
Taboola and Outbrain are merging to create a clickbait giant - danso
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/business/media/online-advertising-chumbox-merger.html
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Nextgrid
Why is this cancer allowed to exist and not blocked by every antimalware/safe
browsing lists? They fit most definitions of malware, it's annoying, designed
to trick/mislead you, can lead you to other malware, and spies on you (so it's
spyware as well).

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k1m
Because some, like, Adblock Plus and I assume all the other ad blockers who
take part in the ridiculous "Acceptable Ads" programme, receive money from
Taboola to allow those ads to show. Here's an entry where Taboola was added:
[https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=25991](https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=25991)

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chii
The day adblock plus coined the concept of acceptable ads was the day they
were compromised by the alure of payment.

The last bastion left is ublock origin. Please, more people need to move to it
(and while at it, consider moving to firefox as well).

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ryall
What’s wrong with pi-hole?

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bertil
Not the OC, but I use uBlock, not pi-hole simply because:

\- hardware, and I’m lazy (admittedly, that doesn’t really qualify as a good
reason);

\- I browse on mobile, at work, from cafés, etc.

I like the idea of having a device that handles my connection everywhere and
my mobile and laptop are always “on wifi” with that device. I’d love to have a
centralised solution to use the dodgy wifi connection at airports, for
instance.

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vector_spaces
You can set up pi-hole + a VPN on a cloud provider to solve the mobile
problem. I did that, and it's great, but I do recognize that it has greater
time demands (setting up the server, hardening it, setting up the CA,
generating keys, ongoing maintenance, etc) and expense.

Here's a dated but reasonable overview of the process from Digital Ocean:
[https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-
bloc...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-block-
advertisements-at-the-dns-level-using-pi-hole-and-openvpn-on-ubuntu-16-04)

~~~
close04
Unfortunately DNS based ad-blocking solutions are nowhere near as effective
and convenient as an extension like uBO. Even if you have a publicly available
DNS based service they will tend to be more lax in order to not break sites
which lets many ads through.

I use a combination of PiHole, Firefox+uBO, and VPN + FW rules to stay as much
away from ads as possible even when browsing mobile. uBO is the single most
convenient and effective measure out of all of them.

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Angostura
> Adam Singolda, who runs Taboola and will take charge of the combined
> company, characterized the deal in a statement as a way to “create a more
> robust competitor to Facebook and Google” while “strengthening journalism.”

Do potential investors/employees actually believe this kind of drivel or is it
a sort of expected formalistic dance?

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chii
Drivel. Investors care about business model, and potential profitability. And
annoyingly, these click baits do work to drive traffic, and drive advertising.

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MarkMc
I'm very surprised that I see Outbrain ads when I visit cnn.com. Google have a
decade of of my email history, my search queries, my Android location, my
YouTube history, etc, etc. Yet apparently Outbrain's advertising is so
effective that they can offer more money to CNN to place ads. What is going
on?

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earthboundkid
Outbrain doesn't offer more money as much as steady money. When I talked to an
advertising person about it, she told me we had a guarantee from them for a
certain amount. That makes budgeting much simpler. You don't have to worry
about if you make your traffic numbers or not.

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dreen
Had a dubious pleasure to implement both on a website of a major publisher.
Eventually both got removed due to low business value. They didn't actually
drive any traffic.

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noneeeed
I've often wondered about this. Many of the places I see them, they seem so
very out of place in the context of the main content of the page. I would love
to know what the percentage of clickthroughs actually is, and how valuable
they really are.

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greggman2
I run into them on slashdot where they don't seem to fit

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KoftaBob
When the founders look back at their life and see "litter the internet with
garbage" as their biggest accomplishment, I wonder if the money will be worth
it.

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patd
They probably don't care or see it as a way to keep newspapers in business.

I'm running an adtech platform for newspapers (I do price comparison and I
believe that I add value to the product review articles) and newspapers need
to generate revenue. They usually have loads of staff from decades ago when
people were still buying paper journals and magazines.

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KoftaBob
I'm not against the idea of ads, at their best they actually serve as a form
of product discovery for viewers. What I am against is deceptive and low
quality clickbait.

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Scottn1
These two cancerous clickbait entities were basically 95% of the sole reason I
started using adblockers to begin with many years ago. I can't stand seeing
their crap on any webpage I visit. It is filth that ruins the Internet for
majority of people who don't have a mental filter to not click on this stuff.

The other 5% reason is malicious ads/tracking. I'd actually be open to not
running adblockers anymore if these two reasons were eliminated from the web.
I'd be fine with small non tracking ads from non cringe worthy gigantic ad
networks that invade basically every webpage I visit nowadays.

PS - Ublock Origin actually doesn't block these two networks
(Taboola/Outbrain) by default - you have to enable Fanboys Annoyance list to
do so.

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justforyou
Nevermind adblockers, these outlets deserve to be blocked at the hosts file
level.

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donohoe
As much as I dislike seeing them on publisher websites this is just going to
be further bad news for publishers in finding revenue outside of ads and
subscriptions.

We're just going to see crappier content at a larger scale that earns them
less money due to significantly reduced competition.

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mianos
Might this help by reducing the size of the pi-hole black list?

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thowawyve
Taboola and Outbrain are like the Mossad in your livingroom. They spy on your
browsing habits for who knows what reasons

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joshdance
This seems like a very bad thing.

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masonic
("Taboola and Outbrain, the two biggest chumbox providers, are merging to
create a clickbait giant.")

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dang
Yes, photo captions are often a source of better titles. Thanks!

