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German Publisher Axel Springer Bans Adblocking Users From Bild Website (axelspringer.de)
An anonymous reader writes: Major European publishing house Axel Springer has instituted countermeasures against users who employ adblocking software on its Bild news outlet, which represents a daily publication with a print circulation of 2.5 million. The website now presents readers with a request to either turn off the adblocking or pay a €2.99 monthly subscription fee. In a statement the company insists that online journalism must be funded by one of the 'two known revenue pillars' — advertising or sales.
It's a no brainer to block all ads and adblock-detecting scripts as well. I went there and could access all normal content with uBlock + noscript.
The biggest issue with their ads is that I don't ever click on them even if I see them. I'm the "don't look for something until I need it, then I buy it" kind of person. So, let's say I'm looking for a chair. I'll do my research, and likely purchase a chair in a day. That's before the ad network gets updated. What's hilarious is the ads are showing me the chair I bought (creepy yes) but that chair is no longer of interest to me for purchase. And it continues doing so for the next month or more. Almost all my purchases are done this way, as that allows for strong budgeting.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
So I decided to give them a try and comply with their request. Disabled uBlock and visited the site. To be fair there don't seem to be animated or noisy ads on there. The page was pretty slow to load due to the ad servers taking several seconds to respond. The site itself seems be be a "tabloid" style paper (I don't read German), with some soft porn on the front page (scroll down a bit) and crappy looking content.
Then I tried to read an article, and it displayed the first few lines and then demand â0.99 for the rest. Fuck you Bild, I accepted your ads and shitty Javascript and you still want me to pay for your content? I already paid!
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Christ, nearly 6MB in 642 URL requests just to load their home page once. Anyhoo, from two full fetches of their home page. Excepting the dozens of trackers and advert organisations that I haven't noted to be involved in malware, we have:
smartclip.net: Party to LG "Smart TV" spying without consent.
turn.com: Repeated malware advertisments to-date. Most recently infecting iPhones.
ads.yahoo.com: Repeated malware advertisments to-date.
serving-sys.com: Repeated malware advertisments to-date.
advertising.com: Repeated malware advertisments to-date.
adnxs.com: Repeated malware advertisments to-date, including Angler Exploit Kit via MSN.com
adscale.de: Malware advertisements.
adsrvr.org: Malware adverts, pushing virus-infected toolbars
rubiconproject.com: Repeated malware bundlers, unwanted toolbars, search result injectors, home-page meddling
mathtag.com: Malware advertisements.
openx.net: Repeated malware advertisments to-date.
bidswitch.net: Malware advertising. Most recently infecting iPhones.
This isn't advert blocking. It's a crucial layer of system security.