[endymi0n]

Not only that, but like the "War on Drugs" is doomed to fail, so is the "war on Ads" - or any other market in which there is significant demand.

Companies need to advertise. If they don't sell their products, they go to die.

Here's some real world impact of Adblockers: Advertorials, Fake Reviews, increasily covert forum spam and Influencer Marketing. Not to mention increasing hard work of PR agencies chiseling away at reputable sources like Wikipedia. I basically can't trust anyone on the internet anymore - and this trend will only accelerate if companies can't reach interested prospects via clearly marked ad slots anymore.

All this advertising need and money isn't going away over night if banner ads are finally gotten rid of: it will simply go somewhere else.

[ACow_Adonis]

You're right in that the "War on Ads" is an unwinnable war. But I think its more analogous to cleaning your house, or good hygiene. Its true that its a just a matter of time until your house, or yourself, will become dirty again if you don't do anything. But I don't think that's really an argument against cleaning.

Rather, its just the reality that you're never going to get down to zero.

But maybe if we put up enough of our own barriers, then our families can live in an environment with 10% of advertising influence and exposure instead of 60% or 80%. And i think that's a fight worth fighting.

I might not be able to get rid of advertising, but I can block ads, I can stop billboards going up, I can stop them advertising cigarettes/alcohol or gambling in certain times and places, and I can never let the tv shows or ghost-written books into my house. And overall, I think we'll live in a better world overall if people make the effort. Its the good fight.

As for ad-blockers being responsible for advertorials, fake reviews, forum spam and influencer marketing...lets just say it takes a massive leap of logic to turn a problem solely due to the behaviours of advertisers and try to level that at the feet of people trying to stop them. Wow.

[jbreckmckye]

It doesn't take a leap of logic at all. All it requires is some fairly simple economics.

Someone has to pay for content. You don't view ads, and you don't buy subscriptions. You also never donate. What do you think will happen next?

Well, some businesses die, but most don't. At the Guardian, we had to rely on three things:

1. We had to make about three hundred people redundant. (This is the human cost of the problem - not that some fatcat makes marginally worse dividends, but that a print worker who's done this job since 16 is now being turned out at 42)

2. We had to diversify our revenue streams. One way became 'native advertising': content sponsored by companies, like an article on the history of whiskey with a Jack Daniels badge, etc. Editorial hated this. Oh, boy, they objected. They fought in every principle and at every point available. They relented when they realized they were next for redundancies.

3. Then there were us, in commercial. Firefighting bad ads coming via the network, trying to resist JS hogging full page experiences, writing ads in the highest performing fashion we could to make the best of a bad situation. No-one liked us.

I didn't stay for long. I'd like to say I left because I was disgusted with the seediness of the ad industry, but the real reason was that the job was boring and depressing. We weren't saving the newspaper and we weren't making ads better.

Personally I think the only solution is the paywall. That's how newspapers worked for 250 years: you gave your dollar and you got your daily edition. You could trust your paper because it was more beholden to you than to any other interest. Will people accept this, though?

[gaius]

Companies need to advertise. If they don't sell their products, they go to die.

Nonsense. If I or anyone NEEDS a product or service, we'll happily go out and buy it. Ads exist purely to drive unnecessary consumption-for-the-sake-of-consumption. It's telling that even a generally capitalist, free-market demographic like HN's thinks they are a sleazy way to make money. It's not a "war on drugs" its more like a war on some disease - and those are very winnable.

[joshuamorton]

This is naive. How will you know what product to buy? And I mean this quite seriously. Where I work, there are initiatives to internally advertise tools and libraries that exist so people don't go reinventing them. For certain niches, it's not clear that a product exists unless you've seen it before.

[gaius]

This is naive. How will you know what product to buy?

This is naive. Advertisers aren't in the business of educating and informing the public. If they were most of them would say don't buy our product, you don't need it, it won't make you happy, the paid celebrity/model in our ad doesn't even use it, the people who make it don't even use it, because they know what's in it.

Like, do you think the executives at McDonalds feed their kids Happy Meals every day?

[JetSpiegel]

> Here's some real world impact of Adblockers: Advertorials, Fake Reviews, increasily covert forum spam and Influencer Marketing.

This has existed before ad-blockers and would continue to exist even if all ad-blockers disappeared overnight.

Being immoral pays more, it has nothing to do with ad-blocking.

> All this advertising need and money isn't going away over night

They could reroute that money into the products themselves. Cheaper prices, more quality, it's their choices.