Google Wants Online Ad Improvement Within Months, Not Years (wsj.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Speaking at the Wall Street Journal's WSJD Live Conference, Google's senior vice president of adverts and commerce Sridhar Ramaswamy has said (paywalled) that advertisers need to address the shortcomings of online ads within 'months'. "This is essential to our survival" said Ramaswamy. "We're talking about getting this in a time frame of months rather than years. We need to get going on this." Ramaswamy was referring to recent commitment from the advertising industry to halt the rise of adblocking services by addressing common reader annoyances such as autoplay video, overly complex and slow-loading content, and excessive tracking.

Comments

well then

[fyngyrz]

Well then the first thing Google should do is go back to text ads that didn't drag our poor browsers all over the damned web. You know, the actual reasonable ads that they put out once upon a time. That would be great.

Re: well then

[Anonymous Coward]

And stop accepting money from the bad advertisers. Oh yeah, and stop collecting data. Think that's going to happen? Nope. Google is the driving force behind all this ad-crap and data collection. Google needs to die.

Re: well then

[AvitarX]

This exactly, though I don't mind images, and even a few frames of movement.

But Google upended advertising by doing less annoying ads than the competition, but targeting them well.

They remain relatively less annoying advertisers I think, but they should definitely lead by example.

Of course this benefits them, they're powerful data collection means they can do beat with the simple ads, simpler advertising will give them more market share.

Re:well then

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, at least text ads don't sap my computer's processing power and memory. I used to think someone buying a computer for web browsing wouldn't require much horsepower but the way things have gone with Flash, CSS, and Javascript, you do need a pretty decent computer to surf the web.

Re: well then

[greenfruitsalad]

i've noticed that it's not just ads that do that in the US. i hate it when i middle click links (to US news sites) in slashdot summaries and then have to quickly go through all the new tabs to see which ones have the annoying women talking about something i've no interest in. it's always a stupid video in a sidebar (completely unrelated to the article). wtf america?

Re:well then

[greenfruitsalad]

i miss the old internet
- half of it was under_construction(.gif)
- half had + MIDI file playing in the background
- and the remaining 4 halves were porn in 256 colours

everything was nicely formatted with tables and centered. the fanciest of webpages even had comic sans.

Re:well then

[martin-boundary]

NO ads are reasonable. The purpose of an ad is to steal a small part of a person's attention while they are doing something else. It is evil, pure and simple.

(and BTW, humans have lived on earth for thousands of years, and 99% of that time ads didn't exist.)

Re:well then

[greenfruitsalad]

BLINK + MIDI

Re:well then

[TheRaven64]

They should also go back to displaying ads relevant to the content of the page that I'm looking at, not relevant to some crappy model of what I might be interested in in general. I actually clicked on a few ads back when they did this, because I was interested in the thing that they were advertising at exactly the time that they showed me the ad. It's been years since I've seen a Google ad that's been remotely interesting to me.

It amazes me that Google managed to disrupt the ad industry by adding non-intrusive, relevant, ads to pages that people were far more likely to click on than the annoying crap that their competitors were offering, yet now does exactly the same thing as everyone else.

Re: well then

[gweihir]

Google needs to die.

Indeed. And then we could have competition on the search-engine front again, because Google search frankly sucks.

Re:well then

[gweihir]

Not quite. There was for example mandatory ad consumption of the worst kind every Sunday in Christianity. And even worse in other religions. At least the cretins today only want to sell you something and are fairly easy to ignore. But this type of plague has been with the human race for a long, long time.

Re:well then

[Ashtead]

This.

There is nothing as wasted as an ad for something that I just bought... yet that has happened several times: I have just bought something on ebay (or wherever) and sure enough, here comes an advertisement for the same exact thing. That model is simply broken.

Re:well then

[jafiwam]

This.

There is nothing as wasted as an ad for something that I just bought... yet that has happened several times: I have just bought something on ebay (or wherever) and sure enough, here comes an advertisement for the same exact thing. That model is simply broken.

They aren't distinguishing between "viewed page about" and "bought."

I get ads on Facebook (some of the only few ads I see) from Amazon for things I have been looking at on Amazon. Sometimes they actually show the thing I was looking for but couldn't find at first try. Sometimes it's just stuff off my "Wish List."

So it isn't a foolish waste. Plus, when you just bought the thing, your mind is probably picking it off the page more consistently. The other stuff you looked at but didn't buy is probably there too.

Re: well then

[tippen]

And then we could have competition on the search-engine front again, because Google search frankly sucks.

Not sure what planet you are living on, but oddly enough, you are free to use all those other search engines that are better than Google.

/boggle

Re:well then

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd just be happy if ads were not a source, if not the primary source, for malware on the Net. Ads are not just an invasion of privacy, but a severe security risk.

I doubt any ad company gives a rat's ass about this, other than to find a reason/excuse to fight AdBlock, but in any other field, an organized group that allows or tolerates malware being served through their machines would have been long since shut down by local LEOs or a cooperative Interpol effort.

Driving this point home, replace "malvertising" with "IP infringement" and see how long a company that served up ads with the latest Star Wars in 1080i for direct download would last.

Re: well then

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is the driving force behind all this ad-crap and data collection. Google needs to die.

Just go to the Android Play store and tap on same random app and check its permissions. 99% of these apps collect data they should not. If Google is evil, other companies are mini-evil. Getting rid of one company solves nothing.

Re: well then

[gweihir]

And why would I want more competition if though there actually were better alternatives? Seriously, can you read?

Re: well then

[Coren22]

because Google search frankly sucks.

Yes, we can read. If Google search sucks so bad, go use the alternative. No one is forcing anyone to use Google. By all accounts, Bing is great, though uses way more bandwidth, and Yahoo just uses Bing's results. But if you hate Google's search so much, feel free to go somewhere else, it doesn't require Google to burn before you can go elsewhere.

Re: well then

[Coren22]

I hate this about CNN, I have a ton of things to try and stop their autoplaying videos on 90% of the articles (even ones that indicate they have no video). I like to middle click on the interesting articles, then go through and read them, but CNN makes me not want to use their site at all as all the videos load and start playing.

Re:well then

[Coren22]

Thousands of repeats of the same Gif over and over... Geocities was the place to be.

Re:well then

[Coren22]

I always love the ads for the products I just bought, like I am going to buy another telescope or computer after just buying one.

Re:well then

[Anonymous Coward]

Au contraire, advertising is thousands of years old - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising#Pre-modern_history.

Re: well then

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the Android Play thing you are talking about? It sounds like a crappy version of F-Droid.

Re: well then

[tlhIngan]

But Google upended advertising by doing less annoying ads than the competition, but targeting them well.

They remain relatively less annoying advertisers I think, but they should definitely lead by example.

Considering Google owns all the other advertisers for the most part, I don't think that's true anymore. They could easily "lead by example" since they do own a good chunk of the companies that pioneered popups, popunders, "rich ads" and other things.

In fact, it seems the amount of people using Google Ads has gone down - perhaps Google is shuffling them to one of their other ad networks because they bring in more money?

All Google has to do is... just do it.

Re:well then

[Anonymous Coward]

they could quit with the tracking every pageview on every site that has anything google-related on it (that includes doubleclick, youtube, google+, adwords, g-a, etc), as well. unnecessary third-party scripts are a vector for not only performance issues, but also malware, scams, and crooks.

Re:well then

[Anonymous Coward]

TIME CUBE FTW 4 SIDED DAY 4EVAH!

Re: well then

[gweihir]

Well then you seem to have a defect in your mind. Because "Google sucks" does in no way imply that the current alternatives are better. The royal "we" is also eminently unbecoming.

Re:well then

[Anonymous Coward]

I use privacy badger. Its not an ad blocker, but a blocker for cookies that send info back to advertisers.
I just love blocking those. As result, I can enjoy reading an article without having a noisy poor taste girly add pushed in my face.

And then ?

[rudy_wayne]

"This is essential to our survival" said Ramaswamy. "We're talking about getting this in a time frame of months rather than years. We need to get going on this."

And when advertisers do nothing, then what? A sternly worded blog entry?

Advertisers don't give a shit. That's why there's a problem in the first place

Re:And then ?

[Lord Bitman]

The question is: Does Google have enough money / clout to piss off its main source of revenue? Are advertisers still its main source of revenue?

When advertisers do nothing, Google could (theoretically) say "follow our new standards or you are banned from our ad network". I mean, that's the obvious thing they "could" do. Whether or not they have the ability to get away with that, that's another thing.

Re:And then ?

[Lunix Nutcase]

You say "duh" and be glad you continued ad blocking? Why would anyone trust an advertiser?

Re:And then ?

[mjwx]

The question is: Does Google have enough money / clout to piss off its main source of revenue? Are advertisers still its main source of revenue?

When advertisers do nothing, Google could (theoretically) say "follow our new standards or you are banned from our ad network". I mean, that's the obvious thing they "could" do. Whether or not they have the ability to get away with that, that's another thing.

The thing is, it isn't the customers driving the bad habits in advertising. Those who buy advertising want it to be effective, but aren't really too well clued in as to how this happens. Of course the best advertising campaigns are the ones that are inoffensive but to be inoffensive and effective is hard to do so most advertisers deliberately be offensive in order to be noticed. Google needs to target the advertising providers, not the advertising buyers. Very few companies will say "give me an annoying banner ad with viruses and malware that pops up over the content people are trying to see and is near impossible to remove" because they know this will piss people off. What companies say is "we need more customers" and the advertising agency says "we will bring you more customers" without being specific and the company doesn't give a shit about the specifics as long as money is being made.

In fact, I'd bet its the companies that do give a shit about their advertising that produce the least offensive advertising.

As Google derives much of it's revenue from advertisers and is smart enough to realise that advertising offensiveness is the reason that ad blockers are becoming more and more common, so they have a vested interest in changing the industry.

Finally, for Australians playing along at home, a good example of inoffensive and effective are the Bunnings ads, 20 years on the same format speaks for itself (inevitably though, there is bound to be someone who hates them).

Re:And then ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You love sucking dinks I see. What a sissy poof you are.

Re:And then ?

[AmiMoJo]

Google has already started enforcing better advertising. Beta versions of Chrome now don't play flash ads by default, for example.

It's in Google's interests to enforce reasonable standards for ads. The more people who block ads the less money they get, so making ads acceptable is a profitable goal for them. They have enough clout to force advertisers to comply too, because those that don't will find themselves kicked off Google networks and demoted in search results.

Re:And then ?

[GuB-42]

Yes / yes
If you don't comply with their terms and conditions, you will be banned from their ad network, at least until you fix your site. And they tend to be more and more demanding, enough to drive off a few website owners.
And if Google thinks your site is abusive in some way, it will be considered "low quality" and your search engine ranking will suffer, among with other penalties.

easy fixes

[laurencetux]

1 have ads limited to less than 25% of the page

2 stop cutting articles into index card sized chunks to increase ad slots

3 NO AUTOPLAYING VIDEOS (unless the page is for a single video)

4 no more than 3 videos per page

5 no POP under over in down up (or any of the 8 possible directions)

6 absolutely no mimicking SYSTEM level elements or hiding existing ones (gimme a proper close button that does so)

7 No Audio or Animations

Re:easy fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

You just described Youporn's home page and how they derive a bunch of their revenue.

Please don't make Youporn go away.

Pretty please, sugar on top?

Re:easy fixes

[speederaser]

My one simple rule for ads:

0. Don't do anything that a dead-tree magazine can't do.

For me that about covers it since mimicking Windows system elements on my Linux box just makes the advertiser look incompetent.

Re:easy fixes

[laurencetux]

cut outs of course for sites that ads ARE the content on

Re: easy fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

My simple rule for ads: block every fucking one of them.

That rule has served me well for years.

Re:easy fixes

[rtb61]

Seriously? The number one most important issue in advertising is truth or more accurately the lack there of. So truth and nothing but the truth in advertising and all paid advertisements should be subject to legal challenge (based upon the number of citizen complaints) and substantiation, should the claims prove false, than those who provided the ad to the consumer should be prosecuted.

Next up liability for false advertisements should cover all those who profited by it, including the product or service sellers, the producer of the advertisement, those paid to appear in the advertisement and those who displayed the ad for profit. All should be liable for damages resulting from purchased of product or service under false pretences.

Consumer manipulation via reinforcement, subliminal messaging and false association should all be banned. If the claim is advertising is about nothing but informing the consumer about the product or service, than that is all the advertisement should do, inform the consume of the provable facts about the product or service.

All advertisements targeted at minors should be straight up banned, there is no space in any caring modern thoughtful society for adults who would economically target children's pocket money in order to live to extreme excess. The is absolutely no excuse imaginable for adults targeting children with advertisements that are not in the best interests of the child. Pretty much all messaging targeted at minors should be subject to public psychological review to ensure mental health and safety and to prevent the manipulation and exploitation of minors by uncaring greedy, lets be blunt, shit heads.

Now we can look at stuff like invasion of privacy and based upon that hugely disruptive ads targeted at the wrong people ie junk food ads targeted at type 2 diabetics (especially as that is what turned them into diabetics in the first place), gambling ads to gambling addicts, ads to generate fear in those vulnerable to it, peer pressure marketing targeted at those subject to conformist pressures etc etc

Re:easy fixes

[fahrbot-bot]

5 no POP under over in down up (or any of the 8 possible directions)

However, Pop-Tarts ads still okay.

Re:easy fixes

[Shompol]

Ads are always a lie, even if they say "truth, only truth and nothing but". Ads are designed to present a lopsided picture of the market in favour of the ad sponsor. I would love to see the entire ad industry banned as they do nothing constructive for the economy, as their purpose is to mislead.

Re:easy fixes

[nukenerd]

Ads are always a lie

Perhaps it is different in the US, but in the UK it is illegal for an advert to give false information, and it is quite common for advertisers to be taken to court over it. Court cases are usually by individuals though, so there is not much clout. Perhaps because of this legal threat, mainstream adverts tend, rather than lie, to give no information at all. An advert for beer, say, will show some brainless idiot falling off a ladder and landing on a mattress that someone happens to be carrying past at that moment, and doing a string of such antics while keeping up a cheesy smile, and finally opening a can of the beer in question. Nothing is said about how good or otherwise the beer is, only (in my eyes anyway) that it is drunk by cheesy idiots.

Of couse I am drawing a line between mainstream adverts (on TV and website pop-ups, whose purpose is only to associate a brand with a lifestyle) and low-key adverts of the type you need to look for on their own web sites; like if I am thinking of buying a camera I will go and browse the websites of Canon, Pentax etc for info. The latter type of website is less likely to lie as in the UK at least they would be open to prosecution if they told plain lies.

Re:easy fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

3 NO AUTOPLAYING VIDEOS (unless the page is for a single video)

No unless! I hate when I restart my browser or it crashes, and when I start it up again 5 tabs with youtube vids start autoplaying all at once. No autoplay ever!

Re:easy fixes

[AmiMoJo]

You forgot

8 No tracking. No cookies. No logging IP addresses. No canvas fingerprinting

9 No Javascript

10 No delay displaying the page or causing it to reflow

Re:easy fixes

[gweihir]

Well, that comes pretty close to describing my blocking habits. And I even go so far as to block in firewall rules if other things do not work.

Re:easy fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

Ads are always a lie

Perhaps it is different in the US, but in the UK it is illegal for an advert to give false information, and it is quite common for advertisers to be taken to court over it. Court cases are usually by individuals though, so there is not much clout.

Perhaps because of this legal threat, mainstream adverts tend, rather than lie, to give no information at all. An advert for beer, say, will show some brainless idiot falling off a ladder and landing on a mattress that someone happens to be carrying past at that moment, and doing a string of such antics while keeping up a cheesy smile, and finally opening a can of the beer in question. Nothing is said about how good or otherwise the beer is, only (in my eyes anyway) that it is drunk by cheesy idiots.
 

Of couse I am drawing a line between mainstream adverts (on TV and website pop-ups, whose purpose is only to associate a brand with a lifestyle) and low-key adverts of the type you need to look for on their own web sites; like if I am thinking of buying a camera I will go and browse the websites of Canon, Pentax etc for info. The latter type of website is less likely to lie as in the UK at least they would be open to prosecution if they told plain lies.

In the U.S., the advertisers will slap up anything they want and claim "free speech" if you call them on it. Given the anti-consumer legal system we have now, you are just as likely to lose a lawsuit against a company that you claim is advertising falsely. As long as America keep electing pro-corporation people, we will continue with this nonsense.

Re:easy fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

However, Pop-Tarts ads still okay.

The are not okay until they bring back non frosted Cherry!

Re:easy fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

There are false advertising laws (among other advertising laws, like the one with beer commercials being unable to show people actually drinking) in the U.S. The real issue is that the advertisers know exactly where the lines are. They will either make zero factual claims (it is all opinion or puffing) or will make the claims so specific they cannot be false (4 out of 5 doctors agree, according to a survey of 5 doctors on a particular day and hour and if we didn't get the results we wanted, we'd have done another the next hour).

Re:easy fixes

[LessThanObvious]

That would be a seriously good start. Once there I'd just ask for more safeguards against malware and invasive tracking. If I visit a site, the site operator in my mind is ethically responsible for assuring any ads presented do not contain malicious code.

Not Excessive Tracking

[FunkSoulBrother]

Not Excessive Tracking -- any tracking. They can put whatever they want in a static, hosted by the first-party domain, text or image ad, with no javascript, and I'll happily allow it past my blockers. Hell they probably wouldn't be able to catch it anyway.

Just treat it like taking out an ad in Time Magazine or the New York Times, and there won't be any serious number of people blocking you.

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[Anonymous Coward]

Not Excessive Tracking -- any tracking. They can put whatever they want in a static, hosted by the first-party domain, text or image ad, with no javascript, and I'll happily allow it past my blockers. Hell they probably wouldn't be able to catch it anyway.

Just treat it like taking out an ad in Time Magazine or the New York Times, and there won't be any serious number of people blocking you.

If that's what you require, be prepared for one of three things to happen: Even more ads on the page, paywall, or no page.

Your slashdot ID is low enough that you may recall the days before AdWords/AdSense, when web advertising was even more obnoxious than it is today. Google was able to do a better job with its low-key text-based ads... but the reason it was able to do better was because its ads were targeted. Targeting increases the value to the advertiser. Remove that, and the value goes down, which means the ad network and the site owner get less money per ad. That means either more ads on the page, or else that the page won't get enough revenue to continue operating. Or maybe the web will shift to a subscription model, where you pay money for your content, rather than looking at ads.

There are always a few vocal slashdotters who say they'd like to go back to the era when all sites were labors of love running on stolen time on university hardware. I suppose if that's what you really want, good for you.

Anyway, figure out what's most important to you. What content do you want, and how do you want to pay for it? Cash, have your eyeballs assaulted with untargeted ads, or have a few, relevant targeted ads? Or no content. Those are your choices. Choose well.

And note that "Block all the ads!" doesn't work in the long run. If everyone does it, then sites will either paywall or die.

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[peppepz]

I've been on the internet since the time of 28.8 modems and I don't remember ads being more obnoxious than today. Once upon a time they were just banners of animated gifs of two different sizes, with a couple of frames of animation. Things started getting awful when advertisers began taking advantage of javascript to manipulate the browser window, favorites and so on. Which got fixed after browsers began blocking pop-ups (and IIRC that move was induced by the appearance of third-party plugins, too). Nowadays, with HTML5, advertisers are free to do whatever they want - and they exercise that freedom to the maximum extent. Pages are artificially restricted to one third of the visible screen, with the two remaining thirds reserved for huge ads that often contain - let's say so - eye-catching content that cannot be hidden. Self-playing videos will pop up from every corner of the page, either automatically or when you make the mistake of hovering the mouse pointer over them, perhaps while the pointer was on its way to click a link that you effectively were interested in. Such videos become full-screen, have extremely bandwidth-intensive content and play abrupt, annoying audio tracks that are always recorded at an extremely high volume, and the button to close them, when it's not missing or not working, is extremely hard to find and use. And I haven't talked about the extreme espionage put in place by ad networks: not only they will make a dossier about you even if you don't log into any site you visit, but now they will even associate that dossier with your real identity when you buy stuff in the real world.

I have nothing but admiration and respect for the United States of America. I think that you are a great country, built by great people, who have a lot to teach to the rest to the world. But I also think that you should stop believing the FUD that the world will end if you don't let mega-corporations rape your rights in every possible way. Compromises can be made, too, once in a while.

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[nukenerd]

I've been on the internet since the time of 28.8 modems and I don't remember ads being more obnoxious than today.

Luxury! I was on a 14.4 modem. There were hardly any adverts then, and those that were were - had to be - low key. Anything elaborate would have slowed things to a glacier pace and you would have hung up, redialed, and gone elsewhere.

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[Anonymous Coward]

> And note that "Block all the ads!" doesn't work in the long run. If everyone does it, then sites will either paywall or die.

Good. All this crap needs to go back to TV where it belongs. The internet would be improved by 100% if all ad supported sites died today.

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[nukenerd]

There are always a few vocal slashdotters who say they'd like to go back to the era when all sites were labors of love running on stolen time on university hardware. I suppose if that's what you really want, good for you.

Some serious bollocks there, AC. People used stolen time and university hardware in those days because it was very expensive. These days it is as cheap as chips. No-one will ever be going back to those days.

Anyway, figure out what's most important to you. What content do you want, and how do you want to pay for it? Cash, have your eyeballs assaulted with untargeted ads, or have a few, relevant targeted ads? Or no content. Those are your choices. Choose well. .......And note that "Block all the ads!" doesn't work in the long run. If everyone does it, then sites will either paywall or die.

I do pay - I pay for my interent access and I also pay for hosting four websites. But my websites are free, have no adverts on them, and they cost me peanuts. They will still be there, as will millions of others. It will be the likes of YouTube and Twitter that will go, but even those will be replaced by something equivalent as long as people have an urge to upload their cat videos.

Most people here seem of the view, and it's also the point of TFA, is that low key adverts are OK. Paper magazines did fine on non-animated non-pop-up adverts. Targeted adverts - yes, just like I get from ebay for a car washer for months after I have actually bought a car washer through them - I'm sure the world will keep on turning without them.

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[Anne Thwacks]

Bring back 110 baud modems - that will fix 'em!

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[tepples]

The internet would be improved by 100% if all ad supported sites died today.

Slashdot is ad supported. So this 100% improvement would lose your comments on Slashdot. Perhaps the red site is more your style?

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[tepples]

People used stolen time and university hardware in those days because it was very expensive. These days it is as cheap as chips. No-one will ever be going back to those days.

If there are no advertisers to fund the distribution of compelling articles, videos, and social networking platforms, how many people will continue to subscribe to home Internet? Probably not nearly as many. This means ISPs will have to spread their fixed costs across fewer customers. Internet won't be "cheap as chips" anymore.

It will be the likes of YouTube and Twitter that will go, but even those will be replaced by something equivalent as long as people have an urge to upload their cat videos.

Sure, you can buy a domain, buy some S3 static hosting by Amazon, and put your blog and videos on an S3 site. But without YouTube and Twitter, how will your blog and videos get any exposure?

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucky, lucky bastard! In my day, we had to open the door and shout across the street.

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[JohnFen]

What content do you want, and how do you want to pay for it? Cash, have your eyeballs assaulted with untargeted ads, or have a few, relevant targeted ads? Or no content. Those are your choices. Choose well.

I don't think those are the only choices, but I'll pretend: out of that set, my choice would be cash. If I can't have that, then untargeted ads.

I consider targeted ads to be not just annoying. They're actively evil and the worst choice of the three.

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a poor memory, it was common for sites to have SEVERAL popup add at the same time. Some of the popups would refuse to close (if closed they would spawn two more)

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[Anonymous Coward]

> But without YouTube and Twitter, how will your blog and videos get any exposure?

the same way they do with youtube and twitter, by people telling other people, hey look at this, and the network effects of that

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[FunkSoulBrother]

If there are no advertisers to fund the distribution of compelling articles, videos, and social networking platforms, how many people will continue to subscribe to home Internet? Probably not nearly as many. This means ISPs will have to spread their fixed costs across fewer customers. Internet won't be "cheap as chips" anymore.

Oh please, Netflix and Amazon alone will keep people subscribed to ISP service in mass quantity, and Twitter could be built out, if a bit clunkier, without some massive corporate force behind it. I don't have an answer for YouTube and its massive bandwidth use -- probably will have to go subscription or die. Oh well.

Remember that we're not going to lose the tech advances that the current internet drove -- a modern computer and home network connection can serve a shitload of 1999-era web content. We'll be fine.

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been on the internet since the time of 28.8 modems and I don't remember ads being more obnoxious than today.

Luxury! I was on a 14.4 modem. There were hardly any adverts then, and those that were were - had to be - low key. Anything elaborate would have slowed things to a glacier pace and you would have hung up, redialed, and gone elsewhere.

Luxury! I accessed internet - email only, and my email address was rather long - in the mid 1980s through a BBS with a 1200bps modem (it cost a fortune, but was state of the art), later upgrading to a 2400bps modem with MNP5 at a similar price. By the time I got a cheaper 14.4kbps modem, it was the late 1980s, and there were no ads on WAIS. When I got a relatively inexpensive 28.8kbps modem, it was the early 1990s, and there were no ads that I could see on Gopher.

Nope, no ads at all on the early internet. Even in the first days of the web, there was damned little advertising. After a few years, it all started to go downhill in advertising.

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[FunkSoulBrother]

well, I suck at tags, but the point still stands :-)

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[Anonymous Coward]

But without YouTube and Twitter, how will your blog and videos get any exposure?

The same way my present site (which lacks ads of any sort) gets exposure. First, by those who appear on the site, or their relatives. Second, by those who get told about it by the first group. Third, by those who get told about it by the second group. And so forth. In other words, it's all word of mouth and free of any and all advertising. My site gets traffic of up to 350GB/month (that's about 3Tbit for those who prefer bits to bytes) as a result.

Re:Not Excessive Tracking

[tepples]

by people telling other people, hey look at this, and the network effects of that

But once YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook shut down due to lack of ad revenue, then through what medium will people be "telling other people, hey look at this"?

Years too late

[Anonymous Coward]

The train left the station long ago. Now that so many people are pissed about ads/tracking, it will take a lot of work to undo. They should have done this when adblockers first arrived.

Security

[Anonymous Coward]

Ads suck. Ads that can compromise your systems security really suck.

Re:Security

[0123456]

I notice that there is no mention of cleaning up the malware/exploit/drive-by-download issues the advertising networks currently have.

If you eliminate all but simple text and image ads, you pretty much eliminate the malware problems. Obviously image decoders do sometimes have bugs that allow infection, so text-only ads would be even better.

PANIC @ Google

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is all the hype about ad blockers on the iPhone made enough noise for a lot of people to decide "thats for me" and its now impacting Googles ability to sell ads and track people.

That one product has the ability to severely damage the 90% of Googles income.

I know my browsing experience has improved so much with ad blockers on ALL my devices I would never go back.

Waiting for "years" to fix the advertising mess will only serve to entrench blockers more firmly and more widely among users.
The ad blocking war has just started in earnest, just waiting now for the first major casualties.

Google is right to panic, they have everything to loose.

Re:PANIC @ Google

[martin-boundary]

Google is right to panic, they have everything to loose.

It's a self inflicted predicament. They shouldn't have gone into bed with evil Doubleclick.

Re:PANIC @ Google

[gweihir]

Indeed. They deserve all the pain coming their way and more for that. But I guess GREED has set in at Google just as in any other large corporation.

Sell your own fucking ads

[DogDude]

The problem is that nobody is selling their own ads. It's that simple. It's these stupid shitty ad networks (Google, included) that are the problem. And I'm always going to block them. If web sites want to sell their OWN advertising and host it from their OWN web sites, then I'd have absolutely no problem. But, what web site wants to employ salespeople and (ad) designers when you can just copy and paste a line of code into a web site? Well, I think the ones that continue to do that into the future are the ones that aren't going to make money. Whether they stick around or not is up to them. I wouldn't mind having a pre-AOL web back, personally. But sites that rely on ad networks for revenue are going to start drying up as more and more people block these stupid fucking ad networks. Web sites that produce valuable content are going to (have to) employ people to sell advertisements and put those ads into their own content, just like the big boys of the much-scorned "old media" do (ie: Newspapers, TV, Radio).

Re:Sell your own fucking ads

[lambsonic]

Exactly, but that requires "premium" (somewhat valuable), "original" (somewhat creative) content, which doesn't fit into the "monetize web properties" model of the industry.

Ironic

[Oligonicella]

As I'm watching Shield right now and the only commercials that won't play worth a crap are Google's.

Security

[Anonymous Coward]

I notice that there is no mention of cleaning up the malware/exploit/drive-by-download issues the advertising networks currently have.

Until they can stop malware, I will keep blocking

[jonwil]

Until such time as Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft and the other online ad networks can gaurantee that their ads are free of malware and nasties, I will keep blocking.

Their biggest problem...

[Yaztromo]

When it comes to the Internet, the biggest problem they're going to encounter is that there is nothing in this world that advertising improves .

I've sat and tried to think of anything that advertising actually improves (in my mind at least). About the closest I can seem to get is movie trailers before a movie. And that's it. And I don't see how that would apply to websites.

There is no advertising anywhere that improves the web experience, thus users will always have an incentive to block it. It uses end-user and ISP bandwidth, so it actually costs the consumer (and everything in-between) for its delivery.

Anything that costs me money which detracts from the overall experience, even by a tiny bit, is going to get blocked when there is an easy technological means to do so. There is absolutely no way Google or anyone else can change that -- being less annoying is still infinitely worse than not being present in the first place.

Yaz

Re:Their biggest problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

To find out what advertising can be, you need to go back to newspapers.

I actually miss the ads in my hometown (large city) newspaper. They were laid out well, noticeable without being intrusive, and clearly targeted to what people were reading.

That is, they were placed in such a way that if you were reading an article about X in section Y, the ads were relevant.

Why did I like them? Because they actually informed me about things I sometimes wanted to know about. Not all of them I was interested in, but some of them definitely. The ads were useful, sometimes as useful as the news stories themselves.

I still feel like no news website has quite replicated that experience for me, and I'm not sure why. It seems so obvious. Ads on the internet now tend to be predatory, annoying; ads in that newspaper were useful and informative.

Re:Their biggest problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is absolutely no way Google or anyone else can change that

Smaller ad networks might not be able to, but Google probably could. Imagine if Google ran their ads, with encoded scripts and links, through their other domains at random. Your only choice then would be to completely block Google, which would break many sites that use their hosted scripts and content, or put up with some ads. Google hasn't done this yet because an anti-adblock arms race would be both costly and a public relations disaster. It's not yet worth it for Google to push the nuclear button on ad blockers, but that day may yet come if things keep going the way that they are.

Re:Their biggest problem...

[swillden]

There is absolutely no way Google or anyone else can change that

Smaller ad networks might not be able to, but Google probably could. Imagine if Google ran their ads, with encoded scripts and links, through their other domains at random. Your only choice then would be to completely block Google, which would break many sites that use their hosted scripts and content, or put up with some ads. Google hasn't done this yet because an anti-adblock arms race would be both costly and a public relations disaster. It's not yet worth it for Google to push the nuclear button on ad blockers, but that day may yet come if things keep going the way that they are.

Nah, there's a better option, if the ad networks (any of them, not just Google) wanted to go nuclear. The nuclear option is to serve the ads from the same site serving the content. Visit the NY Times? All of the ads are served from their servers. It would take a little work to allow the ad network to still do the targeting, and some to make it difficult for sites to misreport impression counts, or clicks if the ad target URL is also a redirect hosted on the same site, to avoid ad blockers filtering based on target. But it could be done.

Re:Their biggest problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at this pompous ass who feels the need to sign his messages. Quit being a douche.

-- Sent from my iphone

Re: Their biggest problem...

[ljw1004]

Something that's made better by ads? ... The Superbowl.

Re: Their biggest problem...

[Yaztromo]

Something that's made better by ads? ... The Superbowl.

We don't get the American Superbowl ads here in Canada, so I really wouldn't know.

Besides which, if the Superbowl isn't good enough without the ads, why watch in the first place?

Yaz

Re:Their biggest problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

is going to get blocked when there is an easy technological means to do so

That's the bit that they can and will change. If you have been paying attention, you must realize that they have already begun. They have encouraged web authors to use multiple domains to load web sites faster (wink wink) and Google serves popular script libraries for the same purported reason. But actually that prevents one of the simplest and most reliable ad blocking techniques: No third party content.

Very few sites host ads themselves, because ads would be a nightmare if they were not separated from the web site by the same origin policy. Hence, if you block third party content, you see virtually no ads. But thanks to Google's efforts, very few sites are fully functional anymore if you do that, because you'll also inadvertently block script libraries, CSS and images that the site needs. You can try whitelisting CDN domains per web site domain, but that makes Sisiphus' job look easy.

The next step in third party advertising relies on the user's inability to quickly decide which domain is part of the web site and which is third party content: The ads will still be loaded from a separate domain, but the site server will "randomize" the domain name from which the ad script is loaded, and the ad broker will constantly add new domains to avoid blacklisting. Sites that do this already exist, and the maintainers of the EasyList for AdBlockPlus have yet to find a better solution than blocking all third party content for sites which use that ad broker, but users will not accept broken web sites to avoid ads.

The advertisers will win this, and make the web an even more convoluted mess than it already is. When a company as big as Google sees a threat to their existence, you know there will be lots of collateral damage as they fight to survive.

Re:Their biggest problem...

[Yaztromo]

Smaller ad networks might not be able to, but Google probably could. Imagine if Google ran their ads, with encoded scripts and links, through their other domains at random. Your only choice then would be to completely block Google, which would break many sites that use their hosted scripts and content, or put up with some ads. Google hasn't done this yet because an anti-adblock arms race would be both costly and a public relations disaster. It's not yet worth it for Google to push the nuclear button on ad blockers, but that day may yet come if things keep going the way that they are.

Except that, unless you only use a HOSTS file (which is the easiest thing to work around in terms of ad blocking), modern ad blockers don't solely block based on host. You can also block based on HTML tags, IDs, and classes. Sure, you can always randomize these on page loads, but you risk breaking a lot of things, and it would add extra server computation to serve out a page (to the point where for someone like Google, it might become more expensive to serve ad pages than you make in revenue).

Yaz

Re: Their biggest problem...

[luvirini]

After talking to many Americans about the fascination of the Superbowl that I could not understand.. apparently the ads are the main point for several people and the actual Superbowl being the skip over content..

Re:Their biggest problem...

[byornski]

I can only hope they switch (back) to this form of advertising to stop APK......

Re:Their biggest problem...

[luvirini]

The thing is, I used to find advertising a good thing back in the days before internet was what it is today.

A lot things like computer/electronics magazines had a lot of ads about products that I would never have found out about without them. The editorial staff could not go through that many different things and write articles about them all.

And now that I think about it, the same was true for many other things too like newspapers.

But now in the world of search engines, news aggregators and so on the need is a lot less.

And add the fact that now ads try to be too smart on showing things related to something magic instead of things related to the thing being viewed.

But if there were actually non-intrusive ads that were related to the thing I was looking at they could add actual value. As example when I am looking at reviews of product A and there was a small sidebar/footer with "you are looking at A, are you aware that there is also a product B that might fill your needs" it might actually be a benefit.

Re:Their biggest problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google have always clearly stated why they won't do that. An advert served up from a content provider's own domain gets full access to cookies set by that domain. It's a liability nightmare. In less than a week after starting up a system like that, it would have been abused to steal login details from just about every site that sets a cookie. Nobody would dare to sign up for advertising again under such a scheme.

Google aren't willing to throw themselves off that particular cliff.

Re:Their biggest problem...

[gweihir]

Can be blocked, but needs some coordination. My AV updates every few hours, why not my ad-blocker too? _That_ service I would pay for.

Re:Their biggest problem...

[gweihir]

And in addition, you can stop visiting pages. I recently had a eye-opening experience: Some website had screwed up its ad placement and it covered the whole page and would not go away on some specific browser. I emailed them and threatened them that they would be permanently removed from my bookmarks unless they fixed this. I had an answer with an apology 30 minutes later and the ad was gone.

Turns out the one thing commercial websites are more afraid of than not making ad revenue is that they do not get visited anymore.

Re:Their biggest problem...

[swillden]

What you say is only true if ads include Javascript, and are not validated to ensure they don't access cookies. Google won't do it, but not because it's not possible to do safely.

Re:Their biggest problem...

[T.E.D.]

I've sat and tried to think of anything that advertising actually improves (in my mind at least). About the closest I can seem to get is movie trailers before a movie

Well, you've touched on it right there. Some ads are actually for things I'd like to know about. This is particularly true if its a movie, new Netflix show, or cool new item on a specialty shop I visit like ThinkGeek.

Also, they pay for the content on the website I'm visiting. If I like the site enough, and the ads aren't annoying and/or resource hogs, I don't mind them at all. They are a good thing.

For instance, I have had enough karma for years to turn off the adds on /. I don't do it because I want to support the site. Also, some of the ThnikGeek stuff is pretty cool.

Re:Their biggest problem...

[swillden]

Can be blocked, but needs some coordination. My AV updates every few hours, why not my ad-blocker too? _That_ service I would pay for.

It would be easy to make every single ad URL unique, one-time, and to make patterns of real page/image URLs be indistinguishable. It'd be harder -- but possible -- to have the page rearrange content and ads rearranged on every page load.

So, the ad blocker would have to actually recognize ad content in order to block it. Including in images.

Oh, and then there's also the option of interstitial ads which require user interaction, perhaps clicking on a certain region of an image map. Captcha combined with advertising.

There are lots of other options, up to and including what is effectively DRM for web content, which serves not to protect copying but to ensure that the site can't be shown in anything but an authorized non-ad-blocking browser. Like all DRM, it could be broken, but it could be made hard enough and changed often enough so that ad blockers always lag.

Then, there's the ultimate option: Forget advertising and just paywall.

Re:Their biggest problem...

[gweihir]

So, the ad blocker would have to actually recognize ad content in order to block it. Including in images.

Ah, yes? That is what I was talking about? You think this is in any way difficult to do? (Caveat: I have specific experience in that area. It is not.)

Then, there's the ultimate option: Forget advertising and just paywall.

That has worked well in the past. Because it usually makes customers just go nuclear on the site and decide that they do not need it after all.

Re:Their biggest problem...

[swillden]

So, the ad blocker would have to actually recognize ad content in order to block it. Including in images.

Ah, yes? That is what I was talking about? You think this is in any way difficult to do? (Caveat: I have specific experience in that area. It is not.)

I notice you deleted my captcha-ad notion. No response to that? I'm also skeptical that it's as easy as you claim to recognize advertising content.

Then, there's the ultimate option: Forget advertising and just paywall.

That has worked well in the past. Because it usually makes customers just go nuclear on the site and decide that they do not need it after all.

Sure, because there have been advertising-supported alternatives, and people prefer to pay with their eyeballs rather than money. But if everyone uses ad blockers, that won't be happening, so there won't be quality free alternatives.

Re:Their biggest problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

APK, where is he?
Dead, or just 'away'?
It's unknown for a thread mentioning the hosts file not to feature his tedious, eye-hurting, repetetive spam.

Re:Their biggest problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

he was earlier in the thread. about 15 Hours before your post

Re:Their biggest problem...

[tepples]

[A paywall] usually makes customers just go nuclear on the site and decide that they do not need it after all.

Until you hit eight paywalls in the first ten relevant results for a search query.

Re:Their biggest problem...

[gweihir]

So what? A paywall is far more likely to be a rip-off than not. Incidentally, paywalled sites only show up in search results if bypassing the paywall is pretty easy.

taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe it or not, there was once a time when the internet had no ads, and no ubiquitous surveillance.. Yes, less "content", but the signal to noise ratio was about a million times higher then, than today. And virtually all of that "content" is social media crap and mass-market pulp anyway.

Advertisers took the place over, and now it's filled with suck. Monitization, ubiquitous tracking -> more monitization, fake reviews -> yet more monitization, and "seach engine optimization" -> even more monitization!

No thanks. The world at large can take the internet back, if it really wants to. The good stuff will persist. I and others donate explicitly to the stuff that's worth while, like Wikipedia. If your content is not able to survive on people wanting it to survive, maybe the internet didn't need it so bad after all.

We had an ad-free internet once. We can have one again.

Re:taking the internet back...

[chipschap]

"We had an ad-free internet once. We can have one again."

I wish that were true. Maybe it's possible.

I run a site for checker enthusiasts ... I've run it almost 11 years with weekly updates and no ads, not ever, not even one. I run it because I want to, and there are plenty of other people doing similar things. Do I feel the need to monetize it? It costs me $10 a month for hosting, and how much revenue could I realistically get? It's not worth ruining it for my readers, even if I could make a little money. The fun would be gone for me and for them.

That's what most of the internet used to be. There's still some of it left, but the percentage isn't high.

Re:taking the internet back...

[Lunix Nutcase]

I'd just be happy with BuzzFeed going out of business.

Re:taking the internet back...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Believe it or not, there was once a time when the internet had no ads...

When was this? When I first started getting on the net search engines were used to pick the information you need out of a sea of porn. The only ad-free time I had on-line was on independently run BBS's.

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

checker enthusiasts

You do realize that checkers is a game that can easily be solved by the Minimax algorithm, alpha-beta pruning and maybe some evaluation functions, which may or may not even be necessary because the game tree in checkers is relatively small compared to that of chess and could probably be searched exhaustively with the powerful smartphone processors available these days. Why spend time playing a game that a computer can play perfectly?

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I run a site for checker enthusiasts ..."
U Dun Gud!
I too remember the nascent Web, when Pages were put up from Commercial entities that were Informational; Apple and NI didn't think out the Ratios of Content vs. Third Party Advertising, and of that revolting concept- CPM. Their Web made getting to the FTP Sites easier. And many Websites were just done it to do it. Look- Blinking Tags!

If the Websites didn't Contract with the Advertisers for this current obnoxious state of affairs, we wouldn't be so bothered. Prostitutes wouldn't have any business if it wasn't for the Johns.
But that is the Problem- The Website as a Business. Not an ancillary bit of Business on the side, because there was still the Main Business to tend to. No, the Website as _the_ Business.
Set up a Website, and then try to make money off of it. That is the thinking.
Some of the worst of these Modern Websites are the Aggregators- they have no Content of their own, they just scrape bits from Elsewhere, and depend on views and unpaid Comments from their Audience to slam that same Audience with the most appalling rubbish in the way of Third-Party Advertising.

(Yeah, I'm not using my low-digit Slashdot ID on _this_ subject...)

Captcha- forsake

Re:taking the internet back...

[Darinbob]

The problem is that so many people have different attitudes than you do. If they're on a computer then they feel that they are entitled to be paid for it. It's what we learned from the shareware model; only a nerd uses a computer because they like computers because the cool kids demand payment.

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why spend time playing a game that a computer can play perfectly?

Why do anything if someone else has done it before?

Because I want to.

  Just because someone else can do it better than me does not mean that I find it unenjoyable.

Re:taking the internet back...

[chipschap]

This is irrelevant to the main discussion, but in fact checkers has already been solved and found to be a draw. That doesn't mean it doesn't have depth and interest for humans. Not at all. Humans are not zillion-processor supercomputers.

Cars can go faster than any human, but we still compete in running races. Cranes can lift more than any person, but we still have weight-lifting competitions.

Many of us enjoy checkers. I have thousands of readers, of all ages and from around the world, who attest to that.

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet. UUCP and versions of TCP/IP, DECNET and Telnet, Readnews and ftp.
Computers were used during the Day to do UNIXy stuff, and in the deep hours of the Morning to communicate together, and pass messages along. The Internet.

"When I first started getting on the net search engines were used..."

Those things only popped up recently.
You really are wet behind the ears. Are you old enough to change your own diapers?

"...you need out of a sea of porn..."
Your comments about Search Engines and this tells us more about you than you might wish.

Re:taking the internet back...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

You seriously don't remember when websites mainly presented porn. Heh.

Re:taking the internet back...

[jandersen]

We could create something similar(ish) to the socalled dark net: a clean net, where everything is guaranteed to be free from adverts, I suppose. There are already many sites that qualify - what is needed is a sort of google, that only finds clean sites.

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

That's what most of the internet used to be. There's still some of it left, but the percentage isn't high.

Fortunately, we don't need a high signal to noise ratio, we just need a useful absolute level of signal. :-)

I too have run various sites over the years just for some combination of personal satisfaction and maybe helping or entertaining others with common interests. It's kind of a shame that ISPs don't seem to routinely supply your own web space as part of the deal any more, so you have to go looking for some separate hosting. That means a lot of stuff gets dumped on sites like Facebook or Medium or Pinterest. The alternative is to pay real money to a hosting service, which as you say isn't a lot for most people, but it's still real money.

Personally I'd quite like it if the search engines could prioritise sites that just provide good quality content without ads, so good enthusiast/community sites could enjoy the profile they deserve, but somehow I don't see Google ever doing that...

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what most of the internet used to be. There's still some of it left, but the percentage isn't high.

there still is, the percentage is very very high. it's just that no one can find these sites anymore. search engines don't about small or commercial free sites. forums hardly even get indexed anymore. if google "checkers" will your site come up on any result page? i doubt it. google, bing and yahoo suck badly. they are no longer search engines, but rather store directories. if they really cared about search, there would be a yellow pages search for commerce and a white pages for non commerce.

Re:taking the internet back...

[T.E.D.]

Believe it or not, there was once a time when the internet had no ads, and no ubiquitous surveillance

No, not really. There were ads being posted on Usenet before there even was a WWW. And the fact is that you cannot have the web we have today without it. None of the websites I regularly visit (/. included) could exist without the full-time employees updating them and generating content. The only ways to do that are with paywalls or ads. You flat out cannot do paywalls; they break the entire linking/sharing paradigm the WWW is built on. That leaves ads.

What you are probably remembering is not an "ad-free" web, but rather a period around 1996-97 or so after the previous backlash against gaudy obnoxious ads. The worst offenders before then were based on things like the blink tag and popups. OpenSource browsers started routinely blocking both due to the abuse, and the problem mostly died down for a while. What's made it get bad again lately is the advent of auto-playing movie/flash plugins. Probably the denouement there will be browsers with built-in blocking for such things, at which point advertisers will get half a clue, and then slowly get worse for another decade or so until they get smacked down again.

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

There never was such a time, unless that was all that you were interested in.
I first got involved with the Internet, that is, the ARPANET in 1974, making Nova Minicomputers and a CDC6600 play nice. Nearly two decades later, I was designing some of the first .gov Websites for xmosaic use. All clean as a whistle, by Law. And no advertising.
Anything Graphic back then had to Scanned in, and reduced to GIFS; JPEGs were _just_ being developed. Video was a joke. (MPEG-1 didn't come around until 1993.) Up to then, the various competing Video Formats like the recent (1991) Quicktime were all proprietary.
In 1994 we got one of the first Apple Quicktakes, which meant taking a picture and putting it on the Web now took only a couple of minutes. For anything of higher quality, we were using Kodak DCS dSLRs with Nikon glass. +$20K each, and another +$20K for a dedicated Sun or a SGI Workstation.
And that was about the same time that the Web began to get a little slimy. Microsoft belatedly discovering the Internet in 1995, with Win95 SP1, had a lot to do with it.

And some time after that, _you_ discovered the Web.
From your comments, we really don't wish to know the details.

Re:taking the internet back...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

The reason I find this funny is that you're missing a crucial detail of how Google came to be.

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, really. "Green Card Lottery " was in 1994, the first large-scale effort to use the Internet for advertising. Remember, Cantor got disbarred for that stunt.
Before that, there may have been individual advertising to Newsgroups, and aside from the .for-sale Newsgroups, it was strongly discouraged.
That was 1994. I first read USENET in 1986. So I can say with absolute certainty that there was an eight year period where USENET alone was reasonably ad-free.

"There were ads being posted on Usenet before there even was a WWW. And the fact is that you cannot have the web we have today without it. None of the websites I regularly visit (/. included) could exist without the full-time employees updating them and generating content."

Slashdot does not "Generate Content". The scrape it from elsewhere, and all of the Commentary is provided for Free, by Us. Think about that.
(The fact that you actually used the term "Generate Content" in a non-ironic context says a bit too much about your mindset.)

There are many, many, Websites that don't depend on Advertising. In some cases, the Business is not the Website itself. Mosey on over to Mouser or Digi-Key. They sell electronic parts, that's their Business, and there isn't an Ad in sight. The Websites don't need it.
There are the Hobbyist Sites. $10 a month for Server space, and all the new Friends you can handle.
There is NPR.com, and all the other "Public" Stations that fund Websites as part of their Overhead. Good PR.

There are the various .gov, .org, and .edu Websites, which are forbidden from Advertising.

"You flat out cannot do paywalls; they break the entire linking/sharing paradigm the WWW is built on. That leaves ads."

No it doesn't. It leaves Sites that depend on Ads. That were created with Advertising as the sole purpose. The WWW was _not_ created with Advertising in mind; it was created so that Physicists could more easily share their work. Go ahead, look it up.

The Genie is out of the Bottle; getting rid of obnoxious Internet Advertising is impossible, as long as lazy suck-ass Webmasters want it.
So... it's Vigilante Time. Remember the Usenet Death Penalty?
Blocking Ads is _just_ the Beginning.

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google came to be in 1998, deep in the "WWW for Profit" Age. Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and Altavista came on the Scene in 1995. You seem to be... deluded.

Here was your first response to a comment about the early Internet:

---Believe it or not, there was once a time when the internet had no ads...
"When was this? When I first started getting on the net search engines were used to pick the information you need out of a sea of porn."

It was explained to you when it was, and how it was. You ignored that. Instead:

"You seriously don't remember when websites mainly presented porn. Heh."

Again, more details about the roughly _three_ Decades of Smut- Free Internet/WWW were given, which you again ignored. I can only infer that you are at most, three decades old yourself. The Internet did not Magically appear, intact and sordid, the very first time that you heard a Modem squawk.

"The reason I find this funny is that you're missing a crucial detail of how Google came to be."

That you found yourself swimming in Smut early on doesn't mean that was the experience of most, or even many, Surfers. What it is _exactly_ that Google did right at the beginning that the earlier Search Engines didn't do, to preserve your Purity Of Essence?

(Note that I am not against Smut per se, just poor quality Smut. I can only guess that "MobileTatsu-NJG" is just playing at the Porn-Obsessed Naif here. After checking their other Slashdot Posts, they seem to be a nice enough person. But still possibly deeply deluded.)
(One reason I stay away from less reputable Sites is because of all the Malware out there. But in my two most recent Browser Hijackings, the Third Party attacks came from a Mercedes Parts Dealer, and aws.amazon. I've refined my Safari keyboard Tap Dance to get out of those lockout irritations in five seconds or less, but still...)

Re:taking the internet back...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I wanted to know when that era was, then you decided to have a go at me for my remark about search engines returning porn. Which... they did, and that abuse of meta tags led to Google quickly being favored when it came about because it actually returned results based on the content we saw, not based on the content they declared themselves to be a part of.

How you frolicked around the web for so many decades without being aware of that bit of history, instead choosing to assume I'm a caricature of Bud Bundy or something, I really don't know, but it is amusing.

   

Re:taking the internet back...

[FunkSoulBrother]

Why spend time playing a game that a computer can play perfectly?

I'm not particularly into checkers, but why not? I've enjoyed sudoku and doing the daily Jumble -- both of which should be solvable by undergrad CS students, but they are still fun as a *human* brain exercise

Re:taking the internet back...

[FunkSoulBrother]

Thanks grandpa!

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, did Altavista return Porn routinely? Did Ask Jeeves? (Yahoo was always crap, but it was always generic crap.)

Your obsessions are getting in the way of your perspective. You really _are_ a caricature of Bud Bundy. Honk-Honk! But of course, Bud Bundy was _fictional_.
You, I assume, on occasion dwell in Meatspace.

"I wanted to know when that era was,..."
No, you didn't. Right up front, you denied that era ever existed. Here it is, in your own words:
"When was this? When I first started getting on the net search engines were used to pick the information you need out of a sea of porn."
"You seriously don't remember when websites mainly presented porn. Heh."

When given proof, with a whole lot of documentable details discounting your preversions, you simply chose to ignore it.
Now, about Google...
"...abuse of meta tags led to Google quickly being favored when it came about because it actually returned results based on the content we saw, not based on the content they declared themselves to be a part of."
The only way that makes any sense at all, in your context, is for all the other Search Engines returning only Porn for you, what and when queried, which they most certainly did not do so.
You are Liar, and an Idiot.

Lastly:
"...How you frolicked around the web for so many decades..."
I did so because I chose to. It was Fun much of the time, and Work on occasion.
You have _no_ idea of who I am, and why I have allowed you to prattle away, here, and now.

In 1979, I signed away a Patent to UC for the use of Variable Virtual Machine Addresses.
It was just a Diagnostic Tool for me, back then.
Have you the remotest idea of what that eventually led to?

Frolicking, indeed.

Re:taking the internet back...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Yes. Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo regularly returned porn for quite a few not-porn searches. As did Hotbot and Lycos. Again, meta-tags and the rapid rise of Google. It was quite the annoyance for those who were there.

The question I asked was "when was this?"

Judging from a fairly lengthy era you missed I assume your patent led to a twenty year long coma.

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

Back to the beginning:

--Believe it or not, there was once a time when the internet had no ads...

"When was this? When I first started getting on the net search engines were used to pick the information you need out of a sea of porn..."

I was about to...
And then it struck me- we may well have quite different definitions for "Porn". Are you offended by the sight of a bare ankle? Do you routinely check under the bed before going to sleep, to see if a porn is hiding there? Do you arrange your bookshelves, so that the letters p, o, r, and n don't appear in sequence among the titles?
The original thread was about the decades when there was no Advertising on the Internet, and your ignorance thereof. In fact, you are ignorant about a lot of things, but obsessed with one thing.

"Yes. Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo regularly returned porn for quite a few not-porn searches."
You are backing far off now from your original assertions, but I will still add this to the collection:

"When was this? When I first started getting on the net search engines were used to pick the information you need out of a sea of porn."
"You seriously don't remember when websites mainly presented porn. Heh."
"Yes. Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo regularly returned porn for quite a few not-porn searches."

Back off further, and you just might approach Sanity. You have made broad assertions up to now without _any_ evidence other than your own outrage, outrage over your imaginary offended sensibilities.

"Judging from a fairly lengthy era you missed I assume your patent led to a twenty year long coma."
I was there for all of it, and I'm still here, still working on the Internet, still working on the Tools that make the Internet work, and I will still be here when you are in a Straight Jacket, worn purely for your own safety of course, because you see porns _everywhere_. Look- one is crawling up your left ankle right now!

Re:taking the internet back...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Hmm... now we're at me being offended by the sight of porn, but don't recall saying that. I guess that's an attempt on my credibility, I dunno. Even if I were sensitive to it, all that'd do is make me more knowledgeable about this topic. Not really helping your case there.

And, yes, I did offer proof even though it wasn't really necessary for someone of your age and experience, but because somehow you weren't around to witness that and the slew of pop culture references made about it for the proceeding decade, you've rejected it. Can't help ya there, bub. I'd quote Steve Martin, but you wouldn't get it.

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I guess that's an attempt on my credibility..."
Not an attempt on your credibility, but on your sanity and your singular obsession. I'm quite sure that what you know about the Internet is True, as far as it goes, to _You_. You see what you want to see. But remember- you came onto the Internet late, biased, and uninformed.

Obviously, we swim in different waters. I have absolutely no idea what you're going on about now, especially the "Pop Culture References" thing. That must be a hobby of yours, like tennis or philately. But the Internet was _not_ made for pop culture references. The Subject: of this Thread originally was "taking the internet back..." (Note- all Lower-Case. an old time unix/usenet thing)

That guy gets it, and you don't.

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are quite welcome, Young One.
(And yes, "Learnt" is a perfectly respectable Scrabble word, and has a Score of 6.)

Re:taking the internet back...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Oh, don't be so modest. The 'singular obsession' you're obsessed with is an invention of yours. The pond you're swimming in is absurdly tiny and, if you don't mind me saying, chuckle-worthy. I mean, really, are you that isolated from civilization that you haven't heard a decade's worth of jokes about internet porn popping up at unintentional times? Heh. Fun fun!

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

"...a decade's worth of jokes about internet porn popping up at unintentional times?"

Oh.
You were trying to be _funny_?
This whole thing has been your attempt at... Humor?
Don't give up your day job.
Here is Fowler's handy table on humor:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=humor

And here's how it's done; I'm quoting myself now:
"That must be a hobby of yours, like tennis or philately.'
Rather odd phrasing there, don't you agree? You should have spotted it immediately.
Now, pick your favorite Search Engine, and paste in the phrase "tennis or philately" including quote marks, and listen for the Whoosh.
This would fall in Fowler's fourth column.

Now, back to your first Post. Here is how to make it funny:
"When I first started getting on the net search engines were used to pick the information you need out of a see of porn."
The change of _one_ letter makes it funny. In cased you missed it: "see of porn".
(Fowler wasn't openly in favor of Puns. But he sure used a lot of them...)

Re:taking the internet back...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I have to admit, I really do enjoy your creativity. First it's a made-up porn addiction. Actually, the 'see of porn' thing was funny! In a parallel universe, that would have been a great Freudian slip that would have worked in your favor! Next we have myself making up a decade's worth of history that, as you've yet to discover, is shared by so many people that it's part of American culture all the way to movies and TV. I can't wait until you research this missing decade because I bet you've got a really amusing explanation behind it cooking.

I'd make a Titanic reference, but you wouldn't get it.

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

" First it's a made-up porn addiction."
Um, check your postings. Tell me which one _doesn't_ have that particular word in it, on a thread about _Advertising_ of all things, which you continually derailed with your obsession?
Tragedy is easy, Comedy is difficult. If you had actually passed for Funny at any point, this conversation wouldn't be happening. Parroting is not Comedy, unless it involves dead Parrots.
Tragedy comes easily to you, about Comedy, you haven't a clue.
And there is the Tragedy.

"Actually, the 'see of porn' thing was funny!"
That was the point I was trying to make from the very beginning, if you had paid attention. I was being your "Straight Man"; I chose to take you _seriously_ for comedic effect- it's a delicate art. The "Internet was made for Porn" meme died out a long time ago. Why can't you let go of it?

"...is shared by so many people that it's part of American culture..."
What gave you the idea that I was an American, and that I wallowed in its transient satirical subcultures of decades or so back? I continually move on.

"I'd make a Titanic reference, but you wouldn't get it."
Are you talking about the original sinking, the excellent 1958 Film version, or Cameron's $300M Chick Flick?

I just pulled down the Haynes RMS Titanic Owners' Workshop Manual from the bookshelf over my left shoulder.
http://www.amazon.com/RMS-Titanic-Manual-1909-1912-Workshop/dp/076034079X

This is wonderful, a Christmas present from an old friend, who knows that I collect these things. Haynes, known mainly in Britain as a Publisher of Automotive repair manuals, chose to do one on the Titanic.
What started out as a lark for the Publishers, went much further than that. You will never find anywhere elsewhere, the explanations that detail the Titanic creation, in Engineering terms.
It is also written extremely tongue-in-cheek, and they hardly even mention the ending.
_That_ is making comedy out of tragedy. It's how we all continually move on.

I suggest that you move on.
That meme that you cling to died out long ago.

Captcha- played

Re:taking the internet back...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Ooo now we've switched gears into projecting and establishing comedy as my motive! I brought up porn for a single, legit, on-topic reason. You've brought it up on several different occasions using skilled creative writing to re-dress it each time. You're absolutely right, comedicly I can't compete with that! The Old Internet Warrior who went missing from time, insisting he was here the whole time. Heh. Ah, I just don't have your flair for it.

Re:taking the internet back...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, first it was projected outrage over a "Sea of Porn" that never existed, and then it was a feeble attempt to explain your postings away as Pop Culture Comedy, and now... "a single, legit, on-topic reason."? What Reason? Where is there _any_ Reasoning? (And still we are puzzled with your now two "Pop Culture References", yet unexplained.)
Just What the Fuck _is_ your "Motive"?
Just why it was that you even bothered? I really wish that you would make up your mind, if that is still possible.

"You're absolutely right, comedicly..." Spell Checkers. Use them. "... I can't compete with that!"
Actually, you can. Stop using unsubstantiated declarative statements, pay some attention to sources, and pull your head out of your ass.
The fact that I can make so much fun out of you should be a clue: Be Pre-Emptive.
Once you have written down anything that you consider Comedic, step back, take a breath, and see how Others can take it apart, and Pre-Empt them.
And if you are writing down anything that you consider Serious, do _exactly_ the same thing.

The funny thing is, from out of your other more expressive writings, I'm actually a little fond of you.
Keep in touch.

(This is an absolutely wonderful Catcha: irking. And yes, I'm still in the running to purchase Slashdot.)

Re:taking the internet back...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Oh it did exist, I did explain the reasoning, and the "pop culture references" were explained as well. I think you're well aware of all that, at least it explains the humorous amount of energy you've expended trying to come up with ways of explaining how I hallucinated a portion of internet history that the rest of the world seems to be aware of.

As for my motivation, I'm just curious how you could be an internet historian of sorts and be completely unaware of something that has had such a huge impact on how we use the internet today. I don't think you're being terribly serious about it, so you could say my motivation is curiosity about your motivation.

Re:taking the internet back...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Ah, I guess we're done. Have a good week man, was fun chatting with you.

Google brokers 55% of ads, Facebook & Twitter

[raymorris]

55% of ad revenue is brokered by Google, Facebook and Twitter account for another 30%. That's 85% of all online ads between those three companies. Whichever standards these companies select to make ads less annoying, advertisers will have to deal with it.

Online ads?

[norite]

Online ads? They have online ads? Seriously? Where?

Re:Online ads?

[0123456]

Online ads? They have online ads? Seriously? Where?

I think they're on Android. I don't see them anywhere else.

Re:Online ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

Online ads? They have online ads? Seriously? Where?

I think they're on Android. I don't see them anywhere else.

No, they're gone on android too! They disappeared about the same time I fired up my BSD based router running unbound.

It doesn't matter

[dogvomit]

As long as it is possible to block ads, I will do it. I hate ads. I would gladly sacrifice the web as it currently exists to avoid ads. If that means subscription only sites, so be it. If it means going back to the web of 1998, so be it. Ads are vomitory, corrosive, fatuous mind-leeches. Kill them all.

No auto-play, no complexity, fast loading, no tracking? Does not matter. All ads are horrible. Kill them all.

—G

Re:It doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

You really nail it. I don't want an advertisement that hacks my computer, but I also don't want an advertisement that hacks ME!

It's the malware, stupid

[PeterM from Berkeley]

I never bothered with an ad blocker until the risk of getting malware delivered to me instead of an ad was made clear to me.

I can put up with annoying: I can filter ads very well mentally. I just look around them automatically.

But having malware delivered to my browser to exploit some security hole I never heard of? Intolerable!

No ads for me until the ad networks take responsibility for preventing malware and for the cost of cleanup if they deliver malware.

--PeterM

Re:It's the malware, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

same here, i will block them because they dont take responsability if they get hacked and i get malware

its funny how this new winwdows you can talk to but when you get infected you wont be able to go, "hey cunt, fix my computer and make me a sandwich", so this everything is connected crap is useless, it still wont hal9000 and work by itself, its just bother you with stupid indian shit ("have i answered all your questions in a appropiate and timely matter?", fuck you cortana and fuck you apu gnutella), if im still the motherfucking dude whos going to have to fix it after it gets broken im going to prevent it to break in the first place, in the browser side of things that means using adblocks and a script blocker that breaks your faggy designed website into fucking picasso looking pieces so be it, im in your website for your info, i dont care if its moved laterally or has some weird characters in there, if i can READ IT its good enough for me, fuck google, fuck microsoft and fuck both the advertisement companies and all the major browsers, they can ALL suck my weiner

i have not seen a website the way the author intended since 2004 or something like that, and i dont care, i dont get infections from a puny browser, thats GAY

Popups

[jason777]

What grinds my gears, are these fucking pop up ads that appear on every fucking news article I click. Who is the retard that thinks that shoving a huge fucking modal html window over top the fucking article im currently trying to read is going to make me stop reading and focus on their shitty ad? Stop this fucking bull shit right fucking now. Put it at the top or on the side, and I'll probably see it eventually. But pop this in my face, and piss me off and theres no way I'm even considering buying your product, even if I'd actually want it.

Re: Popups

[Anonymous Coward]

Popups? Are you using internet explorer 6?

Re: Popups

[Anonymous Coward]

http://tabcloseddidntread.com/

Re:Popups

[AmiMoJo]

Pop up ads are a conspiracy to sell more high blood pressure medication.

Re:Popups

[Parker Lewis]

Stop visiting so many porn sites!

Advertisers will never go for it

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertisers will never cease to employ an add that will one-up the next guy. Imagine if you drove down the street and saw the same type of sign used on every storefront. It just doesn't make good business sense to blend into the crowd, so I doubt we will see the current ad schemes ever change enough.

Re:Google brokers 55% of ads, Facebook & Twitt

[Slashdot Junky]

If your numbers are correct, at least 30% of ads in circulation at any given time will never be presented to me. I don't use Facebook or Twitter, and neither appeals to me. Actually, as a general rule, none of the social web sies and services are of interest to me.

Re:Google brokers 55% of ads, Facebook & Twitt

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about your interests? We're talking market sizes here, not personal preferences, and reality is, many people do like these social web services and continue to use them. Hence, owners of said resources get to make the calls on the ad tech.

Subjects in comments are silly

[Ahnahmoley]

Tiered internet. Prepaid cellular plans. Screen space. Obscured exit or hiding. Hiding prompting tertiary menu. Show me a picture of what you're selling in a compressed image or get off my lawn.

Performance

[Anonymous Coward]

For me its about performance. I don't care if there is an ad in a page (hate video though) but if it slows the page load speed by more than 300ms, its offensive to me.

Yummy

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's tears are so delicious. mmmmmm

Too late

[markdavis]

>"halt the rise of adblocking services by addressing common reader annoyances such as autoplay video, overly complex and slow-loading content, and excessive tracking."

Too late now, the damage is already done. Besides, more and more web sites are now just as annoying as the ads were with stupid an pointless moving/animated/scrolling content, overuse of numerous overlapping huge backgrounds and usually with transparency, pop-up everything, mouse-overs hidden over the whole page blocking the view of what you want to see, slide-ins, slide-outs, fadein/out on every object, etc, etc. I swear- in just one year the majority of sites are just FLOCKING to this stuff and even my fast machines are coming to a crawl loading and displaying these sites. It is a shame. I try to go places to research or buy things and find nothing but endlessly long pages full of nothing but marketing fluff and eye candy. There is barely any content anymore... the idea of adding ads back into that mix would be enough to push anyone over the edge.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

>"halt the rise of adblocking services by addressing common reader annoyances such as autoplay video, overly complex and slow-loading content, and excessive tracking."

Too late now, the damage is already done. Besides, more and more web sites are now just as annoying as the ads were with stupid an pointless moving/animated/scrolling content, overuse of numerous overlapping huge backgrounds and usually with transparency, pop-up everything, mouse-overs hidden over the whole page blocking the view of what you want to see, slide-ins, slide-outs, fadein/out on every object, etc, etc. I swear- in just one year the majority of sites are just FLOCKING to this stuff and even my fast machines are coming to a crawl loading and displaying these sites. It is a shame. I try to go places to research or buy things and find nothing but endlessly long pages full of nothing but marketing fluff and eye candy. There is barely any content anymore... the idea of adding ads back into that mix would be enough to push anyone over the edge.

UX designers jerking each other off and justifying their existence. When will it end?

Re:Too late

[jafiwam]

>"halt the rise of adblocking services by addressing common reader annoyances such as autoplay video, overly complex and slow-loading content, and excessive tracking."

Too late now, the damage is already done. Besides, more and more web sites are now just as annoying as the ads were with stupid an pointless moving/animated/scrolling content, overuse of numerous overlapping huge backgrounds and usually with transparency, pop-up everything, mouse-overs hidden over the whole page blocking the view of what you want to see, slide-ins, slide-outs, fadein/out on every object, etc, etc. I swear- in just one year the majority of sites are just FLOCKING to this stuff and even my fast machines are coming to a crawl loading and displaying these sites. It is a shame. I try to go places to research or buy things and find nothing but endlessly long pages full of nothing but marketing fluff and eye candy. There is barely any content anymore... the idea of adding ads back into that mix would be enough to push anyone over the edge.

That's called "responsive design."

There is one guy that made a framework of CSS boxes and a method for adjusting content based on screen.

Every single young trollip in the "design" industry is using it, and every "graphic designer" loves to make those big gaudy productions of the one big graphic to go in them.

The older method of artfully crafting DIVs to shape the page in the way you want it to look is gone. While it's not very good for smaller tablet screens, it was far less obnoxious and repetitive for the end users.

Re:Too late

[jittles]

It needs to stop. I can't even load some webpages on my iPad (the first gen Mini with Retina display) because the websites are so slow they are unusable. There are websites that I just completely ignore because all their interactive content bogs my device down to the point where I just close the page out of sheer frustration. They're really shooting themselves in the foot.

Re:Too late

[darien.train]

Responsive design is a fairly general design philosophy not a display stack. If you resize the Slashdot classic window the columns still respond to your browser width which is an implementation of responsive design. It's been around for a long time and it used to be done with div tags for years before some CSS libraries made it easier to do more advanced things like hide or swap page elements at different widths, etc.. Twitter Bootstrap is the most commonly used front-end method anyway (or was not long ago) which was far from being the creation of one guy. Responsive has nothing to do with your page performance or the annoying CSS animations used to roll in ads, etc. Those are all design choices separate from any responsive framework. The other main option is a mobile site with device detection redirection which is way more spotty of a user experience than responsive. I don't disagree with what you don't like about your internet experience but blaming responsive design doesn't make any sense. It's like blaming cubism for ruining your trip to the museum by causing all that traffic on the way there.

Re:Google brokers 55% of ads, Facebook & Twitt

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool story, bro. You're unimportant to advertisers any way.

Re:Until they can stop malware, I will keep blocki

[Anonymous Coward]

They can guarantee all they want. I won't trust them until they start bearing the weight of liability and reparations for when their ad network is used to spread malware.

Ads are like assholes....

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, google I don't want to see any ads. I don't want to be actively advertised to. I don't want to see ads for ten merchants competing to sell me the same product. I don't want to see ads for items you think people of my age, gender, income or past buying history indicates I might like. I don't want my android phone to have an ad tracking id I can reset because, I don't want it to have a tracking id to begin with. I don't want the "Ad Choices" ability to opt out of interest based advertising, what I want is the ability to opt out of all advertising. I don't want a merchant to send me a follow-up email asking me to rate a product, I don't want a merchant to send me a follow-up email with other products I might like. I don't want you or others to tout your retargeting abilities or your conversion rates because I don't want retargeting to exist and I don't want to be a conversion that you track or optimize by the color on the site or the marketing speak used in the product description or a million other variables that change the effectiveness of your "sales funnel". I don't want ads to slow done a website or take up space and sure as hell don't want them to be videos and whoever thought up autoplay should be taken out back and shot.

Re:Ads are like assholes....

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, google I don't want to see any ads. I don't want to be actively advertised to. I don't want to see ads for ten merchants competing to sell me the same product. I don't want to see ads for items you think people of my age, gender, income or past buying history indicates I might like. I don't want my android phone to have an ad tracking id I can reset because, I don't want it to have a tracking id to begin with. I don't want the "Ad Choices" ability to opt out of interest based advertising, what I want is the ability to opt out of all advertising. I don't want a merchant to send me a follow-up email asking me to rate a product, I don't want a merchant to send me a follow-up email with other products I might like. I don't want you or others to tout your retargeting abilities or your conversion rates because I don't want retargeting to exist and I don't want to be a conversion that you track or optimize by the color on the site or the marketing speak used in the product description or a million other variables that change the effectiveness of your "sales funnel". I don't want ads to slow done a website or take up space and sure as hell don't want them to be videos and whoever thought up autoplay should be taken out back and shot.

It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who feels this way.

This does away w/ ads (& many other threats)

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:Google brokers 55% of ads, Facebook & Twitt

[gstoddart]

If your numbers are correct, at least 30% of ads in circulation at any given time will never be presented to me

Then you're not trying nearly hard enough.

The first thing I do when I land on a page is click on my blockers to identify any new trackers and ad companies, and make sure to block them.

Google's ad shit was among the first. There's no less than 3 Google domains which have been blocked on the page as I type this comment. Then I remove any cookies not already blocked.

If you think ignoring those social media sites means you aren't tracked on pretty much every web page, you're delusional. That crap is embedded in most web pages, so they track you even if you don't use them, unless of course you're actively blocking them.

Rest assured, Google is trying to make change because the number of people outright blocking ads is becoming noticeable. They don't give a crap about what users want.

And if you think Facebook and Twitter don't see what most people are doing, you need to look closer. It's actually kind of scary.

If you're not actively stopping them, they're watching you anyway.

Google Analytics will be blocked forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost every website loads Google Analytics on their page which makes my computer dutifully ping back to Google to let them know everywhere I've been. I do not consent and so I will forever block Google Analytics. Same with Facebook, Twitter, Disquss and other widgets and tracker bots. Those are what I'm blocking, not ads. I don't care about ads unless they are Flash, but I don't allow Flash on my computer anyway.

Mobile ads are getting dangerously bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the unfortunate experience of locking myself out of my vehicle recently and when I pulled out my smartphone to look up a local towing company to pop the lock the ads on google brought my phone to its knees, damn near killing its battery before I could find the phone number. Yes, I need a better phone and have the means to get one (actually I've pre-ordered a Nexus) but for some poor schmoes a 3 year old device running KitKat is going to have to last them another year or two.

Re: Until they can stop malware, I will keep block

[Anonymous Coward]

I plan on blocking them all, forever. Why would I ever want to see an ad? I have never wanted to see an ad.

Re:This does away w/ ads (& many other threats

[fyngyrz]

Interesting that you think the proper response to a story about the evils of advertising is to... advertise your stuff.

Just interesting. :)

Perhaps Google should lead by doing this one...

[Vidar Leathershod]

Google is one of the worst offenders, as they purport to be "non-intrusive", yet happily accept ads from "companies" that deceive people into believing that they are offering genuine support for any number of companies. Search for Dell Support, HP Support, Gateway Support, etc. (which the elderly and less savvy tend to do) and you will be given a link called "Dell Support" or similar which has a toll free number posted next to it.

Typical "support" scam follows, including false claims of infection, need for optimization software, and of course a nice fat $375 support agreement.

Searching for Apple support no longer seems to result in these ads, by the way. I'm not sure if Apple threatened legal action or if enough people complained. For those who think it is just by chance, and they have no knowledge of the scams, take a look at the Chrome store. For years, when searching for Adblock Plus, Google allowed phony apps called Adblock Plus to appear in the list above the real extension. Now, they seem to have finally banned the name, but are allowing such nonsense as "Addblock Plus", again posted above "adblock plus", the extension (apps show first)

good...

[Anonymous Coward]

bring back gif banners and link exchanges and i will uninstall abp...

Oh there are still ads on the Internet?

[rrohbeck]

If they weren't such a security risk and such an annoyance I wouldn't have blocked them years ago, including blackholing all ad hosts via the hosts file.
So some sites won't play? Fuck you, I don't need you, I can get my information from other sites.

Tortured just a bit.

[Anonymous Coward]

- "Look, if you rip out the kidneys off your prisoner, she may not be able to talk"

- "Ugh?"

- "You have to start pulling her nails, one by one. Perhaps just *talk* about that first, comprende?"

- "Urgh, urgh!"

Dear advertising industry. I don't want "just a bit annoying". Or "half annoying". Or "approved by google consortium-ly annoying".

*I* fucking decide which advertisments reach me and which don't. And *I*'ll implement the necessary technical and psychological means to enforce *my* fucking policy and not yours.

Comprende?

Add Privacy Badger

[Anonymous Coward]

or anything like it to your adblocking arsenal. Forget it's primary function, it allows you to trivially block any associated domains via a slider. Rather then hunting out the id elements with adblock's UI, which invariably get cycled as it's a know trick, just block the offending domain.

After a few weeks of training, your web experience will be instant. No shit loading, no pointless ads, banners, icons and avatars. Bang! Instant load every time.

youtube

[Anonymous Coward]

How about start with Youtube? I'd pay to get rid of the fucking adverts but nope. It's gotten excessive to the point where youtube will pay a 5 minute clip in the middle of a video I was watching. It's at that point I decided to install adblock and never look back.

The golden rule of advertising

[istartedi]

Introduce yourself to customers as you would like them to introduce themselves to you.

Re:The golden rule of advertising

[doconnor]

"Hello, I'm a customer with more money then brains."

I guess that explains a lot of advertising.

Our (short) experience with Google ads

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The thing is, it isn't the customers driving the bad habits in advertising. Those who buy advertising want it to be effective, but aren't really too well clued in as to how this happens.

This is due, at least in part, to the opaque systems operated by big advertising platforms like Google and Facebook.

I run some small businesses. We don't have huge ad budgets, so we've experimented with a lot of different platforms to see what works well. What follows is some of our experience, but of course it's anecdotal and you should imagine a huge "your results may vary" wrapped around this whole post.

In many cases, we start with a very low budget (maybe $100 for an on-line ad network) just to test the waters, because even that level has proven to be enough to identify cost-effective channels. We've found there's not much point trying to figure out in advance what you're really going to get from the auction-based systems anyway, you just have to try one and see if it's competitive with what you get from the others for the same money. They dress things up and show you a million knobs you can turn, but ultimately all you care about is how much money you put in and how much money you got out as a result. If you get one that looks plausible, then you can invest some more money in further campaigns and refining how you use it to improve the results.

We tried Google. Among the top referral sources from an already disappointing level of traffic were blatant spam sites with small print about Viagra, fake qualifications, and so on. We get some conversions from general Google search traffic, but I'm not sure we got a single conversion from the paid ad campaign with them. I suppose this is hardly surprising if that's the kind of site where the ads were showing.

We've never gone back. Sure, the ad industry consultants can probably tell us "how to do better", but if Google's system is that easy to game why would we even try? I can spend the same amount on some other channels that already do better, and I can spend any extra time and money to improve the performance on improving other channels that already do better too. As an obvious example, on Facebook an ad campaign with the same budget pays for itself within just a few weeks on average for us, and our numbers tend to improve over time.

Maybe Google's problem isn't the hostile advertisers. Maybe it's that our experience isn't unusual and they simply aren't offering a good service.

Advertising can be good, it just often isn't

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

It's certainly true that good, responsible advertising can be beneficial all round. After all, if someone invents the best product/service since sliced bread for some niche market, how is anyone in that market who would be interested in having that product/service supposed to find out about it without some form of advertising?

As you say, the trouble is that on-line ads are often so... well, evil. And the trouble with hoping to change that is that the evilness makes them much, much more cost-effective. It seems likely there is a more healthy balance to be found somewhere in the middle, but I don't know whether it will be possible to achieve it in practice because the potentially evil qualities of on-line ads tend to be all-or-nothing propositions.

Re:Until they can stop malware, I will keep blocki

[AmiMoJo]

By that logic you should block every web site, because none of them can guarantee that they won't be hacked and start serving malware. Some ad networks are particularly lax in their security practices, but if you don't trust Google's ad servers not to deliver malware then presumably you don't trust google.com not to either.

Note that Google doesn't let you upload your own ads. You can supply your own plain text or use their online ad builder to do simple graphics, but that's it. You can't insert your own arbitrary Javascript, for example. I'm talking about Google here, not Doubleclick.

To be clear I block Google/Amazon/Microsoft ads anyway, I'm just pointing out the flaw in this logic.

Re:Until they can stop malware, I will keep blocki

[gweihir]

Indeed. And their people going to jail for gross negligence when they infect a few 100'000 computers again.

Here's how I feel about online ads...

[Anonymous Coward]

If one gets past my adblocker I go to extra lengths to block it. If I can't block it I don't go to that website anymore. And... I definitely do not do any business with whatever ad is shown. Want to lose my business? Put an ad up.

Re:This does away w/ ads (& many other threats

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, he does that. This person has some severe mental defect. If past experience serves as a guide, he may now be hounding you for a while too and with completely insane non-arguments.

A little song...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stick, you ads where the sub don't shine, doo-dah, doo-dah,
Stick, you ads right up your arse, doo-dah, doo-dah, day,
Doo, doo-dah-dey,
Doo, doo-dah-dey,
Stick, you ads right up your arse, doo-dah, doo-dah, day.

If you think I'm using *MY* PC, or *MY* bandwidth, or *MY* electricity so you can try to force your annoying, irrelevant, virus riddled, bloated, javascript "ad" crap onto my PC then you are living in cloud cuckoo land.

Doo-dah, doo-day, dey.

Capture: warfare

go hicks go

[Anonymous Coward]

If the peeps at google and all the other add agencies would have listened to bill hicks they would have killed themselves long ago and we would not have this problem at all. They still can do it tho, im just saying, you are pushing pop ups with sound and malware to innocent people, make the world a favour, KILL YOURSELF

Duck time?

[tepples]

Google search frankly sucks.

In what way is DuckDuckGo or Bing noticeably better in this respect? Last time I tried five queries at Bing It On, Google earned 3.5 points and Bing earned 1.5.

Re:Duck time?

[gweihir]

Can you read? If not, learn it. If you can, then stop asking stupid questions.
Hint: Why would I want more competition if I thought DuckDuckGo or Bing was much better than Google?

Re:Duck time?

[tepples]

With your clarification, you now appear to claim that all web search sucks. Now let's work on defining the problem in more detail: What do you want web search to do for you? And how are all the major search engines failing at it?

Re:Duck time?

[0ld_d0g]

The big promise of Google was algorithmic processing. You can't be accused of being partial if the algorithms decide who gets to be on top. Well over time people have learned how to game those algorithms. The first links on the results page are often ad infested hellholes, spyware bundling download websites, etc.

I refuse to believe that Google is not aware of it. Why aren't they doing anything about it? I don't know.

Re:Duck time?

[gweihir]

I see the Google-shills are active as moderators today. Pathetic.

Re:Duck time?

[gweihir]

Those gaming the search engine will often place lots of Google ads on the pages pushed. Mystery solved.

Re:Duck time?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about not returning searches for pointless place holder pages? cnet, gawker and plenty of other big-boys are top ranked for searches despite the pages in question contain nothing about the subject, only the usual shit across the top, bottom and down the sides, doing nothing more than serving ads and linking to external click-bait sites. Seeing as google claim pagerank uses how often a page is linked to within their algorithm, you have to wonder how these empty pages are getting included - because they simply are not linked from elsewhere.

Then we have a similar situation where a well known online "personality"(who I won't name) pushes his own crap at every opportunity, and has a news/content site where the first thing you hit is an invite to create the bloody content yourself, on the very thing you just searched for! So tell me again, how precisely are these zero content pages getting ranked to the very top? They are obviously not linked to from elsewhere.

Removing all the null "robot.txt" nonsense entries should go too. If the site says piss off, then don't include them, duh!

Fx 42 shows audio indicator

[tepples]

Firefox 42 and later show an indicator for HTML5 audio and video, as does Chrome. If you cannot wait for 42 to leave beta, install Noise Control for Firefox. Set Flash to "click to play".

Re:Fx 42 shows audio indicator

[Grishnakh]

What'd be even better than this is some kind of indicator (maybe after opening a new tab or pop-out or something) in Firefox which shows how much CPU and RAM each tab is using up. I'm constantly running into a problem where one of my tabs gobbles up all my CPU time, and I have to forcibly kill Firefox and restart it.

Re:Google brokers 55% of ads, Facebook & Twitt

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been running the "uBlock Origin" add-on in Firefox on both my primary computer and a B&N Nook HD+ tablet for a couple of months now. So, I am blocking most of the ads and whatever else it manages. I had long been using the HOSTS file to point a very long list of host names to a Apache server on my network that serves up a simple page written by me at shows "Ad Blocked" over the iFrame's parent's background color.

While I am irritated by the tracking and Big Data, this isn't what motivated me to look for and install a blocker. The ads using HTML5 video were over-taxing my tablet. Since, Firefox doesn't support "click-to-play" for HTML5 audio and video elements, I couldn't prevent them from auto-playing. All browsers need to add this functionality. I'd prefer that the HTML5 audio/video content not be downloaded until I click play. The second reason is that so much of the ad content and tracking mechanisms built into so much of the web I pay regular attention to has really impacted page load and browser performance. This is made worse for my tablet given its low-end specs.

I don't use the social websites and ads, because I still live in the physical world and prefer face-to-face interactions. Plus, email and text messaging still work just fine for communication between friends and family. I even use the phone for talking some. It irritates me when something like a restaurant or band only has a Facebook page. It costs "nothing" to have and host a simple web page. They should always have this even if they also maintain a presence across the social web. I see restaurants and other business of interest as I drive around the city. My go-to method is to Google the entity. In most cases, having a useful web page that I can find through a search engine is how a business is going to reach me. It doesn't matter if you are plumber, glass shop, restaurant, band, or anything else hoping to get my dollar.

While I do appreciate that so much of the commercial web content and services are "free" and that this is only so due to the ads, ads should not be allowed to ruin the user experience, and so much of the ads in use now are trying hard to do this. Who the hell is the 1 impression in 10,000 clicking an ad. The teaser approach is a turn off for me too. A lot of online "print", be it news or non-news, has adopted a front page accessible to all. Articles linked to by the front page are blocked by pop-up overlays that attempt to get the viewer to subscribe. A click to decline the offer since the viewer back to the home page. I would rather the pay-wall appear at the home page and all be inaccessible to non subscribers.

I make it a point to not patronize a business using in-your-face marketing tactics. It doesn't matter if the marketing is done online or not. Ads that do get through in my browser and presented off-line through various formats are all just background noise. I disregard them when they do register. Some people, such as a friend of mine in radio ad sales, say that impressions are still being made on my subconscious. Given how surrounded we are in ads, I'd say that they aren't making me a customer, ever, in nearly all cases. If I am offended by how the ad is delivered, my business will never be won by the advertiser if I can get the service or widget elsewhere.

It is time for breakfast and running to a big box home improvement store.

-Me

Ads for legal child labor

[tepples]

All advertisements targeted at minors should be straight up banned, there is no space in any caring modern thoughtful society for adults who would economically target children's pocket money in order to live to extreme excess.

If taken literally, this would prohibit retail and food service establishments from posting help wanted ads advertising the intent to hire teens for summer jobs. How else should teens find companies willing to hire them in order to have work experience before graduating from high school?

Pop-Tarts make your head swell up

[tepples]

Really? I thought Pop-Tarts ads implied that they'll make your head swell up (video, 2 minutes).

The. Same. Add. Over. And. Over.

[whistlingtony]

I hate watching youtube and seeing the Same. Damn. Ad. Over. And. Over. After the fifth viewing, even the cutest ad is !@#$ing annoying.

Too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one am not planning to stop using ad blockers, JS blockers and whatever technology I can find that keeps these people and companies from running code on my computer without my consent.

At first, the web was a (relatively) trustful place. We didn't think much about running arbitrary JavaScript on all pages because we trusted developpers not to do anything nasty with that power. Then came the ad agencies and their tracking cookies, their pop-up/under/over/sidewise, their animated garbage and their money, and they abused that trust for so long that they broke it at last.

And now, they expect that by lessening the annoyances they can get the trust back. That's not how it works. There is a social mechanism to regain trust in those situations where you wrong someone : it's called apologizing. I've read many articles defending those ad agencies and justifying their practices, but I have yet to read a single honest apology for the damage they have caused to user experiences and individual privacy over the years.

Worse yet, their actions clearly belie any willingness to change those practices. They try to make us feel bad for blocking their "revenue source". They try to make ads more palatable so they can keep feeding them to us. They don't try to find alternative sources of revenue (like, you know, getting people to willingly pay for a product, like 99% of honest businesses), nor do they actively try to stop tracking me until the law forces them to.

If they want to use my browser to run code that will make them money by annoying me, it's fine. They are allowed to want anything they like, I just don't see any reason why I should comply.

Imagine if TV was like the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Picture (pun intended) this: You turn on your TV change the channel, and before you can watch the program a camera in the TV scans the room, using some sort of AI, products in the room are identified, then 5 minutes of ads structured to you pop up on the TV, all of which require you to press a button on the remote to get rid of before you can watch the program you wanted in the first place. Now imagine the uproar from the public. I'm sure Google and Apple are thinking of how to do this when ATSC 3.0 rolls out in about 4 years.

Re:Google brokers 55% of ads, Facebook & Twitt

[Anonymous Coward]

The real story here is that apparently you DO watch every add that Google produces, how do you do that? You have a live stream or something? Don't you ever get tired, or need to pee? Normal people miss 99.999% or something off all the advertising ever displayed.

"excessive" tracking

[anti-pop-frustration]

to halt the rise of adblocking services by addressing common reader annoyances such as excessive tracking.

Contrary to what the advertising industry is trying to imply with weasel words here, there is no such thing as "reasonable" tracking.

All tracking is excessive.

Are ads making it better or worse

[westcountyboy]

There are too many ads so just block them all as much as you can. Don't visit sites with obnoxious ads and don't use apps. No cookies, skip stupid videos of cats dancing to clue you into the trick banks don't want you to know that saves saves saves on your mortgage. So what if some billionaire makes a billion less? The whole online "experience" is becoming an electronic ad circular aimed at the stupidest. It once was easy to find useful, obscure and interesting information, today it is very difficult with all the stupid sponsored ads. Google "Byzantine Empire" and how many ads will say "Get Great Deals on the Byzantine Empire, only 3 left"? How about a second "virtual web" that is totally non-commercial?

Kick 'em in the page rank!

[Strixy]

Maybe Google does this already, but if a site isn't playing nicely then hit them where it counts, right in their page rank. Rank them lower on search results for a given topic and kick them off of news.google.com. I'm looking at you National Post, Huffington Post and Wall Street Journal - damn you and your auto play videos and your full page blockup ads.

Interesting you'd give me guff on hosts files

[Anonymous Coward]

"if you're not using your hosts file to nuke advertisers and their cookie-mining minions, you're foregoing a great tool" - by fyngyrz (762201) on Sunday July 19, 2015 @07:52PM (#50141883)

See subject & that quote from you: You use hosts files as I do!

* :)

(I'm merely pointing out their many benefits I'm certain you're aware of, especially considering you use them & often ENDORSE their use too. + the EASIEST BEST WAY TO CREATE A CUSTOM HOSTS FILE to gain those myriad benefits...)

APK

P.S.=> Hosts absolutely work for all I stated they do - you know this - & they do FAR MORE for FAR LESS for added speed, security, reliability, + even anonymity than ANY single browser addon does, faster, from kernelmode as part of the IP stack itself & in my case, directly interacting with the kernelmode diskcache (vs. slower usermode browsers + addons operate in which combining them only increases messagepassing, cpu, & RAM overheads galore)... apk

Re:Interesting you'd give me guff on hosts files

[fyngyrz]

Oh yes, I use the hosts file. You bet.

That wasn't my point. It's okay, don't worry about it.

Re:This does away w/ ads (& many other threats

[Anonymous Coward]

You project your mental issues clearly. Apk must've whipped your ass after you trolled him. You're still crying over it.

Re:Google brokers 55% of ads, Facebook & Twitt

[KGIII]

Use Opera and uMatrix. Then you can throw on AdBlock Plus and generally not see anything. Disconnect and Ghostery are fine backups but uMatrix catches anything so far - I've been using it for about a year now. It's a white-listing firewall, so to speak, for browsers.

AOL predated the web

[tepples]

But, what web site wants to employ salespeople and (ad) designers when you can just copy and paste a line of code into a web site? Well, I think the ones that continue to do that into the future are the ones that aren't going to make money.

So how should the individual operator of a small web site recoup the cost of a domain, certificate, and VPS? That's the reason that Federated Wiki hasn't become as popular as traditional wiki software such as MediaWiki: each Federated Wiki editor needs his own web site if he wants to share his changes with anyone else.

pre-AOL web

There was no pre-AOL web. Nexus (formerly WorldWideWeb), the first web browser, was first released in December 1990. Quantum Link launched in late 1985, and it changed its name to AOL in October 1989.

When it's ads or paywalls

[tepples]

There is no advertising anywhere that improves the web experience

What are Craigslist and eBay and Amazon.com if not ads?

If you exclude e-commerce and other sites where ads are the content, the known alternatives for paying the hosting bills and writers' salaries are either a not-for-profit company with an endowment or paywalls. But buying a year's subscription to read one article is impractical in a web of linking, searching, and sharing. And it'll remain impractical until microtransactions are figured out.

Yes, tech advances can disappear

[tepples]

Remember that we're not going to lose the tech advances that the current internet drove

But the availability of tech advances to the public can disappear over time due to perceived lack of demand driving lack of supply. Case in point: Affordable X11/Linux-compatible laptops with a 10" screen were easy to find in 2010. They're a lot harder to find since manufacturers discontinued the category.

Re:Yes, tech advances can disappear

[FunkSoulBrother]

But the availability of tech advances to the public can disappear over time due to perceived lack of demand driving lack of supply. Case in point: Affordable X11/Linux-compatible laptops with a 10" screen were easy to find in 2010. They're a lot harder to find since manufacturers discontinued the category.

True but I don't think it really applies to what the person I was responding to was saying. I don't see a reduction in average people subscribing to ISPs in the near future driving up costs there even in an imagined world where adblocking kills the commercial web, because there are too many popular services that live off of subscriptions being pushed down that same pipe.

I suppose less money in the ecosystem might eventually slow down stuff like backbone upgrades, but I don't really care that much. I would rather have a 2000-era web stagnating on today's technology with no ads than some ad-and-tracking bloated future web that is capable of streaming 4K video to everyone at once. And I really don't think I'm going to have to choose since people like Netflix are going to probably throw enough money at that problem that the rest of us will benefit from the ridiculous connections and hardware it will take in order to deliver that.

Word of mouth after Facebook's demise

[tepples]

First, by those who appear on the site, or their relatives. Second, by those who get told about it by the first group. Third, by those who get told about it by the second group.

Once Facebook and Twitter close due to lack of ad revenue, through what medium will people instead tell other people about web sites?

My site gets traffic of up to 350GB/month (that's about 3Tbit for those who prefer bits to bytes) as a result.

How do you pay for the domain, SSL certificate, hosting, and bandwidth without ads or paywalls?

Clarityray blocks addon users... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Clarityray based adblocking stops browser addon blockers easily by dumping what ones you use through native browser methods. Hosts can't be detected and blocked that way, that easily. Clarityray doesn't work on hosts to stop it from working.

APK

P.S.=> So, as you can see, it's far easier to block browser addons than it is hosts... apk

PrivacyBadger = ABP code & inferior vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

Can PrivacyBadger do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:

1.) Protect vs. malicious sites/servers (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C communique
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C communique
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C communique
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (adds reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get you past a dns blocking
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites
14.) Work on anything webbound (ie email programs) multiplatform.
15.) Give you easily controlled data
16.) Do all that & block ads better than addons more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage

* ANSWER ="NO" to each above on PrivacyBadger doing it as well or @ ALL + hosts = already on every device natively.

APK

P.S.=> PrivacyBadger does less than hosts & less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver queried):

PrivacyBadger's Adblock+ codebase 128mb memory inefficiency http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte... (hosts consume 3-11mb using my program initially).

+

ClarityRay defeats it by dumping addons in use in a browser via native browser methods!

+

PrivacyBadger adds complexity from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).

What's best?

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

It's GUARANTEED safe & clean per it being checked by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

In its 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

... apk

AdBlock+ = inferior & 'souled-out' vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

Can adblock+ do 16 things hosts do 4 speed, security & reliability:

1.) Protect vs. bad sites (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C talk
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C talk
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C talk
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (4 reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoning
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get you past dns blocks
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing (adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites)
14.) Work on anything webbound multiplatform.
15.) Easy data control
16.) Do all that & block ads better vs. addons more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage

* ANSWER ="NO" on ab+ doing it as well or @ ALL + hosts = on devices natively.

APK

P.S.=> Ab+ does less vs. hosts less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN operation (as 1st resolver).

---

Ab+'s a 128-151mb memory hog http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte... (hosts use 3-11mb w/ my program initially). Even FireFox 41 adblock eats 65++mb http://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/...

---

ClarityRay defeats it seeing addons used via native browser methods!

---

Ab+'s bribed not to work by default http://www.businessinsider.com... & ABP bought out adblock http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

---

Ab+ adds complexity in slower usermode (w/ more messagepassing overhead + context switch vs. hosts in kernelmode).

---

AdBlock's SLOWER vs. hosts: http://superuser.com/questions...

---

What's best?

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

It's safe per 57 antivirus programs in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

a 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

... apk

AdBlock+ = inferior & 'souled-out' vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

Can adblock+ do 16 things hosts do 4 speed, security & reliability:

1.) Protect vs. bad sites (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C talk
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C talk
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C talk
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (4 reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoning
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get you past dns blocks
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing (adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites)
14.) Work on anything webbound multiplatform.
15.) Easy data control
16.) Do all that & block ads better vs. addons more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage

* ANSWER ="NO" on ab+ doing it as well or @ ALL + hosts = on devices natively.

APK

P.S.=> Ab+ does less vs. hosts less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN operation (as 1st resolver).

---

Ab+'s a 128-151mb memory hog http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte... (hosts use 3-11mb w/ my program initially). Even FireFox 41 adblock eats 65++mb http://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/...

---

ClarityRay defeats it seeing addons used via native browser methods!

---

Ab+'s bribed not to work by default http://www.businessinsider.com... & ABP bought out adblock http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

---

Ab+ adds complexity in slower usermode (w/ more messagepassing overhead + context switch vs. hosts in kernelmode).

---

AdBlock's SLOWER vs. hosts: http://superuser.com/questions...

---

What's best?

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

It's safe per 57 antivirus programs in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

a 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

... apk

The abstract is indexed

[tepples]

Incidentally, paywalled sites only show up in search results if bypassing the paywall is pretty easy.

The way these paywalled journals work is that you don't need to bypass the paywall to read the abstract, and the journal is happy with only the abstract being indexed for public search results. But it's still a gigantic rooster tease.

Coren22 "security guru" wannabe fails security

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU say "hosts=bad" (but they add security, speed, & reliability) & bitch on admin privelege to UPDATE vs. threats:

"So, have you figured out why privilege escalation is a bad thing yet?" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015 @05:15PM (#50577809)

Hypocrite - You use admin priv admitting it

&

How else can I programmatically update hosts minus it in Windows?

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"Of course it requires elevation to write to the hosts file" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015 @05:35PM (#50585879)

You FINALLY later admit there's no other way!

FACT:

Even MalwareBytes AntiMalware (best one) DEMANDS you use admin privelege (you saying it's "bad" too?) it can't do its job fully otherwise, like many security tools do!

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Aryeh Goretsky NOD32/ESET says hosts = good security-> http://it.slashdot.org/comment...

Oliver Day (Symantec) does-> http://www.securityfocus.com/c...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts hosts & recommends my APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit-> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

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* HOW MANY SECURITY PROS DO I NEED TO KNOCK THE CHOCOLATE OUTTA YOU?

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Those security pros INCLUDE me: I work w/ guys from malwarebytes' hpHosts on a regular basis!

I've professionally worked for decades as a combined domain-wide network admin & software engineer since 1994 (Even showing you HOW to migrate a hosts across an enterprise-> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... )

I've also been securing computers + WRITING GUIDES using CIS Tool (who took fixes from me http://slashdot.org/comments.p... - bonus) http://www.bing.com/search?q=%...

You told me you learn from guides?

I write good ones that MILLIONS USE & was PAID FOR IT http://pcpitstop.com/news/winn...

+ WARES TO PROTECT USERS that are endorsed & hosted by security pros -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

You did all that? No!

(& that's ONLY a SMALL part of what I could put out)

APK

P.S.=> You're all TALK -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... & a "ne'er-do-well" as far as security...apk