6 ms·

You should just stop visiting the site instead. Your still taking their content, but it sounds like what's really not of any concern to you, is their monetizati

You should just stop visiting the site instead. Your still taking their content, but it sounds like what's really not of any concern to you, is their monetization strategy.

rhizome 11y ago
Love the sinner, hate the sin.
weland 11y ago
Or, you know, keep visiting the site until they switch to making money in a way that is not annoying. And it's not just the sounds and the graphics and the non-obvious placement and framing. It's the bloody tracking as well. If they want to play dirty to make money off my ass, I can play dirty, too. "Monetization strategy" makes it sound good. It's not. If it's so bloody disgusting, it's a ripoff, not a business done in good faith. It deserves about as much respect as a scam.
- manigandham 11y ago
  You don't think paywalls are annoying? Because that's the only other model.
  - RogerL 11y ago
    The only possible choices are ads that flash, pop up, and play music, or a paywall? That is a false dichotomy. It is possible to serve tasteful, malware free, silent ads. Most sites choose not to. I, and an increasing number of people are choosing not to view the invasive ads.
    - manigandham 11y ago
      The choices are paywall or ads. If you don't like the ads, don't visit the site. That's how you show them you don't like the experience.
  - weland 11y ago
    How about: * Free, but with ads. * Paid, without ads No paywall, no annoying ads, and I still pay my share if I want to keep away from the ads. What about ads like Facebook's sponsored content? Non-flashy, clearly marked as advertising, in the upper-right portion of the screen or something, so that I can read the text without getting flashbanged.
    - manigandham 11y ago
      I agree with all that. That's in fact all my company does. However blocking ads is a brute force approach that's causing more harm then good right now.
77109 11y ago
>what's really not of any concern to you The requests I block are none of their concern.
SwellJoe 11y ago
Nope. Don't care. If they want to charge me something, that's OK. If they want to have reasonable, unobtrusive, ads without tracking, that's OK, too. But, what many sites currently do is not OK. So, fuck'em.
- manigandham 11y ago
  What is "not OK"? These are subjective concerns. If you're going to the site you're still showing you find the content to be of value, so why do you feel its ok for the site to not make any revenue? You're conflating the ability to do something with whether it's morally right or not. Ad blocking will only hurt the long-tail and freedom of the internet that everyone currently enjoys. Btw, payments arent exactly some kind of perfect answer. It will always cost more than ads and is no less private, in fact you end up giving up even more of your details.
  - SwellJoe 11y ago
    I view it as a negotiation, and this is me blowing out their proposed deal. Imagine you're sitting at the bargaining table and the first offer the person on the other side gives you is an order of magnitude more than you're willing to pay. Say, they want you to pay $50,000 for a car that you know is only worth $5,000. This is the point at which you "blow out" their offer. You could say something like, "I don't think we're on the same page at all about the value of this good. I have to walk away if you consider that a reasonable offer." The other party can counter with, "OK, what are you comfortable with?" So, right now, in the ads vs. privacy negotiation I've said, "No. You're not even on the right page. You are asking an order of magnitude more than I'm willing to give you for this product." They, of course, have the right to let me walk away. They can block me, if they'd like, and put such things in their terms of service. But, the fact is, they engaged in this first. The advertisers created this arms race, a race for the most tasteless, obnoxious, privacy-invading, and intrusive ads they could design. I am merely implementing my own disarmament plan and imposing it on them, whether they like it or not (they don't, obviously...but, again, I don't care; advertisers have destroyed any sympathy I may have had for them). As I mentioned, I took years to install an ad blocker. I am willing to negotiate, but I gave them an inch and they took a mile. They didn't respect "do not track", they took steps to insure that I would be interrupted, even if I wasn't even looking at the tab where they're spewing their garbage with auto-starting audio ads (this was my personal tipping point, I had four or five of them happen in one day of browsing and decided "Never again."). Advertisers did this to themselves. They have no one to blame but themselves. I don't know what comes next, but I've opted out of their system, and I'll continue to do so as long as the technology is used in the most nefarious ways possible.
derefr 11y ago
Guilt in this case is nonsensical. If the site wanted to detect, and then not serve, the users who block their ads, that's actually very easy to implement, technologically. But very few sites do this. Most site owners are, then, making a conscious choice to continue to serve these people who aren't making them money. If they want to give you something for nothing, let them! And if they want to not give you something for free, that's their choice to make!
- manigandham 11y ago
  It's actually not that easy, since the client has full control over what the server sends out.
  - derefr 11y ago
    Yeah, it's theoretically impossible to stop a determined extension-writer from perfectly blocking ads in a way that leaks no information. But current implementations are sloppy and leak all sorts of information. Usually you can just run some (inline!) Javascript to inspect the DOM and then do something. Or, if the client won't run Javascript at all (and you might consider making your site require Javascript to render anything, just to stymie these users, if you're on this path already), you can still set a background-image property as a "default" for a banner div, in a way that it will never get requested if the ad does get rendered, but will get requested if it doesn't. (OKCupid uses this approach, if I recall.) You can then use that information just for analytics, or you can go further and change what the server serves that client from then on (i.e. make all further pages for that session return an error.)
  - RogerL 11y ago
    Then you'll have to explain why I see "You seem to have an ad blocker running. Would you consider turning it off, or subscribing" on many sites.
    - manigandham 11y ago
      The usual way sites do it is have a script that checks for any loaded ads and displays that message. This script itself can easily be blocked if sites decide to do more with it, and it has because the list is maintained by groups that decide what goes on it. They're willing to let simple messages slide but blocking the content has already proven to not work.

You should just stop visiting the site instead. Your still taking their content, but it sounds like what's really not of any concern to you, is their monetization strategy.

rhizome 11y ago

Love the sinner, hate the sin.

weland 11y ago

Or, you know, keep visiting the site until they switch to making money in a way that is not annoying. And it's not just the sounds and the graphics and the non-obvious placement and framing. It's the bloody tracking as well. If they want to play dirty to make money off my ass, I can play dirty, too. "Monetization strategy" makes it sound good. It's not. If it's so bloody disgusting, it's a ripoff, not a business done in good faith. It deserves about as much respect as a scam.

manigandham 11y ago
You don't think paywalls are annoying? Because that's the only other model.
- RogerL 11y ago
  The only possible choices are ads that flash, pop up, and play music, or a paywall? That is a false dichotomy. It is possible to serve tasteful, malware free, silent ads. Most sites choose not to. I, and an increasing number of people are choosing not to view the invasive ads.
  - manigandham 11y ago
    The choices are paywall or ads. If you don't like the ads, don't visit the site. That's how you show them you don't like the experience.
- weland 11y ago
  How about: * Free, but with ads. * Paid, without ads No paywall, no annoying ads, and I still pay my share if I want to keep away from the ads. What about ads like Facebook's sponsored content? Non-flashy, clearly marked as advertising, in the upper-right portion of the screen or something, so that I can read the text without getting flashbanged.
  - manigandham 11y ago
    I agree with all that. That's in fact all my company does. However blocking ads is a brute force approach that's causing more harm then good right now.

77109 11y ago

>what's really not of any concern to you The requests I block are none of their concern.

SwellJoe 11y ago

Nope. Don't care. If they want to charge me something, that's OK. If they want to have reasonable, unobtrusive, ads without tracking, that's OK, too. But, what many sites currently do is not OK. So, fuck'em.

manigandham 11y ago
What is "not OK"? These are subjective concerns. If you're going to the site you're still showing you find the content to be of value, so why do you feel its ok for the site to not make any revenue? You're conflating the ability to do something with whether it's morally right or not. Ad blocking will only hurt the long-tail and freedom of the internet that everyone currently enjoys. Btw, payments arent exactly some kind of perfect answer. It will always cost more than ads and is no less private, in fact you end up giving up even more of your details.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  I view it as a negotiation, and this is me blowing out their proposed deal. Imagine you're sitting at the bargaining table and the first offer the person on the other side gives you is an order of magnitude more than you're willing to pay. Say, they want you to pay $50,000 for a car that you know is only worth $5,000. This is the point at which you "blow out" their offer. You could say something like, "I don't think we're on the same page at all about the value of this good. I have to walk away if you consider that a reasonable offer." The other party can counter with, "OK, what are you comfortable with?" So, right now, in the ads vs. privacy negotiation I've said, "No. You're not even on the right page. You are asking an order of magnitude more than I'm willing to give you for this product." They, of course, have the right to let me walk away. They can block me, if they'd like, and put such things in their terms of service. But, the fact is, they engaged in this first. The advertisers created this arms race, a race for the most tasteless, obnoxious, privacy-invading, and intrusive ads they could design. I am merely implementing my own disarmament plan and imposing it on them, whether they like it or not (they don't, obviously...but, again, I don't care; advertisers have destroyed any sympathy I may have had for them). As I mentioned, I took years to install an ad blocker. I am willing to negotiate, but I gave them an inch and they took a mile. They didn't respect "do not track", they took steps to insure that I would be interrupted, even if I wasn't even looking at the tab where they're spewing their garbage with auto-starting audio ads (this was my personal tipping point, I had four or five of them happen in one day of browsing and decided "Never again."). Advertisers did this to themselves. They have no one to blame but themselves. I don't know what comes next, but I've opted out of their system, and I'll continue to do so as long as the technology is used in the most nefarious ways possible.

derefr 11y ago

Guilt in this case is nonsensical. If the site wanted to detect, and then not serve, the users who block their ads, that's actually very easy to implement, technologically. But very few sites do this. Most site owners are, then, making a conscious choice to continue to serve these people who aren't making them money. If they want to give you something for nothing, let them! And if they want to not give you something for free, that's their choice to make!

manigandham 11y ago
It's actually not that easy, since the client has full control over what the server sends out.
- derefr 11y ago
  Yeah, it's theoretically impossible to stop a determined extension-writer from perfectly blocking ads in a way that leaks no information. But current implementations are sloppy and leak all sorts of information. Usually you can just run some (inline!) Javascript to inspect the DOM and then do something. Or, if the client won't run Javascript at all (and you might consider making your site require Javascript to render anything, just to stymie these users, if you're on this path already), you can still set a background-image property as a "default" for a banner div, in a way that it will never get requested if the ad does get rendered, but will get requested if it doesn't. (OKCupid uses this approach, if I recall.) You can then use that information just for analytics, or you can go further and change what the server serves that client from then on (i.e. make all further pages for that session return an error.)
- RogerL 11y ago
  Then you'll have to explain why I see "You seem to have an ad blocker running. Would you consider turning it off, or subscribing" on many sites.
  - manigandham 11y ago
    The usual way sites do it is have a script that checks for any loaded ads and displays that message. This script itself can easily be blocked if sites decide to do more with it, and it has because the list is maintained by groups that decide what goes on it. They're willing to let simple messages slide but blocking the content has already proven to not work.