
There are no acceptable ads - k1m
https://github.com/fivefilters/block-ads/wiki/There-are-no-acceptable-ads#wrapper
======
ollysb
I want high quality content, and I'm willing to pay for it. Wired recently
starting blocking ad-blockers, with an offer of $4/month for access. I decided
it was time to start putting my money where my mouth is.

I'm tired of low quality content, I want to be supporting serious, intelligent
journalism that goes a bit further than the click-bait we're stuck with at the
moment. Even the content traditional newspapers are putting out online has
become vapid, they need to start shooting for the standards they used to and
become comfortable with charging for it.

I've got £50/month waiting for quality content. Maybe not everyone does? But
then again plenty of people were happy/able to pay for their daily newspaper.
It feels like there's a gaping hole in the market at the moment, I'm hopeful
that we're seeing the start of the return to journalism.

~~~
mahranch
> I want high quality content, and I'm willing to pay for it.

Now if only the other billions of people on this planet felt the same way.

That's why I don't like this sentence. Every time the topic of ads come up
here or on reddit, people always say "I'd pay for high quality content". And
it gets upvoted, dozens of children comments of people agreeing with them, and
everyone pats themselves on the back for such an easy and obvious solution.

Unfortunately, that's simply not the reality we live in. The vast majority
(95% or more) of internet users would rather have their content subsidized by
ads than have to pay. This has been proven time and time again by the
countless subscription model failures over the last decade. Sure, some sites
have found success, but those that do are the extremely rare exceptions, not
the rule. And _none_ have found fantastic success. How many subscription model
websites are in the top 10? Top 100? Top 1000?

Subscription models just don't work. Nuff said, really. There's 10+ years of
data to back it up.

~~~
parenthephobia
There's an obvious reason subscriptions don't work, and that's that whilst
$4/mo is affordable for many people, that's only for one site. If I had to pay
$4/mo each for all the random sites I visit each month... I wouldn't visit
those sites any more.

What's really needed is a workable, simple, micropayments model where users
can pay just one monthly fee and the sites they visit are compensated
automatically.

(And, as an incorrigible cynic, I always wonder whether comments like
mahranch's are made by people with a vested interest in the online advertising
industry. They certainly wouldn't stand to benefit if the Internet switched to
micropayments.)

~~~
bobajeff
That sounds like Brave's bitcoin protocol they are working on.

Thing is, if sites are automatically compensated once users visit how does
that change the motivation away from click bait?

~~~
parenthephobia
It doesn't. Does it need to?

I think it's up to the user to avoid click-bait. Possibly, knowing that
they're directly (or very nearly directly) paying for visits will make some
users think twice before following a click-baity link.

But TBH, I'm not convinced people in general hate click-bait as much as people
on HN seem to. People buy magazines like National Enquirer, which to me are
the print version of click-bait dross.

~~~
dave2000
I don't see how clicking on click bait means you pay/nearly pay. You're only
paying if money leaves your bank account. You're just wasting a little time
(not much though; just click the back button) and feeling a little stupid for
falling for it. Just don't click on linkbait, and make a note not to ever
visit that site again. Actually, it'd be nice if adblockers let you blacklist
sites and turned their urls into the text "linkbait url removed". I think
people DO hate linkbait generally because nobody likes being lied to, which is
essentially what's happening.

------
furyofantares
I agree entirely that there are no acceptable ads. I have only one life and
the entirety of the value I derive from it comes from that which I pay
attention to. Thus I highly value the extent to which I can control my
attention and the thoughts swirling around in my consciousness (and in my
subconscious, since that has a significant effect on what ends up being
promoted to conscious thought.)

I consider advertising to be robbing me of ME. I understand that this is a
cost I am incurring as payment for a service, but I consider it an extremely
high cost, and exploitative of the fact that it is difficult to see how high
the cost is.

This view is informed largely by popular books on how the brain/humans work,
like Thinking Fast and Slow and Consciousness and the Brain and podcasts like
You Are Not So Smart, etc. It is also somewhat informed by meditative
experience, which I think has given me at least a little insight into the
workings of my mind.

I'll note that I do think there is some amount of informational value in
advertising. But as long as advertising is created and funded by people
working hard to drive me to a specific conclusion rather than to inform me,
I'm not interested. I'd rather pay services like consumer reports to deliver
this information to me.

~~~
Avshalom
>I consider advertising to be robbing me of ME

Okay fine but the alternative is working longer hours to produce the money to
pay for your consumption. Which is as much robbing you of you as advertising
is with the disadvantage that you can't consume concurrently.

~~~
furyofantares
If that's true, I think I'm willing to accept it. I'm much more capable of
evaluating how much to consume vs how much to work than I am of evaluating
advertising.

I'm not sure it's true, though. Advertisers are confident they make money from
me by taking my attention. Like everyone else, I don't directly perceive that
to be true -- but, amazingly, it is.*

Advertisers split those profits with the content creators/distributors.

I'd rather that money come directly from a conscious, informed choice on my
part rather than by intentionally manipulated behaviors. That does mean I'll
consume different things than I do when I'm advertised to, but it also frees
up money. I believe this just from looking at "sinks and sources" \-- removing
advertiser profits is removing a big sink (and a small source of informational
value, which I've mentioned I'd rather get elsewhere.)

I don't know what the solution is for getting that money into the hands of
content creators and distributors, but I'm sure there is one.

* And this apparent contradiction, where basically nobody directly perceives the cost, but advertisers realize the value anyway, is consistent with everything psychology tells us about the myriad of systematic human bias, and is a big part of the reason I say the cost of advertising is difficult/impossible to evaluate from an experiential perspective.

------
Zpalmtree
Lots of people say that if we all start blocking ads, then lots of content
will go away. I'm perfectly fine with that, as the majority of 'content' is
complete rubbish. The web used to be populated by hobbyists who made their own
websites not expecting compensation, and they were generally high quality. Now
it's ruled by clickbait and ad infested contentless garbage, I'm happy if it
all dies.

~~~
mahranch
> Lots of people say that if we all start blocking ads, then lots of content
> will go away. I'm perfectly fine with that

Except it's more of a butterfly effect than people realize. Not just "article"
type content, but also innovation. I doubt sites like reddit would exist (at
least in their current form) without ads. Hell, they barely get by _with_ ads.
Google wouldn't exist without ads, etc etc... Sure those sites exist now, and
you take ads away, they're already entrenched, but what about the future
google or reddit or facebook?

A lot of innovation has been spurred from people's passions and their hobbies,
but much more innovation has taken place as a result of people trying to make
a quick easy buck. And that's what ads promise.

Everything from your favorite news website to your favorite android app
wouldn't exist (or likely wouldn't exist) if not for ads. I don't think people
(hackernews users) really have thought about how much innovation on the
internet is directly and indirectly related to ads. If you actually stop and
think about it, the complexity can boggle your mind.

~~~
alanwatts
So Google, Facebook, and Reddit might not exist, so what? Other services and
models will take their place. It reminds me of this Jack Black clip on
piracy[1] where he essentially claims if artists can't make loads of cash,
there will be no more art.

This argument is simply a scare tactic employed by monopolies of every kind.
"Too Big to Fail" banks say the economy won't exist without them. The MPAA
claims art won't exist without them. Advertisers say internet content won't
exist without them.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LkWKvMCzqA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LkWKvMCzqA)

~~~
mahranch
> Other services and models will take their place.

You're missing the point. You fail to grasp the scope and size of the reach
that ads have on the internet. I saw what the internet was like before the
masses arrived, I was here online back in 1995 and while the lack of ads was
nice, "the internet" was a ghost town. Those sites wouldn't, couldn't exist
without ads. Hell, google isn't a search engine, it's first and foremost an ad
company. That's where 95% of their revenue comes from! Their search feature is
just a vehicle to display ads. _Literally_.

> This argument is simply a scare tactic employed by monopolies of every kind.

Except it's not a scare tactic and it's not an argument, it's a fact. Even if
it it was both, it doesn't make it any less true. Advertisements actually _do_
spur innovation and there's tons of data and studies to back it up:

PDF warning: www.voez.at/download.php?id=1152

------
have_faith
I no longer visit websites that block people who block ads. Not out of spite,
but because the content they produce is of such low value that I have no
incentive to pay for it if offered (either with money, or with my attention
for your ad supplier). And this is my contention with 99% of content produced
on the internet in general.

~~~
supergreg
Could we move beyond adblocking and start blocking such sites directly? I
don't want to even visit websites that only grab content from other sites.
From bots making nonsense pages for getting in your search results to news
sites grabbing a story from another news site and rewriting. I've seen plenty
of sites that just copy Wikipedia or StackOverflow content to show it with ads
and with no added value on top.

~~~
mtbcoder
In theory, Google should be penalizing these sites left and right, however,
since many of them appear to slip through the cracks, this would indicate that
the problem is much more difficult to solve than it seems.

------
elorant
I don’t have a problem with ads per se. I have a problem with profiling.
Besides been scary, I also find it annoying. If I’m visiting a site about
video games I’d rather see related ads, not an ad about a product I happened
to search a couple of days ago. Just because I searched for shoes doesn’t mean
it’s the only product I’m interested in. I also have a problem with web pages
that load half a dozen ads that eat too much space and make readability a pain
in the behind.

I’m not naïve to expect that a $50bn industry will just disappear. What I’d
like to disappear though is the gazillion of sites that steal content from
major venues and monetize through AdSense. Which begs the question why Google
accepts them in the first place. In the long term I don’t think there will be
tectonic changes in the adverting industry. If publishers start serving ads
from their own domains the whole ad blocking thing will become obsolete, or
we’ll have to think of more aggressive ways to block ads. I would though like
to see some adoption of micropayments. For the time being no publisher seems
to be heading that way, they all ask for ridiculous subscriptions of something
like $1/week which if you read a couple of articles per month becomes too
expensive.

The other thing that I also don’t like and I rarely see it mentioned, is
affiliate marketing. I wonder if there’s a plugin to render affiliate links
obsolete by stripping away the referrer part. I don’t like when sites become
salesmen because it gives me the impression that the whole purpose of the
content was to promote a product.

------
lrem
> If ad blocking continues to grow, which we hope it will, other ways of
> funding will be found.

What ways can you imagine? Within a few minutes I came up with:

1) Someone else paying for you seeing ads.

2) You paying for using the site or an associated service.

3) Someone else paying for influencing what the site does for you.

4) Someone else paying for your data on that site.

And, the one that people rely on too much:

5) Someone else paying for nothing, hoping the site can be sold later at a
profit.

One that can realistically cover only a small portion of sites:

6) The site being run as part of a charity.

Do you find one of those generally more preferable than 1), or can see a point
I'm missing?

~~~
grey-area
Most companies charge people money for goods or services they value and gladly
pay for. For them ads are an adjunct to marketing, not a business model. Some
other people host stuff for free, some sell content slots (like the job ads
here on HN), some give content away to attract other business. That diversity
is great, and none of it is threatened by ad blockers. There's more to the
world than ads, a lot more.

In contrast the rise of ad companies like taboola is actively degrading
content and experiences and debasing previously respected sites. If you insist
on showing intrusive advertising, users will go elsewhere. The failure of that
business model based on ads is simply not the reader's problem to solve.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_Most companies charge people money for goods or services they value and
gladly pay for_

That's the whole problem. Most of the pablum you see on the internet isn't
worth enough for people to pay for it.

Sure I'll read it if it's free (ad subsidized) but if it wasn't there I
probably wouldn't miss 90% of it.

------
wimagguc
Ads are the lazy way to monetise anything. I love Duolingo's example, where
they've built out a translation service on top of their language-learning
platform: while learning a new language, people contributed to the
translations Duolingo could sell to their clients. I bet they make %% more
than by running any amount of ads.

~~~
galfarragem
_> > Ads are a lazy way to monetise anything_

Ads can be also a way to monetise something that doesn't reach the value
threshold where people will pay directly.

E.g. Niche blogs sometimes have a lot of visitors (they are providing some
value) but not enough to get paid directly. Even patreon most times doesn't
work.

~~~
mseebach
Many interesting niche blogs are essentially job ads for the writers.

------
dibbsonline
I disagree. The best monetized site I've seen had a direct relationship with
the advertiser, no ad blocking as the banners were local content, spot on
topic and tasteful.

~~~
bostik
Have to concur. Some time ago I wrote down a list of ground rules that would
make display ads acceptable, at least for me:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10521930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10521930)

When ads are served locally, avoid tracking, remain kept out of the way and
are kept strictly within the topic of the content - then we are talking about
a reasonable starting point.

Unfortunately the current ad ecosystem seems to be diametrically opposed to
this. As far as I can see, the ad vendors brought this situation upon
themselves.

EDIT: typofixes.

------
decasteve
This medium (Internet over HTTP) is built in a way that I can choose how I
render that information using the programs of my choice or the code that I
write. Those who wish to prevent this can create a new medium, device,
protocol, file format, or program, to push their advertising so that there is
no choice.

The Internet is not a one-way broadcast nor is it newsprint. The browser is
not a television. This medium is new and it is different and we shouldn't put
up with having the old forms and methods being forced upon us.

~~~
jfoster
What's your view on websites denying access if an adblocker is detected?

~~~
aikah
I'm fine with that. I don't visit them, and these websites will find out the
hard way that antagonizing their audience isn't going to work. The Ad revenue
mana isn't going to last, people are tired of all these ads on the internet,
the security issues, the ads killing the battery issues, the webpage
performance issues.

------
pmelendez
>"'Non-invasive advertising' is an oxymoron. Truly non-invasive advertising
would be no advertising at all. Why should any of us put up with being
advertised to when we have no interest in giving our attention to
advertisers?"

I don't find well done advertising invasive, I actually rely on them
sometimes, like when Adwords started... it made sense in the context.

The author say later that as ad blocking usage grow the websites owners would
find other forms of funding. The thing is, we have been there already. The
majority of the volume traffic don't want to pay, and the ones that do aren't
enough to support a big website operation.

------
manigandham
These articles are really getting tired. What people seem to continously miss
is that there is no objective "quality" standard. Value to YOU is not the same
as to someone else. While we can all subjectively say stuff like celebrity
news isnt as important as the latest scientific breakthrough, people are free
to, and will, read whatever they want to read - and it's their actions that
determines what content holds value to them.

Now, regardless of quality, all that content does cost money to create and
advertising is a great system to subsidize those costs. It's fast, passive,
egalitarian, and efficient compared to any form of direct payment (where funds
are transferred directly from you to the site). Giving the reader the choice
is of course the best option, but short of that, it's far better to have ads
then closed access.

The problem today isn't advertising the system but rather the _implementation_
\- it's the low barriers to entry, weak standards, lack of regulation or any
enforcement and misaligned incentives that has caused this massive
proliferation of crappy ad networks with bad code, scammy ads, malware and
fraud.

Acceptable ads is absolutely the right start, it just needs to be done by an
industry group or even the FTC/government itself so that it holds some power.
Not an adblocking company that is paid to whitelist because clearly this leads
to a conflict of interest as can be seen in what is already let through.
Combine real regulation with a vetted list of approved vendors who do the
right thing that advertisers are only allowed to use and we can finally move
on from this silly war between readers and ads.

~~~
DavideNL
I don't agree with this.. I compare the internet ad situation with my TV (in
the Netherlands): since about 10 years there's been more and more ads on many
channels, and i stopped watching at ALL of them. There are currently about 5
channels (of 100+ total) that i still watch, the ones without ads.

And I don't mis much because in my opinion most of the commercial TV channels
(the ones with ads) also have low quality content.

I really hope ad blocking keeps growing and all the bad quality content on the
internet dies together with the ads.

And i'll hapily pay for quality internet content without ads, at an acceptible
price, just as i buy apps in Apples appstore, and pay for Netflix.

~~~
manigandham
I'm not sure what part you don't agree with...

If you don't feel the ads are worth the content in exchange, then you are free
to stop consuming that content. Which is exactly what you're doing.

Again, there's no "bad" quality content. Bad to you might be what someone else
is interested in. As for everything else, it's just an implementation problem
with the market being flooded with shady advertisers and ad networks that
operate without oversight. TV/radio/print all have much stricter standards
which is sorely missing online.

Paying for content is a perfectly acceptable system, it's just not as scalable
or equal to all users as ads are. Payments are a valid option, but it's far
better to be a choice rather than the only option compared to advertising.

~~~
kuschku
> Again, there's no "bad" quality content.

But that’s wrong.

There is content that has purely no content, and which is engineered to make
people click, despite providing no benefit.

Think about all the Buzzfeed upvoted etc sites, providing next to no benefit
at all.

~~~
manigandham
Those sites are read by lots of people who do like that content. Content is
content, you can't just engineer constant attention without actually producing
anything.

The fact is that the mainstream does like reading what Buzzfeed puts out and
are getting plenty of value/benefit from it - regardless of your subjective
judgement of it.

------
alkonaut
I can stretch as far as saying that if a blocker can detect it, it's too
invasive. That includes, for example if it is served from an ad network.

I don't mind ad pictures in magazines. The same should be ok on websites.

Im not sure what fraction of the Internet is paid for by ad-network revenue,
but I really don't care if half the content on the Internet suddenly dies in a
fire because their measly income from ad networks dries up. I'm happy with
only truly free, properly monetized (affiliate links, proper sponsoring), or
paid for content.

------
furyferret
Unfortunately, this gist is based on the same fallacy that the one it opposes
is based on: the idea that visiting sites and consuming their content is a
primary need for visitors.

The so-called "other ways of funding" are paywalls. If every blog, YouTube
videos, online newspaper, start-up, etc, were behind a paywall, people would
just nope out because it wouldn't not worth it, at all. Disabling ads wouldn't
result in other ways of funding, it would result in people not working on
creating content because they wouldn't be able to make a business out of it.

On the other hand, and for the same reason, content creator shouldn't complain
that people block their ads. We don't need to visit your site, we don't need
your content, it's a bonus. We don't care whether you make money or not. You
chose not to make a paywall (and that's probably a good idea since nobody
would pay) and hand over your content for free bundled with ads. We can
technically cut out the ads. If you don't want us to do so, make them so that
their annoyance isn't worth the effort of cutting them out.

------
owenwil
This is ridiculous. I'll be first to admit a lot of the advertising models are
broken, but there _are_ acceptable ads. Many of the advertising structures on
iOS, for example, work well. There are websites that do simple advertising,
without trackers, like Daring Fireball that are more than acceptable.

Can we stop with the repetitive anti-advertising FUD, please?

~~~
moonshinefe
There are acceptable ads. But has the internet's sites overall used best
practices remotely? Nope. They've used auto-play video and audio, performance
and bandwidth hogging schemes, even malware, and countless other things. The
trust is lost.

I agree that this _is_ ridiculous. The fact some ads are OK doesn't mean the
pool isn't poisoned and users are done with it.

------
tambourine_man
Just because you can do something about it easily, doesn't mean you are
entitled to it.

It's a lot harder to remove ads from TV so no one seems to think they are
unacceptable, no matter how terrible they are.

Don't like the ads? Don't consume the content. Or at least treat adblocking
for what it is: a hack made easily available to you by the Web. If you
consider them as part of the content (which they are) you'll see that the
argument for the entitlement to remove ads falls flat

~~~
a_imho
>It's a lot harder to remove ads from TV so no one seems to think they are
unacceptable, no matter how terrible they are.

I would disagree, as many others who do not even own a TV. Or people who
record broadcast and fast forward ads. Streaming is huge. I go less frequently
to the cinema, because I have to watch 20 minutes of ads (+trailers) before
the actual movie.

~~~
tambourine_man
I also don't own a TV, not because of the ads, but because the content and
consumption model sucks.

------
epalmer
I use uBlock origin and love it. But I have a mental conflict. I run 135+
university web sites (for one university) with no ads and no flash. But we do
use google analytics and include some 3rd party fonts on specific sites. Many
ad blockers block google analytics and some block the fonts.

I haven't started counting how many users are blocking google analytics. I'm
less worried about the fonts because the designers have accounted for that and
they downgrade to something that is acceptable (at least to me). We are seeing
a decline in new users to our sites but college applications are up. I'd love
to know if that decline is false and is just because google analytics is
blocked.

I think it is time to put some code in and see what the real numbers are for
ad blocking on our main site.

~~~
supergreg
Maybe move to a self-hosted analytics tool? I've seen some like piwik that use
JavaScript just like Google Analytics, but I wonder if there's any that can
simply be added as a plugin to Apache or nginx or as a middleware for node.js,
etc.

------
raverbashing
Linking to a github page is an (implicit) advertisement for github

Saying "no ad is acceptable" is just so out of reality it's not even funny.

I do use Ublock and I do deactivate it for sites I think are worthy.

------
ryporter
There are no acceptable subscription fees. Why should any of us put up with
paying for content when we have no interest in giving away our money?

------
p4wnc6
I dislike nearly all ads and want the ability to block any ads I dislike.

But the fundamental question is: without advertising, how do you learn about
products you might want to buy? Ad-funded search is not a good answer, and in
the limit, proprietary search result ordering would be just another type of
advertising.

Word of mouth is slow and unreliable, especially if you are looking for
unusual things or if your preferences are often unusual compared with the
people you ask for reviews.

The only thing I dislike more than ads is social media, so that's not an
option.

When I personally bear a higher cost conducting a product search to fit my
needs than the costs of viewing ads, then ads _are_ better and they do add
value.

This is not a heroic defense of the abject shit ads that litter the internet,
the rampant malware or tracking, the creepy attempts at unnecessarily specific
personalization, or content creators selling out.

But it's also not reasonable to say the Platonic idea of an ad is
intrinsically unethical or intrinsically cost-ineffective.

~~~
dota_fanatic
I find it very hard to believe that ads out-perform your personal search of
whatever you're looking for, even currently.

I have never, not once, found a product because of an ad that I wouldn't have
found otherwise in looking for the solution to a problem I was having. I have,
countless times over my life, especially when I was younger, bought something
based on judgement directly based on ads, that turned out to be the wrong
choice.

When you go to a mall, there's a directory. It'd be even nicer if there was an
automated directory so you could peruse at arbitrary granularity before
entering stores. Why isn't there a global directory of products, with a
reputation system? Why is there no directory online for all the stores within
15min of my home, including people selling out of home, that I can search
through? Isn't this driving everyone crazy?

I don't care that there exists some Platonic good side to ads, because that
good side is not how they're used in the big picture, at all, anymore, and
it's just looking the other way from a serious flaw in modern markets.

People buying stuff for no good reason other than that they wanted it, not
needed it, has gotten an entire planet into a heap of trouble. Let's do less
of that, maybe? And let's start making a system to enables people in need of a
product in touch with those who can provide a solution, NOT the other way
around.

~~~
p4wnc6
Here's one example. I like listening to comedy podcasts from Ear Wolf. I heard
an ad for Leesa Mattresses, and happen to need a mattress.

After buying mattresses in the past, one of the major pain points for me is
actually physically hauling the mattress and carrying it up steps to an
apartment.

Leesa sells mattresses that are compressed in a special way into a box the
size of a mini-fridge, and can be relatively easily carried up steps by a
single person.

This shipping detail alone makes me much more interested in their product, and
I could potentially compromise some on price or quality to get that unique
shipping service.

I didn't even know any brand did this, and basically had completely put it out
of my mind. Some time ago I wrote it off as something I couldn't find, and the
activation energy to get my brain to generate a desire to actively search for
this feature became really high. Then, sometime later, Leesa came into
existence as a seller.

My activation energy makes it unlikely that I will choose to search for this
feature (I searched before, came to the belief it didn't exist, and don't want
to deal with the search cost again under this belief).

Thankfully, an ad was pushed into my ears as I listened to a podcast I like,
which alerted me to a new company with a new service that I did want, but for
which it is extremely unlikely I would have thought to search on my own.

Even in the case when I did remember that I want that feature, overcome my
belief that no one provides it, sluggishly open a new tab in Chrome, and type
out that search, and I find Leesa via a Google search, that's really no
different than an ad. It's a function of how many others heard about Leesa
(originally through means other than themselves just searching directly) and
successfully interacted with them, and the effect of increased reputation as a
seller. However, it _does_ rely on me sort of exogenously coming up with the
cognitive wherewithal to do the search, rather to be passively advertised at.
There's a _ton_ of stuff where this trade-off between relying on manually
searching vs. being passively advertised at is in favor of experiencing
passive ads.

I was very happy to be passively advertised at in that case. Whatever research
Leesa did to determine that audio ads through that podcast had a good chance
of successfully reaching people who might want that service, it was good work
on their part, and made a certain tiny corner of the economy slightly more
efficient in a certain way.

There is every potential that online ads could be used the same way, and it
seems efficient to me to place the research cost burden of how to best place
ads onto the advertisers, not onto consumers who then have to overcome
activation barriers to engage in searches.

------
ryporter
Intrusive ads are not some new phenomenon. Print, radio, and TV ads are all
definitely intrusive as well. I don't generally hear the same crowd advocating
the end of all such advertising.

~~~
k1m
You would if it was as easy as installing an ad blocker.

~~~
ryporter
No, I wouldn't. (Do I know you?) I don't even use ad blocker.

------
ssharp
Advertisers are willing to pay more money for the right to put an ad on a
webpage than website visitors are willing to pay to view the webpage.

Until that math changes, ads will prevail.

------
hollander
What about Privacy Badger? How does that compare? Is that OK to use?

[https://www.eff.org/privacybadger](https://www.eff.org/privacybadger)

I've used Adblock, Adblock Plus, Noscript and Ghostery. Since several months
I've changed to Privacy Badger. The first time I tried it, I thought it didn't
work, but it seems it needs a little time to collect info and start blocking.
Since then I've had no issues with it. It's easy to unblock individual sites,
if something doesn't work, and then re-blocking it again.

The only problem is that when I want to unblock one specific functionality on
a website, it's very difficult to find out which scripts to allow. At first
you see the PB has four items blocked. Easy you think, you can try four times,
and then it should work. But those four items load another twenty, and then it
gets complicated. This is not Privacy Badger's fault, just the complexity of
websites nowadays. But if you could allow specific services, instead of
specific scripts, that would be great.

I can't give a useful review, nothing more than that it works for me like
Adblock and Ghostery have worked.

~~~
peteretep
I use Privacy Badger and AdBlock and NoScript. But I feel like my secret
weapon is self-destructing cookies.

------
kup0
I understand that ads going away means loss of jobs in industries supported by
advertising. It means sites may no longer have ways of supporting themselves
easily.

If lost jobs and less web content is the cost of having no advertising, it's a
cost I am okay with. I think. It's an internal mental debate I have on this
topic from time to time.

The one and only case that I have a hard time with myself is for people that
really can't afford to pay for content, people who barely can afford internet
in general. If suddenly most content online becomes paywalled (though this
isn't maybe a given in an ad-less web, hard to say), then a lot of
underprivileged people will be left out of access to the general web, and if
we want the web to be a place of easily accessible information for everyone,
then this becomes a problem.

Personally, I've had enough family members' machines affected by malware from
ads, and I've been to enough intrusive ad-cluttered pages across the web that
I will continue ad-blocking myself (and for my family's machines), despite any
particular larger consequences for the web that my result. The performance,
readability, and security differences between not-ad-blocking and ad-blocking
are staggering.

If all of our ad-blocking eventually kills the web... well at least short-term
I didn't have to deal with ads.

A selfish, short-term view. I don't deny that.

Acceptable ads maybe is some kind of special middle ground we can all arrive
at, but the problem is that "acceptable" is arbitrary depending on who the
arbiter is... and so far ABP's ideas of "acceptable" are not acceptable to me.
Ads from something like "The Deck" ad network are closer to what I consider
acceptable.

------
petercooper
They keep changing the definition of "we" in this.

 _Why should any of us put up with being advertised to when we have no
interest in giving our attention to advertisers?_

But then admit that some people may indeed like and appreciate ads. Please
don't speak for the universal "we" \- some of us actually do enjoy (some, but
not all) and appreciate (some, but not all) ads.

------
AgentME
You can disable the "acceptable ads" in adblock plus. This seems like... an ad
for uBlock Origin.

~~~
k1m
You can, but why not opt in to acceptable ads? Why do we have to opt out?
uBlock Origin does the right thing - assumes you want all ads blocked.

By the way, we're in no way affiliated with uBlock Origin. Just think it's
currently the best ad blocker out there for users.

------
nemoniac
The adblocker test isn't very thorough. It just checks whether an image can be
downloade from gstatic.com. It told me that I don't have an adblocker
installed when in fact I have ublock origin with the setting that it can
download images from gstatic.com

~~~
k1m
No, it consists of 2 tests at the moment:

1\. Tries to load a file called ads.css which is usually blocked in default
installations of many blockers relying on Easy List.

2\. It uses gstatic.com to check if acceptable ads are being allowed -
gstatic.com is whitelisted by Adblock Plus, so we test for it and warn users
that acceptable ads are being let through.

We're going to be updating the detection to detect use of other blockers.

------
StavrosK
> There are no acceptable ads

That is laughably and trivially false. I'm in the market for a good and
affordable house cleaning service. An ad that could hook me up with exactly
what I want, when I want it would not only be acceptable, it would be
fantastic.

~~~
mikro2nd
> An ad that could hook me up with exactly what I want, when I want it would
> not only be acceptable, it would be fantastic.

It's telling that you don't seem to have found one.

------
Aoyagi
There are acceptable advertisements as far as I'm concerned. Ones that are
static and register the user in any way (including cookies) and don't get in
the way of content consumption.

It's been a while since I've seen ads like that.

------
bachback
Can someone explain how Google makes so much money with their ad system and
how its related to these kinds of ads? Google originally planned never to do
ads. They changed course I think 2002 or so, and are now worth 500B$.

~~~
johnchristopher
I'd venture to guess: no looping GIF ? No video ads with auto-play ? That's
why I use an ad-blocker. I didn't care about static images/text but animation
prevented from reading the actual content. I am sure I am not the only one.

~~~
digi_owl
Even static images can be an annoyance.

Just because i occasionally browse gaming news do not mean i want a face full
of glowing eyes or rotting flesh wherever i go.

------
nla
Meanwhile, everyone who pays for cable TV is shown ads, even on the premium
channels. And, everyone who buys a magazine is buying a periodical stuffed
with ads.

If anyone here believes that by installing yet another ad blocker, regardless
of who made it or where it's hosted, that it will somehow curtail online
advertising or improve you online experience, as Mr. Rourke would say,
"Welcome to Fantasy Island."

~~~
a_imho
using a content blocker improved my online experience the very first time I
clicked on a youtube video

------
Freestyler_3
I think with computers we can make a system that makes it easy for website to
charge a small fee (per article or per website) and that notifies/promts the
user in a simple way with the cost. It doesnt have to cost much, since
advertisers are not paying big amounts per pageview either. You can build a
strong paywall, or you make it a gate where visitors can easily go through.

~~~
moonshinefe
It won't work. This is the internet, it's not some single country or smaller
community you can just push a transaction system onto at this point. It really
just doesn't make sense.

~~~
Freestyler_3
The internet can handle it, there are lots of services that make payments
across the globe possible. This system would be rolled out per website that
wants it.

------
a_imho
I think arguing whether acceptable ads is an oxymoron is just about semantics.
Is there a notion of acceptable spam? Selective consumption is a reaction to
ubiquitous and obtrusive content. Ad companies have to come up with an
adequate response, or face decreasing revenues, it is an evolutionary process
and will correct itself.

------
facepalm
So is uBlock origin legit?

I'm not that opposed to ads, but browsing without blocker frequently brings my
Computer to a halt.

Doesn't Google offer a way to pay instead of seeing Google ads?

------
simonebrunozzi
First time I hear about uBlock Origin. Anyone has been using it?

------
mikro2nd
Excellent work. Cloning it for my own website as soon as I can.

~~~
k1m
Thanks! :)

~~~
mikro2nd
Now added (with tweaks to fit the static-site generator and templates I'm
using.) I _love_ the idea of turning the functionality of adblock-detection on
its head.

To my mind, ads are, in the absence of my _prior informed consent_ , an
outright theft of the computing and networking resources _I_ pay for. (Not to
mention the attention thing and the propaganda/pernicious-psychology things.)

I could not agree more: There are NO acceptable ads.

------
PaulHoule
I map Taboolah to 127.0.0.1 in my hosts file.

------
benedict_kmu
this is fantastic!! Loved it.

------
TheLogothete
I find discussions on HN about advertising very amusing. If advertising would
magically disappear tomorrow, most of the people visiting this site would be
jobless.

Something to think about.

~~~
galfarragem
That's what I keep saying also (at expense of some downvotes).

As most people, I don't like ads. But this is capitalism, a system fueled by
consumption. Without changing the system, ads will never disapeer, they will
always come back with a different form, they are a necessary 'evil'.

[edit/disclaimer] I don't work on ads, I only curate a niche blog.

~~~
mseebach
Consumption is the final purchase of goods and services by individuals. What
other direction or purpose ("fuel") should a system have?

A system that doesn't end in consumption either doesn't produce anything, or
produces for no reason, which seems wasteful.

~~~
bottled_poe
One of the problems with pure capitalism is that it favours those that are
buying. i.e. those with money. The direction of progress under a capitalist
system is governed by the desires of the wealth-holders (whether that is
millionaires, the middle class, or some other cross-section of society), not
humanity as a whole.

~~~
mseebach
That would be a lot more powerful argument if capitalism didn't so readily
churn out ever-cheaper (ie, directed at the poor) offerings of, well,
everything. Walmart and Spirit Airlines (to pick a few out of many such
offerings) aren't exactly pandering to the rich.

Anyway, this was not the point the GP made, and thus not what I responded to.

~~~
bottled_poe
That's not a counter argument - cheap products exist because there is a market
for it (whether the market demographic is rich or poor, it doesn't matter). It
still hinges on the exchange of money to decide what should be produced. It's
far from perfect, but it does seem to have a blurry correlation with what
humanity needs (in my opinion).

~~~
mseebach
I guess it's not a counter argument as much as disagreeing with the premise.
If the outcome is good (a wide range of products available to the poor) then
why declare the mechanism by which it happens (exchange of money) problematic?
At least, let's focus on concrete problems.

The problem with declaring something "far from perfect" is deciding what
perfect looks like. The fact that even the poor has a Walmart-sized vote in
what gets produced looks like a pretty strong vindication of the system to me.
Sure, there are always areas that can be improved, I'm not declaring the
current state of things perfect, but I'm appealing to a focus on specific,
practical improvement, rather than a yearning for an abstract perfect state
that epistemologically probably can't be known.

------
yuhong
Paid "acceptable" ads lists are a joke, but ad blockers that don't allow
control of which kinds of ads you want to block are also a joke too.

------
noamsml
This is like people who want to repeal Obamacare and have no alternative. If
you advocate blocking all ads, you should at least have a vision for how
you're gonna pay for your fucking content. I block ads too (I'm ADD and moving
objects in my field of vision make it hard to enjoy content), but I'm not
going to be fucking self-righteous about it.

------
qz_
I just made an account to say this is utter BS. If someone provides a service
that costs them money to run, they have the right to make money off of it. If
you don't agree don't use their service. Whatever. Or block ads and donate to
the service. Just don't be a freeloader.

~~~
deprave
No, they don't, because they're marketing their service to users under the
false pretense that it's "free" thereby explicitly associating it with "costs
zero money" while in reality it does cost money that they do charge, only
someone else in some other way.

Consumers have the right and ability to completely destroy this business model
and should exercise it, sooner the better. Most companies compete by stating
prices on products, it's absurd that a select few get to state prices in long
ToS and/or privacy policies that we know nobody reads.

It doesn't matter one bit if it's a mom-and-pop store or a tech giant that
goes out of business because people are fed up with tracking, malware, and
advertising.

------
donatj
If you don't like ads either don't use the site or ask them for a paid ad free
version.

Blocking ads is actual petty theft. The authors asking price is the ad load.
If you disagree with the price, it's not ok to just to take it. Taking
something for a price the provider didn't agree upon is out and out theft.

You don't walk into a shop and steal a pack of gum just because you don't like
the price. "He was charging too much so I stole it" is not a moral argument,
and certainly would not hold up in court. Just don't buy the gum.

I truly want to hear your contradicting world views. I want to hear how taking
something and not paying the asking price is OK.

~~~
aikah
> Blocking ads is actual petty theft

Since when blocking content on the web is theft ? Providers don't own the web,
don't own my browser. People don't want to see ads, it kill their phone's or
laptop's battery, slow down their browser and make web experience in general
poorer. Providers will have to move to a new business model because their
audience are not willing to put up with ads anymore.

~~~
coldtea
> _Since when blocking content on the web is theft ? Providers don 't own the
> web, don't own my browser._

They own their own site though, and they work and give access to it in the
provision that the ads are also shown.

