AdBlock Plus Defends Ad Blocking, Applauds Marco Arment

Mark Wilson writes: Ad blockers have been much talked about since Apple opened up support for them in iOS 9. The now infamous Peace shot to the top of the download charts before it was pulled by its creator. Now AdBlock Plus has come out in support of Marco Arment, who developed something of a guilty conscience after his ad blocking creation proved so popular. Ben Williams from AdBlock Plus says "I really applaud this guy," going on to suggest that whitelisting and the Acceptable Ads feature of AdBlock Plus epitomize the "more nuanced, complex approach" Arment called for. The ad blocking software I'd like to see would detect and zap into a heap of ash those unrelated-photo clickbait ads; I'd rather suffer through some honest banner ads anytime.

Comments

Support of what?

[SuperKendall]

Support of his capitulation to the status quo by pulling his app? Support for him clearing the market of a successful ad-blocker so they have fewer competitors?

Re:Support of what?

[phantomfive]

Support of his idea to make his app more like theirs.

At the end of the day, this is really an attempt from ad-block pro to capitalize on the publicity he got.

Re:Support of what?

[Tough Love]

Is there any possibility that Apple paid him money in order to reinforce his admirable principles? (Admirable for Apple, not the user)

Re:Support of what?

[Zeio]

What really chaps my hide on this issue is that now days we are mostly all capped and we have to pay to have this trash garbage ads shoveled in our face and they usually amount to more than half the traffic. Sorry, if the internet is coin operated I should be able to choose the content.

Re:Support of what?

[Grishnakh]

No, "we" are not all "mostly capped". Some people are capped, many are not.

Almost everyone in the US on a cellular connection is capped in one way or another.

If the ads are more than half your traffic, or even close to half, then you're not even remotely close to hitting any caps unless you're browsing on a mobile phone.

Are you not paying attention to the article? This is about iOS devices allowing ad-blocking. We're all talking about mobile phones here.

Until then, quit being a dickhead. Use a script blocker and you'll avoid most ads while eliminating potential attack vectors, but quit blocking ads just because you don't "feel" like seeing them.

Go away, advertising shill.

Re:Support of what?

[lsatenstein]

I can't understand what is all the fuss. My adbloc experience was negative. It either was too agressive or not agressive enough.

I therefore did what every FOSS guy does, Privacy Badger. I installed it into Firefox and Chromium), and voila,
I saw who was the culprit that was annoying me, and I just used PB to block it. With two page refreshes, I was into a clean usable annoyance free page.

Re:Support of what?

[Ol Olsoc]

I've got a better "business model:" Die.

No, really! DIE! PLEASE! Fuck off and let the Internet go back to what it was in the '90s, before it got infested by all this commercial bullshit!

Didn't you know, that businessses have the right to succeed?

But seriously, the idea that I would have to subsidize some piece of shit wbsite because if they had to make it on their own, they'd go out of business is just web welfare

Re:Support of what?

[Ol Olsoc]

I'm sure most people want the internet to go back to the same content it had in the 90's../sarcasm

This "commercial bullshit" is what has driven up the speed of our connection as well as the amazing amount of content types available online.

If you want a 90's style internet, turn off javascript and enjoy all the non-commercial sites you want.

So what you are saying is that I have to subsidize websites I'll never go to because you think thw web sould suck so bad if I didn't?

Second there's a really good reason his adblocker was so popular - see first off.

This is anecdotal from a fellow whom I have no reason to doubt his veracity. He installed the adblocker on his phone because of the annoying steamy pile of shit today's web is. Ran some experiments on a 500 word news story. That should be pretty short and simple, right? 40 fscking megabytes of ads and 18 script requests later, he had his page without the adblocker.

Now if you were talking a megabyte, that might be acceptable. But 40 Megabytes of ads? No! No no no! not for a simple story, and especially not on a smartphone. How long you figure that it will take you to run over your cap at that rate?

There is no universe where that lind of thing is acceptable.

There is a really bizarre thing I've noted at home with tehse advertisers who youo adore. The continuous script request. his highly necessary and needed part of modern web surfing has the good website constantly trying to ram it's script request up your browsers ass. I just let it go one evening to see if it would ever stop. It was weird to watch Noscript's counter increment like crazy - I had no idea it would even do that.Some 10,000 blocks later, after only a few minutes I just clicked off and figured that if enough people went to that site, and used no script, it would be like a oddball reverse DDOS. Someone ought to tell the pricks they might want to stop that. One request is enough.

Is all this your utopian vision for the Toobz?

Re:Support of what?

[JackieBrown]

I am having a hard time reading what you wrote with all the grammar and spelling errors. I think you are saying that you believe that I love and adore ads. I don't, but at the same time, I do not want to go back to the way the internet was in the 90s.

In some cases, the cures that people suggest are worse than the disease.

If I had to go back to a browser that did not support ad-blocking, it would radically change what sites I use. In some ways, though, using these ad-blockers to fix the readability of these sites hurt our desire for less intrusive ads since the publishers do not see their visits drop.

Re:Support of what?

[JohnFen]

Cool that PB works for you. For me, PB is woefully anemic.

Re:Support of what?

[samwichse]

I finally switched to Adblock Browser after holding out on my mobile after about the fourth or fifth time I got an autoplaying video ad on my 500mb cell plan.

That fish won't swim, monsignor.

Move and die!

[pubwvj]

Any ads with flash, movement, glitz need to be crisped. Having whitelists, blacklists, preferences as to types and crowd blocking all help. Well behaved ads are not an issue.

Re:Move and die!

[rudy_wayne]

Well behaved ads are not an issue.

And that's the real problem that the AdBlock haters don't want to admit.

More and more pages crammed full of more and more annoying, distracting ads that are either (a) worthless shit that nobody would ever click on, except accidentally, or (b) outright scams and malware.

Clean up your shit and adblocking goes away.

Re:Move and die!

[nine-times]

(a) worthless shit that nobody would ever click on, except accidentally, or (b) outright scams and malware.

There's also a bunch that are somewhere between merely "worthless" and "malware". I've noticed a lot recently which seem to be targeted toward mobile devices, seeming to intentionally trick people on clicking. For example, I've noticed some which seem to load on a delay, either loading overtop of the page or causing the page to reformat itself when it loads, and loading itself directly when/where you would naturally click to begin scrolling down the page. On a technical level, I don't know what they're doing, but I've found myself more and more accidentally clicking on ads on my phone. Like a page loads, I start reading, and as soon as my thumb hits the screen, an ad appears under my thumb. I'm just trying to scroll, and suddenly it's loading some other page.

I wouldn't have gone looking for an ad-blocker in the first place if it weren't for those kinds of tactics.

Re:Move and die!

[lucm]

Those are annoying but really it's the overall slowdown of websites caused by all those lousy ad networks downloads that sucks. Developers spend tons of time optimizing code, minifying javascript and css, using sprites and whatnot, all in order to restrict the number of connections per page to a minimum (the real killer on mobile internet) but then suckers from ad companies step in and cause browsers to download 50 different files.

Do it right without hurting performance and maybe people will stop hating ads.

Re:Move and die!

[Firethorn]

Clean up your shit and adblocking goes away.

Adblocking would never have become a thing if they had stuck to image only banner ads and such and never introduced 'punch the monkey' type ads.

Re:Move and die!

[Anonymous Coward]

All ads are evil. I don't need distractions HIJACKING my thoughts. 99.9999% Chance I am not buying what you are selling, nor do I care... EVER.

Re:Move and die!

[AchilleTalon]

Any ad that make a site to perform badly or change the page layout in an unsual way should be ban in first place by the website owner. If he tolerates badly designed ads, he doesn't deserve to make money from his website. You do not respect your audience, do not expect them to respect you. All the flashy animated bullshit should be banned from the whole internet, dot period. These technologies (animation, etc) are nice for content, not for marketing bullshit. You just want to grab more attention than I am willing to give you because you are trying to sell me crappy products that do not attract customers buy they own qualities.

Re:Move and die!

[drinkypoo]

Adblocking would never have become a thing if they had stuck to image only banner ads and such and never introduced 'punch the monkey' type ads.

Nonsense. Ad blocking also has ramifications for bandwidth use, so if it hadn't already become a thing before mobile became big, that's when it would have become relevant.

Re:Move and die!

[FranTaylor]

Adblocking would never have become a thing if they had stuck to image only banner ads and such and never introduced 'punch the monkey' type ads.

I think ad-delivered malware probably plays a role too.

Re:Move and die!

[FranTaylor]

Any ad that make a site to perform badly or change the page layout in an unsual way should be ban in first place by the website owner.

You do realize that the ads are coming from a third party and the webmaster really doesn't have a lot of control over this.

Re:Move and die!

[siphonophore]

You do realize that the ads are coming from a third party and the webmaster really doesn't have a lot of control over this.

Of course they do. The webmaster is a customer, too, and has choices on which ad delivery service to use. If he chooses one that doesn't vet for shit ads, then he doesn't deserve ad revenue.

Welcome to Chick-fil-a. I'm sorry that our sign-spinner vomited on you on the way in, but we're actually blameless because he way provided by our contractor. Why are you mad? Why are you leaving?

Re:Move and die!

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually prefer the original system: you decide what code runs on your systems, I decide what runs on mine.

Re:Move and die!

[dcollins117]

You do realize that the ads are coming from a third party and the webmaster really doesn't have a lot of control over this.

Ahem. The webmaster is the only one who has total control over what appears, or doesn't appear, on the website. This is not complicated, folks. If you don't want shit ads appearing on your website, don't accept shit ads.

Re:Move and die!

[kevmeister]

This is not actually malicious, but an artifact of the rendering engines and the order in which they render things.

If they choose to wait for all of the external references to other JavaScript stuff and render when this is all processed, all pop-ups and other content will appear it their specified locations, but it often takes so long to do this, due to those ads, that some browsers are rendering as soon as the main script is processed and then "adjusting" positions or adding pop-ups late... often very late. Of course, it is possible that some designers are deliberately taking advantage of this.

This is quite likely a response to the many complaints of the delays before the page starts rendering by users and webmasters. On some things, you just can't win.

Re:Move and die!

[Firethorn]

Pretty much what phantomfive said - banner ads, and their size, isn't that big of a deal. You're probably looking at about 20kb for one of them.

Now, video ads, sound ads, active ads - those get huge.

Re:Move and die!

[Firethorn]

It's fairly hard to deliver malware through images like jpeg, png, and gif compared to the ease at which you can do so via java and flash. Without punch the monkey stuff, they'd be stuck trying more more estoric hacks for their malware.

Re:Move and die!

[nine-times]

All I know is, it didn't used to be a problem, and then suddenly it was a major problem across a lot of different sites, and often sites where the ads were otherwise aggressive. So I don't believe it was purely accidental.

Re:Move and die!

[phantomfive]

Yeap, I just loaded the google homepage, and it has nearly a megabyte of HTML and javascript alone, without images.

Re:Move and die!

[AmiMoJo]

My university installed ad-blocking at router level to reduce bandwidth. IIRC it was Privoxy.

Re:Move and die!

[TheRaven64]

It's fairly hard to deliver malware through images like jpeg, png, and gif compared to the ease at which you can do so via java and flash

Not really. It's only possible to deliver malware via Flash and Java because of bugs in the implementation. If there's a bug in the JPEG or PNG library that allows arbitrary code execution, then the same technique will work. Search for arbitrary code execution CVEs in libjpeg and libpng and you'll see how common this is - they both have a fairly dire security track record, yet browsers will happily pass them untrusted data.

Re:Move and die!

[JohnFen]

Well behaved ads are not an issue.

The problem I have is that no company has defined "well behaved ads" in a way that I agree with. For me, the #1 feature of a well behaved ad is that it does not track or otherwise spy on me. As near as I can tell, there's no such thing as a "well behaved" ad.

Re:Move and die!

[BVis]

your sleazy idiot MBA walking haircut product owner decides what code runs on your systems, my sleazy idiot MBA walking haircut product owner decides what runs on mine.

FTFY.

The webmaster/developer on any site of significant size or complexity most likely is not making those decisions. Frequently it's "OK here are these external requirements, you nerds go off and do whatever it is you do, I'm going to go have a latte." The problem is, that without that bullshit that the MBA has found, the site has no revenue, and the webmaster has no job. Not everyone is a cowboy or a one-man-shop; some of us have to deal with poor decisions made by people who are not merely non-technical, but shouldn't be let within 20 feet of anything with more than three buttons.

Re:Move and die!

[BVis]

See my comment above. Very frequently it's not the webmaster that has control over the content, if he/she wants to keep his/her job. When the person that signs your paychecks tells you to put some atrocity on the web page, you do it or you get fired. If the choice is between putting some shit on a website that I don't own and losing my paycheck and my health insurance, that shit goes on that website, and my resume gets dusted off.

Re:Move and die!

[OhPlz]

"I was only following orders."

Re:Move and die!

[mrchaotica]

Well behaved ads are not an issue.

Even "well behaved" ads are almost always hosted by third-party domains and loaded by javascript, and are thus a privacy and security risk.

Re:Move and die!

[BVis]

Oh please. We're not herding people into ovens here.

Re:Move and die!

[drinkypoo]

If the size of banner ads scares you, never measure the full size of any web page.

I don't care on my desktop, at least not so very much, and on my mobile devices I can use the google app to search, therefore never actually loading the page at all. It's mobile where the page size is reasonably a major consideration to many people; even if you don't have low caps and slow links, you still have to deal with a limited device.

Re:Move and die!

[Grishnakh]

That's not my problem. It's not my responsibility to provide a living for someone who chooses to work for a company that is ad-supported. The MBA should have done a better job in selecting ad providers or finding some other way to support the business. If they can't keep the business going without resorting to obnoxious ads, causing everyone to use ad-blockers which then kill their revenue, then maybe they should just find a new line of work.

Re:Move and die!

[Grishnakh]

That's all fine, but don't complain then when everyone uses ad-blockers. The rest of us are not obligated to support your career choices.

Re:Move and die!

[Grishnakh]

There used to be. Google used to have nice, simple, short, text-only ads that would be shown next to the search results, in response to your search terms. So if you searched for "house paint", for instance, you might see some ads off to the right for Sherwin-Williams and Behr. These ads were separate from the search results, so you knew they were ads, and they were text-only, so they didn't use any significant bandwidth and weren't distracting, and were easily ignored.

Unfortunately, it seems those days are gone now; now everything is all about tracking and spying.

Re:Move and die!

[OhPlz]

No, but it seems to me this willingness to do whatever the higher-ups say is far too prevalent among technology workers. This is just ads, but the same could be said of doing bad things with customer and billing data, security best practices, etc. I hope somewhere along the way, someone has enough backbone to say "hey, maybe this isn't the best idea."

Re:Move and die!

[BVis]

Who's complaining? Given the choice, I'd rather not put them up. But it isn't always my choice, not if I want to keep that job.

Re:Move and die!

[BVis]

Uncontested. Unfortunately, in the real world, it's not the way things work. Developers are seen as interchangeable cogs and cost centers, while MBAs have "vision" for the company and actually bring in revenue. I mean think about it, who's going to win here:

MBA: "Blah blah this much money per month blah blah"
Dev: "But it'll annoy our users".

The MBA wins that argument.

Re:Move and die!

[BVis]

And people do, I've done it. It's just that either I present it in an un-compelling way (or at least a way that's easily ignored), or I get spoken to about being "negative". We can't always win every little moral battle, not if we want to keep a roof over our heads. It's a choice; do I want to lose my job because I think an ad is too annoying? I know what I'd choose.

Now in terms of actual malfeasance, like messing with customer data in an illegal way, yes, I'd lose my job over that. If it came down to it, I'd say "I am not doing that. You can fire me, but either way I'm not doing it." I'd expect to get fired, to the point where I'd have another job offer in my pocket before I put my foot down over it.

There's a line somewhere, and "annoying ads" don't go past it. We don't live in a black-and-white world. Sometimes you have to do things you'd rather not do, and frequently that's called "doing a job".

Re:Move and die!

[Cederic]

Interpret 'webmaster' as 'person that chose what to include in the web page being served by the web server'. That's rarely the actual admin.

Re:Move and die!

[BVis]

That's the product owner, not the webmaster. The webmaster does as he's told or he finds another job.

Re:Move and die!

[Ol Olsoc]

Not everyone is a cowboy or a one-man-shop; some of us have to deal with poor decisions made by people who are not merely non-technical, but shouldn't be let within 20 feet of anything with more than three buttons.

Corporate web welfare.

Tell me - why is it my responsibility to pay all the extra money for going over my cap just so walking haircut can get his latte's?

Hint - It's not. Haircut guy needs to understand he can't just outsource the ads to North Korea, and eveyone has to BOHICA them.

Re:Move and die!

[BVis]

Dude, I'm on your side here. The trouble is that haircut guy has no incentive or motivation to change his behavior. The shitty ads make the company money, and for a for-profit company, that outweighs any other concerns.

You can stand behind your principles all you want. Just be prepared for the possibility that you will be fired for it.

Re:Move and die!

[Ol Olsoc]

Uncontested. Unfortunately, in the real world, it's not the way things work. Developers are seen as interchangeable cogs and cost centers, while MBAs have "vision" for the company and actually bring in revenue. I mean think about it, who's going to win here:

MBA: "Blah blah this much money per month blah blah" Dev: "But it'll annoy our users".

The MBA wins that argument.

The times they are a-changin. That's what this entire subject is about. An adblocker so popular, the writer took it down. suspect he was tortured or something.

Given that the typical slashdotter believes that Apple users are clueless hipster sheeples who know nothing except that they worship any Apple product, and the guy pulls his app because it instantly became the number 1 download, there is something askew with your hypothesis.

Either the so called "clueless Apple worshippers" are not as stupid as we're told they are - which is the likely truth, or your idea that everyone will gleefully accept whatever your haircut guy wants to shove up their ass idea is wrong.

I've done script and ad blocking for a long time. My installs for other people have been including adblockers. When people bring in a computer that's "running my Internet" slow, they get a miracle install of an adblocker. Nothing like the instant conversion that happens when you reload a page without blocking software, then turn it on, restart, and reload it again. And they tell their friends, and they tell their friends.

Ironically, the best form of advertising - word of mouth, will bring down this horrorshow of "The customer is my stupid enemy" brand of advertising.

Re:Move and die!

[Cederic]

I know this. You know this. It's quite likely dcollins knows this.

Stop telling people this and use my suggestion on how to interpret his statement and address his point, not his fucking wording.

Your pendanticism is childish.,

Re:Move and die!

[Ol Olsoc]

See my comment above. Very frequently it's not the webmaster that has control over the content, if he/she wants to keep his/her job. When the person that signs your paychecks tells you to put some atrocity on the web page, you do it or you get fired.

So you are saying that you knowingly put malware distribution software on your website as directed by your boss? Yikes!

Has the talk of liability ever came up? Suits tend to understand liability and bad press and all that kind of happy horseshit. And you should as well, because you are allowing it as well.

Re:Move and die!

[Ol Olsoc]

Oh please. We're not herding people into ovens here.

Let's take a hypothetical lawsuit against your company. Your boss will be happy to throw you under the bus for certain.

The lawyer asks you if you knowingly allowed malware distribution sowtware to run on your site. Unless you are lying, your answer will be yes.

"So why did you do it?"

Your answer?

Re:Move and die!

[BVis]

Given that the typical slashdotter believes that Apple users are clueless hipster sheeples who know nothing except that they worship any Apple product, and the guy pulls his app because it instantly became the number 1 download, there is something askew with your hypothesis.

Guess I'm not the typical Slashdotter then. Assumptions can make you look pretty silly. I've used Apple products on and off since the IIe. I haven't installed iOS 9 but probably will this evening.

Either the so called "clueless Apple worshippers" are not as stupid as we're told they are - which is the likely truth, or your idea that everyone will gleefully accept whatever your haircut guy wants to shove up their ass idea is wrong.

I don't know if we're talking about the same thing. In any event, what I'm saying is that it doesn't matter if the MBA is right or wrong, or if the dev is right or wrong. The MBA gets listened to, the dev does as he's told or he gets fired. It might be a colossally bad idea, even illegal, but they don't care. Those computer guys don't know anything about business. Eventually the MBA's bad decisions catch up with them, but at that point they've either moved on to their next set of suckers with a big raise, or utilized their "make sure you can blame someone else for your own mistakes" skill set. We have a product owner here who, I swear, has a core skill set of "avoiding responsibility" and "not doing his job and making a sour face when he gets caught not doing it."

Re:Move and die!

[BVis]

Pedanticism would be splitting the hair between "webmaster" and "devops" or whatever. "Webmaster" works for the "Product Owner". The webmaster does as he/she is directed by the product owner. Are you familiar with Scrum?

Re:Move and die!

[BVis]

"I was directed by my immediate manager to take that action. Here is the email (that I forwarded to my own outside email account) in which I objected to the action, and here's his response directing me to do it anyway. As my job duties require me to follow his instructions or face disciplinary action up to and including termination, I followed the instructions."

Re:Move and die!

[Ol Olsoc]

Dude, I'm on your side here. The trouble is that haircut guy has no incentive or motivation to change his behavior. The shitty ads make the company money, and for a for-profit company, that outweighs any other concerns.

You can stand behind your principles all you want. Just be prepared for the possibility that you will be fired for it.

One of these days he'll be taken to task. Things are moving away from people laccepting whatever crap advertisers throw at them.

Re:Move and die!

[Cederic]

Yes. Are you familiar with adult discourse?

Re:Move and die!

[BVis]

Perhaps. I don't think it's likely, these slimebags are very good at getting away with all kinds of shit.

Re:Move and die!

[BVis]

Yes. That isn't it. I was asking because I really didn't know if you knew about it or not, because it gives some context.

Re:Move and die!

[OhPlz]

That's a sign of a poor manager. The good ones know not to issue that request over email.

Re:Move and die!

[JohnFen]

This is not actually malicious, but an artifact of the rendering engines and the order in which they render things.

Oh? In order to say it's not malicious, one has to believe that they never actually tested it by browsing using smartphones. If that's true, then they're dangerously incompetent. If they did test, then they're being malicious in allowing such behavior to persist.

Re:Move and die!

[JohnFen]

I mean think about it, who's going to win here:

I am, because I'm going to block all the ads anyway. If the day comes that I can't, then I'll just stop going to websites that engage in terrible advertising practices.

That's a win!

Re:Move and die!

[Ol Olsoc]

Given that the typical slashdotter believes that Apple users are clueless hipster sheeples who know nothing except that they worship any Apple product, and the guy pulls his app because it instantly became the number 1 download, there is something askew with your hypothesis.

Guess I'm not the typical Slashdotter then. Assumptions can make you look pretty silly. I've used Apple products on and off since the IIe. I haven't installed iOS 9 but probably will this evening.

Same here - but do you get my point? Number one apps are not typically number one because of people being seriously web savvy - Its because they are popular. It's a Candy Crush and Bad Piggies world for apps, and here is something you'd expect to be obscure out pacing them. The situataino is getting so dire that normal users are needing adblocking.

The MBA gets listened to, the dev does as he's told or he gets fired.

There is a pecking order to be sure. And once you have the task, you do it. But if you have zero input, and if you have to do immoral things because the MBA told you to, then you gotta get out of there. Because I know from personal experience that there are MBA''s and supervisors and Director's who do take input

Re:Move and die!

[Ol Olsoc]

In other words "I was following orders.".

Man, if you are actually in that sort of situation, you need to get away from it.

Re:Move and die!

[Ol Olsoc]

And people do, I've done it. It's just that either I present it in an un-compelling way (or at least a way that's easily ignored), or I get spoken to about being "negative".

I've found that the mere mention of "massive liability exposure" tends to get serious traction, especially when there are bean counters present. Sometimes it's a bit of a trick play, but often instead of being thought as negative, it's more of a "Thank you very much for pointing that out - we never thought of that".

Re:Move and die!

[david_thornley]

The haircut guy still has no incentive or motivation to change his behavior, based on my actions. I upgraded to iOS 9 so I could install an ad blocker. If haircut guy reforms and vows to deliver only reasonable ads, donate to the EFF, and eat only cheese pizza, I'll never notice.

Re:Move and die!

[david_thornley]

Who cares which specific job role should get the blame? Webmaster, manager, court jester, whatever. Some person or committee has responsibility for the website.

Re:Move and die!

[kevmeister]

I think you miss the point, With all the ad scripts in so many pages, it was taking many seconds for anything to render. Users complained to Google, Mozilla, Apple, etc about this. The web site running the ads also complained. No one was happy. The easiest way to make people happier (NOT happy) was to start displaying the rendered main page as soon as possible instead of waiting for all of the called JavaScript to be rendered. I believe Chrome was first, but I suspect others followed quickly when Chrome started picking up more users. It is probably universal by now. I only run Firefox and Chromium, so I can't say anything about others.

This changed the behavior in the manner you described with NO change to the website or the ads and is really unavoidable. There MAY be a way to override this, but most sites would never do this, as it would return the long delay before a page will start to be displayed. Too many users will just give up. A study by Yahoo about 5 yeas ago showed a significant decline of completed renderings of its pages if they took over 3 seconds to start displaying. That means real $$$. Sites could reduce ads, but that also costs $$$. Result... You lose.

I run NoScript which nicely resolves the issue as the advertising scripts appear to be rendered instantly, but the typical user would not put up with the issues NpScript causes.

Find a new way to make money

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck ads - and I say this as someone who earns money from ads.

Re: Find a new way to make money

[justthinkit]

Some ads are ok. For example. there are ad paragraphs on the front page of slashdot that invite you to read the articles they summarize. We normally call them stories, but they are also ads.

So then it becomes, what is an ad? If I am on a web site, how can I complain -- or worse yet, want to block -- that site from promoting some of their other web pages. At the most, I can get upset if they are too flagrant in promoting other articles. But some promotion of other content is entirely reasonable.

So "other content" ads are ok, on some level.

At the other extreme, a site trying to sell someone else's random product is not something I want to waste time looking at. But what about a banner promoting some comparison of products? The hardware sites do this kind of thing all the time. I think it is fine if the comparison article is related to what I am looking at, and less fine if it is unrelated. But this sort of thing is a lot grayer.

My personal standard or measure is "Does the site host everything itself?" If so, it is reasonable for them to promote it. But if they do too much self-promotion, I will grow tired of their site and go elsewhere.

So, slashdot promoting their own stories/comment threads on their home page is reasonable and would't be blocked (if that was possible). Whereas, slashdot running ad text/graphics for random products is not something I want to read or look at and I will probably block, or try to block.

Re: Find a new way to make money

[Stephen Chadfield]

People who can afford to buy a computer and pay for an internet connection?

Re: Find a new way to make money

[Darinbob]

Yup, after paying for the ISP, that should be enough, especially with some of those prices.

Re: Find a new way to make money

[Darinbob]

I agree. Putting in product placement, promoting a product, that's all well and good. But that's not how most of the web works. They want to automatically count views, then automatically pay out cash, and the web site owner wants to just sit back and collect the caps without thinking about how the sausage is made. Treat the ads like a tattoo; you wouldn't want a random tattoo that you had no choice over, so why have a random ad that makes your site look bad?

When ads on cable TV are less obnoxious than on the web then you things are broken.

Re: Find a new way to make money

[ohnocitizen]

Content and source are both good measures. If it is coming from an outside source, there is a security risk and a performance cost. Both of those are good reasons to block ads. If an ad is too distracting (motion, sound, disturbing imagery), that's another reason to block. Disruptive ads (modals, redirects, late loading ad content that changes the layout of a page, etc) are even worse. Even if all of that is ok bandwidth - largely on mobile - is also an issue. Want ads to be welcomed? Join us in the fight against telecoms that impose data caps.

If it is costing us money to see your ad, we don't want to see your ad no matter how relevant or respectful it is.

Re: Find a new way to make money

[Grishnakh]

Only in America. In civilized countries, ISP service is actually pretty cheap.

What I wonder is...

[Anonymous Coward]

why is Adblock Plus still relevant? There's superior forks without that "acceptable ads" crap.

Re:What I wonder is...

[GuB-42]

AdBlock Plus is relevant because it is an company that is dedicated to ad blocking and they actually try to find some compromise between advertisers, users, and themselves. As such, they have some political presence that others adblockers don't have.
And what are the "superior forks"? AdBlock Edge? This is useless, it is exactly the same as of ABP with the "acceptable ads" checkbox unchecked, but with less support.
As for uBlock (which I am using), it is not a fork, it is a new product. And it is not specifically an ad blocker but an universal blocker. It also uses much less memory, which is why I made the switch.

Re:What I wonder is...

[Darinbob]

So they don't block 100% of ads. They do block 99.5% of ads though, and they're extremely popular, so they're the ones that scare the ad makers, not the 20 people using alternatives.

Re:What I wonder is...

[DERoss]

Complaints about "acceptable ads" are merely hot air. I have Adblock Plus installed. I do not subscribe to any black lists or white lists. Instead, I create my own filters. Anyone who is intelligent enough to install AdBlock Plus is intelligent enough to create filters.

Re: What I wonder is...

[ldobehardcore]

Why?

Re: What I wonder is...

[raynet]

but why should I waste my time to create my own list when I can start from a premade list and add my rules to that?

Re:What I wonder is...

[91degrees]

I'm sure I am intelligent enough, but I'm way too lazy.

Re:What I wonder is...

[david_thornley]

I recently installed ABP. It was trivially easy. I had to know how to install plugins, and that ABP was the one I wanted. I assume there's websites that will tell you that. It would take significantly more effort and knowledge to make my own filters.

It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Ghostery because I think all ads are also tracker bots like Google Analytics, Facebook like buttons, etc. Even if you never use Google or Facebook they know almost every webpage you visit because most have Google Analytics or Facebook like buttons that load JavaScript from their servers.

Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[Kernel Krumpit]

How quickly things change - a comment from Ghostery's add-in page. No Longer Blocks Facebook, Twitter and Othe Trackers Rated 2 out of 5 stars by marty on September 19, 2015 permalink translate Warning - Once a well functioning ad-in, several weeks ago it stopped preventing Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus and other wide ranging trackers. All their icons and functionality are now visible on lots of sites, even Ghostery's site. I've reported this several times, yet there has been only one response with no status or progress. I would caution users about this now. This is happening on Windows & Android machines running Firefox.

Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[phantomfive]

Do you have a solution? Change Ghostery configuration? A different plugin?

I heard (somewhere, not sure where) that you can use Hosts files for that.

Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[Anonymous Coward]

EFF's Privacy Badger.

Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[Zanadou]

Ghostery?? It gets worse: http://www.reddit.com/r/firefo...

Hint: "Allow Ghostery to show messages in my browser related to product features, updates, and promotions."

Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[Kernel Krumpit]

Me Personally? I use Firefox with the uBlock Add-in, HTTPS everywhere and a hosts file. That's all... I used to use noscript too but, not sure why I don't anymore. Probably because my travels are narrow [I'm not in marketing] and also that I'm just not overly interested in clicking anything on the cesspool they call the internet.

Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[AmiMoJo]

Privacy Badger is a better option. It's from the EFF, and works by looking for domains that track you are you move from site to site. No reliance on blacklists or ideology, and no profit motive.

Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[coofercat]

I've heard about this, but can't see any evidence of it myself. I just visited Ghostery's home page with Firebug switched on and the only domains it downloaded any content from are ghostery.com and fonts.googleapis.com.

I noticed a while back that after an update some of the 'trackers' weren't selected in the Options screens. I always just say "select all" on the trackers and cookies tabs, but I guess if you're not completely watching then things could slip by.

Apart from laziness, I suspect the EFF's tool is probably a better choice these days :-(

Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[JohnFen]

Even if you never use Google or Facebook they know almost every webpage you visit because most have Google Analytics or Facebook like buttons that load JavaScript from their servers.

That's one of the main reasons why I use NoScript.

Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[mrchaotica]

I'm not sure I trust even Privacy Badger to go far enough: it sounds like instead of just disabling all third-party requests by default, it allows them until it pattern-matches that tracking is happening. Unfortunately, by the time that happens, you've already been tracked (at least a little bit).

Instead, I use:

• RequestPolicy to block all third-party requests (scripts, images, everything) except the ones I whitelist
• RefControl to forge referrer headers (so it always looks like the request is coming from the root of the current site)
• BetterPrivacy to protect against super cookies
• Self-Destructing Cookies to protect against regular cookies
• NoScript to block first-party Javascript (I often have to whitelist the site to view it properly, but if I don't then I leave it off)
• and finally uBlock, which probably isn't necessary but provides "belt and suspenders" protection

With the revelations about Windows 10, I'm also moving towards router-hosts-file blocking -- I have no intention to actually use Windows 10, but I have Windows 7 and (unfortunately) 8 hosts on my network that I need to protect.

Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[mrchaotica]

I was just reading the FAQ on Privacy Badger, and it seems like it tries to "intelligently" block only tracking while still allowing ads through. Because of that, I don't trust it to work 100% of the time. Instead, I use RequestPolicy (among other things) to default-deny all third-party requests.

Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[AmiMoJo]

Privacy Badger isn't an ad-blocker. You need a separate ad-blocker. It just stops tracking. It complements uBlock/AdBlock.

Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[mrchaotica]

Right, but because it isn't an ad-blocker, it also fails to stop all tracking. From the Privacy Badger FAQ:

When you view a webpage, that page will often be made up of content from many different sources. (For example, a news webpage might load the actual article from the news company, ads from an ad company, and the comments section from a different company that's been contracted out to provide that service.) Privacy Badger keeps track of all of this. If as you browse the web, the same source seems to be tracking your browser across different websites, then Privacy Badger springs into action, telling your browser not to load any more content from that source. [Emphasis added]

In other words, it's going to let the third-party 'maybe-tracker' load a certain number of times until it "seems" like a tracker and only then will block it... which means that until that happens the 'maybe-tracker' has 'maybe-succeeded' in tracking you.

The only way to stop 100% of tracking is to not allow the tracker to load even the first time, which is what RequestPolicy does.

Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[AmiMoJo]

It's not a perfect shield, no. It's a zero-maintenance blocker for 95%+ of tracking, that anyone can use without any knowledge and that the developer doesn't have to keep feeding constantly updated blacklists and rule sets.

I'm not sure why you are concerned about it allowing the first access to a site. It is blocking tracking. Tracking means following you from one site to another, so merely dumping a cookie on one site isn't a problem. It's reading that cookie on another site that constitutes tracking, and that is what Privacy Badger blocks.

If you want deep cleaning then yes, Request Policy is your best bet. But for most people Privacy Badger and uBlock/Adblock Edge are a better combo as they don't require any maintenance and rarely, if ever, break sites.

Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[orient]

Ghostery blocks everything for me, both on Firefox and Chrome. It's just a matter of clicking on "options", then on "select all" and "save". It's better to have the option to whitelist some site rather than be locked out without a chance to make your own choice.

Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots

[JohnFen]

I'm not sure why you are concerned about it allowing the first access to a site.

Because what pages I'm looking at are none of the advertisers business. I don't want one single byte of information about me sent to them.

If I want to buy something, I'll google it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Otherwise I block every ad and I sleep like a baby for it. I don't have a lot of power in this fucking society, if I can't even control where my attention goes to, then what the fuck can I control?

Re:If I want to buy something, I'll google it.

[Ol Olsoc]

Otherwise I block every ad and I sleep like a baby for it. I don't have a lot of power in this fucking society, if I can't even control where my attention goes to, then what the fuck can I control?

Your language?

About online advertising.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Arment's argument made no sense: you can have ads on your own site while still be OK with people choosing to block them;

2) Thanks to targetted advertising, those who purchase the sponsor's product are those who visit the site. So, either way, site visitors pay for the site. Micropayments would involve fewer middlemen, which is a positive, but also mean that those less affluent wouldn't be subsidised by those less so, which is a negative (*);

3) When ABP talk about the "nuanced" approach of whitelisting, they mean, "Have you seen how much Google &co. pay us to whitelist their networks?" But I'm not convinced yet that Arment, who is individually very wealthy, is merely selling out. He might just have become one of those genuinely creepy I-wanted-to-sell-an-ethical-vision-rather-than-a-choice types and then realised that all he was doing was selling a tool, which didn't please his privileged self.

(*) There are a lot of "pay what you can afford" principles in capitalism, before anyone whines - coupons are an overt IRL example, as they allow a person to measure the worth of their time spent gathering coupons.

Hate Ads

[Slashdotgirl]

I decide what I want downloaded, because I pay for it and I fucking hate ads and that is why I use ad blocking software. If I want to buy something, then and only then will I look at some ads (maybe). If you want to run a business web site or your own web site then you pay for it. If you don't like me looking at your web site, fine I will go somewhere else, just don't expect me to look at ads.

The recent slashdot poll about ads said it all, 65% use ad blocking software and do not feel guilty about doing so.

Regards
Slashgotgirl

Re:Hate Ads

[Aighearach]

See where the problem is?

Yeah, you want to make money off content, and don't have any content that either has value, or that you care about transmitting to the world. If you weren't making a buck, your website wouldn't have anything to say, and so it probably doesn't have anything to say.

Like slashdot. The website sucks. The editors aren't even very good. The reason to come here isn't to give them money, it is to interact with other users; who aren't getting paid for providing the content!

Get a real job. I run commercial websites, BTW. Just for perspective. ;)

The person who wants "something for free" is the jerk making money for merely manipulating people into choosing a product. It isn't like you're even advocating advertising that provides useful product information; just a revenue stream, by any means, just to fund fluff that shouldn't exist and can't survive by itself.

The solution isn't to "steal articles," (which is silly, because users of websites don't want to read the same thing again that they already read; except when they do and went back) the solution is obviously to write articles about things you care about, including as a small part of whatever useful thing it is you do. Note that lots of companies that make products and provide actual services have websites, and the only advertising on their sites are unpaid ads for their own products and services; something which isn't even blocked by ad-blockers! Many have blogs and knowledgebases with "articles." Also, many non-profit, community, and volunteer efforts have websites. With content. And aren't ad-supported at all. The content is often higher than commercial blogs, too; and the authors aren't even getting paid.

Re:Hate Ads

[radja]

Advertising is an agreement between advertisers and authors. If the author does not get enough money from the advertiser, blame them. Do not blame a third party who has nothing to do with your deal with an advertiser.

Re:Hate Ads

[AmiMoJo]

Slashdot wouldn't exist as it does today without ads. Look at Soylent News. Those guys are currently failing to raise $2000 to pay their costs. Slashdot costs many times more due to the much higher levels of traffic.

How would you fund a site like Slashdot? Or are you implying that sites like Slashdot should go away?

Sure, Slashdot's content is all user generated, but it still provides a lot of value simply by offering a high bandwidth host with a massive database supported by commercial grade hardware.

Re:Hate Ads

[JohnFen]

How would you fund a site like Slashdot? Or are you implying that sites like Slashdot should go away?

Personally, I would be willing to pay a small fee for it. I recognized that not everyone would prefer that, though. What I would love to see is the standard behavior changing such that if a site runs ads, it also has an option to pay a small fee to remove the ads entirely. Note, though, that by "remove the ads" I mean more than just "I don't see the ads". I mean that all the tracking that comes with the ads stops as well.

Re:Hate Ads

[Merk42]

Yeah, you want to make money off content

GP was only referring to recouping operating costs

...and don't have any content that either has value

Could you provide a link to GP's content, since you seem so sure it has no value?

...or that you care about transmitting to the world.

GP does, thus asking how to recoup the operating costs

If ads, paywalls and donations are unacceptable, then the only way websites can continue is by the owners paying for it out of pocket. If that's the case, then as a website gets more popular, its costs increase and the only kind of people that would be able to afford to continue to bleed money would be the wealthy. So, good job in saying only the wealthy should be able to have mass communication like every other form of media.

Re:Hate Ads

[Grishnakh]

How would you fund a site like Slashdot? Or are you implying that sites like Slashdot should go away?

Yes, absolutely. If they can't find a way to have it support itself financially, and the users aren't willing to pay enough to keep it going, then yes, it should go away. It's really little more than mindless entertainment anyway, filled with trolls and shills.

The same goes for any other site.

Re:Hate Ads

[Grishnakh]

Well what do you propose? You have 3 options it seems: support the site with ads, support it with donations, or have wealthy patronage or ownership. #2 is the most egalitarian, but it rarely seems to work in practice because 1) people are frequently cheap, esp. with things where they aren't getting some physical thing in return, and 2) with the crappy economy and the destruction of the middle class, people have less and less money to spend on non-essentials, including donations. #1 is the most annoying and everyone's bitching about it. So that leaves #3. It's not egalitarian, but it's preferable to ads in my opinion.

Finally, it's not like lower-income people are completely prevented from having mass communication. You can go set up your own website at many places now for $3/month. That's $36/year. If you can't afford $50/year to have your own personal website, you have some serious financial problems. This doesn't mean that everyone should have their own website, I'm just pointing out that if you want to have your own personal soapbox where you don't have to worry about some site owner or Zuckerberg restricting your speech or displaying it in a fashion you don't agree with or whatever, and you want absolute freedom in how your site looks, you can have it quite cheaply. Obviously, if it has a lot of traffic and needs a big database, that's probably not going to work, but for something small these shared-hosting services are fine.

Re:Hate Ads

[mrchaotica]

If ads, paywalls and donations are unacceptable...

Who said that paywalls and (especially) donations were unacceptable? Nobody, that's who, which is why your argument is a strawman.

Re:Hate Ads

[Merk42]

Who said that paywalls and (especially) donations were unacceptable? Nobody, that's who, which is why your argument is a strawman.

Aighearach replied to a comment that explicitly said "Then, try offering a paid subscription service" so it was implied that Aighearach had a problem with them.

Re:Hate Ads

[Aighearach]

Who said that paywalls and (especially) donations were unacceptable? Nobody, that's who, which is why your argument is a strawman.

Aighearach replied to a comment that explicitly said "Then, try offering a paid subscription service" so it was implied that Aighearach had a problem with them.

For the record, my position has always been that paywalls are useful because they let me know a site sucks, or more diplomatically, "that its content and purpose do not match my needs."

Your problem was you didn't understand the ideas I expressed, you just responded to the nearest cliche bullshit to what I said, and pretended that is what I meant. It wasn't, and it never would be. You don't need to add in your own extra "implication" that contradicts what I was saying; the words themselves can be literally understood, in which case they will also match my intended meaning. And, I even went into detail. Try reading my comments before deciding what they say. 0% will be the lowest hanging cliche nearby.

Re:Hate Ads

[Aighearach]

Soylent News user 2621 here. They collected significant donations that would actually pay the hosting costs for a long time, if they had a sysadmin within the volunteer group. I sure as heck wouldn't do it; their editors aren't very high quality. Just grab a handful of the louder people here, with different and opposing views of what a replacement would be, and you have soylent. And they mostly repost the stuff here; users cross-submit, and they just run them, they don't even consider that to be non-useful. It isn't worth money, why would I cry if they're not dedicated enough to keep it up?

The reasons it costs "thousands of dollars" to pay for traffic is that they don't have sysadmins, and are paying retail commercial rates. In public interest groups have interest from the public, they can pay low normal rates. You don't have to pay "overflow" type rates just to get a site up, that is silly. If I added soylent to a server, would I even notice a blip on the log? Doubtful. The money they want is largely to pay themselves, so that they'll spend time working on it. Not useful. Compare to other sites that are successful at raising donations. Sites that have a purpose other than "copying something poorly, because it was shoddy."

If slashdot offers value is an open question. Would the conversation take place elsewhere? Would failure open up the opportunity for competition? The slashdot of the 90s doesn't exist anymore. It was not this place. A few of the users were the same, but overall the users were nerds. Things like "gamegate" would have been run out of town, because nerds hate bullies and always have. Our neckbeards were mild sorts, the worst misogyny was merely objectifying fantasies about sci-fi actresses. If taco was still broadcasting Slashdot Radio, he'd probably have no trouble at all crowdsourcing the funds. And they even knew how to configure their own webserver. ;)

Re:Hate Ads

[amicusNYCL]

That's a terrible analogy. If I walked into a store and someone wearing a clown suit jumped in front of me with a neon sign shouting about things that I should buy, I would just turn around and walk out of the store. Retail stores do not employ that type of advertising, the kind of ads that feature inside stores are not at all similar about the kind of ads that you find online. If Idiocracy comes to pass and you walk inside a store and it's filled with screens shouting ads at you, then you're going to notice a marked decline of people visiting retail locations.

You're not paying for the site, you're paying for how to get there.

Great. If they want me to pay to access their content, fine, set up a paywall and let me decide if it's worth it. If they want to offer content for free and expect to be reimbursed for the bandwidth that I'm using, then they can ask my ISP for their cut of my bandwidth bill.

Re:Hate Ads

[Merk42]

Who said that paywalls and (especially) donations were unacceptable? Nobody, that's who, which is why your argument is a strawman.

Aighearach replied to a comment that explicitly said "Then, try offering a paid subscription service" so it was implied that Aighearach had a problem with them.

For the record, my position has always been that paywalls are useful because they let me know a site sucks, or more diplomatically, "that its content and purpose do not match my needs."

Your problem was you didn't understand the ideas I expressed

Correct. I did misunderstand, I'm sorry.

you just responded to the nearest cliche bullshit to what I said, and pretended that is what I meant. It wasn't, and it never would be. You don't need to add in your own extra "implication" that contradicts what I was saying; the words themselves can be literally understood, in which case they will also match my intended meaning. And, I even went into detail. Try reading my comments before deciding what they say. 0% will be the lowest hanging cliche nearby.

Yes I misunderstood, I didn't pretend it's what you meant any more than you pretended the person you were responding to was asking the questions because they wanted to "make money off content, and don't have any content that either has value, or that you care about transmitting to the world."

They just had the same question I had: If having ads is bad, then how to simply cover the costs of hosting which get more expensive as the site gets more popular? It seems that an answer that you have is paywalls, which is fine by me.
Though doesn't solve their scenario of other places copy/pasting the content. The user wouldn't read the same article twice, they'd read it on the free with ads (that they block) version that copied it from the paywall site they don't pay for. Granted I'm not sure how wide spread this scenario is given I don't recall anything happening with The New York Times which has been (kinda) subscription for a while.

So basically we're in agreement.

Re:Hate Ads

[Grishnakh]

I guess so, unless they can get donations to pay for it. Supposedly that's been tried and didn't work, but maybe they need to try again.

Re:Hate Ads

[Aighearach]

No, that answer is that people with no real content should erect paywalls so they can either fail or not, but without me having to be there. ;)

The answer to the underlying question is that sites without a real product or service don't necessarily deserve revenue just for having a website. If they fail, that is good, because the content created by people passionate enough about the subject to create content on a volunteer basis is higher quality for the type of content that doesn't involve a product or service. Also, there is room for businesses to create content and sell branded merchandise based entirely on the content brand. But I don't see any right for them to make money; it is up to them to make merchandise I would want to buy. I don't use advertising to make purchasing decisions, so it is not helpful even for the thing it does; it is almost entirely parasitic.

I used to read the NYT. When I was a kid, I would read it at the library. I read it for most of my life. And when the internet came, I read it more often. Then they put up a paywall, but excepted incoming links from google, so I kept reading. Eventually, they put google news outside the paywall too, and I learned to click on other sources. If they want to be the standard source of information, they're going to have to provide access, not just to hardcore fans but to everybody participating in the public discourse. If they don't want that, that is fine. I'm not convinced an advertising-supporting site has any better reason to be a default information source than crap behind a paywall.

But if I was a rich, I'd probably spend thousands of dollars a year on Janes subscriptions, because they have interesting content that isn't otherwise available to civilians. So I'm not for or against paywalls; but they do preclude being a default source. And I feel advertising does the same thing, if it is actually required for the site to bother providing the content.

Ultimately as long as there are organizations like the BBC and wikipedia providing quality default data sources that are accessible, then there is no problem from having more or less websites trying to make money. The less of them there are, the higher the signal quality. The more of them there are, the higher the noise. Some people like the noise. Some insist on filtering it. It is all fine. If more people don't like it, good for them. It is natural in that case for the parasites to die back.

I run websites that make no money, and others sell products. If the ones that don't make money had more traffic, then the users would give donations. If they won't support what it is, then they're not getting much value from the service, and maybe it is healthier on both sides if I don't try to pump that traffic up. Same as with real estate; I could let people hang out on the lawn, and depending who they are and why they are there, they might be giving me lots of money for fancy dinners, or just sitting on my lawn drinking BYO beer and pissing in the bushes. Just because people will show up doesn't guarantee there is a good reason to host the event, or a good reason to expect it to generate revenue.

Bullshit headline

[drinkypoo]

AdBlock Plus Defends Ad Blocking, Applauds Marco Arment

Try Adlblock Plus fellates self, applauds Marco Arment for fellating advertisers. Because of course AdBlock Plus would applaud Marco Arment for doing precisely what they do, and permitting some advertising content. But in the process, they're doing nothing but patting themselves on the backs... or as we often like to say these days, sucking their own dicks.

There is no "acceptable advertising", to many of us. We're tired of space in our brain being rented out, and we're willing to not consume content if only we don't have to encounter advertisements. I'd rather my ad blocker break a site than show me ads. Otherwise, I know not to go back there, and may that site die the death of a thousand dogs, amen. This is a war for control of your brain. Don't be a loser.

Re:Bullshit headline

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that having shit available for others on the internet costs money. Your options are a pay-wall or ads.
You can get mad about it all you want, but shit isn't free.

If you can't get that fact into your brain somehow, then there wasn't any space to be rented out in the first place.

Re:Bullshit headline

[drinkypoo]

The problem is that having shit available for others on the internet costs money.

That's not a problem. That's an opportunity.

Your options are a pay-wall or ads.

Your logical fallacy is the "false dichotomy". There's also the begging button, hobby sites, merchandising, product placement, and any number of other means of funding sites. Your lack of imagination does not reflect upon reality, just how far you're going to get in it.

You can get mad about it all you want, but shit isn't free.

I'm not mad, just bored with stupid comments like yours. You're a boring person.

Re:Bullshit headline

[FranTaylor]

The problem is that having shit available for others on the internet costs money. Your options are a pay-wall or ads.

NO, there are other alternatives

you can sell stuff from your web site
you can host your own ads that won't be blocked
if you have a brick and mortar presence then the website will direct customers to your store
you can do it out of the kindness of your heart (if you have the money)
you can ask for donations from your dedicated fans

I'm sure there are many more ways to have a web site pay for itself.

Re:Bullshit headline

[stoborrobots]

There is no "acceptable advertising", to many of us. We're tired of space in our brain being rented out...

Your options are a pay-wall or ads.

Your logical fallacy is the "false dichotomy". There's also the begging button, hobby sites, merchandising, product placement, and any number of other means of funding sites.

"Product placement" sounds an awful lot like renting out brain space for "acceptable advertising" to me...

And your begging button and merchandise will probably also have to be featured somewhere prominent on your site to get any of your readers clicking on them, so that will probably involve taking some brain space on the screen to promote ("advertise") these features/products.

Re:Bullshit headline

[epyT-R]

Hey you know, your viewers pay for their connectivity and bw.. You can pay for yours. Don't waste theirs downloading megabytes of abusive javascript and crappy videos.

Re:Bullshit headline

[west]

Given how badly paywalls work, I suspect the reality of the commercial market is that almost any site of any worth will have to migrate to Facebook, whose ads are pretty much unblockable.

This is the natural evolution of the Internet. Advertisers slowly made the web very difficult to surf, Ad blockers grew in response. Web sites die from lack of revenue. People drift to where content is still available - Facebook.

Those last two steps are a year or so away. But that's the way it's going. And no, there's no going back. Only an infinitesimal number of ad block user even know what a whitelist is. They'll simply block all ads, good or bad, and won't even understand why all the web sites that they visited gradually closed down. But they'll know Facebook still works, and hey, some of their old sites now show up there!

Technical evolution in action.

Re:Bullshit headline

[thegarbz]

There's also the begging button,

Unless you run a linux distro, begging rarely covers the sever bandwidth if anything else of any useful sites. There's a reason it went out of favour.

hobby sites,

Hobby sites survive by being unknown. I run one. I won't ever post the link on slashdot because the sudden influx of traffic would net me a stupendous bill from my host.

merchandising,

Great if you have the facilities and network to do it. And if you're quirky and interesting enough that someone seems to think affiliating with your website is worth their while.

product placement,

So instead of advertising we do advertising?

and any number of other means of funding sites.

So keep the list going. I've yet to see a suitable alternative.

Re:Bullshit headline

[thegarbz]

you can sell stuff from your web site

If you have stuff to sell. Most websites are not about physical product pushing.

you can host your own ads that won't be blocked

You need an incredible amount of infrastructure and support to be able to do something like that. Show me someone that will pay you for hosting advertising when they don't own the means of managing the analytics.

if you have a brick and mortar presence then the website will direct customers to your store

What is this the 90s?

you can do it out of the kindness of your heart (if you have the money)

This I actually agree with, but there's a risk. If you start actually attracting traffic you can end up with a very big bill. I fondly remember situations in the 90s where some poor guy would get slashdotted and then take his server permanently offline because he can't afford the hosting bill.

you can ask for donations from your dedicated fans

I'm sure there are many more ways to have a web site pay for itself.

I prefer the hobby method. Very few website survive on donations. Very few software projects have too.

Re:Bullshit headline

[aaaaaaargh!]

Well, the "shit" is free for me, because I'm running an ultra aggressive ad blocker. :-)

Re:Bullshit headline

[JohnFen]

Your options are a pay-wall or ads.

Not true. For as long as the internet has existed there have been very useful and entertaining sites that are genuinely free. As in, their audiences are not subjected to advertising and are not asked to pay money. These sites still exist. I even run a few of them myself.

Re:Bullshit headline

[JohnFen]

This I actually agree with, but there's a risk. If you start actually attracting traffic you can end up with a very big bill. I fondly remember situations in the 90s where some poor guy would get slashdotted and then take his server permanently offline because he can't afford the hosting bill.

Maybe that was a risk in the '90s, but it's not anymore. Even the cheapest of hosting providers won't suddenly present you with an oversized bill. When you've reached your quota, they'll just temporarily disable your site. If you don't want to pay extra then you can just wait until the next month to begin. If you decide to pay extra, it's never something that will break the bank. When this has happened to some of my sites, I just paid an extra $20 for the month and all was well.

Re:Bullshit headline

[EzInKy]

Maybe, just maybe, if the people you forced your shit ads on weren't paying to access the internet your argument would make sense. I pay good money to view what I see, and I don't want it going to garbage I don't going to garbage I don't want to see.

Re:Bullshit headline

[drinkypoo]

Hobby sites survive by being unknown. I run one. I won't ever post the link on slashdot because the sudden influx of traffic would net me a stupendous bill from my host.

So get a host who just cuts you off if you go over, instead. Besides, Slashdot can't slashdot shit any more. This place is a fucking ghost town.

merchandising,

Great if you have the facilities and network to do it.

You can easily farm this out, there are whole companies which do nothing but this sort of thing for you.

And if you're quirky and interesting enough that someone seems to think affiliating with your website is worth their while.

And if you aren't, then back to "hobby site". If you're not interesting, it won't cost you much to run.

So instead of advertising we do advertising?

Yes, but instead of wasting space on the page you insert it into the content. If you're ham-handed about it, users will go elsewhere, so get a clue.

So keep the list going. I've yet to see a suitable alternative.

I can only lead you to ideas, I can't make you accept them.

Re:Bullshit headline

[Grishnakh]

Hobby sites survive by being unknown. I run one. I won't ever post the link on slashdot because the sudden influx of traffic would net me a stupendous bill from my host.

Really? Who's your hosting service? I have a cheap ($5/month) hosting service plan as well, and I don't remember anything in there about extra costs if there's a lot of traffic. My site is pre-paid 3 years at a time, and it's a flat rate. I imagine that if I got a sudden influx of traffic, it would simply cause the site to toss up errors (probably 503 Service Unavailable).

Re:Bullshit headline

[mrchaotica]

The problem is that having shit available for others on the internet costs money. Your options are a pay-wall or ads.

Bullshit. Other options include donations (even large sites, notably Wikipedia, can work this way) or distributed hosting like Bittorrent or Freenet.

Re:Bullshit headline

[amicusNYCL]

Open up this page in a browser with no ad-blockers (don't worry, I just did it). Scroll down and find the ads. Do you see the precious revenue-generating ads? No? Well, that's because there aren't any.

The Alexa rank for wikipedia.org is #7 globally. If you want to read about their strategy, here is it.

So keep the list going. I've yet to see a suitable alternative.

Wikipedia's 14+ years aren't convincing you yet? You want to know what the difference is between Wikipedia and your own sites which you can't make financially viable without advertising? People actually value the content at Wikipedia, that's why they donate. If you want to determine whether people find the content on your site to be valuable, then put up a donation button and page and explain your position. If your donations bring in enough money to run the site, then people think it's valuable. If they don't, then you're like anyone else with nothing to say and the expectation that people should pay them via advertising to say it, like you have some inherent right to post your babble and be paid for it.

Great if you have the facilities and network to do it. And if you're quirky and interesting enough that someone seems to think affiliating with your website is worth their while.

There are any number of merchandisers just waiting for you to give them a call, while they take their percentage and give you the rest. It's not difficult, and it does not require connections. What it does require is people who think that your content is interesting or quirky enough to make it worth their while and want to pay to support it. I own $50 t-shirts that are not worth $50, but I didn't buy them expecting a superior-quality shirt that would last 20 years. It's not a difficult concept. If you have a valuable site then people will support it, end of story. If you can't manage to meet your bandwidth bill then you have a lot of people using your site who don't care whether it goes away. And that's why people turn to advertising, because they think they have the right to be paid for their stuff that no one really cares about.

Re:Bullshit headline

[Ol Olsoc]

But they'll know Facebook still works, and hey, some of their old sites now show up there!

Technical evolution in action.

Actually, I think a lot of us will just find something different to do with our time. If facebook was the internet, I'd be out making telescopes, or big model rockets. At which point I don't care if Facebook sends someone to your house to beat the shit out of you until you buy something off the web.

Re:Bullshit headline

[west]

I agree. I'll be surprised if Facebook or other conglomerates that can be their own ad serving agency capture more than 30-50% of the web with the rest either dying, somehow surviving behind a paywall (although I think that will be *exceedingly* rare), or being small hobbyist sites.

I think it's quite possible that the web as we know it may well become one of those historic creative blips that technology just happened to allow for a decade or two. We'll be annoying future generations about how great it was that for a brief moment, but few will have any inclination to visit what it's become.

Time for a Reader's Charter

[sparkydevil]

The ad blocking software I'd like to see would detect and zap into a heap of ash those unrelated-photo clickbait ads; I'd rather suffer through some honest banner ads anytime.

Web publishers should get together to make a "Reader's Charter" that pledges to stop clickbait and intrusive ads. It's not that complicated. Here's mine

Re:Time for a Reader's Charter

[FranTaylor]

Web publishers should get together to make a "Reader's Charter" that pledges to stop clickbait and intrusive ads.

and remove their #1 source of income? those are the ads that pay the best. why oh why would they do that?

When did i start ad-blocking activel?:

[drolli]

in 2008/2009. I bought a netbook and quickly figured out that rendering the webpages themself (news, technical stuff) was absolutely fine with a single core atom running for 4h on battery, but that playing the flash video in the ad in the background would render the site unusable.

i started ad-blocking and everything was fine.

Just make decent, maybe targeted ads, which are unintrusive and dont slow down my computer too much, and we can discuss that i change my behaviour.

Re:When did i start ad-blocking activel?:

[nnull]

Started ad blocking when I saw the first moving ad that would avoid your mouse cursor to close it back in the 90's. Haven't stopped ad blocking, nothing has changed since back then. Ads still contain malware and viruses. And as you have discovered, it makes low powered computers completely useless for browsing the web unless you do block all the ads and movies.

These threats of websites going to pay wall sites if you ad-block are just empty threats that will never happen, and hasn't happened, because they know the amount of money they will get from that will be practically zero, since no one will use them. Seriously, these paywall threats have been going on since the 90's.

Re:When did i start ad-blocking activel?:

[Aighearach]

Just make decent, maybe targeted ads, which are unintrusive and dont slow down my computer too much, and we can discuss that i change my behaviour.

See this advertisers? You don't need to fear the small minority of us who are allergic to your bullshit. You can ignore us, because all you have to is be minimally non-offensive and there is a large majority who will line up and bleet happily. No, you never had to resort to being obnoxious and toxic. You'd have been better off in the long run on the high road.

Re:When did i start ad-blocking activel?:

[Aighearach]

It is kinda funny, but when I first installed an ad-blocker back in the 90s my main job was writing a website that generated banner ads. I was constantly white-listing and de-listing clients. What really disappointed me with the whole thing is that almost none of the people using my service cared what their ad looked like, if it had nice aesthetics, if people would enjoy seeing it. They just wanted to figure out how to make shit flash, or look like it was moving. A tasteful way of implementing a requested feature was never appreciated; they were always mad that it wasn't less tasteful. Non-profits, amusingly, weren't interested in even using it because they weren't trying to save money; they'd just pay a contract artist a couple hundred dollars to hand-design a banner image.

I don't mind threats of pay-walls. If they don't want the public to have the material, then I assume it is not a good basis for discourse. It is useless, because even if I subscribed I can't discuss it with other humans, because I can't link to it for them to read it. Sites that have this attitude are not going to be good resources to rely on IMO. When they self-select out of my decision-making process by erecting barriers to keep me out, that is less time I have to waste to evaluate their offering of information.

Information used to be scarce. It was normal that it was paid for. Information is no longer scarce. If you don't get value just from me using your information, then you're probably pricing yourself out of the conversation by not understanding that information scarcity has changed in a way that will not go away unless society as we know it no longer exists.

Ads are NOT necessary

[Peter (Professor) Fo]

If you have a valuable commodity then somebody will voluntarily support it. Wikipedia for example. Or you might find people want to buy what you have on offer. When I see people without ad-blockers I'm amazed at their crap experience, but they don't seem to know any better. If you want to see model this in print then buy Private Eye. Excellent Journalism worth paying for and ads at front and back which I skip over because I've got no money to spend, but presumably some people do because a lot are repeats.

Re:Ads are NOT necessary

[phantomfive]

The large amount of time and effort spent to create a meaningful review (rather than the more typical short-form PR puff piece masquerading as a review) costs a lot of money, and in some cases may actually require you buy the product in question *and* related accessories if the company creating the product doesn't want a critical eye cast over it.

Consumer reports manages to make that work with a Paywall.

Is there any website you like that you wouldn't be willing to pay for?
I've thought through every place I visit on the web. There are some I'd rather pay than have advertising, and others I would rather disappear than have advertising, but overall the internet would be a better place without advertising.

Ask yourself this: If the content isn't valuable, why are you even reading it? Either read it without an ad blocker and support its creator, or GO ELSEWHERE if the ads are more offensive than you're willing to accept in trade for the content. Don't be disingenuous and claim the ads aren't needed, then steal the content anyway.

There is malware in all the major ad networks. If they don't want ad-blocking, they shouldn't be hostile. Right now, it's irresponsible to not block ads.

Really?

[pushing-robot]

The ad blocking software I'd like to see would detect and zap into a heap of ash those unrelated-photo clickbait ads; I'd rather suffer through some honest banner ads anytime.

You mean like the Taboola crap my ad blocker is currently removing from the bottom of Slashdot pages (even though I have ads disabled on my account)?

Re:Really?

[MrLogic17]

Came here to say exactly this.

Don't think so

[SuperKendall]

Marco has sold a number of other successful apps, to the point where he's pretty much independently wealthy.

I'm sure his motivation is purely ideological. I just happen to disagree with the actions he has taken, even though I agree with him ideologically (I think anyway).

I'm just very disappointed Marco did not take the time to shift the app to be something he was happy with, instead of just giving up.

Re:Don't think so

[Tough Love]

I'm just very disappointed Marco did not take the time to shift the app to be something he was happy with, instead of just giving up.

That does seem odd, doesn't it?

Re:Don't think so

[west]

How could he? His principle objection was that he did not want to become the gatekeeper of what was a "good ad" and what was a "bad ad".

He closed his app because he was unwilling to take responsibility for such a decision, yet was not comfortable with eliminating the revenue stream of all sites, regardless of their ad policies.

Re:Don't think so

[DevilM]

What to block should be crowd sourced. Then the software author doesn't have to decide.

Re:Don't think so

[BVis]

He closed his app because he was unwilling to take responsibility for such a decision, yet was not comfortable with eliminating the revenue stream of all sites, regardless of their ad policies.

Are you asking me to be sympathetic to sites that post "Doctors hate him! One wierd trick! Singles in your area! Etc!" ads with irrelevant misleading pictures and popups galore? Because if you are, you can go fuck yourself.

Advertising should be innocuous, relevant, and useful. Until then, they can also go fuck themselves.

Re:Don't think so

[Ol Olsoc]

Are you asking me to be sympathetic to sites that post "Doctors hate him! One wierd trick! Singles in your area! Etc!" ads with irrelevant misleading pictures and popups galore?

Wonder when people will see this one?..

A Housewife in Pennsylvania discovered this simple trick that all the web advertisers hate!

Re:Don't think so

[west]

Are you asking me to be sympathetic to sites that post...

What an odd sentiment. The fact that most non-hobby web sites will die in the next few years is not an occasion for either tears or jeers. It's just the natural technical evolution of the web. The current configuration of millions of independent sites is obviously unsustainable as viewers have made clear by cutting their revenue stream while advertisers have also made it clear that non-obtrusive ads are not worth anything to them.

My only complaint is with those who feel their ought to be independent web content, but that they should haven't to pay for it with obtrusive ads. The price is clear. Pay or not as you will - as long as you don't expect the fact that, until now, everyone else has been paying on your behalf is your natural right.

The only ones I do feel sorry for those are those who do feel that sites are worth the ads. Having a few percent white list sites isn't going to save the sites they love.

Re:What's the point of that last sentence?

[FranTaylor]

Nobody's forcing you to click on clickbait ads. Read the text, don't blindly click on pictures.

You do have to download them. If you're browsing from a phone, you are paying for the ads even if you ignore them.

There are ads on the internet ?

[speedlaw]

I was surprised to find this out. I've had blockers on my stuff for the last, oh, five years. I got hit by a bad ad at one point, and realized it was just another attack vector. I'm sorry that the legit guys lost too, but it is kind of like 50 people pass through your house, one is a thief. None of them NEED to be there, so you can lock the door without feeling bad about it. Every time I have to de-malware someone's machine, it is left with full adblock on all browsers...and I'm not even a real geek.

Re:There are ads on the internet ?

[Cro Magnon]

I'm sorry that the legit guys lost too, but it is kind of like 50 people pass through your house, one is a thief. None of them NEED to be there, so you can lock the door without feeling bad about it.

Actually, it's more like 50 people passing through your house and 49 of them are thieves. Too bad they ruin it for the one good one.

I whitelist nothing and have no remorse

[CAHutch]

I have no guilt about using Ad Blockers. Advertisements have become so pervasive and invasive that they are literally ruining any experience they touch. I got a TiVo so I could avoid spending a quarter of my TV time watching Ads I got an Ad blocker when web Ads started becoming obnoxious and distracting. I for one would rather not have any Ad supported services. I'd rather pay for services like YouTube and Facebook than have to put up with the Ads. If web services lose revenue over Ad blockers, they should offer users a way to Pay for the service in exchange for an Ad free experience. IMO "Ad supported" might as well be "supported by clubbing baby seals". Both are evil and should be stopped. Elon Musk would seem to agree with me. "he refuses to advertise for Tesla, something most startup car companies wouldn’t think twice about—because he sees advertising as manipulative and dishonest."

Most ad blockers are a reflexive overreaction

[Kethinov]

I want an ad blocker that whitelists everything by default, so I can block sites I consider abusive. I tried them all, none do this.

To me, blocking everything by default is a reflexive overreaction. I agree that ads have gotten out of hand, but penalizing sites that use them responsibly is horrible.

Can someone point me in the direction of an ad blocker that lets me whitelist everything by default and has a simple "block ads on this site" button for the bad actors? (I'm looking at you, wikia!)

Re:Most ad blockers are a reflexive overreaction

[FranTaylor]

but penalizing sites that use them responsibly is horrible.

A perfectly competent and well-run web site can still be hosting malware from third-party web sites.

Re:Most ad blockers are a reflexive overreaction

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is blocking ads "horrible"? I never understood this thinking. You aren't required to view ads. It isn't immoral not to see ads. It is "us against them". I pick "us" over "them" every time.

Re:Most ad blockers are a reflexive overreaction

[Aighearach]

They all do it, it just isn't advertised how because few people want that.

Just install the ad-blocker, and then manage your own list subscription. Depending on the blocker, you might need an empty list file. Then nothing is blocked, because there are no blocking rules to start with. You'll still have all the normal tools like "select element to hide," etc.

Re:Most ad blockers are a reflexive overreaction

[del_diablo]

This sounds like a good idea until you realize there is thousends of thousends of thousends of adds out there.
So every time you refresh a page, start your browser, or you go to the next part of a webpage, you would have to click everything. That adds up too a lot of time, compared to just blocking everything.

Re:Most ad blockers are a reflexive overreaction

[JohnFen]

I agree that ads have gotten out of hand, but penalizing sites that use them responsibly is horrible.

What sites are using them responsibly? I've never seen one. I guess the better question is what counts as "using them responsibly"?

Would mind less if advertisers paid for bandwidth

[Maxo-Texas]

I'd still mind but the idea they can cripple my browser- fill it with obnoxious honking and blinking adds- and then on top of that I have to pay 200k of bandwidth to view an 8k page of text is abusive.

I went to adblockers shortly after the first blinking ads which took control of the mouse away.

Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the ad market policed itself, ad-blockers would not be necessary.

Since they are necessary, and since the "more nuanced, complex approach" is expensive and error-prone, rightly self-interested end-users have no choice but to resort to simple, effective, indiscriminate ad-blockers.

That is all.

Re: Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. My bandwidth, my processor and my screen. If they want to implement paid services instead of ad supported ones, I'm happy to pay as long as I deem the service worthy of my money.

I miss the days when people shared thoughts and information with each others not out of financial gains but out of sincere interest into a subject. Collaboration, code sharing, tutorials -- all for free and for the mere expectation that if I share this, I know othera will share too and we all get something out of it. Respect was the currency back then.

Re:Yeah.

[Grishnakh]

Agreed! We gave the advertisers a chance, and they blew it, over and over and over with ever-more obnoxious ads.

I really wouldn't mind seeing ads which are tasteful, non-obtrusive (e.g. not pop-ups, pop-unders, flashing colors, etc.), and are targeted to me. This is why I had no problem with Google's simple search ads; if I'm having a problem and type in some terms about that, and one of the results off to the side is an ad for a product which solves my problem, that's great. (Unfortunately this is the way it used to be, these days it seems like they just integrate the ads into the search results so you can't tell if they're genuine search results or paid ads.)

Re:Yeah.

[JackieBrown]

Ireally wouldn't mind seeing ads which are tasteful, non-obtrusive, and are targeted to me.

A lot of people see that as a privacy invasion. I block ads because they annoy me but I'm not able to muster up the personal outrage and self-righteousness that a lot of people (not say you) see to have when using a site freely.

Now the ones that give you fake download buttons and stuff like that are dishonest and immoral. Those are what usually get me to install an adblocker on a new install (but I don't whitelist sites once the blocker is installed.)

Re:Yeah.

[david_thornley]

What I want out of ads, as a minimum:

Ads should never make it difficult to get back to my original screen. They shouldn't be so extensive that I'm likely to touch one while doing another operation that requires touch (like scrolling), remembering that touch is imprecise here. They shouldn't just dump me into the app store. Since this is apparently too much to ask, I installed a blocker.

Re:Yeah.

[Grishnakh]

I don't see how it's a "privacy invasion" for a freely-available public website to have an ad on it; that's plainly ridiculous. That assumes, of course, that we're just talking about an ad and not anything that tracks you, installs cookies on your browser, etc. If you don't want to see the ad, don't go to the website, it's pretty simple. The website is under no obligation to provide you a site to visit or post messages on. However, you're under no obligation to download and look at their ads or put up with their trackers, either. But if everyone blocks ads and the site gets zero revenue, it's probably not going to stick around long (unless it's someone's little hobby site on a $4/month plan). But putting up with the blatantly dishonest and immoral stuff isn't virtuous either. So basically, for now, those of us who use ad-blockers are getting a free ride from the fools who either don't know how to, or strangely refuse to install an ad-blocker (or don't know that it even exists). Eventually, this situation will probably change as people become more and more savvy; there's only so many ignorant fools left out there, and surely they aren't clicking on that many ads to generate that much revenue for all these sites.

I have no problem blocking ads; if webmasters don't like it, they can serve ads directly from their own domains instead of pointing my browser at some ad domain; it's pretty hard to block that kind of ad without resorting to very fine-grained filters. Their complaints fall on deaf ears here; we've seen all kinds of abuses with advertising in the last 15-20 years on the internet, so AFAIC they're made their own bed. If this means a bunch of possibly useful sites go away, so be it. But I'm under no illusion that I'm entitled to browse other peoples' websites for free and without advertising. That's a pretty serious entitlement mentality there. I don't mind getting away with it as long as their sites willingly serve me pages; how I render those pages on my machine is my own business. But I don't feel entitled to that content, nor am I going to complain when they put it behind a paywall; I'll just go somewhere else most likely.

Re: Yeah.

[jwhitener]

I miss the days when people shared thoughts and information with each others not out of financial gains but out of sincere interest into a subject. Collaboration, code sharing, tutorials -- all for free and for the mere expectation that if I share this, I know othera will share too and we all get something out of it. Respect was the currency back then.

It still happens. It is just extremely hard to search for, thanks to how Google search results work, and how much big/corporate sites work on seo.

I wish Google had an "amateur" category, similar to how...other sites...categorize certain comments. It would be nice to just search personal web sites who do not have a profit motive.

App store switching!

[Duckman5]

Just as bad, if not worse, are those annoying-as-hell ads that automatically redirect you to the app store. I used to not be able to surf the web on my wife's iPad because it would always switch from Safari to the App Store, then it started happening on my Android devices, too.

The deciding factor on which browser I use on my mobile devices is now "Does it have an ad-blocker?" The mobile web is useless without it.

Re:App store switching!

[PoopMonkey]

NoAppStoreRedirect takes care of that if you're jailbroken. Wish there was a similar option for launching apps and not just going to the app store though.

Re:App store switching!

[swillden]

I used to not be able to surf the web on my wife's iPad because it would always switch from Safari to the App Store, then it started happening on my Android devices, too.

On Android you have the option of whether you want to open Play Store links in your web browser or with the Google Play Store app. If it's automatically going to the app, that's because at some point you told the device you wanted all Play Store links to go there. To undo this decision, go to Settings->Apps, then open the menu and touch "Reset app preferences". Then, next time you hit a Play Store link, the device will ask you whether you want to open it in the browser or the app, and whether you want to do this "just once" or "always".

Re:App store switching!

[Ol Olsoc]

Just as bad, if not worse, are those annoying-as-hell ads that automatically redirect you to the app store. I used to not be able to surf the web on my wife's iPad because it would always switch from Safari to the App Store, then it started happening on my Android devices, too.

The deciding factor on which browser I use on my mobile devices is now "Does it have an ad-blocker?" The mobile web is useless without it.

I rarely ever use a smartphone for surfing, except when I need to reference something. You'll just run right over your cap in a short time. I suppose I could e like a few friends who are paying 500 a month. Ironically, much of that 500 goes to support the internet welfare state of advertisers.

Re:App store switching!

[Ol Olsoc]

To undo this decision, go to Settings->Apps, then open the menu and touch "Reset app preferences". Then, next time you hit a Play Store link, the device will ask you whether you want to open it in the browser or the app, and whether you want to do this "just once" or "always".

How handy.

Re:App store switching!

[samwichse]

Yes, that "which app" selection menu for the play store is gold. It doesn't even switch apps on you, just pops up at the bottom of the screen and hitting the back button on the phone cancels whatever link the assholes were redirecting you to.

Adblock EDGE

[Snufu]

Because there is no such thing as 'acceptable ads' on my internet*.

*The internet that was funded by a collaboration between federal and academic institutions for public--not commercial--enrichment.

Re:Adblock EDGE

[Grishnakh]

*The internet that was funded by a collaboration between federal and academic institutions for public--not commercial--enrichment.

If you visit any sites besides .gov and .edu, then this is rather hypocritical. The site you're posting this on is a commercial site, so if you're against commercial sites, what are you doing here?

There is a such thing as an acceptable ad on the internet, just like there's a such thing as an acceptable ad on PBS, to pay for the programming there. Unobtrusive, text-only ads with no tracking are acceptable IMO, and a small price to pay for the content and services available. Unfortunately, no one wants to do those any more, they want obnoxious ads that take over your computer and spy on you, so it's turned into an all-out war. Personally, I think the blame lies 100% with the advertisers; they wore out their welcome long ago with their complete lack of ethics and decency, and it's too bad that the handful of "good apples" in that bunch are being hurt by the collateral damage from the war with the thousands of "bad apples" in their bunch. I just object to the notion that there's no such thing as an "acceptable ad"; there is, we just don't see them any more (and they were never all that numerous or popular to begin with, but Google did use them for a while).

Re:Adblock EDGE

[Snufu]

My mistake. I thought I was posting on soylentnews.ORG.

The Logical Conclusion of Opposing Ad-Blocking

[DERoss]

Those who would prevent the use of ad-blockers need to consider where the logical path of their position leads. Advertisements also appear on television and radio, in newspapers and magazines, and on billboards along our highways.

Action to prevent ad-blockers must therefore also prohibit Mute buttons on TV remotes and prohibit me from running to the bathroom during long commercial breaks on TV. They must also prohibit me from switching radio stations or turning off the radio while driving They must force me me read every ad in my morning newspaper and make me stop my car to carefully read every billboard.

NO. I can choose to be deaf and blind to advertisements in other media. Why can I not choose to block advertisements on the Internet? What is it about the Internet that mandates its advertisements on me, something other media cannot do?

Re:The Logical Conclusion of Opposing Ad-Blocking

[Grishnakh]

Take away ad blocking and that will be the end of the internet for me

How are they going to "take away" ad blocking? It's not particularly complicated technology (it just blocks certain parts of webpages from loading and/or displaying). Browsers (the good ones at least) are open-source, and it's pretty impossible to prevent people from downloading software (though it might need to be hosted offshore if it runs into too many legal problems).

I stopped listening to radio because it was all ads.

Not because the music was total crap? However, it's not that bad: there's always classical radio stations, which usually have very few ads, and only become unlistenable during the pledge drives and the days they only play opera. Some classic rock stations aren't too awful, but they get tired because they play the same few popular classic rock songs over and over, and they've been playing those same few songs for decades now. "Stairway to Heaven" is great and all, but why don't they ever play "When the Levee Breaks" from the same album?

I stopped watching television because more than 60% of the content was ads.

Um, this is an exaggeration. It might be about 25% (45 minutes of an episode + 15 minutes of ads = 1 hour program). Of course, the problem is that the ads are annoying (esp. when they fuck with the volume), and you can't easily block them except by having your thumb ready on the mute button with hair-trigger reflexes, which isn't very relaxing. Or you could get a TiVo, except those are all gone now and replaced by stupid cableco DVRs that you have to pay a monthly fee for (and a cable subscription for $$$). And there really isn't much content on TV worth watching anyway; it's easier to just get Game of Thrones off BitTorrent, maybe watch some other series after they come on Netflix, and ignore the rest.

Slashdot take note

[SoftwareArtist]

You know what kind of ads I really hate? The autoplaying video ads that have started appearing on Slashdot. Is there an ad blocker that will kill only those?

Re:Slashdot take note

[jafiwam]

You know what kind of ads I really hate? The autoplaying video ads that have started appearing on Slashdot. Is there an ad blocker that will kill only those?

Try one of the HOSTS file add blockers.

I don't see any of that on /.

Re: Bullshit

[stoborrobots]

Advertisers aren't offering to pay for my attention or my bandwidth....

...but AM I compensated for either, no...

I'm a user and defender of ad-blocking (as you will see elsewhere in this conversation), but this argument is slightly fallacious.

The advertiser is compensating you for your attention and bandwidth by purchasing content that you wish to view/read.

In an non-advertising supported model, you would be required to pay something to get access to the content, in the advertising-supported model, this cost would be paid on your behalf by the advertisers.

There is an open question on whether the amount of content you are getting in compensation is in appropriate proportion to the amount of your attention and bandwidth (and security/privacy risk) being taken up, but the idea that there is no compensation provided is not quite right.

All Advertising is Evil

[crunchy_one]

I find it very sad that anyone would take the side of advertisers. Advertising is now, and always has been a gangrenous cultural wound; a filthy puss filled carbuncle on the ass of capitalism. Advertisements not only manipulate the ignorant and the weak minded, they actively seek to produce ignorance and weak mindedness. Whether or not it moves, plays sound, or just sits there, advertisements are an evil that should be expunged by any means necessary.

Re:All Advertising is Evil

[mrchaotica]

Advertising in the sense of "getting the word out" is not just non-evil, it's necessary. The world can't advance without people becoming informed of the advancements.

Nope. Anything awesome enough to be worth caring about will be spread by word of mouth anyway.

negative on that

[Tom]

whitelisting and the Acceptable Ads feature of AdBlock Plus

Never forget that ABP has been sold out to a company in the advertisement business, and has been repeatedly accused of cutting favors for a) other companies in their group and b) those who pony up the cash, no matter what kinds of ads they serve.

The solution to the advertisement problem is for advertisers to step back into the realms of civilized behaviour. The solution to theft is not to whitelist the guys who steal a little bit from the rich, it is to jail thieves, period.

Once that basic system is in place, we can think about exceptions, e.g. not jailing people who stole an apple because they were starving. Because we understand that the solution to hunger is food, and providing an alternative way of getting it is the better solution than jailing all starving people.

But before we talk about "acceptable advertisement", we need to arrive at the point where everyone - including the fuckers who made the mess - agrees that the current amount and style of online advertisement is not acceptable.
As long as you have people running around claiming that their particular style of stealing is fine, you shouldn't be talking about whitelisting thieves.

Google has become abusive, in my opinion.

[Futurepower(R)]

Wow! Google search initial web page: 177,128 bytes.

I just switched to DuckDuckGo. Initial web page: 5,255 bytes.

Google has become an extremely abusive company. Many web pages load something from Google, so Google is tracking us wherever we go.

The Slashdot home page loads these from Google:
1) google-analytics.com
2) googleadservices.com
3) googletagservices.com

Re:Google has become abusive, in my opinion.

[BVis]

You do have a point, but to play devil's advocate, Google's ad policies have been engineered from the start to keep advertisers (relatively) honest. Text ads, policies against misleading advertising, close attention to click fraud, etc. I don't mind seeing AdWords on a page, frankly.

No, they're not angels, but let's be fair.

I really don't see the big fuss

[bytesex]

Sorry, but if ads were simply generated on the webserver itself (in case of slashdot), with images that also come from slashdot itself, or - in case of something like wordfeud - the ads are simply proxied by the app's home base (apps also phone home for stuff, right?), then the ad-traffic becomes indistinguishable from other, necessary traffic and ad-blockers would be out of work, right?

Yet this doesn't happen. So apparently, it is still too easy to serve apps.

Re:I really don't see the big fuss

[bytesex]

'serve apps' must be 'serve ads'.

Re:I really don't see the big fuss

[Sloppy]

Even if ads are hosted by the site, there are a few other heuristics other than external requests, which makes filtering usually remain easy:

1) The web people generally don't even try to obscure the ad urls. e.g. Block urls containing "/ads/" and you'll get a lot of ads blocked while getting virtually no false positive blocks. Look at the top of easylist to get some idea of how incredibly easy it is to do, with simple matching.

2) Web ad image sizes tend to come in standard sizes that are rarely used for anything else. e.g. If something is 728x90, then it's an ad. While this might require a little more sophistication and expense than the above approach (e.g. the blocker has to actually be aware of the CSS that applies to an element, or might have to actually download an image in order to measure it), it's doable these days (though the oldschool proxy-based blockers from the 1990s, tended to usually not be smart enough).

Both of these could be countered, but AFAIK most webmasters don't bother. No serious conflict has really started yet, so blockers have kept their advantage. Maybe the reason people are getting their panties in a bunch about iOS9 is that they think things are about to change, and webmasters are going to start to fight back?

But the acceptable ads are NOT acceptable

[DrXym]

I use ABP but I kept seeing Taboola ads and I couldn't understand why ABP wasn't blocking them. I eventually wrote my own rule to strip them out. Then I discovered it allowed them through because they were "acceptable" when they were clearly obnoxious "social" click-bait bullshit. From that I conclude that ABP's main definition of "acceptable" is "paid us a lot of money".

So no, I don't think ABP's policy works, nor is it driven by conscience. At least the settings allow all ads to be blocked but I'd trust the defaults more if it truly did care about acceptability. The only plausible default definition of "acceptable" would be text only / 15k image banners with limits on load times and no tracking cookies.

Re:But the acceptable ads are NOT acceptable

[Grishnakh]

Ignore the advice to switch to Adblock Edge (though that's better than regular ABP). Switch instead to uBlock. Not only is there no "acceptable ads" (="paid us a lot of money") BS, it uses a lot less CPU and memory on your machine because it's not implemented in JavaScript like ABP.

The issue is not the ads but the obnoxious ads

[Karmashock]

Look, if they kept their ads to non-blinking, non-animated, and non-offensive ads then I'd not use ad block.

On youtube DoubleClick keeps trying to sell me something to do with some horrible disease involving really gross looking parasites. And so if I disable adblock on youtube I see these really gross "something awful" type pictures of gross shit. That's on fucking youtube.

I go to some newsites and I get auto playing ad movies.

And then there are lots of sites that have nested javascript which is javascript inside of java script inside of javascript... and all of that makes the pages load slowly to say nothing of doing all sort of weird shit.

Look...

1. If you want ads... I want nothing beyond a jpg. No gifs. No Flash. Nothing that moves.

2. If you want ads... do not annoy me with offensive ads. If I see ads for penis pills, women showing me their vaginas as if I need an add to find porn, or whatever the fuck that image is that double click keeps throwing at me on youtube... I will enable ad block. No hesitation, no mercy, no remorse.

This is why people skip ads anywhere. They get too pushy and people respond "oh really!?"

Re:Move and die

[rtkluttz]

They can't have it both ways. They want to give me unlimited bandwidth that is limited and has a surcharge when I go over my unlimited limit. They want to shove malware at me through ads. They track me despite me saying they can't. They want me to trust anyone that they trust. No thanks. I'll use my adblocker and keep my internet to displaying only explicitly what I have asked it to display.

It's not an accident

[sjbe]

This is not actually malicious, but an artifact of the rendering engines and the order in which they render things.

I don't believe it is unintentional for one second. Advertisers have every incentive to redirect you to their worthless app and we know without any doubt that many of them lack any moral compass when it comes to stunts like this.

Of course, it is possible that some designers are deliberately taking advantage of this.

Gee, you think?

This is quite likely a response to the many complaints of the delays before the page starts rendering by users and webmasters. On some things, you just can't win.

A much simpler explanation is that it is douche bag advertisers trying to make a buck.

Wrong, it's about ads

[EzInKy]

By there very nature ads are designed to divert your attention. They had more to my decision to "cut the cord" than anything else. For fuck sakes, I'd be watching an episode of "Stargate" and have popups at the bottom of the screen about upcoming "wrestling matches" appear on my TV. Like WTF!!!

Banner ads are the least of the problems

[sjbe]

Adblocking would never have become a thing if they had stuck to image only banner ads and such and never introduced 'punch the monkey' type ads.

I find even most banner ads to be obnoxious. But punch-the-money ads are hardly the worst of it. Pop ups, pop overs, pop unders, oversized ads, redirects, etc are all obnoxious. They are using MY bandwidth that I pay for. But the worst of it is the tracking. They honestly think that they have some right to keep track of everything I do on the internet which is beyond creepy not to mention invasive.

Re:Banner ads are the least of the problems

[Firethorn]

You're not the 'average' user though. The average user doesn't care about tracking that much. I use 'punch the monkey' as the ads that broke the barrier for where the effort of developing ad-blockers was worth it. Going beyond them only sped the development.

Defining a "well behaved" ad

[sjbe]

The problem I have is that no company has defined "well behaved ads" in a way that I agree with. For me, the #1 feature of a well behaved ad is that it does not track or otherwise spy on me. As near as I can tell, there's no such thing as a "well behaved" ad.

I'd add a bit to that. No tracking of any kind unless explicitly opt-in requested with informed consent and respects do-not-track requests. No sharing of user information with other organizations. Minimal bandwidth. No animation. No flash or similar technology. No malware or ware of any kind. No redirects unless explicitly selected by user. No pop up/under/over of any kind ever.

And you are right, I don't think there is an actual "well behaved" ad these days.

Not my problem

[sjbe]

If you have stuff to sell. Most websites are not about physical product pushing.

Not my problem. If they don't have a revenue stream besides ads I don't feel any sympathy whatsoever.

You need an incredible amount of infrastructure and support to be able to do something like that. Show me someone that will pay you for hosting advertising when they don't own the means of managing the analytics.

Again, not my problem. Either develop the technology, get a license to use it or stop bothering me. Their choice.

These companies bad business models are not something I'm concerned with. If they rely on obnoxious tracking advertisement which I can block then they have an idiotic business model and deserve to go out of business. If they want to negotiate with me to reimburse me directly for my time and attention and browsing habits then we can talk. I don't give that information away for free and certainly not without prior consent. It has a value and I intend to be the one to benefit from that value. Until such a day I will continue to block ads and trackers whenever possible and I won't lose a moment's sleep over it.

Negotiate with me directly

[sjbe]

The advertiser is compensating you for your attention and bandwidth by purchasing content that you wish to view/read.

No they are not. We had no such agreement prior to my visiting the site. Ergo the owner of the site assumes all the risk in this relationship. If they don't want to display their content to me without me viewing their advertisements, then that is their prerogative but I want to know that up front. Since they did not negotiate directly with me then they take all the risk of me blocking their advertisers which I am 100% within my rights to do and I assure you that I am vigorous in blocking ads and trackers where I have the means.

In an non-advertising supported model, you would be required to pay something to get access to the content, in the advertising-supported model, this cost would be paid on your behalf by the advertisers.

This presumes both models have prior consent. I did not consent to being advertised to or tracked prior to visiting the website. Ergo the advertiser isn't paying anything on my behalf. The advertiser is paying the website operator in the hopes of getting me to view certain information as well as learn some information themselves. That is a risk they assume and is not my concern. I was at no time a part of this negotiation. If they want my cooperation then they can negotiate directly with me prior to visiting the website. They may not like the price I name for my attention and browsing habits but that's how the market should work.

What am I missing about this story?

[Sloppy]

Someone please explain why iOS ad blocking is such big news. Ad blockers have been around since the 1990s and AFAIK it's been available on almost all other platforms for many years, and iOS was a lone exception, no? (And I'd be shocked if ad blocking through HTTP proxies weren't already a reasonably-easy option for iOS users before version 9, at least when they're at home or at work (though probably not "on the go").)

How is "iOS joins the rest of the world" a big story? I feel like I'm missing something important here.

Is it all just about the wider "oh, it's on!" Google-vs-Apple context?

Or are a disproportionate number of iOS users actually using it? (whereas up to now, most people haven't bothered.)

Sponsored content

[Toshito]

The ad blocking software I'd like to see would detect and zap into a heap of ash those unrelated-photo clickbait ads; I'd rather suffer through some honest banner ads anytime.

You mean like those "sponsored content" ad at the end of Slashdot's front page?

How can we remove those pesky ads?

Local "Advertising" DB

[CrashNBrn]

It would seem, something like a vetted database of Ads, be it images, scripts, or even 'some' video - should be created by the Ad-companies that would most benefit from user-trust in this area. The DB could be updated on a regular schedule, kept on the users device. Addresses and scripts would undergo local Anti-Virus software, along with the majors pre-vetting additions to the advertising DB.

No Bandwidth usage to display an Ad.
Mostly(?) secure resources (local advertising DB) utilized for ads.

Department of irony department

[gzuckier]

"Disable Advertising As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable advertising."

ALL ads should be blocked!

[iq145]

The world has been turned into one big ad. Enough is enough...

if adds stop being silly, AdBlocking will go away

[mythix]

This might be true for some, but it's not for me.

I will keep my adblockers for as long as I can, why shouldn't I. I do not care for your profits. If your site dies because you have no ad revenue, I'm sorry but then you've had the wrong business model all along, and somebody else will take your place.