by mbroshi on 2/14/18, 1:59 AM with 37 comments
by briga on 2/14/18, 2:38 AM
by beloch on 2/14/18, 5:22 AM
The web's ad industry is nothing short of amazing. A small number of users started using ad blocking software when ads became obnoxious and intrusive, flashing, spinning, spawning popups and obscuring the content they're supposed to accompany. Did the ad industry take a hint? No, they moved, en masse, to ads that were more obnoxious and intrusive. Then they started exploiting browsers to discover as much personal information as possible about users, which motivated even more people to install ad blockers. Then ads became one of the most significant vectors of malware, so people started adopting script and ad-blockers as standard safe-computing practice.
It's reached the point where I would not allow either my parents or my children to run a browser without an ad-blocker installed. That's how bad it's gotten.
Ad providers have had years to establish ways of delivering safe, privacy-respecting, non-intrusive, content-specific advertising. They haven't, and the rising use of ad blocking is the natural consequence. The demand from people running websites should be there. Maybe space devoted to an ethical ad provider would make less money in the short-term, but anyone can see that ignoring the rise of ad-blocking is going to hurt their bottom line down the road.
Ads just work in print media. They don't jump out of the corner of the page and cover up articles while flashing and making loud noises. They don't invade your privacy. They don't damage your property. Online ads need to advance to this state. The onus is on ad providers and those employing them to accomplish this, not on users to uninstall their ad blockers.
by newscracker on 2/14/18, 4:27 AM
> "Ad blocking software allows Internet users to obtain information without generating ad revenue for site owners, potentially undermining investments in content."
Good that it uses the correct words, like "potentially". I wish we could have something that talks about the user experience, by saying something like, "Most of the sites that run ads are usually obnoxious, drain mobile device batteries and data quotas, track and profile users, spread malware, mine cryptocurrency using the user's resources and are potentially a threat to the entire web and humanity as a whole!"
> "We explore the impact of site-level ad blocker usage on website quality, as inferred from traffic. We find that each additional percentage point of site visitors blocking ads reduces its traffic by 0.67% over 35 months. Impacted sites provide less content over time, providing corroboration for the mechanism. Effects on revenue are compounded; ad blocking reduces visits, and remaining visitors blocking ads do not generate revenue."
I'm confident that the reduced visits are only because of ad-block killers on the websites and the generally poor quality of content on the sites (most "news" sites today regurgitate something from another site with little or no value addition to the context). Such sites don't deserve to be supported by users unless they provide a lot more value.
> "We conclude that ad blocking poses a threat to the ad-supported web."
The ad-supported web is a threat to the web itself. So this is actually good in some ways. Yes, we don't have viable, accessible and cheaper mechanisms for people to support all the sites directly (without involving crooked and malicious ad networks). But the publishers who don't care much for their users don't deserve to be supported. Period.
by dredmorbius on 2/14/18, 4:22 AM
An anonymous New York journalist, quoted in Hamilton Holt's Commercialism and Journalism, 1909.
https://archive.org/stream/commercialismjou00holtuoft#page/2...
by yjftsjthsd-h on 2/14/18, 2:46 AM
Unless they provide some mechanism by which adblockers cause people to stop visiting, they've reversed cause and effect. Bad sites get worse and lose users.
by fao_ on 2/14/18, 3:53 AM
I value the security of my computer and the amount of mental space I have been gifted with too much to clutter them with bit-crap and visual-crap. Besides, advertising has become an adversarial and manipulative industry. The more unwanted influence I can cut out the better.
by corysama on 2/14/18, 5:50 AM
But lately, ads and tracking have become so egregious that the content is often not worth the hassle of awkward, obstructive ads and very creepy tracking.
So, lately I’ve switched my browsing to a mixture of Chrome/Mobile Safari vs. mobile & desktop Brave browser depending on if the account I’m using browses political/monetizable material.
Next I need to investigate Basic Attention Token to see if it actually does present a reasonable alternative to ads that makes content creation viable. Don’t know yet...
by _rpd on 2/14/18, 2:46 AM
> First, ad blocker usage by a site’s visitors reduces the site’s revenue if at least some of those users would have visited the site in the absence of ad blocking. The relevant mechanism, as in the traditional literature on the relationship between intellectual property revenue appropriation and supply, is that reduced revenue may undermine a site’s ability to invest, which could manifest itself as a diminished site that is less appealing to potential visitors. Web users then visit the degraded site less, reducing the site’s traffic.
> Second, in the presence of ad blocking, a site’s remaining revenue-generating visitors are less ad-intolerant, leading the site to run more ads, increasing the nuisance cost of visiting the site.
by dredmorbius on 2/14/18, 4:34 AM
"Copyright has become the single most serious impediment to access to knowledge."
"Today we recognize that knowledge is not only a public good but also a global or international public good.We have also come to recognize that knowledge is central to successful development. The international community, through institutions like the World Bank, has a collective responsibility for the creation and dissemination of one global public good—knowledge for development."
"What the academic publishing industry calls 'theft' the world calls 'research'."
It's far beyond time to recognise that 1) Copyright is not the solution, copyright is the problem, and 2) that creators of valuable creative works need to get paid, somehow.
The intersection of these two statements gives a corollary: Payment for access to knowledge is a net harm to society. Which means that we must find an alternative method of finance. Salon's misguided plea here is not that solution. A general tax, proportionate to wealth and/or income, strikes me as about right.
The quotes above, respectively, are from:
Nina Paley, artist and animator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc
Pamela Samuelson, copyright legal scholar, UC Berkeley http://sfgate.com/opinion/article/Aaron-Swartz-Opening- access-to-knowledge-4224697.php,
Joseph Stigletz, Nobel laureate economist http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0195130529.001...
Edward Morbius, Space Alien Cat https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4p2rwk/what_th...
by Hextinium on 2/14/18, 2:47 AM
by soulchild37 on 2/14/18, 2:44 AM
by petraeus on 2/14/18, 7:22 PM
by dingo_bat on 2/14/18, 3:57 AM
by imron on 2/14/18, 2:50 AM
Good.