
Ad Blockers and the Nuisance at the Heart of the Modern Web - denzil_correa
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/20/technology/personaltech/ad-blockers-and-the-nuisance-at-the-heart-of-the-modern-web.html?ribbon-ad-idx=7&rref=homepage&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Home%20Page&pgtype=article
======
jordanpg
As is typical, this doesn't address my biggest concern, which is that I
absolutely don't want any ads alongside my content, ever.

Now and forever, I reserve the right to read documents that I'm interested in,
without any ads visible. If the web economy cannot exist without this, then I
want to find another way. I don't have the answer.

Yes, I'll pay for subscriptions, but this obviously doesn't solve the whole
problem. Until then, I'll use adblockers until I'm forced not to or they are
out-maneuvered (presumably pretty soon).

We need to stop taking it for granted that the future of the internet is one
in which ads are always visible.

~~~
WalterGR

        Now and forever, I reserve the right to read documents that I'm
        interested in, without any ads visible. If the web economy
        cannot exist without this, then I want to find another way. 
    

Out of curiosity - and as a software engineer who makes his living partially
from the intellectual property he creates - why do you feel entitled to
arbitrary content on your terms?

Do we all have a moral right to unencumbered and payment-less access to the
new Britney Spears album?

Wouldn't it make more sense to only consume media that's _legitimately_
available in a way that you find acceptable? That's one way to steer content
creators towards that world, right?

~~~
Retra
Because content requires attention, and the right to distribute your attention
as desired coupled with the right to carefully investigate publicly available
information imply it. We are entitled to our culture. And we are entitled to
our attempts to control our thoughts and attentions.

It may not be compatible with our current economic system, but that system
isn't a law of nature that can't be contradicted. Just because people make
money producing culture doesn't mean they can lord over it and dictate how it
is consumed and used with absolute authority.

>Wouldn't it make more sense to only consume media that's legitimately
available in a way that you find acceptable? That's one way to steer content
creators towards that world, right?

No, that's just voting on the issue. If a great majority disagrees with you,
you won't get what you want. You could argue then that we have a
responsibility to convince that majority, but that's pushing a responsibility
onto someone who's already taken it.

In other words, by reserving this right, OP is taking a stand in a socially
visible way with the intent of convincing more people to follow suit. That
action will steer the world in that direction if it succeeds. So they are
already doing what you're asking them to do.

\--- EDIT ---

Here's a better way of thinking about it:

You "earn a living" producing content. So you say "because other people want
to see my content, I have a right _to my lifestyle_ (of getting paid.)"

And I say "because other people want my attention, I have a right to my
lifestyle (of choosing exactly what to see.)"

And if you weren't being paid to take a side, or indoctrinated into a certain
bias there, I don't see how you can reason that one is somehow more just than
the other. Especially since the rewards are pretty much commensurate with the
value produced.

~~~
WalterGR
(For people following this thread, the above response isn't from the person I
originally replied to.)

    
    
        You "earn a living" producing content. So you say "because other
        people want to see my content, I have a right to my lifestyle (of
        getting paid.)"
    

Except I don't. I don't feel entitled to get paid in some arbitrary way that's
convenient for me. I'm _happy_ that I can produce software and content and be
paid for it - but I don't feel that I have a _right_ to that by virtue of
being born. It just so happens that the IP laws in my country of residence
allow me to do so.

Which perhaps is why I'm a bit puzzled as to why people would feel entitled to
what I - and others - produce and make available under certain terms that they
might not be happy with, simply because they were born and want the content. I
just don't get the sense of entitlement.

But I acknowledge that this isn't something we're going to resolve in the HN
comments section.

EDIT: Followup questions:

It seems like preventing someone from accessing something that they have a
right to is immoral.

Consider that I have a website with content that I've created. If I work to
hide that content from visitors who have an ad-blocker enabled, am I behaving
in an immoral way?

If that site had its content behind a paywall and I actively disable accounts
when I detect that they're being shared, am I behaving in an immoral way?

If the site has its content behind a paywall and I actively serve DMCA
requests when I find that content published elsewhere without my consent, am I
behaving in an immoral way?

If people are entitled to "culture", as you state, if the content from that
site were instead a physical book, and I owned a book store that sold copies
of the book, and I called the police when people were shoplifting the book,
would I be behaving in an immoral way?

What if that was the only book that I carried at the store and I locked the
door to the store at night. Is that immoral?

Is it not immoral for me to publish it in book form to begin with? If you're
entitled to culture, shouldn't culture-creators make the culture available in
the easiest form for you to get at it? Making the culture available as a
physical object - with all that entails - probably isn't the easiest way for
you to get access to it.

~~~
Retra
If you don't "feel entitled to get paid," then what do you really have to
complain about when someone wants it for free? And don't you think it's a
little unfair that you'd attribute to others a "sense of entitlement" and to
you a "virtue of good fortune" for participating in comparable behavior?

I recommend you stop using the phrase "sense of entitlement" to describe how
other people come to conclusions about what they would like the world to be.
Because unless you are doing the exact same thing, you have no grounds to
object. (I.e., it is your "sense of entitlement" that causes you to want
things to work the way _you_ want them to.)

>It seems like preventing someone from accessing something that they have a
right to is immoral.

No, it doesn't "seem" like it. That's what it means to have a right.

Everything else you're asking is a matter of social bargaining. You are
entitled to payment for your work. Others are entitled to culture and
attention management. You give some of yours, others give some of theirs. And
everybody argues that they are giving more than the other, so as to get the
best deal they can get for what they offer.

At the end of the day, what is _right_ is what benefits our collective ability
to make decisions in the long run. And people are pretty fed up with ads that
do nothing but offend their peace of mind. It doesn't benefit them, it only
benefits those who sell the ads. Which means those who give their attention
are not bargaining well enough to get what they want. Hence this whole
discussion.

~~~
WalterGR

       If you don't "feel entitled to get paid," then what do you really
       have to complain about when someone wants it for free? 
    

I'm not complaining. I'm trying to understand a perspective that I'm having a
hard time empathizing with.

    
    
       And don't you think it's a little unfair that you'd attribute to
       others a "sense of entitlement" and to you a "virtue of good fortune"
       for participating in comparable behavior?
    

Not in the slightest, since as I said above I don't feel entitled to payment
for it. But I'm certainly happy that I can support myself via the creation of
non-physical works.

    
    
       I recommend you stop using the phrase "sense of entitlement"
    

What would you prefer that I use? I'm not going to call it the "right" to the
free, unfettered access to the non-physical creations of others, because I
don't believe it _is_ a right.

    
    
       You are entitled to payment for your work. Others are entitled to
       culture and attention management. You give some of yours, others give
       some of theirs. And everybody argues that they are giving more than the
       other, so as to get the best deal they can get for what they offer.
    

That seems like a good summary of the perspective. Thanks.

------
walterstucco
Internet won't die without ads (or money), maybe big content providers will,
and that's ok to me.

The point of internet advertising is that paradoxically we have to pay to make
advertisers not work. If I pay, the adv gets removed, hence the adv is not
displayed, hence the advertiser real job right now is to create something that
make us think that paying to not to see that shit, is actually acceptable.

Ads are so terrible right now that people are gradually accepting the idea of
paying for a - sometimes expensive - subscription because advertisers created
the false dichotomy that the internet should be free and run by ads, or ads
free but the users will have to pay for it.

It is the same model of the Italian mob: if you pay, I don't burn your shop to
the ground. As Italian I know this model generate lots of revenues, but it's
not exactly fair.

I think there is a better model, the content providers should reward with a
small fee (a tiny percentage of their ads revenues) those users who are
willing to watch the ads in exchange for some - small but real - money (it
could even be something completely different from money, the idea is to reward
who watch the ads).

This way we could put things back in balance: pay advertisers to actually do
their job, not to scare people into buying subscriptions to services that once
were free.

------
blhack
A thing about ads is: I actually _like_ them. One of the reasons I used to buy
magazines was to read the ads. It gave me a really good idea about the
different types of tech that were available in whatever industry I was curious
about at that time.

My problem with most web ads is that they just feel like scams. The barrier to
entry for web ads is _so_ low, that anybody can take out any ad for any thing,
and there really is no filter.

Sure there were always ads for penis pills (or a speaker that makes your car
_sound_ like it has a turbo!) in the back of the magazine, but now those ads
are showing up for me right in the metaphorical front.

Here's what I really wish existed: an opt-in ad network. You agree to have ads
shown to you, and you _tell the advertisers what you are interested in_ , then
they show you ads for things you care about.

For instance: I'm leaving for burning man this weekend. I would LOVE to see
ads about headlamps, or cheap EL wire, or a deal on Cliff Bars; stuff like
that.

Or usually: I would love to see [curated] ads for web hosting, new restaurants
in Phoenix, or cheap airfair to SF.

Maybe that should be my next project: a curated ad network.

~~~
minikites
There's already a curated ad network in The Deck:
[http://decknetwork.net/](http://decknetwork.net/)

Daring Fireball uses it, among others.

------
niels_olson
Wait, my use of an ad blocker costs the industry $11,000?! Maybe I should use
2...

And, frankly, I have no problem paying a reasonable price for content. And the
New York Times sets that bar: $40/mo is a little to high. I think they'd make
10x as much with a $5 or $10 rate.

~~~
delecti
Presumably that means they've calculated that every non-adblocking person
generates almost $1,000 in ad views every month. I find that number ludicrous,
and I even work in advertising.

------
DaveWalk
tl;dr The NYT distills the adblocking zeitgeist into layman's terms. Standard
quotes from ABP parent company CEO. And from an Irish startup called PageFair
that reports on AdBlock use.

Dig this quote: >In a report last week, Adobe and PageFair, an Irish start-up
that tracks ad-blocking, estimated that blockers will cost publishers nearly
$22 billion in revenue this year.

I can't even wrap my mind around that $22 billion comment. What does it even
mean? It seems...vacuous. It reminds me of the RIAA/MPAA propaganda of the
aughts, even though movie/music pirates would never have bought at full retail
price to begin with.

~~~
oconnore
> I can't even wrap my mind around that $22 billion comment. What does it even
> mean?

It means that several thousand people will have to get real jobs.

~~~
Eupolemos
Well, in the end that goes for advertisers and website makers both, I guess.

I think it is a pretty difficult conundrum, with stalking and annoying ads
being unethical, but easy advertising services being a good thing for website
producers.

I'm working on my first commercial site, but don't know how to go about
funding it in a way that wouldn't bother me - not everyone is willing to pay
for membership and I'd like to be able to use ads without being an douchebag.

I just don't know how yet.

------
wanderfowl
That was a really nicely done piece, and captures the ethos nicely with that
closing line ("For better ads tomorrow, block ads today").

So much of adblocker usage is because ads are ugly, intrusive, creepy (or
conversely, pointless), and great vectors for malware, and thus, are bad UX.
I'm very much hoping that increased prevalence of adblocking will make the
content industry either come up with a way to serve ads without wrecking UX,
or monetize differently.

~~~
psadri
> "For better ads tomorrow, block ads today"

The problem with ads and ad blockers is that if a significantly large
percentage of sites have bad ads, people will install and use ad blockers. Ad
blockers will by default block ads on the well behaved sites as well as the
bad sites, effectively punishing the good and bad alike. I believe there is a
term for this -- the market for lemons.

~~~
wldcordeiro
Adblock Plus tried to address this but was given a ton of grief for it. I
thought the idea of having an acceptable ads filter was smart.

~~~
psadri
Adblock could be off by default and if enough people 'vote' a site as bad by
activating it for that site, then it will become 'on' by default.

~~~
mc808
And the whole thing can be funded by selling lists of users who did/didn't
disable the ads in cluster X, Y, Z...

------
Mz
The Internet is here to stay and somehow we need to figure out how to pay for
it in a way that keeps good things available to the public. This means both
finding a way to pay people providing good quality stuff and doing so in a way
that doesn't shut folks not paying.

I have thought about this for a lot of years. When I was a homeschooling
parent, there were a lot of good resources online that later disappeared for
various reasons. One of those reasons was that the person publishing it took
it offline to make it available to paying customers only.

People have decried the deterioration of the Internt for years. I think there
is a lot of validity to those complaints, but there is no such thing as a free
lunch. If you don't want ads, then you need to be willing to pay people some
other way. Donate buttons seem to do poorly. I was glad to see Patreon come
out. I hope we can make headway on this issue. To me, there is a clear
connection between everyone wanting sites to remain free while they
increasingly block ads and simultaneously decry the loss of so much good
stuff.

~~~
niels_olson
Is there any way to impose a "progressive taxation" system? Presumably the
wealthy are willing to cough up $40 per month for the New York Times. But if
it's the poor and oppressed we want to take care of, how do you convince the
wealthy to pitch in? Most studies I'm aware of indicate the wealthy are the
least likely to be interested in progressive taxation schemes, even though
they have historically created tides that lift all boats (rather than the
current trend of financial schemes, which create tides that lift all yachts)

~~~
Mz
I am so tired of hearing this kind of framing. Good paradigms do not frame
economic solutions in terms of rich vs poor. I am not interested in talking
about how to soak the rich for the benefit of the poor. That framing only
deepens the class divide.

We need a different mental model for this relatively new set of problems or
the horrendous crisis we currently have will only get worse.

 _You cannot solve a problem with the same mindset that created it._

\-- Albert Einstein

~~~
niels_olson
I'm so tired of the frame too. So, how do you define the crisis?

~~~
Mz
People have inherent value. Their participation in the system has inherent
value. Their ability to pay not only varies from person to person but also
from time to time. We need to create paradigms that are inclusive of those who
are less well off finanically not as charity but because their participation
adds value.

HN actually does that. It is part of the YC business model. HN is noit
directly monetized. There are no ads and there is no membership fee. But you
cannot apply to YC without a handle on HN.

YC wants and needs HN members who are not currently wealthy. It invests in
companies that are just starting out, that need seed money and other
assistance. That is how YC makes money: by helping them grow and getting a cut
of the action.

The more we exclude the have nots, the harder it gets for them to escape
poverty and become one of the haves. Creating a permanent underclass hurts
everyone.

I like the Patreon model and I am considering pursuing that for some of my
projects. I also have tip jars on some sites. I need more traffic and some
other pieces to come together. I am working on it.

I see no reason why we cannot have several different viable models that treat
those who are not currently able to pay as valuable participants. Human
society is deeply harmed by systems that boil everyone down to their current
net worth. It actively undermines the creation of real value. We need to start
actively discouraging that while grappling with how to pay the bills at the
same time.

------
getdavidhiggins
I'm a bit tired of the AD blocking debate. There will always be two camps in
this; the tech savvy, and the web consumers who think Facebook is the
Internet. Lumping people into these two categories only ever worked for
computers and the web, because remember; a computer is unforgiving, the
programs that execute on it are unforgiving, and a computer is only as smart
as its user. With very fine grained precision I can allow what traffic I want
to see on my network, and I do not apologize for that. In the end AD blocking
is about control structures trickling down into the consumer web. If it is the
case where I am paid better than stupid people because I know how to serve
them ADs better, then I suppose I win on a hermetic level; I have recast the
purpose of a computer; which is something to do my bidding, and made it a mere
device and gimmick for my users.

If on the other hand users are in control and I try to seize back that
control, then I am in a silly game of cat and mouse, and this becomes a game
of who can devise the smartest way to outsmart smart people. Not the game I
want to play. Money is about keeping the channels open to receive an exchange,
and if there are hangups by web publishers about whether they should disband
AD networks because of AD blockers, then the game is lost.

Just open up more channels. Seek out other ways to monetize:
[https://gist.github.com/ndarville/4295324](https://gist.github.com/ndarville/4295324)

Also similar:
[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4924647](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4924647)

------
Fiahil
I looked up the _Interactive Advertising Bureau_ cited towards the ends, and
ended up on a document describing guidelines to detect _Click Fraud_ [0].

How the hell did we ended up to this level of insanity?

[0]: [http://www.iab.net/media/file/Click-measurement-
guidelines20...](http://www.iab.net/media/file/Click-measurement-
guidelines2009.pdf)

------
Nadya
People who are blocking your ads aren't people who would have purchased a
product _because_ of your ad in the first place. So I find the act of "showing
non-disruptive ads to ad blockers" to be strange.

 _> Some publishers and advertisers say ad blocking violates the implicit
contract that girds the Internet — the idea that in return for free content,
we all tolerate a constant barrage of ads._

There is no reason why the implicit contract can't be changed. That's why you
get contracts in writing. :)

As far as any "moral" argument goes. Here's how I see it:

"Your neighbor asks if they can park in your driveway. You agree to it, you
had space to spare for the neighbor's car anyway.

This went on fine for a few months, then your neighbor started parking _two_
cars in your driveway. You had only agreed to having _one_ car parked but you
still had space to spare so you let them do it.

A few years later - your neighbor is now parking many cars in your driveway
and even _blocking your garage_. To drive anywhere you need to move your
neighbor's car out of the way. Being the nice guy he is, he gave you a spare
key to move the car when needed."

Would it be "immoral" to ask your neighbor to stop parking cars in your
driveway at this point? Is it immoral to ask your neighbor to stop parking
cars in your driveway at _any_ point?

I've decided to no longer let ads be parked in my browser. I don't see how
that is immoral.

 _> PageFair’s canny strategy to mitigate users’ outrage is that it will only
show ads that aren’t “intrusive,” Mr. Blanchfield said._

Sean Blanchfield, if you ever get to read this, you can go fuck yourself.
How's that for "mitigated outrage"? You don't get to decide what is and isn't
"intrusive" for me.

~~~
rhino369
>People who are blocking your ads aren't people who would have purchased a
product because of your ad in the first place.

Most advertising is just brand awareness. The days of e-advertising being
about clicking the ad and buying on some webstore are long over.

They are just like commercials on TV or billboards.

You don't even realize the effect they have on you.

>I've decided to no longer let ads be parked in my browser. I don't see how
that is immoral.

I totally agree. But I think it would also be fine if the content providers
refused me service if I didn't let the ads through.

I'm surprised more sites don't do that. I have a blocker on (and I don't even
let through intrusive ads, I block it all) and I think I've only run into
problems on hulu or some other video website.

~~~
Nadya
_> They are just like commercials on TV or billboards. You don't even realize
the effect they have on you._

I do. Which is why I haven't watched television/movies since I was 10 years
old. Luckily I only see billboards when I'm on a freeway, which happens maybe
once or twice a year at most.

I also keep an excel sheet where I blacklist companies whom I've seen
advertisements from. So advertising to me has a net loss of -1 customer for
life.

But I'll agree that _most people_ don't realize how much advertisements
influence their behavior. I find it disgusting and not something that should
be accepted at all in any amount - but most people don't seem to mind it.
(Ignoring privacy issues with _online_ advertisements. I'm speaking more
general here.)

 _> But I think it would also be fine if the content providers refused me
service if I didn't let the ads through._

Oh, I agree. Of course - the provider will likely go out of business because
that isn't a sustainable business model either - but I do agree. It also hurts
their Google Ranking which is why Paywall sites let you read the article if
you find it through Google.

Advertising is a broken business model. Once-upon-a-time it worked but it is
breaking down. It's not the customer's job to keep watching advertisements.
It's the providers job to find a better business model. Or go out of business.

~~~
seibelj
I disagree that advertising itself is a broken model, but I like imagining
that someone ruthlessly updates their excel spreadsheet of blacklisted
companies every time they hear or see an advertisement for any company. You
must only shop at flea markets!

~~~
Nadya
I don't watch TV, rarely drive, don't watch movies, and use an ad blocker. It
shouldn't be surprising that I see _very_ few advertisements. To the tune of
single-digits per year.

If a company is _so intrusive_ that they still find a way to serve me an
advertisement - they aren't a company I wish to support.

Billboards and bus stops are the worst offenders, but most of those I pass are
advertising TV shows and movies. Which I already don't partake in.

I should be more specific: online advertising is a broken model. If it wasn't
broken they wouldn't be trying to fix it. ;)

~~~
wldcordeiro
> I should be more specific: online advertising is a broken model. If it
> wasn't broken they wouldn't be trying to fix it. ;)

By that definition everything is broken.

------
SCHiM
I remember back when I was younger I used to be active on a programming
website (ok it was a game hacking website, but I was active in the programming
sections mostly).

I wrote a number of tutorials, some of what I wrote was crap. I was 15/16 at
the time, but other stuff was pretty useful.

The point being that all this content was shared for free, all the code was/is
in the public domain, I know that some of my code made it into, ahem,
_commercial_ products. Turns out it was pretty productive for content that was
generated without any compensation at all. I wasn't the only person doing
this, most content is still available from others. Naturally the internet,
most companies, cannot possibly run on goodwill and motivation alone. But for
me it does show that in certain niches money is not an issue. As long as there
is a platform there will always be hidden gems to be found.

------
bigger_cheese
I passed the threshold many years ago advertisers only have themselves to
blame back in the late 90's early 00's the web used to be miserable popups
everywhere ads disguised as content ads that served malware etc. Then they
moved on to irritating flash ads - sometimes with sound...

Nowadays it's worse because they actively mine your personal information. I
see things on Facebook like "31 years old and single? Meet women now." No
thanks, talk about creepy and condescending.

------
brownbat
I like the article, but I feel like there's an unquestioned premise everyone
uses in these debates:

> Advertising sustains pretty much all the content you enjoy on the web,

Is that true?

There is definitely a lot of great ad supported stuff. No question. But does
that mean that all great stuff is ad supported, or ad support is necessary for
the web to function?

I'm not getting paid through advertising for this comment. It's still content
I created that you're reading. (I know, you're probably thinking it's not that
great a comment either!)

A lot of webmail is ad supported, but email wasn't always that way. We had
several decades with usenet, user-side email servers, dial-up BBS's, early
MUDs... in the late 90s there were a lot of early online multiplayer games.
Now when a single player game (with a social layer!) fails, the servers die
and it's not playable.[1] Back then when a near-MMO failed, the community just
took over and hosted servers for free.[2] You basically just paid for a pipe
and everyone tried to pitch in, contribute something interesting, or pile in
with a little of their bandwidth.[3]

I don't remember society scoffing and thinking, "nah, Internet doesn't have
YouTube, it's a fad." Well, except Newsweek.[4]

I think that if there were no ads, we would lose a lot of the great stuff
online. But we'd have different cool stuff too, because there's always been
some incentive to share interesting things with other people. Even if that
only motivates one in a thousand people, turns out there are a lot of people
online, and it fills up pretty quick.[5,6]

The different cool stuff might be "obviously worse" in your imagination, but
I'm not sure. Some days I feel nostalgia for the web of decades past. Then I
usually fire up an ad-supported video on YouTube to reminisce, and try to
ignore the irony.[7]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Empires_Online](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Empires_Online)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_\(video_game\))

[3] There's a paradoxical aside in Cryptonomicon about how the cost of
bandwidth approaches zero over time, so, in theory, it can be treated as
costless and abundant. Unfortunately this is a very asymptotic trend, and the
needs for bandwidth increase proportionately, so in practice it's a
significant and ever-present cost.

[4]
[http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2010/02/27/newsweek-1995-bu...](http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2010/02/27/newsweek-1995-buy-
books-newspapers-straight-intenet-uh/)

[5] [http://www.geek.com/news/youtube-hits-3-billion-views-per-
da...](http://www.geek.com/news/youtube-hits-3-billion-views-per-day-48-hours-
of-video-uploaded-per-minute-1383495/)

[6] Most the people uploading videos to youtube will never get paid. Just
because they theoretically could be paid doesn't mean most of them will, or
that's their driving motivation.

[7]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvch3eIoKQQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvch3eIoKQQ)

