
Beyond ad blocking – the biggest boycott in human history - franze
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2015/09/28/beyond-ad-blocking-the-biggest-boycott-in-human-history/?utm_content=buffer56cc9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
======
criddell
Tracking, it's been argued, is good because it allows more relevant ads to be
served. I've been giving Google huge amounts of data about me and my life for
almost 20 years and the ads are still terrible. I spend thousands of dollars
every year at Amazon and their recommendation engine doesn't do much better.

How much more do advertisers need to know about me before ads served online
are significantly more relevant than the ads I see in People magazine at the
doctor's office?

At this point, I'm super skeptical about the ad business. Advertisements don't
really bother me that much, but I'm becoming less comfortable with being
tracked. I would love to see a study that compares the costs of tracking with
the added value of tracking and see who pays those costs and who benefits from
the value.

~~~
electricblue
Google benefits, the costs are negligible compared to the revenue they get.
Its the entire business model.

The problem for content creators is I can't think of much written content that
i'm willing to pay a subscription fee for. I doubt I am alone in this.

~~~
criddell
> the costs are negligible

The costs are not negligible. Tracking scripts use a lot of bandwidth and (on
mobile) battery power.

~~~
Spivak
Exactly, just because the cost is distributed doesn't mean it's not being paid
in one form or another.

If ad networks actually had to pay the cost, say $10/GB of traffic they served
to mobile devices, ads would be lighter and far less spammy.

------
LesZedCB
This feels reminiscent of the arguments over piracy and content distribution
media. Back before spotify and netflix and itunes, pirating music was just the
way of life. People made moral arguments one way or the other and they both
had credibility. Now that we have essentially moved away from that model, I've
noticed discussion about piracy drastically fall off many discussion forums.

Now the same thing is happening with advertising and ad blocking. Both sides
have reasonable arguments, and the discussion really doesn't seem to be
getting anywhere at all. "Ads pay for your free content!" "This content is so
full of other garbage it isn't even consumable in the first place!" etc, etc.
The google service to pay for ad space was interesting, I am curious if that
will translate to the new "spotify" of the music industry. People might be
more willing to pay monthly subscriptions for high quality, ad-free content. I
most likely would be.

However, the most disappointing thing from that article is the search history
for "do not track." That is why I run an ad-blocker. The amount of web
tracking that happens is super creepy and ethically grey at best. I don't want
to be a part of that system, and if running a script blocker does that, that
supersedes any ethical qualms I have with blocking ads.

~~~
pjc50
I think you have something here. Piracy was a problem due to high cost and
poor availability of content. Now there are multiple paid-for content
aggregators that will serve music and video on most devices at reasonable
prices, worldwide.

So it sounds like what we need are text content aggregators that work. What we
need is easy syndication: RSS _with money_. But people have been trying to
build paywalled text aggregator sites since Compuserve and not really
succeeded.

Maybe the people paying should be the link-discussion sites. Reddit lets you
give "gold" to users, but not to the websites hosting submitted links ...

~~~
Touche
The problem is what is trying to be sold, not the medium it is distributed in.
News can't be copyrighted and is willingly distributed for free. Most news is
actually cheap to produce as well.

So the problem is that a previously lucrative business (news) is no longer
lucrative at all, and in fact that are many people who will give it away for
free just for fun.

Unfortunately for those in the business of news I don't think there's a "fix"
for this, it's just the onward march of progress.

~~~
pjc50
News article text absolutely can be copyrighted. It's just the parts that are
pure reported speech or excerpts from someone else's press release that can't.

News is also fairly worthless without comment, analysis and context.

~~~
Touche
Those are not monetarily valuable things though; plenty of people will write
about the news for free.

Investigative reporting is the exception in that it's difficult and can be
expensive to produce.

------
roymurdock
The author says that we, as consumers, need to "engage" advertisers because
they have power (to do what?), and because we all have a stake in each other's
success. He offers this explanation:

 _The only way engagement will work is through tools that are ours, and we
control: tools that give us scale — like a handshake gives us scale. What
engages us with the Washington Post should also engage us with Verge and
Huffpo. What engages us with Mercedes should also engage us with a Ford dealer
or a shoe store._

Does anyone know what he is talking about here? I re-read the article 2 or 3
times and skimmed the linked article in an attempt to figure out what part
scale plays in a handshake. If anything, a handshake is _anti-scale_ because
its a personal gesture that you can only do with one other person at a time.
But the author says that engagement should scale across all verticals
(automakers, shoe stores) and all brands (Huffington Post, Verge). Seems like
an inherent contradiction. Am I parsing his meaning/terminology incorrectly?

Also, why do a plurality of smart people involved in the ad industry keep
pushing for us, the consumers, to "help marketers think past abuse and
coercion"?

Advertisers have had plenty of time to think and reflect upon their business
model. They have chosen to disrespect us, violate our privacy, and chase
short-term profits at the expense of long-term customer satisfaction. Now they
are receiving their just desserts because people _hate_ they way they have
been treated. The sites that host these ads are also guilty by proxy because
they know exactly what they are doing.

What is there to talk about/negotiate in this situation?

~~~
forgottenpass
_What is there to talk about /negotiate in this situation?_

Nothing; we're being conned. They know what they want, they know nobody else
wants that, so they disingenuously play to human nature. By stating that they
should be engaged with directly, they attempt to make blocking seem like an
unreasonable rejection of working with them. They have no interest in
cooperating, so it's just manipulative.

It's the same exact hustle we've seen with whistleblowers (and protesters)
time and time again for ages. Some blowhard says that they're for reform, and
support the concept of whistleblowing in general. But in this one specific
case, the whistle-blowing just wasn't done _right_ , and there are certainly
more-effective routes to that reform, with less collaterally damage that
should have been used instead.

Nah, that's just someone that exists to make sure the status quo doesn't
change. Sorta related, about the NSA/ATT relationship:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7325100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7325100)

------
bsder
I suspect that the problem is that advertising is chasing increasingly fewer
fixed dollars. Consequently, it has had to get more and more aggressive to
have any impact.

Most people are spending at their limits. They have fixed budgets on which to
spend things. So, to change their behavior, you have to apply a _huge_ bat to
get to even the 0.1% you can actually change.

Unfortunately, that offends the 99.9%.

There is a reason why advertisers target new mothers the most. It's the
_single_ time when people's habits get completely disrupted and can be
rearranged.

------
fossuser
I think it's kind of specious to claim that the reason ad blocking software is
more common now is because websites started ignoring Do Not Track.

Most people who use the internet don't know anything about this. It probably
just took a while for there to be enough 'friends good with computers' who
knew about ad blocking and installed the plugins for their family and friends.
That kind of knowledge takes a bit to penetrate.

Once people see it works they keep using it because a web without ads is
objectively better for the individual user (ignoring what might happen if ad
revenue was no longer viable to fund the free services everyone uses).

------
eddd
from:
[http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html](http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html)
" 12\. Fix advertising. Advertising could be made much better if it tried to
please its audience, instead of treating them like victims who deserve x
amount of abuse in return for whatever free site they're getting. It doesn't
work anyway; audiences learn to tune out boring ads, no matter how loud they
shout.

What we have now is basically print and TV advertising translated to the web.
The right answer will probably look very different. It might not even seem
like advertising, by current standards. So the way to approach this problem is
probably to start over from scratch: to think what the goal of advertising is,
and ask how to do that using the new ingredients technology gives us. Probably
the new answers exist already, in some early form that will only later be
recognized as the replacement for traditional advertising "

The problem is that advertising business started abusing users too much and we
just have enough.

~~~
rjsw
I wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem if we did have old-style print
advertising embedded in web pages, it usually followed the same visual style
as the articles.

Before the web, I used to buy computer magazines as much for the ads as for
the supposed "real" content.

------
imagex
There's a strange note of entitlement that seems to pop up whenever
discussions about ad blocking arise.

It smacks of the piracy argument, "if producers didn't make it so difficult to
consume the content, I wouldn't pirate it." The argument isn't about whether
or not it's theft, so much as whether or not consumers agree with the method
and constraints on the intersection between distribution and consumption.

In the case of 'free' content on the web: site 'owners' create and serve
content, often via paid servers with labor overhead in the form of creation,
curation, programming infrastructure/support, sysadmins, and so forth. The
server sits in one or more datacenters, waiting for requests.

Let's use the house metaphor: say I create a website, www.thisismyhouse.com
and you like the content, so you visit my (open) house. My house has certain
conventions, social compacts, if you will. You don't enter without some sense
that there are obligations on both sides: if I am an irritating host, you
don't stay and eat my food, you leave. If you are an irritating guest, you are
escorted out. At no time in the physical world is there a situation where you
can use technology to mute the host while still eating the food (aside from
<insert dated in-laws joke here> ).

"Oho!" someone exclaims, "I spent fuel and time" (internet bandwidth) "to
visit your house! This cost me (unit of value) too!" So we agree that both
sides have a monetary/value stake in this transaction.

But there are rules, folks. The content isn't free and never was. Just because
you can line up at the buffet and filter out the environment until it meets
your requirements through technology doesn't mean that you have an ongoing
right to keep visiting (consuming).

Free content sites are like trialware: you visit, decide if you like it, then
pay if you keep using it, and the price is set by the author (ads,
subscriptions, you name it). If you don't like the price, you don't get to
keep eating your fill.

I'm not a fan of ads, but I accept them as by and large the price of admission
to the content I like. There are plenty of ways to get around tracking without
fully blocking ads, so that doesn't really concern me).

If the ads are just too much, I go elsewhere. How complicated is that?

------
niravshah
I strongly agree that adtech has overstepped bounds in a number of ways, but
articles like this seem more interested in claiming the moral high ground for
ad blockers, equating them with consumer activism. However, ad blockers are
clearly not a boycott - websites are still being "dealt with" (i.e. content is
being consumed) to use the definition language, they are just not being paid.

Disclaimer/Context: I was the Product Manager for Ad Products at Vox Media for
2+ years

~~~
monochromatic
I actually think ad blockers have the moral high(er) ground, but it is weird
to call it a boycott.

~~~
hrvbr
It's the boycott of a business model, more than of the companies who use it.

~~~
monochromatic
I mean, I get that... but that's not what "boycott" means.

------
perlgeek
To put things into perspective: [http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-
US#q=how%20to%20b...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-
US#q=how%20to%20block%20ads%2C%20retargeting%2C%20justin%20bieber&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B4)

yes, interest in ad blocking is growing, but these search term graphs don't
show that it has arrived at the scale of the general public yet.

~~~
po1nter
Your perspective is skewed. Try this
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=adblock%2C%20justin%...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=adblock%2C%20justin%20bieber&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-2)

------
cornholio
"You seem to have adblocking enabled. Please deposit 0.05 mBTC to the address
bellow to white-list this device."

It's not really a war, it's a negotiation.

~~~
pjc50
People seem even less willing to cross paywalls than they do to accept ads.

------
liotier
Users realize they can fight sensory pollution - advertiser outrage ensues...
The arms race rages on !

------
BinaryIdiot
I agree and I like the way this author words the "fight". It has always
baffled me how an entire industry can build up around the trust system because
in the end that's what the majority of online advertisement is. You send me
data, my screen chooses what to display.

------
mgalka
Reminds me of the time when everyone (myself included) felt entitled to free
MP3's, and then got pissed when the record companies disagreed.

A boycott is when you abstain from transacting. Ad blockers are not a boycott,
they're just a legal way of stealing someone else's work.

------
irl_zebra
Interesting conclusions, but they seem to be inevitable:

One is that ad blockers will evolve to valving systems for accepting
advertising’s wheat while rejecting its chaff. (I explain the difference in
the first post in this series. And, sez AdExchanger, 71% of Ad-Block Users
Would Consider Whitelisting Sites That Don’t Suck.)

The other is that we’ll help marketers think past abuse and coercion as ways
to get what they want out of customers. After that happens, they’ll realize
that —

1\. Free customers are far more valuable than captive ones 2\. Genuine
relationships are worth far more than the kind that is coerced 3\. Volunteered
(and truly relevant) personal data is worth far more than the kind that is
involuntarily fracked 4\. Expressions of real intent by customers are worth
far more than guesswork fed by fracked data

~~~
liotier
> accepting advertising’s wheat while rejecting its chaff

What makes you believe that users see any value in ads ?

~~~
irl_zebra
I see value in ads when they target me specifically and alert me to some
product or product alternative that I didn't know about before the ad. But
that is a very small sliver of ads. There's a blog I follow that doesn't use
ads but rather product recommendations with Amazon affiliate links. This type
of advertising is pretty valuable to me and when/if I want to purchase the
product, I use the affiliate link to do so to "pay" the blog author for the
high quality content.

------
hiou
Since we're running full steam ahead in correlation, I'll throw in that around
2012 was when Facebook started displaying ads.

------
mariusz79
War on Ads will end just like the War On Terror, War On Drugs, War on Cancer
and all other similar wars - there will be more of X, in this case Ads. To win
that war we would need to change ourselves, and that's not going to happen.
When I tell people that I have no cable, and Netflix/Amazon Prime is enough
for my entertainment needs they are quickly to point out that I can't see the
newest shows, or movies. My answer is always the same - it's entertainment -
an activity that is just a small part of my life, not something that defines
it.. Yet people act like they are losing part of themselves when they can't
watch their favorite shows, or sporting events. That's why online streaming
has so much problem acquiring new shows - cable networks know that some people
are just too attached to their mindless entertainment, and will never give it
up. A similar situation can be observed with the web and ads. People just want
their fix of entertainment even if it means that they are being tracked,
hacked and used. And it's never going to change.

