[brucelidl]

I doubt that anybody on HN is unfamiliar with the standard arguments for ad blocking. I find them persuasive, particularly the need to protect oneself from the security problems inherent in the third-party adtech system we have today.

I would, however, like to add one more. In the absence of government intervention to curb the worst aspects of the Internet's "surveillance capitalism" model, the moral imperative to ad block is even greater. If everyone ad blocked, it would devastate the economic value of our tracked data. Would my data mean anything to you if you couldn't use it to market to me? (Yes, I'm sure it would still have some value, but much, much less I believe)

Everybody should ad block as aggressively as they can.

[stasilo]

^-- This, a thousand times this. The ad revenue model is what's destroying the internet; creating walled gardens and attention feedback loops, furthering the commoditization of people, simply because, if you leave, they won't be able to serve you ads. I would argue that the only morally acceptable thing to do is to block ads, not the other way 'round.

It's pure garbage, and the sooner it dies the better.

[grzm]

Sure. Are you willing to promote alternative models? Do you currently do so, such as paying subscriptions for news?

[stasilo]

Yes, I do. But I don't even consider that necessary for the "survival" of the net.

There was an internet before google/fb established the current status quo for revenue, and there will be one after. Maybe (hopefully) with less attention grabbing, utter garbage.

[grzm]

Great! I'm glad you're supporting sites you use.

And yes, there was an internet before the current ad-driven models promoted by Google and Facebook. However, the sites that were up were effectively subsidized by other business. I'm thinking primarily about media, here. Bloggers had other jobs and blogged on the side. Sites by established media were likewise side projects that were paid for by other divisions of their business, and a lot of that was income was from ads, either print or television. As those businesses have shrunk, and largely because people have been moving online for content, they no longer have the ability to pay for non-revenue generating web presences.

Please don't mistake this as some apologia for ad-based revenue models. I think the current model is largely encouraging some of the worst behavior of human psychology, as well as serious privacy concerns. However, I do think it's important to understand the the economics at play here and not dismiss these economics out of hand and recognize that this needs to be paid for somehow. Many of the people putting Google Ads on their sites or posting on Facebook aren't doing so because they want people to be tracked, for example, but they don't think they have a choice if they want to be able to support what they want to do.

I also think subscriptions do and will continue to play an important role in changing this, so I would encourage you not to dismiss them out of hand. One of the drivers for moving out of "yellow journalism" was the move from paying for each edition to the subscription model. We've seen the reverse of this with the rise of online, ad-based model. Each story has to sell itself and drive engagement, very similar to the edition-based models and tabloids.

[stasilo]

I do understand the economics at play, and I haven't dismissed the subscription model. My point of view is simply this: if you're a media outlet producing content and you can't survive on a subscription based model (or any other model) alone, and have to revert to ads (malicious, annoying ads - I'll admit there are reasonable ways to advertise, but that's not what we're talking about here) to make ends meet, then your content isn't good enough.

That's like making a terrible burger and complaining you're going out of business because people aren't buying it. Tough luck, but that's capitalism.

[krapp]

It's not the public's concern to promote alternative revenue models on behalf of businesses in return for blocking their ads - it's those business' concern to convince people to pay for their content.

They have every right to try to make money on the web, but they're trying to do so on a platform which was designed to be stateless, and which gives users arbitrary power to filter or block content and alter responses. The only reason ads on the web worked at all was that browser technology and ad blockers hadn't yet matured, and people weren't aware that blocking ads was possible. Businesses thought the web would behave like old media, only cheaper, but that's not really the nature of it.

[grzm]

> "It's not the public's concern to promote alternative revenue models on behalf of businesses in return for blocking their ads - it's those business' concern to convince people to peay for their content."

I completely agree. What I'm was pushing back at is the blanket "ad revenue model is bad and ruining the net" espoused by my parent, as opposed to the more nuanced view presented by the article and their parent. And this is an arms race: the only reason adblocking works now is that it's relatively easy to recognize what payloads are ads and which are content. Once it's more feasible for sites to load ads "natively" mixed with their own content, that will become more widespread and harder to block.

It is the public's/individual's concern to support businesses that are providing a service they provide balanced with them doing so in a way that they agree with, and also to recognize where they're receiving value whether or not they're paying for it. If people aren't willing to support subscriptions or other revenue models, they're going to get ads or nothing, either because the content is going to be paywalled or the content providers are going to be out of business. There are those that complain about paywalls, and others that complain about ads.

[krapp]

>I completely agree. What I'm was pushing back at is the blanket "ad revenue model is bad and ruining the net" espoused by my parent, as opposed to the more nuanced view presented by the article and their parent.

They're not entirely wrong, though. The ad revenue model is infeasible in my opinion first because the web doesn't provide a stable platform for it (can't guarantee viewership, can't reliably track engagement) and second because businesses approached the web unwilling or unable to apply any ethical standards to their advertising (as exist in other media) to the point that their ads are now often indistinguishable from malware.

Ad blocking on the web is really not much different than DVRs, or turning the radio volume down during ads, or any number of other ways users can avoid advertising by old media which don't directly affect revenue. But those media determine the value of advertising based on extrapolation by survey, using companies like Arbitron and Nielsen, so people tuning away don't actually matter. AFAIK, on the web, every impression matters and margins are razor thin, so the old media model breaks down when people choose to block ads, as they do in droves.

>Once it's more feasible for sites to load ads "natively" mixed with their own content, that will become more widespread and harder to block.

I think I've started to see this on Youtube. As a response to their widespread demonetization policies, content creators are starting to do more stand-up ads directly in their video, like the early days of television when they would sometimes just turn the camera around and talk about the sponsors for a few minutes. Oddly, I find that less annoying than commercial-style ads. It's often less intrusive, and can even be entertaining. As long as there's no deception involved, then I don't think it's a problem.

But most of the web isn't video, so I think paywalls or some kind of subscription service will probably work, although I suspect a lot of sites dying for lack of revenue is going to be inevitable. Of course, companies could always just see the web as one more media format and not put all of their eggs in that particular basket.

[brucelidl]

Yes, I do. I subscribe to a quite a few sites. Got anything else?

[grzm]

Great! I do, too. I agree with your thoughtful comment above, particularly as it focuses on the issues of tracking with respect to the majority of advertising on the web. There have been some attempts to decouple these two, such as the Deck: http://decknetwork.net, but they've clearly not been as successful as Google and Facebook.