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> Despite the steps forward for user control found in these judgments, they do not go as far as we would hope to secure user freedom when using the internet Th

> Despite the steps forward for user control found in these judgments, they do not go as far as we would hope to secure user freedom when using the internet This is a strange take. They contend that the courts not forbidding website owners from refusing access to adblock users is a bad thing somehow, as if the courts should have forced businesses to serve them... The German courts took the only logical conclusion: You can block ads all you want, and website owners can block you all they want.

baz00 3y ago
Yeah nothing wrong with that. This is how it goes for me though: 1. Company stuffs ads down my throat. 2. I use adblocker 3. Company blocks me 4. I ignore company. The whole problem starts at (1) which is "create a business supported only by advertising revenue". That says your actual product is worth fuck all.
- herodotus 3y ago
  > That says your actual product is worth fuck all. Look I use ad blockers and a pi-hole. And I don't bother reading paywalled sites that I don't pay for. But your comment is a little harsh. It is a sad reality of the internet that there are so few options for generating revenue. I wish there was a micro-payment model where part of my monthly ISP payment was divvied up and paid to websites based on volume of content read by me. That way niche websites (like, for example, hobby sites or local sites) could get some income without having to resort to ads or fundraising. In my view the real ripoff are the exorbitant monthly fees I pay to my ISP.
  - seanp2k2 3y ago
    The fact that even in Silicon Valley, the Comcast monopoly is very strong for both single-family and multi-tenant housing tells you everything you need to know about the viability of anyone actually solving this problem. They’re simply making far too much profit from bad service and terrible business practices, and they’ve paid for all the regulators they need to ensure they’ll never have to change or have any meaningful competition. That they and others in the ISP and mobile ISP cartel have been handed hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to build out FTTH and rural areas that they instead pocketed is just the cherry on top of the turd banana split that is consumer protection in the USA. Check out “The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal” for more on this.
  - baz00 3y ago
    It's brutal but true. Either have a revenue model or expect no income. That is the reality. The fuzzy grey bit in the middle is where all the garbage is. Your idea sounds a fantastic way to make a system incredibly complicated with no actual gain other than a billing dystopia.
  - tcfhgj 3y ago
    > I wish there was a micro-payment model where part of my monthly ISP payment was divvied up and paid to websites based on volume of content read by me. something like that already exists: https://www.contentpass.net/en https://www.contentpass.net/en
- seanp2k2 3y ago
  100% this. If companies use Admiral to block Adblock and don’t have the tiny “heck off” link at the bottom of the modal, I just hit back and don’t read their article. Sometimes Reader works on iOS in those situations, sometimes not. Between crap like Admiral, GDPR nag screens that help no one, incessant useless live chat boxes, large banners on mobile that are pinned to the tops and bottoms of views (doubly so if they’re simply cosmetic), “spin the wheel for a discount” modals, and SMS spam signup schemes, many websites are quite annoying to use and very user-hostile on the modern internet.
  - giantrobot 3y ago
    > If companies use Admiral to block Adblock and don’t have the tiny “heck off” link at the bottom of the modal, I just hit back and don’t read their article. The most asinine part of that is the fucking site has already delivered the content. They incurred whatever costs their multi-megabyte bloated JavaScript monstrosity requires and only then blocks it with a stupid blocking banner. They'd incur the same (or less) costs if they just sent a static HTML page with the content. Doing this they could still make advertising money with a simple text add saying "this content brought to you by Slurm" inline with the content. Just log analysis will get them a ton of visitor information some overwrought AdTech product promises will revolutionize their synergies. A $5 VPS with its included terabyte of data transfer can serve so many fucking web pages in a month. Loading that down with autoplaying videos, megabytes of uncompressed PNGs, and a dozen copies of Doom worth of JavaScript is just a ludicrous pointless cost. A sprinkle of CSS can make those basic pages look amazing.
- squarefoot 3y ago
  > The whole problem starts at (1) which is "create a business supported only by advertising revenue". That says your actual product is worth fuck all. It's a bit more complex than that as the market is long oversaturated with products and services, that is, there are not enough buyers compared to the number of products and services, but that awful thing called consumerism calls for more and more production anyway to keep the machine going and prices down, therefore companies need to fight hard for potential customers attention, and one way to achieve that goal is to put their names on every possible free spot where one's eyes might look. There's nothing wrong in being dependent on advertising, but at the level necessary today it simply doesn't scale anymore, and on the web a lot more than half of the (sometimes metered) traffic is already made of advertising, and is growing steadily. We already know where this thing is leading: more and more advertising, coupled with less and less attention which in turn will generate the need for even more advertising. It doesn't scale and it doesn't work anymore like it should. I would rather start looking right now for alternatives, for example one where (local) governments convert a tax collected from all registered companies to a system of unobtrusive advertising which by rotating equally, still being weighted according to the amount of investment in research, production, personnel, etc. would guarantee fair exposure to all businesses. That would be however deeply against current idea of uncontrolled capitalism, though, therefore we likely will have to wait for the day the world will be ready for a more mature, harmless way of doing business.
MikePlacid 3y ago
Technical curiosity: how site owners are able to detect blockers and why blockers are not able to bypass detection? As for ads I prefer Brave Browser model, where I pay websites directly, bypassing advertisers.
- Sephr 3y ago
  The Brave model does not allow you to directly pay websites. You directly pay Brave, who then distributes funds to some participating websites. Additionally, they take a 30% cut of the value of their "basic attention token" shitcoin for themselves.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    > You directly pay Brave, who then distributes funds to some participating websites. This isn't worse than the way ads work anyway, so that seems fine. > Additionally, they take a 30% cut of the value I also don't see the problem here. They develop the browser, the infra, etc. What is the problem? What is it that you people want?
    - Sephr 3y ago
      > What is the problem? It's open source software implementing anti-features. Why should I willingly share the value of my attention with my browser vendor?
      - insanitybit 3y ago
        Because they're providing the software, infrastructure, and services that allow you to display that content...
        Sephr 3y ago
        The default ratio clearly implies a profit-seeking share in my opinion.
- 3y ago
cousin_it 3y ago
It's not the only logical decision, because it leads to a technological arms race which is costly to all parties. The outcome is binary: see ads or not. The only logical decision is to figure out from first principles what the outcome should be, and make it binding for all parties to avoid the arms race.
Quarrel 3y ago
> the only logical conclusion: You can block ads all you want, and website owners can block you all they want. I very much agree with this bit. The real worry is the next step, as per your TOS you force me to render your website content only in an "approved" signed browser. This is a step several players are pushing towards (Netflix and others are already there, but for distinct reasons- at least they degrade your experience if you aren't using an approved stack). This we need to fight against.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  I mean, what if there are actual technical limitations of whatever browser you'd like to use that prevent, for example, the on-the-fly playback of 4K video? Or, even more broadly, what if the device you're watching on has insufficient compute to accomplish the task? Do you, as proverbial Netflix's chief engineer or whatever, degrade the quality of the experience so things run smoothly, or do you press on and let the user choose a worse experience, and leave nasty feedback on public listings/forums/what have you? I don't mean to argue for the Netflix's in this situation, I'm just genuinely curious what HN thinks of this: in a situation where whatever tech a user is bringing to the table is insufficient to run your product, be it hardware or software, what do you do? I've been in a situation myself where the tech stack of our user base was directly contributing to the stream of angry emails our support was getting and was forbidden by management to gate content only to those who we knew could run it, yet simultaneously was held responsible for the negative impressions of our product as a result of it. I left that job soon after because it was an obvious lose/lose scenario.
  - yesco 3y ago
    Netflix does not offer 1080p+ content to people watching on a Linux desktop. There is no technical reason for this, Linux browsers are capable of playing 1080p+ content of course. So why do you think Netflix does this? Rather than deal with hypotheticals let's focus on reality, a lot of people have put a lot of effort into ensuring that web browsers can run the same content on every platform. This is already a solved problem, even if imperfect. The only genuine reason a device might not be able to play a browser supported 4k video is because it's too resource expensive (rare) and this is simply an immutable property of computers that isn't going to change unless you are expecting all users to use the exact same hardware forever.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gumby 3y ago
I’m a determined ad blocker and I agree with you. The only exception should be a government web site (I also block analytics).
em-bee 3y ago
the problem is that they also say it is legitimate to charge for adfree access. while that is technically correct is has negative impact on society because it means only rich people (i exaggerate intentionally to make a point) can live ad free. poor people have to suffer ads or be excluded, which is fine if the content is something not of interest to the general public, but it is not fine at all if it is eg facebook or youtube. add to that that poorer segments of the population tend to be less well educated and thus more susceptible to manipulation. if you force ads on people you must do so to everyone equally and block adblockers equally. any exchange of money creates a situation where only those that can afford it can protect themselves if you charge for access you may not offer the same access for the price of watching ads. it should be either one or the other
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
beeboobaa 3y ago
This works until they shove remote attestation down our throats and it becomes practically impossible because you no longer own your machine
- insanitybit 3y ago
  It still works at that point - websites can send you ads and you can choose not to view those websites. No one is forcing you to go to Youtube or whatever.
  - beeboobaa 3y ago
    > No one is forcing you to go to Youtube or whatever Oh boy. They sure are. Many countries their governments post their videos on youtube. Many employers put their training videos on youtube. And so on.
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      That doesn't sound like a Youtube problem, it sounds like a your-government problem.
      - beeboobaa 3y ago
        Just responding to what you said. > No one is forcing you to go to Youtube or whatever
  - Kamq 3y ago
    Nobody is forcing youtube to respond to my https request either. If they wanted, they could lock it down and force you to log in and agree to a bunch of rules in order to use the service, but they don't.
- kmbfjr 3y ago
  Google et al are fooling themselves if they think this is the end of the game.
- 3y ago
blooalien 3y ago
> "You can block ads all you want, and website owners can block you all they want." This is absolutely the correct conclusion to come to, given that the Internet is really "just" a network of networks (still an amazing thing, don't get me wrong), and when one connects a device to a network, they should have absolute control over the data that device allows to flow to and from the "outside world", for the safety of the user, the device, and for the health of the larger "outside" network. This holds even more true when connecting a network to another network. For your own security, you (should) run a firewall at the very least. Even better is when all devices on the network all have their firewall enabled, but sadly, not all devices were designed with network security in mind, so that's not always possible. TL;DR: All the above is just to say an adblocker is just another form of the end user exercising control over the data that flows into and out of their devices / network, as they've always been able to, until advertising companies (which initially all scoffed at the entire idea of advertising on the "passing fad" Internet) decided that they had a right to our eyeballs and our devices' network data flows at any time and in any way they please.

baz00 3y ago

Yeah nothing wrong with that. This is how it goes for me though: 1. Company stuffs ads down my throat. 2. I use adblocker 3. Company blocks me 4. I ignore company. The whole problem starts at (1) which is "create a business supported only by advertising revenue". That says your actual product is worth fuck all.

herodotus 3y ago
> That says your actual product is worth fuck all. Look I use ad blockers and a pi-hole. And I don't bother reading paywalled sites that I don't pay for. But your comment is a little harsh. It is a sad reality of the internet that there are so few options for generating revenue. I wish there was a micro-payment model where part of my monthly ISP payment was divvied up and paid to websites based on volume of content read by me. That way niche websites (like, for example, hobby sites or local sites) could get some income without having to resort to ads or fundraising. In my view the real ripoff are the exorbitant monthly fees I pay to my ISP.
- seanp2k2 3y ago
  The fact that even in Silicon Valley, the Comcast monopoly is very strong for both single-family and multi-tenant housing tells you everything you need to know about the viability of anyone actually solving this problem. They’re simply making far too much profit from bad service and terrible business practices, and they’ve paid for all the regulators they need to ensure they’ll never have to change or have any meaningful competition. That they and others in the ISP and mobile ISP cartel have been handed hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to build out FTTH and rural areas that they instead pocketed is just the cherry on top of the turd banana split that is consumer protection in the USA. Check out “The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal” for more on this.
- baz00 3y ago
  It's brutal but true. Either have a revenue model or expect no income. That is the reality. The fuzzy grey bit in the middle is where all the garbage is. Your idea sounds a fantastic way to make a system incredibly complicated with no actual gain other than a billing dystopia.
- tcfhgj 3y ago
  > I wish there was a micro-payment model where part of my monthly ISP payment was divvied up and paid to websites based on volume of content read by me. something like that already exists: https://www.contentpass.net/en https://www.contentpass.net/en
seanp2k2 3y ago
100% this. If companies use Admiral to block Adblock and don’t have the tiny “heck off” link at the bottom of the modal, I just hit back and don’t read their article. Sometimes Reader works on iOS in those situations, sometimes not. Between crap like Admiral, GDPR nag screens that help no one, incessant useless live chat boxes, large banners on mobile that are pinned to the tops and bottoms of views (doubly so if they’re simply cosmetic), “spin the wheel for a discount” modals, and SMS spam signup schemes, many websites are quite annoying to use and very user-hostile on the modern internet.
- giantrobot 3y ago
  > If companies use Admiral to block Adblock and don’t have the tiny “heck off” link at the bottom of the modal, I just hit back and don’t read their article. The most asinine part of that is the fucking site has already delivered the content. They incurred whatever costs their multi-megabyte bloated JavaScript monstrosity requires and only then blocks it with a stupid blocking banner. They'd incur the same (or less) costs if they just sent a static HTML page with the content. Doing this they could still make advertising money with a simple text add saying "this content brought to you by Slurm" inline with the content. Just log analysis will get them a ton of visitor information some overwrought AdTech product promises will revolutionize their synergies. A $5 VPS with its included terabyte of data transfer can serve so many fucking web pages in a month. Loading that down with autoplaying videos, megabytes of uncompressed PNGs, and a dozen copies of Doom worth of JavaScript is just a ludicrous pointless cost. A sprinkle of CSS can make those basic pages look amazing.
squarefoot 3y ago
> The whole problem starts at (1) which is "create a business supported only by advertising revenue". That says your actual product is worth fuck all. It's a bit more complex than that as the market is long oversaturated with products and services, that is, there are not enough buyers compared to the number of products and services, but that awful thing called consumerism calls for more and more production anyway to keep the machine going and prices down, therefore companies need to fight hard for potential customers attention, and one way to achieve that goal is to put their names on every possible free spot where one's eyes might look. There's nothing wrong in being dependent on advertising, but at the level necessary today it simply doesn't scale anymore, and on the web a lot more than half of the (sometimes metered) traffic is already made of advertising, and is growing steadily. We already know where this thing is leading: more and more advertising, coupled with less and less attention which in turn will generate the need for even more advertising. It doesn't scale and it doesn't work anymore like it should. I would rather start looking right now for alternatives, for example one where (local) governments convert a tax collected from all registered companies to a system of unobtrusive advertising which by rotating equally, still being weighted according to the amount of investment in research, production, personnel, etc. would guarantee fair exposure to all businesses. That would be however deeply against current idea of uncontrolled capitalism, though, therefore we likely will have to wait for the day the world will be ready for a more mature, harmless way of doing business.

MikePlacid 3y ago

Technical curiosity: how site owners are able to detect blockers and why blockers are not able to bypass detection? As for ads I prefer Brave Browser model, where I pay websites directly, bypassing advertisers.

Sephr 3y ago
The Brave model does not allow you to directly pay websites. You directly pay Brave, who then distributes funds to some participating websites. Additionally, they take a 30% cut of the value of their "basic attention token" shitcoin for themselves.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  > You directly pay Brave, who then distributes funds to some participating websites. This isn't worse than the way ads work anyway, so that seems fine. > Additionally, they take a 30% cut of the value I also don't see the problem here. They develop the browser, the infra, etc. What is the problem? What is it that you people want?
  - Sephr 3y ago
    > What is the problem? It's open source software implementing anti-features. Why should I willingly share the value of my attention with my browser vendor?
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      Because they're providing the software, infrastructure, and services that allow you to display that content...
      - Sephr 3y ago
        The default ratio clearly implies a profit-seeking share in my opinion.
3y ago

cousin_it 3y ago

It's not the only logical decision, because it leads to a technological arms race which is costly to all parties. The outcome is binary: see ads or not. The only logical decision is to figure out from first principles what the outcome should be, and make it binding for all parties to avoid the arms race.

Quarrel 3y ago

> the only logical conclusion: You can block ads all you want, and website owners can block you all they want. I very much agree with this bit. The real worry is the next step, as per your TOS you force me to render your website content only in an "approved" signed browser. This is a step several players are pushing towards (Netflix and others are already there, but for distinct reasons- at least they degrade your experience if you aren't using an approved stack). This we need to fight against.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
I mean, what if there are actual technical limitations of whatever browser you'd like to use that prevent, for example, the on-the-fly playback of 4K video? Or, even more broadly, what if the device you're watching on has insufficient compute to accomplish the task? Do you, as proverbial Netflix's chief engineer or whatever, degrade the quality of the experience so things run smoothly, or do you press on and let the user choose a worse experience, and leave nasty feedback on public listings/forums/what have you? I don't mean to argue for the Netflix's in this situation, I'm just genuinely curious what HN thinks of this: in a situation where whatever tech a user is bringing to the table is insufficient to run your product, be it hardware or software, what do you do? I've been in a situation myself where the tech stack of our user base was directly contributing to the stream of angry emails our support was getting and was forbidden by management to gate content only to those who we knew could run it, yet simultaneously was held responsible for the negative impressions of our product as a result of it. I left that job soon after because it was an obvious lose/lose scenario.
- yesco 3y ago
  Netflix does not offer 1080p+ content to people watching on a Linux desktop. There is no technical reason for this, Linux browsers are capable of playing 1080p+ content of course. So why do you think Netflix does this? Rather than deal with hypotheticals let's focus on reality, a lot of people have put a lot of effort into ensuring that web browsers can run the same content on every platform. This is already a solved problem, even if imperfect. The only genuine reason a device might not be able to play a browser supported 4k video is because it's too resource expensive (rare) and this is simply an immutable property of computers that isn't going to change unless you are expecting all users to use the exact same hardware forever.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gumby 3y ago

I’m a determined ad blocker and I agree with you. The only exception should be a government web site (I also block analytics).

em-bee 3y ago

the problem is that they also say it is legitimate to charge for adfree access. while that is technically correct is has negative impact on society because it means only rich people (i exaggerate intentionally to make a point) can live ad free. poor people have to suffer ads or be excluded, which is fine if the content is something not of interest to the general public, but it is not fine at all if it is eg facebook or youtube. add to that that poorer segments of the population tend to be less well educated and thus more susceptible to manipulation. if you force ads on people you must do so to everyone equally and block adblockers equally. any exchange of money creates a situation where only those that can afford it can protect themselves if you charge for access you may not offer the same access for the price of watching ads. it should be either one or the other

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

beeboobaa 3y ago

This works until they shove remote attestation down our throats and it becomes practically impossible because you no longer own your machine

insanitybit 3y ago
It still works at that point - websites can send you ads and you can choose not to view those websites. No one is forcing you to go to Youtube or whatever.
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  > No one is forcing you to go to Youtube or whatever Oh boy. They sure are. Many countries their governments post their videos on youtube. Many employers put their training videos on youtube. And so on.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    That doesn't sound like a Youtube problem, it sounds like a your-government problem.
    - beeboobaa 3y ago
      Just responding to what you said. > No one is forcing you to go to Youtube or whatever
- Kamq 3y ago
  Nobody is forcing youtube to respond to my https request either. If they wanted, they could lock it down and force you to log in and agree to a bunch of rules in order to use the service, but they don't.
kmbfjr 3y ago
Google et al are fooling themselves if they think this is the end of the game.
3y ago

blooalien 3y ago

> "You can block ads all you want, and website owners can block you all they want." This is absolutely the correct conclusion to come to, given that the Internet is really "just" a network of networks (still an amazing thing, don't get me wrong), and when one connects a device to a network, they should have absolute control over the data that device allows to flow to and from the "outside world", for the safety of the user, the device, and for the health of the larger "outside" network. This holds even more true when connecting a network to another network. For your own security, you (should) run a firewall at the very least. Even better is when all devices on the network all have their firewall enabled, but sadly, not all devices were designed with network security in mind, so that's not always possible. TL;DR: All the above is just to say an adblocker is just another form of the end user exercising control over the data that flows into and out of their devices / network, as they've always been able to, until advertising companies (which initially all scoffed at the entire idea of advertising on the "passing fad" Internet) decided that they had a right to our eyeballs and our devices' network data flows at any time and in any way they please.