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I think it's only a matter of time until adblock is legally banned. The current situation, where the vast majority of the internet relies solely on ads and an

I think it's only a matter of time until adblock is legally banned. The current situation, where the vast majority of the internet relies solely on ads and an increasing number of people use adblock year over year is unsustainable. The system can support a certain number of free riders (people who consume the product but don't contribute back in ad eyeballs), but at a certain point the math will no longer work. Eventually we as a society will reach a point with only two options: 1. Stop using ads to fund most of the internet 2. Ban adblock so our current ad funded internet can work.

duxup 5y ago
I keep wondering if / when we as users want to pay for more things…
- bmicraft 5y ago
  I would pay for I the things I currently block. The problem is they usually want >5$/mo for things that would make maybe 10c/mo from ads otherwise which I don't find fair
Buttons840 5y ago
Option 3, let the ad funded internet die and keep the remaining good parts.
- jandrese 5y ago
  The problem is that the most popular alternative, microtransactions, doesn't work. Turns out there is a big psychological barrier between free and literally any payment at all, even a few pennies. People are sensitive to the danger of being nickled and dimed to death. And that's before you get into the problem of how to set up a clearinghouse where you can handle microtransactions without being eaten alive by fees.
  - glenstein 5y ago
    I thought the porous paywall + subscription model is the most popular alternative?
  - coldpie 5y ago
    If ad-based business models truly become unviable, they will find a new one. Ad-based businesses suck all the air out of the room, preventing other models from even forming. It'll take effort to find better models, but they'll come. But TBH, I don't see the ad-based model dying any time soon.
    - visarga 5y ago
      There are plenty of reasons to post good content that are not related to ads, and very weird incentives to write good content otherwise. Content for ads is riddled with SEO, hyped headlines, short shallow and unoriginal articles. Good content is posted by people and companies for indirect benefits: a researcher makes videos about papers to motivate and held himself accountable to the public, a company publishes documentation and tutorials that are related to their business, a hobbyist does the same for pure fun. A teacher posts lesson plans to collaborate with other teachers. We'll be fine without content-for-ads.
  - Fornax96 5y ago
    I think taxes are the biggest hurdle for microtransactions. You are legally required to report taxes in _every_ country where you have customers. This means that the customer will need to fill in address information for each website they want to use which is also a high barrier. And if you run an online business it won't take long before you have to report taxes in 200 countries. It's a job on its own to administrate that! With advertisements you receive payments from a single party, and because it's a business-to-business transaction it's tax free.
  - irrational 5y ago
    > People are sensitive to the danger of being nickled and dimed to death. And yet, people will sign up for multiple subscription services (Netflix, Disney plus, HBO max, Amazon prime, etc), which I consider to be the same as being nickeled and dimed.
- aidanhs 5y ago
  Ad funding would never stop because people wanting to make money off content would never stop - it just becomes more subtle. Think sponsored posts, product placement, added bias. Imagine a plain text blog run by an individual, good quality technical content, and a company comes and offers $10k to write a blog post about their product after trying it. If the author decides not to disclose the financial motivation, you now have a subtle biased funded advert that no adblocker will save you from.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - CuriouslyC 5y ago
    We already have mountains of shilled astroturf on the internet. I'm fine with it since shill content tends to be low quality and not too difficult to distinguish (except in google SERPS, which is another problem). Legitimate content creators won't just blindly hop on the shill bandwagon because building a following is hard and takes time, and getting caught shilling can destroy your credibility and cause you to bleed followers VERY quickly. Adding a sponsor call-outs will probably be the ultimate go-to for legitimate content creators, but even that must be done carefully as pushing low quality sponsors will also hurt subscriber numbers.
pluc 5y ago
If AdBlockers become illegal it will lead to a slew of adblock devices like PiHole-preloaded RaspberryPis and will just shift the blocking at the DNS level Ads are for people who don't know how to avoid them.
AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
Legally banning adblock will open up a large can of worms that I don't think anyone really wants to probe into. Third party "ads" can run shady, if not outright malicious JavaScript. If "adblocking" becomes illegal, does it logically follow then that a visitor to a website is legally compelled to allow the site's shady-ass code to run on their computer? That would likely fail in the courts, and it might cause inverse blow-back that fully bans such things from running at all. The ad vendors don't want that, because they're probably content to let a minority of users block their ads if it means that the majority still let their ads and all associated tracking/JS run unabated.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  What happens when the people who grew up without the internet die and all that's left is the people that have been watching youtube since they were 3. Won't the vast majority of people be using adblockers?
  - AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
    Anecdotally, I feel like half the people in my immediate circle of friends/family still don't use adblockers unless I help them set it up. And then that only holds until the next time they get a new device and I'm not there to help them do it again.
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      How old is your immediate circle? The truly internet first generation is only like 15-20 at this point.
      - AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
        Are we sure this "truly internet first generation" is primarily using laptops? If they grew up with an iPhone/iPad, there's no guarantee that they even have adblocking as an option.
Jalad 5y ago
There's good precedent for adblock remaining legal through a few lawsuits[0]. Granted that is in Germany but I'm hopeful legal action in the US would have a similar outcome. [0] https://torrentfreak.com/adblocking-does-not-constitute-copyright-infringement-court-rules-220118/ https://torrentfreak.com/adblocking-does-not-constitute-copy...
Trellmor 5y ago
So far, adblockers have won in court every time. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32903235 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32903235 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43838308 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43838308 https://torrentfreak.com/adblocking-does-not-constitute-copyright-infringement-court-rules-220118/ https://torrentfreak.com/adblocking-does-not-constitute-copy...
- lalaland1125 5y ago
  Yes, they would have to create new laws to ban adblockers. With the justification that those laws are necessary to save most of the internet.
  - z33k 5y ago
    That would set quite a precedent. Anyone is free to point a domain at a server and serve HTTP, in the sense that they are allowed to buy a server, domain and maybe software- in order to have a website. A fair comparison could be done for a pamphlet or a book- you are free to pay a publisher/ printing press/ editor- in order to have a pamphlet or book. Banning adblockers would not simply affirm this. It would go further and set a precedent that you, the publisher, can run arbitrary code or display arbitrary things on a user's screen; potentially against the user's wishes.
vbezhenar 5y ago
How do you draw the line? What is adblock? Is it addon which allows to control your browser? Is it list of rules for some websites? Web is too flexible and built with flexible user agent.
everdrive 5y ago
There’s definitely an option #3 here: ad-blockers eventually lose the arms race. We’re already partially there.
- bspammer 5y ago
  I think this is most likely sadly. There has been no working adblocker for twitch.tv for over a year now. As far as I know, they are splicing the ad directly into the main video stream while it’s playing, so there’s no way to differentiate it from the content at all. Surely it’s only a matter of time before youtube starts doing this too.
  - coldpie 5y ago
    > Surely it’s only a matter of time before youtube starts doing this too. I recently learned about the SponsorBlock extension[1] for YouTube. It's a crowdsourced collection of the location and duration of in-band sponsorships in YouTube videos. The extension queries the database for each video, then skips over the sponsorship portion of the video. I don't use it myself, since I don't mind skipping sponsorships manually, but it's kind of fascinating that it exists and (apparently) works. [1] https://sponsor.ajay.app/about https://sponsor.ajay.app/about
    - bspammer 5y ago
      Oh yeah SponsorBlock is great! It reminds me of Wikipedia - it is surprisingly reliable given that it's crowdsourced. It does rely on the sponsor being at the same location in the video every time though, so it's not a solution to twitch-style adverts.
inglor_cz 5y ago
The ad model is unsustainable for many other reasons too and it will likely fail anyway. See Facebook's struggle when Apple limited their ability to track you.
jimbob45 5y ago
If any ad-evasion technology was ever going to be banned legally, it would have been TiVo. The internet is far less reliant on straight ad revenue than TV shows were.
- jandrese 5y ago
  Did TiVo actually affect ad revenue? My understanding is that the revenue figures were calculated based on Nielson family scores, and TiVo ad skipping wouldn't show up in there.
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    >Did TiVo actually affect ad revenue? My understanding is that the revenue figures were calculated based on Nielson family scores, and TiVo ad skipping wouldn't show up in there. Given that TiVo has been running "pre-roll" (i.e., when you start playing a recording) ads for a couple years now (they are skippable), they're certainly trying to get a piece of that sweet, sweet ad revenue for themselves. I have no idea whether that cuts into the existing pie or is additional ad spend. That said, TiVo isn't as intrusive (in that you can skip their "pre-roll" ads) as YouTube, Amazon Prime, etc. Really, the best thing about TiVo is their video Fast-forward/rewind. It actually scrolls the content as it does so. No other platform seems to support that, which really kills UX for me. As for ad skipping, that's only supported for some shows, and even those don't generally allow it until at least a few hours after air time. Of course, you can still fast-forward through the ads (made much easier by the TiVo video scrolling) which works quite nicely.
dasKrokodil 5y ago
There was an internet before everything was funded by ads. It was different, but also nice.
treeface9000 5y ago
aquir 5y ago
The problem with ads is that they are intrusive and not respecting the privacy of the users. I don't mind static, well placed and well curated ads on any page. The pages then should fund ourselves using crowdfunding and good ads. It's already a working model. They can't ban it anyway, once the data reaches my device I do whatever I want with it.
bambax 5y ago
I too fear AdBlock will eventually fail, not because it will be legally banned (on what basis??) but because Chrome will kill it and other browsers will die. You seem to welcome it; I think it would be a great catastrophe.
- gaius_baltar 5y ago
  This can be a new selling point for Firefox: "the browser that allow you to block ads"
- jart 5y ago
  It's more likely governments will make it illegal to not use an adblocker. For example the security community is now having adblock installed on normie browsers as a matter of policy. If everyone starts doing that and the companies whose survival depends on ads react in a way that ends the free ride for the technical class, things will really hit the fan. Imagine all the smartest programmers in the world wake up one morning and are forced to use the unfiltered internet. We'd all switch to SerenityOS within the fortnight and the old regime would skulk along like a brainless beast for a few decades while Andreas Kling becomes emperor of the world.
st3ve445678 5y ago
If ads were reasonable, I would not block them. I define reasonable as simple static image ads with no tracking that link to the advertised product/service. But ads today bloat pages with so much tracking & other nonsense that it has ruined the experience. I cant stand to browse the web without an ad-blocker, it's horrific.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
> certain number of free riders This implies that ads means paying/sutaining for the service, and no ads means not paying/sustaining. This hasn't been the case for a long long time. Even paying customers get ads piled on them. Sure for many sites ads is the whole business. But there are also many business that 1. Never had a business plan to begin with, even the ads won't sustain them. The goal is just to be bought by a bigger company or become a loss leader and then "figure it out later". 2. The goal is to maximize profits by any means necessary even with paying customers upon which a sustainable business could be built. But instead we get dark patterns, abuse of user data and ads.
- csa 5y ago
  > Even paying customers get ads piled on them. Often times more… they have demonstrated that their wallet is open. If you want an example of this in the US, make a small political donation. The amount of money that will be spent coming after more of your money is mind-bending.
titzer 5y ago
It's exponential growth that's unsustainable. Just five years ago, ad revenues on the internet were half of today. How did we "sustain" it then?
packet_nerd 5y ago
I had a good laugh when I saw my grandma using her iPad calculator app to do her finances. The app was displaying an an ad, she didn't want to see it and stuck a sticker over that part of the screen. :-) Is my grandma's sticker going to be illegal in this forced advertising future? If not, where in the stack between the webpage and your eyes will it start to be legal to block? What about blocking in the graphics stack in the OS? The display? A sticker in front of the display? A smart film in front of the display? Smart glasses? Will it be illegal to avert your eyes from advertisements, à la Black Mirror?
matheusmoreira 5y ago
If it's unsustainable, it's their own fault. They chose to send people content for free. They did so hoping they'd look at the noise they call advertising. Well, it's not happening and they need to deal with it. We don't owe them a thing, they need to accept it and move on. The fact is people don't want to be subjected to ads. Advertisers aren't entitled to people's attention and they're not gonna get it. So either they start charging people for access or they just turn off the servers, either is fine. If they send us ads, we're gonna block them.

duxup 5y ago

I keep wondering if / when we as users want to pay for more things…

bmicraft 5y ago
I would pay for I the things I currently block. The problem is they usually want >5$/mo for things that would make maybe 10c/mo from ads otherwise which I don't find fair

Buttons840 5y ago

Option 3, let the ad funded internet die and keep the remaining good parts.

jandrese 5y ago
The problem is that the most popular alternative, microtransactions, doesn't work. Turns out there is a big psychological barrier between free and literally any payment at all, even a few pennies. People are sensitive to the danger of being nickled and dimed to death. And that's before you get into the problem of how to set up a clearinghouse where you can handle microtransactions without being eaten alive by fees.
- glenstein 5y ago
  I thought the porous paywall + subscription model is the most popular alternative?
- coldpie 5y ago
  If ad-based business models truly become unviable, they will find a new one. Ad-based businesses suck all the air out of the room, preventing other models from even forming. It'll take effort to find better models, but they'll come. But TBH, I don't see the ad-based model dying any time soon.
  - visarga 5y ago
    There are plenty of reasons to post good content that are not related to ads, and very weird incentives to write good content otherwise. Content for ads is riddled with SEO, hyped headlines, short shallow and unoriginal articles. Good content is posted by people and companies for indirect benefits: a researcher makes videos about papers to motivate and held himself accountable to the public, a company publishes documentation and tutorials that are related to their business, a hobbyist does the same for pure fun. A teacher posts lesson plans to collaborate with other teachers. We'll be fine without content-for-ads.
- Fornax96 5y ago
  I think taxes are the biggest hurdle for microtransactions. You are legally required to report taxes in _every_ country where you have customers. This means that the customer will need to fill in address information for each website they want to use which is also a high barrier. And if you run an online business it won't take long before you have to report taxes in 200 countries. It's a job on its own to administrate that! With advertisements you receive payments from a single party, and because it's a business-to-business transaction it's tax free.
- irrational 5y ago
  > People are sensitive to the danger of being nickled and dimed to death. And yet, people will sign up for multiple subscription services (Netflix, Disney plus, HBO max, Amazon prime, etc), which I consider to be the same as being nickeled and dimed.
aidanhs 5y ago
Ad funding would never stop because people wanting to make money off content would never stop - it just becomes more subtle. Think sponsored posts, product placement, added bias. Imagine a plain text blog run by an individual, good quality technical content, and a company comes and offers $10k to write a blog post about their product after trying it. If the author decides not to disclose the financial motivation, you now have a subtle biased funded advert that no adblocker will save you from.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- CuriouslyC 5y ago
  We already have mountains of shilled astroturf on the internet. I'm fine with it since shill content tends to be low quality and not too difficult to distinguish (except in google SERPS, which is another problem). Legitimate content creators won't just blindly hop on the shill bandwagon because building a following is hard and takes time, and getting caught shilling can destroy your credibility and cause you to bleed followers VERY quickly. Adding a sponsor call-outs will probably be the ultimate go-to for legitimate content creators, but even that must be done carefully as pushing low quality sponsors will also hurt subscriber numbers.

pluc 5y ago

If AdBlockers become illegal it will lead to a slew of adblock devices like PiHole-preloaded RaspberryPis and will just shift the blocking at the DNS level Ads are for people who don't know how to avoid them.

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago

Legally banning adblock will open up a large can of worms that I don't think anyone really wants to probe into. Third party "ads" can run shady, if not outright malicious JavaScript. If "adblocking" becomes illegal, does it logically follow then that a visitor to a website is legally compelled to allow the site's shady-ass code to run on their computer? That would likely fail in the courts, and it might cause inverse blow-back that fully bans such things from running at all. The ad vendors don't want that, because they're probably content to let a minority of users block their ads if it means that the majority still let their ads and all associated tracking/JS run unabated.

colinmhayes 5y ago
What happens when the people who grew up without the internet die and all that's left is the people that have been watching youtube since they were 3. Won't the vast majority of people be using adblockers?
- AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
  Anecdotally, I feel like half the people in my immediate circle of friends/family still don't use adblockers unless I help them set it up. And then that only holds until the next time they get a new device and I'm not there to help them do it again.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    How old is your immediate circle? The truly internet first generation is only like 15-20 at this point.
    - AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
      Are we sure this "truly internet first generation" is primarily using laptops? If they grew up with an iPhone/iPad, there's no guarantee that they even have adblocking as an option.

Jalad 5y ago

There's good precedent for adblock remaining legal through a few lawsuits[0]. Granted that is in Germany but I'm hopeful legal action in the US would have a similar outcome. [0] https://torrentfreak.com/adblocking-does-not-constitute-copyright-infringement-court-rules-220118/ https://torrentfreak.com/adblocking-does-not-constitute-copy...

Trellmor 5y ago

So far, adblockers have won in court every time. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32903235 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32903235 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43838308 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43838308 https://torrentfreak.com/adblocking-does-not-constitute-copyright-infringement-court-rules-220118/ https://torrentfreak.com/adblocking-does-not-constitute-copy...

lalaland1125 5y ago
Yes, they would have to create new laws to ban adblockers. With the justification that those laws are necessary to save most of the internet.
- z33k 5y ago
  That would set quite a precedent. Anyone is free to point a domain at a server and serve HTTP, in the sense that they are allowed to buy a server, domain and maybe software- in order to have a website. A fair comparison could be done for a pamphlet or a book- you are free to pay a publisher/ printing press/ editor- in order to have a pamphlet or book. Banning adblockers would not simply affirm this. It would go further and set a precedent that you, the publisher, can run arbitrary code or display arbitrary things on a user's screen; potentially against the user's wishes.

vbezhenar 5y ago

How do you draw the line? What is adblock? Is it addon which allows to control your browser? Is it list of rules for some websites? Web is too flexible and built with flexible user agent.

everdrive 5y ago

There’s definitely an option #3 here: ad-blockers eventually lose the arms race. We’re already partially there.

bspammer 5y ago
I think this is most likely sadly. There has been no working adblocker for twitch.tv for over a year now. As far as I know, they are splicing the ad directly into the main video stream while it’s playing, so there’s no way to differentiate it from the content at all. Surely it’s only a matter of time before youtube starts doing this too.
- coldpie 5y ago
  > Surely it’s only a matter of time before youtube starts doing this too. I recently learned about the SponsorBlock extension[1] for YouTube. It's a crowdsourced collection of the location and duration of in-band sponsorships in YouTube videos. The extension queries the database for each video, then skips over the sponsorship portion of the video. I don't use it myself, since I don't mind skipping sponsorships manually, but it's kind of fascinating that it exists and (apparently) works. [1] https://sponsor.ajay.app/about https://sponsor.ajay.app/about
  - bspammer 5y ago
    Oh yeah SponsorBlock is great! It reminds me of Wikipedia - it is surprisingly reliable given that it's crowdsourced. It does rely on the sponsor being at the same location in the video every time though, so it's not a solution to twitch-style adverts.

inglor_cz 5y ago

The ad model is unsustainable for many other reasons too and it will likely fail anyway. See Facebook's struggle when Apple limited their ability to track you.

jimbob45 5y ago

If any ad-evasion technology was ever going to be banned legally, it would have been TiVo. The internet is far less reliant on straight ad revenue than TV shows were.

jandrese 5y ago
Did TiVo actually affect ad revenue? My understanding is that the revenue figures were calculated based on Nielson family scores, and TiVo ad skipping wouldn't show up in there.
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >Did TiVo actually affect ad revenue? My understanding is that the revenue figures were calculated based on Nielson family scores, and TiVo ad skipping wouldn't show up in there. Given that TiVo has been running "pre-roll" (i.e., when you start playing a recording) ads for a couple years now (they are skippable), they're certainly trying to get a piece of that sweet, sweet ad revenue for themselves. I have no idea whether that cuts into the existing pie or is additional ad spend. That said, TiVo isn't as intrusive (in that you can skip their "pre-roll" ads) as YouTube, Amazon Prime, etc. Really, the best thing about TiVo is their video Fast-forward/rewind. It actually scrolls the content as it does so. No other platform seems to support that, which really kills UX for me. As for ad skipping, that's only supported for some shows, and even those don't generally allow it until at least a few hours after air time. Of course, you can still fast-forward through the ads (made much easier by the TiVo video scrolling) which works quite nicely.

dasKrokodil 5y ago

There was an internet before everything was funded by ads. It was different, but also nice.

treeface9000 5y ago

aquir 5y ago

The problem with ads is that they are intrusive and not respecting the privacy of the users. I don't mind static, well placed and well curated ads on any page. The pages then should fund ourselves using crowdfunding and good ads. It's already a working model. They can't ban it anyway, once the data reaches my device I do whatever I want with it.

bambax 5y ago

I too fear AdBlock will eventually fail, not because it will be legally banned (on what basis??) but because Chrome will kill it and other browsers will die. You seem to welcome it; I think it would be a great catastrophe.

gaius_baltar 5y ago
This can be a new selling point for Firefox: "the browser that allow you to block ads"
jart 5y ago
It's more likely governments will make it illegal to not use an adblocker. For example the security community is now having adblock installed on normie browsers as a matter of policy. If everyone starts doing that and the companies whose survival depends on ads react in a way that ends the free ride for the technical class, things will really hit the fan. Imagine all the smartest programmers in the world wake up one morning and are forced to use the unfiltered internet. We'd all switch to SerenityOS within the fortnight and the old regime would skulk along like a brainless beast for a few decades while Andreas Kling becomes emperor of the world.

st3ve445678 5y ago

If ads were reasonable, I would not block them. I define reasonable as simple static image ads with no tracking that link to the advertised product/service. But ads today bloat pages with so much tracking & other nonsense that it has ruined the experience. I cant stand to browse the web without an ad-blocker, it's horrific.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago

> certain number of free riders This implies that ads means paying/sutaining for the service, and no ads means not paying/sustaining. This hasn't been the case for a long long time. Even paying customers get ads piled on them. Sure for many sites ads is the whole business. But there are also many business that 1. Never had a business plan to begin with, even the ads won't sustain them. The goal is just to be bought by a bigger company or become a loss leader and then "figure it out later". 2. The goal is to maximize profits by any means necessary even with paying customers upon which a sustainable business could be built. But instead we get dark patterns, abuse of user data and ads.

csa 5y ago
> Even paying customers get ads piled on them. Often times more… they have demonstrated that their wallet is open. If you want an example of this in the US, make a small political donation. The amount of money that will be spent coming after more of your money is mind-bending.

titzer 5y ago

It's exponential growth that's unsustainable. Just five years ago, ad revenues on the internet were half of today. How did we "sustain" it then?

packet_nerd 5y ago

I had a good laugh when I saw my grandma using her iPad calculator app to do her finances. The app was displaying an an ad, she didn't want to see it and stuck a sticker over that part of the screen. :-) Is my grandma's sticker going to be illegal in this forced advertising future? If not, where in the stack between the webpage and your eyes will it start to be legal to block? What about blocking in the graphics stack in the OS? The display? A sticker in front of the display? A smart film in front of the display? Smart glasses? Will it be illegal to avert your eyes from advertisements, à la Black Mirror?

matheusmoreira 5y ago

If it's unsustainable, it's their own fault. They chose to send people content for free. They did so hoping they'd look at the noise they call advertising. Well, it's not happening and they need to deal with it. We don't owe them a thing, they need to accept it and move on. The fact is people don't want to be subjected to ads. Advertisers aren't entitled to people's attention and they're not gonna get it. So either they start charging people for access or they just turn off the servers, either is fine. If they send us ads, we're gonna block them.