
There are no acceptable ads - bigbugbag
http://blog.fivefilters.org/post/140558352082/there-are-no-acceptable-ads
======
skrause
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233016)

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BookmarkSaver
Wait, I'm really confused. They took this quote: "A big part of the web is
paid by ads. Lots of websites rely on (non-invasive) ads to sustain themselves
and provide content to anyone for free." and literally only addressed the
"non-invasive" part.

1\. Obviously other people out there don't agree that all advertising is
"invasive", and their assertion otherwise is nothing but semantics.

2\. More importantly, the core part of the statement is that "A big part of
the web is paid by ads." and they seem to have _completely_ ignored this
fundamental issue. But instead they just transition from painting advertising
as some malicious evil into various ad blockers.

So what is the solution they are proposing? Most of the internet is paid for
by ads. Are people going to switch to a paid version of Facebook? Twitter? Is
everyone expected to get Youtube Red? And are we only supposed to look at the
few news sources that we can justify the subscription cost for?

All they are advocating is to just piggy-back off of the people that are
willing (or unaware of the alternatives) to deal with ads while blocking it
for yourself. This is not a solution, this is just taking advantage of a
technical loophole in advertising in order to make your own experience better.
How exactly do they envision an Internet without advertising?

~~~
interpol_p
Isn't non-invasive advertising just non-functional advertising? As soon as
advertising is noticed it has distracted from the content.

The solution they seem to propose is: block ads and see what happens. I don't
think one must propose a specific solution in order to advocate ad-blocking.

Regarding piggy-backing they seem to be trying to spread the word to everyone
to do the same as they do. I think they want to see advertising go away, and
piggy-backing off people who are unaware of ad-blocking is not going to lead
to that end result.

Personally I block ads and have no solution or alternative for them. I even
dislike billboards and physical ads in my town. They make the place ugly.

~~~
BookmarkSaver
>Regarding piggy-backing they seem to be trying to spread the word to everyone
to do the same as they do. I think they want to see advertising go away, and
piggy-backing off people who are unaware of ad-blocking is not going to lead
to that end result.

So how do they expect the Internet to exist afterwards?

~~~
interpol_p
They don't know. They just don't want ads to exist on whatever the Internet
looks like in the future.

I believe that if you eliminated ads the Internet would be better for it.
Advertising is just so backwards and nonsensical. It is analogous to screaming
for attention in an overcrowded market. To think that our future Internet is
stuck _with this_ is a depressing thought.

Personally I'm okay with the following forms of advertising and would like to
see them more widely adopted:

Podcast-style ads: getting the narrators and writers of a podcast to promote
your product in an amusing way _consistent with the theme of their show_ and
in a way the user can skip if desired. (Same applies to YouTube video creators
advertising within their show.)

Affiliate links: sites like The Wirecutter doing all the research and leg-work
on a product category to find the best. Then making money through affiliate
links to those products.

Small ads that have been vetted by the writer of the article / website are
okay too. If I enjoy reading an author's content, and that author has
personally approved a product ad on their site because they like it or think
it would be good for their readers, then I'm okay with that.

Basically, any advertising that is explicitly acknowledged and approved of by
the content creators is okay with me. It means they know what their readers
will see, they know whether the products are good, and if they start
recommending shitty products then they are putting their own reputation on the
line.

~~~
bigbugbag
Basically what you say is that online advertising networks are ruining user
experience and you should not rely on a third party to provide ads to your
website.

There's a couple guy who thought along these lines when time came when costs
of running their website grew and investors required ROI and that's how google
got into the advertising business. They kinda invented the acceptable online
ads and transitioned from being a search engine to being an advertising
company specialized into acceptable ads then came the tracking invisibly
turning acceptable into unacceptable.

What I'm trying to say is that explicitly acknowledging and approving do not
scale well. As operation scales up it becomes a time-consuming and tedious
process which wears you rather quickly. To be viable long term, the website
has to keep a low resources consumption and not draw too much traffic, If your
website suddenly gets hugely popular it will cost you money, possibly a lot.
Maybe we need to changer how those who owns the internet infrastructure charge
for using it so as to avoid this.

~~~
interpol_p
> What I'm trying to say is that explicitly acknowledging and approving do not
> scale well.

Why do we need to scale? Many authors are self-hosting and self-publishing. I
love reading, but I don't wan't my favourite content to be aggregated by some
huge service which sells ads on-top of it indiscriminately.

I'm sure there are hosting services which will handle traffic spikes and
charge accordingly.

I'm not advocating for no large services on the web. Obviously infrastructure-
heavy services will be large (AWS, Google Search, Netflix, and so on). But two
of those examples charge directly, and Google Search ads aren't particularly
bad because they show up during a search and not on top of content that I want
to read.

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DanBlake
I hate this shit. Between adblocking and piracy, people are just going to push
publishers into a new form of advertising where they don't even know they are
being advertised to. This is going to mean more "sponsored posts" on sites you
love and less authentic content. Its going to mean your favorite movies
crammed with product placement (
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfHuZ5qrYX4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfHuZ5qrYX4)
). Its going to mean a distrust of anything you see on the web much greater
than exists today. Its going to mean every product review you read about will
be 90% about the affiliate payment they get and 10% because of the product
itself.

Ads suck, I agree. I think the major complaint is malware- But that doesnt
explain blocking google adsense, which doesnt allow offsite javascript, or
facebook ads, or other 'trusted' ad networks. People just remove those ads
because "Fuck ads" \- Well, thats fine. But those decisions will obviously not
just be candidly ignored- Publishers and content producers will react and find
new ways to generate revenue where they lost it.

~~~
Fnoord
> I hate this shit. Between adblocking and piracy, people are just going to
> push publishers into a new form of advertising where they don't even know
> they are being advertised to. This is going to mean more "sponsored posts"
> on sites you love and less authentic content. Its going to mean your
> favorite movies crammed with product placement (
> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfHuZ5qrYX4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfHuZ5qrYX4)
> ). Its going to mean a distrust of anything you see on the web much greater
> than exists today. Its going to mean every product review you read about
> will be 90% about the affiliate payment they get and 10% because of the
> product itself.

If this'd happen en masse this allows competition in the market of reviewers,
news sites, and social network sites. It also allows for fact checking (which
perhaps even gets automated). The model which works is akin to seed fund, or
open source development by contract. There'd be say a review in the make of a
product X. In order for it to be made, Y USD is required. This is then
gathered via crowd funding. Then those who paid get early access, week later
its in the public domain. The model isn't even new. LWN uses it, to name an
example.

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rsingel
And yet this company's blog post has two ads blocked by AdBlock and runs
Disqus as its comment section which is a web-wide data collector and ad
service.

~~~
blazespin
Which probably means are they are being pretty brutally honest as they are
attacking their very own business model.

~~~
hawkice
There is a spectrum, for people with a certain belief, between 'hypocrisy' and
'principled', which describes how much their actions are in conflict with that
belief.

There is a conservation of expected probability thing happening here, so if
'hypocrisy' is more trustworthy than not knowing how someone acts, then
'principled' must be less trustworthy.

But if you said someone was obviously being dishonest because their actions
match their words, you'd make no sense.

I am almost completely certain your statement is similarly absurd.

~~~
imagist
Sure, maybe they're untrustworthy, but we don't need to trust them to believe
what they say in this case. We can evaluate what they say independently of
their trustworthiness, using logic and experience.

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andrewflnr
> ‘Non-invasive advertising’ is an oxymoron. Truly non-invasive advertising
> would be no advertising at all.

You can't be taken seriously if your argument is to loudly change all the
definitions to fit your worldview. Show me a better world that _actually
works_.

~~~
imagist
But that's not what he's doing. The entire purpose of advertising is to put
ideas in your head--that's invasive. That's not changing the definitions of
words, that's what those words mean in common parlance.

~~~
eropple
That's also the purpose of an editorial.

~~~
praisewhitey
The purpose of all communication really.

~~~
imagist
But I seek out communication with people whose ideas I care about. That's very
different from having someone shove their self-serving ideas in front of me.

------
fiatjaf
What happened with the idea that ads were a means you had to get to know
useful products?

If all ads were banned forever from existence, how would anyone discover
anything new?

~~~
psyc
When I have a need, I go looking for it, and I find it. I want that part of my
life to be strictly pull, no push. Advertising is one of the things I hate
most about the commercial world.

~~~
blhack
What do you pull on?

~~~
imagist
People with expertise in the area, ideally.

------
iand
The elephant in the room: a large majority of sites just don't have good
enough content to support themselves through reasonable advertising.

Too many have it 180 degrees reversed: instead of trying to support their
content with advertising income they are trying to supporting their
advertising income with content.

------
RodericDay
> Some people commented that they don’t mind ads, but object to the spying,
> malware, intrusive stuff that is often hard to control when the site
> publishing the ads isn’t in control of who produces and serves the ads.
> That’s a very good argument in itself for blocking ads. But even if that
> were dealt with tomorrow—if we got ads that didn’t spy on us, didn’t
> introduce malware into our machines, weren’t 'obnoxious'—we’d still be
> blocking them. Why? Because we’re not interested in being advertised to.
> It’s that simple.

> We have a visceral dislike of advertising. We don’t think there’s such a
> thing as a 'good’ or even 'acceptable’ ad.

Yes. This cannot be repeated enough.

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sliken
Why don't ad based agencies allow users to opt out at 2x whatever they would
have earned from the ads?

Seems to benefit all involved, the content providers get the money, the users
who are willing to pay a few $0.01 don't see ads, and the ad agency makes more
money. Doubly so because the remaining ads will be worth more.

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eptcyka
A slightly naive message. Until more than half of the users become willing to
pay for information, this will never be viable.

~~~
imagist
I'm not sure what you mean by "this will never be viable". If you mean that
many content providers' businesses will never be viable without ads, good.
Content providers that serve advertisers rather than their users _should_ go
out of business. That would be a great benefit to humanity if content was
geared toward the needs of humans rather than companies.

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jrnichols
I really, really wish that uBlock origin had a Safari version.

~~~
lowmagnet
It does

[http://imgur.com/a/pJ0TY](http://imgur.com/a/pJ0TY)

Available under "Installation"
[https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/ublock](https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/ublock)

~~~
jrnichols
No, it doesn't. That's "ublock" and not "uBlock Origin." They are not the
same, and uBlock is not even being developed anymore.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/4bbuf3/whats_the_bes...](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/4bbuf3/whats_the_best_osx_safari_adblocking_option_now/)

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gorer
I use uBlock origin, the problem is I don't like tone of your article.
Advertising is site owner's decision. If you don't like it than don't visit
that site. So go and fuck yourself :)

~~~
imagist
Everything anyone does is their decision. That doesn't put them above
criticism. Lots of people make shitty decisions.

~~~
gorer
Advertising is regular part of site content owner decided to show you. What
comes next? Blockin unwanted article content on someone's blog? It's not
criticism it's fascism. Do you like ads on the street? Are you destroying
them? Not? Why? Aha you can't you don't have balls to do it :)

~~~
dwaltrip
The ads on the street haven't teleported into my private property, so I can't
do much about them.

The web content that my browser fetches and displays is a different matter,
obviously.

