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Contrary to popular belief, ads can be delivered without arbitrary code execution. The Spotify app already has the ability to deliver audio and video, that's al

by kgwxd 8y ago

Contrary to popular belief, ads can be delivered without arbitrary code execution. The Spotify app already has the ability to deliver audio and video, that's all they need. The mistake here is letting third-parties onto users devices. It's a disgusting industry-wide practice that needs to stop. Using the existing audio/video delivery system would render "ad blockers" useless. "thrid-party blockers" would still work as intended though.

akerl_ 8y ago
And if the approach is “I won’t use services that want to use 3rd-party-RCE-style ads”, it makes sense to me. But the folks who are blocking ads are taking Spotify’s offer (pay us, let us run our ads, or don’t use our service, pick 1) and trying to shoehorn a 4th option that Spotify doesn’t offer: get the content w/o Spotify getting paid. To tell Spotify “I’d use your service if you added an option where the ads didn’t give 3rd parties the ability to run JS on my system” is different from “I picked your current ad-supported option and then prevented the ads from running”.
- gowld 8y ago
  Pandora and Google Play Music (and maybe Spotify too I don't know) put ads in the audio stream (and video, if you are looking at the app screen while listening to music for some reason). Seems simpler to do this than get into a technical arms race with users.
  - judge2020 8y ago
    They already do this, there are constant interruptions for 30-second audio ads. Currently, you can turn the audio down, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do something akin to the black mirror episode "fifteen million merits" where you have to look at/listen to the ads for them to go away. The main gripe is using adsense which can still often be used to deliver malware.
    - heynk 8y ago
      I've paid for Spotify for a while, so its been some time since I've heard an ad. But from what I remember, if you put the volume below ~30%, the ad pauses.
      - gmueckl 8y ago
        That was one of the annoyances that finally made me pay for the service. The other one was that they were constantly changing what the free plan allows you to do back then.
      - Bonooru 8y ago
        I haven't ever used spotify, so forgive my ignorance. How are they measuring the system volume from inside a webapp? Shouldn't that information not be visible to them?
        andai 8y ago
        It pauses it if you put the in-app volume too low. I think the desktop client also reacts to the system volume setting, but it's been a while since I had the free plan.
        Scoundreller 8y ago
        I have this issue with the NPR One web player on Windows7. When the laptop is muted and I press the physical button to unmute it, the mute light goes off, but the web player soft-mutes. Argh. Why can’t the mute button just be a physical switch!?!?!?
        SturgeonsLaw 8y ago
        You could try getting a 3.5mm stereo cable, cutting the end off and using that as your physical mute button. Not sure if that routes audio to the "headphones" at the software or firmware level, but anything reading volume levels would still see it set to whatever level the OS is at.
      - 8y ago
  - loco5niner 8y ago
    >Pandora and Google Play Music ... put ads in the audio stream Why would you want to encourage Spotify to adopt this horrible practice? I don't WANT ads injected into the audio.
    - davidcbc 8y ago
      Then you can pay for the service
      - loco5niner 8y ago
        You misunderstand. I'm fine with paying for the service and DO (Spotify Premium). I also use other services on occasion and HATE when the audio is interrupted with ads. Show visual ads all day long, that's fine. Audio ads just suck. Especially when they raise the volume threshold for commercials.
      - loco5niner 8y ago
        Oh, like cable, Amazon Prime video, etc... where you pay for the service and STILL get ads?
  - nobodyandproud 8y ago
    Video stream. That's when I uninstalled Pandora. They get my ears. At the volume I dictate. If they exceed that threshold, then into the trash they go. Spotify is no better.
- kgwxd 8y ago
  I've never used this phrase in my entire life but it seems absolutely perfect for the described scenario. Sorry not sorry. I personally chose not to use Spotify at all, but I'm not going to fault anyone for using it with a thrid-party blocker. Even if Spotify didn't also do advertising the right way (e.g. branded playlists (I believe paying users get those too)), no one is obligated to subject themselves to personal harm, even if someone is dumb enough to expose people to that risk as a subsidy for their service, no matter how useful the service is.
  - fastball 8y ago
    If you don't want to "subject yourself to personal harm" you can either not use the service or pay for the ad-free service. You don't have a right to use Spotify how you want. It's an online service, not a piece of personal property.
    - v_lisivka 8y ago
      But I still have right to NOT use service provided by Spotify or and another third-party service, completely or partially.
      - fastball 8y ago
        You do NOT have a right to use the service "partially" (by blocking ads), as blocking ads on their free plan is against the ToS.
        sieabahlpark 8y ago
        He has all the right to, that's why he's not in prison. Spotify gets to dictate who gets to use their product though.
        zanny 8y ago
        ToS's (online, at least) aren't legally enforceable. If they were actually legally binding companies would be sueing users for violating them all the time. Theres a reason the extent of ToS enforcement is just account closure, its because they have no legal standing and just act as a safeguard against actual legal challenges.
- teawrecks 8y ago
  This is just the argument against piracy. And if anyone proved that convenience combats piracy, it's Spotify. If you ever find your users trying to circumvent part of your process in order to make their experience better, the proper response isn't "hold up now, your experience with our product wasn't supposed to be THAT good." It's on their business to figure out how to maximize their customer's satisfaction, while still remaining profitable. Or another service will come along and do it for you.
  - lifeisstillgood 8y ago
    Thank you. Failures of your business model are not our problem. The only people who can force me to pay is Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. Everyone else can persuade me
    - criley2 8y ago
      Enjoy your ban! I'm always pleased when companies stand up to grifters like you. Go back to stealing mp3s or whatever it is you think you're entitled to.
      - lifeisstillgood 8y ago
        I actually do pay spotify - I just object to the enforcement principle. (And apple music and Amazon - I think I need to rationalise that one) I think that the Apple / Amazon model is more appealing - pay us first or basically you get nothing. I guess this is the early signs of the Freemium model falling apart.
      - stale2002 8y ago
        I am not sure why you are accusing someone of a crime ("stealing"). Installing an ad blocker is within someone's full legal right. Why are you making false statements regarding what is or is not a crime?
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- stale2002 8y ago
  It is within someone's full legal right to use an ad blocker.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    Yep! Just like it's within Spotify's full legal right to ban you for using an ad-blocker.
    - stale2002 8y ago
      You know people can just create another account, right? Also, they can do other things, such as starting a consumer revolt against Spotify, and by giving them bad publicity, that may cause paying users to remember about their unused account and cancel it. Bad publicity costs companies a lot of money.
      - brewdad 8y ago
        I don't know about other users, but I'm not canceling my Spotify account to stand in solidarity with the freeloaders. Ad blocking users are a net negative to Spotify, why shouldn't they ban them?
        jodrellblank 8y ago
        Ad blocking users are a net negative to Spotify, why shouldn't they ban them? It's not unthinkable that ad blocking users are keeping money and attention away from Spotify's competitors, spreading enthusiasm about Spotify to more people who will become paying customers, and giving Spotify more ears and more user information to inform their decisions. Ad blocking users cost, but only as much as a low-bitrate audio stream - and that should get cheaper every year. At some point, will it cross so they're not net-negatives?
    - leothecool 8y ago
      Sure, but can they legally spy on me or search my computer to try and figure out if I am blocking ads?
- smichel17 8y ago
  > To tell Spotify “I’d use your service if you added an option where the ads didn’t give 3rd parties the ability to run JS on my system” is different from “I picked your current ad-supported option and then prevented the ads from running”. Is it really, when the solution I'm using to prevent ads from running is blocking a handful of 3rd party domains in my hosts file? I haven't taken away Spotify's capacity to run ads on my machine, only the 3rd party's capacity. Spotify could even test whether I'm interested in blocking first party ads by running their Spotify Premium ads this way. On the whole, it seems like a more effective way to communicate blocking ads seems like a more effective way to communicate my distaste than abstaining from use of the service and contacting them (how?) to let them know I would use the service if get served ads directly. This way, they know exactly how much I use the service. That way, who's to say whether I'd actually use the service if they changed their ad serving model the way I say?
- manicdee 8y ago
  Spotify telling us, "you have to let us run unvetted third party software on your device to listen to music for free" is completely different from, "here is an ad-supported music streaming option."
- majani 8y ago
  Maybe Spotify and others could offer an option to serve untargeted ads, but hide it away under heaps of menus and technical jargon such that only the 0.1% of their users who are obsessed with this topic will bother with it
Changee6 8y ago
You don't even have to go that far. You could let ads still be html iframes with text/image/video/audio content. Just no javascript or cookies. (enforcable via csp sandbox) And "acceptable ads" policies of blockers could require those properties. They wouldn't even need a fixed whitelist or cooperate with specific companies for that, all they have to do is allow iframes with appropriate CSP rules. I.e. it's a vendor-agnostic approach.
- pytyper2 8y ago
  They would not get as much telemetry, they also want all the data, it's not just the showing of an ad, it'c collecting everything the internet knows about the user and their pc. The problem is the tracking, collecting and resale of personal data. NOT simply viewing an ad! Ya dig?
  - Changee6 8y ago
    Inert, no-cookie ads are the compromise position between total blocking and allowing arbitrary code execution and tracking.
    - pytyper2 8y ago
      Then you can't target the ads to those who most likely will buy, then each impression is worth less in most ad marketplaces. I don't think you will be able to suggest a solution if you ignore the true desires of the buyers and sellers of ads.
      - CharlesColeman 8y ago
        > Then you can't target the ads to those who most likely will buy, then each impression is worth less in most ad marketplaces. I don't think you will be able to suggest a solution if you ignore the true desires of the buyers and sellers of ads. Their desires aren't the only factor in the equation here. If they want to satisfy their desire to have their ads seen at all, they're going to have to sacrifice some of their other desires. If they expect the user make all the sacrifices, then they shouldn't complain when users like me mercilessly block them, encourage others to do so, and do what I can to encourage regulation that would destroy them.
josteink 8y ago
> Contrary to popular belief, ads can be delivered without arbitrary code execution. All true and all irrelevant to his point.
bad_user 8y ago
I'm assuming you're using an ads-blocker. Just out of curiosity, if Spotify would serve ads via images only, without JavaScript, would you whitelist it in your ads-blocker? If no, then the loading of JavaScript isn't really the issue, isn't it?
- VRay 8y ago
  Man, I would delete my ad blockers right now and never use them again if everyone just served inert images, text, or even video without tracking affordances. I mainly block ads so I can cling to my last tiny shred of privacy and security
  - grogenaut 8y ago
    Several companies have done this and the users still scream about it, sometimes more because now they can't block the ads. The other hard thing for a company is internally, you see normal ad revenue going down and you have some users you can deliver to via some methods. You have to crank that method up to account for it. Ads is also interesting with the "how much money is enough money" argument. When do you stop monetizing.
  - pmontra 8y ago
    I add my take. I started blocking ads so many years ago that I lost the memory of it. It was not for fear of tracking and privacy intrusion. It was to improve the legibility of web pages. Ads pollute them so much more than they did to newspapers. Years after that, I started enjoying the implications of adblocking on privacy and tracking. I also use uBlock Origin to hide many elements on several pages only to improve legibility, expecially on mobile (hello Medium hosted sites! and many other fixed positioned menus.)
  - 4ec0755f5522 8y ago
    I started when x10 camera popups were the thing. Now, it's to control the javascript execution on my computer. It's stupid to allow JS to be run on your computer. (We do it because everything breaks if we don't. But it's still stupid).
kazinator 8y ago
> Contrary to popular belief, ads can be delivered without arbitrary code execution. What popular belief is this? The ready counterexample is the delivery of an ad to a vaccuum-tube TV in 1950.
baybal2 8y ago
The epidemic of JS heavy ads is there for 2 reasons: 1. fraud, 2. tracking I myself is skeptical about advertisements having future as such. In the age of the Internet, ads are the least useful method to discover product info. The analogy for Internet ads today is like if modern cars were propelled by horses - an unviable arrangement. I know many online only companies making good money and spending literally zero on ads. The industry will eventually follow that path.
- grogenaut 8y ago
  I would like to see this argument based on data as opposed to your feelings. There are many years of argument about the effectivity of advertisment, with a ton of data. One can usually argue that ads are not worth the price... it's very hard to find data that they are completely ineffective. They may be less effective due to ab blocking tech but they are still able to influence people.
  - baybal2 8y ago
    My parallel is that - horses are an ok way to propel a car - it works, but a gasoline engine is way, way better and convenient. Ads are the horses here It is just about how you communicate with the buyer. For a mass market good, smarter people simply go to Alibaba.com and press ctrl+f these days, and about anything non-commodity people already know everything from subject matter websites. Even on Alibaba itself, front page spots, and top line of search results are usually not human curated, and they cost surprisingly cheap. Most traders there deject them outright. In consumer goods, they don't shy away to simply send few samples to paid reviewers (ones who do that openly) like Linus, NR, etc, and write honest, first hand articles about their own products in tech blogs.
grogenaut 8y ago
The hard thing for platforms is that no one trusts the platform to not lie about delivery metrics. Thus the need for advertisers to run code to verify it ran and run alternative networks. No idea why advertisers trust the ad networks over say spotify. This was going the otherway then facebook's massive lies about video ad views tanked it. Other services like twitch have done what you said and users are equally irate about ads they can't skip and are completely embedded. Basically it sucks for all parties involved. But at the end of the day you have to monetize or die. Also I feel a lot of users are voting that 2 coffees a month is too much for music. I'm an old so... but for most of my life music just came out of a box for free. Sure I didn't have much control over it. But when I use spotify I just or pandora or amazon I tend to just get a genre based station going and just let it roll. Just like radio. I don't have time to be futzing around with optimizing playlists and that, I literally just don't care about music very much. Hell one of my friends, when he wants to concentrate, just puts the same song on repeat all day long (8+ hours). That used to cost: cost free, price of tape/cd ($16 / year way over priced), free(napster,piracy), free with ads (pandora)... Hell I can't even stomach paying $12 / month to xm when I'm going to drive cross country with no coverage.
- hombre_fatal 8y ago
  Of course, radio was paid for by ads as well.
  - CPLX 8y ago
    Indeed. And notably, the radio stations paid the composers of the songs.
  - wasdfff 8y ago
    Metallica doesn’t get a dime when their records played all night on college FM. The local hardware store on the radio ad also doesnt know anything about the personal lives of who might have heard their ad. It is a different landscape now than just buying a primetime slot, advertising is much much more about gleaming any piece of potentially useful personal information about a user for an advertisers own furure use or for sale to the highest bidder. And personally identifiable information held by third parties will never be secure as it is a challenge and a prize for talented people to steal.
jcoffland 8y ago
It's not that it's impossible to deliver ads without referring to a thirds party site's code. It's that advertisers don't trust content sites to just tell them how many views they got.
underwater 8y ago
Hypothetically there are three groups of people: Those who don't block ads, those who block distracting/dangerous ads and whitelist responsible ad delivery, and those who block everything. In practice the second group is miniscule. There is zero incentive for companies to improve their practices and grow their market by targeting those people. Instead the only path to maximising profit is to increase the value they can get from people without ad blockers.
notSupplied 8y ago
Do you really believe this is the main motivation behind people who are blocking Spotify ads? That they are sophisticated tech users who wish to express their distaste for intrusive script-based ads? Or is it simply because they want to use Spotify ad free without paying (in other words, engage in piracy to save some money)? I find this rationale, while likely true for many readers on Hacker News, unlikely to generalize to overall population fo Spotify ad blockers.

by kgwxd 8y ago

akerl_ 8y ago

And if the approach is “I won’t use services that want to use 3rd-party-RCE-style ads”, it makes sense to me. But the folks who are blocking ads are taking Spotify’s offer (pay us, let us run our ads, or don’t use our service, pick 1) and trying to shoehorn a 4th option that Spotify doesn’t offer: get the content w/o Spotify getting paid. To tell Spotify “I’d use your service if you added an option where the ads didn’t give 3rd parties the ability to run JS on my system” is different from “I picked your current ad-supported option and then prevented the ads from running”.

gowld 8y ago
Pandora and Google Play Music (and maybe Spotify too I don't know) put ads in the audio stream (and video, if you are looking at the app screen while listening to music for some reason). Seems simpler to do this than get into a technical arms race with users.
- judge2020 8y ago
  They already do this, there are constant interruptions for 30-second audio ads. Currently, you can turn the audio down, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do something akin to the black mirror episode "fifteen million merits" where you have to look at/listen to the ads for them to go away. The main gripe is using adsense which can still often be used to deliver malware.
  - heynk 8y ago
    I've paid for Spotify for a while, so its been some time since I've heard an ad. But from what I remember, if you put the volume below ~30%, the ad pauses.
    - gmueckl 8y ago
      That was one of the annoyances that finally made me pay for the service. The other one was that they were constantly changing what the free plan allows you to do back then.
    - Bonooru 8y ago
      I haven't ever used spotify, so forgive my ignorance. How are they measuring the system volume from inside a webapp? Shouldn't that information not be visible to them?
      - andai 8y ago
        It pauses it if you put the in-app volume too low. I think the desktop client also reacts to the system volume setting, but it's been a while since I had the free plan.
      - Scoundreller 8y ago
        I have this issue with the NPR One web player on Windows7. When the laptop is muted and I press the physical button to unmute it, the mute light goes off, but the web player soft-mutes. Argh. Why can’t the mute button just be a physical switch!?!?!?
        SturgeonsLaw 8y ago
        You could try getting a 3.5mm stereo cable, cutting the end off and using that as your physical mute button. Not sure if that routes audio to the "headphones" at the software or firmware level, but anything reading volume levels would still see it set to whatever level the OS is at.
    - 8y ago
- loco5niner 8y ago
  >Pandora and Google Play Music ... put ads in the audio stream Why would you want to encourage Spotify to adopt this horrible practice? I don't WANT ads injected into the audio.
  - davidcbc 8y ago
    Then you can pay for the service
    - loco5niner 8y ago
      You misunderstand. I'm fine with paying for the service and DO (Spotify Premium). I also use other services on occasion and HATE when the audio is interrupted with ads. Show visual ads all day long, that's fine. Audio ads just suck. Especially when they raise the volume threshold for commercials.
    - loco5niner 8y ago
      Oh, like cable, Amazon Prime video, etc... where you pay for the service and STILL get ads?
- nobodyandproud 8y ago
  Video stream. That's when I uninstalled Pandora. They get my ears. At the volume I dictate. If they exceed that threshold, then into the trash they go. Spotify is no better.
kgwxd 8y ago
I've never used this phrase in my entire life but it seems absolutely perfect for the described scenario. Sorry not sorry. I personally chose not to use Spotify at all, but I'm not going to fault anyone for using it with a thrid-party blocker. Even if Spotify didn't also do advertising the right way (e.g. branded playlists (I believe paying users get those too)), no one is obligated to subject themselves to personal harm, even if someone is dumb enough to expose people to that risk as a subsidy for their service, no matter how useful the service is.
- fastball 8y ago
  If you don't want to "subject yourself to personal harm" you can either not use the service or pay for the ad-free service. You don't have a right to use Spotify how you want. It's an online service, not a piece of personal property.
  - v_lisivka 8y ago
    But I still have right to NOT use service provided by Spotify or and another third-party service, completely or partially.
    - fastball 8y ago
      You do NOT have a right to use the service "partially" (by blocking ads), as blocking ads on their free plan is against the ToS.
      - sieabahlpark 8y ago
        He has all the right to, that's why he's not in prison. Spotify gets to dictate who gets to use their product though.
      - zanny 8y ago
        ToS's (online, at least) aren't legally enforceable. If they were actually legally binding companies would be sueing users for violating them all the time. Theres a reason the extent of ToS enforcement is just account closure, its because they have no legal standing and just act as a safeguard against actual legal challenges.
teawrecks 8y ago
This is just the argument against piracy. And if anyone proved that convenience combats piracy, it's Spotify. If you ever find your users trying to circumvent part of your process in order to make their experience better, the proper response isn't "hold up now, your experience with our product wasn't supposed to be THAT good." It's on their business to figure out how to maximize their customer's satisfaction, while still remaining profitable. Or another service will come along and do it for you.
- lifeisstillgood 8y ago
  Thank you. Failures of your business model are not our problem. The only people who can force me to pay is Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. Everyone else can persuade me
  - criley2 8y ago
    Enjoy your ban! I'm always pleased when companies stand up to grifters like you. Go back to stealing mp3s or whatever it is you think you're entitled to.
    - lifeisstillgood 8y ago
      I actually do pay spotify - I just object to the enforcement principle. (And apple music and Amazon - I think I need to rationalise that one) I think that the Apple / Amazon model is more appealing - pay us first or basically you get nothing. I guess this is the early signs of the Freemium model falling apart.
    - stale2002 8y ago
      I am not sure why you are accusing someone of a crime ("stealing"). Installing an ad blocker is within someone's full legal right. Why are you making false statements regarding what is or is not a crime?
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
stale2002 8y ago
It is within someone's full legal right to use an ad blocker.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  Yep! Just like it's within Spotify's full legal right to ban you for using an ad-blocker.
  - stale2002 8y ago
    You know people can just create another account, right? Also, they can do other things, such as starting a consumer revolt against Spotify, and by giving them bad publicity, that may cause paying users to remember about their unused account and cancel it. Bad publicity costs companies a lot of money.
    - brewdad 8y ago
      I don't know about other users, but I'm not canceling my Spotify account to stand in solidarity with the freeloaders. Ad blocking users are a net negative to Spotify, why shouldn't they ban them?
      - jodrellblank 8y ago
        Ad blocking users are a net negative to Spotify, why shouldn't they ban them? It's not unthinkable that ad blocking users are keeping money and attention away from Spotify's competitors, spreading enthusiasm about Spotify to more people who will become paying customers, and giving Spotify more ears and more user information to inform their decisions. Ad blocking users cost, but only as much as a low-bitrate audio stream - and that should get cheaper every year. At some point, will it cross so they're not net-negatives?
  - leothecool 8y ago
    Sure, but can they legally spy on me or search my computer to try and figure out if I am blocking ads?
smichel17 8y ago
> To tell Spotify “I’d use your service if you added an option where the ads didn’t give 3rd parties the ability to run JS on my system” is different from “I picked your current ad-supported option and then prevented the ads from running”. Is it really, when the solution I'm using to prevent ads from running is blocking a handful of 3rd party domains in my hosts file? I haven't taken away Spotify's capacity to run ads on my machine, only the 3rd party's capacity. Spotify could even test whether I'm interested in blocking first party ads by running their Spotify Premium ads this way. On the whole, it seems like a more effective way to communicate blocking ads seems like a more effective way to communicate my distaste than abstaining from use of the service and contacting them (how?) to let them know I would use the service if get served ads directly. This way, they know exactly how much I use the service. That way, who's to say whether I'd actually use the service if they changed their ad serving model the way I say?
manicdee 8y ago
Spotify telling us, "you have to let us run unvetted third party software on your device to listen to music for free" is completely different from, "here is an ad-supported music streaming option."
majani 8y ago
Maybe Spotify and others could offer an option to serve untargeted ads, but hide it away under heaps of menus and technical jargon such that only the 0.1% of their users who are obsessed with this topic will bother with it

Changee6 8y ago

You don't even have to go that far. You could let ads still be html iframes with text/image/video/audio content. Just no javascript or cookies. (enforcable via csp sandbox) And "acceptable ads" policies of blockers could require those properties. They wouldn't even need a fixed whitelist or cooperate with specific companies for that, all they have to do is allow iframes with appropriate CSP rules. I.e. it's a vendor-agnostic approach.

pytyper2 8y ago
They would not get as much telemetry, they also want all the data, it's not just the showing of an ad, it'c collecting everything the internet knows about the user and their pc. The problem is the tracking, collecting and resale of personal data. NOT simply viewing an ad! Ya dig?
- Changee6 8y ago
  Inert, no-cookie ads are the compromise position between total blocking and allowing arbitrary code execution and tracking.
  - pytyper2 8y ago
    Then you can't target the ads to those who most likely will buy, then each impression is worth less in most ad marketplaces. I don't think you will be able to suggest a solution if you ignore the true desires of the buyers and sellers of ads.
    - CharlesColeman 8y ago
      > Then you can't target the ads to those who most likely will buy, then each impression is worth less in most ad marketplaces. I don't think you will be able to suggest a solution if you ignore the true desires of the buyers and sellers of ads. Their desires aren't the only factor in the equation here. If they want to satisfy their desire to have their ads seen at all, they're going to have to sacrifice some of their other desires. If they expect the user make all the sacrifices, then they shouldn't complain when users like me mercilessly block them, encourage others to do so, and do what I can to encourage regulation that would destroy them.

josteink 8y ago

> Contrary to popular belief, ads can be delivered without arbitrary code execution. All true and all irrelevant to his point.

bad_user 8y ago

I'm assuming you're using an ads-blocker. Just out of curiosity, if Spotify would serve ads via images only, without JavaScript, would you whitelist it in your ads-blocker? If no, then the loading of JavaScript isn't really the issue, isn't it?

VRay 8y ago
Man, I would delete my ad blockers right now and never use them again if everyone just served inert images, text, or even video without tracking affordances. I mainly block ads so I can cling to my last tiny shred of privacy and security
- grogenaut 8y ago
  Several companies have done this and the users still scream about it, sometimes more because now they can't block the ads. The other hard thing for a company is internally, you see normal ad revenue going down and you have some users you can deliver to via some methods. You have to crank that method up to account for it. Ads is also interesting with the "how much money is enough money" argument. When do you stop monetizing.
- pmontra 8y ago
  I add my take. I started blocking ads so many years ago that I lost the memory of it. It was not for fear of tracking and privacy intrusion. It was to improve the legibility of web pages. Ads pollute them so much more than they did to newspapers. Years after that, I started enjoying the implications of adblocking on privacy and tracking. I also use uBlock Origin to hide many elements on several pages only to improve legibility, expecially on mobile (hello Medium hosted sites! and many other fixed positioned menus.)
- 4ec0755f5522 8y ago
  I started when x10 camera popups were the thing. Now, it's to control the javascript execution on my computer. It's stupid to allow JS to be run on your computer. (We do it because everything breaks if we don't. But it's still stupid).

kazinator 8y ago

> Contrary to popular belief, ads can be delivered without arbitrary code execution. What popular belief is this? The ready counterexample is the delivery of an ad to a vaccuum-tube TV in 1950.

baybal2 8y ago

The epidemic of JS heavy ads is there for 2 reasons: 1. fraud, 2. tracking I myself is skeptical about advertisements having future as such. In the age of the Internet, ads are the least useful method to discover product info. The analogy for Internet ads today is like if modern cars were propelled by horses - an unviable arrangement. I know many online only companies making good money and spending literally zero on ads. The industry will eventually follow that path.

grogenaut 8y ago
I would like to see this argument based on data as opposed to your feelings. There are many years of argument about the effectivity of advertisment, with a ton of data. One can usually argue that ads are not worth the price... it's very hard to find data that they are completely ineffective. They may be less effective due to ab blocking tech but they are still able to influence people.
- baybal2 8y ago
  My parallel is that - horses are an ok way to propel a car - it works, but a gasoline engine is way, way better and convenient. Ads are the horses here It is just about how you communicate with the buyer. For a mass market good, smarter people simply go to Alibaba.com and press ctrl+f these days, and about anything non-commodity people already know everything from subject matter websites. Even on Alibaba itself, front page spots, and top line of search results are usually not human curated, and they cost surprisingly cheap. Most traders there deject them outright. In consumer goods, they don't shy away to simply send few samples to paid reviewers (ones who do that openly) like Linus, NR, etc, and write honest, first hand articles about their own products in tech blogs.

grogenaut 8y ago

The hard thing for platforms is that no one trusts the platform to not lie about delivery metrics. Thus the need for advertisers to run code to verify it ran and run alternative networks. No idea why advertisers trust the ad networks over say spotify. This was going the otherway then facebook's massive lies about video ad views tanked it. Other services like twitch have done what you said and users are equally irate about ads they can't skip and are completely embedded. Basically it sucks for all parties involved. But at the end of the day you have to monetize or die. Also I feel a lot of users are voting that 2 coffees a month is too much for music. I'm an old so... but for most of my life music just came out of a box for free. Sure I didn't have much control over it. But when I use spotify I just or pandora or amazon I tend to just get a genre based station going and just let it roll. Just like radio. I don't have time to be futzing around with optimizing playlists and that, I literally just don't care about music very much. Hell one of my friends, when he wants to concentrate, just puts the same song on repeat all day long (8+ hours). That used to cost: cost free, price of tape/cd ($16 / year way over priced), free(napster,piracy), free with ads (pandora)... Hell I can't even stomach paying $12 / month to xm when I'm going to drive cross country with no coverage.

hombre_fatal 8y ago
Of course, radio was paid for by ads as well.
- CPLX 8y ago
  Indeed. And notably, the radio stations paid the composers of the songs.
- wasdfff 8y ago
  Metallica doesn’t get a dime when their records played all night on college FM. The local hardware store on the radio ad also doesnt know anything about the personal lives of who might have heard their ad. It is a different landscape now than just buying a primetime slot, advertising is much much more about gleaming any piece of potentially useful personal information about a user for an advertisers own furure use or for sale to the highest bidder. And personally identifiable information held by third parties will never be secure as it is a challenge and a prize for talented people to steal.

jcoffland 8y ago

It's not that it's impossible to deliver ads without referring to a thirds party site's code. It's that advertisers don't trust content sites to just tell them how many views they got.

underwater 8y ago

Hypothetically there are three groups of people: Those who don't block ads, those who block distracting/dangerous ads and whitelist responsible ad delivery, and those who block everything. In practice the second group is miniscule. There is zero incentive for companies to improve their practices and grow their market by targeting those people. Instead the only path to maximising profit is to increase the value they can get from people without ad blockers.

notSupplied 8y ago

Do you really believe this is the main motivation behind people who are blocking Spotify ads? That they are sophisticated tech users who wish to express their distaste for intrusive script-based ads? Or is it simply because they want to use Spotify ad free without paying (in other words, engage in piracy to save some money)? I find this rationale, while likely true for many readers on Hacker News, unlikely to generalize to overall population fo Spotify ad blockers.