[going_to_800]

I worked in ad space 7 years ago. Companies that provide content need to get paid for the content one way or another, either paying a fee or ads, nobody can argue with this.

There needs to be an organization that imposes ad guidelines(like only specific formats, not being intrusive, etc) for both websites and ad companies. They should verify the ads/websites based on user reports and if they find something, to kick the company out.

All companies that follow those guidelines should be whitelisted by ad blockers, probably something implemented at browser level.

Otherwise is just a useless chase.

[ignoramous]

https://eyeo.com, home to the world's most installed ad-blocker, AdBlock+, has an acceptable ads policy already in place; whilst Google is trying to tackle the data-collection problem via the controversial privacy-sandbox proposal [0]. Safari [1] and Firefox [2] seem to have the right idea abt it all, whilst Brave is trying a radically new approach [3].

As for the online services needing ads to keep lights on:

1. The pervasive dragnet that the online ad-industry has birthed is a massive reason behind content-blocking.

2. Ads are freq used to spread source of malware, scareware, spyware, ransomware, fake-news among other totally unreasonable things.

3. The end-users should be free to chose what they want to view and what they don't. The service providers are free to refuse service.

4. The tracking that goes on is so covert that it seems to me that it is borderline unethical [4].

5. The online ads business is a scam [5]?

---

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20767891

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20700914

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21497488

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21525592

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336762

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13992576

[bostik]

> All companies that follow those guidelines...

If we want to push for guidelines on acceptable ads, how about starting with these?

https://bostik.iki.fi/aivoituksia/random/no-stalking.html

(Yes, I have brought these up recently elsewhere.)

[tsimionescu]

There are other alternatives. Alternative monetization schemes, such as those offered by Patreon or Twitch or Kickstarter can be found.

Also, ads can be placed teh same way they were in newspapers - the ad company would submit ads to the content creator, who would manually chose which ads to include, and where.

[going_to_800]

It's not that easy as you may think. Also, small companies won't benefit from that, nobody will submit an ad to websites with lower traffic. Besides this, there's the issue with the tracking server and so on.

[tsimionescu]

I didn't say it was easy. But perhaps it is important enough that it should even be regulated.