from Hacker News

Yahoo escalates war on ad-blockers--by keeping people out of their own e-mail

by 001sky on 11/23/15, 8:32 PM with 8 comments

  • by isomorphic on 11/23/15, 9:12 PM

    If the ad-block-blocked content is of sufficient value, this will inevitably give rise to stealth tech in ad-blockers. If one isn't concerned about bandwidth, then an ad-blocker could operate at the level of hiding or obscuring ads, rather than not loading them. And so an arms-race develops, which site operators would likely lose.

    Worse yet, measures against people running ad-blockers are sure to annoy some of them into retaliatory responses. For example, there are already plugins which attempt to click on all the ads on a page, so advertisers become concerned about click-fraud and offer less return to the site operator.

    It would be very interesting to know the rates at which users disable their ad-blocker for Yahoo Mail, versus the ultimate account-abandonment rate from this "small" A/B test.

  • by jackvalentine on 11/23/15, 10:32 PM

    (This is a direct copy of my post on another thread about this)

    As a staunch advocate of adblockers: as is Yahoo!'s right and adblocker makers should not attempt to circumvent it.

    Yahoo! doesn't have an implicit right to their code running fully on my machine but by the same token I don't have an implicit right to their services. If they've made it clear they think I am not making a bargain with them that they like then I respect that.

    What I can't respect is whinging about adblockers in editorials but still serving me the content (cough, The Verge).

  • by darrmit on 11/24/15, 1:52 AM

    I would be really curious to see if this sort of strong arm tactic actually works for them. Part of me wants to see them implement it just to see if their users cry loud enough to make them revert, but I have a feeling the vast majority would just disable Adblock and go on about their business. Most anyone serious about privacy likely quit using free email services long ago.

  • by SBArbeit on 11/23/15, 9:47 PM

    I find amusing that WaPo is publishing this article, after the way they blocked users with ad blocking software for about two months themselves. Safe to say that wasn't an accident....