Slashdot Mirror
Wired To Block Ad-Blocking Users, Offer Subscription (wired.com)
AmiMoJo writes: In a blog post Wired has announced that it will begin to block users who block ads on its site: "On an average day, more than 20 percent of the traffic to WIRED.com comes from a reader who is blocking our ads. We know that you come to our site primarily to read our content, but it's important to be clear that advertising is how we keep WIRED going," wrote the editors. The post goes on to offer two options for users blocking ads: whitelist wired.com or subscribe for $1/week.
Bye then!
I forgot the third option. Stop reading Wired.
Note to people submitting stories: No more wired.com links please. It joins forbes.com on the /. blacklist.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Guess I'll have to get my tech news from Slashdot instead.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
or not risk my computer being infected and just not goto wired anymore.
I wonder if the content on Wired is worth $1 / week to browse sans advertisements. I normally read the headline and quick summary in the email they send; rarely is it interesting enough to actually go to their site.
Since there's no pulp to push, the economics of the price are astounding.
If ads were more intelligent and higher class, they wouldn't be so annoying. Nothing like continuing to see ads for something you bought, or putting up with taboola's brain-dead stupid tricks.
Ads should be as good as the articles they parasitically feed off of.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Do they also intend to give us malware, as Forbes did? :-P
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I will consider unblocking all ads on their site if the accept all liability for the ads, content, and actions of their site.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Or just block the ad-blocker blocker script. Just like one can do for most of these sites trying to block ad blockers.
Ok, I guess right now the ad-blocker detection is based on the idea that they check with Javascript if an element containing the ad is present in the DOM tree. Or not, just guessing.
Any existing solutions for this?
... the last time I actually read a wired.com article. Given the number of autoplay video ads they use, there's no fucking way in hell I'm whitelisting them.
Used to be a interesting magazine, around 20 years ago.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Remember Wired? That brought back some good early-2000 memories. So they have a web site now? Who knew?
A while back, people asked questions bout why you'd use Incognito Mode in a non-pr0n situation. This is one of those reasons.
Also, i didn't notice anything as to WHY people block ads. Namely, i would have liked a "we promise to actively check ads to make sure they don't try to hijack your browser, or set EverCookies". We're not blocking ads to screw you. We're blocking ads to not have you screw us. Address that and then we'll talk.
Or just wait an hour or two for AdBlock's anti-AdBlock killer list to re-fix their site.
The advertisers need to understand that they really can't win this war - Even if it eventually comes down to letting every single ad and craptastic script on a page run in an invisible sandbox just to pass all their tests, we still won't watch the damned ads.
Find a revenue model that doesn't depend on pissing off your customers, or you deserve to go out of business. Really that simple.
"Wired to lose 20% of its readership"
Most people are not going to turn off their ad-blocking software just to read Wired. Regardless, the quality of their content has been dropping steadily over the last decade.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Seriously. I turned off ad block to see how their main page looked, and I get two versions of the autoplaying, rapidly animated banner ad. Out of curiosity, I cropped and measured the screen area used by ads and content: 36% ads, 30% headlines/graphics, 34% header/whitespace. That's not really winning me over.
Then again, this commenting page is no better when it loads...
Sources: http://imgur.com/a/8fto4
after years of abusing ads for profit, sites are now trying to act like innocent victims just trying to keep the lights on.
I see this type of comment fairly frequently, and I understand the sentiment, but what exactly do you propose that they do instead? Just go bankrupt? Can they somehow regain your trust by running non-abusive ads? (Whatever that means. How do you know which ads aren't abusive? Do you check every site or just run your ad blocker everywhere?) What if non-abusive ads aren't enough to break even? Micropayments?
Wired produces good content, so I'd hate for them to go under. I see other comments saying that you'll just get your content elsewhere, but that's just kicking the can down the road instead of solving the problem. The same problems apply to your new news source, which is probably going to ban ad blockers sooner or later too unless a long-term solution is found.
(Moreover, what exactly does "abusing ads for profit" mean? Are you faulting them for trying to make a profit using advertising? Is the complaint not the ads per se, but the ads that track your every move? If so, that's not at all clear from your writing.)
Why don't any of the adblockers simply request the ads but render them off-screen?
Everyone wins. Content providers get ad revenue, and advertisers get to feel important.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Wired is a site that actually pays their writers. The internet has become a place where everybody wants stuff for free, and expects writers to be unpaid; the internet has been flailing around trying to find a model where writers can actually get paid for their work-- but having trouble finding one.
So, give them a little credit-- if you are neither willing to look at ads nor willing to pay-- basically, you want stuff for free--well, ok, don't go there: you can get plenty of free content elsewhere on the internet. It's a race for the bottom. But they are at least trying to find a way to survive and keep paying their writers.
(Hufflepuff Post is probably about the worst of the lot-- their business model is "we get millions of dollars, people who write for us get nothing.")
http://blogpaws.com/executive-...
http://www.mayhillfowler.com/p...
http://inthesetimes.com/workin...
http://nymag.com/daily/intelli...
http://www.theguardian.com/com...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Wired can just go fuck themselves if they think their readers should bend over and take this kind of abuse.
I had a print subscription to Wired since 1996. About 2 years ago I didn't renew, not because I didn't like the magazine anymore, but because my magazine continually arrived two to three weeks AFTER it was available on store shelves. That wouldn't have been so bad, except that Wired eventually got to the point of releasing all the magazine content online over the course of the month...for FREE... I tried for nearly 2 years to get Wired to figure out the problem, to no avail. Even when I moved to a new house, 30+ miles away, the late deliveries continued (so probably not a local post office issue.)
It's always frustrating when you WANT to give a company your money, but they just have to make it so damn hard (see DRM also...) Anyway, maybe I'll whitelist them, maybe I'll just quit going to Wired.com. I'm sure not giving them any more money.
you can call yourself anything you want but not a "customer"
True, but neither can the most loyal, fully ad-watching subscriber - They count as the product, not the "customer".
That's it, I'm sending back my ::cue::cat !
shit, that joke's old enough to drive...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I've never looked at a 19th century newspaper, but I'mma go out on a limb here...
I'm pretty sure the ads didn't:
1) Make noise.
2) Move around annoyingly trying to get my attention.
3) Make me sit and wait to read the rest of the page while they loaded.
4) Cost me additional money (mobile bandwidth) to load.
5) Report my location & reading habits back to the advertiser as I walked about London.
6) Take up 80% of the page, requiring me to flip page after page to read a sentence or two surrounded by half a dozen ads.
7) Cause an actual danger to me in damaging the device I was using to read them.
Did I forget anything? I'll take 19th century advertising standards.
There's a certain red-on-black alternative social networking site that does advertising right. Hosted on their own server, static simple images, reasonably sized, no animation, no sound, no JScript, no Flash, no BS. They actually host the images on a sub-domain of their main site. It would be trivial to block them. I don't because they're not annoying or dangerous. Occasionally they even advertise something interesting, and I (intentionally!) click/tap on an ad.
If they want to sell ads, actually sell the space
Say someone operates a website as a hobby, but then the site outgrows the $10 per month VPS it started on. This means its operator will start to need to sell ad space to pay the hosting bill. Can you recommend a guide for the operator of a relatively small site to learn how to sell ad space?
Fine,
1 No auto playing video.
2 No pop-ups, pop-unders, page covering ads, or ads that cover the article where I have to wait for the close x.
3 No malware vectors, all your ads should be vetted (no exceptions)
Break any one and I use an ad-blocker. If that means I don;t read your rag, fine. The fact you are a tech magazine means you are just losing readership and will soon disappear.
The internet was not built to be an advertising medium, yet here we are, the majority of what you see online is advertising. It's gross and sad that we cannot come up with a way of funding things without constantly barraging people with lies.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
That's fine if a site is sticky, such as a forum. Something Awful succeeds with a paywall because forums are sticky. But say you read ten different articles on ten different websites in one day. Are you willing to pay $1 and key in your payment information for each article?
Then don't make the advertising on your site intrusive, and abusive.
Ads have been on the Internet for 15 years now, we're willing to accept some advertising. But if you go overboard, we'll find ways to make it go the fuck away. The rise of ad blockers can be correlated with the rise of in-your-face pop-over infuriating advertising. I know the bills have to be paid, but stop throwing it up in my face covering the content.
You've got nobody to blame but yourself. Think of ad blocker software as the DVR 30 second skip button of the Internet. It exists purely as a reaction to content providers going over the line a few too many times.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Well, not in this manner, no.
I remember when Wired used to provide stories. Many were long and exactly the same as their print magazine.
Today, Wired has sold out to the "must please Google's absurd 'mobile-friendly' standard". Translation: You must have a bunch of giant graphics (with little or no text) first. Or else Google will down-mod you. Actual text content is worthless, so cut that back. Here, have some white bread.
So the Wired of today is worthless, and won't be missed.
As to why this move by Wired will fail? People share links with others. Let's say, hypothetically, that you have subscribed to Wired or turned off your ad block. Wired serves you an article. You say "Gee, this article is good. Me gonna share it." You share it. People email bomb you to complain about how they can't load the page. There is no rinse and repeat.
I come here for the love
I paid for a weather channel subscription years ago because it was cheap and they made the CLAIM no ads. That was as it turned out a flat out lie. I unsubscribed the very same day, turns out at the time a lot of people were doing the same. They will just change the definition of what ads are they cant help themselves.The urge to forge loopholes is just too great.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Lost in all of this is that people who run software ad blockers probably also run mental ad blockers (in my case, this can not be uninstalled), so our response to the advertising—even if they manage to shove it down our throats—is not going to generate any significant net cash outflow.
For a while, Wired can monetize the increasing number of eyeballs, but then the advertisers will normalize to the newly deflated advertising conversion rate (down 20%? who would have guessed?) and Wired will eventually end up getting exactly the same money as before.
Nice business model you've got there. Shame if anyone connected all the dots.
Barker: Hey, I'd like to interest you in a new business model!
Banker: How does it work?
Barker: You plant a suggestion, then people buy your shit.
Banker: A suggestion?
Barker: A Loud, Noisy, Flashy, Wheezy, Spinning, Popping, Sliding suggestion.
Banker: I think you missed a dwarf. Somebody steal your March?
Barker: Him, too.
Banker: But—the suggestion isn't actually binding on the bumpkin, and surely you must give them something in return just to get their attention in the first place?
Barker: Cheaper than you think.
Banker: But—I'm still having trouble with the fundamentally non-binding nature of the transaction.
Barker: A new day, a new dawn! We'll make this Silverado shitstorm so ubiquitous, it'll soon become regarded as a moral crime to respond to our everlasting fusillade of suggestive schlock as anything less than simply irresistible.
Banker: You certainly have big plans.
Barker: And you certainly have big bucks.
Banker: I won't have to actually drive a Silverado, will I?
Barker: Oh, no. You can drive a Bentley.
Banker: Funny you say that. I was looking at one just the other day.
Barker: A red one?
Banker: Just how would you know that?
Short, conspiratorial silence.
Barker: [whispers] Pull up a chair, here's where it gets real interesting ...
If the content is soooo special that they feel the need to rape my computer before I see it, the site can require a subscription or dedicated app. Clicking a link is not an agreement on my part to accept any and all conditions of the site in order to view the content. Clicking a link is the beginning of a negotiation for exchange of data. A negotiation that I will leave if third party scripts, third party ads, tracking cookies, or flash content are requirements.
file: