ABP already is part of the dark side with their "acceptable ads." It boggles the mind why a program whose sole purpose is to block ads would not do so out of the box.
> ABP already is part of the dark side with their "acceptable ads." It boggles the mind why a program whose sole purpose is to block ads would not do so out of the box.
I actually like the acceptable ads system. I don't inherently object to advertising (content has to be paid for somehow, and I'd rather pay with my attention than with my money). I just object to invasive or distracting ads, and ABP does block those.
Be careful with malware ads on Google Search. This happens fairly regularly, and in some cases can mean a direct loss of money, e.g. if you search for 'blockchain', instead of the online Bitcoin wallet showing up, Google ads often points to a malware that is a phishing site and occasionally people fall for it and lose all their Bitcoins [1]. This has been going on for a long time [2][3].
You can't pay for content if you don't click on the ads and buy something. Companies spend money on advertisement in order to increase sales, and if there isn't an increase in sale, they stop paying the content creators for providing ad space.
Search ads aren't the same as programmatic or display ads.
The latter supplements publishers (websites) with revenue that covers the cost of providing content to you. Search ads are typically acquisition driven, where companies are paying for new customers.
Search Google with "credit card". Everything above the fold is a Google ad.
Five years ago, searching for "credit card" had top hits from credit card search spammers. Today, Google has brought that spam in-house and redirected the revenue to themselves. It's kind of depressing.
(We, of course, have Ad Limiter, to cut Google search ads down to size.)
The "acceptable ads" initiative is how the company behind ABP makes money. It is their primary revenue driver and is the primary differentiator from other products on the market.
Yet, they choose to name their product in a misleading way, suggesting they do something which, by default, their product does not do.
If ABP was a drug, what would the FDA say? :)
We all know that outside tech circles most people don't even know what "acceptable ads" are, assume ABP does what it says on the label, and don't bother changing defaults. That's why ABP's business is so shady.
How does something generating revenue automatically make it immoral or unacceptable?
Pharmaceutical companies generate their revenue from selling drugs. That doesn't make selling drugs illegal.
Nobody is getting tricked by ABP. For one thing, their homepage literally says "unobtrusive ads aren't being blocked in order to support websites" right above the install button. [0] Moreover, even if a user were to install it and still saw ads they would realize that it's not in fact blocking all ads.
Since you apparently hate capitalism, I'm curious how you're paid.
I'd be surprised to learn most users ever even touch the homepage, rather than the plugin installation mechanism for their respective web browsers. Result #1 on Google for me goes straight to the Chrome store.
The immorality comes in when the program actively subverts its own purpose for existing... imagine an antivirus with "acceptable viruses" allowed out of the box. They don't steal your info, or ruin your computer, but its authors gave the company a backhander to leave them unblocked by default. This is directly analogous to ads.
It's also a conflict of interest, and gives the developer a perverse incentive to allow more ads, since they charge ad publishers actual money to be on the whitelist. ABP's customers are the ad companies, not its users. (Something something if you're not the customer...)
And "hating capitalism" is such a ridiculous strawman that it deserves no further comment.
_ The immorality comes in when the program actively subverts its own purpose for existing_
Depends on what you think its purpose is -- I don't block ads because I have a moral problem with advertising revenue paying for content I view -- I block ads because I'm tired of overly disruptive ads that interfere with my web browsing experience. I really don't mind if there are some unobtrusive ads and I might even click on them if they are particularly relevant (i.e. Google ads tend to be relevant enough that I click on them).
_ It's also a conflict of interest, and gives the developer a perverse incentive to allow more ads,_
But AdBlock devs have a strong incentive to not piss off users so much that they'll stop running the software or will click the button that says "block all ads". If developers remove that button, then users will move to different software.
I don't care how much money ABP makes from publisher payouts, I just care that my browser no longer freezes while I wait for a 2MB pop-over to load as it chews up my limited bandwidth.
Not OP, but I do things that people pay money for. I find advertising degrading and avoid it where possible. The real issue is most online content is terrible and not worth paying for.
Worse even when I do pay, the ads don't go away. (Hulu, premium cable TV, etc.) Because, it's the people with money that subsidize the Advertising model, let them opt out and it collapses.
Evidently, and as I'm very sure you completely understood but chose to disregard in order to go on a tirade, the above poster wasn't objecting to revenue making in itself, but to the fact that the way that this ad-blocker makes its money is by (ironically), displaying ads. Most non tech people instantly associate ad-blocking software with AdBlock Plus, and don't even realize that the software they are installing made a deal with certain companies to let their ads through. Your tirade against "those damn anti-american commies" (hyperbole but that was the gist of it) makes no sense at all.
Since you're apparently hate reading and replying to comments as they were written, instead of as you want to read into them, I paraphrase the above poster:
"We all know that outside tech circles most people don't even know what "acceptable ads" are, assume ABP does what it says on the label, and don't bother changing defaults. That's why ABP's business is so shady."
I don't hate capitalism and there's nothing wrong with generating revenue. In fact, the rise of ad blocking is a perfect example of market efficiency. What's important here isn't the software that blocks ads, but the expression of preference by hundreds of millions of people around the world who say "we do not want to see ads on the web and we know they can be stopped."
Believing "acceptable ads" can thrive alongside such knowledge is naively asking to be reminded of the tragedy of the commons and the fact that such widespread coordination usually happened in either dictatorial or communist societies.
Revenue will be generated, only that it will eventually have to come from consumers directly to publishers and content creators.
>the rise ad blocking is a perfect example of market efficiency
No it isn't - it's market inefficiency. Ad blocking allows content consumption without contributing to costs, which publishers have budgeted for. Flattr and Google Contributor are more efficient versions of blocking ads because it still contributes to content.
You seem to hate capitalism because your argument against ABP was basically "they get revenue."
ABP is in fact a capitalist solution. It gives advertisers an incentive to tone down their ads so they can be seen by more people.
Absolutist ad blockers are actually the ones exploiting the tragedy of the commons. Without advertising, the content which you're viewing without ads would not exist.
> Revenue will be generated, only that it will eventually have to come from consumers directly to publishers and content creators.
Why? That's your personal preference and political position. Reality isn't forced to adapt to your preferences and in practice advertising has existed for thousands of years—it's unlikely to go away anytime soon.
Moreover, I suspect that if you asked most people outside the HN echo chamber they'd actually rather have advertising than paying through subscriptions.
You seem to hate capitalism because your argument against ABP was basically "they get revenue."
This is a very disingenuous representation of the other comments in the thread. It's a low-brow dismissal by straw man and an appeal to the sacrosanct "capitalism". You seem to be trying to manipulate others into supporting your view by labeling the other view as anti-capitalism. This is the same as accusing anyone who opposes government surveillance of "hating freedom".
ABP is problematic because of how they generate revenue. From the advertisers' side, it looks like racketeering. From the consumer side, it looks like the tobacco industry paying your doctor to get you to smoke. Accepting money to whitelist ads is the very thing an ad blocker should never do.
Is ABP being paid by the advertisers whose ads they're allowing? I honestly don't know. But it's unlikely they're blocking ads they're being paid to show.
> Since you apparently hate capitalism, I'm curious how you're paid.
acceptable ad by me is a bit of text and maybe an image I can click on if the context is right and I have a coinciding interest. Please no JS/FLASH etc stuff on your page.
Exactly. On a thread some time ago on the topic of ad-blockers, someone said something of the sort "The internet is a pull medium, not a push medium. I don't block ads, I just decline to request them and run their code on my machine"
I've never understood the backlash against the acceptable ads program. They state clearly what policies the ads must adhere to, and review them manually for compliance. Sure, if viewing absolutely no advertising is important to you, then you'll want to turn that feature off or use a different client. But why do you think they're part of the "dark side" for trying to encourage inoffensive ads?
>I've never understood the backlash against the acceptable ads program.
Simply put, many people believe there is no such thing as an acceptable ad on the web, and that any ad blocker which allows advertising to be shown is by definition malicious, broken software. No advertising, anywhere, at any time, under any circumstances, regardless of the content, or how badly a site depends on it, is acceptable to users of ad blockers. They expect it to block ads, period.
> No advertising, anywhere, at any time, under any circumstances, regardless of the content, or how badly a site depends on it, is acceptable to users of ad blockers.
I'm a user of an ad blocker (ABP). Don't put words in my mouth.
I believe in compensating creators for their content and would rather compensate them with my time than my money.
"Many people," not "literally everyone, especially HN user 'morgante.'"
I'm certainly in the "fuck all ads forever" camp. There are just way too many downsides to downloading/seeing/playing/executing advertisements. If all the websites that relied on ads today had to disappear or redesign to reduce their operational costs, I think the web would be a much better place.
Paywalls would probably be a more stable revenue model than advertising. Everyone else would have make money some other way, but alternatives (like Patreon) already exist.
> Prior to the disestablishment 1995 commercial traffic on the Internet in the United States was limited by law, and prior to 1988 for the most part strictly forbidden, with the exception of traffic with research and defense aims.
I believe you're in the extreme minority when it comes to ad block users.
The web was always presented as being free - the content was free, the browsers were free, the community that built it believed information wanted be free. Most people don't want to compensate anyone for anything on the web by viewing ads because they've been conditioned to expect that they shouldn't have to - they simply see advertising as a nuisance. Until recently when sites started detecting ad-blockers, there was no negative effect to blocking it.
I do believe advertising doesn't work on the web, but mostly because of the way the web was designed and implemented, not entirely because of politics. Content creators can't expect to be compensated through web ads as long as they can't stop users from viewing their content without the ads. At least with other forms of media, you're expected to pay before you consume, or viewership is estimated, so the effect of avoiding advertising isn't so direct, but on the web, every view counts.
Given the poor reputation (entirely deserved) of web ads, the degree of control users have over their browsers, and the number of people who view piracy and ad-blocking as a moral imperative, alongside the majority who just consider ads to be annoying and useless for them, it's simply not possible for advertising as a revenue model to work on the web. The number of people who consider "ethical" or "acceptable" ads to even be a thing isn't large enough to support the web's economy.
> I believe in compensating creators for their content and would rather compensate them with my time than my money.
But there is money involved, a lot of 3rd parties inserting themselves between you and the creators are getting paid real money (Eyeo, through its "acceptable ads" campaign, is such a 3rd-party).
Surely that money is not created out of thin air, hence the question: where is this money coming from ultimately?
> Surely that money is not created out of thin air, hence the question: where is this money coming from ultimately?
It's coming from advertisers, obviously. Unlikely so many on Hacker News, I don't think advertisers are inherently immoral and horrible people. I'm happy for them to pay for content and the technology to deliver that content.
Ironically, in this system the advertisers are actually subsidizing the blocking of non-compliant ads. That seems ideal: advertisers are competing to provide quality ads and to block poor ones.
> It boggles the mind why a program whose sole purpose is to block ads would not do so out of the box.
Well, maybe the purpose of that particular program is to block awful, obstructive, auto-playing ads, but allow sensible levels of advertising to support web sites.
>Anyone who hasn't yet switched to uBlock Origin should do so ASAP.
I looked at it, I tried it, I love it so far. I added uMatrix(1) and uBlock Origin Websocket(2). Now I just need to read the documentation to get the full advantage(3).
Anyone who hasn't yet switched to uBlock Origin should do so ASAP. It's super fast, has a much smaller memory footprint, has a strict policy against "acceptable ads" (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/MANIFESTO.md), licensed under the GPLv3, and hosted in a very active repository on GitHub (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock).