[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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-12-21 23:00 UTC)