
Welcome to the Block Party: The internet after ad blocking - cpeterso
http://www.theawl.com/2015/09/welcome-to-the-block-party
======
Jerry2
About a year or so ago, my dad called me out of the blue and told me that my
mom was crying because "internet ads were following her and making her
anxious".

Earlier that day, she came from a doctor and ended up searching for a medical
condition on a famous search website. After that, she started seeing ads for
various bullshit remedies all across the internet. Almost every website she
visited, showed her same types of ads. Even when she wanted to forget and take
her mind of it, she couldn't because these ads were constantly reminding her
of it.

She got so disgusted that she quit using the web for the rest of the day and
cried.

I guided them on how to install ad blocking addons and how to change default
search engines (she now uses Startpage) But we couldn't easily block it on
iPad so the solution was to switch the search engine and clear cookies.

All these companies that make money off tracking people and are selling search
results really need to rethink their business models.

PS: She also wrote an email to Tim Cook complaining about this and got a reply
from someone that they will "look into it". I'm glad Apple will now a provide
solution to block these kinds of things on an iPad.

~~~
mojuba
I'm sorry but how do you know it was the search website that sold information?
It could as well be the first web site that she opened that happened to be on
the same ad network as other related web sites she visited. Just guessing.

~~~
hueving
Said search website was probably google. If that's the case they don't have to
sell it, they just use it to target ads from their own network. If you search
something on Google it will follow you like the plague.

------
mintplant
I don't want ad companies tracking me.

Ad companies have roundly demonstrated that I can no longer trust them to show
me ads without tracking.

Sorry, but I'm not switching off that blocker. Maybe if the history of the
internet had taken a different course. But now it's too late -- the well's
been poisoned, and advertisers and publishers have only themselves to blame.
Pointing the finger at the users doesn't do anything to repair this lost
trust.

    
    
        Ad-blocking, insofar as it contributes to the decimation of
        advertising revenues, will hasten this exodus to the
        platforms. And there is no way to block the ads shown to you
        by Facebook or Google or Twitter in their own apps,
        especially not on mobile.
    

Aside: There absolutely are ways to block ads within apps. There are already
Android apps that accomplish this to various extents, and I'm sure they'll
only get more sophisticated to match any migration of users to mobile.

~~~
a_e_k
Tracking is one thing that bothers me. The other are video ads that hijack my
speakers and sap my bandwidth, pop over ads that hijack my screen focus, etc.
Those are where I draw the line.

I don't use explicit ad blockers, but I do run with NoScript and Cookie
Controller. Simple, well-behaved banner and sidebar ads are fine. Overly
aggressive ads get killed.

------
wmt
Damn, that article took a strange leap with discussing what better ads would
be. Somehow it entirely skipped the possibility that more ads might resemble
the ads of the most successful advertisers of the web (like google, facebook,
twitter) and instead leaped on a dystopian slope where all ads are served by
the content platforms of those companies.

Saying that twitter, google or facebook ads cannot be blocked is just bogus.
People use them on normal web browsers that quite easily could block them. The
reason they're not blocked is that it's not worth the hassle, because the ads
are clean, small and polite. You know, better ads.

Such better ads are not patented, and switching to pleasant text ads like the
industry leaders leaders did would make ad blockers a marginal phenomenon.

~~~
001sky
_Such better ads are not patented, and switching to pleasant text ads like the
industry leaders leaders did would make ad blockers a marginal phenomenon._

The risk is that _advertising_ would also become a marginal phenomenon.

~~~
a3n
It's _amazing_ to me that so many smart minds in content outlets can't figure
out a way to make money other than ads, particular privacy invading ads.

It's been said often enough and long enough to sound tired, but we really are
products, not customers. The entity that a content outlet cares about is the
ad networks. _NOT_ you. The content is just a bug zapper meant to attract you
in.

~~~
tertius
"It's amazing to me that so many smart minds in content outlets can't figure
out a way to make money other than ads"

There are many ways, but nothing that is as profitable.

------
axefrog
I was always a defender of a site's right to use advertising in lieu of any
better way to pay for its content. As someone who'd had stabs in the past at
making content sites with useful content, I understood that it was a case of
etiquette. If you want to read my content, do me the courtesy of allowing an
unobtrusive text ad to exist off to the side. On that basis, I never blocked
ads. Sometimes the ads were even interesting.

I use an ad blocker now. Too many abuses of my willingness to let the
publishers show me ads and I eventually just got sick of it. Where the line
was crossed for me included:

\- Videos (or audio) autoplaying over the top of my own music; especially when
they're in some other tab, halfway down the page, forcing me to go hunting to
figure out where the sound was coming from

\- Links commandeered by popup launchers; especially when they cancel the
original click, or load my link in a new tab and override the _current_ tab
with the ad popup, which often resulted in me accidentally leaving the ad tab
open while I closed the tab I actually wanted.

\- Hover ads that activate because I was careless enough to not pay precise
attention to the location of my mouse pointer

\- Page content scroll positions jerking up and down as ads appear or
disappear (usually just the former)

\- Overlay ads appearing on top of content I'm trying to read, and in
particular those which make the close button either hard to see, unresponsive
when clicked, or which respond as though I've clicked the ad itself

\- Content that just won't display because it's blocked by ad resources that
have stalled while loading

And so forth. I'll stand up for publisher's rights, but only to a point.
Eventually the noise and bad behaviour just becomes too much.

------
buffoon
I love the mantra of "the web is supported by advertising" that every one of
these sorts of articles at least quotes. It's not. Shitty business models are
supported by advertising. There are plenty of us who provide non-advertising
driven services that are profitable and can afford transit costs.

As for blocking, the technology allows it so I will use it. If it doesn't
allow it, I have no ethical qualms about breaking it until it does. If I'm
paying for the portal device be it tablet, desktop, smartphone, TV, I will be
in control of it. If it's subsidy-driven, their funeral.

~~~
jgianakopoulos
The mantra? This is how the majority of the web is monetized. It's not a
mantra, it's a fact. People contribute content to the web and you pay with
viewing ads. I don't know how you can rationalize that as being a "shitty"
business model just because you purchase a device that is capable of
connecting to the internet.

If what you really mean to say is that it's a bad business model because
people like yourself can install ad-blocking software and consume content
without paying for it, then I see what you're saying although you come off as
entitled and naive.

~~~
buffoon
Thats really not how it works. Content providers like that ideal but it's
incorrect. It never has operated that way.

I pay for a connection and a device. I don't pay for an advertising subsidy.
If you choose to use advertising as a capital model for your business in a
market so easily destroyed by technology then that by definition is a shitty
business model due to the massive risk of a technological shift destroying
your only income. Not only that, the consumers merely tolerate your model, not
engage it. It is a plague upon them most of the time.

The only way this model works is if you provide a device which consumes
advertising. That in itself is being eroded as well due to the number of
services which offer utility without advertising even on the advertiser's
territory.

Content isn't worth much on its own which is the problem. Authors rarely get
paid anything significant from publishing; same with content driven
advertising. I don't see how you're going to milk it in a decaying market.

The web will shrink, content will have to stand alone and be free of
advertising ties and you'll have to put some cash down for services. Back to
1995 again.

I fully expect these dying markets to throw a few turds yet however. That will
merely bury them deeper.

~~~
tertius
So what you're suggesting is one of two things.

1\. Support model. I.e. I donate to your site and then consume your content.
2\. Netflix (walled garden) model: I pay a central place, think AOL, or
Facebook and they track my views and pay those producing content.

~~~
buffoon
I'm not really suggesting, just acknowledging the inevitability of.

------
Nkdo
This is why I encourage all the people I know, who aren't great with
computers, to use adblockers:

[http://i.imgur.com/dzwaKhI.png](http://i.imgur.com/dzwaKhI.png)

Saw that ad for what is borderline malware on a fresh install of windows 10
while trying out Microsoft Edge to see what it's worth as a browser. It's a
google ad (you can always spot them through the X button), on a popular
website.

As long as google doesn't do any real policing on what is permissible in their
adnetworks, it will always be a user's right to protect himself. Television
and newspapers have higher standards for ads, at least in my country.

This was also a reminder that Edge will not be a real browser until Microsoft
adds the possibility of using an adblocker. No extensions, no deal.

~~~
cpeterso
Microsoft announced earlier this year an IE feature called "SmartScreen
Filter" that is supposed to detect and block misleading or malicious ads. I
assume Edge has this feature, too, but from the blog post (and your
experience) it sounds like it is disabled by default.

[http://blogs.technet.com/b/mmpc/archive/2015/04/28/cleaning-...](http://blogs.technet.com/b/mmpc/archive/2015/04/28/cleaning-
up-misleading-advertisements.aspx)

------
mahranch
The author gets one thing massively wrong. So do the reddit commentors they
quote.

The quote:

" _Ad blockers could end up saving the ad industry from its worst excesses. If
blocking becomes widespread, the ad industry will be pushed to produce ads
that are simpler, less invasive and far more transparent about the way they’re
handling our data_ "

Oh? And how are you so sure they won't go the other direction? Because that's
where I'd place my money in a heart beat.

Adblockers rely on blocking requests to known ad networks and affiliates. If
the ads are instead served up locally, from the site the person is visiting
itself, it can't block the ads. Ad blockers are 100% ineffective in those
instances. A company like google or any other major ad network just needs to
create some sort of back-end, plugin or server side program that serves up ads
from the domain you're visiting. The ad blocker wouldn't know if it's a
picture of a cat or an ad for Netflix since it's all coming from
randomsite.com

Several smaller companies have already started doing this and it could very
well signal the end of ad blockers if it becomes widespread and adopted by the
big players (specifically adsense).

The one thing I _don 't_ see is ad companies becoming more transparent & open.
That's silly to even think about since it's less profitable alternative. The
companies that don't do this will cannibalize the ones that do since they'll
be shooting themselves in the foot. No, I see ad companies becoming more
clever.

As far as content creators go, I don't even know how this is a debate. Just
how entitled are people nowadays? Is this why they call millennials the
entitled generation? If someone creates content, and wants people to see an ad
for Pepsi before you can consume that content, that is the creators
prerogative, not yours. End of story. There's no further argument here. I
don't know why people think everything should be free. Nothing is free,
everything is subsidized by something.

~~~
mintplant

        If the ads are instead served up locally,
        from the site the person is visiting itself,
        it can't block the ads.
    

Why not? I don't see why an ad blocker couldn't identify and block certain URL
schemes/patterns, common scripts, or element structures.

Also -- doesn't cross-site tracking rely on third-party cookies from a shared
(separate) domain?

~~~
mahranch
> Why not?

I think you missed the point, the plugin or program wouldn't have a distinct
pattern or scheme since it would be coming from the website you're visiting.

Say, for example, I want to show an ad for denture cream. Nothing fancy, just
a gif. Well, the URL would look like
[http://www.randomsite.com/img/filename.gif](http://www.randomsite.com/img/filename.gif)

How do you block that without blocking every image on the website?

Granted, what you propose would be easier to do for more advanced systems, but
the key here, is that 95% of adblockers almost exclusively look for calls to
ad networks. If you eliminate that, you open up that 95%.

~~~
anonymousab
>How do you block that without blocking every image on the website?

By blocking that specific asset? Blocklists will be much larger and slower
reactively, but still far better than nothing.

------
interpol_p
My personal reason for using an ad blocker is the infrastructure.

There is nothing wrong with ads. But there is something deeply wrong with ad
networks and automated ad placement.

Giving up a square of your website to some company to place whatever the hell
they deem relevant is the reason I dislike web ads. I go to a website to read
_their_ content, not what Doubleclick thinks I should see based on my creepy
user profile.

So if content creators curate and produce ads in partnership with advertisers
(whose products they must actually, you know, like enough to want to promote
to their readers) then maybe people will find ads less offensive. Instead of
seeing ads for malware, or a private medical condition, or the towels they
were just browsing on Amazon in a separate tab.

Great content creators don't use an algorithm and analytics-generated user
profiles to determine what content to serve individual users, they just
publish what they think their readers will like. Why not do the same for ads?

------
mojuba
As a possibility, a model whereby advertisers pay both content providers and
readers for viewing ads.

I can imagine a system where before viewing expensive content (your next
ultradeep NYT analysis I really want to read) I'm given a choice to view an ad
(video, audio or picture) on one of the topics I'm interested in and be paid
say $0.001. There are ad processors, let's say 2 or 3 major ones A, B and C,
with whom I have an account. NYT hires one or two of them to give readers
reasonable choices of what kind of ads to view and pay both ways. I'm
registered with A and C with interests in cars, musical instruments and hiking
equipment (in fact they may be priced differently), NYT supports A and B,
which is fine, I'll be paid by A this time. I may of course change my
preferences over time.

This will make ads even more expensive for the advertisers, but will at the
same time improve relevance. In fact advertisers may compete for
keywords/interests just like they do with Google Ads.

~~~
cpeterso
Ad networks use real-time bidding to auction banner ad space as the page
loads. (I imagine that's part of the reason it can take so damn long for some
news sites to load.) Why can't the _user_ (or their user agent) take part in
this same auction? If I'm will to pay $0.02 per page view on nytimes.com, but
advertisers are only willing to pay $0.01 then I should be able to win the
auction.

~~~
ariwilson
So, exactly this:

[https://contributor.google.com/u/0/](https://contributor.google.com/u/0/)

You even have control over who gets your money:

[http://i.imgur.com/4Vuuefm.png](http://i.imgur.com/4Vuuefm.png)

~~~
cpeterso
Interesting! I thought Google Contributor was more of a direct micropayment
system for content, but from that link it looks like real-time bidding.

------
bambax
> _In other words, even the most important and widely respected newspaper in
> the world is nowhere close to being healthily monetized, especially not by
> the small number of people who pay for it._

It's not true that people won't pay for "content". People subscribe to
Netflix, and still go to the theaters in droves (despite "piracy"). People buy
games. And it's not even true that there's a problem with written content:
people still buy books.

People won't pay for _news_ , which isn't the same thing as "content" in
general.

The reason people won't pay for news is because news have _no inherent value_.

Reading the news is a way of passing time; it's more like glazing at trees and
leaves in the wind (but much less enjoyable).

~~~
Scarblac
There are good arguments for the view that news is actively bad for you:
[http://dobelli.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Par...](http://dobelli.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf) (pdf).

~~~
bambax
Great read, thanks! I agree with everything in this paper (but that may be
confirmation bias at work...)

So adblocking is actually going to save the world by starving all the evil
news-producing entities.

However, the fact that most people won't pay for news, signals that news is
less addictive than one could think (since people do pay for drugs - they're
willing to pay any price for a fix).

------
brianclements
What bothers me the most about all these fertile sources for spam and ads to
thrive (junk snail mail, telephone marketers, email spam, internet ads) is not
just the malicious intent of most of it, but also the _inefficiency_ of it
all. A majority of Internet traffic is bots[1] costing electricity and time
sorting through spam. Most of my snail mail by weight and size is trash every
single day, waisting effort of an already underfunded and non-profitable USPS.
Internet ads clutter up web interfaces and take up cycles in our browsers
wasting time and making the delivery of information much less efficient. I
feel as though in time, with all the physical and digital public services we
have, 60% of infrastructure resources will go toward wasteful and nefarious
services, 30% will go toward blocking and mitigating said services, and the
remaining 10% will be human activity wondering why everything is so damn slow
and expensive.

[1][http://theweek.com/articles/454320/62-percent-all-web-
traffi...](http://theweek.com/articles/454320/62-percent-all-web-traffic-
comes-from-bots)

------
Animats
Maybe the ad-heavy Internet was just a phase. Business models come and go.
Craigslist killed newspaper classifieds as a business. Ad blockers may kill
web ads as a business.

~~~
venomsnake
And we slide into closed and centralized places ... that is scary.

~~~
Animats
Every business will still have a web site for their own products and services.
Amazon won't have a problem. Wikipedia will go on. The New York Times, Wall
Street Journal, and The Economist are already pay sites, and they're almost
the only news sites with actual reporters. Pay TV will continue to fund news
networks, which will have sites with additional content to get people to watch
their TV.

All we'll lose are the millions of bottom-feeder sites which take content in,
hang ads on it, and hope to get paid. No big loss.

~~~
dingaling
> and The Economist are already pay sites, and they're almost the only news
> sites with actual reporters.

The Economist doesn't actually have on-staff reporters, they rely on
correspondents around the World who sell their articles either ad hoc or on a
commission basis.

They do have staff who write editorials, but not the news articles.

The Economist is also happy to ( try to ) utterly bombard me with ads on their
website despite being a subscriber. They even had a crawl-up SUBSCRIBE NOW! ad
at one point _when I was logged-in_.

------
windlep
Would've been nice if the article had pointed out that ad-networks have become
a popular way to distribute trojans and malware using Flash exploits (though
I'm sure when Flash is gone, ppl will keep finding other browser exploits ad's
can exploit).

------
oconnore
Another possibility is that people will learn to care about what they read,
and learn that it costs something. We don't _have_ to tip, either.

Also, I'm sorry, but I'm never going to login to Facebook to read the
Economist, and I stopped using Twitter's mobile app when they introduced
sponsored content.

~~~
eru
> We don't have to tip, either.

And in Australia, we don't.

------
dombili
Content providers (from ad networks to movie studios) need to realise that you
can only go so far. Ads have become more than ads. They track you wherever you
go, not just online but offline too and people are starting to realise how
intrusive this is. Most people are reasonable. A lot of articles have been
publish about how terrible ads are but if you show them in a tasteful and a
non-intrusive way (meaning that they don't track the user), they can be very
successful.

Podcasts have been getting more and more popular everyday and I listen to a
lot of them. I almost never skip any podcast ads even though I've heard most
of them before because they feel more authentic (mostly because it's read by
someone whose opinion I trust) and they're not intrusive at all. It seems like
a good trade of to listen to them while getting great entertaining/informative
content for free _and_ I might get a good deal on something I might be
interested in (since they mostly offer promo codes). If I'm listening to a
podcast on technology, I get to hear Hover's ad spot, for example. That's
interesting to me because as someone who's interested in listening to a
podcast about technology, it's possible that I already manage a couple of
domains and I might not be happy with my registrar (then again, who is).
They're generically targeted ads. While on the websites, cookies follow me
wherever I go, sometimes even when I delete them and my information is sold by
companies I trust as a user because they're greedy and some other party want
my information just so they can put ads in front of my face. When I try to
block these, I'm called unethical because I'm taking food off the table of the
writers.

There's a middle way here but I don't think ad networks ever going to realise
this the same way movie studios haven't realised you can't solve piracy
problem by adding more and more DRM. Don't be intrusive. Don't fuck up the UX.
Don't bother me. I don't mind removing my ad blocker and see ads if that means
I'll support the websites I visit. But ad networks are greedy and I fear this
is only going to make them become more intrusive because of how easy (and now
probably widely reached) ad blockers are going to become. And even if they do
realise their mistake and make ads less intrusive both for privacy and UX
reasons, no one will be there to realise that because everybody will be using
ad blockers.

------
z3t4
The advertising market have been inflating for ten years now. Ten years ago
one user would earn you an average of one usd per month, while you only get
around 1 cent per user now. The same goes for advertisers, if your ad gets
shown for ten thousand people, you can expect one lead. While ten years ago
that would have been a hundred leads.

------
ipsin
Given the date and the description of blocking ad banners specifically, my
guess is that they were talking about an ad-blocking proxy like Internet
Junkbuster.

These proxies weren't as easy to install as browser extensions, but they did a
good job of blocking ads, and I remember similar conversations about The
Future of Ad Blocking at the time.

------
sigma2015
There are so many premises wrong here - it hurts:

1\. The majority of people in fact doesn't care about being tracked -
"hackers" (and also myself) do care though - but that's a minority.

2\. Most people like _good_ advertisement.

3\. It's wrong to just naturally assume that ads have to be annoying. A
discreet, not-moving, not-animated ad is not bothering anybody.

4\. Just as most people aren't willing to pay for content they aren't willing
to pay for the maintenance of ad blockers - which is why the devs of those ABs
will (and as a matter of fact) already offer whitelisting for money.
[[http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/02/over-300-businesses-...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/02/over-300-businesses-
now-whitelisted-on-adblock-plus-10-pay-to-play/)]

5\. More and more web-sites will simply deny access to their content if ad
blocking is detected.

6\. The HN people's perspective on ads is in each and every way not that of
the majority of people potentially clicking ads. _We_ are _not_ the driving
force.

\---

The equilibrium will be Ad Blockers that white list benevolent and discreet
ads - advertisement as an income source will become less attractive but it
won't go away.

Also Ad Blocking depends on detectable code or ad servers. If the ad
dissemination technology shifts accordingly then Ad Blockers simply won't be
able to detect ads any longer.

------
jimworm
It's possible that some advertising will merge in with regular content and
become covertly invasive over the long term. Publishers become credibility
farms, where credibility is built using real articles and sold via
"propaganda" pieces. One possible example is the Wired tennis physics link
posted recently [0].

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10210808](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10210808)

------
otabdeveloper1
For all the people cheering on ad blockers: do you not realize that the _only_
result of wide-spread ad blocking is to drive smaller ad networks out of
business and make Google into a monopoly?

This is _not_ a win for privacy or security on the Internet. Google is an
order of magnitude worse offender compared to the small-time ad networks.

And no, you cannot ad block Google. Good luck trying to block google.com
cookies and access to *.google.com.

~~~
bambax
> _you cannot ad block Google_

Why not? It may be difficult to stop google from tracking you, but if you
don't ever see the consequences (as you're blocking their ads), it doesn't
much matter does it?

~~~
cpeterso
I think the OP means that many websites rely on Google services and will stop
working if you block google.com content or cookies.

------
cpeterso
Are there any studies that show whether cross-site user tracking actually
increases ad click-through rates? An advertiser can already intuit a lot about
a reader from the current web site or search terms without tracking their
activity on other sites. The most relevant ads I've seen were from Feedly and
Twitter, who have their own profiles based on RSS feeds or Twitter accounts I
follow.

------
a3n
I'm mainly talking about news outlets, and mainly the premiers like NYT and
major regionals.

Those outlets claim, probably rightly so, that they can't survive on
subscriptions alone, they need ads. But on the web, what that means is "we
can't survive unless we degrade your web experience and violate your privacy
by selling you to ad networks."

We're all focused on the ad side, and "how can we make money selling exactly
what we've always sold without ads."

Maybe selling news is not a viable business on the web. Ad blockers are not
just evidence that we don't like ads as they are now, but also evidence that
"we don't want to pay for what you're selling us. What you're selling us isn't
worth it."

Maybe a premier outlet like the NYT should be more than a news outlet. Maybe
also an education outlet. NYT especially (and other premiers) already have
people who do excellent research, writing, presentation, web development and
data analysis. They have all the tools for education, they just aren't
deploying them that way.

In classrooms, teachers sometimes try to incorporate current events into
lessons. Turn that on its head.

But don't fall into the trap of replicating "the classroom," or courses,
online. This would need some pretty serious innovation.

Would I subscribe to something like that? Hell yeah. I'd even accept ads, but
not active privacy gouging ads, just static text and images served from the
first party domain. Don't do something new, only to fuck it up with old.

Premier news outlets could be so much more that just another trap for ad
viewing. They have really smart people, trapped in their employers' outdated
business models.

------
sireat
Anecdotal evidence: I was shocked how quickly web degenerates when you disable
adblocking.

Start with a reputable major news site, click on one business clickbait
article -> a bit sleazy but still somewhat readable site opens -> click on
different clickbait article -> sleazier site opens with a lousy article ->
click again on ad -> full blown video popup ad extravaganza for rather
unsavory business opportunities.

I shudder to think what would have happened if I had chosen to read about
medicine or sex.

So in some ways online advertising has the same problem that fashion industry
does. The immediate suppliers might be decent but a few steps down you get
into OSHA nightmares exported overseas.

The problem is that incentives encourage this sleaziness no matter what high
moral standards A,G,F,M, et al profess publicly.

------
a3n
Is there a way that I, as a consumer, could sell ads to ad networks that would
be "viewed" (i.e. consume resources) by content outlets? Maybe they could be
so resource intensive that admins would feel compelled to review logs, and the
log content would somehow have enough information that an admin would buy a
shoe.

Maybe http headers sent to content outlets could have ads.

Maybe something magic and really creative, I don't know.

You could even customize part of the message. One part from the advertiser,
and one part from me, "Please do me a solid and stop blocking my ads to you. I
need the ad revenue to help pay for my broadband fees."

~~~
a3n
Maybe just make it a habit to send email to every human address I can find at
a site, and load the message up with ads. Although the ads might not be seen,
if people at the content site themselves are using adblockers.

------
mtgentry
Why don't more publishers try to detect the ad blockers with stuff like this?
[https://github.com/sitexw/FuckAdBlock](https://github.com/sitexw/FuckAdBlock)

And then they could throw up a page that says "Sorry, AdBlock must be disabled
to view this content"

~~~
executesorder66
Because you can block adblock killers with adblock. So what's the point?

~~~
nitrogen
Additionally, anything more aggressive than DuckDuckGo's "Please turn off your
ad blocker, or tell others about us, thanks!" will really upset the people who
use ad blockers.

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PhasmaFelis
> _And there is no way to block the ads shown to you by Facebook or Google or
> Twitter in their own apps, especially not on mobile._

This is not entirely true. AdBlock Plus for Android works at the system level.

~~~
fwn
AFAIK abp does work by simulating a VPN on your system and therefore being
able to block all resources channeled through this VPN. I don't know if that
counts as system level. In comparison: Adaway (which needs root) edits the
hosts file to block network requests on a system level.

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greenleafjacob
Have we hit peak ads? [1]

[1]:
[http://peakads.org/images/Peak_Ads.pdf](http://peakads.org/images/Peak_Ads.pdf)

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venomsnake
I don't run ad blocker since 2009. I just got that good at ignoring ads. F12 +
delete offending element works wonders for the most annoying stuff. And there
are always hosts files.

~~~
mintplant
I would consider a specially-crafted hosts file a form of ad blocking.

