[coldpie]

I host a half-dozen websites out of my own pocket with no ads. I pay for an Ars Technica subscription and don't view ads. Hacker News doesn't have ads, yet here we are. Wikipedia doesn't have ads.

I guess the world we live in is pretty magical!

[theg2]

Those are all subscription or donation (wikipedia) based examples. A lot of sites could never survive on those models or obtain the resources to manage them.

I'm all for blocking sites that abuse their users.

[Karunamon]

They all abuse their users in one way or another. Tracking me across the web? How about no?

What about distraction? Is time free now?

And that's before we get into the malware vector problems. The few tenths of a penny you got for me seeing your ad is much less than my hourly rate for cleaning up a network infected with the latest 0day du jour.

Is your (the collective your) company going to compensate me when one of your ads destroys my machine? No? Then I'm forced to conclude that you want the benefit with none of the responsibility.

The blockers stay on.

*ed I realize this comment sounds mighty dickish but I'm quite tired of advertising apologists demanding that I sacrifice my privacy, security, and time to access their all-important text. I decide if and how my computer renders a given piece of markup - if your business can't survive that, welp, not my problem. Fix your broken business model.

[wutbrodo]

I don't personally block ads, but I of course find all the arguments against tracking, malware, etc to be rather compelling, since they don't really fit any reasonable definition of consent, given many users' lack of awareness of tracking and the intentional failure of ad companies to be explicit about it.

> They all abuse their users in one way or another. Tracking me across the web? How about no? What about distraction? Is time free now?

But your comment reaches new heights of absurdity. Taking your attention is "abuse"? When you go to the store and they force you to pay for goods, is that theft and abuse? You're consuming a service for free, and the cost of that service is a modicum of attention. When we're not talking about the terms of the transaction being hidden from users, pretending that paying for services is "abuse" is frankly just pathetic. Grow up.

[Karunamon]

When I go to the store and pay for one of their goods and am injured in the store, the store is usually liable if the conditions were unsafe.

People who plaster ads up on their site and trust Google/Facebook/whoever to vet the ads for not being malware vectors are being irresponsible. Again, this respect is a two-way transaction, and the people who slap ads up on their site have demonstrated none for me.

[manigandham]

1) Tracking is not as bad as it's made out to be.

2) You have to pay something for the content: a passive ad is far more efficient and actually more private than direct payment.

3) Malware/scams/etc are an entirely different problem. That doesn't mean the model is broken, it just means that there are bad actors that need to be effectively dealt with. Otherwise we could point to any industry and say it all sucks because a few bad guys did some bad stuff.

[Karunamon]

1) We disagree.

2) No, I really don't. I didn't pay anything to access HN, or Reddit, or any of the other sites I browsed today, including ads. Somehow, the system is still working, the incessant crocodile tears of the advertising companies be damned.

3) The model is broken because this is a systemic problem, and that problem is a complete lack of vetting from the big ad networks and the sites that use them. It's entirely too easy for a random webmaster to log into Adsense/etc, get some random javascript code, slap it up on their site, and call it a day, without understanding the implications to them or their users.

With a lack of understanding comes a lack of care and/or responsibility - and without that care and responsibility, why should I hurt my privacy, attention, and security just so you can get a few pennies?

[manigandham]

Just because a single entity decides to run a forum for free (and reddit/hn are all user generated content) doesn't mean content businesses are all the same.

Again you're pointing to a model when the issue is the bad actors and the poor processes. Advertising is fine, it's the industry that needs to get better at technology and enforcing rules. Part of the problem is that this is a global industry and there's little regulation.

Publishers are getting a few pennies so they can produce content and run the site which you can visit at anytime and consume. You can choose not to go to that site - but you are still going there so there MUST be value you find there and that is what the publisher is working to be compensated for.

[coldpie]

To say nothing of the harm advertising does in general: convincing people to spend money they don't have on products they don't need, or worse, are actively harmful. Like junk food, soda, cigarettes. And then you get into the shady shit like payday loans, scam products, fake products, the list goes on...

[coldpie]

> Those are all subscription or donation (wikipedia) based examples.

That was precisely my point: there are other viable models than ad-supported.

> A lot of sites could never survive on those models or obtain the resources to manage them.

Tough shit.

[manigandham]

> Tough shit.

Not really, it might hurt in the short term but it only gets worse for users to have paywalled/closed access, which will actually lead to more ads and tracking.