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Let's be adults here. This is SO, and I imagine you've used and enjoyed the use of their services just like the rest of us. Support them by letting passive ads

Let's be adults here. This is SO, and I imagine you've used and enjoyed the use of their services just like the rest of us. Support them by letting passive ads sit on the edges of the page, and appreciate that they are actually trying to solve this issue.

keyle 7y ago
I want to agree with you, but "passive ads sit on the edges of the page" is a false argument.
muckrakerz 7y ago
No. We got content without this in the past, and we can do this in the future. And I will note THEY admit this is bad. Stop trying to defend the indefensible.
- manigandham 7y ago
  You didn't get Stackoverflow, and barely any of the content today. You may be fine with the internet of the early 90s but most people are not.
  - zrobotics 7y ago
    Who paid for the content I actually visit StackOverflow for? It surely wasn't SO; they provide a nice platform but they also get that content for free. This isn't a journalism site, the value in SO comes from freely provided user answers. Yes, SO provides some value vs. forums via their q/a platform, but it is a marginal amount of value. Sure, SO is easier than parsing a forum thread, but the actual value that I care about is the answers provided for free by their users. I could easily return to 90's era usenet, it wasn't as convenient but it worked. What I couldn't deal with is a lack of a platform where people ask technical questions & get answers, I remember being on dial-up and reading paper manuals that were out-of-date/incomplete. But SO isn't irreplaceable, and I am oftentimes frustrated with finding questions closed for incorrect reasons, normally my answer is buried 2 links deep in SO because my DDG search (and Google too) takes me to an improperly closed question where the 'previously addressed' question is adjacent to my query. StackOverflow does not provide an irreplaceable service; like github they do some nice things but there isn't any reason they must be the dominant platform. And the real value is in the answers, which SO gets for free.
    - manigandham 7y ago
      SO doesn't pay for the content, they pay for the space to host that content and community. Since users aren't paying, SO needs to monetize it somehow and that's what the ads are for. I'm sure you could return to the old internet, but many billions of other internet users enjoy the content they consume for free. Use your adblocker and stick with paywall/subscription sites because we're unlikely to ever go back to a pre-commercial internet.
      - arpa 7y ago
        A tiny nitpick: nothing is free, the internet users just pay with a different currency: their data and attention. Both of these things are much more valuable than most internet users think. As far as a non-commercial internet goes... well, we can always hope. We just have to wrangle the means of content production and control (heh, heh, see what I did there?). The resources are there to do that and have a free (both as in beer and in freedom) and high-quality internet, what we are missing is... attention of the masses, the most expensive thing.
    - huac 7y ago
      "it wasn't as convenient but it worked" - this is the story of every single dead product. Zunes were less convenient than iPods and iPhones. Books are less convenient than Kindles. AltaVista and Yahoo Directories were less convenient than Google.
      - GenghisSean 7y ago
        I would hardly call books a dead product. They even have an advantage over Kindles because they don't track you[0]. [0] https://files.catbox.moe/gxyjfn.png https://files.catbox.moe/gxyjfn.png
  - blub 7y ago
    The last remaining excuse of advertisers: you wouldn't want something to happen to your favorite content? That would be a shame. Yes, most people would not be "fine" if they lost their googles and youtubes and stack overflows. But then in a few weeks or maaaybe months they'd get over it, because none of these "free" services are in any way essential. Paid alternatives will pop up where needed.
    - manigandham 7y ago
      What excuse? Advertisers aren't concerned, there will always be advertising inventory available. And paid alternatives have been tried for decades (ExpertsExchange if you want a specific example here). It's not a revolutionary idea, it just doesn't work for most content.
kortilla 7y ago
Google ads are anything but passive.
scarface74 7y ago
They could “solve” the issue by not having third party ads. Of all the sites on the internet, StackOverflow has the demographics that any advertiser would crave. How large of an inside ads sales force would you need to target higher than average income earners? How large reputable sites trust third party ad servers is a mystery to me. Besides, native ads that could be served from StackOverFlows own servers would be harder to block.
- manigandham 7y ago
  That's just not how digital ad campaigns are run. Advertisers, agencies, media buyers and the rest of the supply chain don't negotiate with individual sites like that, not at any scale that can sustain a site like SO.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Stack Overflow has a known demographic and is not some unknown site. Are you really saying that companies like Amazon (AWS),Microsoft, JetBrains, Google (GCP), Slack, etc would ignore a sales pitch from SO?
    - manigandham 7y ago
      It doesn't work like that is what I'm saying. You dont just pitch those companies. They have layers of agencies (a master agency of record, creative agencies, media buying agencies) that handle all the advertising duties. These shops create and traffic these ad campaigns in demand-side platforms (DSPs) which connect and bid on inventory in adexchanges and supply-side platforms (SSPs). Then there's layers of targeting, accountability, measurement, and insurance that gets requested and bought from anti-fraud, brand-safety and verification vendors. That's likely where this fingerprinting came script came from. Going to individual agencies with your own different supply path is not going to get any attention and nobody is going to change the way they buy millions in advertising just for you. No single publisher has that much power these days, not even Stackoverflow.
      - 7y ago
yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
We're talking about this precisely because the ads are becoming less passive.
DJHenk 7y ago
> Let's be adults here. This is SO, and I imagine you've used and enjoyed the use of their services just like the rest of us. Support them by letting passive ads sit on the edges of the page If we're adults, lets also acknowledge that this relationship between me and SO is not really symmetrical and that forcing me as a user to accept privacy invading ads has a hint of blackmail in it. This is not about supporting the site's content. If they would introduce a paid service that lets me have the exact same site, but without ads, I would sign up in a second. Hell, my employer would likely want to foot the bill, so they wouldn't even have to be modest with their pricing. Why is this not an option, I ask you. Why keep sites like this insisting on their surveillance model? > and appreciate that they are actually trying to solve this issue. It's very hard not to be cynical about this. They care about their image. I'm not convinced that they care about my feelings. They is absolutely no evidence for that.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  > If they would introduce a paid service that lets me have the exact same site, but without ads, I would sign up in a second. And then do that and then suddenly users think it's not worth the money for reason X and they tank. It has happened many times before and few companies can pull that off when their products were established as free.
anbop 7y ago
Users gave StackOverflow its entire business by making it the #1 place for programming. Now it’s StackOverflow’s responsibility to treat those users fairly. Since companies in this position often renege on this social contract, users have to turn to Big Government to regulate those who refuse to self-regulate.
SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
> Support them by letting passive ads sit on the edges of the page Any ad that fingerprints and tracks users is not "passive".

keyle 7y ago

I want to agree with you, but "passive ads sit on the edges of the page" is a false argument.

muckrakerz 7y ago

No. We got content without this in the past, and we can do this in the future. And I will note THEY admit this is bad. Stop trying to defend the indefensible.

manigandham 7y ago
You didn't get Stackoverflow, and barely any of the content today. You may be fine with the internet of the early 90s but most people are not.
- zrobotics 7y ago
  Who paid for the content I actually visit StackOverflow for? It surely wasn't SO; they provide a nice platform but they also get that content for free. This isn't a journalism site, the value in SO comes from freely provided user answers. Yes, SO provides some value vs. forums via their q/a platform, but it is a marginal amount of value. Sure, SO is easier than parsing a forum thread, but the actual value that I care about is the answers provided for free by their users. I could easily return to 90's era usenet, it wasn't as convenient but it worked. What I couldn't deal with is a lack of a platform where people ask technical questions & get answers, I remember being on dial-up and reading paper manuals that were out-of-date/incomplete. But SO isn't irreplaceable, and I am oftentimes frustrated with finding questions closed for incorrect reasons, normally my answer is buried 2 links deep in SO because my DDG search (and Google too) takes me to an improperly closed question where the 'previously addressed' question is adjacent to my query. StackOverflow does not provide an irreplaceable service; like github they do some nice things but there isn't any reason they must be the dominant platform. And the real value is in the answers, which SO gets for free.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    SO doesn't pay for the content, they pay for the space to host that content and community. Since users aren't paying, SO needs to monetize it somehow and that's what the ads are for. I'm sure you could return to the old internet, but many billions of other internet users enjoy the content they consume for free. Use your adblocker and stick with paywall/subscription sites because we're unlikely to ever go back to a pre-commercial internet.
    - arpa 7y ago
      A tiny nitpick: nothing is free, the internet users just pay with a different currency: their data and attention. Both of these things are much more valuable than most internet users think. As far as a non-commercial internet goes... well, we can always hope. We just have to wrangle the means of content production and control (heh, heh, see what I did there?). The resources are there to do that and have a free (both as in beer and in freedom) and high-quality internet, what we are missing is... attention of the masses, the most expensive thing.
  - huac 7y ago
    "it wasn't as convenient but it worked" - this is the story of every single dead product. Zunes were less convenient than iPods and iPhones. Books are less convenient than Kindles. AltaVista and Yahoo Directories were less convenient than Google.
    - GenghisSean 7y ago
      I would hardly call books a dead product. They even have an advantage over Kindles because they don't track you[0]. [0] https://files.catbox.moe/gxyjfn.png https://files.catbox.moe/gxyjfn.png
- blub 7y ago
  The last remaining excuse of advertisers: you wouldn't want something to happen to your favorite content? That would be a shame. Yes, most people would not be "fine" if they lost their googles and youtubes and stack overflows. But then in a few weeks or maaaybe months they'd get over it, because none of these "free" services are in any way essential. Paid alternatives will pop up where needed.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    What excuse? Advertisers aren't concerned, there will always be advertising inventory available. And paid alternatives have been tried for decades (ExpertsExchange if you want a specific example here). It's not a revolutionary idea, it just doesn't work for most content.

kortilla 7y ago

Google ads are anything but passive.

scarface74 7y ago

They could “solve” the issue by not having third party ads. Of all the sites on the internet, StackOverflow has the demographics that any advertiser would crave. How large of an inside ads sales force would you need to target higher than average income earners? How large reputable sites trust third party ad servers is a mystery to me. Besides, native ads that could be served from StackOverFlows own servers would be harder to block.

manigandham 7y ago
That's just not how digital ad campaigns are run. Advertisers, agencies, media buyers and the rest of the supply chain don't negotiate with individual sites like that, not at any scale that can sustain a site like SO.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Stack Overflow has a known demographic and is not some unknown site. Are you really saying that companies like Amazon (AWS),Microsoft, JetBrains, Google (GCP), Slack, etc would ignore a sales pitch from SO?
  - manigandham 7y ago
    It doesn't work like that is what I'm saying. You dont just pitch those companies. They have layers of agencies (a master agency of record, creative agencies, media buying agencies) that handle all the advertising duties. These shops create and traffic these ad campaigns in demand-side platforms (DSPs) which connect and bid on inventory in adexchanges and supply-side platforms (SSPs). Then there's layers of targeting, accountability, measurement, and insurance that gets requested and bought from anti-fraud, brand-safety and verification vendors. That's likely where this fingerprinting came script came from. Going to individual agencies with your own different supply path is not going to get any attention and nobody is going to change the way they buy millions in advertising just for you. No single publisher has that much power these days, not even Stackoverflow.
    - 7y ago

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago

We're talking about this precisely because the ads are becoming less passive.

DJHenk 7y ago

> Let's be adults here. This is SO, and I imagine you've used and enjoyed the use of their services just like the rest of us. Support them by letting passive ads sit on the edges of the page If we're adults, lets also acknowledge that this relationship between me and SO is not really symmetrical and that forcing me as a user to accept privacy invading ads has a hint of blackmail in it. This is not about supporting the site's content. If they would introduce a paid service that lets me have the exact same site, but without ads, I would sign up in a second. Hell, my employer would likely want to foot the bill, so they wouldn't even have to be modest with their pricing. Why is this not an option, I ask you. Why keep sites like this insisting on their surveillance model? > and appreciate that they are actually trying to solve this issue. It's very hard not to be cynical about this. They care about their image. I'm not convinced that they care about my feelings. They is absolutely no evidence for that.

johnchristopher 7y ago
> If they would introduce a paid service that lets me have the exact same site, but without ads, I would sign up in a second. And then do that and then suddenly users think it's not worth the money for reason X and they tank. It has happened many times before and few companies can pull that off when their products were established as free.

anbop 7y ago

Users gave StackOverflow its entire business by making it the #1 place for programming. Now it’s StackOverflow’s responsibility to treat those users fairly. Since companies in this position often renege on this social contract, users have to turn to Big Government to regulate those who refuse to self-regulate.

SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago

> Support them by letting passive ads sit on the edges of the page Any ad that fingerprints and tracks users is not "passive".