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Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

244 points by ytNumbers 9y ago

makecheck 9y ago
Interesting how the response of sites with terrible user experiences caused by ad tech is not to say “oh, how can we change our ads so people will accept them?” but rather to find ways to make their user experiences even more horrible, e.g. popping up new unwanted interruptions accusing you of having an ad-blocker. Hey big web sites, here is the solution, and I won’t even charge you for it: stop making terrible user experiences. I am not trying to block your ad; I am blocking your carelessly-written malware-laden code, your obnoxious pop-ups, your auto-playing videos, your shove-in-my-face-at-the-worst-time messages, your unreasonable consumption of my mobile data, and everything that is making a simple article difficult to load. I’ll even tell you how to fix this: make more simple text ads, or images that are not animated and not peppered with distracting colors. Make the first paragraph of every article a nice little blurb telling me more about a company that pays you to advertise for them. Put some cute ads in muted colors inline with the content. Create a couple simple links to things that cost money that could support you (apps, T-shirts or whatever). In short, don’t be a complete jerk to the people you apparently “need” to help maintain the costs of your site.
- krapp 9y ago
  Do many sites have that much direct editorial control over the ads they run? I've only ever done a little ad banner work so I don't know how it is for "large" sites, but I assume the people writing and maintaining the code are not the ones actually selling or creating the ads. I assume those decisions are made between sales and the client.
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    Any site that doesn’t control the content of their ads deserve to be starved out of business as fast as possible by ad blockers. That is: I don’t mind ads, I just don’t accept “adtech”.
    - krapp 9y ago
      Advertisers tend not to be willing to give that much control to whatever medium they're advertising in. More often than not, they can dictate terms because they drive revenue.
      - alkonaut 9y ago
        I understand that. But once adblocking ensures that the cost of an impression via an “ad network” is an order of magnitude higher than the alternative - their trust will likely increase.
      - CaptSpify 9y ago
        Well advertisers have clearly shown that they can't be responsible with the controls they have. It's time their tools are taken away. I'm not sure that how this should happen, but this is a clear sign that something in this system is seriously broken.
      - zipwitch 9y ago
        And they then use that leverage to attack the readers/viewers. Speaking for myself, I will see the internet wither and die before I'll accept that as a valid model for anything.
- getaclue99 9y ago
  You do realize that these websites give zero shits about you, right? “Oh no, this megacorporation is willing to exploit everyone for a profit, but maybe they’ll see the error of their ways and back out of this lucrative revenue model!” Widen up, dude. These websites don’t care about you as a user. You’re a metric, you’re a fucking dot on a graph at a board meeting where a small number of people in suits decide how best to extract every last red cent from you and the millions of other cattle that only exist to fuel their fucking empire.
  - dang 9y ago
    Please don't post rageful rants to HN. Some websites may treat their users as cattle, but that's no reason to spoil this one.
  - makecheck 9y ago
    One can find many examples of corporations successfully making money on things that aren’t good (such as harm to people and the environment). Web sites are merely the latest. Just because terrible companies exist and are “successful” doesn’t mean that they’re not crappy and it sure doesn’t mean we should give up and not work for something better.
- danso 9y ago
  > “oh, how can we change our ads so people will accept them?” If a single website -- say, your local or regional news site -- overhauled its ad experience to become more user-friendly, how would you even notice, if their ad server was added to your ad blocker's blacklist?
  - TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
    Host ads as first-party content?
    - intrasight 9y ago
      This is obviously the right solution. It's what print newspapers and magazines do. Why isn't there a quality first-party ad platform? Is there a business opportunity here?
      - danso 9y ago
        Some non-legacy news sites do make ads first-party content, i.e. native advertising or sponsored content. BuzzFeed is probably the most prolific at it [0], with a great tech team and focus, but even BuzzFeed is floundering when it comes to revenue targets. I think Quartz [1] also does it well (though it's also part of the Atlantic media group. Newer outlets do it well too -- e.g. theoutline.com and axios.com -- but both are too new to know how viable their business is. Of the legacy outlets, New York Times is in the forefront as it is in most digital categories (the creators of D3, Backbone, and other tech have been on the payroll), but most of their gains seem to have come from digital subscriptions, with digital advertising still nowhere close to offsetting the loss in print ad revenue [2] I'm guessing the reason why native advertising hasn't been the status quo is related to inertia and the timing of seismic change in the industry. When I was in j-school many years ago, the professors were fond of saying that newspapers was basically money printers with profit margins only rivaled by the cocaine trade -- though this was only the case after TV and radio crushed the industry, to the point that most cities became one-newspaper monopolies. At around the time of the digital boom, i.e. 90s and mid-200s, regional and local newspapers were floundering and bigger players figured it be wise to swoop them up and turn one-city monopolies into regional monopolies. The NYT famously bought the Boston Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion -- and then sold it for $70m in 2013 [3]. McClatchy had become the 3rd biggest publisher after buying the Knight-Ridder chain for $4.5 billion in 2006 [4] and racking up $2B in debt as the entire industry was facing double digit drops in revenue. And all of this was about the time when publishers realized (too late) that Craigslist had effectively decimated everyone: classified ads were once as much as 20-25% of a newspaper's revenue. All this is to say that the news business definitely had the money to blow on innovation [5], but by the time they realized how fucked the Internet was going to make things, they weren't in a position of confidence and stability. There was some efforts -- I think cars.com was a bright spot for McClatchy and Tribune [6] -- but all too little and too late. The shitty ads that I see news sites serving up seem to me to be a symptom of legacy inertia and existential panic -- going with DoubleClick and other shitty 3rd-party ads probably seemed like the most efficient solution. Remember that most of these companies still have significant print ad departments, because these ads still make way more money than digital. And then there's the traditional firewall between the editorial and ad departments. I worked at a McClatchy newspaper as a reporter and a developer and there were many problems arising from the fact that digital operations were basically under the business side, and effectively in an entirely different building. I think the other problem is that ads are fundamentally a different experience in print than they are on the web (and for TV and radio). Newspapers have a whole page to work with for ad layout, and ads can come in all kinds of sizes and formats, from full-page ads to small bottom corner ads to tiny classifieds. When newspapers were rolling in money, they were also the primary places for the average citizen to find out things like stock prices, government auctions/notices, apartment rentals, and local sales and events. My parents (Vietnamese refugees) weren't much into reading English publications, but we subscribed to the local newspaper's weekend edition because it was chock full of ads and coupons. Ads were a destination -- arguably, for the average person, they were more valuable and desired than the newspaper's actual editorial content, in the way that people might watch the Super Bowl just for the ads. In today's web environment, is there any normal mindset in which people actively seek out ads (other than looking them up on YouTube if you missed the Super Bowl)? The kind of native advertising that BuzzFeed et. al seem to have the most success with are advertorials that don't seem like ads. Unfortunately, this creates its own conflict with news-minded organizations. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/12/buzzhome/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/12/buzzhome/ [1] https://nypost.com/2017/11/16/buzzfeeds-revenue-to-fall-70m-short-of-target/ https://nypost.com/2017/11/16/buzzfeeds-revenue-to-fall-70m-... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/business/media/new-york-times-earnings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/business/media/new-york-t... [3] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/business/media/new-york-times-company-sells-boston-globe.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/business/media/new-york-ti... [4] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/business/media/06paper.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/business/media/06paper.htm... [5] http://archives.cjr.org/feature/the_newspaper_that_almost_seized_the_future.php http://archives.cjr.org/feature/the_newspaper_that_almost_se... [6] http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-cars-spinoff-0908-biz-20160907-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-cars-spinoff-0908-...
- noncoml 9y ago
  I had to disable my ad blocker today to try out another plugin. The sites were 2-3x slower to load. There is no way anyone can convince me to disable my ad blocker again.
- lscotte 9y ago
  Oh... I, like most people, am actually intentionally blocking the ads.
- lwansbrough 9y ago
  > Interesting how the response of sites with terrible user experiences caused by ad tech is not to say “oh, how can we change our ads so people will accept them?” but rather to find ways to make their user experiences even more horrible, e.g. popping up new unwanted interruptions accusing you of having an ad-blocker. That's not how online advertising works. If a user doesn't like ads, they block all ads indiscriminately. Changing ads doesn't do anything, because users will always block ads regardless of their quality, at least until the vast majority of ads are "acceptable" -- and even then, many demographics will continue blocking anyway. What is "acceptable", anyway? Make the ad small enough and/or dumb enough that it is no longer worth anything to the advertiser? > stop making terrible user experiences. There are plenty of websites with acceptable UX (or UX that isn't practically made worse by ads) that use ads. How many of them are on your whitelist? Do you even know which sites are showing ads if you use an adblocker? > I’ll even tell you how to fix this: make more simple text ads, or images that are not animated and not peppered with distracting colors. While this is a reasonable request, it doesn't change the fact that many/most people now have an adblocker on their browser. There's no doubt this problem has been exasperated by malicious ad creatives. But the onus of correcting the problem lies in the hands of BOTH adblocker developers AND the online ads industry (including publishers, exchanges, and advertisers.)
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    I always forget to install my ad-blocker after an install. Once I start browsing the web I re-install it. If ads weren't so terrible, I would likely just forget to install it.
  - nasredin 9y ago
    >But the onus of correcting the problem lies in the hands of BOTH adblocker developers AND the online ads industry (including publishers, exchanges, and advertisers.) Disagree. Adblock developers should block ads. Advertising-surveillance companies should die. Website owners should personally vet AND HOST ads on their sites. It's all very simple in my opinion. --- Why do you think adblocking is such a "problem" for some? Because almost all ads are hosted on third party servers. I know a couple small blogs that host image ads on the side of the page and it's not blocked in any default ABP lists. The "adbros" brought this upon themselves. This war on our minds is so pervasive they got fanboys on most major tech forums always defending them. These people are either in the industry themselves or suffering from the Battered Wife Syndrome: "If only adblock developers weren't so mean... maybe these adbros would stop pushing malware and spying on us". Also "gorhill" is an asshole.
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  Although I agree with your first point, I think this is a symptom of a much larger problem that we are ignoring: We have a serious economic problem in which we can't fund things that we want and need. Instead of making advertising "less bad", we should be looking into alternative ways to fund sites and services. Advertising in it's current form simply needs to go.
  - jacques_chester 9y ago
    My bet is microsubscription, but that's only because it's something I've been working on (Robojar). Part of my motivation has been to make the best parts of the early web economically viable. For a few years it was normal to have relatively successful small sites with good writing and regular readers. They've largely been driven out by the economics of clickbait. I'd like to help that come back by breaking the rigid nexus between traffic and revenue. Adblock/flattr are doing something very similar. Google Contributor was, but seems to have morphed into a prepaid micropayment scheme. Patreon splits the middle. I still think the model where a single subscription fee is distributed amongst participating sites/services/apps approximately according to usage is the best overall model.
    - marcusjt 9y ago
      Flattr http://flattr.com http://flattr.com is the best solution out there IMHO, Patreon is good but only makes sense if you're a regular/loyal consumer of a source.
      - jacques_chester 9y ago
        Flattr is the closest to what I'm aiming at. Some minor scheme differences, quite distinct implementation. One thing I can do differently is to interoperate smoothly with paywalls without revealing user identity.
lainon 9y ago
Discussion of said paper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16012403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16012403
borplk 9y ago
I recently saw one site that said "It looks like you are using an ad-blocker. So you must wait 10 seconds.". And had an overlay with a countdown.
- eeereerews 9y ago
  Maybe they're getting paid per unit of user suffering.
  - Ajedi32 9y ago
    Or maybe they were using a cryptocurrency miner during those 10 seconds as a substitute for ads.
    - charonn0 9y ago
      That's not a bad idea, provided they were up front about it.
    - borplk 9y ago
      That kind of setup doesn't work. They will keep it honest for the first 24 hours of rolling it out. Then it will creep from "during those 10 seconds" to "the entire time".
- aembleton 9y ago
  What happens if you block javascript? What about finding just the javascript file that was causing this to happen and blocking that?
lousken 9y ago
Disabling javascript is the best anti-anti-adblock solution. I wish chrome added an option for tampermonkey scripts to be run with disabled js, that would make this solution perfect.
- severine 9y ago
  Maybe you can test this extension [1] in Chrome? Works great in Firefox, where bookmarklets are tricky sometimes due to some CSP voodoo. [1] https://github.com/mems/bookmarklets-context-menu https://github.com/mems/bookmarklets-context-menu
  - Groxx 9y ago
    Yup. It's a long-standing issue. Join in the fun: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=866522 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=866522
    - severine 9y ago
      :) Guess where I found the extension? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=866522#c83 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=866522#c83
- freedomben 9y ago
  Brave (at least on mobile) has a handy toggle by default right in the tool bar for blocking javascript and trackers. I don't use anything else on mobile anymore. Been using it about 50% of the time on desktop as well. Thinking about doing the micro-payments thing they offer.
- uwu 9y ago
  > I wish chrome added an option for tampermonkey scripts to be run with disabled js, that would make this solution perfect. that's up to tampermonkey but maybe it's possible that google wouldn't like it since it would let userscripts access extension apis what tampermonkey does is inserting the script into the page in a script tag to isolate it from the extension[1] and let it access variables defined by scripts on the page, but if scripts are blocked on the page it just doesn't run i made my own custom js manager (with no userscript api support) that lets you choose if the script should be ran in the extension or page context (defaults to extension which works with scripts blocked) but i don't know if it's in good enough state to put on the internet and i've never really made things for anyone but myself [1] https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/content_scripts#execution-environment https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/content_scripts#exec...
sixtypoundhound 9y ago
If you're in a niche with decent prospects for contextual advertising, there's an easy way around most ad-blockers. Set up a small piece of editorial content and embed some affiliate links into it.
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
  If I came to a site, liked what it was about, noticed it didn't get any hits by uBO and saw an affiliate link with text (no images hosted elsewhere) like "Do you need AAA batteries and would like to support our site? Click Here", it's very likely I would click the link if I will need the thing any time soon. It doesn't have to be related to the content of the page or fit the genre of the site, it doesn't need to try and guess exactly what I need at this very second or prey on my insecurities. Just links to basic necessities.
  - user5994461 9y ago
    To be fair, some contextual amazon recommendations would probably fare better than most stupid ads.
    - jasonkostempski 9y ago
      Thats exactly the edge of the cliff everyone jumped off so many years ago. Even if they don't have to drop in a third-party JS snippet on their site to get that feature, now you have to question the motives of the author.
- intrasight 9y ago
  Even better - just have a text message "Sponsored by XYZ". This has worked for hundreds of years. I don't see why it can't work now.
strooper 9y ago
While these anti ad blockers may succeed confusing pattern matching ad blockers, how are they going to work against domain/IP list based (i.e. hosts file) ones?
jancsika 9y ago
Some adtech startup should just quit playing games and go full creeper mode: * simple text-only ads * give the advertisers the tools to generate text content that is minimally distracting, maximally invasive, maximally creepy, and maximally personally-identifying "$35,000 in debt, unemployed, recently dumped and insecure about your male sexual identity? You deserve this special price on Axe Body Spray..." The buzz alone would get people to turn off their ad-blockers just to see what content gets generated for them.
- reificator 9y ago
  So an updated version of the classic browser/IP/country/OS sign people used in their forum signatures? http://www.danasoft.com/vipersig.jpg http://www.danasoft.com/vipersig.jpg
- PrimHelios 9y ago
  If anything, I would keep my adblocker enabled just to see those creepy ads, that would make for some interesting browsing sessions.
- kilroy123 9y ago
  It's that pretty much Google ads?
  - jancsika 9y ago
    No, because Google advises their advertisers not to creep out their potential customers. AFAICT an ad from Google is chosen based on the reams of data Google has about me, but the content of the ad seems generic (or at least seems like it's meant to come off as generic so as not to creep me out). The hypothetical adtech I'm describing would of course choose the ad based similarly on reams of data about me, but the content of the ad would itself also be worded using invasive data about me. Google ad: "get some cheap technical degree" Creeperville Ad: "climb out of your 35,000+ debt with a technical degree" There are even more convincing examples wrt pornography but I'd rather not go down that rabbit hole.
- raguuu 9y ago
LeoPanthera 9y ago
Oh, the irony. https://i.imgur.com/uplpnxv.png https://i.imgur.com/uplpnxv.png
- mschuster91 9y ago
  Actually, I don't mind these. You can click them away if you want and it wont reappear (at least on TC, on spiegel.de the nagscreen reappears after 20s or so of reading time).
- userbinator 9y ago
  I have JavaScript off and I don't get that... I suppose JS off doesn't count as an ad-blocker, despite how effective it is. (I know there are many more sites these days rendering simple static content with JS, possibly in an attempt to defeat/confuse others like me --- but my solution for them is either Google's text-only cache, or the Back button. Chances are I can find the same or even better content elsewhere; forcing me to jump through hoops ensures I'm not coming back.)
- antimatter 9y ago
  Can someone explain to me why they want to show you the ad even when they don't care if you look at it, let alone click on it? Are advertisers still paying for just showing the ad?
  - betterunix2 9y ago
    Yes, because just seeing the ad is effective in many cases; for example, brand advertising. (Edit: note that even though you may not look at it directly, it is still effective)
- freedomben 9y ago
  TBF, the article does admit as much. I also don't mind this sort of thing as long as it's a reasonable request (not sure if it is tho cause I block all javascript lol)
williamstein 9y ago
I wish I could view a version of Hacker News in which ALL links to articles that are behind a paywall are just hidden from me. I would just rather not see them at all.
aaronchall 9y ago
In the beginning, I tried to avoid ad-blockers in the beginning out of consideration for the sustainability of the content providers. It took one site for me to start using ad-blockers. Facebook: they persistently were showing me ads for online MBA programs when I already had completed a better brick-and-mortar one. I recall that I tried complaining and got no response. For some psychological reason, that did it. I installed an ad-blocker on my and my wife's laptops and never looked back. If the big sites had been more conscientious about their ad strategy (and specifically allowing people more control over what shows up on their screens) we might not be in an escalating technological war over ads.
- dhimes 9y ago
  I've actually tried telling the company that purchased a useless ad that it's wasting its money- to no avail. I still see ads for something I won't re-purchase for five years or so.
orbitingpluto 9y ago
Okay, here's a crazy idea for advertisers. Tie the advertisement to the type of content that the user is already there to read about. Then you can serve ads from the content web server and make it indistinguishable from content, completely unobtrusive, completely noninvasive, and maybe even welcome.
- MisterBastahrd 9y ago
  They already do this if possible. The VAST majority of publishers are selling only a small percentage of their own ad space (the giants of the industry might be different, but even they probably have third party networks to fill gaps in their inventory). Instead, they partner with networks who auction ads off to the highest bidder. That bidder is usually going to be a company who trusts the ad network to track users and show ads relevant to either the interests they've shown or the current content. I work with a publisher on these sorts of things (I am not an ad network, though). Some of those networks have strict prohibitions against showing ads on pages featuring certain types of content, and so we've had to build our own system to display ads on those pages which work with networks which are fine with that content. The publisher does sell its own ad spaces to interested local parties, but these are usually accompanied by periodical ad sales because the company ultimately makes more money selling ads through networks.
- ISL 9y ago
  That's what adwords tries to do. There's a substantial premium on relevance.
- Jedi72 9y ago
  In theory this is a good idea but in practice it leads to thousands of low quality "top ten things you need when going camping" style websites only created to sell things.
  - ByThyGrace 9y ago
    I'm under the impression those thousands of low quality ad infested click-baiting websites already exist.
Overtonwindow 9y ago
And I will continue to deploy anti-anti-adblock measures.
leeoniya 9y ago
the irony on full display (at the linked article) in chrome devtools / record perf timeline and network log. incognito: 4.4mb, 7000ms scripting, 365 requests, onload: 7600ms with uMatrix (no third party shit): 612kb, 190ms of scripting, 56 requests, onload: 500ms this is on a 300MBit connection
- PhantomGremlin 9y ago
  The linked article is highly readable and loads very quickly simply by disabling all JavaScript on the site. Which I do by default. Thank you NoScript.
  - freedomben 9y ago
    This is the only way to live. Been doing it for years and while I do end up whitelisting a lot (especially on a new browser) it is so much easier and less annoying than dealing with the ads and crappy scripts.
- ktta 9y ago
  AMP versions of some websites are better https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/27/thousands-of-major-sites-are-taking-silent-anti-ad-blocking-measures/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/27/thousands-of-major-sites-a...
  - pmlnr 9y ago
    True. However, I refuse to use AMP as long as it's a google vendor lock in. Also not the solution; if they can provide an amp version without all the tracking and ad JS they could just as simply provide an actual, working website as well.
- true_religion 9y ago
  The article took 7.8 seconds to "fully" load for me, however the text was readable in under 300ms. Loading ads of screen doesn't bother me. Also, I'm not sure where the irony is here. They're talking about anti-adblocking, so it's hardly ironic that they use advertisements themselves.
leeoniya 9y ago
> It turns out that many ad providers are offering anti-blocking tech in the form of scripts that produce a variety of “bait” content that’s ad-like — for instance, images or elements named and tagged in such a way that they will trigger ad blockers, tipping the site off. you don't need a provider to help detect ad blocking in most cases. just serve a script from your server called `ads.js` that modifies some global js variable or does an ajax post to some endpoint indicating it was served....or "pixel.gif".
sharpercoder 9y ago
I wish content suppliers would listen more to clients. Clients want more content without ads, so why not invest more into offering content without ads?
- ISL 9y ago
  Content suppliers would like to eat. Many clients don't want to pay for content, and nobody has yet figured out how to make micropayments blossom.
  - imgabe 9y ago
    Here's a hint: if nobody wants to pay for what you're selling, sell something else.
    - Thorncorona 9y ago
      If anybody listened to your advice then search engines, stack overflow, web forums, news agencies, and Reddit would simply disappear.
      - executesorder66 9y ago
        Or be replaced by open source alternatives. And if you are wondering why they haven't already, it's because google/stackoverflow/reddit etc. are already providing the service for 'free'. So as soon as they shut down, someone else will make an alternative.
        IronKettle 9y ago
        > So as soon as they shut down, someone else will make an alternative. They exist already. They're mostly horrible. I pretty religiously use DDG, but even then I probably use the !g operator every third search or so. Reddit's already almost entirely open-source IIRC. People have used it to make alternatives. Check out Voat, you can see the alternative in action (you might not like what you find, though).
tinus_hn 9y ago
If they would go back to ads hosted on their own servers they likely wouldn’t get blocked. That means the ad network doesn’t get to track the users though.
RandomInteger4 9y ago
I use an ad blocker, because otherwise the web is unusable. Maybe if (1) fewer ads pumped up CPU and memory usage for a page, and (2) companies didn't give their non-technical asshole free reign over placing scripts on the page, then maybe many of these sites wouldn't be so bad to visit without an ad blocker.
- PrimHelios 9y ago
  Animated ads actually give me sensory overload. If a site could promise non-moving ads, I'd gladly whitelist them. It's amazing how many sites think you'll just accept incredibly intrusive and annoying banners.
  - itronitron 9y ago
    I feel like we are reaching the 'end of days' as the actual informative content on a site is typically less than 20% of the visual information on a page. I have adjusted my browsing habits to avoid sites which may be visually offensive to my sensibilities, bog down my cpu, or hang my browser. That isn't necessarily a bad thing (for me) but it certainly seems counterproductive to the site owners' goals.
  - LoSboccacc 9y ago
    I used to whitelist all webcomics I read, then one served malicious flash and another started aggressive mobile redirects to advertisement pages Now I just siphon the images into a rss feed. If they want my eyeball they better start putting up banners like they used to. Active content can fuck right off.
  - godelski 9y ago
    Or the ads with sounds. Even just auto starting videos. News sites are bad at this.
  - scaryclam 9y ago
    I'll tend to whitelist sites that I find useful, but the moment a distracting ad shows, the ad blocker goes back on. I understand the reason some sites rely on ad revenue, and I sympathise when theyre not given a chance, but if they can't be civil to their users then I see no reason for their users to put up with it.
dingo_bat 9y ago
I'm also taking silent ad-blocking measures. So I think it's fair.
jcrawfordor 9y ago
When I worked as an intrusion analyst, I worked on a lot of content to detect domain generation algorithms (DGA) that are sometimes used by botnets and other malware for more robust command and control. Over the last couple of years this has become increasingly frustrated by a lot of websites using algorithmically generated domain names in order to evade adblocker blocklists. Domains like "djbvueiabjqkna.com" are increasingly just some major news website delivering their banner ads.
nerdponx 9y ago
I've started noticing this from Google, among others. Tracking scripts are no longer explicitly named as such, or they're prefixed with some slug or GUID alongside the legitimate "functional" scripts. It's getting to a point where you need to actively monitor every network request the site makes. It's despicable and I have nothing but ill will for the data scientists, software engineers, and product managers who participate in this.
- rc_bhg 9y ago
  .. I mean, they would not have jobs if they did not participate in it.
  - nojvek 9y ago
    Google + FB, the worlds largest online advertising companies lose probably billions to ad blockers. I’m sure quite a number of people got nice bonuses and promos for bringing some of that revenue back.
    - r00fus 9y ago
      Lose? They have monopoly positions in their respective markets and we have little choice. While I personally avoid FB and use DDG, most folks can't or aren't allowed to (no extensions).
    - stewbrew 9y ago
      They don't lose billions because some people hide annoying stuff that makes their pages esesstially unusable and have no extra benefit because ... I personally don't think this kind of online marketing actually works. I cannot imagine someone actually buying something because of some meaningless text snippet, a stupid blinking image or a video clip.
      - edanm 9y ago
        Do you really trust your personal opinion on this, versus literally an entire billion dollar industry which has an enormous incentive to get this right, and which thinks this as business DOES work?
gorhill 9y ago
In the paper, this excerpt: > We choose Adblock as it is one of the most popular. It is also possible to use Adblock Plus or uBlock, as the way they operate is exactly the same — HTTP filters and HTML element hiding. AdBlock in the Chrome store uses Adblock Plus filtering engine[1], so to say the way these two "operate is exactly the same" makes sense. However uBlock Origin uses its own code base, and is far better equipped than AdBlock/Adblock Plus to deal with anti-blockers, so to say that the way uBO operates is "exactly the same" is a stretch. * * * [1] Since version 3.0: https://help.getadblock.com/support/discussions/topics/6000038686 https://help.getadblock.com/support/discussions/topics/60000... -- it's not explicitly stated in the announcement but this code repo mirror shows it: https://github.com/kzar/watchadblock/blob/c5f5b7f535182d677462463591bd2f8e059c771e/src/lib/adblockplus.js https://github.com/kzar/watchadblock/blob/c5f5b7f535182d6774...
- zzleeper 9y ago
  What would you recommend for mobile? Browsing on Android with Chrome is a nightmare, and the last time I tried FF it was a bit sluggish (although it did allowed me to install extensions!)
  - diminish 9y ago
    On mobile Android I mainly use Firefox equipped with ublock origin in order to save battery, bandwidth and boost performance. - This helps with all types of ads for many news and reading, - the big benefit is: opening all youtube videos on Firefox with ublock origin in order to get rid of youtube ads -
  - alykhalid 9y ago
    Have you tried Firefox focus[0]. I use it on a daily basis and I am quite happy with it. [0]https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/mobile/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/mobile/
  - just_observing 9y ago
    Take a look at Blockada. https://github.com/blokadaorg/blokada https://github.com/blokadaorg/blokada
deleted 9y ago
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godzillabrennus 9y ago
I was reading the news with Safari on iOS 11.2 with a new iPhone X recently. As I was browsing different sites I noticed I was getting redirected to those scammy "You've won a cruise" style websites. I had no idea ads were so out of control. I've been using ad blocking technology for 10+ years and never see it first hand. It's pretty crazy that website operators have to create such a terrible user experience to survive these days.
- kstrauser 9y ago
  I've been using 1Blocker on iOS for ages now and can't tolerate the mobile web without it. There are several other good blockers, too, including Firefox Focus. I highly, highly recommend using one.
nimbius 9y ago
Ads are inherently psychologically abusive, targeting your insecurities and exploiting sex and basic instinct to move product. There needs to be a fundamental shift from the old tv and radio model of advertisers targeting everyone through inescapable ham fisted and manipulative ads, to a system that is all but dormant until I query it for a service. Show me nothing, nothing at all, until I make the effort to ask the question "what products are available for $need?" If I'm on a website and begin searching, give the site the ad revenue.
- tylerhou 9y ago
  > Ads are inherently psychologically abusive, targeting your insecurities and exploiting sex and basic instinct to move product. This is a pretty wild claim. Most ads I see are relatively tame (like the “Build on AWS” and iPhone X ads I see around San Francisco), and I don’t see them “exploiting sex or basic instinct.”
  - kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
    Ads targeted at women almost universally target their vulnerabilities in subtle ways, many of which are culturally cultivated and manipulated by marketers. Consider how the food industry plays on weight anxiety: "light", "guilt free" (why should anyone feel guilt over eating?), "sinful", "temptation", "fear X". All the foods are "out to kill you" or at least make you "fat and undesirable". It's all manufactured, alarmist fear-mongering designed to sell stuff. It works. Very few people see through this game. This then extends to other industries. Chocolate is heavily marketed to women as a "decadent" "indulgence" for those times you want to let loose the strictures of life. So the diamond industry cooks up a way to sell crap brown diamonds specifically to women as a way to treat themselves with "chocolate" ice. No man required so you can express your feminism in full force. Go girl power! This changes the very language we use. Decadent no longer has its original meaning of severe depravity any more because advertisers co-opted it in the mid-70's to apply whenever you eat a candy bar. Now it's just a bon mot women's pulp lit. sprinkles in every few paragraphs regardless of the topic. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=decadent+chocolate&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1940&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cdecadent%20chocolate%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bdecadent%20chocolate%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BDecadent%20Chocolate%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=decadent+choco...
threatofrain 9y ago
I find that ad blocking is a must for older relatives, and I think anyone managing technological access for the elderly ought to also be installing ad block. Advertisers love to scare old people in every way, and then peddling them scam solutions and pills.
jakeogh 9y ago
starting at the DNS level makes things much smoother: https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
Advertisers need to fuck off. Ads are never going to work on the web - the ad bubble needs to pop already! Advertising on the web is a horrifying web of fraud, psuedoscience, and invasive tracking and sensitive data hoarding. Frankly, it should have been outlawed by now.
- raguuu 9y ago
  While everything that is going on with ads is horrible, it does work. This is very wrong side to hope for things get better. There is fraud but companies pay premium for ads because of it and in the end customers.
- snarfy 9y ago
  I've been browsing the web since Mosaic and have never bought a product by clicking on an ad. I may learn of a new product by seeing an ad, and in that sense it worked, but never by clicking on it. The point being there is absolutely no reason for any ad to have javascript associated with it.
- username223 9y ago
  > the ad bubble needs to pop already! I agree, but it will be ugly. These "ad" companies are really surveillance companies who can currently print money by selling ads. When the bubble pops, they'll still have all of their surveillance data, but will be forced to sell it in different and sleazier ways. Think credit reporting that is technically not "credit reporting," job applicant screening based on web histories, reporting on political dissidents, etc. FB/GOOG will get seriously evil as they collapse.
nkrisc 9y ago
At this point use of an ad-blocker for me is no longer a question about ethics or business models or the like, but about security. I use an ad blocker because ad networks serve malware. I'm sure they don't mean to, but they do, so I block them. I'm no longer concerned with their intent, but concerned with what is actually happening.
_ph_ 9y ago
I wish, instead of fighting Ad Blockers, they would try as hard to fix they way they run ads. Not to mention the sites, which only exist to display ads and practically don't have their own content except for clickbait headlines. A side comment: while blocking ads might reduce revenue for sites, it also means the advertiser has to pay for views by people who wouldn't click on the ads anyway.
- tdb7893 9y ago
  The thing is that ad blockers don't often don't discriminate between acceptable ads and unacceptable ads and just block everything. Even if you put a lot of effort to make your ads better most people will just block them regardless.
  - _ph_ 9y ago
    Yes, that is the collateral damage inflicted by participating at the current ad model far to long. However, for sites who really want to change, this isn't a real problem. First of all, if you don't serve ads via "ad networks" but as part of your hostet content, I don't think the ads are getting blocked by default. Also, if a site with true content and regular readers has a proper ad model, they can just ask their readers to whitelist their site. If you don't just ask because you don't want to get your ads blocked, but at the same time can tell your readers why this won't be a problem for them, I think many would whitelist the site - if whitelisting is needed at all.
    - tcd 9y ago
      Yeah, any site that pops-up "pls whitelist us!!" gets an instant X on the tab from me. It sucks, but I will never tolerate ads of any kind, no matter how good or bad. To me, they are done, along with tracking on the web (including mobile). Oh, and before you scream at me, what about people that simply disable JS, which is basically how all of this works anyway. I'm not entitled to a free web, I get that, but ads are a failing revenue model due to years of sustained abuse, and that damage is not going to be reversed ant time soon.
deleted 9y ago
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reacharavindh 9y ago
I wonder why the major websites are not going for the old way of "self-hosted" ads where the ad networks buy a space in the website and the website shows it at that space from their own domain and it is harmless.. That I'd consider allowing in my laptop. It's not the ads themselves that make me run to the blockers. It's their creepiness and tracking. If they're just images shown same to everybody, then I'm okay.
- InternetUser 9y ago
  But the millions of people working at news websites and at ad companies need to feed themselves and their families. What do you have to say to them?
  - reacharavindh 9y ago
    I think I was not clear. I meant to say that instead of hitting the users with creepy ads that the users block anyway or have developed a "mental ignore", May be the ad companies can sell harmless image ads that content publishers can serve from the same domain as the content is. No tracking, no user customizations. The user knows what they click. Why would millions of people working at ad companies go out of business in the above scenario? The ines that are writing creepy user tracking code will have to go. But, I don't sympathize with them. They will find some Tyler's meaningful to do with their skills. Imho, just because millions are doing/depending on the creepy stuff doesn't justify their presence.
marban 9y ago
I'm not opposed to ads per se but simply the extra workload it puts on the browser. What baffles me though is the across the board negativity and Robin Hood-like mentality here from people who are, to a large part, directly or indirectly monetizing their work by means of advertising.
smashingfiasco 9y ago
I use an ad-blocker and have since 2011. To get around broken/hidden content, I just copy/paste the link into Terminal after $lynx. Works almost every time.
- dhimes 9y ago
  I do this too for some sites.
paulie_a 9y ago
So i now have two choices: mentally blacklist these websites and when I forget, actively make sure to click every stupid ad possible.
minikites 9y ago
Given that banner ads are a major malware vector, I'll disable my ad-blocker when sites take responsibility and reimburse me for the time and money spent repairing computers affected by the malware they inevitably end up serving.
doesnt_know 9y ago
I'd be happy to install an extension that blocks all sites/content that consider viewing ads a prerequisite for accessing their content. I run an ad/analytic blocker, and I will never turn it off. I also understand that content creation and hosting costs money. If you're not a company that I already give money to (bank, insurance, other meat space service) then I accept the ad-for-content relationship and choose not to view the content. The biggest problems are that I can't scale randomly adding domains to a host file, and it's difficult to know the intent of content creators/owners regarding ads. It would be nice to have a signal, maybe a html tag in the header or something to state the intent regarding ads. I would set my browser/an extension to honor it and block access to content instead of accepting ads.
- Matheus28 9y ago
  Honorable, but 99% of the people don't care. They just want their free content with no ads. (numbers completely made up on the spot)
yilugurlu 9y ago
IAB is already providing a tool to detect adblockers. https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/AdBlockDetection https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/AdBlockDetec...
- executesorder66 9y ago
  Hmm, one more thing to block.
- dawnerd 9y ago
  Cool so my adblocker will detect their script and block it too.
snarfy 9y ago
I use uBlock. When I get a page that pops up "We see you are using an ad blocker...", I hit Q and edit the page until it works again.
- cbcoutinho 9y ago
  How does this work? I'm not in webdev so I don't know the ins and outs of browser editing, is it really possible to only accept a portion of a website and get around those things? Wouldn't this also be useful for getting around pay-to-view sites as well?
  - iaml 9y ago
    Those types of limitations can be implemented either client or server -side. When it's clientside, removing overlays from DOM can easily circumvent paywalls and such, but when it's server side, there's nothing you can do.
    - snarfy 9y ago
      They usually don't send you the content for a paywall without a login. But adblock detection is another story. They need to render the ad to detect that it's being blocked. They could use some js to do this before downloading the rest of the content, but they usually don't.
mikequinlan 9y ago
Ad blocking seems like a possible application for machine learning, to distinguish between ads and content. Anti-ad blocking also seems like a possible application for machine learning, to distinguish clients that are blocking ads and those that are not. In a battle between the two it seems like the anti-ad blocking side will win. They have resources (big companies with lots of money and server farms, versus small developers and browser-adons) and incentive (earning money versus improving my web experience). I use an ad-blocker but I am not optimistic about the future of ad-blockers.
- luch 9y ago
  Using machine learning for ad blocking suffers from the same issue malware detection has : your "environment" will actively try to game your detection system, which can greatly hinders the learning phase. I'm not entirely sure AI is currently fit to solve cat-and-mouse games such as ad blocking.
- aethertron 9y ago
  If anti-ad-blocking countermeasures compel ads to become undetectable as ads, then they would, it seems, become non-popups, non-animated, silent, and not mess with webpage layouts. So, less annoying. That outcome looks like a significant victory to me. I am still optimistic about ad-blocking. Because the client system has the final say for how websites are displayed.
globcal 9y ago
I have always been against ads and misguiding Internet users. Ads should be strictly regulated and the Internet should be completely free and open, it is that simple.
- nsebban 9y ago
  >Ads should be strictly regulated and the Internet should be completely free and open While I completely agree with you on both points, I'm afraid both things that are mutually exclusive :(
forgotmypw 9y ago
All the more reason to use NoScript and close the tab if the site doesn't render.
nickjj 9y ago
I've been using uBlock since it came out and I just immediately leave those sites that don't function unless I disable it. Whatever content they have, someone else likely has a "good enough" alternative. I also happen to run a blog (no where near a major website) but my thought process is, you should write because you want to spread what you've learned with others, not create a platform for the sole purpose of making money. To me, having a visitor on your site is a privilege. Why would you go out of your way to interrupt and attempt to manipulate them, yet that's what so many large sites do. There's other ways to make money rather than tormenting your users.
- dbmikus 9y ago
  Should everyone do their job for free? It's reasonable to try to make money writing. A site can disable access to those using adblock, and it's reasonable to choose to avoid those websites.
- hutzlibu 9y ago
  But you are not writing for a living, so it is easy to say, just doing it for the joy and not for money. But there are people which profession is writing - and they need to get money. The normal way, unfortunately is with ads, even though nobody likes them. My preferred solution of voluntarily pay what you want ... probably takes a bit more time, to become established.
  - nickjj 9y ago
    I do write for a living, but instead of basing my business model around selling ads I went with a different approach (doing freelance work and training). I know that's not applicable to every writing industry, but those other industries have different ways to generate income too.
- dwild 9y ago
  I apply the same logic but to website that has annoying ads. You annoy me, I go somewhere else. I have the privilege to have content creators to visit, not the other way around. There is 8 billions potential visitors, there's can only be less than that potential content creator. Visiting takes no time, creating takes so much more time (if it wouldn't, well I wouldn't even read your stuff, I would do it myself). > There's other ways to make money rather than tormenting your users. Sure, but what does it have to do with me visiting your website? I'm there for a single reason, read what you got. Except if you directly sell me what you write using a paywall, if you have a sideline, than what you do is ADVERTISING, which let me remind you, you don't like (I don't either). At least using advertising on the side of what you read, the text is no longer an advertisement, just what's beside it (which is clearly labeled and clearly ads). Since the explosion of adblocker and the effect was increased after the Youtube Adpocalypse, there is so much more sponsored content produced, it's disgusting. I can live with some of it but currently, it just becomes worse and worse.
dhimes 9y ago
As I've said many times I don't mind ads, but I block trackers. What these websites need to understand is that this is the market in action. We can bemoan trackers. We can legislate against them (at least in principle). But if WEBSITES were to LOSE MONEY if as a result of using trackers and therefore NOT USE THEM then the companies hoarding our data would have to find another business model or go out of business. Using ad/tracking blockers is the morally correct choice if you want the market to handle this.
- rplnt 9y ago
  > As I've said many times I don't mind ads Have you seen the web without an ad blocker though?
  - dhimes 9y ago
    I definitely agree that some sites are better than others. I guess I should clarify- in principle I don't mind the concept of showing me ads to pay for a site. I do mind the concept of tracking me. In my view site-related ads have a higher probability of being relevant to me than search-engine ads.
    - dhimes 9y ago
      Came back to add: For the first time ever, I was watching a youtube vid that was interrupted to play an ad. Ugh. I hope it doesn't go that way. I don't even know what the ad was for.
  - donatj 9y ago
    Unpopular opinion, but I more often than not find the sites plastered with ads to be things I’m better off not having in my life. Junk news, clickbait lists, I just don’t bother. There is a single site I use regularly that is ad ridden, and I use Brave for it basically exclusively. I can see that they accept Brave Payments as well, so I don’t feel too bad about it.
wdn 9y ago
Without adblocking, the web is unusable for most sites. Full page ads, video ads that follow you while you scrolling, popup, malwares, bitcoin mining, tracking, etc... TBH, the only solution is browser makers put out an ad acceptable standard. However, with Google's revenue base on ads, I doubt there will be any change to it until someone come along and disrupted the browsers.
- belorn 9y ago
  Its like email. Email without spam filters is unusable for most people. Scams, fraud, malware, targeting of vulnerable people in society. At some point people have enough and the market falls into even further decay. The web is where email were before 2000, still somewhat usable without a blocker but has reached the breaking point for a lot of users. The major difference between email and web advertisement is that the web has so much more money invested into the system, so the browsers and the biggest advertisement system that exist is trying to save the market by ad acceptable standard. Will be interesting to see if they can do what email advertisement could not. Personally I doubt it, as email, scam, and fraud is remains something which the publishers refuse to take responsibility when distributing. Practically every country in the world has advertisement laws, except that none of them is followed on the web.
- notatoad 9y ago
  >the only solution is browser makers put out an ad acceptable standard. However, with Google's revenue base on ads... funny you should call out google for this, as in february chrome will start blocking ads (including google's) on websites that violate the policies defined here: https://www.betterads.org/standards/ https://www.betterads.org/standards/ https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/12/better-ads https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/12/better-ads
ravenstine 9y ago
Y'know, you could not force multiple tracker scripts and obtrusive ads on me. Stupid bastards. The sad part is that anti-adblocking may work in their favor because the average person isn't going to go as far as to stop using certain websites or turn off JavaScript. It may get to that point with me, though. I already refuse to use most websites that try to block my ad blocker, autoplay videos, open modals too early, etc. It's not about ads, but the types of ads that are presented. There would be backlash if the types of ads we see on the internet were equally as plastered everywhere in real life, but for some reason we've just got to deal with it on the web. I generally don't disdain people for doing things for a living, but I'd openly thumb my nose at developers and anyone else involved in thwarting adblockers and tracking blockers. Talk about a sisyphean job that helps nobody except one of the slimiest industries to exist. A lot of people would be willing to pay for web content; Patreon and the wealth of content on YouTube are a testament to this. But websites that let you pay to remove ads have a problem, and it's that they don't use a unified system to manage subscriptions. The user is somehow supposed to manage what sites they're subscribed to. It'd make more sense if news sites, for example, could integrate with a service where you could manage your subscriptions to these sites as well as more content.
danjoc 9y ago
The solution is to use an ad block that clicks all the ads, like Ad Nauseum. Then I'm happy and the publisher is happy.
donatj 9y ago
HN in the same breath: - We miss the old internet of independent creators. - We love ad blockers. The rise of the second has in no small part injured the first. Money is a big incentive for independent creators, and removing it from the equation has a chilling effect.
dpedu 9y ago
When a site asks me to turn off my ad blocker, I read this as "please trust us not to serve annoying or unsafe ads, and pay for us to do so." Trust? Me pay for it? Pass.
uallo 9y ago
This article got me thinking. There should be an ad company without any tracking. And the only company that I would actually trust with this is Mozilla.

244 points by ytNumbers 9y ago

Interesting how the response of sites with terrible user experiences caused by ad tech is not to say “oh, how can we change our ads so people will accept them?” but rather to find ways to make their user experiences even more horrible, e.g. popping up new unwanted interruptions accusing you of having an ad-blocker. Hey big web sites, here is the solution, and I won’t even charge you for it: stop making terrible user experiences. I am not trying to block your ad; I am blocking your carelessly-written malware-laden code, your obnoxious pop-ups, your auto-playing videos, your shove-in-my-face-at-the-worst-time messages, your unreasonable consumption of my mobile data, and everything that is making a simple article difficult to load. I’ll even tell you how to fix this: make more simple text ads, or images that are not animated and not peppered with distracting colors. Make the first paragraph of every article a nice little blurb telling me more about a company that pays you to advertise for them. Put some cute ads in muted colors inline with the content. Create a couple simple links to things that cost money that could support you (apps, T-shirts or whatever). In short, don’t be a complete jerk to the people you apparently “need” to help maintain the costs of your site.

krapp 9y ago
Do many sites have that much direct editorial control over the ads they run? I've only ever done a little ad banner work so I don't know how it is for "large" sites, but I assume the people writing and maintaining the code are not the ones actually selling or creating the ads. I assume those decisions are made between sales and the client.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  Any site that doesn’t control the content of their ads deserve to be starved out of business as fast as possible by ad blockers. That is: I don’t mind ads, I just don’t accept “adtech”.
  - krapp 9y ago
    Advertisers tend not to be willing to give that much control to whatever medium they're advertising in. More often than not, they can dictate terms because they drive revenue.
    - alkonaut 9y ago
      I understand that. But once adblocking ensures that the cost of an impression via an “ad network” is an order of magnitude higher than the alternative - their trust will likely increase.
    - CaptSpify 9y ago
      Well advertisers have clearly shown that they can't be responsible with the controls they have. It's time their tools are taken away. I'm not sure that how this should happen, but this is a clear sign that something in this system is seriously broken.
    - zipwitch 9y ago
      And they then use that leverage to attack the readers/viewers. Speaking for myself, I will see the internet wither and die before I'll accept that as a valid model for anything.
getaclue99 9y ago
You do realize that these websites give zero shits about you, right? “Oh no, this megacorporation is willing to exploit everyone for a profit, but maybe they’ll see the error of their ways and back out of this lucrative revenue model!” Widen up, dude. These websites don’t care about you as a user. You’re a metric, you’re a fucking dot on a graph at a board meeting where a small number of people in suits decide how best to extract every last red cent from you and the millions of other cattle that only exist to fuel their fucking empire.
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't post rageful rants to HN. Some websites may treat their users as cattle, but that's no reason to spoil this one.
- makecheck 9y ago
  One can find many examples of corporations successfully making money on things that aren’t good (such as harm to people and the environment). Web sites are merely the latest. Just because terrible companies exist and are “successful” doesn’t mean that they’re not crappy and it sure doesn’t mean we should give up and not work for something better.
danso 9y ago
> “oh, how can we change our ads so people will accept them?” If a single website -- say, your local or regional news site -- overhauled its ad experience to become more user-friendly, how would you even notice, if their ad server was added to your ad blocker's blacklist?
- TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
  Host ads as first-party content?
  - intrasight 9y ago
    This is obviously the right solution. It's what print newspapers and magazines do. Why isn't there a quality first-party ad platform? Is there a business opportunity here?
    - danso 9y ago
      Some non-legacy news sites do make ads first-party content, i.e. native advertising or sponsored content. BuzzFeed is probably the most prolific at it [0], with a great tech team and focus, but even BuzzFeed is floundering when it comes to revenue targets. I think Quartz [1] also does it well (though it's also part of the Atlantic media group. Newer outlets do it well too -- e.g. theoutline.com and axios.com -- but both are too new to know how viable their business is. Of the legacy outlets, New York Times is in the forefront as it is in most digital categories (the creators of D3, Backbone, and other tech have been on the payroll), but most of their gains seem to have come from digital subscriptions, with digital advertising still nowhere close to offsetting the loss in print ad revenue [2] I'm guessing the reason why native advertising hasn't been the status quo is related to inertia and the timing of seismic change in the industry. When I was in j-school many years ago, the professors were fond of saying that newspapers was basically money printers with profit margins only rivaled by the cocaine trade -- though this was only the case after TV and radio crushed the industry, to the point that most cities became one-newspaper monopolies. At around the time of the digital boom, i.e. 90s and mid-200s, regional and local newspapers were floundering and bigger players figured it be wise to swoop them up and turn one-city monopolies into regional monopolies. The NYT famously bought the Boston Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion -- and then sold it for $70m in 2013 [3]. McClatchy had become the 3rd biggest publisher after buying the Knight-Ridder chain for $4.5 billion in 2006 [4] and racking up $2B in debt as the entire industry was facing double digit drops in revenue. And all of this was about the time when publishers realized (too late) that Craigslist had effectively decimated everyone: classified ads were once as much as 20-25% of a newspaper's revenue. All this is to say that the news business definitely had the money to blow on innovation [5], but by the time they realized how fucked the Internet was going to make things, they weren't in a position of confidence and stability. There was some efforts -- I think cars.com was a bright spot for McClatchy and Tribune [6] -- but all too little and too late. The shitty ads that I see news sites serving up seem to me to be a symptom of legacy inertia and existential panic -- going with DoubleClick and other shitty 3rd-party ads probably seemed like the most efficient solution. Remember that most of these companies still have significant print ad departments, because these ads still make way more money than digital. And then there's the traditional firewall between the editorial and ad departments. I worked at a McClatchy newspaper as a reporter and a developer and there were many problems arising from the fact that digital operations were basically under the business side, and effectively in an entirely different building. I think the other problem is that ads are fundamentally a different experience in print than they are on the web (and for TV and radio). Newspapers have a whole page to work with for ad layout, and ads can come in all kinds of sizes and formats, from full-page ads to small bottom corner ads to tiny classifieds. When newspapers were rolling in money, they were also the primary places for the average citizen to find out things like stock prices, government auctions/notices, apartment rentals, and local sales and events. My parents (Vietnamese refugees) weren't much into reading English publications, but we subscribed to the local newspaper's weekend edition because it was chock full of ads and coupons. Ads were a destination -- arguably, for the average person, they were more valuable and desired than the newspaper's actual editorial content, in the way that people might watch the Super Bowl just for the ads. In today's web environment, is there any normal mindset in which people actively seek out ads (other than looking them up on YouTube if you missed the Super Bowl)? The kind of native advertising that BuzzFeed et. al seem to have the most success with are advertorials that don't seem like ads. Unfortunately, this creates its own conflict with news-minded organizations. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/12/buzzhome/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/12/buzzhome/ [1] https://nypost.com/2017/11/16/buzzfeeds-revenue-to-fall-70m-short-of-target/ https://nypost.com/2017/11/16/buzzfeeds-revenue-to-fall-70m-... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/business/media/new-york-times-earnings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/business/media/new-york-t... [3] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/business/media/new-york-times-company-sells-boston-globe.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/business/media/new-york-ti... [4] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/business/media/06paper.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/business/media/06paper.htm... [5] http://archives.cjr.org/feature/the_newspaper_that_almost_seized_the_future.php http://archives.cjr.org/feature/the_newspaper_that_almost_se... [6] http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-cars-spinoff-0908-biz-20160907-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-cars-spinoff-0908-...
noncoml 9y ago
I had to disable my ad blocker today to try out another plugin. The sites were 2-3x slower to load. There is no way anyone can convince me to disable my ad blocker again.
lscotte 9y ago
Oh... I, like most people, am actually intentionally blocking the ads.
lwansbrough 9y ago
> Interesting how the response of sites with terrible user experiences caused by ad tech is not to say “oh, how can we change our ads so people will accept them?” but rather to find ways to make their user experiences even more horrible, e.g. popping up new unwanted interruptions accusing you of having an ad-blocker. That's not how online advertising works. If a user doesn't like ads, they block all ads indiscriminately. Changing ads doesn't do anything, because users will always block ads regardless of their quality, at least until the vast majority of ads are "acceptable" -- and even then, many demographics will continue blocking anyway. What is "acceptable", anyway? Make the ad small enough and/or dumb enough that it is no longer worth anything to the advertiser? > stop making terrible user experiences. There are plenty of websites with acceptable UX (or UX that isn't practically made worse by ads) that use ads. How many of them are on your whitelist? Do you even know which sites are showing ads if you use an adblocker? > I’ll even tell you how to fix this: make more simple text ads, or images that are not animated and not peppered with distracting colors. While this is a reasonable request, it doesn't change the fact that many/most people now have an adblocker on their browser. There's no doubt this problem has been exasperated by malicious ad creatives. But the onus of correcting the problem lies in the hands of BOTH adblocker developers AND the online ads industry (including publishers, exchanges, and advertisers.)
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  I always forget to install my ad-blocker after an install. Once I start browsing the web I re-install it. If ads weren't so terrible, I would likely just forget to install it.
- nasredin 9y ago
  >But the onus of correcting the problem lies in the hands of BOTH adblocker developers AND the online ads industry (including publishers, exchanges, and advertisers.) Disagree. Adblock developers should block ads. Advertising-surveillance companies should die. Website owners should personally vet AND HOST ads on their sites. It's all very simple in my opinion. --- Why do you think adblocking is such a "problem" for some? Because almost all ads are hosted on third party servers. I know a couple small blogs that host image ads on the side of the page and it's not blocked in any default ABP lists. The "adbros" brought this upon themselves. This war on our minds is so pervasive they got fanboys on most major tech forums always defending them. These people are either in the industry themselves or suffering from the Battered Wife Syndrome: "If only adblock developers weren't so mean... maybe these adbros would stop pushing malware and spying on us". Also "gorhill" is an asshole.
CaptSpify 9y ago
Although I agree with your first point, I think this is a symptom of a much larger problem that we are ignoring: We have a serious economic problem in which we can't fund things that we want and need. Instead of making advertising "less bad", we should be looking into alternative ways to fund sites and services. Advertising in it's current form simply needs to go.
- jacques_chester 9y ago
  My bet is microsubscription, but that's only because it's something I've been working on (Robojar). Part of my motivation has been to make the best parts of the early web economically viable. For a few years it was normal to have relatively successful small sites with good writing and regular readers. They've largely been driven out by the economics of clickbait. I'd like to help that come back by breaking the rigid nexus between traffic and revenue. Adblock/flattr are doing something very similar. Google Contributor was, but seems to have morphed into a prepaid micropayment scheme. Patreon splits the middle. I still think the model where a single subscription fee is distributed amongst participating sites/services/apps approximately according to usage is the best overall model.
  - marcusjt 9y ago
    Flattr http://flattr.com http://flattr.com is the best solution out there IMHO, Patreon is good but only makes sense if you're a regular/loyal consumer of a source.
    - jacques_chester 9y ago
      Flattr is the closest to what I'm aiming at. Some minor scheme differences, quite distinct implementation. One thing I can do differently is to interoperate smoothly with paywalls without revealing user identity.

lainon 9y ago

Discussion of said paper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16012403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16012403

borplk 9y ago

I recently saw one site that said "It looks like you are using an ad-blocker. So you must wait 10 seconds.". And had an overlay with a countdown.

eeereerews 9y ago
Maybe they're getting paid per unit of user suffering.
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  Or maybe they were using a cryptocurrency miner during those 10 seconds as a substitute for ads.
  - charonn0 9y ago
    That's not a bad idea, provided they were up front about it.
  - borplk 9y ago
    That kind of setup doesn't work. They will keep it honest for the first 24 hours of rolling it out. Then it will creep from "during those 10 seconds" to "the entire time".
aembleton 9y ago
What happens if you block javascript? What about finding just the javascript file that was causing this to happen and blocking that?

lousken 9y ago

Disabling javascript is the best anti-anti-adblock solution. I wish chrome added an option for tampermonkey scripts to be run with disabled js, that would make this solution perfect.

severine 9y ago
Maybe you can test this extension [1] in Chrome? Works great in Firefox, where bookmarklets are tricky sometimes due to some CSP voodoo. [1] https://github.com/mems/bookmarklets-context-menu https://github.com/mems/bookmarklets-context-menu
- Groxx 9y ago
  Yup. It's a long-standing issue. Join in the fun: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=866522 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=866522
  - severine 9y ago
    :) Guess where I found the extension? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=866522#c83 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=866522#c83
freedomben 9y ago
Brave (at least on mobile) has a handy toggle by default right in the tool bar for blocking javascript and trackers. I don't use anything else on mobile anymore. Been using it about 50% of the time on desktop as well. Thinking about doing the micro-payments thing they offer.
uwu 9y ago
> I wish chrome added an option for tampermonkey scripts to be run with disabled js, that would make this solution perfect. that's up to tampermonkey but maybe it's possible that google wouldn't like it since it would let userscripts access extension apis what tampermonkey does is inserting the script into the page in a script tag to isolate it from the extension[1] and let it access variables defined by scripts on the page, but if scripts are blocked on the page it just doesn't run i made my own custom js manager (with no userscript api support) that lets you choose if the script should be ran in the extension or page context (defaults to extension which works with scripts blocked) but i don't know if it's in good enough state to put on the internet and i've never really made things for anyone but myself [1] https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/content_scripts#execution-environment https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/content_scripts#exec...

sixtypoundhound 9y ago

If you're in a niche with decent prospects for contextual advertising, there's an easy way around most ad-blockers. Set up a small piece of editorial content and embed some affiliate links into it.

jasonkostempski 9y ago
If I came to a site, liked what it was about, noticed it didn't get any hits by uBO and saw an affiliate link with text (no images hosted elsewhere) like "Do you need AAA batteries and would like to support our site? Click Here", it's very likely I would click the link if I will need the thing any time soon. It doesn't have to be related to the content of the page or fit the genre of the site, it doesn't need to try and guess exactly what I need at this very second or prey on my insecurities. Just links to basic necessities.
- user5994461 9y ago
  To be fair, some contextual amazon recommendations would probably fare better than most stupid ads.
  - jasonkostempski 9y ago
    Thats exactly the edge of the cliff everyone jumped off so many years ago. Even if they don't have to drop in a third-party JS snippet on their site to get that feature, now you have to question the motives of the author.
intrasight 9y ago
Even better - just have a text message "Sponsored by XYZ". This has worked for hundreds of years. I don't see why it can't work now.

strooper 9y ago

While these anti ad blockers may succeed confusing pattern matching ad blockers, how are they going to work against domain/IP list based (i.e. hosts file) ones?

jancsika 9y ago

Some adtech startup should just quit playing games and go full creeper mode: * simple text-only ads * give the advertisers the tools to generate text content that is minimally distracting, maximally invasive, maximally creepy, and maximally personally-identifying "$35,000 in debt, unemployed, recently dumped and insecure about your male sexual identity? You deserve this special price on Axe Body Spray..." The buzz alone would get people to turn off their ad-blockers just to see what content gets generated for them.

reificator 9y ago
So an updated version of the classic browser/IP/country/OS sign people used in their forum signatures? http://www.danasoft.com/vipersig.jpg http://www.danasoft.com/vipersig.jpg
PrimHelios 9y ago
If anything, I would keep my adblocker enabled just to see those creepy ads, that would make for some interesting browsing sessions.
kilroy123 9y ago
It's that pretty much Google ads?
- jancsika 9y ago
  No, because Google advises their advertisers not to creep out their potential customers. AFAICT an ad from Google is chosen based on the reams of data Google has about me, but the content of the ad seems generic (or at least seems like it's meant to come off as generic so as not to creep me out). The hypothetical adtech I'm describing would of course choose the ad based similarly on reams of data about me, but the content of the ad would itself also be worded using invasive data about me. Google ad: "get some cheap technical degree" Creeperville Ad: "climb out of your 35,000+ debt with a technical degree" There are even more convincing examples wrt pornography but I'd rather not go down that rabbit hole.
raguuu 9y ago

LeoPanthera 9y ago

Oh, the irony. https://i.imgur.com/uplpnxv.png https://i.imgur.com/uplpnxv.png

mschuster91 9y ago
Actually, I don't mind these. You can click them away if you want and it wont reappear (at least on TC, on spiegel.de the nagscreen reappears after 20s or so of reading time).
userbinator 9y ago
I have JavaScript off and I don't get that... I suppose JS off doesn't count as an ad-blocker, despite how effective it is. (I know there are many more sites these days rendering simple static content with JS, possibly in an attempt to defeat/confuse others like me --- but my solution for them is either Google's text-only cache, or the Back button. Chances are I can find the same or even better content elsewhere; forcing me to jump through hoops ensures I'm not coming back.)
antimatter 9y ago
Can someone explain to me why they want to show you the ad even when they don't care if you look at it, let alone click on it? Are advertisers still paying for just showing the ad?
- betterunix2 9y ago
  Yes, because just seeing the ad is effective in many cases; for example, brand advertising. (Edit: note that even though you may not look at it directly, it is still effective)
freedomben 9y ago
TBF, the article does admit as much. I also don't mind this sort of thing as long as it's a reasonable request (not sure if it is tho cause I block all javascript lol)

williamstein 9y ago

I wish I could view a version of Hacker News in which ALL links to articles that are behind a paywall are just hidden from me. I would just rather not see them at all.

aaronchall 9y ago

In the beginning, I tried to avoid ad-blockers in the beginning out of consideration for the sustainability of the content providers. It took one site for me to start using ad-blockers. Facebook: they persistently were showing me ads for online MBA programs when I already had completed a better brick-and-mortar one. I recall that I tried complaining and got no response. For some psychological reason, that did it. I installed an ad-blocker on my and my wife's laptops and never looked back. If the big sites had been more conscientious about their ad strategy (and specifically allowing people more control over what shows up on their screens) we might not be in an escalating technological war over ads.

dhimes 9y ago
I've actually tried telling the company that purchased a useless ad that it's wasting its money- to no avail. I still see ads for something I won't re-purchase for five years or so.

orbitingpluto 9y ago

Okay, here's a crazy idea for advertisers. Tie the advertisement to the type of content that the user is already there to read about. Then you can serve ads from the content web server and make it indistinguishable from content, completely unobtrusive, completely noninvasive, and maybe even welcome.

MisterBastahrd 9y ago
They already do this if possible. The VAST majority of publishers are selling only a small percentage of their own ad space (the giants of the industry might be different, but even they probably have third party networks to fill gaps in their inventory). Instead, they partner with networks who auction ads off to the highest bidder. That bidder is usually going to be a company who trusts the ad network to track users and show ads relevant to either the interests they've shown or the current content. I work with a publisher on these sorts of things (I am not an ad network, though). Some of those networks have strict prohibitions against showing ads on pages featuring certain types of content, and so we've had to build our own system to display ads on those pages which work with networks which are fine with that content. The publisher does sell its own ad spaces to interested local parties, but these are usually accompanied by periodical ad sales because the company ultimately makes more money selling ads through networks.
ISL 9y ago
That's what adwords tries to do. There's a substantial premium on relevance.
Jedi72 9y ago
In theory this is a good idea but in practice it leads to thousands of low quality "top ten things you need when going camping" style websites only created to sell things.
- ByThyGrace 9y ago
  I'm under the impression those thousands of low quality ad infested click-baiting websites already exist.

Overtonwindow 9y ago

And I will continue to deploy anti-anti-adblock measures.

leeoniya 9y ago

the irony on full display (at the linked article) in chrome devtools / record perf timeline and network log. incognito: 4.4mb, 7000ms scripting, 365 requests, onload: 7600ms with uMatrix (no third party shit): 612kb, 190ms of scripting, 56 requests, onload: 500ms this is on a 300MBit connection

PhantomGremlin 9y ago
The linked article is highly readable and loads very quickly simply by disabling all JavaScript on the site. Which I do by default. Thank you NoScript.
- freedomben 9y ago
  This is the only way to live. Been doing it for years and while I do end up whitelisting a lot (especially on a new browser) it is so much easier and less annoying than dealing with the ads and crappy scripts.
ktta 9y ago
AMP versions of some websites are better https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/27/thousands-of-major-sites-are-taking-silent-anti-ad-blocking-measures/amp/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/27/thousands-of-major-sites-a...
- pmlnr 9y ago
  True. However, I refuse to use AMP as long as it's a google vendor lock in. Also not the solution; if they can provide an amp version without all the tracking and ad JS they could just as simply provide an actual, working website as well.
true_religion 9y ago
The article took 7.8 seconds to "fully" load for me, however the text was readable in under 300ms. Loading ads of screen doesn't bother me. Also, I'm not sure where the irony is here. They're talking about anti-adblocking, so it's hardly ironic that they use advertisements themselves.

leeoniya 9y ago

> It turns out that many ad providers are offering anti-blocking tech in the form of scripts that produce a variety of “bait” content that’s ad-like — for instance, images or elements named and tagged in such a way that they will trigger ad blockers, tipping the site off. you don't need a provider to help detect ad blocking in most cases. just serve a script from your server called `ads.js` that modifies some global js variable or does an ajax post to some endpoint indicating it was served....or "pixel.gif".

sharpercoder 9y ago

I wish content suppliers would listen more to clients. Clients want more content without ads, so why not invest more into offering content without ads?

ISL 9y ago
Content suppliers would like to eat. Many clients don't want to pay for content, and nobody has yet figured out how to make micropayments blossom.
- imgabe 9y ago
  Here's a hint: if nobody wants to pay for what you're selling, sell something else.
  - Thorncorona 9y ago
    If anybody listened to your advice then search engines, stack overflow, web forums, news agencies, and Reddit would simply disappear.
    - executesorder66 9y ago
      Or be replaced by open source alternatives. And if you are wondering why they haven't already, it's because google/stackoverflow/reddit etc. are already providing the service for 'free'. So as soon as they shut down, someone else will make an alternative.
      - IronKettle 9y ago
        > So as soon as they shut down, someone else will make an alternative. They exist already. They're mostly horrible. I pretty religiously use DDG, but even then I probably use the !g operator every third search or so. Reddit's already almost entirely open-source IIRC. People have used it to make alternatives. Check out Voat, you can see the alternative in action (you might not like what you find, though).

tinus_hn 9y ago

If they would go back to ads hosted on their own servers they likely wouldn’t get blocked. That means the ad network doesn’t get to track the users though.

RandomInteger4 9y ago

I use an ad blocker, because otherwise the web is unusable. Maybe if (1) fewer ads pumped up CPU and memory usage for a page, and (2) companies didn't give their non-technical asshole free reign over placing scripts on the page, then maybe many of these sites wouldn't be so bad to visit without an ad blocker.

PrimHelios 9y ago
Animated ads actually give me sensory overload. If a site could promise non-moving ads, I'd gladly whitelist them. It's amazing how many sites think you'll just accept incredibly intrusive and annoying banners.
- itronitron 9y ago
  I feel like we are reaching the 'end of days' as the actual informative content on a site is typically less than 20% of the visual information on a page. I have adjusted my browsing habits to avoid sites which may be visually offensive to my sensibilities, bog down my cpu, or hang my browser. That isn't necessarily a bad thing (for me) but it certainly seems counterproductive to the site owners' goals.
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  I used to whitelist all webcomics I read, then one served malicious flash and another started aggressive mobile redirects to advertisement pages Now I just siphon the images into a rss feed. If they want my eyeball they better start putting up banners like they used to. Active content can fuck right off.
- godelski 9y ago
  Or the ads with sounds. Even just auto starting videos. News sites are bad at this.
- scaryclam 9y ago
  I'll tend to whitelist sites that I find useful, but the moment a distracting ad shows, the ad blocker goes back on. I understand the reason some sites rely on ad revenue, and I sympathise when theyre not given a chance, but if they can't be civil to their users then I see no reason for their users to put up with it.

dingo_bat 9y ago

I'm also taking silent ad-blocking measures. So I think it's fair.

jcrawfordor 9y ago

When I worked as an intrusion analyst, I worked on a lot of content to detect domain generation algorithms (DGA) that are sometimes used by botnets and other malware for more robust command and control. Over the last couple of years this has become increasingly frustrated by a lot of websites using algorithmically generated domain names in order to evade adblocker blocklists. Domains like "djbvueiabjqkna.com" are increasingly just some major news website delivering their banner ads.

nerdponx 9y ago

I've started noticing this from Google, among others. Tracking scripts are no longer explicitly named as such, or they're prefixed with some slug or GUID alongside the legitimate "functional" scripts. It's getting to a point where you need to actively monitor every network request the site makes. It's despicable and I have nothing but ill will for the data scientists, software engineers, and product managers who participate in this.

rc_bhg 9y ago
.. I mean, they would not have jobs if they did not participate in it.
- nojvek 9y ago
  Google + FB, the worlds largest online advertising companies lose probably billions to ad blockers. I’m sure quite a number of people got nice bonuses and promos for bringing some of that revenue back.
  - r00fus 9y ago
    Lose? They have monopoly positions in their respective markets and we have little choice. While I personally avoid FB and use DDG, most folks can't or aren't allowed to (no extensions).
  - stewbrew 9y ago
    They don't lose billions because some people hide annoying stuff that makes their pages esesstially unusable and have no extra benefit because ... I personally don't think this kind of online marketing actually works. I cannot imagine someone actually buying something because of some meaningless text snippet, a stupid blinking image or a video clip.
    - edanm 9y ago
      Do you really trust your personal opinion on this, versus literally an entire billion dollar industry which has an enormous incentive to get this right, and which thinks this as business DOES work?

gorhill 9y ago

In the paper, this excerpt: > We choose Adblock as it is one of the most popular. It is also possible to use Adblock Plus or uBlock, as the way they operate is exactly the same — HTTP filters and HTML element hiding. AdBlock in the Chrome store uses Adblock Plus filtering engine[1], so to say the way these two "operate is exactly the same" makes sense. However uBlock Origin uses its own code base, and is far better equipped than AdBlock/Adblock Plus to deal with anti-blockers, so to say that the way uBO operates is "exactly the same" is a stretch. * * * [1] Since version 3.0: https://help.getadblock.com/support/discussions/topics/6000038686 https://help.getadblock.com/support/discussions/topics/60000... -- it's not explicitly stated in the announcement but this code repo mirror shows it: https://github.com/kzar/watchadblock/blob/c5f5b7f535182d677462463591bd2f8e059c771e/src/lib/adblockplus.js https://github.com/kzar/watchadblock/blob/c5f5b7f535182d6774...

zzleeper 9y ago
What would you recommend for mobile? Browsing on Android with Chrome is a nightmare, and the last time I tried FF it was a bit sluggish (although it did allowed me to install extensions!)
- diminish 9y ago
  On mobile Android I mainly use Firefox equipped with ublock origin in order to save battery, bandwidth and boost performance. - This helps with all types of ads for many news and reading, - the big benefit is: opening all youtube videos on Firefox with ublock origin in order to get rid of youtube ads -
- alykhalid 9y ago
  Have you tried Firefox focus[0]. I use it on a daily basis and I am quite happy with it. [0]https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/mobile/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/mobile/
- just_observing 9y ago
  Take a look at Blockada. https://github.com/blokadaorg/blokada https://github.com/blokadaorg/blokada

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

godzillabrennus 9y ago

I was reading the news with Safari on iOS 11.2 with a new iPhone X recently. As I was browsing different sites I noticed I was getting redirected to those scammy "You've won a cruise" style websites. I had no idea ads were so out of control. I've been using ad blocking technology for 10+ years and never see it first hand. It's pretty crazy that website operators have to create such a terrible user experience to survive these days.

kstrauser 9y ago
I've been using 1Blocker on iOS for ages now and can't tolerate the mobile web without it. There are several other good blockers, too, including Firefox Focus. I highly, highly recommend using one.

nimbius 9y ago

Ads are inherently psychologically abusive, targeting your insecurities and exploiting sex and basic instinct to move product. There needs to be a fundamental shift from the old tv and radio model of advertisers targeting everyone through inescapable ham fisted and manipulative ads, to a system that is all but dormant until I query it for a service. Show me nothing, nothing at all, until I make the effort to ask the question "what products are available for $need?" If I'm on a website and begin searching, give the site the ad revenue.

tylerhou 9y ago
> Ads are inherently psychologically abusive, targeting your insecurities and exploiting sex and basic instinct to move product. This is a pretty wild claim. Most ads I see are relatively tame (like the “Build on AWS” and iPhone X ads I see around San Francisco), and I don’t see them “exploiting sex or basic instinct.”
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  Ads targeted at women almost universally target their vulnerabilities in subtle ways, many of which are culturally cultivated and manipulated by marketers. Consider how the food industry plays on weight anxiety: "light", "guilt free" (why should anyone feel guilt over eating?), "sinful", "temptation", "fear X". All the foods are "out to kill you" or at least make you "fat and undesirable". It's all manufactured, alarmist fear-mongering designed to sell stuff. It works. Very few people see through this game. This then extends to other industries. Chocolate is heavily marketed to women as a "decadent" "indulgence" for those times you want to let loose the strictures of life. So the diamond industry cooks up a way to sell crap brown diamonds specifically to women as a way to treat themselves with "chocolate" ice. No man required so you can express your feminism in full force. Go girl power! This changes the very language we use. Decadent no longer has its original meaning of severe depravity any more because advertisers co-opted it in the mid-70's to apply whenever you eat a candy bar. Now it's just a bon mot women's pulp lit. sprinkles in every few paragraphs regardless of the topic. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=decadent+chocolate&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1940&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cdecadent%20chocolate%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bdecadent%20chocolate%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BDecadent%20Chocolate%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=decadent+choco...

threatofrain 9y ago

I find that ad blocking is a must for older relatives, and I think anyone managing technological access for the elderly ought to also be installing ad block. Advertisers love to scare old people in every way, and then peddling them scam solutions and pills.

jakeogh 9y ago

starting at the DNS level makes things much smoother: https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago

Advertisers need to fuck off. Ads are never going to work on the web - the ad bubble needs to pop already! Advertising on the web is a horrifying web of fraud, psuedoscience, and invasive tracking and sensitive data hoarding. Frankly, it should have been outlawed by now.

raguuu 9y ago
While everything that is going on with ads is horrible, it does work. This is very wrong side to hope for things get better. There is fraud but companies pay premium for ads because of it and in the end customers.
snarfy 9y ago
I've been browsing the web since Mosaic and have never bought a product by clicking on an ad. I may learn of a new product by seeing an ad, and in that sense it worked, but never by clicking on it. The point being there is absolutely no reason for any ad to have javascript associated with it.
username223 9y ago
> the ad bubble needs to pop already! I agree, but it will be ugly. These "ad" companies are really surveillance companies who can currently print money by selling ads. When the bubble pops, they'll still have all of their surveillance data, but will be forced to sell it in different and sleazier ways. Think credit reporting that is technically not "credit reporting," job applicant screening based on web histories, reporting on political dissidents, etc. FB/GOOG will get seriously evil as they collapse.

nkrisc 9y ago

At this point use of an ad-blocker for me is no longer a question about ethics or business models or the like, but about security. I use an ad blocker because ad networks serve malware. I'm sure they don't mean to, but they do, so I block them. I'm no longer concerned with their intent, but concerned with what is actually happening.

_ph_ 9y ago

I wish, instead of fighting Ad Blockers, they would try as hard to fix they way they run ads. Not to mention the sites, which only exist to display ads and practically don't have their own content except for clickbait headlines. A side comment: while blocking ads might reduce revenue for sites, it also means the advertiser has to pay for views by people who wouldn't click on the ads anyway.

tdb7893 9y ago
The thing is that ad blockers don't often don't discriminate between acceptable ads and unacceptable ads and just block everything. Even if you put a lot of effort to make your ads better most people will just block them regardless.
- _ph_ 9y ago
  Yes, that is the collateral damage inflicted by participating at the current ad model far to long. However, for sites who really want to change, this isn't a real problem. First of all, if you don't serve ads via "ad networks" but as part of your hostet content, I don't think the ads are getting blocked by default. Also, if a site with true content and regular readers has a proper ad model, they can just ask their readers to whitelist their site. If you don't just ask because you don't want to get your ads blocked, but at the same time can tell your readers why this won't be a problem for them, I think many would whitelist the site - if whitelisting is needed at all.
  - tcd 9y ago
    Yeah, any site that pops-up "pls whitelist us!!" gets an instant X on the tab from me. It sucks, but I will never tolerate ads of any kind, no matter how good or bad. To me, they are done, along with tracking on the web (including mobile). Oh, and before you scream at me, what about people that simply disable JS, which is basically how all of this works anyway. I'm not entitled to a free web, I get that, but ads are a failing revenue model due to years of sustained abuse, and that damage is not going to be reversed ant time soon.

deleted 9y ago

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reacharavindh 9y ago

I wonder why the major websites are not going for the old way of "self-hosted" ads where the ad networks buy a space in the website and the website shows it at that space from their own domain and it is harmless.. That I'd consider allowing in my laptop. It's not the ads themselves that make me run to the blockers. It's their creepiness and tracking. If they're just images shown same to everybody, then I'm okay.

InternetUser 9y ago
But the millions of people working at news websites and at ad companies need to feed themselves and their families. What do you have to say to them?
- reacharavindh 9y ago
  I think I was not clear. I meant to say that instead of hitting the users with creepy ads that the users block anyway or have developed a "mental ignore", May be the ad companies can sell harmless image ads that content publishers can serve from the same domain as the content is. No tracking, no user customizations. The user knows what they click. Why would millions of people working at ad companies go out of business in the above scenario? The ines that are writing creepy user tracking code will have to go. But, I don't sympathize with them. They will find some Tyler's meaningful to do with their skills. Imho, just because millions are doing/depending on the creepy stuff doesn't justify their presence.

marban 9y ago

I'm not opposed to ads per se but simply the extra workload it puts on the browser. What baffles me though is the across the board negativity and Robin Hood-like mentality here from people who are, to a large part, directly or indirectly monetizing their work by means of advertising.

smashingfiasco 9y ago

I use an ad-blocker and have since 2011. To get around broken/hidden content, I just copy/paste the link into Terminal after $lynx. Works almost every time.

dhimes 9y ago
I do this too for some sites.

paulie_a 9y ago

So i now have two choices: mentally blacklist these websites and when I forget, actively make sure to click every stupid ad possible.

minikites 9y ago

Given that banner ads are a major malware vector, I'll disable my ad-blocker when sites take responsibility and reimburse me for the time and money spent repairing computers affected by the malware they inevitably end up serving.

doesnt_know 9y ago

I'd be happy to install an extension that blocks all sites/content that consider viewing ads a prerequisite for accessing their content. I run an ad/analytic blocker, and I will never turn it off. I also understand that content creation and hosting costs money. If you're not a company that I already give money to (bank, insurance, other meat space service) then I accept the ad-for-content relationship and choose not to view the content. The biggest problems are that I can't scale randomly adding domains to a host file, and it's difficult to know the intent of content creators/owners regarding ads. It would be nice to have a signal, maybe a html tag in the header or something to state the intent regarding ads. I would set my browser/an extension to honor it and block access to content instead of accepting ads.

Matheus28 9y ago
Honorable, but 99% of the people don't care. They just want their free content with no ads. (numbers completely made up on the spot)

yilugurlu 9y ago

IAB is already providing a tool to detect adblockers. https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/AdBlockDetection https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/AdBlockDetec...

executesorder66 9y ago
Hmm, one more thing to block.
dawnerd 9y ago
Cool so my adblocker will detect their script and block it too.

snarfy 9y ago

I use uBlock. When I get a page that pops up "We see you are using an ad blocker...", I hit Q and edit the page until it works again.

cbcoutinho 9y ago
How does this work? I'm not in webdev so I don't know the ins and outs of browser editing, is it really possible to only accept a portion of a website and get around those things? Wouldn't this also be useful for getting around pay-to-view sites as well?
- iaml 9y ago
  Those types of limitations can be implemented either client or server -side. When it's clientside, removing overlays from DOM can easily circumvent paywalls and such, but when it's server side, there's nothing you can do.
  - snarfy 9y ago
    They usually don't send you the content for a paywall without a login. But adblock detection is another story. They need to render the ad to detect that it's being blocked. They could use some js to do this before downloading the rest of the content, but they usually don't.

mikequinlan 9y ago

Ad blocking seems like a possible application for machine learning, to distinguish between ads and content. Anti-ad blocking also seems like a possible application for machine learning, to distinguish clients that are blocking ads and those that are not. In a battle between the two it seems like the anti-ad blocking side will win. They have resources (big companies with lots of money and server farms, versus small developers and browser-adons) and incentive (earning money versus improving my web experience). I use an ad-blocker but I am not optimistic about the future of ad-blockers.

luch 9y ago
Using machine learning for ad blocking suffers from the same issue malware detection has : your "environment" will actively try to game your detection system, which can greatly hinders the learning phase. I'm not entirely sure AI is currently fit to solve cat-and-mouse games such as ad blocking.
aethertron 9y ago
If anti-ad-blocking countermeasures compel ads to become undetectable as ads, then they would, it seems, become non-popups, non-animated, silent, and not mess with webpage layouts. So, less annoying. That outcome looks like a significant victory to me. I am still optimistic about ad-blocking. Because the client system has the final say for how websites are displayed.

globcal 9y ago

I have always been against ads and misguiding Internet users. Ads should be strictly regulated and the Internet should be completely free and open, it is that simple.

nsebban 9y ago
>Ads should be strictly regulated and the Internet should be completely free and open While I completely agree with you on both points, I'm afraid both things that are mutually exclusive :(

forgotmypw 9y ago

All the more reason to use NoScript and close the tab if the site doesn't render.

nickjj 9y ago

I've been using uBlock since it came out and I just immediately leave those sites that don't function unless I disable it. Whatever content they have, someone else likely has a "good enough" alternative. I also happen to run a blog (no where near a major website) but my thought process is, you should write because you want to spread what you've learned with others, not create a platform for the sole purpose of making money. To me, having a visitor on your site is a privilege. Why would you go out of your way to interrupt and attempt to manipulate them, yet that's what so many large sites do. There's other ways to make money rather than tormenting your users.

dbmikus 9y ago
Should everyone do their job for free? It's reasonable to try to make money writing. A site can disable access to those using adblock, and it's reasonable to choose to avoid those websites.
hutzlibu 9y ago
But you are not writing for a living, so it is easy to say, just doing it for the joy and not for money. But there are people which profession is writing - and they need to get money. The normal way, unfortunately is with ads, even though nobody likes them. My preferred solution of voluntarily pay what you want ... probably takes a bit more time, to become established.
- nickjj 9y ago
  I do write for a living, but instead of basing my business model around selling ads I went with a different approach (doing freelance work and training). I know that's not applicable to every writing industry, but those other industries have different ways to generate income too.
dwild 9y ago
I apply the same logic but to website that has annoying ads. You annoy me, I go somewhere else. I have the privilege to have content creators to visit, not the other way around. There is 8 billions potential visitors, there's can only be less than that potential content creator. Visiting takes no time, creating takes so much more time (if it wouldn't, well I wouldn't even read your stuff, I would do it myself). > There's other ways to make money rather than tormenting your users. Sure, but what does it have to do with me visiting your website? I'm there for a single reason, read what you got. Except if you directly sell me what you write using a paywall, if you have a sideline, than what you do is ADVERTISING, which let me remind you, you don't like (I don't either). At least using advertising on the side of what you read, the text is no longer an advertisement, just what's beside it (which is clearly labeled and clearly ads). Since the explosion of adblocker and the effect was increased after the Youtube Adpocalypse, there is so much more sponsored content produced, it's disgusting. I can live with some of it but currently, it just becomes worse and worse.

dhimes 9y ago

As I've said many times I don't mind ads, but I block trackers. What these websites need to understand is that this is the market in action. We can bemoan trackers. We can legislate against them (at least in principle). But if WEBSITES were to LOSE MONEY if as a result of using trackers and therefore NOT USE THEM then the companies hoarding our data would have to find another business model or go out of business. Using ad/tracking blockers is the morally correct choice if you want the market to handle this.

rplnt 9y ago
> As I've said many times I don't mind ads Have you seen the web without an ad blocker though?
- dhimes 9y ago
  I definitely agree that some sites are better than others. I guess I should clarify- in principle I don't mind the concept of showing me ads to pay for a site. I do mind the concept of tracking me. In my view site-related ads have a higher probability of being relevant to me than search-engine ads.
  - dhimes 9y ago
    Came back to add: For the first time ever, I was watching a youtube vid that was interrupted to play an ad. Ugh. I hope it doesn't go that way. I don't even know what the ad was for.
- donatj 9y ago
  Unpopular opinion, but I more often than not find the sites plastered with ads to be things I’m better off not having in my life. Junk news, clickbait lists, I just don’t bother. There is a single site I use regularly that is ad ridden, and I use Brave for it basically exclusively. I can see that they accept Brave Payments as well, so I don’t feel too bad about it.

wdn 9y ago

Without adblocking, the web is unusable for most sites. Full page ads, video ads that follow you while you scrolling, popup, malwares, bitcoin mining, tracking, etc... TBH, the only solution is browser makers put out an ad acceptable standard. However, with Google's revenue base on ads, I doubt there will be any change to it until someone come along and disrupted the browsers.

belorn 9y ago
Its like email. Email without spam filters is unusable for most people. Scams, fraud, malware, targeting of vulnerable people in society. At some point people have enough and the market falls into even further decay. The web is where email were before 2000, still somewhat usable without a blocker but has reached the breaking point for a lot of users. The major difference between email and web advertisement is that the web has so much more money invested into the system, so the browsers and the biggest advertisement system that exist is trying to save the market by ad acceptable standard. Will be interesting to see if they can do what email advertisement could not. Personally I doubt it, as email, scam, and fraud is remains something which the publishers refuse to take responsibility when distributing. Practically every country in the world has advertisement laws, except that none of them is followed on the web.
notatoad 9y ago
>the only solution is browser makers put out an ad acceptable standard. However, with Google's revenue base on ads... funny you should call out google for this, as in february chrome will start blocking ads (including google's) on websites that violate the policies defined here: https://www.betterads.org/standards/ https://www.betterads.org/standards/ https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/12/better-ads https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/12/better-ads

ravenstine 9y ago

Y'know, you could not force multiple tracker scripts and obtrusive ads on me. Stupid bastards. The sad part is that anti-adblocking may work in their favor because the average person isn't going to go as far as to stop using certain websites or turn off JavaScript. It may get to that point with me, though. I already refuse to use most websites that try to block my ad blocker, autoplay videos, open modals too early, etc. It's not about ads, but the types of ads that are presented. There would be backlash if the types of ads we see on the internet were equally as plastered everywhere in real life, but for some reason we've just got to deal with it on the web. I generally don't disdain people for doing things for a living, but I'd openly thumb my nose at developers and anyone else involved in thwarting adblockers and tracking blockers. Talk about a sisyphean job that helps nobody except one of the slimiest industries to exist. A lot of people would be willing to pay for web content; Patreon and the wealth of content on YouTube are a testament to this. But websites that let you pay to remove ads have a problem, and it's that they don't use a unified system to manage subscriptions. The user is somehow supposed to manage what sites they're subscribed to. It'd make more sense if news sites, for example, could integrate with a service where you could manage your subscriptions to these sites as well as more content.

danjoc 9y ago

The solution is to use an ad block that clicks all the ads, like Ad Nauseum. Then I'm happy and the publisher is happy.

donatj 9y ago

HN in the same breath: - We miss the old internet of independent creators. - We love ad blockers. The rise of the second has in no small part injured the first. Money is a big incentive for independent creators, and removing it from the equation has a chilling effect.

dpedu 9y ago

When a site asks me to turn off my ad blocker, I read this as "please trust us not to serve annoying or unsafe ads, and pay for us to do so." Trust? Me pay for it? Pass.

uallo 9y ago

This article got me thinking. There should be an ad company without any tracking. And the only company that I would actually trust with this is Mozilla.