7 ms·

Neat, their ads are powered by: https://www.ethicalads.io/ https://www.ethicalads.io/ This makes me wonder - what ads would be acceptable in the eyes of privac

Neat, their ads are powered by: https://www.ethicalads.io/ https://www.ethicalads.io/ This makes me wonder - what ads would be acceptable in the eyes of privacy focused developers? Any? And i don't mean UX - i mean, what ads would you, a privacy focused developer, recommend i install on my site. Assuming i want to fully respect by users privacy, while still attempting to pay for the server costs. Maybe this warrants a AskHN, but it seems relevant here as they're implementing this exact concept. Thoughts?

utf_8x 6y ago
Personally, I think ethicalads.io and contextcue.com are just fine. Maybe even carbonads.net but good luck getting them to even talk to you without a very large audience already in place.
nicoburns 6y ago
> This makes me wonder - what ads would be acceptable in the eyes of privacy focused developers? Any? Ads that: - don't track you. - Are either textual or images (non-animated) - Are clearly marked as adverts and don't try to blend into the page
- paul_f 6y ago
  Not denying this is desirable to consumers. Be aware this list of requirements would make any ads run low value to marketers. Retargeting is important to many campaigns, as are ads that grab attention.
ziddoap 6y ago
>what ads would be acceptable in the eyes of privacy focused developers I think it's a pretty straight-forward and easy answer. Don't put ads that breach user privacy. Just use context-based advertisements. If your ads are asking about my canvas size, mouse position, etc. or otherwise are attempting to track me from website to website, I'm not cool with that and will block it whatever way possible. Other dark patterns (blending in to website e.g. Reddit's sponsored posts) are also terrible, but not necessarily related to your question re: privacy. If I know a website is using context-based advertisements with no tracking, I allow the ads and sometimes even follow them if I need whatever is being advertised.
- cxr 6y ago
  OP seems to be asking for specific examples of ad services to use. (I'm not sure what's up with the number of responses to the question, "what ads would you [...] recommend i install on my site [a]ssuming i want to fully respect [m]y users privacy", with answers such as, "Don't put ads that breach user privacy".)
  - ziddoap 6y ago
    Obviously the question is ambiguous enough that there is more than one interpretation. Even if they said "What specific & exact ad service would you recommend", a reply of "Any ad service that doesn't do tracking -- consider contextual based ads" is still a valid one, no?
    - cxr 6y ago
      No. > Even if they said [...] We don't have to imagine anything. We can look at what was written (and I quoted it again above). No matter what a person has in mind when writing out, "Don't put ads that breach user privacy", it's not a meaningful reply to the question that was actually asked.
      - ziddoap 6y ago
        Interesting... You started with "OP seems [...]", which sort of implies you are interpreting as well... Whatever, I'll stand corrected I guess. My (and everyone else except you!) reply is not meaningful. Edit to add: If I ask for a product that does X and respects Y, and someone says "Here are the criteria I use to make sure any product respects your Y requirement", I would accept that as a valid and helpful reply. Maybe it's just me.
        cxr 6y ago
        > You started with "OP seems [...]", which sort of implies you are interpreting as well... I edited that in to soften the message. It's like the approach of phrasing things to avoid use of "you" when addressing a topic, to prevent people from getting defensive—which I also do a lot and did here. Clearly that effort was wasted.
ximeng 6y ago
Ads that can be turned off. If they’re not adding enough value to users for them to turn them on, get rid of them.
komali2 6y ago
Cory Doctorow just did a whole email on this. In short: contextual ads. Here's the email: https://mail.flarn.com/pipermail/plura-list/2020-August/000159.html https://mail.flarn.com/pipermail/plura-list/2020-August/0001...
- skyfaller 6y ago
  Same content in a more web-friendly format: https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/05/behavioral-v-contextual/#contextual-ads https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/05/behavioral-v-contextual/#...
  - komali2 6y ago
    Thanks, how'd you find that? I had a hard time finding a web version at all.
    - cdoctorow 6y ago
      All my stuff is mirrored on Twitter, Tumblr, Mastodon, my newsletter and my blog; the easiest way to find old posts in the blog: pluralistic.net
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
Does the lists used in adblockers like UBlock Origin whitelist Ads from this company, are there any other advertising companies with similar philosophies?
- ffpip 6y ago
  uBlock Origin whitelists nothing. You decide what to let in. I've noticed it blocks carbonads, ethicalads and even ads on DDG. I turned it off on DDG and notepad++ sites, to let ads through. If you want you can too.
  - Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
    Thanks, have carbon ads gained good reputation? I've been seeing it increasingly on small project sites, but most of the time the Ads have been from adobe.
    - ffpip 6y ago
      I don't whitelist whole ad networks. So don't really know their reputataion. I whitelist specific sites (some sites I like, and reddit)
chris_f 6y ago
I've spent a lot of time over the last few months looking at different privacy focused forms of monetization, specifically aimed at search engines because of my use case. [0] The main factor determining your options is whether you are comfortable having a 3rd party ad provider have access to the IP, user agent (and potentially search term in some cases) of your users. If that is not a dealbreaker for your use case then there are a lot of different options, including EthicalAds which I believe is a great service. Understandably, the main reasons for this are because the ad networks need to prevent fraud, and the ad sponsors usually want some kind of measurable metric to determine ROI. If you are not comfortable with the above compromise then your options for contextual advertising are significantly limited with the only real option being to sell direct ads to companies. [0] https://coil.com/p/runnaroo/Privacy-and-Search-Engine-Monetization/5dXAW6NwF https://coil.com/p/runnaroo/Privacy-and-Search-Engine-Moneti...
- wintermutestwin 6y ago
  >with the only real option being to sell direct ads to companies. Maybe I don't understand the complexity behind the ad-network curtain today, but direct ad sales worked fine pre-internet. Serve the ads from the same domain as your content and you can prevent ad blocking. Sounds like a win-win to me.
  - chris_f 6y ago
    >Sounds like a win-win to me. Yeah, I agree. The challenging is finding the relevant companies who wish to advertise and the ad 'sales' process. It's significantly more work than just plugging in an existing ad network who has a ready supply of ads, and it requires a slightly different skillset that's not necessarily a core competency. I'm going through the process right now of reaching out to relevant companies with an aligned privacy focused and it is a mixed bag of results. Having said that, I think it is worth it in the long term because it makes you less reliant on other companies, but it is a tremendous amount of work upfront.
  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    Almost all companies won't bother with buying ads directly from a random small company, because they don't know if you are trustworthy or won't show up some controversial content that hurts their brand. Much easier to use an ad bundler (from their standpoint) like google.
lykr0n 6y ago
I'm fine with Ads. What I'm not fine with is: - Intrusive Ads that either demand attention or mask themselves as something else - Ads that are based on targeted information pulled from other sources, such as other websites. - Ads that are just completely off topic. I'm fine with general targeting. "male" "computer science" "linux" stuff like that
skinkestek 6y ago
You'll find that a number of HNers, including a number of high profile ones are against any form for advertising. Personally I am against tracking and unethical ads[0] but I think purely contextual ads can be OK: - ycombinator ads on news.ycombinator.com: OK with me even if they blend in, it is part of what I want to see when I am here - Webstorm/IntelliJ/upcoming programming conference ads on developer blogs: Smashing - "Sponsored by" ads on Open Source projects (as long as they aren't bad[1]): fine with me [0][1]: like pushing payday loans to poor, gambling to addicts, cheating sites etc
- oska 6y ago
  > You'll find that a number of HNers, including a number of high profile ones are against any form for advertising. Yep, this is me (although I'm not at all 'high profile'). Specifically, I'm against all push advertising, where ads are being served to a user when they are not actively looking for product/service information. If it's a site that is all advertising or nearly all advertising with some filler editorial then I'm fine with that because obviously a user is not going to go to that site unless they want to be marketed too and are actively looking for product/service information (including about products/services of which they were previously unaware).
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    What about newspapers and magazines (and the online versions thereof). They have a fairly explicit business model of advertising and have for 80 years. It's well understood by pretty much all adults that reading such a newspaper or magazine includes reading ads.
    - oska 6y ago
      A newspaper that includes a dedicated classifieds ads section? Fine. A newpaper that runs advertising through its editorial sections? Not fine, and the influence of advertising accounts held by major corporations with newspapers on how and what news is written is well known. I'd argue that most newspapers and magazines that ran advertising were toxic too and played a large part in promoting the consumer culture that took hold in the 20th century and helped to push harmful products that would not have been taken up nearly as widely without huge advertising spends (cigarettes, sugary breakfast cereals, soft drinks, etc). But with a printed product sold as a bundled package of editorial and advertising it was hard for the consumer to protect themselves from the harmful advertising. Now, when content is delivered digitally and we have the means to screen out the unwanted advertising we'd be fools to not do so (and fools to be convinced by a bogus argument that we need to pollute our brains as our part of a supposed 'deal').
1propionyl 6y ago
In case anyone from EthicalAds is reading this, you've got a copy error: > We believe good advertising should _compliment_ content and never get in the way. That's why we built a network that complies with AcceptableAds, BetterAds, and DoNotTrack. Complement, not compliment.
eternalban 6y ago
We can also ask the alternative question which is never asked: - what other mechanisms can server the same utility as advertising for businesses? - what other mechanisms can support viable business models. What is strange about advertising is that it enjoys a bizzare outsized role in determining social norms that is never questioned. Sure, businesses need to advertise their services and goods but at the cost of even destroying privacy? I find it strange.
- erikrothoff 6y ago
  One aspect to consider is that it is the tried and true solution. Surely many businesses and a lot of smart people have considered alternatives. It seems, save from actually paying money or living off the generosity of others, ads won.
aidenn0 6y ago
From my point of view, just about any non-tracking ad is ethically okay. Very highly deceptive ads are going to be bad too; things like push-polls or ones that make demonstrably false factual claims. If your ads play loud songs, pop up a dozen (non-tracking) windows or flash annoying animations over the page, I'm not going to block those, I'm just going to not visit your site. Also if one more site tells me to "disable my ad blocker" when I'm running privacy badger, I'm going to scream. I'm not blocking advertising, at least how it is understood in the general sense. If a newspaper contained an eye-tracker that measured my engagement and I put a piece of tape over the lens, no reasonable person would call that "ad blocking".
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
Maybe I'm not getting it but I don't see how (as a user not a dev) any ad acceptable to me can be acceptable to an advertiser. You can't know my wants if you don't build a profile of me. To do that you need to track me and my browsing behaviour. That is unacceptable. But if you don't you'll be throwing a lot of things with none of them sticking. So how can this work? Edit: this is what they say (https://www.ethicalads.io/advertisers.html> https://www.ethicalads.io/advertisers.html> "When you run a campaign with us, your ad only appears on developer and technical websites. This drives your business results and respects our audience without having to resort to programmatic ad buys" Well, good luck lads, I hope you succeed. If I can offer a small hint, never try to get my attention with any kind of animation. Images from your entire domain will be blocked instantly (whether it be ethicalads.io or if they're self-hosted on pqrs.com, then pqrs.com. I repeat - don't try to draw my attention).

utf_8x 6y ago

Personally, I think ethicalads.io and contextcue.com are just fine. Maybe even carbonads.net but good luck getting them to even talk to you without a very large audience already in place.

nicoburns 6y ago

> This makes me wonder - what ads would be acceptable in the eyes of privacy focused developers? Any? Ads that: - don't track you. - Are either textual or images (non-animated) - Are clearly marked as adverts and don't try to blend into the page

paul_f 6y ago
Not denying this is desirable to consumers. Be aware this list of requirements would make any ads run low value to marketers. Retargeting is important to many campaigns, as are ads that grab attention.

ziddoap 6y ago

>what ads would be acceptable in the eyes of privacy focused developers I think it's a pretty straight-forward and easy answer. Don't put ads that breach user privacy. Just use context-based advertisements. If your ads are asking about my canvas size, mouse position, etc. or otherwise are attempting to track me from website to website, I'm not cool with that and will block it whatever way possible. Other dark patterns (blending in to website e.g. Reddit's sponsored posts) are also terrible, but not necessarily related to your question re: privacy. If I know a website is using context-based advertisements with no tracking, I allow the ads and sometimes even follow them if I need whatever is being advertised.

cxr 6y ago
OP seems to be asking for specific examples of ad services to use. (I'm not sure what's up with the number of responses to the question, "what ads would you [...] recommend i install on my site [a]ssuming i want to fully respect [m]y users privacy", with answers such as, "Don't put ads that breach user privacy".)
- ziddoap 6y ago
  Obviously the question is ambiguous enough that there is more than one interpretation. Even if they said "What specific & exact ad service would you recommend", a reply of "Any ad service that doesn't do tracking -- consider contextual based ads" is still a valid one, no?
  - cxr 6y ago
    No. > Even if they said [...] We don't have to imagine anything. We can look at what was written (and I quoted it again above). No matter what a person has in mind when writing out, "Don't put ads that breach user privacy", it's not a meaningful reply to the question that was actually asked.
    - ziddoap 6y ago
      Interesting... You started with "OP seems [...]", which sort of implies you are interpreting as well... Whatever, I'll stand corrected I guess. My (and everyone else except you!) reply is not meaningful. Edit to add: If I ask for a product that does X and respects Y, and someone says "Here are the criteria I use to make sure any product respects your Y requirement", I would accept that as a valid and helpful reply. Maybe it's just me.
      - cxr 6y ago
        > You started with "OP seems [...]", which sort of implies you are interpreting as well... I edited that in to soften the message. It's like the approach of phrasing things to avoid use of "you" when addressing a topic, to prevent people from getting defensive—which I also do a lot and did here. Clearly that effort was wasted.

ximeng 6y ago

Ads that can be turned off. If they’re not adding enough value to users for them to turn them on, get rid of them.

komali2 6y ago

Cory Doctorow just did a whole email on this. In short: contextual ads. Here's the email: https://mail.flarn.com/pipermail/plura-list/2020-August/000159.html https://mail.flarn.com/pipermail/plura-list/2020-August/0001...

skyfaller 6y ago
Same content in a more web-friendly format: https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/05/behavioral-v-contextual/#contextual-ads https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/05/behavioral-v-contextual/#...
- komali2 6y ago
  Thanks, how'd you find that? I had a hard time finding a web version at all.
  - cdoctorow 6y ago
    All my stuff is mirrored on Twitter, Tumblr, Mastodon, my newsletter and my blog; the easiest way to find old posts in the blog: pluralistic.net

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

Does the lists used in adblockers like UBlock Origin whitelist Ads from this company, are there any other advertising companies with similar philosophies?

ffpip 6y ago
uBlock Origin whitelists nothing. You decide what to let in. I've noticed it blocks carbonads, ethicalads and even ads on DDG. I turned it off on DDG and notepad++ sites, to let ads through. If you want you can too.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
  Thanks, have carbon ads gained good reputation? I've been seeing it increasingly on small project sites, but most of the time the Ads have been from adobe.
  - ffpip 6y ago
    I don't whitelist whole ad networks. So don't really know their reputataion. I whitelist specific sites (some sites I like, and reddit)

chris_f 6y ago

I've spent a lot of time over the last few months looking at different privacy focused forms of monetization, specifically aimed at search engines because of my use case. [0] The main factor determining your options is whether you are comfortable having a 3rd party ad provider have access to the IP, user agent (and potentially search term in some cases) of your users. If that is not a dealbreaker for your use case then there are a lot of different options, including EthicalAds which I believe is a great service. Understandably, the main reasons for this are because the ad networks need to prevent fraud, and the ad sponsors usually want some kind of measurable metric to determine ROI. If you are not comfortable with the above compromise then your options for contextual advertising are significantly limited with the only real option being to sell direct ads to companies. [0] https://coil.com/p/runnaroo/Privacy-and-Search-Engine-Monetization/5dXAW6NwF https://coil.com/p/runnaroo/Privacy-and-Search-Engine-Moneti...

wintermutestwin 6y ago
>with the only real option being to sell direct ads to companies. Maybe I don't understand the complexity behind the ad-network curtain today, but direct ad sales worked fine pre-internet. Serve the ads from the same domain as your content and you can prevent ad blocking. Sounds like a win-win to me.
- chris_f 6y ago
  >Sounds like a win-win to me. Yeah, I agree. The challenging is finding the relevant companies who wish to advertise and the ad 'sales' process. It's significantly more work than just plugging in an existing ad network who has a ready supply of ads, and it requires a slightly different skillset that's not necessarily a core competency. I'm going through the process right now of reaching out to relevant companies with an aligned privacy focused and it is a mixed bag of results. Having said that, I think it is worth it in the long term because it makes you less reliant on other companies, but it is a tremendous amount of work upfront.
- NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  Almost all companies won't bother with buying ads directly from a random small company, because they don't know if you are trustworthy or won't show up some controversial content that hurts their brand. Much easier to use an ad bundler (from their standpoint) like google.

lykr0n 6y ago

I'm fine with Ads. What I'm not fine with is: - Intrusive Ads that either demand attention or mask themselves as something else - Ads that are based on targeted information pulled from other sources, such as other websites. - Ads that are just completely off topic. I'm fine with general targeting. "male" "computer science" "linux" stuff like that

skinkestek 6y ago

You'll find that a number of HNers, including a number of high profile ones are against any form for advertising. Personally I am against tracking and unethical ads[0] but I think purely contextual ads can be OK: - ycombinator ads on news.ycombinator.com: OK with me even if they blend in, it is part of what I want to see when I am here - Webstorm/IntelliJ/upcoming programming conference ads on developer blogs: Smashing - "Sponsored by" ads on Open Source projects (as long as they aren't bad[1]): fine with me [0][1]: like pushing payday loans to poor, gambling to addicts, cheating sites etc

oska 6y ago
> You'll find that a number of HNers, including a number of high profile ones are against any form for advertising. Yep, this is me (although I'm not at all 'high profile'). Specifically, I'm against all push advertising, where ads are being served to a user when they are not actively looking for product/service information. If it's a site that is all advertising or nearly all advertising with some filler editorial then I'm fine with that because obviously a user is not going to go to that site unless they want to be marketed too and are actively looking for product/service information (including about products/services of which they were previously unaware).
- aidenn0 6y ago
  What about newspapers and magazines (and the online versions thereof). They have a fairly explicit business model of advertising and have for 80 years. It's well understood by pretty much all adults that reading such a newspaper or magazine includes reading ads.
  - oska 6y ago
    A newspaper that includes a dedicated classifieds ads section? Fine. A newpaper that runs advertising through its editorial sections? Not fine, and the influence of advertising accounts held by major corporations with newspapers on how and what news is written is well known. I'd argue that most newspapers and magazines that ran advertising were toxic too and played a large part in promoting the consumer culture that took hold in the 20th century and helped to push harmful products that would not have been taken up nearly as widely without huge advertising spends (cigarettes, sugary breakfast cereals, soft drinks, etc). But with a printed product sold as a bundled package of editorial and advertising it was hard for the consumer to protect themselves from the harmful advertising. Now, when content is delivered digitally and we have the means to screen out the unwanted advertising we'd be fools to not do so (and fools to be convinced by a bogus argument that we need to pollute our brains as our part of a supposed 'deal').

1propionyl 6y ago

In case anyone from EthicalAds is reading this, you've got a copy error: > We believe good advertising should _compliment_ content and never get in the way. That's why we built a network that complies with AcceptableAds, BetterAds, and DoNotTrack. Complement, not compliment.

eternalban 6y ago

We can also ask the alternative question which is never asked: - what other mechanisms can server the same utility as advertising for businesses? - what other mechanisms can support viable business models. What is strange about advertising is that it enjoys a bizzare outsized role in determining social norms that is never questioned. Sure, businesses need to advertise their services and goods but at the cost of even destroying privacy? I find it strange.

erikrothoff 6y ago
One aspect to consider is that it is the tried and true solution. Surely many businesses and a lot of smart people have considered alternatives. It seems, save from actually paying money or living off the generosity of others, ads won.

aidenn0 6y ago

From my point of view, just about any non-tracking ad is ethically okay. Very highly deceptive ads are going to be bad too; things like push-polls or ones that make demonstrably false factual claims. If your ads play loud songs, pop up a dozen (non-tracking) windows or flash annoying animations over the page, I'm not going to block those, I'm just going to not visit your site. Also if one more site tells me to "disable my ad blocker" when I'm running privacy badger, I'm going to scream. I'm not blocking advertising, at least how it is understood in the general sense. If a newspaper contained an eye-tracker that measured my engagement and I put a piece of tape over the lens, no reasonable person would call that "ad blocking".

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

Maybe I'm not getting it but I don't see how (as a user not a dev) any ad acceptable to me can be acceptable to an advertiser. You can't know my wants if you don't build a profile of me. To do that you need to track me and my browsing behaviour. That is unacceptable. But if you don't you'll be throwing a lot of things with none of them sticking. So how can this work? Edit: this is what they say (https://www.ethicalads.io/advertisers.html> https://www.ethicalads.io/advertisers.html> "When you run a campaign with us, your ad only appears on developer and technical websites. This drives your business results and respects our audience without having to resort to programmatic ad buys" Well, good luck lads, I hope you succeed. If I can offer a small hint, never try to get my attention with any kind of animation. Images from your entire domain will be blocked instantly (whether it be ethicalads.io or if they're self-hosted on pqrs.com, then pqrs.com. I repeat - don't try to draw my attention).