you can't be used to generate clicks.
  - chiefalchemist 10y ago
    True. But if you've never clicked doesn't that mean something? Even if the goal is impressions wouldn't you prefer someone who has shown to be influence-able over someone who isn't? (Hint: I would de-target non clickers.)
    - tripzilch 10y ago
      Yes, if online advertising was strictly a deal between the media (online newspapers etc) and the advertisers. But there's a useless middle-man industry that is the cause of all these problems: the ad-networks. They don't quite care that the impressions are no good to the advertisers, and they care only very little about the brand-damage to the media, caused by malware and bandwidth-waste. Or (dangerous) inconvenience to the consumers. We wouldn't have any of these issues if the media were just to strike deals with advertisers themselves (like newspapers used to) (or maybe hiring out to an advertising agency, but still keep full editorial control, no newspaper would regularly allow an ad agency to inject their content last-minute before press, without any editorial oversight). They would basically just self-host the ad banner, with a click-through link, self-hosted analytics for the advertisers, and everything would be fine. Ad blockers don't block self-hosted banners. No viruses, no malware, not as much privacy risk, no bandwidth wastage. The ad-networks are really bad for all parties involved.
    - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
      What makes you think people who don't click aren't influenced? Repeated spaced exposure seems to have an impact on people, even if they don't think it does.

wernercd 10y ago

Obligatory: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160111/05574633295/forbes-site-after-begging-you-turn-off-adblocker-serves-up-steaming-pile-malware-ads.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160111/05574633295/forbe...

matt4077 10y ago

Maybe we need smarter ad blockers. Publications right now have little incentive to improve their ads with regards to security, readers' resources or quality – because if the LA Times motivates you to install an ad blocker, the NYT is getting hit as well. The tragedy of the commoners, so to speak. If ad blockers would aggressively judge each publisher, ad network and/or advertiser and rewarded good behaviour by showing the ads, I could see publishers prioritising the user experience. I'm pretty sure the publishers and journalists themselves look at these websites with horror, and they'll jump at the chance to regain some quality. The adblock+ model is tangentially similar, but charging the publishers is simply too close to blackmail to be acceptable.

bsder 10y ago
> Maybe we need smarter ad blockers. And maybe we ad purveyors who don't suck. I occasionally do tech support on relative's computers and am appalled by how slow they are without an ad blocker. I'll go even more extreme, if my browsing experience on your site invokes more than your domain and a single CDN domain, you FAIL. If you want to serve ads, you should have to put your resources and the reputation of your domain at risk to serve them.
bigbugbag 10y ago
In other parts of the world they would find who is making those ads and who is in charge of those and burn their houses down or chop them with machetes. Suddenly the number of people willing to produce ads for clients and said clients is dramatically reduced. I'm not suggesting this kind of extreme response, my point is there's no punishment for putting up those ads so there's no incentive to behave correctly and we're stuck in a spiraling vicious cycle. Breaking this cycle and turn into a virtuous cycle requires a paradigm shift and I'm afraid this is not going to happen by itself. Moving away from ads as a business model means wiping out google, facebook and a few others big players so whatever effort to emerge a new business model will be resisted by those who have the power and can burn money for years without even noticing it. Until then I have two solution, the first is a combination of noscript[1] and ublock origin[2] in my browser and the the second is wallabag[3] which for the LAT page given as example gives this: http://share.pho.to/AegpU http://share.pho.to/AegpU [1]: http://noscript.net/ http://noscript.net/ [2]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock [3]: https://wallabag.org/en https://wallabag.org/en and https://wallabag.it/en https://wallabag.it/en