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Obviously PR people aren't going to start calling it what it is, but we should. "Ads" should be referred to as "trackers"; real "ad blockers" (without whitelist

Obviously PR people aren't going to start calling it what it is, but we should. "Ads" should be referred to as "trackers"; real "ad blockers" (without whitelists (those should be called "extortion rings")) should be called "tracking blockers"; "ad networks" should be called "tracking networks"; etc. Then maybe eventually the average user will understand that when a site asks to "please disable ad blocking", that's just PR speak for "enable tracking". "Advertisement" just sounds annoying, but harmless. Also, if we ever see an actual "advertisement" on the internet, we should celebrate it, I've noticed maybe 2 in the past 10 years.

Waterluvian 8y ago
I really like this. Ads are things. Tracking is an activity. It's a significant difference to appreciate. I'm generally okay with a sensible quantity of soundless, videoless ads. I'm never okay with tracking.
- jasonkostempski 8y ago
  Obnoxious ads are definitely a problem. If they were native, I'm not sure we'd have much recourse against them. I disable auto-play in Firefox, but that's not the default and some browsers don't even have the option. I'm personally fine with that scenario, I'd rather just black-list a sites that go too far, but we need better tools to do that. I made an FF extension for myself that lets me remove links to any sites I choose from any page I view. For example, there are several sites I know I'm going to hit a paywall or "sign in to view" if I visit, I'd rather just never see those links, now I don't. If everyone had that power (preferably built in to browsers) and it was easy to use and, possibly, community driven, site owners might be far more conscious about what they do, at the risk of being basically removed from the internet.
phobosdeimos 8y ago
Hear hear. If sites ever switch to hosting their own curated ads I will disable my adblocker.
- jasonkostempski 8y ago
  I'd still have it on for the bad players. There'd likely be no need to whitelist if you just want to help those playing nice because tracking blockers don't block ads, they block third-party trackers. Ads hosted natively would be indistinguishable from other native content. I wouldn't even want an ad blocker that tried to block that, it would eat up too much processor trying to use machine learning to figure out what to block, and still get it wrong half the time. I've been to a couple sites that use traditional advertising and, as far as I can tell, uBlock Origin doesn't do anything to try and stop it.
matheusmoreira 8y ago
Ad networks are malware vectors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising
earenndil 8y ago
Ublock origin[1] already does this. > uBlock Origin is NOT an "ad blocker": it is a wide-spectrum blocker -- which happens to be able to function as a mere "ad blocker". The default behavior of uBlock Origin when newly installed is to block ads, trackers and malware sites 1: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
anotherevan 8y ago
I've never called them ad blockers. I always call them HTML firewalls.
strken 8y ago
> Also, if we ever see an actual "advertisement" on the internet, we should celebrate it, I've noticed maybe 2 in the past 10 years. Slatestarcodex has had Real Ads™ on the sidebar for a while now. Not coincidentally, they align so well with what I'm interested in that I've clicked every single one multiple times. I guess that's the difference between mass media and weird little niche blogs.
- jasonkostempski 8y ago
  Now I've seen 3, and this one looks like one I'll actually revisit!

Waterluvian 8y ago

I really like this. Ads are things. Tracking is an activity. It's a significant difference to appreciate. I'm generally okay with a sensible quantity of soundless, videoless ads. I'm never okay with tracking.

jasonkostempski 8y ago
Obnoxious ads are definitely a problem. If they were native, I'm not sure we'd have much recourse against them. I disable auto-play in Firefox, but that's not the default and some browsers don't even have the option. I'm personally fine with that scenario, I'd rather just black-list a sites that go too far, but we need better tools to do that. I made an FF extension for myself that lets me remove links to any sites I choose from any page I view. For example, there are several sites I know I'm going to hit a paywall or "sign in to view" if I visit, I'd rather just never see those links, now I don't. If everyone had that power (preferably built in to browsers) and it was easy to use and, possibly, community driven, site owners might be far more conscious about what they do, at the risk of being basically removed from the internet.

phobosdeimos 8y ago

Hear hear. If sites ever switch to hosting their own curated ads I will disable my adblocker.

jasonkostempski 8y ago
I'd still have it on for the bad players. There'd likely be no need to whitelist if you just want to help those playing nice because tracking blockers don't block ads, they block third-party trackers. Ads hosted natively would be indistinguishable from other native content. I wouldn't even want an ad blocker that tried to block that, it would eat up too much processor trying to use machine learning to figure out what to block, and still get it wrong half the time. I've been to a couple sites that use traditional advertising and, as far as I can tell, uBlock Origin doesn't do anything to try and stop it.

matheusmoreira 8y ago

Ad networks are malware vectors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising

earenndil 8y ago

Ublock origin[1] already does this. > uBlock Origin is NOT an "ad blocker": it is a wide-spectrum blocker -- which happens to be able to function as a mere "ad blocker". The default behavior of uBlock Origin when newly installed is to block ads, trackers and malware sites 1: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

anotherevan 8y ago

I've never called them ad blockers. I always call them HTML firewalls.

strken 8y ago

> Also, if we ever see an actual "advertisement" on the internet, we should celebrate it, I've noticed maybe 2 in the past 10 years. Slatestarcodex has had Real Ads™ on the sidebar for a while now. Not coincidentally, they align so well with what I'm interested in that I've clicked every single one multiple times. I guess that's the difference between mass media and weird little niche blogs.

jasonkostempski 8y ago
Now I've seen 3, and this one looks like one I'll actually revisit!