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Yahoo Denies Ad-blocking Users Access To Email (washingtonpost.com)
JoeyRox writes: Yahoo is running an A/B test that blocks access to Yahoo email if the site detects that the user is running an Ad Blocker. Yahoo says that this a trial rather than a new policy, effecting only a "small number" of users. Those lucky users are greeted with a message that reads "Please disable Ad Blocker to continue using Yahoo Mail." Regarding the legality of the move, "Yahoo is well within its rights to do so," said Ansel Halliburton an attorney at Kronenberger Rosenfeld who specializes in Internet law.
A simple hack for ad blockers, though this will require a few hacks to browsers, is to display ads with 0% opacity, and absolute position them in a place that can't be seen. With a few hacks to the browser, what you want to do is to have the rendering engine render everything as usual off screen, and then mirror the elements into a second page with the ads rendered invisible, such that javascript running on the page will see the off-screen page, possibly with simulated mouse and keyboard activity based upon what the actual user is doing (filter out keystrokes other than cursor keys). But sites powered by advertising need to learn that they must adopt conventions that keep advertising reasonable and reasonably unintrusive. If they can't make ends meet doing that, get off the web.
John_Chalisque
I'm stuck with a Yahoo email because of my ISP. I tolerate it, but I'm not overly invested in it.
I haven't seen the blocking ... if they do that to me I'll ignore them.
But what I have seen is them adding to the number of ad-sites embedded in my email by quite a lot lately -- there's now almost 20 external domains they pull in which I'm blocking in just my email. I understand Yahoo is increasingly desperate to pretend they are relevant and to bring in revenue, but it's not my damned problem. I didn't choose to use Yahoo, my ISP made them my email because they didn't want to provide it themselves.
So, Yahoo is something I use at my sufferance ... and my patience with them is growing thin.
They're not that good, I don't use them for anything but that specific email that I'm supposed to keep for my ISP. They keep adding ad sites which I keep blocking. If they block me because of that ... well, they'll cease to exist to me, really.
Yahoo is a company which really only lives on its own inertia of people who already have Yahoo accounts. Their painful decline into oblivion means they're being bigger assholes in trying to keep revenue.
And when that backfires on them, they might just discover how irrelevant they've become.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Another major reason is the speed. So many web sites are so much faster with adds blocked. I am not talking about small change, but something that is clearly visible.
Right. Occasionally I'll see a "please disable your ad blocker" notice on sites that I like and that I use all the time. And I'll say, okay, that's reasonable, they have to make money to keep the lights on. So I'll disable the ad blocker and reload. Aaaand the site no longer loads, not even within (seriously) two full minutes. And so I say, if this is what it takes to keep the lights on, I'd be happier in the dark. So I turn the ad blocker off, and reload the same page, in milliseconds.