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Neat software, but I think this is less defensible than other ad blockers. With web ad blockers you protect against tracking, privacy violations and potentiall

Neat software, but I think this is less defensible than other ad blockers. With web ad blockers you protect against tracking, privacy violations and potentially malware and thus don't see "unacceptable ads". In contrast this seems to be about blocking ads just for the sake of blocking ads.

throwawawathrow 7y ago
Yeah that's the point. Fuck ads.
obituary_latte 7y ago
Why would anyone have to defend blocking ads? It’s a personal choice that doesn’t negatively impact anyone. You could argue that if enough people did it, it could effect the potential advertising revenue, but if that were the case then the end result is not that “people are bad for blocking ads” but rather that the current state of advertising is incompatible with user needs and desires.
detuur 7y ago
I can't be the only one who literally can't stand the sound of radio advertising. They make a point of using as many annoying and attention-grabbing sounds as possible, not to mention the cheap and cheesy jingles. I'll often find myself turning the radio down to the second-lowest volume it goes, so I can turn it back up when there's actual music. Equally often I turn it down and then forget about it for the rest of the trip. Honestly, a trip in silence is sometimes preferable to one where I have to micro-manage the volume knob, let alone one where I have to listen to radio ads.
- Siemer 7y ago
  Ever since raising the volume on ads was banned they simply switched to using using limiters, that basically boost all frequencies to achieve the same effect. They'll even use common ring tones or the buzz of a silenced phone to draw your attention. Personally I mute or switch channels as soon as the commercials start and I've actually turned down at least one job offer because they had radio on the office floor.
- onemoresoop 7y ago
  Had absolutely the same sentiemnt, forgot the radio off and realized how much joy I got from it. I gave up on TV about 14 years ago and felt a lot less invaded in my home.
- soylentcola 7y ago
  Since (commercial, music-based) radio in the US became dominated by a handful of companies running syndicated programs, I just found myself moving away from it in general. Too little variety, no real local personality, basically none of the things radio was great at doing. When I'm in the car now, it's all a mix of public radio/podcasts for news and discussion and Shoutcast-type streaming radio for music. I do sometimes pull up specific stuff from my personal uploaded music collection on Google Play Music or find something else I want to hear on YouTube, etc. but not often. The funny thing is that I've found more streaming "radio" stations that do a better job of (the things I liked about) radio than actual radio stations do. It dropped off a lot since the '00s when the cost of legally running a station skyrocketed but it still beats the endless Clear Channel wasteland on the FM dial.
smhost 7y ago
it's about users being able to control information flow on their own devices in whatever way they want. the privacy concerns are secondary.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
There is a reason ad blockers are called "ad blockers", and not "tracking protectors" or "privacy protectors" or "malware protectors" (the latter three being their own category of software). It's because they exist precisely for blocking ads "just for the sake of blocking ads". Ads are malicious. It's perfectly fine to block them. Privacy protection is just a convenient side effect.
- mkolodny 7y ago
  I agree that it's perfectly fine to block ads. And that ad blockers' primary feature is blocking ads. At the same time, I think most ads aren't malicious. They aren't "intending to do harm". Ads sell things. Sometimes things people want. I'd guess that most people who use ad blockers just don't like being sold things.
  - jordanpg 7y ago
    I choose to define "unsolicited attempts to take my attention away from things I care about" as harm. I am happy to be sold things, on my own terms. I don't need ads to find out about things to buy.
    - j4kp07 7y ago
      You can't get much weaker and softer than this right here. I'm just trying to imagine the PTSD you must experience when faced with billboards on the highway or when you attend a sporting/musical event and see BoA plastered around the venue. Also, it's not "unsolicited" when you made the choice to turn on the radio and turn up the volume. If you don't like the ads, turn the radio off. > I am happy to be sold things, on my own terms. I'm pretty sure everyone is happy with everything, when they define their own terms.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > I'm just trying to imagine the PTSD you must experience when faced with billboards on the highway or when you attend a sporting/musical event and see BoA plastered around the venue. GP isn't getting PTSD, but ads here are like mosquitos. A few here and there you won't notice, but once there's lots of them buzzing around and biting, the quality of life goes down very quick. As for unsolicited - they are. They are a malicious third party injecting itself where it isn't welcome. Also, be it TV or radio, ads weren't supposed to be there. This is where the infectious nature of advertising shows. They came and took over these media, and dragged their quality down.
Nextgrid 7y ago
Isn't technology supposed to make our lives better and solve problems? If skipping the ad manually is fine and defensible, then so is telling a machine to do it for you. Frankly, I don't care whether people think it's defensible or not. If something's only purpose is to waste my time and sell me shit I don't need I will use every possible solution (whether technical, legal - GDPR complaints, etc - or else) to get rid of it and make my life better. Maybe instead of thinking whether blocking/skipping ads is defensible, we should ask ourselves why as a society we are accepting having an industry whose only mission is to waste as much of humanity's time as possible while manipulating them to do things against their best interest?
Hitton 7y ago
On the contrary I would say it's more defensible than other ad blockers. When blocking ads/analytics the potential advertiser sees that the ads reach just part of the audience. With audio blocking, advertiser has no feedback and only thing he an do is to guess how many people listen to the station. This blocking would have to become incredibly widespread to start matter.
FroshKiller 7y ago
TV and radio ads are probably embedding inaudible signals meant to be overheard & catalogued by your smartphone, smart home devices, etc. Don't defend advertisers. They are vampires. Don't mournfully look upon them and proclaim, "Even these wretches must eat." Plenty of jobs need doing. Advertising is not, never has been, and never will be one of them.
- noitsnot 7y ago
  I would like to assume at least Facebook and Google are doing it through their apps and devices but they might not even need the inaudible tones.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  Has anyone developed a system to embed redundant inaudible signals into an audio signal? Seems like you could support publishers 100x+ more than any other listener by spoofing these, while poisoning the advertiser's dataset.
mnm1 7y ago
Ads themselves are not defensible. Trying to manipulate others for gain is a disgusting practice. It can lead to depression in individuals and encourages extreme materialism in culture. There's no such thing as an acceptable ad.
- iamstupidsimple 7y ago
  Advertising is necessary (paid or not it's the same shit) for small businesses to get off the ground, at all. Cut off ads and you'll strangle thousands of startups/SMBs. Physical ads haven't lost their effectiveness. If they had then we'd be in real trouble. I don't like ads either but remember there are multiple perspectives here. We should focus on purging bad actors than the entire practice. For now though, I see ad blockers as the tools of change and fully support them.
  - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
    There is nothing wrong with simple ads. The problem is that at least a century of research into persuasion techniques have morphed ads into objects that can seriously compromise your beliefs and emotions in ways that you did not consent to. Modern ads are the equivalent of refined sugar products we have today compared to the relatively tame fruits. Eating fruits is great, eating refined sugar products is terrible for human health. Currently, once a few businesses in the market start using refined-sugar type ads everyone else has to or they die. I want legislation that only allow ads that are the fruit kind, not the refined-sugar kind. Until that happens, I will block all ads.
    - iamstupidsimple 7y ago
      100% there on the analogy. It's incredibly difficult to define but I think we can put some boundaries on it straight away - flashing ads, usage of audio for static ads.
      - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
        Those things are just annoying. They are not even remotely the most dangerous tactics. See the discussion here [1] on Google Fi's advertisement for medium level tactics. Things like font sizes, colors, placement of text have already primed your mind to think 50 dollars. It will take a huge amount of rational thought to overturn the good gut feeling one has developed toward Google's offering based on the false 50 dollars statement. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21011175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21011175
ekianjo 7y ago
Podcast ads are extremely annoying though. They tend to repeat the same message 2 or 3 times, then spell out the name of the products as if people were dumb, and this like 5 times in an hour.
- criddell 7y ago
  Podcasts feel like they are at an inflection point. Ad tech people are either going to wreck podcasting or there will be a podcasting bubble pop and the ad tech will go find some other field to destroy.
- AlexandrB 7y ago
  I feel like I'm living in a parallel universe where podcasts either don't have ads (and are Patreon-supported) or the ads are read by the podcast hosts themselves as a humorous "bit". Which podcasts are you listening to?
  - aembleton 7y ago
    The Joe Rogan Experience. I set my podcast client to skip the first 400 seconds of his shows as they are just adverts.
targonca 7y ago
>this seems to be about blocking ads just for the sake of blocking ads No shit Sherlock, it's literally in their name: Adblock. By the way, ads are violating privacy: the privacy of thought. They manipulate your thoughts creating associations between their brands and positive emotions. They try to make you feel bad and inadequate to incite you to buy their product. They lie, deceive and manipulate. Advertising needs to die. Period.
fiblye 7y ago
I block ads because I don't want to be conditioned to buy things I don't need or legitimately want. I don't want the mega rich to gradually chip away at my mind day by day, hour by hour in order to make themselves another fat pile of cash. If a site shows me some sad puppy image about me stealing their money by blocking their brainwashing, I just add their whole site to my filter. Content on the internet powered by ads is almost entirely content made to distract people. Cutting it of my life is only doing me good. Until everything decides to block me, I'll just be blocking ads because I hate them and the industry behind them.
- dmix 7y ago
  That’s nice. Do you use gmail and other services? Because those were built and delivered for free based on the same ideas you dislike.
  - Fargren 7y ago
    I find this argument very weak. Should communists not buy anything? Should anarchists not use roads? When your political beliefs are at odds with the current legal framework, you have no choice but to compromise to some degree. That doesn't mean you don't actually believe what you claim.
    - dmix 7y ago
      My point was it comes from a entitled position. I'm not making the absolutist position, nor am I dismissing all advertising like OP, but these business models exist for a reason and that is why we have so many of our products online. It's easy for us to use adblockers as the minority of technical users, but that's a privilege based on the other 90% still seeing them (which I personally see nothing wrong with and clearly most publishers dont want to poke the bear either). Otherwise of course people would love to have everything free plus no ads. But ads built and paid for a lot of good things on the internet, which wouldn't have been possible had they all expected payment or other models. I'm all for pushing Google et al to be less aggressive with ads and make the web more usable and not requiring adblockers in order to have basic performance. But I don't disparage advertising as a whole because I understand the tradeoffs.
pavel_lishin 7y ago
> Neat software, but I think this is less defensible than other ad blockers. Why is the onus on me to defend what software I run on hardware I own?
ghego1 7y ago
I don't see why blocking ads for the sake of blocking ads shouldn't be a good enough reason to block ads. As a user I'm not in charge of ensuring that the market works, and I'm certainly not required to ensure that corporations make a profit. It's their duty to do so, and companies making a profit out of ads have proven repeatedly that they will seek profits however feasible. The worst thing one might be doing by blocking ads is to breach some contractual agreement, assuming that one was ever undersigned. The only reason one should refrain from blocking ads for the sake of blocking ads would be if that was illegal. But I don't know of any criminal law that punishes such a behavior, and honestly I don't think it would easy to draft one. I certainly will block ads whenever possible, which in first place means paying for the services I like (entertainment, email, productivity, news, etc.). But when paying is not an option, and too often it is not, I simply quit the service (e.g. Facebook), or block the ads when even that won't work (surfing the web).
HoveringOrb 7y ago
Why would you feel the need to defend it? It's your bandwidth. Your paying for it. Filter the content you access however you like with a clear conscience.
RickS 7y ago
You have a point that radio ads are less hostile and invasive than more targeted advertisement, but that argument feels a bit like "It's less defensible to resist a stabbing, because it's better than getting shot" Resisting psychological manipulation by entities that don't want the best for you remains highly defensible. Media creators want what's best for the hand that feeds them. Both advertisers and mediums that host advertisements are subjecting me to messages that are intentionally designed to influence my behavior, often in ways that 1) I did not ask for, and would not elect given a choice 2) are misleading 3) are interruptive or otherwise undermine the utility of whatever I'm watching/listening to. There's a similar justification/motive outlined on the main site https://www.adblockradio.com/en/ https://www.adblockradio.com/en/
SkyBelow 7y ago
Many ads are justifiable to block in and of themselves because of the message they send. "Do you have ugly crooked yellow teeth..." Why do we need to tell people that crooked teeth are inherently ugly. This sort of add is the reason we have girls under 10 worrying about getting braces when their dentist never even mentioned the idea and who are whitening their teeth. Not all are that bad, and some ads exist just to inform. But given that someone doesn't know until they have already had to listen to the ad, it makes simple enough to justify.

throwawawathrow 7y ago

Yeah that's the point. Fuck ads.

obituary_latte 7y ago

Why would anyone have to defend blocking ads? It’s a personal choice that doesn’t negatively impact anyone. You could argue that if enough people did it, it could effect the potential advertising revenue, but if that were the case then the end result is not that “people are bad for blocking ads” but rather that the current state of advertising is incompatible with user needs and desires.

detuur 7y ago

I can't be the only one who literally can't stand the sound of radio advertising. They make a point of using as many annoying and attention-grabbing sounds as possible, not to mention the cheap and cheesy jingles. I'll often find myself turning the radio down to the second-lowest volume it goes, so I can turn it back up when there's actual music. Equally often I turn it down and then forget about it for the rest of the trip. Honestly, a trip in silence is sometimes preferable to one where I have to micro-manage the volume knob, let alone one where I have to listen to radio ads.

Siemer 7y ago
Ever since raising the volume on ads was banned they simply switched to using using limiters, that basically boost all frequencies to achieve the same effect. They'll even use common ring tones or the buzz of a silenced phone to draw your attention. Personally I mute or switch channels as soon as the commercials start and I've actually turned down at least one job offer because they had radio on the office floor.
onemoresoop 7y ago
Had absolutely the same sentiemnt, forgot the radio off and realized how much joy I got from it. I gave up on TV about 14 years ago and felt a lot less invaded in my home.
soylentcola 7y ago
Since (commercial, music-based) radio in the US became dominated by a handful of companies running syndicated programs, I just found myself moving away from it in general. Too little variety, no real local personality, basically none of the things radio was great at doing. When I'm in the car now, it's all a mix of public radio/podcasts for news and discussion and Shoutcast-type streaming radio for music. I do sometimes pull up specific stuff from my personal uploaded music collection on Google Play Music or find something else I want to hear on YouTube, etc. but not often. The funny thing is that I've found more streaming "radio" stations that do a better job of (the things I liked about) radio than actual radio stations do. It dropped off a lot since the '00s when the cost of legally running a station skyrocketed but it still beats the endless Clear Channel wasteland on the FM dial.

smhost 7y ago

it's about users being able to control information flow on their own devices in whatever way they want. the privacy concerns are secondary.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

There is a reason ad blockers are called "ad blockers", and not "tracking protectors" or "privacy protectors" or "malware protectors" (the latter three being their own category of software). It's because they exist precisely for blocking ads "just for the sake of blocking ads". Ads are malicious. It's perfectly fine to block them. Privacy protection is just a convenient side effect.

mkolodny 7y ago
I agree that it's perfectly fine to block ads. And that ad blockers' primary feature is blocking ads. At the same time, I think most ads aren't malicious. They aren't "intending to do harm". Ads sell things. Sometimes things people want. I'd guess that most people who use ad blockers just don't like being sold things.
- jordanpg 7y ago
  I choose to define "unsolicited attempts to take my attention away from things I care about" as harm. I am happy to be sold things, on my own terms. I don't need ads to find out about things to buy.
  - j4kp07 7y ago
    You can't get much weaker and softer than this right here. I'm just trying to imagine the PTSD you must experience when faced with billboards on the highway or when you attend a sporting/musical event and see BoA plastered around the venue. Also, it's not "unsolicited" when you made the choice to turn on the radio and turn up the volume. If you don't like the ads, turn the radio off. > I am happy to be sold things, on my own terms. I'm pretty sure everyone is happy with everything, when they define their own terms.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > I'm just trying to imagine the PTSD you must experience when faced with billboards on the highway or when you attend a sporting/musical event and see BoA plastered around the venue. GP isn't getting PTSD, but ads here are like mosquitos. A few here and there you won't notice, but once there's lots of them buzzing around and biting, the quality of life goes down very quick. As for unsolicited - they are. They are a malicious third party injecting itself where it isn't welcome. Also, be it TV or radio, ads weren't supposed to be there. This is where the infectious nature of advertising shows. They came and took over these media, and dragged their quality down.

Nextgrid 7y ago

Isn't technology supposed to make our lives better and solve problems? If skipping the ad manually is fine and defensible, then so is telling a machine to do it for you. Frankly, I don't care whether people think it's defensible or not. If something's only purpose is to waste my time and sell me shit I don't need I will use every possible solution (whether technical, legal - GDPR complaints, etc - or else) to get rid of it and make my life better. Maybe instead of thinking whether blocking/skipping ads is defensible, we should ask ourselves why as a society we are accepting having an industry whose only mission is to waste as much of humanity's time as possible while manipulating them to do things against their best interest?

Hitton 7y ago

On the contrary I would say it's more defensible than other ad blockers. When blocking ads/analytics the potential advertiser sees that the ads reach just part of the audience. With audio blocking, advertiser has no feedback and only thing he an do is to guess how many people listen to the station. This blocking would have to become incredibly widespread to start matter.

FroshKiller 7y ago

TV and radio ads are probably embedding inaudible signals meant to be overheard & catalogued by your smartphone, smart home devices, etc. Don't defend advertisers. They are vampires. Don't mournfully look upon them and proclaim, "Even these wretches must eat." Plenty of jobs need doing. Advertising is not, never has been, and never will be one of them.

noitsnot 7y ago
I would like to assume at least Facebook and Google are doing it through their apps and devices but they might not even need the inaudible tones.
cwkoss 7y ago
Has anyone developed a system to embed redundant inaudible signals into an audio signal? Seems like you could support publishers 100x+ more than any other listener by spoofing these, while poisoning the advertiser's dataset.

mnm1 7y ago

Ads themselves are not defensible. Trying to manipulate others for gain is a disgusting practice. It can lead to depression in individuals and encourages extreme materialism in culture. There's no such thing as an acceptable ad.

iamstupidsimple 7y ago
Advertising is necessary (paid or not it's the same shit) for small businesses to get off the ground, at all. Cut off ads and you'll strangle thousands of startups/SMBs. Physical ads haven't lost their effectiveness. If they had then we'd be in real trouble. I don't like ads either but remember there are multiple perspectives here. We should focus on purging bad actors than the entire practice. For now though, I see ad blockers as the tools of change and fully support them.
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago
  There is nothing wrong with simple ads. The problem is that at least a century of research into persuasion techniques have morphed ads into objects that can seriously compromise your beliefs and emotions in ways that you did not consent to. Modern ads are the equivalent of refined sugar products we have today compared to the relatively tame fruits. Eating fruits is great, eating refined sugar products is terrible for human health. Currently, once a few businesses in the market start using refined-sugar type ads everyone else has to or they die. I want legislation that only allow ads that are the fruit kind, not the refined-sugar kind. Until that happens, I will block all ads.
  - iamstupidsimple 7y ago
    100% there on the analogy. It's incredibly difficult to define but I think we can put some boundaries on it straight away - flashing ads, usage of audio for static ads.
    - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
      Those things are just annoying. They are not even remotely the most dangerous tactics. See the discussion here [1] on Google Fi's advertisement for medium level tactics. Things like font sizes, colors, placement of text have already primed your mind to think 50 dollars. It will take a huge amount of rational thought to overturn the good gut feeling one has developed toward Google's offering based on the false 50 dollars statement. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21011175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21011175

ekianjo 7y ago

Podcast ads are extremely annoying though. They tend to repeat the same message 2 or 3 times, then spell out the name of the products as if people were dumb, and this like 5 times in an hour.

criddell 7y ago
Podcasts feel like they are at an inflection point. Ad tech people are either going to wreck podcasting or there will be a podcasting bubble pop and the ad tech will go find some other field to destroy.
AlexandrB 7y ago
I feel like I'm living in a parallel universe where podcasts either don't have ads (and are Patreon-supported) or the ads are read by the podcast hosts themselves as a humorous "bit". Which podcasts are you listening to?
- aembleton 7y ago
  The Joe Rogan Experience. I set my podcast client to skip the first 400 seconds of his shows as they are just adverts.

targonca 7y ago

>this seems to be about blocking ads just for the sake of blocking ads No shit Sherlock, it's literally in their name: Adblock. By the way, ads are violating privacy: the privacy of thought. They manipulate your thoughts creating associations between their brands and positive emotions. They try to make you feel bad and inadequate to incite you to buy their product. They lie, deceive and manipulate. Advertising needs to die. Period.

fiblye 7y ago

I block ads because I don't want to be conditioned to buy things I don't need or legitimately want. I don't want the mega rich to gradually chip away at my mind day by day, hour by hour in order to make themselves another fat pile of cash. If a site shows me some sad puppy image about me stealing their money by blocking their brainwashing, I just add their whole site to my filter. Content on the internet powered by ads is almost entirely content made to distract people. Cutting it of my life is only doing me good. Until everything decides to block me, I'll just be blocking ads because I hate them and the industry behind them.

dmix 7y ago
That’s nice. Do you use gmail and other services? Because those were built and delivered for free based on the same ideas you dislike.
- Fargren 7y ago
  I find this argument very weak. Should communists not buy anything? Should anarchists not use roads? When your political beliefs are at odds with the current legal framework, you have no choice but to compromise to some degree. That doesn't mean you don't actually believe what you claim.
  - dmix 7y ago
    My point was it comes from a entitled position. I'm not making the absolutist position, nor am I dismissing all advertising like OP, but these business models exist for a reason and that is why we have so many of our products online. It's easy for us to use adblockers as the minority of technical users, but that's a privilege based on the other 90% still seeing them (which I personally see nothing wrong with and clearly most publishers dont want to poke the bear either). Otherwise of course people would love to have everything free plus no ads. But ads built and paid for a lot of good things on the internet, which wouldn't have been possible had they all expected payment or other models. I'm all for pushing Google et al to be less aggressive with ads and make the web more usable and not requiring adblockers in order to have basic performance. But I don't disparage advertising as a whole because I understand the tradeoffs.

pavel_lishin 7y ago

> Neat software, but I think this is less defensible than other ad blockers. Why is the onus on me to defend what software I run on hardware I own?

ghego1 7y ago

I don't see why blocking ads for the sake of blocking ads shouldn't be a good enough reason to block ads. As a user I'm not in charge of ensuring that the market works, and I'm certainly not required to ensure that corporations make a profit. It's their duty to do so, and companies making a profit out of ads have proven repeatedly that they will seek profits however feasible. The worst thing one might be doing by blocking ads is to breach some contractual agreement, assuming that one was ever undersigned. The only reason one should refrain from blocking ads for the sake of blocking ads would be if that was illegal. But I don't know of any criminal law that punishes such a behavior, and honestly I don't think it would easy to draft one. I certainly will block ads whenever possible, which in first place means paying for the services I like (entertainment, email, productivity, news, etc.). But when paying is not an option, and too often it is not, I simply quit the service (e.g. Facebook), or block the ads when even that won't work (surfing the web).

HoveringOrb 7y ago

Why would you feel the need to defend it? It's your bandwidth. Your paying for it. Filter the content you access however you like with a clear conscience.

RickS 7y ago

You have a point that radio ads are less hostile and invasive than more targeted advertisement, but that argument feels a bit like "It's less defensible to resist a stabbing, because it's better than getting shot" Resisting psychological manipulation by entities that don't want the best for you remains highly defensible. Media creators want what's best for the hand that feeds them. Both advertisers and mediums that host advertisements are subjecting me to messages that are intentionally designed to influence my behavior, often in ways that 1) I did not ask for, and would not elect given a choice 2) are misleading 3) are interruptive or otherwise undermine the utility of whatever I'm watching/listening to. There's a similar justification/motive outlined on the main site https://www.adblockradio.com/en/ https://www.adblockradio.com/en/

SkyBelow 7y ago

Many ads are justifiable to block in and of themselves because of the message they send. "Do you have ugly crooked yellow teeth..." Why do we need to tell people that crooked teeth are inherently ugly. This sort of add is the reason we have girls under 10 worrying about getting braces when their dentist never even mentioned the idea and who are whitening their teeth. Not all are that bad, and some ads exist just to inform. But given that someone doesn't know until they have already had to listen to the ad, it makes simple enough to justify.