[HN Gopher] The right to use adblockers
___________________________________________________________________
The right to use adblockers
Author : jrepinc
Score : 163 points
Date : 2023-12-21 20:26 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fsfe.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (fsfe.org)
| teekert wrote:
| A browser is your car on the digital highway. Said car should
| have your best interest as priority #1. Not the highway itself,
| not some company. You.
|
| Use Firefox people, before it is too late.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| The way the interweb currently works is bringing stuff into my
| computer, and showing it to me here. Even with streaming, I see
| it 'here'. So My PC, My Rules.
|
| If the interweb changes and I see it 'there' instead of 'here'
| we can discuss again.
| jefftk wrote:
| And, yet, if Firefox decided to ship an ad blocker on by
| default they would lose their primary source of funding.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| That sounds like Firefox made a bad decision to fund their
| operations by selling the default search engine space to an
| advertising company, then.
| teekert wrote:
| It's chicken and egg. Because of their low usage numbers
| they don't have much leverage and a deal with devil is the
| option they're forced into.
| lolinder wrote:
| To date, Mozilla refuses to let me donate to directly
| fund Firefox.
|
| I can donate to Mozilla, but then they'll take my money
| and pursue whatever their current distraction of the
| month is. I can pay for Pocket, but then I'm paying for
| Pocket, which I don't need or want. I can't just give
| them money and say "I really, really want this money to
| go directly to Firefox, not to another side project".
|
| Until they offer that as an option, they cannot claim to
| have tried everything.
| evulhotdog wrote:
| If only it gracefully supported profiles in a similar way to
| Chrome. Having two binaries running gets real funky when you
| want to open a page in whatever browser window you recently
| used, which also happens to be the most recent profile, too.
| teekert wrote:
| Is this not a use case for containers?
|
| On any other browser I always miss my containers.
| wjdp wrote:
| I'm aware it's not the same as Chrome profiles but multi-
| account containers, where individual tabs can have their own
| sessions, is a killer feature of Firefox.
|
| The ability to have multiple AWS accounts logged into at the
| same time in tabs side by side is a real time saver.
| mrj wrote:
| I use containers with SideBerry for this. I have panels
| dedicated to google accounts (broadly: work, other and
| personal). When I'm in a panel and click a link it opens
| correctly with the right container and corresponding auth.
|
| It's the best flow I've found. You can also set rules for
| domains to always open (or prompt) in a container, but I
| found that to be too much work for several common domains
| that I use from different profiles.
|
| I do still have rules set up for some things like Github,
| which should always use my personal container. That's nice
| since no matter what mode I'm working in, it opens correctly
| and I don't have to log into Github for each container. And I
| have stuff like Linkedin and Facebook firewalled into a
| social container.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Firefox has Mozilla Corporation as its #1 priority best
| interest.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| Honestly I trust Mozilla more than Google or Microsoft. Not
| that corporations _should_ be trusted. It 's more of a "less
| bad" situation.
| kleiba wrote:
| _> the court nevertheless preserved Axel Springer's right to
| exclude users with an activated adblocker from accessing its
| content_
|
| I actually think this is fair, and I say that as someone who has
| been using adblockers since the dawn of time and couldn't imagine
| using a webbrowser without it.
|
| I believe the court has decided absolutely sanely for one: it
| should be my choice as an internet user whether I want to be
| exposed ot ads or not. In my case: no way, Jose. And to those who
| make the argument that a lot of what the internet offers todays
| would be unsustainable without the ad revenue, I say that
| although you may think that you cannot live without this or that
| or the other on the internet, let me reassure you: you can.
| Everything on the internet is expendable. Trust me. Yes, even
| TikTok, son. Heck, most of what you're in love with today wasn't
| even there 10 years ago.
|
| It may come in as a surprise to some but yes, you can have a life
| without the internet. And to be honest, I'd rather lose some
| conveniences if the alternative is this absolute insanity that is
| today's web without an adblocker.
|
| But if content providers do not want to give me their stuff
| unless I watch their ads, I think that's fine. It's your right to
| do that. Just don't think that I am going to turn off the
| adblocker for you as a consequence. Much more likely, I'm just
| going to go somewhere else for my kick.
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| > Just don't think that I am going to turn off the adblocker
| for you as a consequence. Much more likely, I'm just going to
| go somewhere else for my kick.
|
| You'll be saving them money (less infrastructure costs, like
| bandwith) without giving a penny to their competitors (because
| you're using an adblocker); actually now you're probably a net
| loss for their competitors.
|
| So they're happy to lose you, I guess?
|
| We're headed towards a paywalled Internet, I know first hand.
| And I hate it.
| lolinder wrote:
| I'm actually very excited to get back to the point where
| services compete for my money rather than for my attention.
| Advertising has created an internet that has an _enormous_
| amount of content, most of which is just... bad. It 's hard
| to find good content because almost all of it is engineered
| to get clicks.
|
| A paywalled internet will mean I'll have to be choosier about
| what I consume, but what's available will hopefully be high
| quality because it's not competing for my attention when I'm
| at my weakest at the end of a long day, it's competing for my
| wallet when I rationally review the budget every month.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > We're headed towards a paywalled Internet,
|
| If that's the intersection of need/demand, okay so be it.
|
| Like, I have preferences but I understand they might not be
| others'.
| cschep wrote:
| There is so much good content on the internet that people put
| out because they just love it and don't expect any money for
| it. All of that won't change. Lots of the ad-ridden blogs and
| stuff will go away but I'll echo the sentiment found largely
| around these comments: good riddance.
| izzydata wrote:
| If something is not sustainable without ads that seems to imply
| that people are not willing to pay for it. If people aren't
| willing to pay for it then I'm not sure it is a good business
| model.
|
| Regardless of the consequences I'd rather see an ad free
| internet. If that means Youtube can't exist and Facebook can't
| exist and Google can't exist then so be it.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Why not just ignore sites that use ads? If people find value
| in ad supported product they can use them and if they don't
| they can just avoid them and use an alternative without ads
| or nothing.
| izzydata wrote:
| If there were no ads anywhere on the internet than
| everything would be on an even playing field. Currently a
| site that offers a paid service for something that someone
| else gives away for free is at a huge disadvantage.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Even if the web was on an even playing field it has to
| worry about being disrupted by other platforms that allow
| ads. That could take the form of Web2 which is the web +
| ad supported sites with backwards compatibility with the
| original web or it could take the form of mobile apps
| where users can get useful ad supported apps.
| kevindamm wrote:
| Some services would go the subscription route and survive,
| but then they're limited to the users that are able and
| willing to pay. I can't imagine offering a search product or
| wiki product where payment is required. Donations may be a
| viable option but may not provide enough starting runway.
|
| Maybe I've been drinking too much internet capitalism
| koolaid, but a completely ad-free internet would not have had
| the commercial lift we've enjoyed these past 20-plus years.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > Maybe I've been drinking too much internet capitalism
| koolaid, but a completely ad-free internet would not have
| had the commercial lift we've enjoyed these past 20-plus
| years.
|
| I completely agree that an ad-free internet would not have
| seen numbers get big as quickly as what we've experienced,
| but it doesn't necessarily follow that an internet that
| makes numbers get big quickly is also the internet offering
| the best user experience.
|
| Usually, user experience gets sacrificed to make the
| numbers get bigger, faster.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Or, some people are willing to pay for it, and some are
| willing to pay for it indirectly (via ads).
|
| Hulu
|
| I wouldn't characterize it as a "bad" business.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| If past experience serves me right, usually it would rther
| be: Some people are willing to pay for it indirectly by ads
| and some are willing to pay and still get ads later.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Ads are creeping in to paud-for Hulu. That's the nature of
| ads (or maybe advertisers): they corrupt the medium they
| support.
| sbarre wrote:
| Yeah like I hate to say this, but do we need _that many_
| sites about cameras, gadgets, games, cars, or <insert topic>?
|
| Do all those sites need to be commercial enterprises with
| sales teams and large editorial teams? Or could they go back
| to being hobby passion projects?
|
| Or maybe there's just a handful of them and they are
| subscription-based for people who _really_ want that kind of
| news, and the best writers and creators gravitate to those
| sites and they build a sustainable business that way?
|
| The ad-supported business model has allowed perhaps _too
| many_ people per topic area to try their hand at garnering
| eyeball in exchange for what is ultimately the same
| repackaged content, because they don't need their users to
| pay for the content, they just need to draw them in to
| support the sales of ads or tracking data.
|
| This incentivizes all kinds of user-hostile behaviours in the
| quest for profit (or even just sustainability).
| dageshi wrote:
| I think you're about 5ish years out of date.
|
| Most of the sites on cameras, gadgets, games, cars e.t.c.
| are dead or dying and have been replaced by youtube
| channels, many of them run by hobbyists.
| jjulius wrote:
| The same rhetorical question still applies for hobbyist
| YT channels, IMO. Especially since many of them lock the
| more useful content behind subscription walls.
| sbarre wrote:
| Ehh sure, that's a take.
|
| There's still plenty (too many?) commercial websites -
| most that include their own YouTube channel - trying to
| compete for eyeballs by repackaging the same
| preview/review/press materials that companies send out..
|
| They're no longer the only game in town though, that's
| for sure. I don't disagree that many hobbyists
| (definition up for debate) can compete on merit for the
| audience, which is awesome of course.
| ryandrake wrote:
| You shouldn't hate to say it--it's absolutely true. We _don
| 't_ need yet another listicle site choked with ads
| competing in a zero sum slugfest for some top organic
| search result spot. Nobody needs it. The only thing these
| sites serve is the greed of whoever is producing them. The
| Internet is worse off the more of these that exist. This
| shouldn't be a controversial opinion.
| eli wrote:
| What's stopping people from creating these hobbyists sites
| now? Or you from using them?
| sbarre wrote:
| Nothing! And I do use a lot of them personally. I pay for
| several creators on Patreon and subscribe to a few
| creator-owned website publications to encourage work I
| care about most...
|
| These are not mutually exclusive things, sorry if I
| implied that.
|
| My point was more about the race to the bottom with
| commercial content sites/networks/publications in what
| seems like a borderless space, with increasingly bad
| incentives to draw in users.
| bshacklett wrote:
| Discoverability is a problem. The average hobbyist
| website has no chance of making it to the top of the pile
| of search-engine-optimized trash websites that are
| returned by search engines. For example: Quora often
| takes up half of my results these days.
|
| ...and if the hobbyists know that their sites aren't
| going to get any visitors, there's little reason to make
| them in the first place.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| do we "need" 50 brands of soda, or 300 varieties of cheese?
|
| > The ad-supported business model has allowed perhaps _too
| many_ people per topic area
|
| "Too many" according to whom? You?
|
| If no one "needs" them, then they won't get viewers and
| thus eventually won't get ads, either.
| dageshi wrote:
| It's a well understood part of human nature that it's very
| difficult to charge for something you previously gave away
| for free.
|
| The vast majority of the web has been given away for free by
| being ad supported, that's never going to roll back, the
| expectation has been set.
|
| Thankfully, the wider public might find ads irritating but
| they'd still prefer them over paying so ads aren't going away
| anytime soon.
| izzydata wrote:
| I know it will never happen. At least not anytime in the
| near future.
|
| There is usually a group of people advocating that using an
| adblocker is like stealing or killing businesses. My
| counter argument is that I'm fine with that. Don't offer
| something for free when I have complete control over how it
| is displayed on my end if you can't stay in business if I
| block some part of it. Everyone on the planet should use ad
| blockers for their own protection and to actively change
| the internet to a non-ad business model.
|
| I will never stop using ad blockers and I don't feel bad
| about it in the slightest.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Except that users are willing to pay for it, since a vast
| majority of them look at the ads and some of them even click
| on the ads.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| I wouldn't have a problem with ads if they weren't so
| intrusive and obnoxious. Imagine trying to read a magazine
| that would jump itself to the page with the "Axe" ad, you
| go back to the page you were reading and 10 seconds later
| it jumps to the "Chevy colorado" ad. Or asking the
| bookkeeper for "a book of holiday recipes" and on you way
| home in every corner a guy knocks your car window to sell
| you "holiday food".
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _that seems to imply that people are not willing to pay for
| it._
|
| No, it's just often that the logistics make it too
| inconvenient.
|
| For various impossible-coordination reasons, micropayments
| and monthly-subscription-to-all-news just haven't taken off,
| _despite_ consumers being willing to pay.
| arp242 wrote:
| Things like newspapers and comic books and whatnot have had
| ads for over a hundred years. These types of things partly
| being sponsored by ads is hardly a new concept.
|
| Ads are not going away.
|
| I would argue that the internet has gone rather overboard
| with it, but that's a different thing.
| tootie wrote:
| That would eliminate 99% of news. Including anyone on social
| media.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| > If something is not sustainable without ads that seems to
| imply that people are not willing to pay for it. If people
| aren't willing to pay for it then I'm not sure it is a good
| business model.
|
| Advertising can be a perfectly fine business model. Look at
| the radio, television, and newspaper industries. These have
| existed for decades and have brought much good to humanity
| even though they need advertising support to exist.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _But if content providers do not want to give me their stuff
| unless I watch their ads, I think that 's fine._
|
| Exactly. I've got a right to block ads if I can figure out how
| to achieve that technologically. But they've got a right to
| _not_ give me content if they can figure out, technologically,
| that I 'm blocking their ads.
|
| This all seems very fair to me.
| l0b0 wrote:
| Agreed. As someone who could not use the web without an ad
| blocker, I wouldn't even be opposed to a `X-Blocks-Ads: true`
| request header or something, to just shut down the hue and
| cry between the two parties. Let's all be honest, then see
| where it gets us.
| plagiarist wrote:
| If we could trust adtech to be honest we wouldn't have to
| vigorously block them. You and I both know X-Block-Ads
| would be nothing more than an extra wrinkle for your
| browser fingerprint.
| andy99 wrote:
| Yeah it's pretty simple, the world doesn't owe anyone a
| business model (something that's forgotten way to often) but
| nor are we owed free content. My understanding of a transaction
| is that there needs to be a "meeting of the minds" - if I value
| what you want to give me more than the price you want, we have
| trade and everybody wins.
|
| Unfortunately the ad economy is closer to begging. The consumer
| doesn't value what's being provided and the provider somehow
| tries to guilt or force users into "paying". And overall
| everyone loses - the content provider doesn't get the value
| they want for their content and the consumer doesn't get
| something they value. The only winner is advertising
| intermediaries. That unfortunately is the system we've set up.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| > But if content providers do not want to give me their stuff
| unless I watch their ads, I think that's fine. It's your right
| to do that. Just don't think that I am going to turn off the
| adblocker for you as a consequence. Much more likely, I'm just
| going to go somewhere else for my kick.
|
| To me, I think this is the more salient set of points. I accept
| that a company wants to show me ads to pay for the content
| they're serving. I accept that they may refuse to let me access
| content if I don't first view/consume the ads. And I also
| accept that if I am not happy with that specific arrangement, I
| am free to go elsewhere.
|
| What I do refuse to accept is that once they have sent me the
| data that they have any right to control how I consume it. If
| you want to prevent me from accessing your site unless I view
| ads, you have a very simple way to do that -- have your
| webserver return an error code unless I have viewed the ads.
| But once you have sent me the bytes, in my eyes, you lose any
| right to dictate how those bytes are processed or blackholed.
| mission_failed wrote:
| There is a grey area though when a company becomes the defacto
| monopoly over a service. Google and Microsoft email both have
| history of blocking email from other providers and have created
| a landscape where trying to run your own email server is a
| nightmare. But should they be able to refuse service to you if
| you block ads?
| alphazard wrote:
| This is ridiculous. We don't need people pontificating about what
| "rights" exist when I chose to request content from someone
| else's server.
|
| We need better ad-blocking technologies. Let the arms race
| continue. Haven't had to deal with ads for years now, as a happy
| Firefox + uBlock user.
| drdaeman wrote:
| This. Service operators have no saying in how you process the
| response, as long as it doesn't violate any laws (e.g.
| redistribution beyond fair use)
|
| But. The end of this arms race is gonna be problematic because
| of the halting problem. Unlike some other issues, we possibly
| don't want to push it too hard here until the society catches
| up, or we'll end up with black box programs inside the
| browsers, handling all aspects of rendering. That would be a
| wasteful loss for everyone.
| ilc wrote:
| The camel's nose is already there. Say hi to DRM.
| JohnFen wrote:
| If I can't find browsers that help me protect myself from
| websites, I'll just stop using the web entirely.
|
| The web has been getting less useful, more irritating, and
| more problematic for years anyway. At this point, it wouldn't
| be a huge loss to me.
| tantalor wrote:
| > We don't need people pontificating about what "rights" exist
|
| While you may prefer anarchy, in the real world courts will
| make these choices for you, and enforce the rules, putting your
| property and liberty at risk.
| alphazard wrote:
| In this case it's a bit like legislating the weather.
|
| Rights are just commitments by a government to ensure certain
| things do/don't happen within its area of reach. A right is
| only as good as a government's ability to enforce it.
|
| In this case we aren't talking about life or property or
| physical things in a single jurisdiction. We are talking
| about information exchanged over a distributed network, that
| spans nearly every jurisdiction on Earth. Unless you are
| expecting a single world government, monitoring every network
| link, and a ban on encryption in the near future, it's
| unreasonable to expect the "rights" being discussed to
| materially impact you.
|
| Maybe you work in advertising, and this does actually affect
| some number in a quarterly report.
| epgui wrote:
| This just sounds to me like you don't know a whole lot about
| the philosophy of law and you think it's not worth learning or
| thinking about.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes. It's my computer, my screen, my power, my network
| connection. I will choose which content I wish to view using my
| resources. I don't wish to view ads, especially the kind of
| intrusive, annoying ads that are predominant today. If they
| were simple banners that didn't try to interupt my use of the
| site and tax my CPU and network I probably would care a lot
| less.
|
| If a site doesn't like those terms, fine. I'll find my content
| elsewhere.
| simion314 wrote:
| I can't find the original source, but there are many articles
| that claim that FBI recommends ad blockers, the ad networks made
| the internet unsafe so we need to setup ad blockers on our and
| our family computers.
| josefresco wrote:
| This piqued my interest and _lo and behold_ they do!
|
| "Use an ad blocking extension when performing internet
| searches. Most internet browsers allow a user to add
| extensions, including extensions that block advertisements.
| These ad blockers can be turned on and off within a browser to
| permit advertisements on certain websites while blocking
| advertisements on others."
|
| https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Unfortunately devs don't get a vote, we're just too much of a
| minority. Remember IE6? It took google literally firing all guns
| to de-throne it, and they did it because they injected a message
| with every google search to use chrome.
|
| Unfortunately... i don't know what we can do, even if the entire
| dev community gives google the finger.
| IlliOnato wrote:
| In Europe, Firefox usage was 30-40% (depending on a country)
| before Chrome has arrived.
| syndacks wrote:
| They have an advertisement begging for money at the top of the
| page.
| syndacks wrote:
| Please fsfe.org, I'm dying to know more about "The right not to
| be advertised to"
| userbinator wrote:
| IMHO this is just a small part of a bigger struggle -- the right
| to use the browser of your choice (and thus one that also
| presents content the way you want), and by extension, the rest of
| your software and hardware environment.
| Dwedit wrote:
| Right to use Adblockers also means the remote server has the
| right to force you to download and display the ads as a condition
| of getting the content.
|
| Thus begins the arms race. The client can simulate all that
| happening, but ultimately not actually present the ads to the
| user (possibly including a blank screen with a timer for enforced
| video ads).
|
| Then the server starts forcing client attestation to make sure
| their scripts run in a trusted environment.
|
| Gets really messy really quick.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| My go-to analogy:
|
| I subscribe to a magazine. It has ads. I pay my butler to cut out
| the ads. Is that illegal? Now I have a robot butler doing the
| exact same thing. Is that illegal?
|
| The web server is serving you content. Your ad blocker is a robot
| butler cutting the ads out of the documents you're receiving.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Yup. If you reverse the situation it gets even harder to
| define. Ie to say you're not allowed to automate your avoidance
| of ads seems to bundle your consumption of content with your
| attention to ads.
|
| How much attention are we required to give these ads? How much
| annoyance in bypassing them is required? Are we only allowed to
| walk away from the TV to avoid ads? etc
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Not only are you expected to put up with the ad, you're
| expected to put up with your personal data being sent to
| hundreds/thousands of third parties whenever someone wants to
| show you an ad.
| userbinator wrote:
| Indeed, either muting and doing something else or changing
| the channel was a common thing to do back when TV was an
| actual tube.
|
| From a similar era, it's also worth noting that some VCRs had
| automatic "adblocking" (pause recording, and resume once the
| ad breaks were over.)
|
| Personally, I think it boils down to: my eyes, my brain. I
| shouldn't be compelled to effectively lose the right to close
| my eyes when I want to.
| IlliOnato wrote:
| The magazine is given to you for free, you don't pay for it.
| The magazine is able to detect that your butler is cutting out
| the ads. The magazine decides it does not want to send you its
| issues any more. Is that illegal?
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Neither one should be illegal. Not every conflict needs the
| court system to resolve it.
| phailhaus wrote:
| At the end of the day, you have no "right" to a site's content.
| You have the right to use an adblocker, and a site that depends
| on its revenue has the right to refuse to serve you.
| lolinder wrote:
| Yes, that's what the court ruled:
|
| > While user freedom means that users are able to use the tools
| that they wish to when browsing the World Wide Web, the court
| nevertheless preserved Axel Springer's right to exclude users
| with an activated adblocker from accessing its content. This
| can be understood as an approval on the use of adblock
| detection tools by companies like Axel Springer.
|
| This sounds fine to me. If you want to put your content on the
| internet for all to see, great, but I'm not going to let my
| browser render the ads that you suggest that it render. If you
| want to put the content behind a paywall or otherwise block ad
| blockers, fine, I'll pay if it's worth my money or I won't if
| it's not. But I'm not going to turn my ad blocker off just
| because content publishers whine about it.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I'd happily put up with banner ads on websites, it's the
| mechanism that serves that ad that I find contentious and is
| the reason I personally use an ad blocker.
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| How you choose to render bits that are served to you is as
| fundamentally your right as whether you choose to leave your eyes
| open, or read text that has been put in front of you.
|
| Moreover, your right to not be spied on for you browser
| configuration is the same as your right to not have your irises
| tracked. This isn't even close.
| Havoc wrote:
| This feels off to me. I feel entitled to use an adblocker, but I
| also feel the site should be entitled to make corresponding
| choice their side.
|
| The reality is much of the web is ad funded, so some sort of ugly
| compromise is necessary. Allowing both sides to do as they please
| seems more fair than holding a gun to corporates head and telling
| them no.
|
| That said I reckon news is an exception - it's way too
| centralized and way to crucial to democracy to let all the big
| news orgs move as a unit. The way they all moved as a unit & some
| lead the charge on paywalls knowingly taking a hit felt way too
| coordinated for my liking.
| Conscat wrote:
| All respect to Michael Larabel's reporting itself, but opening a
| Phoronix article and seeing a dozen ad embeds which constitute
| most of the page weight is a frequent reminder to me that I live
| in heck.
| samstave wrote:
| If I cannot use an ad-blocker, then I should be able to have a
| perfect measurment of what % of my bandwidth, for which I pay
| for, is consumed by ads, and then charge them a fee for resource
| utilization, convenience fee, fcc annoyance fee, corrupt-packet
| fee and dropped-packet waste of resource fee, and congestion fee.
| lee wrote:
| I'm totally fine with this.
|
| Content is paid with your eyeballs or with money. If you're not
| willing to pay with your eyeballs, then you shouldn't get the
| content. I think that's fair.
|
| In China where copyright laws aren't enforced, there's simply no
| economic incentive for producers to create content...let's not go
| there.
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(page generated 2023-12-21 23:00 UTC)