8 ms·

I cannot stand how everything with internet access is just becoming a vehicle to shove ads down everyone’s throat. This web browser wants to sell me credit deal

• rightbyte 5y ago
  > My expensive TV has banner ads in the menus (well, it did until I blocked about two dozen domains) Just wait until Google has pushed everyone into encrypted DNS like they did with HTTP ...
  • post-it 5y ago
    The TV will still need to update its certificates and work on corporate wifi, so there should always be a way to feed it your own certificate and MITM DNS. I think, anyway.
    • krisrm 5y ago
      You'll have to pay extra for the "enterprise" TV ;)
      • Spivak 5y ago
        I mean fine, I’ll gladly pay more just give me the option.
        • freeflight 5y ago
          You just fell for the con!
          • Spivak 5y ago
            But why is it a con though? Marginal cost of TV is $600, amortized business cost for projected sales is $400, expected average lifetime revenue from user data and ads is $60 ($15/"user"/yr for 5 years which is damn good for an ad network), throw in a 6.3% profit margin and we get TV priced at $999.99. Throw away the ads and user data collection and up the profit to 10% to make it worth their while (since someone willing to pay more is on average worth more to advertisers and so decreases the value of their network) and we get a TV priced at $1099.99. This seems totally fair to me.
            • freeflight 5y ago
              > But why is it a con though? The product would work just fine without all the extra monetization, that's how it worked for the longest time. Nobody asked for savings trough selling their privacy, that was very much forced on us, and now they force the upsell to "enterpise privacy edition" as the solution to a problem they themselves introduced.
        • anonymousab 5y ago
          Unfortunately, the "extra" will probably be another 0 on the end of the cost, alongside a minimum order requirement and needing to get the procurement through someone with connections.
          • mananaysiempre 5y ago
            This is more or less what happened with Windows 10 editions, as far as I can tell from reading the list.
    • the_pwner224 5y ago
      Only until they implement cert pinning, unfortunately.
  • matt123456789 5y ago
    HTTPS can be implemented in a decentralized way without a single party having access to your sites visited. DNS-over-HTTPS is by its nature centralized. So is DNS. Your DNS provider has a list of all sites they’ve resolved for you, whether it’s encrypted over using TLS or not. Maybe that doesn’t go against your point, but I wanted to clarify that the two technologies have very different privacy implications.
    • perryizgr8 5y ago
      > HTTPS can be implemented in a decentralized way How does that work? AFAIK there is always a root authority.
      • nicce 5y ago
        Keys can be exchanged without root authority. Root authority is only required for identifying that website owner is who he claims to be.
        • xyzzyz 5y ago
          Yes, and without verifying that the owner is who he claims to be, exchanging keys is not of much value.
          • c22 5y ago
            I dunno, knowing the owner hasn't changed since last time seems almost as good.
      • erikerikson 5y ago
        No. There are roots and you can install any root you like including one you create. Is that some amount of centralization? I don't think so though convenience and efficiency encourage it on a single and not very important dimension. Once a CA signs a cert they are no longer involved in the HTTPS protocol and really that's the bulk of the use case. As GP noted, it certainly includes "without a single party having access to your sites visited".
• behnamoh 5y ago
  I typically respect Apple products, but they also shove ads in the settings app...
  • musicale 5y ago
    > I typically respect Apple products, but they also shove ads in the settings app... This is insanely horrible - another flagstone on the road to hell. I'm kind of shocked that the HI people at Apple would be OK with it. Apple has built its entire business on user experience, so it doesn't seem wise to sacrifice that on the altar of marketing for services.
  • macintux 5y ago
    I have seen a reminder once about time running out to buy an AppleCare warranty, which I appreciated. What other ads have you seen in Settings?
    • deergomoo 5y ago
      You get offers for Apple Fitness+ when buying a new Apple Watch. At the minute they’re very much on the boundary between ads and useful reminders/offers, and are still easy to dismiss. But I worry that as services continues to become a bigger and bigger focus for Apple that they may end up just like Samsung.
    • gregsadetsky 5y ago
      iCloud storage subscription when your phone is running low on space. See this mini thread from a few days ago on the same topic -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29291166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29291166
      • behnamoh 5y ago
        Wow! I was going to mention the same mini thread (started by me!).
        • gregsadetsky 5y ago
• phendrenad2 5y ago
  Maintaining browsers has become a significant undertaking, so complex that only well-funded corporate interests can afford to keep one patched and up-to-date with the latest web standards. It surpassed operating system complexity. It surpassed pretty much everything else too. So we can forget about it ever being truly "free" (and free from ads) unless we simplify the web somehow. I also don't think we're going to go back in time and start cutting features out of browsers. So that isn't going to happen. What might work is a browser funded by massive numbers of small user donations. That's the Firefox model. It kinda works? But Firefox still pushes things on their users and defaults to Google Search. Another option is to pay for a browser. But there isn't enough interest in a paid browser to get one off the ground.
  • hvgk 5y ago
    Back to gopher. Use native compiled apps and APIs for everything else. I’m serious. Probably shave a few gigawatts off the grid killing off electron apps.
    • slx26 5y ago
      The advantage of browsers is that they are becoming the de-facto "universal operating systems". That's why users like them, and that's why devs like them, despite all their defects. I kinda believe in that direction too. It's just the path that is a massive mess. Would I delete and rewrite? Yeah, but browsers and traditional OSes both, to become a single thing. ..and then regret it afterwards :D
      • chillingeffect 5y ago
        Theyre multi-platform portals to the capitalist endpoints of work, and shopping, and paid leisure, but abstractions to hardware they are not. Merely abstractions to differing operating systems.
      • enos_feedler 5y ago
        Devs might like them, but it would be hard to find a user who grew up in a mobile native world that "likes" a web browser. That's the problem. It doesn't really do anything that 1st and 3rd party apps can't do. Much of the functionality around identity, payments, ad and ui rendering just works so much better in native apps. This is because of API crafting and data management by the platform and partnerships with 3rd parties, like payments. It can all be integrated in a product focused way. Regular users don't even need to understand it. They are just trained that its better. They will learn that once they get into Safari things might not work very well based on prior experience.
• iamstupidsimple 5y ago
  But what can we do? Ads provide employment for tens of millions of people and fund literally billions of hours of content watched a year. Even if you agree most is trash, it's also allowed some really high quality stuff to flourish while being able to stay relatively independent. It's strongly tied to economic growth, and thus everybody's pensions are tied up in the success of advertising. It seems illogical it makes such an obscene amount of money, but collectively the advertising industry is bigger than even oil & gas. Now I don't exactly enjoy ads, I accept a few, but every time they're implemented the pressures of the market just increase it over and over until it ruins the base product, like a cancer. What's the alternative? Consumers don't have enough money to pay for dozens and dozens of subscriptions. The ads industry is effectively a tax on every other industry, and thus makes more money than consumers would ever spend on content. I'm open to ban advertising entirely but that also seems like an opposite extreme and counterproductive.
  • deergomoo 5y ago
    I am not against ads as a concept. If I’m getting something for free, I think it’s fair to say have a lot less say in what I see and when. What I am against is what seems to be a complete decline in any sense of taste and decency over the past 20 years, that means ads will be shoved anywhere if it can make a quick buck out of someone. I think it’s the interjection that really rubs me the wrong way. If the shop I was purchasing from offered me credit on their website during checkout, I wouldn’t mind—I’m entering a transaction with the shop. But why is Microsoft offering me credit? This is nothing to do with them. Same goes for the ads on smart TVs. I’ve paid Samsung money for the TV. Why are they still here?
    • rmbyrro 5y ago
      I'm in the same position. From their perspective, they're trying to make as much money as possible. Not saying it's OK, but that's the reality. In a sense, we developers are also trying to make as much as we can from the job market. Not saying it's the same - it's not - but the motivations has some similarity.
    • iamstupidsimple 5y ago
• mbesto 5y ago
  You can thank the capital side of the equation for this. Example: https://andrewchen.com/this-is-what-free-ad-supported-uber-rides-might-look-like-mockups-economics-and-analysis/ https://andrewchen.com/this-is-what-free-ad-supported-uber-r... They used to hide it, but because so much money is being made there's no point anymore.
  • rappatic 5y ago
    That site is a perfect example of this. It actually required me to sign up for the newsletter to even read the article.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • DavidPiper 5y ago
      It's interesting to watch how pages work (or don't) when you delete the advertising DOM elements from the page. Some work fine (like this one), others crash when they try to do something smart like "show the un-skippable banner when you scroll past here".
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • paledot 5y ago
    It boggles my mind that this is being presented by the author as if it were a legitimately good idea and not another step on our collective descent into a dystopian hellscape.
    • swiley 5y ago
      Most mainstream things are like this now.
    • cyanydeez 5y ago
      or a normal progression to microtransactions to actually pay for content of value rather than let the msrket of doom scrolling and "engagement" dictate the hellscape that led to trump style media. remember, 20 years ago they wanted microtransactions to enable content production. this coule of course be done in a open way, but the idea that this is worse than the current landscape of abhorrent conspiracy fueled hate med8a parade is silly.
• WalterBright 5y ago
  > My expensive TV has banner ads in the menus Mine doesn't, because I don't plug it into the intertoobs. (I use a Roku box.)
  • perryizgr8 5y ago
    I read somewhere that roku makes more money by selling user data than they do by selling hardware.
    • DrammBA 5y ago
      Wasn't that Vizio? Probably all of them are making more money selling data...
  • cpeterso 5y ago
    My Roku shows ads on its home screen. Do you have an older model? Even my Roku remote control has ads: the Netflix, Disney, Hulu, and Sling shortcut buttons that can’t be reprogrammed.
    • xiphias2 5y ago
      They are not clearly ads, for most people they are features. As I’m visiting lots of hotels, my main criteria for watching TV there is if there’s a Netflix button or not on the remote.
• VoodooJuJu 5y ago
  >my belongings You think they are, but they aren't.
  • _aavaa_ 5y ago
    Yeah, this is basically it. If you have to agree to an End User License Agreement to use a thing then that thing isn't yours, not truly.
• Nextgrid 5y ago
  This is what pisses me off from the tech industry and makes me want to save enough to retire and quit for good or open a non-tech business. When I dreamed about joining the industry a decade ago I saw all these new companies offering useful & innovative products/services that actually solved real problems and legitimately made people's lives better. I wanted to be part of this world and get in on the action, making honest money in the process - I provide useful service, customer pays me money. Win-win, right? Nowadays it seems like every tech company's goal is "engagement" and any problems they solve (or claim to solve) are only there to convince you to "engage" with the product. Even when you think you've actually found a company that has a real paid product that shouldn't (and doesn't - yet) rely on "engagement" you will always find some assholes on the inside (typically in marketing) that chase this "engagement" (and over time ruin the perfectly good product). You could say it's capitalism's fault but I don't think so. There are other areas where completely unbounded capitalism would lead to terrible outcomes such as ponzi schemes, and yet we mostly avoid these because we have appropriate regulation to deter this behavior. The problem is that we have zero effective regulation (the GDPR doesn't count until it's enforced seriously) around misuse of personal data which powers this whole "engagement" crap. Fortunately I think (hope) there is light at the end of the tunnel. "Engagement" only works if advertisers pay for those eyeballs which they'd only do if those ads worked and the prospective customer actually bought the advertised product. As we are already saturated in ads (and/or people deploy countermeasures such as ad-blockers) and the costs per click/impression keep dropping the bubble will hopefully pop and it will become more profitable to sell paid, premium & ad-free products like it should be.
  • guitarsteve 5y ago
    That’s partly why I’ve enjoyed working on “b2b” products in my career and have avoided working on “b2c”. When your customers are using your product as part of their job, your incentive is (often) clear: make them more efficient at their job, which means make your product faster and easier to use. The vendor and the customer are aligned. In the b2c world your goal is often “engagement”. Get the customer to spend as much time as possible in the app. Get them to use your app more than other apps. In a way you have to make your app less useful (to the customer) to make it more valuable to the vendor.
• Paradigma11 5y ago
  Because nobody wants to pay for anything and ads won the race to the bottom for monetization.
  • Kaze404 5y ago
    Except I paid for my TV.