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Adblockers aren't undetectable. Publishers know how many visitors are adblocking. Or, at least that information is attainable if they decide they want it. Ther

Adblockers aren't undetectable. Publishers know how many visitors are adblocking. Or, at least that information is attainable if they decide they want it. There's also the issue of the simple time investment in curating ads. If I just somehow knew every website that depended on awful ads for the majority of their revenue, I'd happily avoid most of them, and everyone would be satisfied. But the volume is so tremendous, an adblocker for me is surrender. I would like to support good ads and avoid/punish bad ads. But there are just so many websites, so many ads, I cannot mentally catalog it all and remember "oh right I'm ideologically avoiding site <blerp>" as I skim Google. Given that, uBlock is the only thing keeping my old laptop from collapsing under the weight of the bad ads that appear from every direction. Actually it's a lot like spam blocking in some ways. Spam is such a voluminous problem, you are forced to implement blanket policies, leverage advanced technologies in heuristics, and maintain large networks of whitelists and blacklists, just to get on with life... that's what good ads and ad-free sites seem like, ham lost in a sea of spam.

manigandham 12y ago
Yes, I completely understand that. I think the best compromise if you're using AdBlock is to at least disable it on the higher-end sites you enjoy the most. Also, because Adblock plugins can just stop network requests from ever happening, it's actually hard to accurately measure everything. Lots of publishers also arent that technical or have large dev teams so it might seem simple to the Hacker News readers but reality is more difficult for these sites operators. Wordpress actually runs more of the big famous sites then you may be aware of, just because it's easy and doesn't take a big ops team.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  I do try to disable adblock on sites I like. Which brings up a technical challenge- there's a vendor I like who implements targeted ads that follow you around the web. The ads are extremely benign and I would want to permit them- but they are hosted on a platform. How do I permit only certain vendors on an ad platform, without allowing the entire platform...
  - manigandham 12y ago
    Unfortunately no. Certain networks do have a opt-out selection but this would not work because: 1) the opt-out choice relies on the same tracking cookies and stuff which would be blocked by adblockers 2) not every company offers opt-out because its a gray area of regulation, especially across global regions 3) you would have to opt-out of the infinite choices you dont want, just to let in the single one you do

manigandham 12y ago

Yes, I completely understand that. I think the best compromise if you're using AdBlock is to at least disable it on the higher-end sites you enjoy the most. Also, because Adblock plugins can just stop network requests from ever happening, it's actually hard to accurately measure everything. Lots of publishers also arent that technical or have large dev teams so it might seem simple to the Hacker News readers but reality is more difficult for these sites operators. Wordpress actually runs more of the big famous sites then you may be aware of, just because it's easy and doesn't take a big ops team.

sliverstorm 12y ago
I do try to disable adblock on sites I like. Which brings up a technical challenge- there's a vendor I like who implements targeted ads that follow you around the web. The ads are extremely benign and I would want to permit them- but they are hosted on a platform. How do I permit only certain vendors on an ad platform, without allowing the entire platform...
- manigandham 12y ago
  Unfortunately no. Certain networks do have a opt-out selection but this would not work because: 1) the opt-out choice relies on the same tracking cookies and stuff which would be blocked by adblockers 2) not every company offers opt-out because its a gray area of regulation, especially across global regions 3) you would have to opt-out of the infinite choices you dont want, just to let in the single one you do