Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by zactato 2560 days ago
Serious question. We all realize that the economics of the internet is largely fueled by ads, so why are we so keen to block them? It’s ad revenue that have allowed technology to flourish so strongly over the last two decades.
7 comments
dsswh 2560 days ago
Not long ago, the economy was largely fueled by slavery. Yet we got rid of that.
link
layoutIfNeeded 2560 days ago
Citation needed
link
briandear 2560 days ago
Not exactly Godwin’s law, but pretty close. Comparing advertising and marketing to the ownership of human beings? Slavery infringed on the inalienable of human beings, the existence of advertising doesn’t take away my freedom or potentially subject me to beatings.

It’s a ridiculous comparison. I am not a friend to intrusive ad-tech, but making a moral equivalence to slavery is to trivialize slavery. It’s like comparing parking tickets to the death penalty.

link
dsswh 2559 days ago
It's a valid comparison. Long ago it was ok to kill your enemy. Not long ago it was ok to have slaves. Today either is a sure way to end up in prison. Standards are rising. IT is a very new thing and the society and the laws are behind a bit. Adtech uses this to extract profit while it can. But this will end. Soon it will be a crime to store personal data: names, location, anything like that. GDPR is just the beginning. Adtech will fight, but it will lose. This business will disappear entirely, just like slave labor. In far future it will be a crime to be intrusive: any unwanted ads; and mining personal data will be seen like cannibalism today, i.e. even criminals will consider such people as freaks. Right now we are in the era of wild west in IT.
link
jancsika 2560 days ago
> Comparing advertising and marketing to the ownership of human beings?

That's not exactly what happened here.

OP repeated the beginning of a truism: "ads fund the development of the web while at the same time causing a whole host of severe problems for its users (individually and as a whole)."

OP left a hole where the italized part of the truism should be.

OP asked HN to fill that hole.

On a side devoted to tech/software, it's either low effort or bad-faith to ask others to fill a hole in such a well-known truism.

In light of this I offer up a countervailing law, "Loki's Law:"

"If you leave a Hitler-sized hole in your argument, expect it to be filled accordingly."

link
aagd 2560 days ago
I'd say it's not so much about the ads, more about the way they're delivered with all those shady tricks for tracking and fingerprinting. IMHO ad blocking is more about privacy than anything else...
link
ycombonator 2560 days ago
Ads have gotten to a point where they hamper user experience. My problem with most of the ads is the amount of js tracking junk and 3rd party A/B calls that grinds the browser to a halt.
link
cm2012 2560 days ago
Do you mind FB ads which are pretty smooth experiences?
link
ycombonator 2560 days ago
I rarely use FB. However their Ads are lightweight and pleasant to interact with but I don’t think they have an ad serving platform for publishers on the web like Google and others do. If they do I am not aware of it.
link
cm2012 2560 days ago
They don't
link
jormungand 2560 days ago
You are partially right. There are ads that are truly useful and those which are malicious, such as popunders which often include scammy pops. I use adblock to prevent the latter. There are popunder ad networks which are trying to fight against adblock by introducing "solutions" like anti-adblock, see here: https://propellerads.com/blog/anti-adblock-3-monetize-99-per...

I side with the adblock solutions in this war.

link
pinguinFromY 2560 days ago
I would not mind contextual ads that don't get in the way of viewing the actual content a website or mobile app is offering. But no, we get huge banners that cover the whole background, pop-ups, every click opens a new tab redirecting to an ad and "hot chicks in your area". If I'm seeing an intersting ad I'll click on it by myself, don't need your help really. Conclusion: it's not the ads themselves but how they get in your way. See reddit ads, google ads. They are part of the actual content.
link
geggam 2560 days ago
Internet was a better place when the economics of the internet was driven by porn.

</2 cents>

link
mtgx 2560 days ago
Whether or not ads on the internet are good is not that clear cut. But I would say 99% of tracking is both evil and mostly useless, probably with the 1% being first-party analytics to track some very simple stuff like page views.

I'm glad Firefox is now blocking third-party trackers by default (not that I needed it for myself, but it's important for others to have this).

link