
Banning Sites That Don't Respect Adblock - setra
Certain sites that are linked to here are very difficult to navigate for those of us with adblockers installed. Such a site would include forbes. I propose sites that break adblockers, or are generally horrible to use because of advertisements be banned from hackernews.
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jeremysmyth
Please don't try to prevent _me_ from using things because you don't like
them.

Sure, some sites limit who can view them based on visitor preferences.
Analogy: Some restaurants have a "no shirt, no service" policy. It would be
ridiculous to impose a blanket ban for all people on such restaurants just
because you refuse to wear a shirt.

If you want to pick a more sensible fight, try going after links to paywalled
sites (whose content is blocked through their decision rather than mine).
However, bear in mind HN policy already has those covered: "It's ok to post
stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds."

~~~
WayneBro
Nobody here is able to prevent you from using Forbes or other similar sites.
So, your analogy is way off base and that's why it sounds ridiculous to you.

It would be more accurate to compare this to "removing a restaurant from a
single list of good restaurants because their food has a high chance of making
you sick or making your computer download some malware".

~~~
DanielBMarkham
_Nobody here is able to prevent you from using Forbes or other similar sites.
So, your analogy is way off base and that 's why it sounds ridiculous to you._

This is actually a very good piece of advice that holds true in all sorts of
conversations. If you attempt to argue the other side of an argument, and find
it completely ludicrous? You don't understand the other side. Instead of
arguing, ask questions.

I only wish that I could follow my own advice!

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michaelbuckbee
Serious question: what are these publishers to do?

I look at a site like Reddit: no tracking, no flashy ads, no sound,
significant investment in their own custom ad serving software to try and make
things more targeted and relevant, clearly marked ads, etc.

They are doing _everything_ that our community continually says that we would
like more publishers to do and they are severely struggling despite being one
of the most popular sites on the entire Internet.

If you have even a semi technical audience for your site, you're today looking
at a rapidly growing 30% of your audience using an ad-blocker.

Except in very few cases, most people aren't willing to pay for content and
more paywalls (the non-advertising business model) further fracture the open
web.

I feel kind of scared for where we're going.

~~~
whamlastxmas
Reddit does a shitload of tracking

~~~
Caprinicus
Here's the reddit CEO bragging about it

[https://youtu.be/6PCnZqrJE24?t=499](https://youtu.be/6PCnZqrJE24?t=499)

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axonic
Maybe we should create a community maintained list of blocker unfriendly
sites, and serve a public blacklist compatible with existing software.

Forbes and others are blocked on my home DNS for hostility and crippling of
features. If a company can demonstrate how it protects its visitors from its
advertisers and respects my rights, I used to exempt them from my ad blocker.
Now I'm sick of seeing rude messages targeting me as an ad blocker user
telling me what a horrible person and a thief I am, so I block all ads, and
I've discontinued use of nearly all ad supported software. Bottom line: It's
not our job to make their business models work, they need to adapt and quit
whining.

~~~
Overtonwindow
Have you tried Brave? Whenever I have to view a website with a particularly
onerous anti-adblock system, I use Brave. It blocks the ads and loads the
pages fine.

------
trequartista
So far, I think Guardian has the best approach towards ad-blocking. There's a
non-intrusive banner message at the bottom of the screen, which says that they
know you are using adblock and asks if you would like to support them via a
paid subscription.

~~~
cptskippy
That's a step in the right direction. The problem I have with signing up for a
subscription is two fold. First is that I don't feel like I traffic particular
sites often enough to justify the price they ask. Second is that I don't want
to give up the personally identifiable information they ask for (and sell
off).

I'd much rather there be an anonymous mechanism for making one-time payments
or tips. Maybe a metadata header that indicates a BTC address that can be
picked up by a plug-in of the user's choosing?

~~~
CaptSpify
I'd love to be able to anonymously say "Yeah! This article was sooo good, it
deserves $10!" or "That article was crap. It doesn't deserve anything". But
that has to be done _after_ I've read it. In the current ad model, articles
get paid based on how much they are shared, not how much people like the
content.

EDIT: It's kind of like tip-sharing. If I have a good waiter, I don't want to
the crappy waiter to have his share of the tip.

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Overtonwindow
I see this as a double-edged sword. I think people should have the right to
block ads, but sites should also have the right to block your access to their
content. It's the same no-shirt no service rules for businesses. Correct me if
I'm wrong here, but no one has a legal right to gain access to the data on a
website. If that website chooses to restrict access that's their problem. I
and others will just go somewhere else.

~~~
dwaltrip
Your point is a good one. However, it doesn't imply that HN must allow these
sites to be posted.

I don't have an opinion on whether HN should make such a change, but just
wanted to connect your statement to the question at hand.

~~~
Overtonwindow
A fair point. I think HN should let these sites be published because it gives
us all the knowledge that something exists. We can then freely make the choice
of how we wish to interact with that site. Taking the position that something
should be not be shared, disseminated, or indexed, simply because of the bad
behavior by that link, brings to mind the delisting of material from search
engines that may be offensive to others. Put the articles and websites out
there and let people choose for themselves.

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apricot13
What we need is a little plugin that puts a * or some sort of symbol next to a
link to a site that blocks content for adblock users.

~~~
scottlilly
I recently wrote a Greasemonkey script to do this - it changes the link text
background to yellow and disables the click.

If anyone is interested, the code is posted here:
[http://scottlilly.com/greasemonkey-block-links-to-
annoying-w...](http://scottlilly.com/greasemonkey-block-links-to-annoying-
websites/).

------
MrLeftHand
I do agree in certain extent. Forbes is really bad regarding adblockers.

I don't mind being reminded that they use ads to generate revenue to deliver
news for free, but doing it in a way where they actually loose readers because
of that is nonsense.

Give me a popup asking me to turn adblocker off, not banning me from the
content.

In the information age where the same news gets presented on numerous sites
it's a bit shooting oneself in the foot denying access to the content because
of adblockers.

People on hacker news should try to avoid posting content from sites like
forbes, but we shouldn't force them to do so. Because then hacker news
wouldn't be better then forbes.

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digdigdag
This is the reason why I haven't visited Wired or Forbes in months. And it's
not that I couldn't figure out a way past their ad-block detectors. The idea
that I must disable what is inherently a _security_ feature just so they can
satisfy their marketing goals is antithetic to an open web.

I noticed Wired no longer blocks uBlock Origin (or more humorously, uBlock
Origin has now began filtering out anti-adblockers) but I continue to see no
reason to frequent their site.

~~~
buckbova
Wired was suggesting I needed to whitelist their site but I had disabled and
removed ghostery and adblock some time ago. WTF. I haven't been back since.

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vermontdevil
I subscribe to the NYT and yet still get asked to be whitelisted. So a
subscription model will not generate enough revenue for them without ads.

It's like the cable tv model - we pay to watch more ads.

~~~
cr1895
You're still served ads with a paid NYT subscription?

edit: well, I had been thinking about a subscription. I suppose not anymore.

~~~
freehunter
Yeah, I brought that up when I called to cancel and they said "well the ads
help keep the cost of your subscription low!". But that's not the point! I pay
to remove ads, I don't watch ads to keep the price low!

~~~
a3n
That's what you _think_ you're buying, but that's not what they're selling.

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vacri
I run with NoScript because I don't like the crap that a lot of these sites
do. But if a site is broken for me and I'm not that interested in chasing it
down, well, the Back button is a tiny mouse movement away.

The mods already have enough to do without having to curate a blacklist of
sites for lazy users.

------
krapp
Hacker News' purpose isn't to promote discussion from explicitly free or
noncommercial sources, or from sources which enforce a particular moral
framework. Even though paywalled sites and sites that block adblock are
annoying (although many provide workarounds,) banning them outright would
deprive the site of potentially worthwhile content, and the _content_ is
what's important, not the commercial model behind the site hosting it.

If you're not willing to RTFA, fair enough, just don't comment in threads
about TFA. That would improve Hacker News more than blocking those sites
altogether.

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lllorddino
Personally I haven't clicked on a single Forbes link in months after being
forced to unblock them to view content that should be available to the public
with no catch. I never go back to sites that implement that system.

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meira
I agree with you. The worst part is that most of the links in front page are
from these big média players that have paywalls and adblockers blockers. A
strange shift in HN profile.

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cpdean
Linking to paywalled content should also be prohibited. Those links should be
treated as ads themselves. The submitter is posting spam to HN.

~~~
cr1895
>The submitter is posting spam to HN.

Except in the case where it is the submitter's own paywalled content, how is
that spam? The submitter isn't benefitting from the paywall.

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mdotk
Get a better ad blocker or try find the content they've spent time and money
creating elsewhere.

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jklein11
Because how dare a company try to make money on a service they provide to us
for free!

~~~
setra
It is the right of a consumer to not patronize businesses with that particular
monetization model

~~~
deong
No one argues that. It's much more dubious whether the consumer has the right
to patronize a business in explicit disregard of the terms that business sets.
If you don't want to see ads on Forbes, you can not go to Forbes. I'm not so
sure you're entitled to just read Forbes without the ads.

I use an ad-blocker too. I'm just not so sure I'm defending some principled
public good in doing so.

~~~
CaptSpify
And that's kind of what OP is doing. He's saying "lets not even go to those
sites". In a weird way, it's more ethical to just not share them, than to
share them with ad-block users.

