6 ms·

Without the suggestion to install an adblocker, this is not credible advice.

by xnx 1y ago

userbinator 1y ago
The FBI recommends using an adblocker: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41483581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41483581
ninth_ant 1y ago
A media outlet which depends on ad revenue as a primary income source is unlikely to suggest this. Ditching these deeply invasive products remains a good idea, independent on any decision to use ad blockers or not. The Meta/Yandex incident in particular is straight-up malware and everyone should remove their apps.
- timewizard 1y ago
  > which depends on ad revenue They're more tightly bound than that. They're dependent on Google Display Ads. Which really makes their whole diatribe that much more pathetic. Any media company that decided to traffic the ads themselves, from their own servers, and inline with their own content, would effectively be immune from ad blocking. > Ditching these deeply invasive products remains a good idea While still allowing random third party javascript to run unchecked on a parent website.
  - kulahan 1y ago
    > While still allowing random third party javascript to run unchecked on a parent website. Lol, why are you commenting as if somehow allowing it to run negates the other good ideas in some way? Obviously some is better than none, and all is better than some, but each step takes more effort.
    - timewizard 1y ago
      lol, because ads pay for the content you're reading. it pays salaries. what I _don't_ want is to be _tracked_. show me ads all day if you want.
      - petre 1y ago
        They'd like to show you personalised ads, for more effective manipulation, which implies tracking.
      - kulahan 1y ago
        I have bad news for you about how ads work. Also, you didn’t really answer my question, you just dodged it. I’m not asking what you think makes for a successful ad campaign, I’m asking why you’re letting perfect be the enemy of good
  - jonhohle 1y ago
    It’s odd that orgs like NYT don’t run their own ad services. I’m sure they have a dedicated department for ad sales for physical copies. They’re large enough that companies would work directly with them. And they would have at least some editorial control on what is displayed on their site.
    - macNchz 1y ago
      The NYT does have a direct-sold ads business and first-party data platform for targeting them: https://open.nytimes.com/to-serve-better-ads-we-built-our-own-data-program-c5e039bf247b https://open.nytimes.com/to-serve-better-ads-we-built-our-ow...
    - rjsw 1y ago
      That used to be how print newspapers worked.
    - paradox460 1y ago
      I've worked for a few companies that had ad placements. I wasn't too deep into that side of things, and it was a long time ago, but as I recall, at reddit there was an in house ad auction platform. If there wasn't any ads sold for the period, we'd either show in house ads (think the old reddit merch store, pics of animals, a pic of one of the reddit staff with a paper tube on his forehead to resemble a narwhal, etc) or ads from a network like AdSense. Once upon a time this actually caused issues because there was malware being served from one of those and networks
    - Workaccount2 1y ago
      Targeted ads based on extensive data harvesting are just soo much more juicy though.
  - labster 1y ago
    Hosting the ads on the same server as the content is done in some cases, but doesn’t result in any immunity. If the ads are sufficiently annoying, it only leads to a merry little game with the adblocker annoyance list community, where they figure out new regexen to block the content, deploying daily. Bypass the blocks too effectively, and the adblocker will accidentally start blocking website content. Users will assume the website itself is broken, and visit less. Self-hosting ads is not really a winning game unless your ads are non-animated, non-modal static text and images.
- alkonaut 1y ago
  Getting privacy advice from an adtech funded outlet sounds like reading democracy advice from the Chinese ruling party or vegetarianism advice from lions to be honest. It might be correct-and-incomplete but they just have no credibility on the topic.
  - gamblor956 1y ago
    WaPo is dependent on subscription revenue, not ads. They limit the number of articles non subscribers can read. They're also owned by one of the richest men in the world...
    - romanows 1y ago
      Maybe, but they they refused to offer an ad-free subscription tier last time I asked. NYT and Chicago Sun Times also refused.
    - eviks 1y ago
      Of course it's dependent on ads, what are you talking about, nothing prevents showing ads to subscribers to the tune of 180 mil/year https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/washington-post-lost-100-million-last-year-amid-staff-shakeups-wsj-reports-wapo-journalism-media-jeff-bezos https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/washington-post-lost...
      - gamblor956 1y ago
        WaPo is dependent on subscription revenue, which is more than 2/3rd of their revenue. Advertising revenue is less than a 1/3rd of their revenue, and dropping fast. Ad revenue from more than 50 million visitors is less than subscription revenue from 2.5 million subscribers. If WaPo was dependent on ads, they would have taken steps to increase accessibility to articles, but they didn't and haven't. Instead, they're restricting more and more content to subscribers, because ultimately subscribers are the ones that keep the lights on.
        eviks 1y ago
- brookst 1y ago
  You’re not wrong, but there was a time many of olds remember when editorial content and commercial concerns were firewalled. It used to be outrageous, and usually wrong, to suggest an editorial position was contingent upon a business benefit for the media outlet. I miss those days.
  - account42 1y ago
    It was always naive to believe that business interests do not influence the content. You can't firewall a journalist's understanding that their job depends on certain things.
- account42 1y ago
  > A media outlet which depends on ad revenue as a primary income source is unlikely to suggest this. That's a problem for the media outlet to solve. Ad-supported tech "news" can never be trustworthy.
jfengel 1y ago
Does the ad blocker prevent leaks of your information? I know it blocks a use of your information against you (targeted ads). And any external source is a potential leak (e.g. the kinds of things that CORS is supposed to reduce). But does an ad blocker specifically leak more, or just reduce the incentive to collect that information?
- antithesizer 1y ago
  Yes they block tracking
- weaksauce 1y ago
  they don't load up the ads at all so they can't know your information in the first place at least from the ads themselves. if the website is sharing information directly there's nothing you can do outside of some kind of vpn and never logging on to any services.
- demosthanos 1y ago
  A full-featured ad blocker (uBlock Origin original, not the neutered Lite version that runs on Chrome now) will intercept requests at the network level and prevent your browser from requesting the advertisers' JavaScript code. Your browser not only won't show the ads, it won't run the code that was supposed to show them or even send a request to the advertisers' servers. This blocks most existing tracking methods. The only thing you're not protected from is first-party tracking by the site you're actually visiting, which is impossible to fully protect against.
  - zahlman 1y ago
    >prevent your browser from requesting the advertisers' JavaScript code. Your browser not only won't show the ads, it won't run the code that was supposed to show them or even send a request to the advertisers' servers. Incidentally, just blocking JavaScript with NoScript kills quite a lot of ads (obviously, not first-party ones if you've white-listed their JavaScript for site functionality; but I try to avoid that when there isn't real demonstrated value) without any need for an explicit ad blocker.
mingus88 1y ago
They will not bite the hand that feeds them. But I am glad they are pushing people toward other browsers because that is the biggest step. Once you have taken that step, installing the most popular extensions is trivial. Guess what the highest rated extensions are?
ryandrake 1y ago
I would bet money that the techie they asked to put the list together included "use an adblocker." And then the higher-up who approves articles like this said "shit! wait... no, no, no, delete that one!!" These corporations are deeply deceptive.
godelski 1y ago
The advice is fine, just incomplete. It is better than nothing and definitely for the more "normies" advice. Let's start there and then we can get them onto adblock and other stuff. Btw, the ArsTechnica article they link offers more advice[0] [0] https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/meta-and-yandex-are-de-anonymizing-android-users-web-browsing-identifiers/ https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/meta-and-yandex-are...
mmooss 1y ago
That may not be viable for many non-technical users, which is their audience. On HN, it would be an error to omit ad blockers; the Washington Post has a different audience. I expect that most would find installing and learning a new browser to be too much effort and too hard to understand.
- Larrikin 1y ago
  This is provably wrong since Google has been pushing Chrome installs for over a decade.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    Good point.
theandrewbailey 1y ago
They suggest Brave browser, which has an adblocker built in and on by default.
greggsy 1y ago
It’s still good advice
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

Without the suggestion to install an adblocker, this is not credible advice.

by xnx 1y ago

Without the suggestion to install an adblocker, this is not credible advice.

The FBI recommends using an adblocker: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41483581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41483581

ninth_ant 1y ago

A media outlet which depends on ad revenue as a primary income source is unlikely to suggest this. Ditching these deeply invasive products remains a good idea, independent on any decision to use ad blockers or not. The Meta/Yandex incident in particular is straight-up malware and everyone should remove their apps.

timewizard 1y ago
> which depends on ad revenue They're more tightly bound than that. They're dependent on Google Display Ads. Which really makes their whole diatribe that much more pathetic. Any media company that decided to traffic the ads themselves, from their own servers, and inline with their own content, would effectively be immune from ad blocking. > Ditching these deeply invasive products remains a good idea While still allowing random third party javascript to run unchecked on a parent website.
- kulahan 1y ago
  > While still allowing random third party javascript to run unchecked on a parent website. Lol, why are you commenting as if somehow allowing it to run negates the other good ideas in some way? Obviously some is better than none, and all is better than some, but each step takes more effort.
  - timewizard 1y ago
    lol, because ads pay for the content you're reading. it pays salaries. what I _don't_ want is to be _tracked_. show me ads all day if you want.
    - petre 1y ago
      They'd like to show you personalised ads, for more effective manipulation, which implies tracking.
    - kulahan 1y ago
      I have bad news for you about how ads work. Also, you didn’t really answer my question, you just dodged it. I’m not asking what you think makes for a successful ad campaign, I’m asking why you’re letting perfect be the enemy of good
- jonhohle 1y ago
  It’s odd that orgs like NYT don’t run their own ad services. I’m sure they have a dedicated department for ad sales for physical copies. They’re large enough that companies would work directly with them. And they would have at least some editorial control on what is displayed on their site.
  - macNchz 1y ago
    The NYT does have a direct-sold ads business and first-party data platform for targeting them: https://open.nytimes.com/to-serve-better-ads-we-built-our-own-data-program-c5e039bf247b https://open.nytimes.com/to-serve-better-ads-we-built-our-ow...
  - rjsw 1y ago
    That used to be how print newspapers worked.
  - paradox460 1y ago
    I've worked for a few companies that had ad placements. I wasn't too deep into that side of things, and it was a long time ago, but as I recall, at reddit there was an in house ad auction platform. If there wasn't any ads sold for the period, we'd either show in house ads (think the old reddit merch store, pics of animals, a pic of one of the reddit staff with a paper tube on his forehead to resemble a narwhal, etc) or ads from a network like AdSense. Once upon a time this actually caused issues because there was malware being served from one of those and networks
  - Workaccount2 1y ago
    Targeted ads based on extensive data harvesting are just soo much more juicy though.
- labster 1y ago
  Hosting the ads on the same server as the content is done in some cases, but doesn’t result in any immunity. If the ads are sufficiently annoying, it only leads to a merry little game with the adblocker annoyance list community, where they figure out new regexen to block the content, deploying daily. Bypass the blocks too effectively, and the adblocker will accidentally start blocking website content. Users will assume the website itself is broken, and visit less. Self-hosting ads is not really a winning game unless your ads are non-animated, non-modal static text and images.
alkonaut 1y ago
Getting privacy advice from an adtech funded outlet sounds like reading democracy advice from the Chinese ruling party or vegetarianism advice from lions to be honest. It might be correct-and-incomplete but they just have no credibility on the topic.
- gamblor956 1y ago
  WaPo is dependent on subscription revenue, not ads. They limit the number of articles non subscribers can read. They're also owned by one of the richest men in the world...
  - romanows 1y ago
    Maybe, but they they refused to offer an ad-free subscription tier last time I asked. NYT and Chicago Sun Times also refused.
  - eviks 1y ago
    Of course it's dependent on ads, what are you talking about, nothing prevents showing ads to subscribers to the tune of 180 mil/year https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/washington-post-lost-100-million-last-year-amid-staff-shakeups-wsj-reports-wapo-journalism-media-jeff-bezos https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/washington-post-lost...
    - gamblor956 1y ago
      WaPo is dependent on subscription revenue, which is more than 2/3rd of their revenue. Advertising revenue is less than a 1/3rd of their revenue, and dropping fast. Ad revenue from more than 50 million visitors is less than subscription revenue from 2.5 million subscribers. If WaPo was dependent on ads, they would have taken steps to increase accessibility to articles, but they didn't and haven't. Instead, they're restricting more and more content to subscribers, because ultimately subscribers are the ones that keep the lights on.
      - eviks 1y ago
brookst 1y ago
You’re not wrong, but there was a time many of olds remember when editorial content and commercial concerns were firewalled. It used to be outrageous, and usually wrong, to suggest an editorial position was contingent upon a business benefit for the media outlet. I miss those days.
- account42 1y ago
  It was always naive to believe that business interests do not influence the content. You can't firewall a journalist's understanding that their job depends on certain things.
account42 1y ago
> A media outlet which depends on ad revenue as a primary income source is unlikely to suggest this. That's a problem for the media outlet to solve. Ad-supported tech "news" can never be trustworthy.

jfengel 1y ago

Does the ad blocker prevent leaks of your information? I know it blocks a use of your information against you (targeted ads). And any external source is a potential leak (e.g. the kinds of things that CORS is supposed to reduce). But does an ad blocker specifically leak more, or just reduce the incentive to collect that information?

antithesizer 1y ago
Yes they block tracking
weaksauce 1y ago
they don't load up the ads at all so they can't know your information in the first place at least from the ads themselves. if the website is sharing information directly there's nothing you can do outside of some kind of vpn and never logging on to any services.
demosthanos 1y ago
A full-featured ad blocker (uBlock Origin original, not the neutered Lite version that runs on Chrome now) will intercept requests at the network level and prevent your browser from requesting the advertisers' JavaScript code. Your browser not only won't show the ads, it won't run the code that was supposed to show them or even send a request to the advertisers' servers. This blocks most existing tracking methods. The only thing you're not protected from is first-party tracking by the site you're actually visiting, which is impossible to fully protect against.
- zahlman 1y ago
  >prevent your browser from requesting the advertisers' JavaScript code. Your browser not only won't show the ads, it won't run the code that was supposed to show them or even send a request to the advertisers' servers. Incidentally, just blocking JavaScript with NoScript kills quite a lot of ads (obviously, not first-party ones if you've white-listed their JavaScript for site functionality; but I try to avoid that when there isn't real demonstrated value) without any need for an explicit ad blocker.

mingus88 1y ago

They will not bite the hand that feeds them. But I am glad they are pushing people toward other browsers because that is the biggest step. Once you have taken that step, installing the most popular extensions is trivial. Guess what the highest rated extensions are?

ryandrake 1y ago

I would bet money that the techie they asked to put the list together included "use an adblocker." And then the higher-up who approves articles like this said "shit! wait... no, no, no, delete that one!!" These corporations are deeply deceptive.

godelski 1y ago

The advice is fine, just incomplete. It is better than nothing and definitely for the more "normies" advice. Let's start there and then we can get them onto adblock and other stuff. Btw, the ArsTechnica article they link offers more advice[0] [0] https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/meta-and-yandex-are-de-anonymizing-android-users-web-browsing-identifiers/ https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/meta-and-yandex-are...

mmooss 1y ago

That may not be viable for many non-technical users, which is their audience. On HN, it would be an error to omit ad blockers; the Washington Post has a different audience. I expect that most would find installing and learning a new browser to be too much effort and too hard to understand.

Larrikin 1y ago
This is provably wrong since Google has been pushing Chrome installs for over a decade.
- mmooss 1y ago
  Good point.

theandrewbailey 1y ago

They suggest Brave browser, which has an adblocker built in and on by default.

greggsy 1y ago

It’s still good advice

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]