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As a user this is an awesome tool, but as a content producer that relies on advertising revenue this is potentially a nightmare. While you can argue that it's

by mdolon 16y ago

As a user this is an awesome tool, but as a content producer that relies on advertising revenue this is potentially a nightmare. While you can argue that it's similar to AdBlock, you're essentially 'forcing' the removal of ads on your users, whereas a browser plugin is optional and takes at least some work to install (finding it, installing and restarting browser). Just seems scary to imagine lots of websites picking this up, as that could kill advertising revenue for many sites.

_delirium 16y ago
Yeah, I have mixed feelings about it also, since it allows the linker, not just the browser user, to rewrite what the linked content looks like. Though, some of my mixed feelings come from the other direction: if stuff like this becomes widespread, sites that do have nice layouts, not a ton of in-your-face advertising, etc., lose their competitive advantage. Right now I avoid linking to particularly egregious sites, but if I could link to a decent article via a mechanism that reformatted it to be readable, maybe it's ok? And that'd remove the advantage that more friendly sites currently have in attracting links. Perhaps it's a bit idiosyncratic, but for my personal surfing, I do some minimal ad-blocking via a local proxy (polipo), but I have it configured to return the default 503 Forbidden response, so sites that have been ad-blocked are marked up with a bunch of ugly error frames, rather than silently rewritten into nicer-looking sites. It keeps sites from loading their terrible video ads, say, while not allowing me to forget that they do have them (which in turn reminds me to be careful when sending such links to people who might not have an ad-blocker installed).
- Groxx 16y ago
  If your layout doesn't help drive traffic, something like this won't change things. If it does, then people will probably go to your site because they prefer it. For instance, all these reader-tools like this are utterly worthless for navigating a site, so if the person is at all interested in more they must visit the site. And then you're back to your layout helping things or not. Advertising revenue: certainly a concern. But no more so than any other adblocker out there. Layout? Not particularly, unless you rely entirely on layout and not on content. In which case, I generally say good riddance.

by mdolon 16y ago

_delirium 16y ago

Yeah, I have mixed feelings about it also, since it allows the linker, not just the browser user, to rewrite what the linked content looks like. Though, some of my mixed feelings come from the other direction: if stuff like this becomes widespread, sites that do have nice layouts, not a ton of in-your-face advertising, etc., lose their competitive advantage. Right now I avoid linking to particularly egregious sites, but if I could link to a decent article via a mechanism that reformatted it to be readable, maybe it's ok? And that'd remove the advantage that more friendly sites currently have in attracting links. Perhaps it's a bit idiosyncratic, but for my personal surfing, I do some minimal ad-blocking via a local proxy (polipo), but I have it configured to return the default 503 Forbidden response, so sites that have been ad-blocked are marked up with a bunch of ugly error frames, rather than silently rewritten into nicer-looking sites. It keeps sites from loading their terrible video ads, say, while not allowing me to forget that they do have them (which in turn reminds me to be careful when sending such links to people who might not have an ad-blocker installed).

Groxx 16y ago
If your layout doesn't help drive traffic, something like this won't change things. If it does, then people will probably go to your site because they prefer it. For instance, all these reader-tools like this are utterly worthless for navigating a site, so if the person is at all interested in more they must visit the site. And then you're back to your layout helping things or not. Advertising revenue: certainly a concern. But no more so than any other adblocker out there. Layout? Not particularly, unless you rely entirely on layout and not on content. In which case, I generally say good riddance.