
“We're considering banning domains that require users to disable ad blockers” - Hjugo
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4if65h/mod_announcement_were_considering_banning_all/
======
econnors
As noted other comments, this would only apply to the /r/technology subreddit.
The general feedback is in favor of blocking these types of sites.

I'm pretty amazed at the current state of ads. With multiple ad exchanges,
private sellers, and static brand deals, the entire serving process is a mess
and users are paying for it. I don't think publishing websites are being
malicious; they're incentived to make money and just haven't figured out how
to do it at a high enough margin while keeping users happy. I just think the
entire internet ad industry is in shambles and nobody really knows a solution
that makes everyone happy.

~~~
tomp
Of course they are malicious. They're serving the high-profit ads, which
obviously includes malware, where they could be serving low-profit, safe (but
boring) ads.

That's equivalent to pharmacists selling illegal drugs (heroin, cocaine)
simply because they obviously make them more profits.

~~~
econnors
It's not that simple. At any one time, a publisher can be serving ads from a
few exchanges, a few different private sellers, and custom built ads for
brands. And these all are served in different combinations across several
different ad units on multiple pages. And some of those ad sellers may be
backfilling with other ad networks, or maybe the publisher is backfilling
certain ads from the ad exchanges at certain CPM prices.

I'd liken it more to a hardware product being shipped with faulty materials
when multiple manufacturers are involved and it's extremely difficult to
identify the responsible party. Sure, they're responsible for the end product,
but it's not so black and white.

~~~
devishard
> At any one time, a publisher can be serving ads from a few exchanges, a few
> different private sellers, and custom built ads for brands. And these all
> are served in different combinations across several different ad units on
> multiple pages. And some of those ad sellers may be backfilling with other
> ad networks, or maybe the publisher is backfilling certain ads from the ad
> exchanges at certain CPM prices.

So, don't do that.

> It's not that simple.

It is absolutely that simple.

Your argument is basically, "Their process is so complicated they can't avoid
serving up malware." But that's not a justification for serving up malware. If
your process is too complicated to avoid serving malware, then you need to
simplify your process until you can avoid serving up malware.

You don't get a free pass on ethics just because ethics are inconvenient for
your business model.

~~~
Silhouette
_You don 't get a free pass on ethics just because ethics are inconvenient for
your business model._

I think calling this an ethical issue is quite a stretch. In many cases, we're
talking about visitors who are not only enjoying the content from someone
else's site completely for free, but also employing tools that actively modify
the intended presentation of that content to the detriment of the host site's
operators. And now you're saying that not only should the site operators make
their content freely available and accept that some visitors will circumvent
possibly the only way they have of generating revenue, those operators should
also be actively responsible for vetting any third party content they
incorporate within their site in case the third party is hostile and those
visitors know enough to run ad-blockers but not enough to run anti-virus
software? That seems a very short-sighted and one-sided position, entirely in
favour of the party who isn't actually contributing anything in this scenario,
and I see no ethical basis for that.

Edit: For those who are downvoting, please consider that I did _not_ disagree
with the original premise I quoted. Obviously unethical business models are
still unethical even if the ethical ones are inconvenient.

What I'm asking is why we should consider it an ethical requirement for
someone who is already generously offering their content for free _and_
accepting that a significant fraction of visitors will circumvent their
intended ad-funded model to _also_ go to unrealistic lengths to vet any third
party content they include for safety against arbitrary unknown threats that
could change at any time without notice, all for the benefit of a visitor who
is offering them nothing. I'm not sure whether someone operating a web site
really owes their visitors _anything_ in this scenario, other than perhaps a
basic "good citizen" principle of not negligently serving up malicious
content, and I don't see how operating within the same infrastructure as a
huge number of other web sites could reasonably be considered negligent in
this respect.

Unless you think we should also close down all third party CDNs, image hosting
services, caching services, web font services, and so on, the web is
fundamentally a linked medium where sites can usefully be built by combining
resources from other services, and naturally those other services will retain
control of what they are hosting themselves. Making Joe Blogger responsible if
some massive service's CDN version of jQuery got hacked doesn't seem like a
good way to encourage Joe Blogger to spend their time sharing their writing
with the rest of the world.

~~~
devishard
> And now you're saying that not only should the site operators make their
> content freely available and accept that some visitors will circumvent
> possibly the only way they have of generating revenue, those operators
> should also be actively responsible for vetting any third party content they
> incorporate within their site in case the third party is hostile

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying it's unethical to have ads with malware on
your site. I didn't propose a way not to have malware on your site.

The way you propose, by vetting ads, has been used successfully, but it's not
a particularly imaginative solution. What about donations, freemium, PWYW,
subscriptions, grants? Or what about giving your work away for free and using
that reputation to get jobs?

> Making Joe Blogger responsible if some massive service's CDN version of
> jQuery got hacked doesn't seem like a good way to encourage Joe Blogger to
> spend their time sharing their writing with the rest of the world.

It's utterly ridiculous to claim this is about Joe Blogger. Joe Blogger is
quite often happy to do his blogging as a labor of love and let
blogspot/livejournal/whatever reap all the ad revenue. And small-time bloggers
who do make money are frequently more sensitive to their readers' complaints
and explore alternatives to big add networks that serve ads. The problem is
big content providers who are under shareholder pressure to produce growth
each quarter, so they try to squeeze out every bit of ad revenue with no
concern for users. They're also too risk averse to try alternative
monetization strategies to ads. It is well within the capability of those
players to provide ads without malware, but they don't because it doesn't hurt
their bottom line enough.

Serving up malware to your users and readers is unethical. I'm all for
supporting content providers; I donate to NPR and to artists on Patreon
frequently. But if you can't run your business ethically, then you should shut
down your business.

If you really think serving up malware to finance content is okay, then why
don't you propose that content creators just hack some small percentage of
their users and sell the data online? The effect on users is the same, but it
cuts out the middlemen so it's more efficient.

~~~
Silhouette
_The way you propose, by vetting ads, has been used successfully_

For businesses running large enough sites to operate their own scheme, sure.
Facebook ads are pretty safe, for example. Unfortunately, this isn't a
realistic option for smaller sites, and neither are any of the other things
you mentioned in most cases. Alternatives like donations or PWYW have been
tried and they almost always fail. That's why ad-funded web sites are still so
common!

I don't think this discussion is going to go anywhere useful. You're objecting
to a behaviour that is widely useful -- incorporating content served by third
parties as part of a site -- on the basis that site operators with little if
any revenue aren't operating to an impossibly high standard of safety checking
at their own expense to prevent a small risk of third party malware being
served by their site without their knowledge or consent. Furthermore, you have
offered no plausible better alternatives for most of those site operators. In
a world complying with your rules, most of the modern web doesn't exist,
because no-one would "ethically" be allowed to contribute to it without
falling short of your standards.

~~~
devishard
> Alternatives like donations or PWYW have been tried and they almost always
> fail.

1\. Most businesses fail, period. I think you would be hard-pressed to prove
they failed because they doesn't have ads.

2\. You conveniently ignored half the alternatives to ads that I listed,
probably because there are numerous examples of successful subscription-based
content providers.

> In a world complying with your rules, most of the modern web doesn't exist,
> because no-one would "ethically" be allowed to contribute to it without
> falling short of your standards.

This is true, but I'm not sure why you see this as a bad thing. Most of the
modern web is noise that makes it harder to find signals I care about. Sites
that get their money from me are more likely to give me content I want than
sites that get their money from ads and malware.

~~~
Silhouette
_1\. Most businesses fail, period. I think you would be hard-pressed to prove
they failed because they doesn 't have ads._

Well, if a business used to make enough revenue to turn a profit through ads,
and then you take that revenue away and it fails, it seems likely that the
failure was caused by the loss of ads combined with the lack of any
alternative revenue stream(s) to replace them. Occam's razor and all that.

 _2\. You conveniently ignored half the alternatives to ads that I listed,
probably because there are numerous examples of successful subscription-based
content providers._

From direct personal experience, getting a site to the point where someone is
willing to pay real money for access -- even if you have lots of original
content that gets very favourable comments and a lot of interest -- is _hard_.

If you're running a huge brand whose site people really do visit often -- a
good quality news site, say, or perhaps a service like Netflix or Spotify --
then sure, someone might consider it worth paying a few dollars a month to
subscribe.

If you're running a smaller niche site that someone might find very useful but
only visit occasionally, unfortunately it is a different game entirely.

Just to be absolutely clear, so you don't think I'm ignoring any of your
alternatives:

Donations: Known to generate negligible revenue in most cases.

Freemium: Possible in some cases, but only if there is something useful to
upsell to.

PWYW: See Donations.

Subscriptions: Possible in some cases, but only if the site is big enough
and/or updated often enough to attract regular visitors.

Grant: From where, exactly?

 _Sites that get their money from me are more likely to give me content I want
than sites that get their money from ads and malware._

Really? I find sites that show up for the search terms I'm using and hold my
attention for more than 5 seconds when I click through are often very useful.

However, I'm not going to subscribe to every one of the 150+ sites that my
browser history tells me I visited today while researching something, or even
the 10-20 of them that actually did have very useful information.

Nor am I realistically going to go through the hassle of making a card payment
or using some donation service I've never heard of and don't necessarily trust
just to give each site some fraction of a dollar, even if I considered the
material they'd given me on that occasion to be worth it.

I would happily donate to such sites if an immediate and non-intrusive method
for handling the micropayments existed, but sadly we haven't solved that
problem yet. Until we do, I don't begrudge sites that are ad-funded, nor do I
think they owe me anything if they block me because I then block those ads.

So as I wrote before, I don't think this discussion is going anywhere useful.
You still haven't suggested any viable alternatives for many sites that are
currently ad-funded, and you still seem to think all the responsibility for
safety on the Internet belongs to the only people actually contributing
anything in your scenario, i.e., the people running the sites.

------
alblue
The nub of the thread is: these sites have put up ad blocker blockers, so you
can't see the content without disabling your ad blocker. And yet when you do
you are either exposed to full screen or video auto play ads, or in some
cases, malware: [http://www.extremetech.com/internet/220696-forbes-forces-
rea...](http://www.extremetech.com/internet/220696-forbes-forces-readers-to-
turn-off-ad-blockers-promptly-serves-malware)

Given that Reddit is a large source of incoming referrals this stance (if
implemented) might be a sufficient lever to send a signal to get those sites
to improve their environment.

In any case since the sites are still able to use curated self hosted ads (ie
not JavaScript redirects to externally hosted providers) they are able to sell
static ad space to make money even with adblockers enabled.

It might be worth seeing what the outcome for the experiment is (if it goes
ahead) and then seeing if the same logic would work for HN.

~~~
bemmu
In response to ads, people install ad blockers.

In response to ad blockers, sites install ad blocker blockers.

In response to ad blocker blockers, Reddit adds ad blocker blocker blocker.

~~~
GhotiFish
Personally, I place my bets that if enough content providers start deploying
ad blocker blocking, then clients should be able to respond.

I think in a war between ad's trying to assert a user has seen an ad, and
clients trying to view content, so long as the client owns the computer, the
client will win. That's why I hate walled gardens so much. I'm convinced it
was a preemptive shot in this war.

~~~
eridal
> so long as the client owns the computer

Is Moore law against this?

A possible future scenario could be one were technology becomes so cheap that
Apple/Google/Facebook .et all, starts "lending" their own hardware for free so
people can access their _open_ walled-garden flavored internet.

Projects like of RPi/Arduino bring me hope that this wont ever happen, at
least to us.

------
esoteric_nonces
Maciej (HN handle 'idlewords') has an interesting take on this that I'm
struggling to find in my history right now. The basic idea is that all of the
data these companies collect is still ultimately useless in practice. We still
don't have advertising that is even close to being relevant.

But the data retains its toxic qualities (of being a database of every action
I take on the Internet and some in the real world).

I fire up the YouTube homepage and all of my recommendations are for UK
daytime TV. Celebrities, 'Jeremy Kyle' (the UK Jerry Springer), etcetera.

YouTube sends me adverts for female hygiene products and dog food. (I am male
and I own no dog.)

Even when I get advertising that's not selling me stuff that would require I
buy something else first (sex change, dog) it's invariably for something
vastly overpriced or some sort of megabrand.

~~~
slig
Do you use YouTube while logged in?

In my experience, the content recommendation on YouTube is the best. I've been
learning about electronics and watching a few videos about it. Now YouTube
recommends me new content and channels that are extremely relevant.

My brother is into guitars, and his frontpage is all about that.

~~~
driverdan
They're not great. About 40% of the recommendations are things I'd never
watch, 40% are things I've already watched.

YT has trouble figuring me out because I watch a lot of gamers that also
appeal to a younger audience (eg Yogscast). I get recommended a lot of
terrible stuff targeted at that audience that I have no interest in (eg
PewDiePie and Markiplier).

I have no idea why they recommend stuff I've already watched.

~~~
nkrisc
I too can not figure out why YT wants me to watch things again. Or also
common, the last 10 seconds of a video is just links to the user's other
videos, so I move on. Then YT wants me to "finish watching" it. No, I don't
want to finish watching the last 5 seconds of an outro.

~~~
slig
> Then YT wants me to "finish watching" it. No, I don't want to finish
> watching the last 5 seconds of an outro.

I have this issue with Netflix. I have tons of movies on "continue watching"
that the only thing left to watch is the credits.

~~~
Natanael_L
Scroll to the end, let it spend 5-10 seconds to finish. Done.

------
MichaelBurge
I wonder if you could sue a website for serving you malware.

Here's my idea for an ad company:

* People who want to post ads have to provide their name, address, verified email, and a security deposit(say $500). Larger volumes of ad purchases require either a long history, insurance, or a bank letter to vouch for you. If you load malware anywhere into the system, you get fined and your information gets turned over to the police.

* People who want to earn money with advertisements have to provide name, address, verified email, and a security deposit. The security deposit could be funded out of earnings(or not). Fraud is countered by randomly sampling websites and fining offenders if the ad isn't visible. Also they get their information turned over to the police if it was intentional fraud.

* Security deposits are returned within 1 month after the advertising relationship is terminated.

* Fines are paid out of the security deposit, and your access is restricted until you refill the account(possible with an even bigger deposit).

* People who are higher risk(from a shady lawless country, no history or background, etc.) have to pay a higher security deposit.

* Ads can be either text or banner ads. Anything Turing-complete needs insurance or a bank letter.

* If someone pushes through a porn ad to get advertised on the NYT by miscategorizing it, they get fined.

Now all the ads are guaranteed to be of high quality, and the websites you're
advertising on are probably higher quality too.

~~~
na85
Sounds great, here's my deposit paid via bitcoin.

My business is at 123 fakenschaft, Zurch. My email is a newly created Gmail
account.

~~~
MichaelBurge
* Require businesses to provide a tax id or registration number appropriate to their country.

* Require security deposits to be paid with a bank transfer, cashier's check, or money order from a country with strong anti-money-laundering laws.

* For countries like the US where business information is public, verify the provided business address against public records.

* Allow larger sites like the NYT to require higher standards of verification(maybe 6 months active history on your account), so even if you went ahead with your malware attacking(say, using a homeless person to shield you from the cops) it at least wouldn't hit the NYT.

Honestly, I think at least taking their security deposit would deter a lot of
attackers. You're probably right that it wouldn't help much against targeted
attacks at smaller sites.

~~~
evilDagmar
All that would mean is that the malware authors will get paid slightly more
for ensuring they have more pernicious and persistent malware. Considering the
amount of havok the ransomware guys have been causing lately, do you think
they'd really be bothered by being asked to pony up even a $50,000 deposit?

The real problem is very simple. The advertising companies need to _stop_
publishing non-vetted media files (which means they can also no longer do a
http referral to a site they don't control to save "bandwidth costs"). Many of
them are not doing that because they're foolishly assuming a "deposit" or any
other such arbitrary monetary penalty is going to be cost-prohibitive to a
criminal organization. To the criminal organization, it's no different than
any other bribe.

------
Zelmor
Same should go for HN, really. Paywalls and adwalls are a great way to make me
not even read the article and thread. Yet, they make frontpage due to buzz.

~~~
realityking
How do you propose content producers earn their income, if you think neither
ads nor paywalls are acceptable?

~~~
alkonaut
Ads are fine, "ad networks" are (often) evil. Content producers couldself-host
ads without tracking and do tgeir own ad sales and no one will block them.

Paywalls are also fine. Content producers choice. It's (un-annotated) links to
paywalled content that is annoying.

~~~
john_reel
Reddit, Mozilla, and Project Wonderful have pulled this off well.

------
kinghrothgar
All of this was started by a false accusation. The same guy that posted the
tweet that went vial later said he was mistaken:

[http://www.ghettoforensics.com/2016/03/of-malware-and-
adware...](http://www.ghettoforensics.com/2016/03/of-malware-and-adware-why-
forbes-was.html)

"Here is what is clear:

The advertisement was not malware.

Forbes is still whitelisted from my ad-blocker.

We have no evidence of what exactly created this pop-up."

~~~
evilDagmar
That article is kind of saddening because it's incredibly naive.

At the very least the "ad" was being run by someone trying to create an air of
legitimacy around events like... a random popup IN YOUR BROWSER telling you
about host system software you might actually need and should therefore go
right ahead and install.

Oh HELL no. If it's part of someone's malware campaign, it should be
categorized malware. That some dinky piece of their campaign doesn't involve
machine-executable code does _not_ matter in the slightest.

The weasely logic needing to justify allowing deliberate attempts at mis-
education is how one gets sites for which navigation is rather like attempting
to defuse a bomb, blindfolded, while riding a stampeding buffalo.

------
awinter-py
Hmm; how about a +5 point boost instead for sites doing paywall innovation?
Free content isn't the end goal. Don't we want people to make a living off
content? I can't imagine anybody here wouldn't pay 1 or 5 pennies for the
second half of a useful article.

~~~
angry-hacker
Don't forget that the world does not only consist of rich Silicon Valley
engineers.

How on earth should someone from Bangladesh use Reddit? They can't even access
PayPal.

~~~
awinter-py
Agreed -- people in low-cost countries have barriers. They also have
opportunities. The income from content goes a much longer way if rent & food
are cheaper.

------
willvarfar
Tangentially, I would like Google to put a warning on navigating to a site
that has served malware any time in the past month. This will increase the
penalty of serving malware so much that sites will suddenly push back on the
ad networks and improve quality dramatically.

~~~
wslh
The problem with Google is that they are labeling as malware a lot of software
that is not malware just because they have an .exe. Source: it is happening at
my company.

It seems like just signing the software is enough to remove this labelling but
their policies are not transparent.

At the end Google is behaving like a vigilante.

~~~
tunap
When the IP for a shared hosting server is flagged, the result in search for
all sites residing under that IP are saddled with an alt URL titled "This site
may be hacked". Their solution to fix it for the dozens/hundreds of benign
sites co-hosted on said server? Sign up for more Google services(Google Search
Console).

In that way, they are behving like a typical corporation.

~~~
evilDagmar
Sadly for your argument, what Google does there is the _correct_ solution,
because it is _true_.

~~~
tunap
I disagree. Subscription plays no part in the solution, regardless of what the
problem entails. Google could post the reason they mettled in the results page
in the first place and require subscription for their expertise in correcting
said issue.

------
SEJeff
I genuinely wish HN did this, but with uBlock origin, you can block most of
the scripts that ask you to disable adblockers. In a cat/mouse game, the
techies are going to win.

------
jimbobimbo
I wish search engines would start banning Forbes too: very often they're one
of the top results, but their implementation of interstitial is broken and
lands you on their home page instead of the page which search engine links to.
And I don't even use ad blocker!

~~~
spdegabrielle
Does the search engine have a relationship with the ad providers?

------
niccaluim
Have media companies ever considered something like the cable TV model? I'm
thinking something like ten different sites form a network, and readers pay
once (on a subscription basis) for access to the whole network instead of
paying each site separately.

I definitely am not interested in subscribing separately to (e.g.) Wired, the
NY Times, the Economist, WSJ, the New Yorker, etc. But I think I'd be totally
down for a single rate that gave me ad-free access to some or all of those.

~~~
mnx
Attempts at that have been made, at least in poland. The "piano" system gives
access to a whole bunch of local news publications, forbes, and a major
national newspaper or two.

It costs ~4.5 USD a month, so ~2-3 hours of an entry level supermarket
position pay. I don't know anyone who subscribes.

------
keypusher
This only applies to r/technology. Which is a large sub, but still a very
small part of reddit.

------
TheRealPomax
Why are people commenting here, instead of in the reddit request for comments
thread? It's literally a call for you to leave your comments on this matter
for reddit to read, doing so here is in this case about as counter productive
as it gets...

~~~
Namrog84
I have seen in the past when there is a split like this. That there are often
different styles and topics of conversation on the subject. I find reading and
sometimes participating in both to be worthwhile.

------
threatofrain
What consumers want is a combination of product or service (1) database, (2)
curation by category + quality, (3) recommendation, and (4) discovery. As an
odd category, there may also be product sponsorship, like with Kickstarter.

Advertisements suck at all of these.

------
return0
Anything that expedites the process of moving from ads to paying "somehow
else" for good content is good. But it falls on the technologists side to come
up with something that replaces ads. Redditors are only curing a symptom.

~~~
HappyTypist
Ads have been fine for years until they started tracking you around, flashing
annoying animations, auto playing sound or video or taking up the whole page.

I'm perfectly content with banner and text ads, as long as they're not
animated.

~~~
mirimir
Ads have never been safe. I got adware from an ad ~15 years ago.

~~~
emp_zealoth
I believe it was said about web experience itself, not security side of things

~~~
mirimir
That was the focus, yes. But "ads have been fine" was a far broader claim, and
just too wrong to ignore. One bloody ad cost me hours of unbillable time. I
even invoiced the site ;)

------
phereford
This industry is ripe for innovation. I agree that the state of malware being
served through Ad Exchanges is grotesque and I fully employ my ad blocker
everywhere.

Here is the thing I just dont get. Why doesnt some tech savvy organization
create a white label solution that companies can either slap a subdomain on
and invite "Customers" to fill ad supply. Self host the curated assets through
said white label solution. Moderate with sophisticated computers that are not
subject to the vast majority of mal ware (excluding 0-day obviously), and move
on. Im sure someone could easily serve the ads off of the main domain anyway
to circumvent all of the ad blockers on subdomains.

This is a perspective from the outside looking in, but people seem to just
complain about the problem instead of looking for solutions.

EDIT: BAH, so there is a conversation from last year.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10221859](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10221859)

~~~
soared
Many adblockers use CSS to block ads, but that obviously wouldn't be terribly
difficult to overcome. I just don't want to be that guy that lets everyone
serve ads that can't be blocked by adblockers.

------
cha5m
I honestly like the sites that block adblock. I only use adblock because it is
so easy and has such massive benefits, but I still feel guilty than I am not
supporting content creators.

------
xrisk
You should really post np.reddit links to prevent non-users of said reddit
community from voting. It's the standard practice --
[https://www.reddit.com/r/NoParticipation/wiki/intro](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoParticipation/wiki/intro)

~~~
Angostura
Since non-users would have to create an account anyway in order to vote, I'm
not sure that this is an issue.

~~~
noneTheHacker
np is meant for Reddit users that are not subscribed to the subreddit. For
example, when I am logged into reddit and go to
[https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4if65h/mod_annou...](https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4if65h/mod_announcement_were_considering_banning_all/)
I don't see the voting arrows.

------
snappythrowaway
I would suggest a emoji based labeling system. Not too intrusive (grey scale)
that somehow could signal if article is paywalled / blocking visitors with ad-
blockers.

For a subset of users (either detected or by user preference), there might be
another useful symbol as well for indicating if a website is not tor friendly.

~~~
cooper12
PLOS uses this logo for open access:
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Open_Access_logo_PLo...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Open_Access_logo_PLoS_white.svg).
(an open lock) Based on that Wikipedia uses a closed lock to indicate
paywalled sources:
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Closed_Access_logo_a...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Closed_Access_logo_alternative.svg).
So how about these: [Closed lock] [Open lock]? (TIL HN doesn't support emoji)
I think reddit also allows image use via CSS.

~~~
protomyth
I would prefer not reusing closed lock since it represents encryption in most
browsers.

~~~
cooper12
Hmm that's a fair point even if it's in a different context since ideally each
symbol would retain its own meaning. I'm not sure what a better icon would be
then that would be intuitive unless one was decided upon and widely used.

~~~
protomyth
Its a recent user training issue, so, if it wasn't so soon I would be all
happy, but finding a better icon would probably be better.

A book with a lock might work.

------
jcoffland
I think HN should automatically penalize the scores of paywalled sites.
Although I'm not sure HN's pro-corporate politics would ever allow it.

~~~
gedrap
I just disagree. It's up for the community to decide what's useful and what's
not by voting on it.

If you don't like the link - don't vote. If enough people like it, then it's
fair for others to see it. That's how communities work, you can't change rules
to please everyone because you never will.

~~~
jcoffland
You cannot down vote links on HN. You can flag them but doing so on otherwise
legitimate articles might be frowned upon and could lead to voting penalties.

------
aaron695
How about they bugger off and not censor my content.

Power hungry censors from either the government or forums piss me off.

People who own forums have a right to regulate content, true.

But bullshit like this aint cool, I and the users are not babies, bugger off,
we'll decide with votes.

~~~
Vendan
arguably, they _are_ deciding with votes. There appears to be massive support
for the idea, and it's getting lots of upvotes.

------
pmontra
I second that.

I also don't like those sites that require JavaScript to read plain text
content. Forbes is an example of both cases, with a twist. The text of the
article is embedded in a script tag inside the HTML page and then added to the
visible DOM. I could understand a SPA getting JSON from the server but here
the content is already in the page.

------
moron4hire
You would think, if they have the ability to detect that a user has an ad
blocker in place, they could just as easily redirect them to a subscription
form for an ad-free experience, rather than block people and lose revenue
completely.

~~~
LoSboccacc
That works only in theory, subscription has a cost which is above and beyond
whatever price listed: it's the mental cost tied to renewing, cancelling and
tracking it.

Single subscription multiple website model may work, but as soon as buy-in
ramps up for that model expect everyone jumping in with me-too services,
killing it.

~~~
LeoNatan25
All subscriptions I have on internet websites have been some of my easiest
"mental cost". Sites that I visit often, have great content and allow
subscription for full ad removal (not partial) - I'm there with my money.

------
xg15
"We're forcing our users not to post sites that would force them not to force
the sites to not force the user's viewing habits by posting ads".

You know an arm's race is in progress when...

------
mcbits
I share the sentiment of the proposal, but what I really don't understand is
why user moderation fails to suppress those sites despite their tactics
angering so many people.

~~~
gabemart
Often the demographic that votes on stories can be quite different from the
demographic that comments on stories and forms the "community", especially for
default subreddits.

The majority of people voting on the story may only be reading the headline.

~~~
na85
Reddit is also routinely gamed by bots or paid upvoters.

------
ctulek
Sidenote: we should call it ad-company blockers, not ad blockers

------
S_A_P
Ive actually implemented this locally. I reached a breaking point with some of
the intrusive ads, so I block ads. If a site(such as Wired) asks me to turn
that off, I add it to simple blocker and dont go back. The funny thing is a) I
have a print subscription to wired but I cant access the site without turning
off ad blocking, and b) I dont miss the online version. If Im just being
honest with myself, its doing me a favor by preventing procrastination.

~~~
logfromblammo
I also have a print subscription to Wired. I don't pay for it directly. I use
the airline miles I occasionally get from any company that puts me on a plane
at their expense, just to keep the remaining balances from expiring due to
inactivity.

I usually don't even take it out of the plastic overwrap, because my eyes
don't have ad-blockers installed.

I guess next time, I can spend some miles on a cheapo flashlight keyfob, or
something. I guess I was just sort of throwing them a bone out of 90s
nostalgia, anyway. If they don't want me looking at their website on my own
terms, I won't do it. And if I stop looking at their website, I don't have
much use for their inky paper, either.

------
rdudek
uBlock Origin and enable the anti-adblock killer under 3rd party options seem
to usually work great. I also run Privacy Badger add-on which allows me to
disable certain scripts and trackers from pages. Works great. I'll subscribe
to sites that I visit on daily basis if they offer it with option to disable
ads. I have no problem with this. I don't want to be served idiotic malware
from some ad-exchange.

------
rodionos
Banning these sites altogether would be too much. Assign a pre-defined
downvote so that the hurdle for ad-driven sources is higher to overcome.

~~~
phaemon
I don't think it would be too much. Why would it? I'd like to see those ad-
laden pages dropped from HN also. As well as sites with paywalls. There are
plenty of other pages on the web that can be featured instead.

~~~
morgante
Genuine question: do you think all journalism should be done for free?

I can somewhat an understand an opposition to advertising _or_ paywalls.
Opposing both is unconscionable.

~~~
phaemon
For free? I'm not sure those gossip-mongering petty scribblers would do
anything for free.

But you have me wrong on paywalls: I'd fully support them going paywalled. In
fact, I fully support them going off the Web onto their own proprietary
network (like the Compuserve and AOL of old) and charging thousands (if not
millions) of $CURRENCY a year for access. That would be great.

------
anonymousab
I should think flair would be enough. The community would naturally downvote
those links when they thought the content wasn't worth it.

------
_audakel
One easy way I have found to get around some of these site's blocks is
disabling javascript in the chrome console and then reloading the page. it
works a good amount of the time. you can also wget the page and pass in
headers that your a google bot to bypass paywalls on sites like economist and
wsj. (this was documented in a previous hn post exactly how to do this)

~~~
bsimpson
I wrote a bookmarklet that catches all scroll events in the capture phase and
cancels them. It seems to work pretty well.

------
tacos
Make it a user option -- sites really shouldn't be in the business of globally
blocking domains. And then let me add sites to the .ignore file too, please.

Anyone got the list of sites HN currently blocks/penalizes/rewards? I'd love
to tweak those options, and add marco.org and buzzfeed to my personal
blocklist.

------
jasonkostempski
I'm not sure this would be possible via normal subreddit admin tools but I'd
like to see this done as an user opt-in feature. Let people post those link if
they choose to but also let users choose if they see them or if they get a
notice when they try to post a link to one.

------
therealdrag0
This week I noticed that StackOverflow has voting on ads. Hover over an ad and
it shows thumbs up/down. I disable my ad-blocker on sites I want to support
and just noticed this.

Seems genius to me.

------
X86BSD
I personally do not mind the "Deck" ad network. To me that is ads done right.

I learned about the deck from daringfireball.

------
gjolund
A simple solution to publishers:

Curate your ads and serve them statically.

~~~
soared
and still get blocked via CSS selectors.

~~~
gjolund
at least that is something you can control.

------
dredmorbius
Yes, ban both adblock blockers and paywalls.

The first are overtly refusing to accept users' terms. The second are trying
to have their cake and eat it too: viral content propogation whilst refusing
to present content to those who come at it via link aggregators and discussion
sites such as Reddit.

Both actively thwart Reddit's intended aim: informed discussion of an article
_by having read it_. If they don't want to participate, then don't
participate.

Moreover, advertising, the advertising infrastructure, and multiple aspects of
it are creating a seriously problematic WWW information structure: crap
content, user-hostile design, hugely excessive bandwidth usage, slow browser
response, and privacy and security risks galore. At the same time, the actual
_creative producers_ and _journalists_ responsible for primary content are
hugely undercompensated.

Eliminating the existing advertising regime would allow all of these to be
addressed.

 _That said, high-quality information has a very serious revenue problem, and
I 'd like to highlight that._

It's a topic I've explored in some depth, "Why Information Goods and Markets
are a Poor Match"
([https://np.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2vm2da/why_info...](https://np.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2vm2da/why_information_goods_and_markets_are_a_poor_match/)).
Or if you prefer a real economist, Hal Varian's "Markets for Information
Goods"
([http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/japan/index.h...](http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/japan/index.html)).

A frequently proposed solution is micropayments. I don't see those as viable,
Clay Shirkey, Nick Szabo, and Andrew Odlyzko have all written at length on why
not.

Rather, a universal content tax or broadband tax seems an alternative. Phil
Hunt of Pirate Party UK and Richard M. Stallman of the Free Software
Foundation have suggested this, I'd made my own universal content proposal
some time back
([https://np.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modest...](https://np.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modest_proposal_universal_online_media_payment/))

I've also done some back-of-the-envelope calculations on amounts. _Total_
global ad spend in 2013 was $500 billion, online was $100 billion. If _only_
the world's richest 1 billion (roughly: US, EU, Japan, Australia) were to
contribute to this, the tax would be $100/year to eliminate _all_ online
adverts, and $500/year for _all advertising entirely_. The money could fund
existing creatives -- writers, editors, film producers, journalists, and
musicians -- at roughly _twice_ today's compensation.

It's worth a thought.

~~~
DannyBee
"The first are overtly refusing to accept users' terms."

As they are refusing to accept theirs :)

This is just contract negotiation. I'm not sure why you have an issue with it
(or would desire to ban it). You have told them "we want to change the terms'.
They are saying "no". Great, so move if you don't like that supplier.

Humorously, the thing you (and reddit) want to perform by banning is known as
"concerted refusal to deal":
[http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/concerted-
refus...](http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/concerted-refusal-to-
deal.html)

~~~
dredmorbius
Because the trade is openly hostile to the intent of discussion sites: to
exchange and discuss information.

If users can't view the content, they cannot discuss it.

And, as I've also mentioned at length (in the post and its links, as well as
elsewhere) _advertising itself is the problem in multiple aspects_.

The sooner we render it nonviable, the sooner we move to something that works.

~~~
DannyBee
"Because the trade is openly hostile to the intent of discussion sites: to
exchange and discuss information. "

This is an opinion. It sounds like your your mechanism of dealing with the
opposing opinion is to censor it?

That seems bad ... Why not say: "let them do what they want, and let me
convince people they are wrong on the merits?"

~~~
dredmorbius
Again, answered in OP and links.

~~~
DannyBee
Not in any convincing way .... It basically amounts to "because we think we
are super right".

I gotta be frank, if this is the cure, it seems much worse than the disease.

