3 ms·

Not many now, but if websites start feeling the squeeze from ad revenue, it will become more common (see Hulu making commercials 2-3x as long if Adblock is enab

Not many now, but if websites start feeling the squeeze from ad revenue, it will become more common (see Hulu making commercials 2-3x as long if Adblock is enabled). It's also an unfair comparison because Adblock is opt-in -- you have to download the add-on to get it to work, which not many people are willing to do (what percentage of Firefox users use AdBlock -- maybe 5%?). DNT, on the other hand, is something all Firefox users will have enabled by default -- Imagine 20% of the worldwide browsing market suddenly blocking all tracking cookies.

MichaelGG 13y ago
Can you elaborate on the Hulu commercial thing with Adblock? Why would changing duration do anything? If Hulu can detect an adblocker, why not just not do the video at all? Playing a blocked ad for longer doesn't seem to make any sense.
- eggbrain 13y ago
  ...why not just not do the video at all? Playing a blocked ad for longer doesn't seem to make any sense. Well, it's actually a fairly clever solution. If the person wants to block ads Hulu won't stop them, it will just make the commercial time take 3x as long ("commercial time" meaning silence in this scenario, since no ad is served, which is actually quite jarring in videos when you have silence for 6 minutes followed by the video continuing). The people who allow ads get to watch the original shorter commercials, meaning they don't have to wait nearly as long. They could probably block people who block ads and just refuse to serve the video, but that could prevent people from legitimately watching the show if their adblock-checker went haywire. Plus, users would be probably more pissed if you outright blocked them rather than if you made their experience annoying.
jeffcutsinger 13y ago
> DNT, on the other hand, is something all Firefox users will have enabled by default It's opt-in. My guess is that the gap between people willing to install an add-in and people willing to dig into their settings and check a box is not large.
- eggbrain 13y ago
  From the article: ...That would leave Firefox in a permanent state of blocking advertisers' cookies by default. Default means this feature would be an opt-out feature, not an opt-in feature. Since Firefox now autoupdates, that means soon most Firefox installs would have this enabled by default without any user input.
tomjen3 13y ago
Maybe, I am consistently surprised by the number of people who don't have adblock installed. But surely it must me much higher in the technology segment.

MichaelGG 13y ago

Can you elaborate on the Hulu commercial thing with Adblock? Why would changing duration do anything? If Hulu can detect an adblocker, why not just not do the video at all? Playing a blocked ad for longer doesn't seem to make any sense.

eggbrain 13y ago
...why not just not do the video at all? Playing a blocked ad for longer doesn't seem to make any sense. Well, it's actually a fairly clever solution. If the person wants to block ads Hulu won't stop them, it will just make the commercial time take 3x as long ("commercial time" meaning silence in this scenario, since no ad is served, which is actually quite jarring in videos when you have silence for 6 minutes followed by the video continuing). The people who allow ads get to watch the original shorter commercials, meaning they don't have to wait nearly as long. They could probably block people who block ads and just refuse to serve the video, but that could prevent people from legitimately watching the show if their adblock-checker went haywire. Plus, users would be probably more pissed if you outright blocked them rather than if you made their experience annoying.

jeffcutsinger 13y ago

> DNT, on the other hand, is something all Firefox users will have enabled by default It's opt-in. My guess is that the gap between people willing to install an add-in and people willing to dig into their settings and check a box is not large.

eggbrain 13y ago
From the article: ...That would leave Firefox in a permanent state of blocking advertisers' cookies by default. Default means this feature would be an opt-out feature, not an opt-in feature. Since Firefox now autoupdates, that means soon most Firefox installs would have this enabled by default without any user input.

tomjen3 13y ago

Maybe, I am consistently surprised by the number of people who don't have adblock installed. But surely it must me much higher in the technology segment.