Slashdot Mirror
UK Gov't Launches Anti-Adblocking Initiative, Compares It To Piracy (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: UK culture secretary John Whittingdale has announced that the British government will set up a 'round-table' between online publishers and adblocking companies to discuss the 'problem' of adblocking. He described the practice of charging companies to be whitelisted as a 'modern day protection racket', and said: "Quite simply – if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist And that's as true for the latest piece of journalism as it is for the new album from Muse." The issue has largely been left to the market to self-regulate until now, although Germany's courts ruled adblocking legal in 2015.
People who abuse free samples are equivalent to thieves, people who test drive cars excessively are car jackers, and those taking more pennies than they leave are bank robbers!
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
If your product has adverts then adverts are part of your product. That makes YOU responsible for them. So if they annoy the ever living crap out of your users then it is YOUR fault.
So if you need adverts then take some responsibility. That means making sure you don't have adverts so obnoxious or malware ridden that your users want to block them. If the users want to block your adverts it is your fault and you have failed.
If you just want to "maximize your monetization" or simply can't be arsed to do a decent job, then you have no sympathy from me.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I'll support anti-blocking initiative, if and only if these websites and ad providers are held criminally and financially liable for any damage caused by malicious ads.
I've never heard of a TV ad locking up someone's TV and ask for ransom. Hold online ads to the same standard.
He described the practice of charging companies to be whitelisted as a 'modern day protection racket', and said: "Quite simply – if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist
That's EXACTLY the point. I didn't agree to view advertising in exchange for the content. Nobody contacted me about the arrangement to find out how I felt about it. If their business model depends on annoying me in a way that I have the power to stop then it should surprise no one when I go ahead and stop them from bothering me. Their stupid business model is not my problem.
To meaningfully understand consumer backlash to advertising means we need to go back all the way to 1986. It was here, when advertisers switched from building a product to building a brand and decoupling their reliance on a product entirely. Its also worth noting many scholars reference the 80s to a period of peak consumption. we had more choices than ever, and could no longer reliably rely on quality as a metric for purchases. by the 90s manufacturers through NAFTA and CAFTA had cemented this concept of american "brand" consumption entirely. Advertising, arguably, now had to become entirely predatory.
luxury cars were no longer sold on quality and luxury, but on a brand of cultivated superiority and projection of affluence. Athletic shoes, appliances, food, you name it, suddenly became a feature of a culture you could define yourself by and not a product you were actually seeking. "what does it do, how well does it do it" was no longer offered to be considered. And as brands forced more and more lifestyle and experience into their products they began to run out of understanding of culture, or the entropy by which their brand-centric consumerism thrived.
fast forward to this foul year 2016. ads now track you, sites track you, and campaigns overtly demand your input. there are entire analytic suites and social science departments that study you like a petri dish for any semblance of clue as to what defines your wants, and how to exploit your desires. they do this because without information about who you are and what you do, the product cant be targeted to appeal to what lifestyle you can be made to desire. Be it astronaut, playboy, or racecar driver. unless the idea of brand-as-culture is dialed back, this is only going to get worse.
what we're seeing online is a revolt against the intrusiveness of ads from bandwidth to page view and browser experience, but its also a revolt against the idea of a consumer as a lab-rat
Good people go to bed earlier.
It's nothing to do with the politicians. It's the advertisers and their under-table back-handers. A lowly oik is promised a non-executive board position at £300k/yr 4ish years down the road. She raises the issue with civil servants (job for life in the public sector, never lose their jobs when govts change) until it makes it to a committee. At this point more money comes in via promises of further non-exec income for the senior people on said committee; these people will be associated with a given party, even if they're don't hold a senior seat.
Sooner or later the corps get to buy legislation at the expense of the people. This is obviously the status quo in the US, but no Europe (yet). The retards in the UK always gripe about the House of Lords, but it's these very people that are the last bastion of sanity to tell the lower House to fuck off with this shit. Unfortunately the UK has followed the US model and set things up to reduce the peers (who have zero worries about income, wealth, education et al, for them and their family), and load up with career politicians to outvote those that see through the obvious corporate buy-the-law bullshit.
I sort of understand their point in this matter, at least partially. When money comes into play regarding whitelisting, that's where I'm having a hard time accepting ad blocking companies' actions. It's like being forced to claim a Yelp business profile so you can respond to critical comments.
What I don't have any objections against are non-profit adblocking software that let the user fully control what they see or don't see while respecting their privacy. No hidden URL tracking policies, data collection, ad whitelisting schemes or any similar nonsense. There are already a metric shitton of means to get around ad blocking software and improving user privacy at the same time.
-SR
And if AdBlocking software is banned, then people will just figure out other ways to keep the web clean.
As much as I hate to say this, and I really hate to say this: ad-blocking through host file changes will be resilient.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.