Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla Sets Out Its Proposed Principles For Content Blocking (mozilla.org)
Mark Wilson writes: With Apple embracing ad blocking and the likes of AdBlock Plus proving more popular than ever, content blocking is making the headlines at the moment. There are many sides to the debate about blocking ads — revenue for sites, privacy concerns for visitors, speeding up page loads times (Google even allows for the display of ads with its AMP Project), and so on — but there are no signs that it is going to go away. Getting in on the action, Mozilla has set out what it believes are some reasonable principles for content blocking that will benefit everyone involved. Three cornerstones have been devised with a view to ensuring that content providers and content consumers get a fair deal, and you can help to shape how they develop.
I'll block every single ad you force down my throat
If you'd like to avoid the ad-infested miasma that is TFA over at BetaNews, you can go straight to the proposal here:
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/10/07/proposed-principles-for-content-blocking/
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Many websites only exist because of user generated content (like /.).
Don't impose your idea of what's fair to the content I provide for your site.
Web sites had the chance to go the NPR route and be low key about advertising but by and large they went the obnoxious way and embraced pop ups, pop unders, Flash, animation, and widespread invasive tracking.
Fuck that, I'm not participating in your scheme to get rich off my content, at least the part where I provide you with content and am then expected to be shouted at by ads and tracked. That's not even remotely fair.
Here's my "guideline": I'll block whatever the hell I want, whenever the hell I want, for as long as I want.
"Guidelines? We don't have no guidelines...I don't need any stinkin' guidelines!"
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
HTTP is a pull protocol. The client pulls data from the server. Bandwidth usage is a resource. The more that is required to download to render a page the longer it will take. And where users pay for usage, the more it will cost the user.
Page render time is a high end user criteria and end users should expect to be able to have the client pull only the content they want to improve performance.
The web site producers only have themselves to blame for creating sites loaded with massive visual and data bloat.
Using a computing device to perform optimizations for the benefit of the user is normal usage. Nobody should be surprised by the use of ad blockers.
What this is really about (and what a lot of people are finding hard to accept) is that for the most part, people don't want to see or consume ads. With TV, we never got the chance to opt out except for "ad skip" and "fast forward." The advertising industry never really took notice of that because the numbers weren't there. With the Internet, it is possible to both block ads and measure how many ads are accepted/blocked.
Now people that deliver advertising are starting to see what customers really think: they don't like advertising. This is proving hard for business folks, especially those whose business is advertising, to stomach. How do they sell products?
Sure there are a token few that say "I'll allow advertising to support this site" but if you look in slashdot polls, those people are not a majority.
But lets face it, if there was no impact to a website and people had the choice to either accept ads or reject them, most people are going to select reject.
The main problem with advertising is that it is given to us when we're not looking to buy (or rent) something. If I'm watching Star Wars then I really don't want to hear about your latest car. If I'm reading slashdot, I don't want to see an ad for your latest cloud offering.
When I want to see ads is when I'm shopping for something - specifically when I click on the "shopping" tab in Google search. Then and at no other time.
People like me have been using content filtering proxy servers like Privoxy for a very long time. What makes you think we'll trust a web browser (especially an Apple browser) to do the job for us?
The day the content guys pay for *my* internet access that's when they can serve me ads.
My computer. My browser. My bandwidth.
Until then, they can FUCK OFF.
If you want to do ads "right", look at what Steam does. It shows me which games are on _sale_ and *I* get a say in what ads I see. i.e. None, Next, or Product Sale.
The browser is my tool. It better does what I want it to do. To assume any other role is a mistake on the part of the browser manufacturer. If Mozilla decides they don't want to let me block something that I want to block, then they're out of a job.
1. Publish a product that's better than competitors'.
2. Open source it.
3. Earn the cheers from the free software crowd, and get the advantage from external contributors, as only large browser vendor.
4. Your users will love the freedom they have, and your product will be famous for its extendibility. They'll love ad-blockers as the web gets more and more annoying ads.
5. Get more and more market share by staying better than your shitty competitors.
6. Let other browser vendors copy your success by open-sourcing their browser as well, or giving up to EEE the WWW.
7. Start your downfall:
a) Require add-ons to be signed because we live now in a world of apps and every app is is signed.
b) Publish ads in your product's start page. Enjoy the annoyment of your users.
c) Integrate an useless closed source product. (Pocket). Enjoy the annoyment of your users.
d) Announce that your addon API will be locked down.
e) Publish your "principles for content blocking". <====== We are here
f) Enforce them. This is the point of no return.
8. Gently shove a Yoda Doll up your user's asses. Be careful, its larger than the dicks the other browser vendors ram up their ass as well. That's also the only reason your browser is still used.
9. Enjoy your 2% market share.
I've always feared that AD blocking would get to be to mainstream. As long as it was on the fringes of the internet it was unlikely that content providers would do much to counteract it.
What does "[c]ontent blocking software should focus on addressing potential user needs (such as on performance, security, and privacy) instead of blocking specific types of content (such as advertising)" mean? Most users *want* to block specific types of content, namely advertising (particularly obtrusive, bandwidth-heavy ads). People don't want to block something just because it's bandwidth-heavy, otherwise they'd be blocking videos and such that they do want to watch.
And how's this going to play with Firefox's mandatory extension signing that's scheduled to take effect with FF43? Will they refuse to sign extensions that don't follow these guidelines, thereby going beyond a model of simply ensuring that the extension isn't harmful? Will they get around that by defining extensions that don't follow these guidelines as "harmful", even if they're doing exactly what users want?
There's a really slippery slope Mozilla looks like it's heading down...
Mozilla, remember when you transitioned to requiring all addons to be signed, and then assured everyone you wouldn't use this as a mechanism to set policy on what addons can and cannot do? Well, you'd better have meant it, because this blog post looks very suspicious coming so soon after that transition.
I'll stop blocking everything when they stop tracking me, using ads that break the layout of the webpage, popups that take 10 seconds before you can close them, autoplaying audio and video, etc.
Like somebody else said in the last article about adblocking:
Users: Please don't track us
Companies: Fuck off
Companies: Please don't block our ads
Users: Fuck off
Listen the last few SecurityNow podcasts. They've been debating tracking, advertising on sites, and content blocking off and on. They've had good talking points from both sides of the issue. Basically it comes down to the good sites who provide service needing ads to help pay the bills, and users not wanting to be tracked and preventing obnoxious, terrible, or even malicious content. It all makes sense, however right now the only way users can safely protect themselves ends up being content blocking.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
intro to Robot Chicken
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If(isThisAnAdvertisement)
Block();
Mozilla is seemingly saying:
if(isThisAnAdvertisement && !weveBeenBribed)
Block();
God spoke to me
If any advertisers are reading this article, I have a message for you.
Advertisers: kill yourselves. No really, kill yourselves. This is not sarcasm.
Best Regards,
Everyone that browses the internet
As nice of an idea as this sounds, it's completely impossible to do the things you are talking about. Since JavaScript powers the web now and JavaScript has absolutely no notion of security, there is no way to completely stop only the bad scripts from having anything less than the same access any other JavaScript entity has. One could block third party scripts but that would instantly make so many legitimate things cease to function. Ever try using the Evernote web clipper in Firefox with third party scripts and cookies turned off?
Content blocking IS the only solution that will work. Because only when the content is blocked will they think they have to do anything at all. Otherwise it's a slow march to the bottom.
and nothing else. Steam is showing you ads for stuff to buy. Very different than ads surrounding content you want to access.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
What's wrong with what we have today?
It's a battle rather than an agreement.
I don't mind some advertising, but I do mind scripting and video and bandwidth consumption. The state of the ad-supported web as it exists currently is a battle between the consumers who don't want to see advertising and businesses who want the consumers to see it anyway. What we have today is companies who insert their programming into pages coming from their own servers with little or zero oversight to make sure that what consumers get is safe or desirable, even tolerable. Consumers use Ad-Blocking software to filter out things that come from sites outside of the content desired. Advertisers can still get their advertisements to show, and I'm surprised more aren't by having the ads injected directly by content directors and by using URLs within the desired content providers' resources which are indistinguishable from the desired content. I'm surprised more aren't; it isn't that hard.
What we really want isn't the battle we have today. We want the benefits of cheap content, and we're willing to view safe and unobtrusive advertising or pay micro amounts to support our desired content but the way the ad-supported web is built today doesn't allow us to do that simply and reliably, so it's far easier to just block stuff and far easier to load web pages with crap. The problem with what we have today is that it isn't a long term sustainable solution.
There are two solutions that I think we're headed toward. The first is direct support. Google and others are recognizing there is money to be made in suppressing advertising, and the natural development of that is either paying consumers to allow ads or to consolidate enough advertisers who are willing to take payment in lieu of actual advertising. The other is building advertising systems that make it impossible to avoid and building better adblocking software to avoid what was previously impossible. One is a war, the other is a cooperative system. I don't know which will win, but I'm rooting for cooperation.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
From Mozilla's proposed principles:
Publishers and other content providers should be given ways to participate in an open Web ecosystem.
You can tell this "principle" is totally bogus -- here's how: A majority of the people on the Internet are content providers. For example, everyone with a Facebook page is a content provider. We obviously don't need some fancy-schmancy new "principle" that ensures that all one billion of us who provide content "should be given ways to participate". Just fucking use HTML5 -- that's how you "participate".
This nonsense "principle" was clearly added with the goal of providing something special for the people who want to monetize their content. But that goal directly contradicts another principle:
[It] should block under the same principles regardless of source of the content.
This principle means that all one billion of us content providers are equals -- we will all have the same restrictions imposed on us by the blocking controls. Anyone who wants money for their content is going to have to play by those exact same rules. There is no need to carve out a special "principle" just for people who want money.
Content Neutrality: Content blocking software should focus on addressing potential user needs (such as on performance, security, and privacy) instead of blocking specific types of content (such as advertising).
You can't be this fucking stupid. Get rid of the middlemen between the publisher and advertiser, and most issues go away along with the ads. If the problem was really with the publisher, and I wanted to keep visiting that site, I'd grab the contact information from the site and contact them myself. I don't need you to dream this problem into other areas of interest. It really is that simple.
Transparency & Control: The content blocking software should provide users with transparency and meaningful controls over the needs it is attempting to address.
Like the meaningful controls you're been implementing over the past 10 years? I needed Lightbeam just to find the DNT button for a while there. You would have been better off to stick with the Navigator configuration notebooks.
Openness: Blocking should maintain a level playing field and should block under the same principles regardless of source of the content. Publishers and other content providers should be given ways to participate in an open Web ecosystem, instead of being placed in a permanent penalty box that closes off the Web to their products and services.
Sure, Privacy Badger does this, other than for the yellowlist that keeps some sites in cookie-gobble mode instead of going to fully-blocked mode. Help those authors improve their algorithms so they no longer need the yellowlist. No need to reinvent the wheel, unless you want to re-invent the wheel using C and some hand-tuned assembly code.
"Other content providers" don't need to be placed in a penalty box, they need to be ejected from the game and perhaps fined by the commissioner.
Seriously, Mozilla should stay out of this. They've already butted into too many things they shouldn't have with their attitude of trying to dictate how the web works. The whole reason for their breakneck release speed was to make sure customers adapt to their new whims as soon as possible. They should stick to making browsers instead of telling people how to make web sites.
Mozilla declares itself COMPLETELY out of touch with the vast overwhelming majority of the userbase.
Nice way to declare yourself absolutely irrelevant.
I've said it before and I've said it again, THIS IS AN ARMS RACE that the advertising industry started.
Live by the thermonuclear obliteration of your users rights, die from the thermonuclear backlash.
You made your choice long ago, and continue to poke the bear, be sure to enjoy the consequences of your obnoxious actions.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I have no problems with Ads. I totally understand sites need to make money. People do work to make sites exist and I totally get that. But really some of these Ads are totally insane and just a big pain in the butt!
If Ads were just part of the page and didn't run video, change like crazy, etc I would be ok heck some of them are actually interesting and I buy things related to them. Imagine that??
If you've ever visited any porn site, you'll know Mozilla can't even block popups and pop unders. They can't even get the basic features to work.
So who cares what Mozilla thinks they should block. BECAUSE THEY'VE LOST THE PLOT!
They can't deliver a popup blocker, they think there is a debate to be had as to whether adverts should be blocked or not.... THIS IS UP TO ME! I am the surfer, if I choose to block adverts then that IS MY CHOICE and MY CHOICE ALONE.
It's not a negotiation, and if my browser decides that it knows better than me, then it will be quickly replaced.
Mozilla dudes, you've really lost the plot here, and its clear from the market share you've long lost the plot. You keep putting 'CLOUD' features in when the basic privacy/speed/control principles that underlined Firefox are being weakened. pocket lists? sync? Unwanted features that were available as addons now get forced in the browser?
"Publishers and other content providers should be given ways to participate in an open Web ecosystem, instead of being placed in a permanent penalty box that closes off the Web to their products and services."
It's UP TO ME, if I decide I've had enough of Googles spyware, and I decide to block their ads, PERMANENTLY, that's MY choice. Get with the plot or fuck off Mozilla.
Normally I just ignore all the Mozilla-haters because they're whining about stupid stuff (like Chrome-style versioning) or minor mis-steps (like Pocket) or things I find totally awesome (like Awesome Bar).
But if they go where I think they're going--banning ad-blockers--then I'm going to have to seriously re-evaluate my trust in this organization. Sorry Denelle: I'm not "content neutral". I want to maximize signal and minimize noise, especially in this overloaded information age, even if it's "just" the psychological noise of ads trying to manipulate me. I'm freaking tired of everyone thinking they can deceive me, play on my fears and doubts, tinker with my self image, and re-frame my perceptions to match their agenda... and advertisers are the worst of the lot.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
It's my computer, my browser, my bandwidth - *I* get to decide how it's used, no-one else does.
btw, one of my absolutely required needs is "blocking specific types of content (such as advertising)", and javascript.
another of my needs is to have my browser modify or override bits of CSS (e.g. fonts, font sizes, div widths, etc) so that the content actually displays on my screen in a form that is readable by my eyes.
The day the content guys pay for *my* internet access
Isn't that called "zero rating"? I thought the Mozilla camp called zero rating initiatives, such as Internet.org, a net neutrality violation.
AdBlock has already won. The countermeasures do their job just fine. Many sites that used them did a serious about face when people didn't shutdown their AdBlockers they just went to another website offering the same/similar content. Adblock blockers are also trivial to block/circumvent.
The Firefox pop-up blocker allows pop-ups only in response to a discrete user action, such as a click or keypress. This was intended to allow for pop-ups inside legit web applications, especially in the era before DHTML pop-overs became standard. But it ended up abused, as ad networks would just wait for any random click on the page before doing the same old pop-ups. And pop-overs have since also been heavily abused to nag viewers, usually into subscribing to a mailing list.
But can you block an ad with cows in it?
EAT MOR CHIKIN
>an ublock do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:
Yes.
Wind Beneath Thy Wings
I don't mind ads, I don't mind relevant ads less. I'm upset by the new hostile add that hijack me out of my browser and into to the App Store. I can't stand ads that block content that I need to interact with on the site, like an ad over the submit button. Huge ads on each page of a 40 page blog post that has 100 words of content and 39 pictures are not cool. Irrelevant Ads on the top, side, bottom, and interweaved with content type sites are awful.
I find slashdots ads placement, relevance, and size to be wrong in so many ways.
I'm okay with watching a 20 second YouTube ad, but the multi minute adstravaganza is too much.
If I'm on mobile paying $9/GB, ads should be very small and text, not huge animated images plus JS library collection that is in style.
So if you want a content limited, pay-walled, countermeasure-riddled web -- just stick with that childish attitude. But if you want a sustainable, awesome web ecosystem -- then start proposing acceptable limitations that nurture the publishers we all love.
I remember the horrible, awful, web before advertising brought us to the Brave New World of 'content' that exists solely to make money from ads.
I'd like it back, please.
Can APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit block forum spam advertising APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit?
No?
What a shame.
Required reading for internet skeptics
that you don't like.
Yes, exactly. By blocking ad sites, we automatically prevent our browser from going to those ad sites.
Can I use it to block these annoying posts? Or is it not capable of that?
Personally, I have no problem with visiting a web site that has ads on it, within reason. That mainly applies to my home internet connection, but my mobile is a work tool and I rarely browse the internet on it anyway.
However, pages that load within a second or two, but then sit with a blank window "waiting for Adserve/Adsense/some-other-bullshit-3rd-party-ad-site" for a minute or so; or pages that have a tiny amount of useful content but which have 30-40 trackers on them, meaning that my (admittedly crap) home internet connection slows from a crawl to a coma-inducing slither; or sites that try to fetch ads from a third party which has been infected with malware which then tries to install on my system; ads that lead my technologically illiterate family members to call me in a panic because there is a thing on the screen saying their computer is infected; or ads that are so visually intrusive that I can barely see the information I am interested in; these are the main things that drive me to install ad blockers, script blockers, and privacy tools.
They also drive me to restrict access for user accounts to system resources, so if any of those family members want stuff installed, I have to go and install it for them (a pain in the ass and a time sink, but from experience I can say that it is less of a pain in the ass and much less of a time sink than the alternatives I have found).
If I was on a connection where I was paying for every megabyte of data I download, such as the typical mobile contracts, I would be even harder.
Advertisers want to paint this as me "stealing" from them, as if I have taken from them anything more tangible than the POTENTIAL to try and sell me something I do not want. But for me, loading a web page is akin to inviting someone into my house (I generally offer coffee, tea and cake to people I invite in) - I am inviting that information, that company, to make a connection to me. Just because I have invited that ONE connection does not mean that I am going to extend that invitation to their friends, friends of friends, neighbours and some drug-addled homeless psycho that is tagging along with them to come in, drink my coffee, eat my cake, piss all over the dining room and steal the painting on the wall. With allowing ads on my system, sometimes it feels as though that is what I would be doing.
So, umm, no Mr. Advertiser, sorry. I might trust the person or party that I have invited enough to load their web page, but I do not know you or any of your friends, and you are not accepting any liability for bad stuff that happens, so if you happen to cause me problems I have no recourse against you. That means you get left at the front door, and while I will not come out brandishing a shotgun shouting "Get off my lawn!", it is an awfully tempting thing.
that you don't like. Not sure I see the problem. You decide what's fair. If it's not fair don't go to those sites. You don't have to participate. It's not like anyone (outside of malware authors) is forcing you. If a site does things you don't like, stop typing their addy into your URL bar...
It appears to me that that is what advertisers are actually complaining about - 1) we block their ads, 2) they attempt to bypass our blocks, 3) we move on to a different site, 4) the site complains about freeloaders.
It's really very simply - if buzzfeed and co. went away the world would be a better place. They know it. We know it. They know we know it. So now they're engaging in a PR war rather than the technology war to get us to view their ads.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Content Neutrality: Content blocking software should focus on addressing potential user needs (such as on performance, security, and privacy) instead of blocking specific types of content (such as advertising).
Seriously?
Have you been on the Internet lately, like in the last five years? Have you been outside lately? Have you watched TV in the last 10 years?
Advertisement is not neutral content, so it doesn't deserve content neutrality. Advertisement is the heroin of communication. It is intentionally designed to attract, bind and consume as much of your attention as possible, and attention is a limited resource. Both in time and in total your attention is limited. If it is tied up by roadside advertisement, you cannot focus on driving as well. If it is busy processing the ad messages on the train, you cannot focus on the conversation with your lover as good. If by repetition it has entered your long-term memory, it impacts you whenever it is triggered, not just when it is present itself.
And we all know that if you have to focus for a long time, you feel exhausted. That is your mental battery running low.
This shit does not come for free. Advertisement, by its very nature, burns user resources and violates user needs. Anyone who doesn't understand that has no place writing rules about content blocking. Go back and take at least the 101 class before you write a textbook on the subject matter.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
First, correct.
Second, bullshit.
Third, true. But until the fucking politicians wake up and declare this thing illegal and throw the fuckers in jail, that's all we can do. I'm still a big fan of that idea to turn off any and all spam filters for one week and show normal people what e-mail would be like if we didn't work so hard to make it halfway acceptable. After that week, either we can shut down all the SMTP servers because nobody is using e-mail anymore, or something would finally be done on the legal side of the problem.
(and to those who say it won't work: Fuck off, retard. We throw murderes and thieves in jail as well, and while the crime rates are not zero, they are a far cry from the ratio of spam, so apparently it does work if you snap out of your binary thinking.)
So if you want a content limited, pay-walled, countermeasure-riddled web -- just stick with that childish attitude. But if you want a sustainable, awesome web ecosystem -- then start proposing acceptable limitations that nurture the publishers we all love.
Biggest bullshit of them all.
How about we throw away advertisement as a model simply because nobody likes it, you know, like fascism and sacrificing babies to the gods - yes for a while we thought there's no alternative, but then we kind of realised that we were just being stupid.
Let's just throw it away, and I can guarantee you that we will come up with better answers.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
And HOSTS files can't block the most pernicious advertising on Slashdot: your posts.
Please stop pretending to be some sort of security analyst - you wrote a shitty front-end which installs other people's hosts files. Get over yourself.
I'm sure everyone has seen APK ("crazy hosts guy") flooding pretty much any topic on this.
There's ups and downs to host based blocking. But one upside that I hadn't considered until reading the Mozilla statement is that the existing web browsers have a lot of pull- if these "guidelines" become enforced, then ublock origin would be removed from the firefox store. You probably won't see this until chrome and firefox can both do it at about the same time, but it definitely looks like we are seeing a slow moving attempt to try to stop actual adblockers from running.
A hosts method isn't subject to this kind of "guideline". In general, an external binary / firewall isn't.
Anyway, interesting. We may need to explore executable options in the future. This seems yet another push for "acceptable ads" being shoved in everyone's face.
And yet your spamming will continue unabated with or without a HOSTS solution. With a client-side blocker, though, it can be removed trivially. I don't think advertising an ad-blocker through ads which it can't block is a good idea, but then I'm not off my meds.
Those are not ads, they're malware.
So if you want a content limited, pay-walled, countermeasure-riddled web -- just stick with that childish attitude. But if you want a sustainable, awesome web ecosystem -- then start proposing acceptable limitations that nurture the publishers we all love.
I remember the horrible, awful, web before advertising brought us to the Brave New World of 'content' that exists solely to make money from ads.
I'd like it back, please.
+1
I absolutely agree. Give me back the good old web where you didn't have to wade through tons of shovelsites full of bullshit "slideshows" made entirely to milk as much ad revenue as possible, and seriously annoy the users in the process.
My PC, my OS, my internet connection, my decision on how many ads I want to see (exactly none).
Eat the rich.
It's not a battle. The computer user determines what displays.
And that is NOT ads, thanks.
I'm still a big fan of that idea to turn off any and all spam filters for one week and show normal people what e-mail would be like if we didn't work so hard to make it halfway acceptable. After that week, either we can shut down all the SMTP servers because nobody is using e-mail anymore, or something would finally be done on the legal side of the problem.
(and to those who say it won't work: Fuck off, retard. We throw murderes and thieves in jail as well, and while the crime rates are not zero, they are a far cry from the ratio of spam, so apparently it does work if you snap out of your binary thinking.)
Hey, long time since someone dared to propose a solution to spam and make the following relevant again. With you low ID, you should know better.
Your post advocates a
( ) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
(X) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(X) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
(X) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
(X) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(X) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(X) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
() SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
Buzzfeed has found an easy way to get around ad blockers. Every single article is an ad. They are all sponsored. People love it, Buzzfeel is immensely popular at a time when traditional news outlets are dying.
You can't have it both ways either. If you want quality journalism it has to be paid for, either by adverts or by subscription. Subscripts are okay but if we want a plurality of news outlets that we can get a variety of views from and easily link to then putting them all behind a paywall isn't going to work.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If sites don't want me to go to their sites and block ads, they should stop responding to my http requests.
"Second, you are pushing for a non-sustainable approach which ultimately destroys that thing you obviously want."
it cuts both ways.
As website owners got greedy and began to occupy more and more of their precious pages with flashing banners, add popups, add popunders, they began to destroy the very thing they sought, that which had sustained them: user attention.
Adblocks have been a long time coming. We got to this point slowly
Well, if you like going to those sites, it does become your problem as the more people who block ads, the less revenue they generate, and then their content will start to get worse, and eventually they'll disappear.
So what if they do disappear? I'll move on to something else. I have NO problem paying for content that I find valuable and I subscribe to several sites. The rest of them can dry up and blow away as far as I'm concerned. What they provide isn't valuable enough for me to care. I might miss a few for half a second but I'd get over it. If they want to PAY ME cold hard cash to look at their ads and track what I do then we can have a discussion about it. Until then their business model is stupid and I'm not about to give away my bandwidth and attention without what I consider adequate compensation.
Their bad business model is not my problem.
You can't have it both ways either. If you want quality journalism it has to be paid for, either by adverts or by subscription.
I'm okay with that - the internet worked fine prior to the days of ads. It worked fine *for* *me*, though; viewers who want to simply see cat videos should cough up for their favourite cat video site. Those of us who wanted to discuss metalworking, or gardening, etc could do so both for free AND without advertisements.
In short - sites that cannot find enough paying customers *should* die. Sites that don't need paying customers will still survive.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
There should be one and exactly one principle as far as content blocking:
Block any and only the content the user identifies to the best degree possible.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Consider what you are arguing for. Get rid of free news sites with paid journalists, except for those funded some other way like the BBC or other state agencies. Many people will have to go back to getting news from ad supported TV channels or ad supported newspapers, so won't escape the ads anyway.
One of the reasons why newspapers are declining is the democratization of news. I think that's a good thing, it makes it harder to end up getting most of your news from a single (biased) source.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Mozilla want to focus on user needs instead of advertising. However a big user need for me is not to be the target of constant sales pitches. This means for me that the problem is advertising full stop, not the way that the advertising is carried out.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
If all ads on the internet were simple, text based or at least not animated, didn't play sounds, didn't block the content I actually want to see, didn't use tracking cookies and didn't take up much bandwidth, I would be happy to switch my ad blocker off.
The ads bother me for three reasons.
1) Bandwidth - if they want to buy me a gigabit fiber connection then they can talk to me about taking up my bandwidth. Until then then can fuck off.
2) Tracking - What I do on the web is my business and not theirs. If they want to track me then they can pay me cold hard cash and a lot of it. I'm NOT trading my privacy for a bit of ephemeral news content or articles about kittens.
3) Time - They are wasting my time which is the most precious thing I have. I have countless better things to do that engage in a war with self-entitled advertisers over whether they have a right to spew their ads at me and track my whereabouts.
Do you want major Corporations and those with money controlling the content on the web? Because, "I will block all ads, even static images" is how you get Corporations control content.
Ready to pay for "packages of sites? The " war" here hasn't even started and people are acting like its over. Those that can, will go paid. Want it free, you will see something you don't want to to pay for it. Some sites would actually save money if ad blocking people stopped coming. See what Verizon is doing with unlimited customers. Turning people awy can save you money.Lets not talk about how this will disadvantage those already effected by the digital divide.
A lot of very cool things will disappear that are in between needing ads and surviving on paid.
"Science is the power of man"
Consider what you are arguing for. Get rid of free news sites with paid journalists, except for those funded some other way like the BBC or other state agencies. Many people will have to go back to getting news from ad supported TV channels or ad supported newspapers, so won't escape the ads anyway.
One of the reasons why newspapers are declining is the democratization of news. I think that's a good thing, it makes it harder to end up getting most of your news from a single (biased) source.
I hear what you're saying and I have considered it: the internet was just as useful to me back when ads were not everywhere as it is now. I *prefer* having sites where people who share a common interest gather and share the cost.
The difference between what I'm saying and what you're hearing is this: I see the internet as a fount of useful information and a place to gather with other like-minded people. You see the internet as a place to read the latest news.
With no ads and only user-supported sites/forums I can still learn all that I want to learn. I get my news on the radio anyway. The majority of stuff I do on the internet is linked to non-news, non-facebook, non-twitter, non-social-media, non-cat-videos, non-youtube stuff and non-buzzfeed crap.
The stuff I *do* use the internet for are related to forums around auto repair, guitar playing, metalwork, carpentry, building/construction, fiction-reading/writing, watercolor painting, electronic circuits, software-writing (OSS contributions), pencil/charcoal sketching, cooking, exercise, mechanical design (building a mill in my garage)... and a lot more that I probably will only remember at some later time when I don't need to.
(I have a lot of hobbies - very busy usually)
So you see, *my* internet will remain - those forums are mostly ad-free (and the people running them usually reveal how much they make off ads). If ads go away, it only takes a few tens of members chipping in a few cents a year to keep it going. Most forums have hundreds or thousands of members.
Like I said before, the internet was all fine and pretty useful before ads - it will be all fine and still pretty damn useful if ads were to go away :-)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
It would be relatively straightforward to circumvent adblock. All it requires is that the ads be delivered from the same domain for urls used to fetch the content and ads cannot be separated by pattern matching. This might be too much effort for some smaller websites but I see no reason that bigger sites couldn't do it. e.g. 3rd party advertisers could offer some kind of webapp that runs inside the host's DMZ and works in conjunction with some kind of frontend url resolver that sends requests one way to fetch content or the other for ads (and ad clicks) so they both appear to originate from the same host.
It would also be simple to block the adblockers by looking for page elements which should be there but aren't and blocking the user until they disable ad blocking on the site. Some sites already do this and more might do it in time.
I see your point, but don't see why we can't have both. Usenet is still going, anyone can set up a free site and ad driven popular sites have pushed costs down for everyone.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
when i visit example.com, I cant see why on earth the browser would even allow content from 3rd party sites!
not only adds but things like google analytics are plain and simple spyware!
if a page have 3rd party media like audio,video,flash and images, they should automatically be replaced by a placeholders with url info & click to play.
and links should be treated as special read only tags, just like file inputs, no more showing one url and redirecting to another!
they could start by having every page with 3rd party scripts show a red open padlock or stopsign in the adress bar.
I see your point, but don't see why we can't have both. Usenet is still going, anyone can set up a free site and ad driven popular sites have pushed costs down for everyone.
Actually we *can* have both, but not if the advertisers get their way. Usenet fell by the wayside due to the wall of spam that came about, so chalk that up to advertisers killing a perfectly usable medium. The web is going to go the same way if site owners insist on intersitials(sp?) and other such tomfoolery. If the advertisers don't want lose eyeballs they'd better start behaving better - the market has spoken and it has almost universally spoken *against* advertisers.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I couldn't care less what principles Mozilla comes up with. I will continue to block all advertising no matter what.
If they've taught us nothing else over the years, advertisers have taught us that they are entirely untrustworthy, and so it's reasonable to avoid trusting them with data about me to the greatest degree I can.
But if you want a sustainable, awesome web ecosystem -- then start proposing acceptable limitations that nurture the publishers we all love.
For me, this is easy: stop tracking me. I don't mind ads. I despise the tracking that comes with them. Until that stops (which will be never), I will continue to block all ads.
I'd like it back, please.
Yes yes yes!! Me too. Every day I use the web, it makes me long for the days when it was better.
An arms race.
Oh, I forgot to comment on this bit: For me, there's no arms race and never will be. If I can't block ads on a site, I simply stop going to that site.
If I were the site I don't think I'd be sad to see the back of freeloaders. But honestly I doubt many people would flee at all whether they were blocking ads or not.
Please explain why it's "idiot simple".
Micro-payment, for example. There are a few prototypes out there already, sadly they don't have the reach they need. But I am absolutely willing to pay for things I like. If hitting a universal "I like this" button means an automatic, behind-the-scenes transfer of a few cents to the content creator, why not?
We don't notice that this "everything for free" attitude is also in parts a result of this advertisement poisoning the well. They've told us for years that we can get cool things for free, but they were lying to us. It's not for free at all. The price is just not in dollars.
The LotR movies made, according to a quick googling, a world-wide total of 2.9 billion $. Let's be honest with ourselves and say that a LOT of people saw them without paying. I know a bunch of people who did, because I bought the extended version DVDs and made a big home-cinema event for my friends.
I would dare to say close to a billion people probably watched these movies. That's $3 for everyone. Apparently, there is a lot of inefficiency in the system, because no legal source offers the movies for $1 a piece.
With less overhead in the system, we could bring these movies to everyone interested for a few bucks per person and without taking any revenue away from the creators. Sure, I didn't figure in the costs for operating a cinema or pressing DVDs. But I sincerely hope you are not trying to tell me that in those $15 cinema tickets only $1 is going to the studio?
My "I like" button is easily applied to media of all kinds. Duration of consumation is a perfectly good criterium. If I watch most or all of the movie, I pay a bit for it. If I watch it a second or third time, I pay less than for the first time, or not. Details TBD.
It is absolutely possible and normal to pay for content, and if it were priced correctly, I doubt so many people would opt out. We have seen it with iTunes already, which has made music reasonably cheap and comfortable to get and most people prefer it over hunting for a torrent.
We are beginning to see it with movies now with Netflix, and HBO and again iTunes / Apple TV.
We are beginning to see it with books as well. It won't work as well because physical books still have the better form factor, haptics and general appeal.
But the point is: People are ready to pay, if they don't feel extorted. People don't like to pay for movies because they are not priced fairly. 30 bucks to watch a movie with your GF? Seriously? For students, that's a lot of money. They could just pay the Hollywood stars a few millions less and make the movie half as expensive. Most people do not trick people of similar wealth, but when you see these guys driving to dream holiday locations in supercars, wearing designer clothes that cost more than you make in a month, there is much less of an ethical issue. That's just applied psychology. Heck, even Hollywood has understood this already and changed their anti-piracy messages to pointing out how many normal jobs depend on movies. It won't work if they don't make these normal people visible, though, but don't tell them.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Pretending I'm an advertiser for a moment: If you go to a page where I want you to see my ads, you'll see my ads, at least the first time you load the page, and probably ever time thereafter. Why? Because I understand how ad-blockers work and they're not hard to outsmart. Have you ever built an adblocker? I ask because you'd have to build your own, rather complex, adblocker to keep me from being able to show you undesired ads.
The computer user doesn't determine what displays, the programs running to display desired content determine what displays. Programs to force unwanted advertising don't have to be nearly as sophisticated as the ones that are designed to block them. Right now, advertisers and programmers haven't cared enough to change the way most ads are delivered, but that's changing. Eventually, the end user can win because they have the potential to control the computer that does the actual display but they won't anytime soon. The programming skills to accomplish that goal are tremendously sophisticated. No current adblocker is even remotely close to being that sophisticated.
Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook have the programmers capable of writing adblockers that sophisticated, but none of them has the incentive.
I was blocking advertising and other junk before adblockers became something you could just add to a browser. I needed to learn how in order to effectively use the terrible bandwidth I had in those days, so I had to learn a lot about what can and can't be done. If advertisers get determined enough to outsmart the adblockers available today, my experience assures me that we'll start getting bombarded with crap again no matter what adblocker we try. I'm still hoping for an ecosystem change rather than that outcome, because if it goes that far, the money it will take to build a successful adblocker against that scenario will mean we'll have to pay out of pocket to fund it.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Hey, long time since someone dared to propose a solution to spam and make the following relevant again. With you low ID, you should know better.
So you didn't read what I wrote.
So, I repeat: No, it would not make spam go to zero. Just like making theft illegal has not eliminated theft. However, the fact that it is a crime and is prosecuted and people go to jail for it certainly contributes a lot to the fact that in general we don't have very much of it.
Sure, spam would come from Russia and China. So? Just because something doesn't work 100% doesn't mean we should give up. Oh yes, and a lot of spam does come out of the USA. And even more of the actual spammers (the people, not the mail servers) are in the US.
(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
Bullshit. Follow the money. What is being advertised, who runs that business and who did he pay for sending spam? Yes, a lot of the crap advertised is itself illegal, but again, doing something is better than doing nothing.
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
You just put crosses at random, yes? Users of email will not put up with spammers being put in jail? I very much doubt anyone would be sorry for them.
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
Absolute bullshit. It requires nobody to cooperate. If it is a crime I can take the spam I got today and go to the police and that's it. You don't have to cooperate and neither does anyone else.
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
Not necessary. I'll stop at this point because it's becoming apparent you just put crosses at random without actually thinking about it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I agree with your points, but maybe not your conclusion. The computer user DOES determine what displays, because he will determine which programs are running. While an advertiser could absolutely push ads through the current blocking schemes (at relatively great cost), the amount of effort needed to remove that on the end users side will ultimately be feasible and worthwhile. The advertiser needs to get a return on investment, so any of his workarounds will be met with both user hostility and sophisticated solutions that will be disseminated rapidly.
I heard a suggestion the other day. Someone speculated that content providers should distribute the desirable content through the same systems that distribute the advertisements. Personally I'd be more inclined as an content provider or an advertising distributor to incorporate an advertising module directly on the content server. Adblockers use pattern recognition and source recognition to determine which content components are advertising. Both strategies are defeated when the advertising patterns are randomized and coming from the same sources.
In order to block advertising in either of those situations, adblockers will have to evolve to be able to interpret the desired content and process and interpret the content displayed well enough to figure out which parts aren't related to the same subject matter. There isn't AI advanced enough to do that consistently anywhere yet, let alone in software you could run in your computer and it is a long, long way from being something you can put in a browser add-on. There are a couple things holding advertisers back from implementing more unavoidable schemes, but when they find their revenue dying due to widespread adblocking, they'll have the motivation.
Everybody wins if we can reach a consensus on what constitutes acceptable advertising. That's a big if, but I'm glad to see Mozilla making the attempt.
Another alternative I'm on-board with is a per-visitor micropayment system. Google's already offering that but until there is a common consensus, and some way to get payments exchanged between different middle companies, it's a partial measure only. It's been tried before and failed, but I but I still hold hope since that was before adblocking became commonplace.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
It seems to me that newspaper decline is disastrous, as we're losing fact checking and long articles. We see more copy-pasting journalism (e.g. Reuters or AFP wire news) or not even that, as "retweeting" crap spares the effort. So, blatantly false news and outright fabrications get broadcast instantly all over the world, such as "Kim Jong Un killed his ex-girlfriend" ; then you get to choose from 1000 media sources to hear the same bad news, and the weakened newspapers can hardly check and balance as they used to.
You can find many alternative sources, but the general masses will not have been exposed to them and some of them will provide weak or fabricated news too. e.g. RT News may post things you can agree with but a lot of the content is likely made up. Then you can bury yourself in a filtering bubble, whether an algorithmic one or just frequenting the same circles and sites over again.
You may find the news more "democratic" and they may be somewhat but I feel like democracy is week at the moment. Biggest corporations and richest people have been continuously getting more powerful and dissent is locked away in social media posts or drowned into a see of crap.
Real journalists are still needed, news without journalists is like war without soldiers (blow stuff up from the air for a decade and watch everything go to shit)
No advertising is acceptable. I will block all ads. You should too.
Speculating on how some particular pattern recognition versus spam war will go down is not easy. Certainly, the advertisers are doing all they can to force their bullshit into the eyes of those that don't want it, but ultimately, your PC, your rules.