Adblock again beats publishers' Adblock-blocking attempts Adblock Plus is celebrating, but publishers are scratching their heads, after German courts ruled blocking online advertisements is legal. All claims brought by German media cornerstone Spiegel Online against Eyeo GmbH, creators of Adblock Plus, were late last week dismissed by a court in Hamburg, Germany. Seven media houses …
I would like to add to your advice the suggestion to use a frequently updated hosts file. Between modifying the security settings of your browser to a level of paranoia that thwarts third party participants cold in their tracks, the use of plug ins like Ghosterie & NoScript to shield against the unknown sources, & a hosts file to give TheFinger to those known sources of shite, you should be able to surf in safety.
Cheers & have a safe day.
My browser talks on behalf of me to a server talking on behalf of a company or other person. If loading a web page was a literal discussion between me and a company, it would go something like this:
Me: "Hi, I would like to request <x> information from you."
Company: "Okay. But first, can I interest you in some special offers from our affiliates?"
Me: "No thanks; I'm just interested in <x> today."
Company: "Okay, here is <x> information."
Ruling that Ad blocking should be illegal would be as absurd as ruling that saying "No thanks" in the above conversation should be illegal. And if it ever becomes law, it will be one law that I will never adhere to.
Because that would subvert seller's discretion. Vendors shouldn't be required to sell anything. If the seller attaches conditions, it's up to the buyer whether to take them or not.
What will you do when you need new drivers, but the manufacturer's website throws up an ad wall?
The 'seller' isn't required to accept the 'buyer's' conditions. Websites can tell if you're using an ad-blocker and they are free to refuse to deliver content, if they want to. Nowadays, some websites show a polite notice saying that they can tell that you're using an ad-blocker and ask you to consider whitelisting their site.
P.S. I'd turn off the ad-blocker on the driver website.
>Never buy a device from that manufacturer again.
Yep. I bought a "smart" TV from LG a few years ago. It's generally a decent TV and I do use Netflix etc. on it, so want it to be online. However, a couple of software updates later, it started serving ads to me on its browsing screens. That would be fair enough had the TV been free, but it wasn't; I paid for it.
This prompted me to install my own DNS server, which comes in handy as it means I don't get ads on my phone when I'm in the house as well as blocking those on the TV.
LG will not get my cash again.
What these people don't realise is, I don't want to see their ads. I have never clicked on them and never will. Those serving the ads are wasting their money paying these people, because they're wasting their time if they think they might sell me something.
Not quite. When you ask for x, you get exactly x. This x contains URIs for other resources such as images, videos, scripts, stylesheets and frames. Your browser then requests those resources and renders them. The ad blockers work by choosing to not download some of those resources and/or adjusting the stylesheet so those resources are not visible.
> But the publisher can tell if ads are being loaded or not
To do this they need to wait for the ad content to download and render before delivering the content. With video or animations that is impossible. Even for simple images or text you would be adding substantial lag to your page display time for the 80%ish users who aren't using them.
Current detection approaches involve making using JavaScript to fetch a beacon from the ad network and then detect whether that download is blocked. The simple counter measure allows such beacons to download but it does prevent simple hosts file blocking of the whole network.
There are other possible measures. Many moons ago I had to deliver a "way too complex for html of the day" report over the web which ended up being a dynamic png rendered on the server side. These days you could do it with html5 and angular. It was an absolute usability nightmare. You could get dynamic screen sizes to be taken into account and image map out hyperlinks but it was non trivial. It also made it inaccessible to screen readers.
I'd like to think that websites would not screw up everyone's experience to spite the relatively small proportion of users who bypass their ads. Then again, we are already stuck with animations that interfere with content, fake download buttons, etc all apparently in the name of supporting websites so yeah.
"To do this they need to wait for the ad content to download and render before delivering the content. With video or animations that is impossible. Even for simple images or text you would be adding substantial lag to your page display time for the 80%ish users who aren't using them."
They couldn't wait for the GET request which is standard in HTTP?
I can't believe that Spiegel, regardless of their personal preference, would actually believe that it would be be illegal to block parts of what they have on their site. I could chose to not go to their site at all and contravene their wishes even more.
Exactly. You (I mean the generic not specific useage) have the right to say almost anything you like as long as it doesn't violate the law. However, I have the right to refuse to listen to it.
You have the right to say it, you do not have any right to an audience.
If you printed advertisements in a physical form (newspaper, magazine, snail mail flyer, etc) then you can try to distribute it to all & sundery, but nobody has to accept it being handed to them in a parking lot, shopping mall, or at the door to the market; you have the right to try & distribute it, but I don't have to accept it.
You can pay to have it added to my mailbox such that I pick it up with my mail, but I am not forced to read it; I can throw it away, use it as bog paper, roll it up as fire lighters, or do anything with it that I please. You can print it in the paper, but I can ignore them as I wish.
You can add them to your site & ask me to view them, but you have NO RIGHT to force me to do so; your right to Free Speech does not include a right to an audience. I can ignore your ads if I choose, just as I may ignore it in any other form you may attempt to force it upon me.
TL;DR: You have the right to advertise, but I have the right to tell you to go fuck yourself. You have the right to advertise, you don't have a right to an audience.
What's worse about online ads is that if you are paying for your data allowance, particularly when mobile, then they are using your data allowance to try and force feed their message.
I don't really get how they can believe that forcing ads on users is a good idea. If we cannot choose to avoid the ads, as I can do on my TV with a TIVO etc, then I am going to see this imposition as an irritation and the company being advertised will be associated with that irritation and lose all goodwill.
If these services need to be paid for then fine, find another way to monetise them, one that works.
My wife switched to a Windows tablet purely to be able to use a proper adblocker after she used up an entire months worth of data in a morning. Just The Times crossword - the launcher page had a video ad that played on a loop even when the tab didn't have focus. That was the end of using a BlackBerry for crosswords.
I'm finding I use Element Hiding Helper A LOT to block things like fixed-position navigation headers & footers that usually overlay 20% of the content. This screws with using page up/down, because you can't read the part that ends up under the header, so it's really annoying.
So I block that shit. I find I don't normally miss the navigation bar anyway.
Why haven't more Ad-funded news sites etc, embedded Ads at source? Like Facebook does to make it harder. If a story includes context sensitive photos from the article plus Ads, isn't that pretty hard to filter out? Its an ad-broker clusterfuck atm, which I'm glad to say even a simple Hosts file can successfully filter.
No, the reason is legal. If ads are sourced through them, they'd have legal responsibility to curate them. Plus there's legal obligation to identify ads, so there will always be a way to detect them. And if you can detect them, you can block them, even inline. The only practical solution is ad-walling. There the law is on the publisher's side due to vendor's discretion.
"No, the reason is legal. If ads are sourced through them, they'd have legal responsibility to curate them."
Thanks, Charles. That, in a nutshell is the problem. Gross irresponsibility on the part of the publishers. They're happy to take money and no responsibility for throwing potentially damaging stuff at their visitors.
"They MUST be intrusive."
Which makes them repellent.
This amazing comment came in a recent /. discussion in the paperless office. Nothing could be more indicative of the utter lack of self-awareness of workers in the ad industry: https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9898731&cid=53315433
"Readers ignore all the other ads."
Actually this isn't true. Readers look at ads when they want to. Every Friday my local paper publishes a motoring supplement. It's filled with advertisements from the local car dealerships. I ignore them with extremely rare exceptions - when I'm looking to change car. Because I can ignore them they don't annoy me; they just become so much bedding for my grandchildrens' rabbits. Because they haven't annoyed me I'm prepared to consider giving the advertisers my custom when I need to.
What really drives the ad industry to make intrusive ads is that there'd be much less money for themselves. The only thing the ad industry sells its own services to advertisers.
"Which makes them repellent."
Which is good enough for them because it lodges them in your brain, rather than be ovelrooked like a mist otherwise. The ads have both primary and secondary effects. If you click on the ad, that's a primary effect. All fine and dandy. But even if you notice it but don't click, when the time comes to look for something in that category, that brand will jump to your mind, even if you forgot the ad itself. Love it or hate it, at least you KNOW it. That's brand awareness, a secondary effect. It's much harder to measure but also tougher to ignore because it hits the SUBconscious mind an plays on familiarity. At least you've HEARD of the brand name before, and familiarity breeds comfort when shopping. Thus why many people avoid shots in the dark.
me: (Play gameplay youtube video)
ads: BUY LOTION NOW!
me: (Play another gameplay youtube video)
ads: BUY! BUY LOTION NOW!
me: (Play another gameplay youtube video)
ads: BUY! BUY! BUY LOTION NOW!
Yea, that sure reminded me to get ABP and never buy that brand of lotion. ffs at least match them to some related ads. It's not rocket science. Seriously, it's not that hard to scan the f*cking title for the ads. It says 'gameplay' not foreplay or beauty lesson.
Until a tipping point is reached, the ad industry will not reform themselves. Until that time, it will be a arms race between the blocking software and the ad industry. Until it hurts them financially for trying to develop more intrusive ways to counteract the blocking side, they will continue down the wrong path. There have to be some out there working to change this paradigm, and make ads safe, and non-intrusive. But, it will take time. I read articles the other day about all the fraud in the ad industry too. So they have major work to clean up the entire way of doing business. I think it's time to help push them over the edge, by doing a little advertising of our own, to get even more people using adblocker software.
The numbers favor the ad people. Ads are still so cheap to make that just one hit in say a million can justify the expense. You can't make them illegal due to freedom of speech issues, and bandwidth is double edged because BOTH ends pay for bandwidth.
What happens when everything goes behind ad walls?
"Ads are still so cheap to make that just one hit in say a million can justify the expense."
And the industry has no metrics on the negative effect of the the other 999,999 so they can go on selling their services to the special snowflakes who haven't cottoned on to the idea that the ads for their products will annoy their potentials customers just as much as other ads annoy them.
"What happens when everything goes behind ad walls?"
You think everything would? There'll always be some sites smart enough to thing differently and hoover up most of the traffic.
"...selling their services to the special snowflakes who haven't cottoned on to the idea that the ads for their products will annoy their potentials customers..."
Most bizarre is the ad industry's constant reference to its output as "content" in that way usually reserved for purveyors of pseudo luxury watches etc. The special snowflakes no doubt lap up the idea people really want to see their ads, but reading the trade journals, I'm not so sure the ad pimps aren't drinking their own magic potion, Makes for very confusing reading when absolutely everything is referred to as "content".
Re: Until a tipping point is reached, the ad industry will not reform themselves.
From my readings on other behavioural change, it would seem that 25% is a good rule of thumb. At this point people's perceptions seem to change and begin to treat the 'new' thing as normal. Hence given usage of adblockers is between 19~21%, I suspect the ad networks are working so hard currently to block the use of adblockers is an attempt to prevent the tipping point being reached...
The fact is, I would gladly turn off my adblockers if, and only if, they respected my privacy and do not track me (which they didn't do in the past), do not use javascript or flash or java (which they didn't do in the past), do not block all or part of a website (which they didn't do in the past), do not have any autoplay video or audio ads (which they didn't do in the past), and do not take up half of a web page's content (which they didn't do in the past).
Advertisers had a successful model in the past, back when the internet went from luxury to necessity. If it worked once, it can work again.
There are a couple of sites I use regularly where I have chosen to pay a small annual subscription to view them without advertisements.
One of these sites has recently started pushing increasingly intrusive "offers from our carefully chosen partners", which I believe to be simply greedy. Needless to say these offers cannot easily be disabled...
Guess who won't be getting their annual subscription renewed.
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