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With all the fervor around ad-blocking what I fail to see is how do you propose those sites that you visit, read their content to make money ? Are you willing t

With all the fervor around ad-blocking what I fail to see is how do you propose those sites that you visit, read their content to make money ? Are you willing to pay every site you visit or encourage them to put up pay walls ??

jto1218 7y ago
you can pretty easily whitelist those sites.
- aw3c2 7y ago
  Pi-Hole is a very simple DNS based blocker. You can not whitelist ad providers on a origin basis.
  - ztoben 7y ago
    They didn't say whitelist ad providers, they said sites. Which you can do with pi-hole.
    - supergauntlet 7y ago
      How does a DNS blocker know what requests are caused by what site? It's a stateless protocol.
      - ztoben 7y ago
        Yeah, that was a misunderstanding on my part. I suppose for their whitelist/blacklist to work with regex matching the ads would have to be served from a similarly named domain. Like facebook.com vs ads.facebook.com, and you'd have to whitelist *facebook.com. And if they were getting ads externally you'd have to whitelist those ads for every site that you visit.
aw4y 7y ago
when they will stop abusing ad, delivering malware through unchecked ad (https://www.geoedge.com/meetus_university/65/what-is-malvertising-or-malware-in-ads https://www.geoedge.com/meetus_university/65/what-is-malvert...) and respect the "do not track" then I'll rethink about ad blocking.
ChikkaChiChi 7y ago
The "fervor" you mention has more to do with ads becoming ever more intrusive, third party content slowing down page loads, consuming bandwidth, and potentially being used for malware distribution than it does with wanting to take food off another person's table. I regularly try browsing without adblocking on, and it's a constant nightmare. If sites held their advertising networks accountable to any reasonable set of standards, they wouldn't be in this situation. The content I appreciate, I have found ways to support it.
yulaow 7y ago
Do not use tracking ads. I whitelist any site which is not using tracking/profiling ads.
ztoben 7y ago
I disable my adblocking for sites that use reasonable ads. If I go to a site and am bombarded with pop ups, auto playing video ads, etc., then yeah why wouldn't I block them? With the malware and tracking that is often injected into ads I have no problem using my adblocker at all times and disabling it for pages that ask politely. I'm happy to click on ads on sites that I frequent and would like to support. I think there's absolutely a balance here, and for many years the advertising industry has abused their stay.
- mikepasek 7y ago
  Problem is you don’t know what’s reasonable and what’s not. It’s not based on how it looks. If may look reasonable and harmless but still send your IP and browser fingerprint to surveillance ads networks.
  - ztoben 7y ago
    That's true. I suppose there's a certain amount of trust required. I really only ever disable it on sites that have a good track record with security and provide me enough value. There is risk involved though.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
scohesc 7y ago
I don't have to care about if they make money or not. That's not my business. If they want to make money, they'll shift to other profit models that don't involve intrusive tracking and annoying advertisements.
- bilal4hmed 7y ago
  would you support paywalls ?
  - txcwpalpha 7y ago
    If the site maintains a standard level of quality of content where their paywall is worth paying, sure. But I think the vast majority of sites (think your average Medium blog, many 'news' sites, or tabloid sites) don't meet that standard, and are probably terrified of the thought of nobody willingly signing up for their subscriptions.
  - wlll 7y ago
    I support them, in the sense that they don't particluarly bother me. When a site asks me for money to read an article or to subscribe I tend to just close the browser tab and do something else. The thing is, most articles are a distraction, a diversion. Something I do instead of the thing I should be doing and as such they are very very low value to me.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Patreon-paywalls are becoming increasingly popular, with bits of free content as advertising. It seems like a reasonable way to do business.
elorant 7y ago
Have ads that relate to content, not to visitor. Like it was back in the days. When I visit a sci-fi site I'd like to see ads for sci-fi movies, books and paraphernalia. Not an ad for a pair of shoes I happened to search a week ago. Profiling is spooky and it's an offend to privacy. Not to mention that it doesn't work that well. Just because I search something on Google doesn't mean it's the only thing I'm interested in buying.
zelon88 7y ago
What's wrong with the "old" way, where you visit a Mopar automotive related website and saw Mopar car part ads? Or when you visit a computer magazine and saw ads for computer parts? Or when you went to NYT and saw basic shit like paper towels and fall fashion? It became a problem when everyone and their sister started needing to know what kinds of kinks I'm into just to sell me dish detergent.
- ChikkaChiChi 7y ago
  This is hilariously accurate. I've been predicting for a while now that sites would fall back to the old television show model "RockAuto presents MustangForums.com" or something to that effect. Instead, we get a dancing Albert Einstein begging us to take IQ tests.
  - Dangeranger 7y ago
    This is in fact very popular among both YouTube channels and podcast producers. It makes a lot of sense for an advertiser to pick a producer who matches their market and have that producer create an in content advertisement. I am fine with this. The content producer wins, the advertiser wins, and the viewer wins by getting better ads by someone they want to support.
- stevesearer 7y ago
  This is what we do at Office Snapshots (https://officesnapshots.com https://officesnapshots.com). We post about office design and our ads are primarily for office furniture or other services related to the industry. We also self-host the ads which are non-animated jpgs and sell them without using any ad networks. What you describe works well for us :)
  - ChikkaChiChi 7y ago
    What type of overhead is associated with this? Are you experiencing an increase in server costs? What about the resources it takes to build those relationships, maintain the content, or manage the infrastructure? I'm very interested in learning more...
asark 7y ago
Few of the important things on the Web are spyvertising-supported, or wouldn't promptly be replaced by something community-driven and free if they went away or became paid-only (stackoverflow, for instance). It's mostly junk. [EDIT] to expand, I think the piles of spyvertising money funding sites & services is a big part of the decline of truly free sites and open protocols, and make running a paid site (or app, or whatever) harder since you're competing with "free" (but spying on you). Less incentive to use them, less incentive to contribute to them. The whole system's perverse and harmful and it would 100% not be the end of the world, or the end of nice things for free/cheap, if it just disappeared tomorrow.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ProAm 7y ago
I dont believe locally hosted ads are blocked.
SantalBlush 7y ago
Those websites designed a bad model for collecting revenue; it was based on the assumption that viewers would watch their ads out of some misplaced sense of guilt, while the ads and data collection become more and more intrusive. It is not our responsibility to prop up their poor model. If these sites want to make their case that they won't survive without our eyes on their ads, then they can open their books for us to look at the costs and revenues and decide for ourselves whether or not we should help them. But at the end of the day, it is their problem, not ours.
Causality1 7y ago
If sites actually curated the ads they display instead of saying "Give us money and we'll let you and whoever's paid you show whatever you want and run whatever scripts you want" they wouldn't get blocked by the pi-hole. I'm sick of malicious ads on even major sites because everyone's too lazy to give a damn.
idiot900 7y ago
Yes, absolutely. Let me pay them exactly the revenue they lose from my use of an ad blocker, in exchange for no ads.
m3rc 7y ago
I bought a TV that, because of the pihole, I know phones home approximately once every thirty seconds about my viewing habits. In the world we live in something like a pihole isn't an ideological position, it's a necessity to not have everything we do end up rolling into someone else's ad profile on my household.
- bilal4hmed 7y ago
  blocking your TV from dialing home is reasonable. You have paid for the TV and thats the end of the transaction. It would be another story if you took the TV for free in exchange for ads :)
f00_ 7y ago
They should just find a new business model, if their currently one can be bypassed so easily. giantbomb.com sells premium subscriptions and merch and does okay
wlll 7y ago
I'll turn off my ad blockers when sites stop serving intrusive CPU burning malware laden memory hogging shit to me, which will be never.
intopieces 7y ago
In what other industry is the customer responsible for the company’s business model? I choose who deserves my attention carefully. Internet ads have not earned it.
dsr_ 7y ago
I have no idea how Netflix, HBO, PBS and C-SPAN make money without advertising, but I do know this: it's not my problem, it's theirs.

jto1218 7y ago

you can pretty easily whitelist those sites.

aw3c2 7y ago
Pi-Hole is a very simple DNS based blocker. You can not whitelist ad providers on a origin basis.
- ztoben 7y ago
  They didn't say whitelist ad providers, they said sites. Which you can do with pi-hole.
  - supergauntlet 7y ago
    How does a DNS blocker know what requests are caused by what site? It's a stateless protocol.
    - ztoben 7y ago
      Yeah, that was a misunderstanding on my part. I suppose for their whitelist/blacklist to work with regex matching the ads would have to be served from a similarly named domain. Like facebook.com vs ads.facebook.com, and you'd have to whitelist *facebook.com. And if they were getting ads externally you'd have to whitelist those ads for every site that you visit.

aw4y 7y ago

when they will stop abusing ad, delivering malware through unchecked ad (https://www.geoedge.com/meetus_university/65/what-is-malvertising-or-malware-in-ads https://www.geoedge.com/meetus_university/65/what-is-malvert...) and respect the "do not track" then I'll rethink about ad blocking.

ChikkaChiChi 7y ago

The "fervor" you mention has more to do with ads becoming ever more intrusive, third party content slowing down page loads, consuming bandwidth, and potentially being used for malware distribution than it does with wanting to take food off another person's table. I regularly try browsing without adblocking on, and it's a constant nightmare. If sites held their advertising networks accountable to any reasonable set of standards, they wouldn't be in this situation. The content I appreciate, I have found ways to support it.

yulaow 7y ago

Do not use tracking ads. I whitelist any site which is not using tracking/profiling ads.

ztoben 7y ago

I disable my adblocking for sites that use reasonable ads. If I go to a site and am bombarded with pop ups, auto playing video ads, etc., then yeah why wouldn't I block them? With the malware and tracking that is often injected into ads I have no problem using my adblocker at all times and disabling it for pages that ask politely. I'm happy to click on ads on sites that I frequent and would like to support. I think there's absolutely a balance here, and for many years the advertising industry has abused their stay.

mikepasek 7y ago
Problem is you don’t know what’s reasonable and what’s not. It’s not based on how it looks. If may look reasonable and harmless but still send your IP and browser fingerprint to surveillance ads networks.
- ztoben 7y ago
  That's true. I suppose there's a certain amount of trust required. I really only ever disable it on sites that have a good track record with security and provide me enough value. There is risk involved though.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

scohesc 7y ago

I don't have to care about if they make money or not. That's not my business. If they want to make money, they'll shift to other profit models that don't involve intrusive tracking and annoying advertisements.

bilal4hmed 7y ago
would you support paywalls ?
- txcwpalpha 7y ago
  If the site maintains a standard level of quality of content where their paywall is worth paying, sure. But I think the vast majority of sites (think your average Medium blog, many 'news' sites, or tabloid sites) don't meet that standard, and are probably terrified of the thought of nobody willingly signing up for their subscriptions.
- wlll 7y ago
  I support them, in the sense that they don't particluarly bother me. When a site asks me for money to read an article or to subscribe I tend to just close the browser tab and do something else. The thing is, most articles are a distraction, a diversion. Something I do instead of the thing I should be doing and as such they are very very low value to me.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Patreon-paywalls are becoming increasingly popular, with bits of free content as advertising. It seems like a reasonable way to do business.

elorant 7y ago

Have ads that relate to content, not to visitor. Like it was back in the days. When I visit a sci-fi site I'd like to see ads for sci-fi movies, books and paraphernalia. Not an ad for a pair of shoes I happened to search a week ago. Profiling is spooky and it's an offend to privacy. Not to mention that it doesn't work that well. Just because I search something on Google doesn't mean it's the only thing I'm interested in buying.

zelon88 7y ago

What's wrong with the "old" way, where you visit a Mopar automotive related website and saw Mopar car part ads? Or when you visit a computer magazine and saw ads for computer parts? Or when you went to NYT and saw basic shit like paper towels and fall fashion? It became a problem when everyone and their sister started needing to know what kinds of kinks I'm into just to sell me dish detergent.

ChikkaChiChi 7y ago
This is hilariously accurate. I've been predicting for a while now that sites would fall back to the old television show model "RockAuto presents MustangForums.com" or something to that effect. Instead, we get a dancing Albert Einstein begging us to take IQ tests.
- Dangeranger 7y ago
  This is in fact very popular among both YouTube channels and podcast producers. It makes a lot of sense for an advertiser to pick a producer who matches their market and have that producer create an in content advertisement. I am fine with this. The content producer wins, the advertiser wins, and the viewer wins by getting better ads by someone they want to support.
stevesearer 7y ago
This is what we do at Office Snapshots (https://officesnapshots.com https://officesnapshots.com). We post about office design and our ads are primarily for office furniture or other services related to the industry. We also self-host the ads which are non-animated jpgs and sell them without using any ad networks. What you describe works well for us :)
- ChikkaChiChi 7y ago
  What type of overhead is associated with this? Are you experiencing an increase in server costs? What about the resources it takes to build those relationships, maintain the content, or manage the infrastructure? I'm very interested in learning more...

asark 7y ago

Few of the important things on the Web are spyvertising-supported, or wouldn't promptly be replaced by something community-driven and free if they went away or became paid-only (stackoverflow, for instance). It's mostly junk. [EDIT] to expand, I think the piles of spyvertising money funding sites & services is a big part of the decline of truly free sites and open protocols, and make running a paid site (or app, or whatever) harder since you're competing with "free" (but spying on you). Less incentive to use them, less incentive to contribute to them. The whole system's perverse and harmful and it would 100% not be the end of the world, or the end of nice things for free/cheap, if it just disappeared tomorrow.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ProAm 7y ago

I dont believe locally hosted ads are blocked.

SantalBlush 7y ago

Those websites designed a bad model for collecting revenue; it was based on the assumption that viewers would watch their ads out of some misplaced sense of guilt, while the ads and data collection become more and more intrusive. It is not our responsibility to prop up their poor model. If these sites want to make their case that they won't survive without our eyes on their ads, then they can open their books for us to look at the costs and revenues and decide for ourselves whether or not we should help them. But at the end of the day, it is their problem, not ours.

Causality1 7y ago

If sites actually curated the ads they display instead of saying "Give us money and we'll let you and whoever's paid you show whatever you want and run whatever scripts you want" they wouldn't get blocked by the pi-hole. I'm sick of malicious ads on even major sites because everyone's too lazy to give a damn.

idiot900 7y ago

Yes, absolutely. Let me pay them exactly the revenue they lose from my use of an ad blocker, in exchange for no ads.

m3rc 7y ago

I bought a TV that, because of the pihole, I know phones home approximately once every thirty seconds about my viewing habits. In the world we live in something like a pihole isn't an ideological position, it's a necessity to not have everything we do end up rolling into someone else's ad profile on my household.

bilal4hmed 7y ago
blocking your TV from dialing home is reasonable. You have paid for the TV and thats the end of the transaction. It would be another story if you took the TV for free in exchange for ads :)

f00_ 7y ago

They should just find a new business model, if their currently one can be bypassed so easily. giantbomb.com sells premium subscriptions and merch and does okay

wlll 7y ago

I'll turn off my ad blockers when sites stop serving intrusive CPU burning malware laden memory hogging shit to me, which will be never.

intopieces 7y ago

In what other industry is the customer responsible for the company’s business model? I choose who deserves my attention carefully. Internet ads have not earned it.

dsr_ 7y ago

I have no idea how Netflix, HBO, PBS and C-SPAN make money without advertising, but I do know this: it's not my problem, it's theirs.