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I can understand your last point. The reason I urge people to use a cautious hand when using such a broad stroke of the brush (ad-blockers/calling for an ad-les

by Denzel 10y ago

I can understand your last point. The reason I urge people to use a cautious hand when using such a broad stroke of the brush (ad-blockers/calling for an ad-less world) is because I'm not sure they're considering the third-order, even fourth-order, effects of their actions. Ads, in the broadest definition, are not going anywhere, no matter how much we push them into the shadows. As much as I hate being inundated with ads, at least I know that they're ads. Know what I hate even more? When you can't distinguish ads. So the more we tip the scale from explicit advertising, the more we welcome indistinguishable inline, sponsored, content advertising. Where you start asking yourself, are they being paid for this? That's just one effect that we're already seeing. I don't know whether we'll reach a steady-state for ad blocking or not. Regardless, it doesn't keep me up at night; I'm perfectly content watching others burn themselves. I just wish they'd do it quicker. Why don't people use site-blockers instead of ad-blockers, i.e., they don't get the content if they don't want the ads. Problem solved, and we can accelerate faster to whatever point we're headed to.

M_Grey 10y ago
Well, the truth is that people want the content without the ads, and most of them don't see a problem with that. For me, I've seen enough to know that this a closing frontier, and I just want to enjoy it while I can; before ad-blocking and VPN's are either discouraged by monopolistic practices, or criminalized. As for site-blockers... sure, it's one way to go. I used to take that approach, but the nature of ads changed a while ago, and stopped being a simple issue. When ads don't just mean, "Hey look at this, buy this shit!", but means, "An integrated system to identify and track you, collate said data, form a profile, then sell said profile, to people who may be so irresponsible that they have loud autoplaying ads, or even malware ads..." well... then it's different. Maybe the issue is that we need to stop talking about "Ad-Blockers". I don't know about anyone else, but my time to be reasonable and play along with advertisers and content providers was back when I had none of the power, and they were busily screwing me. Now that the tables have briefly turned, I'm supposed to be the civic-minded one? No. I remember a time before all of this content, and if the end of advertising means an end to it (which it doesn't, but lets say that it does) then I can live with that.
- Denzel 10y ago
  Your point is not lost on me. The one thing I'll note is that ads and tracking are orthogonal. Although tracking is meant to make ads more useful in theory, there are issues in practice, as you said. Nonetheless, it's not really helpful to muddy the definition of either by placing them under the same umbrella term. We are in agreeance, should the end of web advertising lead to the end of large swathes of content, we can live with that.
ashark 10y ago
> Ads, in the broadest definition, are not going anywhere, no matter how much we push them into the shadows. As much as I hate being inundated with ads, at least I know that they're ads. Know what I hate even more? When you can't distinguish ads. So the more we tip the scale from explicit advertising, the more we welcome indistinguishable inline, sponsored, content advertising. Where you start asking yourself, are they being paid for this? There are enough: 1) really good recorded albums, 2) good TV shows, 3) excellent films, 4) great books, 5) fun, engaging, possibly even enriching video games already in existence that I can't possibly get to all of them in a lifetime. If new media gets bad enough I can simply abandon it. Bring it on—it'll be unfortunate, but I'm already on wondering whether the effort of searching for good new media isn't less efficient than mining the past, so it's entirely possible it'll improve my life. Go ahead. I'll tune out.

by Denzel 10y ago

M_Grey 10y ago

Well, the truth is that people want the content without the ads, and most of them don't see a problem with that. For me, I've seen enough to know that this a closing frontier, and I just want to enjoy it while I can; before ad-blocking and VPN's are either discouraged by monopolistic practices, or criminalized. As for site-blockers... sure, it's one way to go. I used to take that approach, but the nature of ads changed a while ago, and stopped being a simple issue. When ads don't just mean, "Hey look at this, buy this shit!", but means, "An integrated system to identify and track you, collate said data, form a profile, then sell said profile, to people who may be so irresponsible that they have loud autoplaying ads, or even malware ads..." well... then it's different. Maybe the issue is that we need to stop talking about "Ad-Blockers". I don't know about anyone else, but my time to be reasonable and play along with advertisers and content providers was back when I had none of the power, and they were busily screwing me. Now that the tables have briefly turned, I'm supposed to be the civic-minded one? No. I remember a time before all of this content, and if the end of advertising means an end to it (which it doesn't, but lets say that it does) then I can live with that.

Denzel 10y ago
Your point is not lost on me. The one thing I'll note is that ads and tracking are orthogonal. Although tracking is meant to make ads more useful in theory, there are issues in practice, as you said. Nonetheless, it's not really helpful to muddy the definition of either by placing them under the same umbrella term. We are in agreeance, should the end of web advertising lead to the end of large swathes of content, we can live with that.

ashark 10y ago

> Ads, in the broadest definition, are not going anywhere, no matter how much we push them into the shadows. As much as I hate being inundated with ads, at least I know that they're ads. Know what I hate even more? When you can't distinguish ads. So the more we tip the scale from explicit advertising, the more we welcome indistinguishable inline, sponsored, content advertising. Where you start asking yourself, are they being paid for this? There are enough: 1) really good recorded albums, 2) good TV shows, 3) excellent films, 4) great books, 5) fun, engaging, possibly even enriching video games already in existence that I can't possibly get to all of them in a lifetime. If new media gets bad enough I can simply abandon it. Bring it on—it'll be unfortunate, but I'm already on wondering whether the effort of searching for good new media isn't less efficient than mining the past, so it's entirely possible it'll improve my life. Go ahead. I'll tune out.