
Fix your crappy ads and I’ll stop blocking them - Sindisil
https://mortoray.com/2017/05/02/fix-your-crappy-ads-and-ill-stop-blocking-them/
======
anigbrowl
I just had CNBC.com tell me that I couldn't have autoplaying video if I don't
turn off my adblocker. Sounds like a win-win from my perspective. Maybe if
large commercial news websites weren't so annoying and crappy to use, and the
quality of the adverts so deplorably low, then I might be more open to viewing
them.

If you allow flashy banners and animations etc. all over your page, then I'm
gonna black them. That simple, guys. I am not going to buy anything from
someone who gets up in my face in a rude way. Not only am I not going to buy
anything right now, I'm going to actively avoid your products/services in the
future because you annoyed me already.

~~~
stcredzero
I think ad blockers should be able to throttle by amount of bandwidth. If the
ads are taking up more than 20% of load time or 20% of bandwidth, they start
getting cut off.

Also, an ad blocker that learned your preferences would be very cool. If you
could "thumbs down" ads, this information could be used to show you ads you
like and are interested in. Such information would actually be very valuable
to marketers.

~~~
Doxin
Google ads allow you to stop showing specific ads. Click the little _i_ symbol
in the corner to go to the settings for that.

~~~
DanBC
I wish ad networks would let me opt out of classes of ads.

I never want to see alcohol ads, nor gambling ads.

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xatan_dank
I think this article doesn't go far enough with its championing of blocking
certain ads. All ads should be blocked and web services which rely on them
should find a better way of sustaining themselves profitably.

The malicious nature of ads is not new. Ads have always been infested with
malware, tracking, and hideous graphics. Taken to their logical extreme (as
Facebook has done), ads can also manipulate users to a degree far more
dangerous than a TV or radio ad could. Ads are just the surface of a much
deeper problem with the Internet, which is that most massive web services are
paid for with user data rather than a mutually agreed upon price.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no reason to willingly view an advertisement
to support a useful service. This amounts to a donation which you are not
really in control of. Just circumvent the ad and buy from the company or send
them money if you value their services.

~~~
notacoward
> there is no reason to willingly view an advertisement to support a useful
> service

How about when the service _can not exist_ otherwise? Even if you were willing
to pay for it, many others might not be. If the value of the service is
heavily based on network effects, the result is a network too small to reach
the break-even point. I'm not saying you should view ads you don't want to,
but demanding that people provide a free service you find useful while denying
them any _realistic_ way to pay for that service seems bit too entitled for
me.

~~~
xatan_dank
>How about when the service can not exist otherwise?

Then maybe it shouldn't exist in the first place. If your business model
relies on feeding users ad technology known to be unsafe, undesirable, and
disrespectful to users' freedom, it's not worth patronizing. There are plenty
of web services not supported by advertisement. This is not a case where "if
it ain't broke don't fix it" is acceptable. The current system of sustaining
webservices is broken and outdated.

~~~
kbenson
> If your business model relies on feeding users ad technology known to be
> unsafe, undesirable, and disrespectful to users' freedom, it's not worth
> patronizing.

You are conflating specific negative aspects of the current advertising
landscape with advertising in general.

"Advertising" covers a large spectrum of actions, from the sign above the
corner store in a neighborhood saying its name to complex analysis of online
behavior, personal traits and current disposition to influence your actions.
There are both positive and negative aspects of online and offline
advertising. Oversimplification of the description and overly broad statements
based on that simplification aren't really useful to a beneficial change.

~~~
xatan_dank
I'm not at all, because I'm not talking about advertising in general. I'm
aware of what advertising is. I'm talking specifically about the same kind of
advertising that the article posted is.

~~~
kbenson
You responded to something about advertising in general ("How about when the
service can not exist otherwise?") with something about specific negative
advertising practices. Regardless of what the article is about, is seems the
comment you replied to was talking about advertising in general (and was
itself responding to a comment referring to advertising in general).

I don't think we're going to get very far if we aren't talking about the same
thing.

------
wavefunction
My ad-blocker is more of a "don't run arbitrary code from a fourth party
delivered by a third-party ad-network on websites I visit" blocker.

~~~
dec0dedab0de
exactly. Why are there no server side ad networks serving only images and
links?

~~~
savanaly
Because the share of people using the internet who understand the distinction
is probably about 1%, and of that 1% the share that care is certainly less
than half, and of that group the share that would go go to the trouble of
trying to identify the sites that use serverside ads and not block them as
opposed to just blocking every ad is in turn miniscule.

~~~
smnscu
No need to care about it if the ads simply bypass adblockers by being served
the same way as regular content. Faster-loading pages will make everyone
happier anyway. This is something I'm particularly interested in building.

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pavel_lishin
Advertising companies don't get to shit in the community well for a decade,
and then act outraged when we start buying bottled.

~~~
anigbrowl
Excellent metaphor.

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jasonkostempski
Fix the ads in the ways mentioned here and they'd be damn hard to block in the
first place. The only rule needed to block practically all ads is "Stop
loading data from third-party websites."

~~~
Freak_NL
The amount of crap websites load from third parties to track and analyse your
every move is staggering. This is a list of tracking parties loaded _on a
single website_ :

    
    
        googletagmanager.com
        adnxs.com
        chartbeat.com
        google-analytics.com
        hotjar.com
        scorecardresearch.com
    

This is for the website of a well-regarded professional Dutch newspaper with a
professional website!

------
jmcdiesel
There is a 3rd option. You dont visit the sites that have ads on them. That
way, you aren't imposing your will on them, and you aren't taking their work
without passively supporting them, and everyone wins.

The idea that you're entitled to everyone's content without even passively
supporting them, the author, as they ask, is just a bit too much for me.

~~~
leejoramo
How do you implement your policy of not visiting sites with ads?

How do you block a site prior to visiting it? Are you using a custom hosts
file to block all sites that are known offenders?

Many of us are blocking ads for security and privacy concerns. How do you
confirm that a site is safe prior to visiting it so that you can allow ads if
it is a safe site?

Unfortunately, the only tools I have found block the good with the bad.

~~~
evilDagmar
It's actually _not_ that hard to eliminate the worst of it. You just leave the
ad-blocker _on_ , full-time until you visit a site. If the site isn't an
abhorrent "content farm" with link-baity headlines and vague, poorly worded
nonsense, _then_ "So far so good..." you whitelist them and hit the reload
button. Thanks to the race to the bottom that advertising has become, >90% of
the bad sites won't make it past this first stage.

If after disabling the ad blocker the content becomes buried in interstitials,
auto-playing videos, and is so crowded with ads that the actual content turns
into snaketext that looks like someone tried to outdo The Odyssey in haiku
form, you turn the ad blocker _back on_.

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mschuster91
> Brain-dead statistical matching of page content to ad content would do a
> better job of targeting than whatever systems are in place now. I want to
> see ads that are relevant to the content, something that doesn’t feel like a
> distraction.

Wasn't this the business model of Google AdWords?

> Stop loading data from third-party websites. This is a security and privacy
> issue. There’s no technical reason why all ads can’t be served from the site
> I’m visiting. It can still communicate with ad servers, just do it on the
> backend.

Ad networks insist on this because there's no other way to prevent massive-
scale fraud by the customers - how should the ad network know that the end
user is a "real" user and not a fake request the customer generated to drive
up the impressions on pay-per-impression ads?

~~~
Drakim
And I block ads because there is no other way to prevent massive-scale fraud,
deception, distraction and malware from advertising afflicting me.

Ad networks can't swing the sword of justice at me while themselves standing
on a platform of shaded pragmatism.

------
jeena
Na I kind of disagree with the author, ads do work, and they work quite well,
otherwise the whole internet wouldn't rely on them.

But also ads are always bad, because the only reason they exist is to get my
to buy something I don't want. Because everything I want to buy I can (and do)
research and find out where to buy without them.

~~~
marcosdumay
> the only reason they exist is to get my to buy something I don't want.

Doesn't need to be. Ads can also be used to tell you that something you may
want exists, and how to get it.

And that's still simplistic. I do agree that ads are dangerous things, but
they have many uses, some good.

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Shivetya
What I find most frustrating about blocking ads and such is that when I find a
site I want to see content on I will start allowing more in; i use uBlock
Origin. Sometimes I do this so streaming content will load and other times to
benefit the site.

However almost immediately the same pattern sets in, this is particularly true
with streaming content issues. More sites pop up on the blocked list. It is
like one of those little Russian Dolls, you open one up and keep finding more.

This is why I keep all blocks on and it is a very very rare occasion I will
remove them. When I now come across content I would like to see I move to
unblock but if I run into another Russian Doll setup I just close the tab and
never look back.

Simply put. I don't trust you. If your ad services are nested within each
other then whom am I actually allowing entry? I said you can come in, not the
people you met on the street. so stay out.

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anotheryou
Make micropayments a thing and I'll pay you directly. (no way I gonna unblock
any ad). And with micro I mean something more like spotify: A flat- or capped-
rate and automatic payment of anything I read across publishers.

~~~
jeena
[https://flattr.com/](https://flattr.com/)
[https://www.patreon.com/](https://www.patreon.com/)

~~~
anotheryou
Both great!

Patreon however no flat-rate and not much in use for articles and flattr not
widely supported and recently aquired by a dubious company...

For flattr I never understood why you can't hit the button multiple times to
give double or trippe to a single author.

------
Paul_S
There is nothing you can do to stop me blocking ads. I'll use duck tape if I
have to.

For everyone else's sake I hope you follow the author's suggestions.

------
colanderman
Same goes for crappy video players. I'd be glad never to use youtube-dl again
if the video player of the (ad-supported) program I'm watching didn't
repeatedly freeze, crash, or outright refuse to work.

Youtube, HBO, Amazon, and Netflix are usually stellar. Hulu, NBC, Comedy
Central, TBS… I don't think I've _ever_ successfully watched a video all the
way through on one of those services.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I've never really had a problem with video players not working; I have had
about a thousand problems with them automatically playing content, sometimes
from a tab I can't identify.

------
0xFFC
This is my exact position. I don't have any existential problem with ads. The
problem i have is what the websites does. It seems there is competition
between websites "who can put more ads". This is ridiculous. I use adblocks
only because of this. If they put ads in more rational fashion, i would be
more than happy to help websites owners make money out of their websites.

------
peteyPete
We're in a sad state when advertisers get to dictate how intrusive they get to
be and content producers are sort of at their mercy if they want to make any
money. If ads respected my browsing experience and didn't slow down the
content being usable, I wouldn't block them.

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sdx23
Fix your crappy website that has no content without javascript and I may stop
instantly dismissing it.

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amelius
> Fix your crappy ads and I’ll stop blocking them

I'll always block them, just in case they decide to track me.

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kexari
The ad model is broken. I see the future of web monetisation as tiny fractions
of a bit coin (or another crypto currency) being automatically deducted from a
your wallet, charged per second/minute.

~~~
JBReefer
Wouldn't that let you perform even crazier levels of tracking, and expose my
(barely anonymous) browsing to the entire world? Wallets might be just a bunch
of characters, but I bet you can figure out who I am from my url trail alone,
given I spend a ton of time on messenger.com/t/mywife and mywebsite.com

Also, doesn't that mean that only people with money can go on the internet?
This seems like a much, much worse system than we have today (with adblockers)

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palakchokshi
What about having Ad Blockers work more like Anti Virus tools where in they
let through Ads that conform to an Ad industry standard?

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mariust
I agree! If ads will look better and blend in with the website it would be a
win-win stiuatuation for advertisers and site owners.

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marcosdumay
And... It's one of those sites that are blank when you block 3rd party
Javascript. Go figure.

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salzig
The missing part is an ad-blocker thats allowing ads by default, unless you
tell him to block on the current domain.

I think the problem is in the default behaviour of being on for all domains by
default. Which even when you do your job right, by not using overlay or
otherwise distracting ads, blocks you by default, without giving the user a
choice to decide.

~~~
ubernostrum
The user already decided, by installing the ad blocker.

~~~
matt4077
Have they? A user may install an ad blocker because of some giant video
obscuring content and playing music on a.com, but they may be entirely willing
to continue seeing text ads on b.com. For users that want such an experience,
there is definitely a lack of options.

~~~
45h34jh53k4j
In my experience, Online advertising is overwhelmingly negative.

Lets compare it to cancer. Maybe the users don't want brain cancer, but they
should have the option for skin cancer.

Nobody wants cancer. Users who install adblockers don't want ads.

~~~
salzig
comparing ads with cancer is suggestive.

personally i compare them with housekeeping. I don't like it, i can decide to
pay someone to do it, or i've to accept them. Which could kill me by poisonous
cleanser (malware).

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lousken
It's great to see this on site that shows white page with js off...

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rootedbox
I just don't wanna see ads. Crappy or otherwise.

~~~
senorjazz
+1

I have absolutely zero interest in seeing anything you are trying to sell me.
Intrusive, spying, or just a linked JPG.

I will not whitelist ads for any site for whatever reasons.

If that means the site cannot continue to, well so be it.

