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?
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.
1. Obviously some people don't agree with fact or scientific truth, to each his/her opinion but it seems to me advertising is invasive by definition.
2. "your failed business model is not my problem" seems right. Could it be that most of the web is using an ad based revenue model because the guys who sell ads also happen to run the most popular web services at no monetary cost for the user and it's hard making a revenue while competing with gratis.
The expected solution to this conundrums would be to stop doing the internet wrong (centralizing everything) and start doing right (p2p, self-hosting, federated). The day may come when we have an affordable appliance you just plug in your network which will allow this.
The thing is, advertisers need the web - it's rendered nearly all prior advertising and media paradigms obsolete, or at the very least, less cost effective. But the web doesn't need advertising.
So the solution is simple - businesses advertising online that fail to convince users to opt in to paying for their content somehow will lose revenue and die. The free market at work.
>Are people going to switch to a paid version of Facebook? Twitter?
Maybe, maybe not. The web will survive without both, however. But I suspect that enough people would be willing to pay for Facebook, at least, to make it viable. Not viable at its current scale, perhaps, but something is better than nothing.
>Is everyone expected to get Youtube Red?
I honestly believe the answer is yes, eventually, everyone will be expected to get Youtube Red, because paid, licensed content makes more sense for Google than the morass of illegal and non revenue generating fare that is currently the bulk of Youtube content.
>And are we only supposed to look at the few news sources that we can justify the subscription cost for?
That actually sounds like a good idea, given the quality of most news sources. They should have to work harder to earn their bread.
> their assertion otherwise is nothing but semantics
Given that what counts as "invasive" is a semantic question, I'm not what you're trying to say here. You seem to be using this as a dismissal, without any justification.
They didn't ignore the fact that the web is paid for by ads. They stated that they expect other models would come about, and that in any case, ads aren't an acceptable price to pay.
The way the author addresses number 2 is by claiming that businesses need to focus on a different way of earning money than just clicks and page views. It's a sort of view that the web is already too inflated with unrealistic expectations of what's valuable, and I somewhat agree. Maybe when you start a company, focus on how to make a product instead of how to gather attention.
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 ). 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.
> 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 ). 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.
Its such a new form that it is already illegal in most places, and common not taxed properly. If publishers are going the illegal route, there are better ways than illegal ads. Many sites with "sponsored posts" have been fined for doing this, and more sites likely will until the risk of doing so is higher than the profits.
I'm pretty sure advertising has been doing, expanding and seeking the "they don't know they're being advertised to" for quite a while. IIRC it was developed after people being exposed to ads over time learned to recognize them and put up mental filters to filter ads out as a very efficient workaround that block, more recent developments include neuromarketing in the early 2000's. Point is this trend exists because it is the path of evolution of advertising, and I personally doubt adblocking has enough impact yet to push the established course of advertising in a different direction.
Publishers are encouraged to find new ways to get revenue preferably outside of advertising so their revenue would not be at risk. You can only put so much sponsored content on your website before you start losing traffic , i.e. ad revenue and need to resort to shadier practices and this cycle continues until the website dies.b
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.
Strange, using ublock origins there no ads blocked. There's three tumblr trackers blocked though. Could it be related to using pictures hosted on tumblr ?
I also noticed they have addthis for facebook and twitter.
Maybe someone should point them to discourse as an alternative to disqus[1].
> ‘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.
I don't take this as an attempt to re-define anything. It's a pretty clear statement of a (admittedly strong opinion): Advertising is, by its very nature, an intrusion.
I don't think that is completely out of line. An ad's purpose is to convince me to part with some amount of my time or money. And even when they don't managed to do that, they still have an impact on my environment. It ends up cluttered with animated banner ads and auto-playing videos and tasteless billboards and sudden jumps in the audio volume coming out of my radio. It fills my mental space with memes that are deliberately engineered to harm my mental health by convincing me that I'm too hairy and smelly and old and bald and bored and overweight and under-penised and any number of other things that I wouldn't be the slightest bit worried about otherwise.
Which isn't to say that there aren't ads that I appreciate (shout out to Metromile for running the most recent subway ad to get me to buy a product), but they do seem to be a relative rarity in the grand scheme of things. That's coming from someone who deliberately tries to occupy a low-ad environment by avoiding things like live TV, though, so there's my bias.
What definitions are being changed? It's pretty reasonable to claim that if you don't want to see any ads (which is clearly the position in the article), then any ads you do see are invasive.
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.
What happened with the idea that ads were a means you had to get to know useful products?
Tragedy of the commons. That idea was OK when the state of technology placed a limit on the amount of advertising, on its psychological impact, and on its externalities such as erosion of privacy and malware.
I discover new things all the time without being exposed to ads. I also have a modestly successful side business. Its advertising is limited to identifying my business when I participate in certain web forums, and maintaining a frightfully ugly web page.
Well I think it could be more of a "pull" model instead of a shove down your throat model.
People would research their options when they're in the market.
Plus you'd have more word of mouth and thought leaders.
Perhaps we'd even start expecting our friends and family to routinely talk about products they like. We'd develop new customs living in an ad vacuum?
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.
> What happened with the idea that ads were a means you had to get to know useful products?
The internet.
> If all ads were banned forever from existence, how would anyone discover anything new?
What would happen for existing categories of products is "pull" instead of "push." And if it's an entirely new product category, word of mouth and news articles.
The Wirecutter has a good business model here. Do the leg-work and review and compare the products to find the best. Make money on affiliate links for those products.
People who go to that site to research a product want to be sold to. They want to give their attention and money up for a product. Advertisements on websites are completely backwards from that model.
> What happened with the idea that ads were a means you had to get to know useful products?
It died a long, long time ago.
This guy, Freud's nephew, is what happened: Edward Bernays [1]. As covered in Adam Curtis excellent documentary on the subject of the history of propaganda and advertising "The Century Of The Self" [2].
For one example, I discovered Joule (new immersion circulator from ChefSteps) when they appeared on Cooking Issues. While they've since taken advertising from ChefSteps, I'm pretty sure the initial appearance was Dave Arnold chatting with Chris Young(? I think it was him) because he (Dave) thought it was an interesting product.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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 :)
[+] [-] skrause|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BookmarkSaver|9 years ago|reply
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|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bigbugbag|9 years ago|reply
2. "your failed business model is not my problem" seems right. Could it be that most of the web is using an ad based revenue model because the guys who sell ads also happen to run the most popular web services at no monetary cost for the user and it's hard making a revenue while competing with gratis.
The expected solution to this conundrums would be to stop doing the internet wrong (centralizing everything) and start doing right (p2p, self-hosting, federated). The day may come when we have an affordable appliance you just plug in your network which will allow this.
[+] [-] krapp|9 years ago|reply
So the solution is simple - businesses advertising online that fail to convince users to opt in to paying for their content somehow will lose revenue and die. The free market at work.
>Are people going to switch to a paid version of Facebook? Twitter?
Maybe, maybe not. The web will survive without both, however. But I suspect that enough people would be willing to pay for Facebook, at least, to make it viable. Not viable at its current scale, perhaps, but something is better than nothing.
>Is everyone expected to get Youtube Red?
I honestly believe the answer is yes, eventually, everyone will be expected to get Youtube Red, because paid, licensed content makes more sense for Google than the morass of illegal and non revenue generating fare that is currently the bulk of Youtube content.
>And are we only supposed to look at the few news sources that we can justify the subscription cost for?
That actually sounds like a good idea, given the quality of most news sources. They should have to work harder to earn their bread.
[+] [-] imagist|9 years ago|reply
The parts of the Internet which are paid for by ads have a net negative impact on humanity.
[+] [-] GavinMcG|9 years ago|reply
Given that what counts as "invasive" is a semantic question, I'm not what you're trying to say here. You seem to be using this as a dismissal, without any justification.
They didn't ignore the fact that the web is paid for by ads. They stated that they expect other models would come about, and that in any case, ads aren't an acceptable price to pay.
[+] [-] jonahrd|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cam_l|9 years ago|reply
But is it the good part?
[+] [-] DanBlake|9 years ago|reply
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|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] belorn|9 years ago|reply
Its such a new form that it is already illegal in most places, and common not taxed properly. If publishers are going the illegal route, there are better ways than illegal ads. Many sites with "sponsored posts" have been fined for doing this, and more sites likely will until the risk of doing so is higher than the profits.
[+] [-] bigbugbag|9 years ago|reply
Publishers are encouraged to find new ways to get revenue preferably outside of advertising so their revenue would not be at risk. You can only put so much sponsored content on your website before you start losing traffic , i.e. ad revenue and need to resort to shadier practices and this cycle continues until the website dies.b
[+] [-] imagist|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsingel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blazespin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigbugbag|9 years ago|reply
I also noticed they have addthis for facebook and twitter.
Maybe someone should point them to discourse as an alternative to disqus[1].
[1]: https://www.discourse.org/
[+] [-] imagist|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewflnr|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bunderbunder|9 years ago|reply
I don't think that is completely out of line. An ad's purpose is to convince me to part with some amount of my time or money. And even when they don't managed to do that, they still have an impact on my environment. It ends up cluttered with animated banner ads and auto-playing videos and tasteless billboards and sudden jumps in the audio volume coming out of my radio. It fills my mental space with memes that are deliberately engineered to harm my mental health by convincing me that I'm too hairy and smelly and old and bald and bored and overweight and under-penised and any number of other things that I wouldn't be the slightest bit worried about otherwise.
Which isn't to say that there aren't ads that I appreciate (shout out to Metromile for running the most recent subway ad to get me to buy a product), but they do seem to be a relative rarity in the grand scheme of things. That's coming from someone who deliberately tries to occupy a low-ad environment by avoiding things like live TV, though, so there's my bias.
[+] [-] baddox|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imagist|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigbugbag|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fnoord|9 years ago|reply
Try teleporting back to the 20th century and experience the internet in its full glory. Without advertising.
[+] [-] fiatjaf|9 years ago|reply
If all ads were banned forever from existence, how would anyone discover anything new?
[+] [-] analog31|9 years ago|reply
Tragedy of the commons. That idea was OK when the state of technology placed a limit on the amount of advertising, on its psychological impact, and on its externalities such as erosion of privacy and malware.
I discover new things all the time without being exposed to ads. I also have a modestly successful side business. Its advertising is limited to identifying my business when I participate in certain web forums, and maintaining a frightfully ugly web page.
[+] [-] mrfusion|9 years ago|reply
Plus you'd have more word of mouth and thought leaders.
Perhaps we'd even start expecting our friends and family to routinely talk about products they like. We'd develop new customs living in an ad vacuum?
[+] [-] psyc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gpm|9 years ago|reply
I.e. the exact same way I heard about 99.9% of products I actually use today.
[+] [-] charlesism|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] interpol_p|9 years ago|reply
People who go to that site to research a product want to be sold to. They want to give their attention and money up for a product. Advertisements on websites are completely backwards from that model.
[+] [-] Fnoord|9 years ago|reply
It died a long, long time ago.
This guy, Freud's nephew, is what happened: Edward Bernays [1]. As covered in Adam Curtis excellent documentary on the subject of the history of propaganda and advertising "The Century Of The Self" [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
> If all ads were banned forever from existence, how would anyone discover anything new?
By word of mouth. I know, not a novel idea, but it seems to work quite well on this very website!
The fallacy is that ads were never informative anyway.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] eric_the_read|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imagist|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iand|9 years ago|reply
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|9 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] sliken|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] eptcyka|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imagist|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrnichols|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lowmagnet|9 years ago|reply
http://imgur.com/a/pJ0TY
Available under "Installation" https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/ublock
[+] [-] gorer|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sctb|9 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] imagist|9 years ago|reply