[matheusmoreira]

> Built-in ad-blocking

Definitely enjoying this trend. I think Brave was the first to do it, and now Kagi is doing it too in their own browser.

The web without adblocking is so unusable it might as well be considered broken. Ad blockers are the new popup blockers: they should be built into the browsers themselves as first class features. Only conflicts of interest prevented that. Couldn't trust a company funded by Google to maintain an ad blocker. I'm so glad alternatives are showing up.

[tjpnz]

Not only unusable, it's an outright security risk. Even the purportedly less scammy ad networks like Google sell ads to scammers and malware developers.

[mrngld]

You're right. My elderly mom has fallen victim, or nearly fallen victim at least, to tons of ads or sponsored spots served within Facebook, which are a bit harder to block. They can also outrun DNS-based block lists, probably because LLM's are allowing crooks to move faster and be more prolific.

I actually started making an LLM-powered browser extension that I thought could read the page and determine if it passed a smell test and block it if it didn't meet some strict criteria I'd set for her, but I didn't get very far before I became too concerned about prompt injection. Wanted to do the same on her e-mail, because gmail's built in filters sometimes let her down, but same concern. Prompt injection there may be trivial as well.

[MrMember]

I used to read the games site Rock Paper Shotgun. At some point they decided they were going to block everyone who blocked ads. There were ways around it but the writing had gone downhill so I chose to stop reading it entirely. A few months later I saw they had issued an apology for serving malware through their ads.

I will never, ever, under any circumstances stop using an adblocker.

[deaton]

Its been a while since I've seen an ad on Youtube since I got premium, but I remember, at least for a while, every ad on there was a scam. At some point I think Google realized nobody would stop them, so they just started accepting anyone who wanted to advertise with them.

[c16]

As an ad-blocker user for years, I agree. On the flip side, how do blogs, news, and every day ad-serving websites survive without them? If it dies, it dies? Maybe this is not a discussion for here right now. But it's definitely something I've thought of. Not everyone want to pay for news.

[shevy-java]

> On the flip side, how do blogs, news, and every day ad-serving websites survive without them? If it dies, it dies?

I heard that argument many times before, and to this I can only say: if your revenue model is based on pestering real humans, you need to go extinct. So if they die that is great. The sooner we can get rid of companies that build their existence on pester-harassing people, the better. The days of infiltrating people's minds via ads are over - these companies just have not realised that yet. I live a 100% ad-free life (ok, that's not really possible, since sometimes I still see ads, but I strive towards that ideal - the sooner companies that rely on ads go extinct, the better, and the more they complain, the more convinced I am that they must go extinct today rather than tomorrow).

[JumpCrisscross]

> how do blogs, news, and every day ad-serving websites survive without them?

Same as they do now. The quality ones charge for their content. The low-quality ones survive on serving ads to the masses.

[Rebuff5007]

There is a third option, that the content does not need to be monetized.

[mrngld]

Full time journalists do in fact enjoy eating like the rest of us.

[Rebuff5007]

The parent comment mentioned "blogs" and "everyday websites."

Do you want to make a case for why exactly a percentage increase calculator app needs ads?

[armadyl]

More like the quality ones get their content ripped and viewed for free with tools like archive.is or people just posting the full text in comments on this forum even.

Subs only aren’t viable for publications with full staff imo

[JumpCrisscross]

> the quality ones get their content ripped and viewed for free with tools like archive.is

This is increasingly blocked by investigative outlets, particularly niche ones. It eventually filters through to folks who won’t or can’t pay. And for most people, that’s fine—they don’t need detailed and timely news.

[neodymiumphish]

I want to pay good sites for their content, but I don't think it's economical to expect a subscription from every semi-regular reader.

I'd like for the internet to settle on some sort of micro-transaction system where your browsing history pays out a fraction of a penny each time you browse to a site, so as long as you maintain a balance in your wallet, you can browse the web ad-free across all the sites that support the transaction system.

[JumpCrisscross]

> micro-transaction system

Doesn’t make sense commercially or socially. If you’re dabbling in specialist content, you’re fine waiting for it to filter out through ad-funded sources. The information density will be lower. And timing, too. But the whole point of the subscription is you have a stable base of financing and a committed community of knowledgeable people (likely in positions of power).

And practically speaking, the archive.is workarounds sort of are the solution for dabblers. It just taxes your time instead of wallet, which seems fair.

[tensor]

> Not everyone want to pay for news.

People want things for free. Too bad. Nothing is really free. Either you pay for it, have ads, or have your taxes pay for it as part of public media. Personally, I'd like to see forced ads banned. Having ads that the user can come to see is fine (e.g. I'm looking for a product and I want to browse pitches, totally fine). That means that yes, we need a way where news can get paid. Most big news companies already offer paid tiers, they just continue to shove ads even then.

[lesostep]

I know few web sites that has unblockable ads. Mostly nerdy themed websites that has relationship with small nerdy webstores. They just host the ad themselves and it's a part of the site.

It's cheaper for a webstore to pay one good website personally, and people trust ads like that a lot more. It's almost like a personal recomendation from the team curating knowledge base.

And no ad trackers, plus quicker website, win/win|win situation for everybody

[dzonga]

ads are not bad. if it's publisher ads/native ads.

the bad ad ecosystem is where there's whole demand, supply side platforms and ad exchanges that mine and sell your data.

now there's better tech to do native ads without the intrusion and massive bad experience.

you're reading some article about EV's - then boom the publisher themselves can serve you a small ad - not serve you an ad about weight loss or viagra or any other shit stuff.

[Altern4tiveAcc]

> ads are not bad.

Highly debatable, IMO. They're already a net negative for society on their own. We'd probably have a healthier Internet if ads didn't create incentives for social media companies to get their users addicted to serve them more ads.

[dzonga]

remove the internet - forget the internet didn't exist.

you will see why the publishing business runs on ads. see the world for what it is not what you want it to be.

once people started publishing books or whatever in the 1600s - the world runs on ads.

it's only in the last 30 years - when ads got a bad rap due to tech bros who don't didn't learn humanities

[lesostep]

>> once people started publishing books or whatever in the 1600s - the world runs on ads.

I remember seeing old books (early victorian era) that were printed with healthy "subsidize" from the ad revenue. They honestly looked very much alike any site without ad blocker looks now. And I had the feeling that some content of the book was sponsored as well. Kept mentioning specific shops by name.

I wonder what did we do right, to stop books from looking like that? Maybe it could help us fix internet issues.

[akersten]

> it's only in the last 30 years - when ads got a bad rap due to tech bros who don't didn't learn humanities

LOL, I take it you never saw the "doctors recommend Camel cigarettes" ads.

Advertising is a plague.

[Altern4tiveAcc]

>remove the internet - forget the internet didn't exist.

Advertising as it exists today is tied to the Internet.

> you will see why the publishing business runs on ads.

And I maintain that tying business interests with advertising inevitably results in a conflict of interest between people producing goods and services, and people consuming them.

>it's only in the last 30 years - when ads got a bad rap

It's only natural that ads started being viewed in a more negative way as their effects were amplified by tech.

> due to tech bros who don't didn't learn humanities

Name calling doesn't add much to this discussion. My background is in humanities anyway.

[dzonga]

my apologies if you felt I was name calling you.

I was putting it out as a generality - that most engineers/founders have no background in humanities. hence they don't tend to use 'logic' to make decisions that involve humans. when 'logic' doesn't work.

[II2II]

> now there's better tech to do native ads without the intrusion and massive bad experience .... the publisher themselves can serve you a small ad

This has always been possible and, from my recollections, was how some early online advertising was done. (I don't know if it was ever the dominant model, but it was certainly more common.)

I suspect the difficulty connecting content providers with advertisers is the root of them problem. After that, it takes effort to maintain that relationship. Having a third party handle everything is simply easier, especially for smaller web sites and smaller companies who want to advertise.

[matheusmoreira]

> ads are not bad

Ads are noise deliberately added to the signal. They're content you did not seek out and probably don't want. All advertisements are inherently untrustworthy: they're getting paid to sell you something, naturally they will exaggerate the positives and downplay the negatives. Conflicts of interest doesn't even begin to describe it.

That's the charitable interpretation. One could describe advertising as mind rape. You don't consent to it, you don't want it. They just keep trying to forcibly insert the data into your mind anyway. You block them, they bypass your blocker, which arguably makes them malware as well.

They feel entitled to our cognition, memories, attention. They think it's theirs to sell off to the highest bidder. They make it even harder for people with attention deficit to concentrate by trying to forcibly grab their attention. It's not only an accessibility problem, it's also a form of aggression, which makes uBlock Origin a form of justified self-defense.

[tensor]

100% agree. Everyone is susceptible to ads, even if few believe it. The ad pushers know it. It's a form of information warfare, not simply business. If I'm looking for a product and ask a vendor to give me pitch, great. But if I'm doing something else and vendor propaganda is forced on me interrupting my task, that's not ok in any way.

[dzonga]

If I put out a native ad - uBlock Origin won't work on it. since it's just an html <p> tag or any other element.

the ad industry at large has caused damage - for you to think ads are not beneficial and intrusive or mind rape as you call it - through excessive mining, data selling.

but like an example - I gave - there's an article about cars - and in there there's a text item that says BMW or Cadillac has released a new V8 or electric sedans. if you're a car enthusiast that's relevant to you, if you're not - it's still information that maybe a year down the line - you might find relevant.

not logical but it works. and that's what runs the world - whether you like it or not. see the world as it is.

[matheusmoreira]

> If I put out a native ad - uBlock Origin won't work on it. since it's just an html <p> tag or any other element.

It absolutely will. I routinely block all sorts of elements on pages. If I think your <p> is annoying, it will get zapped with extreme prejudice.

> there's an article about cars - and in there there's a text item that says BMW or Cadillac has released a new V8 or electric sedans

That's just normal information. I don't consider it advertising. Users go to the site to read about cars, they're getting exactly what they wanted.

If I go to the market, it's because I want to see the products. If I open the app, it's because I want to see the offerings. If I come to HN, it's because I want to see submissions and comments.

In these cases, it's not advertising, it's the exact information I requested. It becomes advertising if they pay money to shove the products into my face while I'm trying to read a programming blog.

> not logical but it works. and that's what runs the world - whether you like it or not. see the world as it is.

Yeah, well the world sucks, the world is wrong and I'll fight it. I couldn't care less how much money they lose. My mind is sacred, and I don't have memory to waste on brands, slogans and jingles.

There is absolutely nothing stopping people from literally banning advertising. It's a very simple policy decision. People just have to develop the audacity to demand it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa

https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...

[dzonga]

so when you come to HN - and there's a story on the 1st Page about a YC company hiring - that you can't comment on - but just click.

to you is that an AD ?

for all contexts and purposes it's an ad. is it intrusive ? no. that's just a native ad. are you gonna zap it ? most times - just leaving it there makes sense than going through the effort of using the ublock origin picker.

[WarmWash]

>You don't consent to it, you don't want it.

By viewing ad supported content, you are inherently agreeing to see ads. That is the product being sold. If you don't want to see ads, don't load the content. It's very simple and plainly understandable.

People using all manner of backdoor techniques to sidestep the parts that they don't want, kills the demand to create a product they do want.

So rather than a paywalled news org that has no ads on the other side of the wall, we have ublock origin and archive.is

[matheusmoreira]

> By viewing ad supported content, you are inherently agreeing to see ads.

I agree to absolutely nothing, least of all "inherently". Following a link to a website gives exactly no one the right to assault me with advertising. If they try, I will defend myself with every single technology at my disposal.

> That is the product being sold.

Not a single thing is being sold here. Browsers make requests, servers can decide whether to reply or not. They're the ones who send web pages to anyone who asks for free.

They do so under the assumption that we'll look at the ads they bundled with the pages. We're under exactly zero obligation to validate that assumption.

If they want money, they should charge people directly. If they send us ads, we'll delete them.

> If you don't want to see ads, don't load the content.

I'm under no obligation to "not load" anything whatsoever. Browsers make requests, that's how the web works. If they reply with free web pages, I'm only too happy to consume them. If they don't like it, they're free to return HTTP 402 Payment Required.

> It's very simple and plainly understandable.

Apparently not, since you believe they are "selling" web pages. They're making a bet that giving us free web pages loaded with ads will pay off. They're not entitled to win that bet.

> People using all manner of backdoor techniques to sidestep the parts that they don't want

As is our god given right. Nothing "backdoor" about it either.

If someone hands me a magazine for free, I'm not obligated to look at the ads to "pay them back" or anything of the sort. In fact I can just rip out the ad pages and throw them in the trash, where they belong, and then fully enjoy my free gift.

[WarmWash]

Ok, I follow.

Now why doesn't that logic apply to roadside farm stands?

Really I'd just like a general rule that we can apply to any [value transaction] to determine when compensation for that value is optional.

So I can quickly evaluate that I should leave money for the produce I take, but I optionally can leave money for the articles I read. Or perhaps roadside stands are fair game for "they could put a lock and on door and a phone to the house if they want compensation for their goods"?

[janandonly]

We should revive the micro payments feature that where built into very early browsers.

It didn’t catch on back then. But time are changing.

[Kye]

I don't remember that, though I only started with early Netscape. Do you have more detail?

[ihateolives]

It wasn't in Mosaic either so I have no idea where they took that fact from.

[c16]

pretty sure the guy from TPB had a micro-payments/donation startup around the time when everyone was using Facebook like buttons on their websites.

[Kye]

That was a decade after anything I would think of as early browsers, much less very early browsers.

[LukaD]

> We should revive the micro payments feature that where built into very early browsers.

I don't think this was ever a thing. I know there's HTTP 402 and before 2000 there were some standards around payment being pursued but AFAIK nothing ever made it into browsers. Or am I missing something?

[Itoldmyselfso]

Paywalling with extremely easy, one-click payment of very small amount might work. Paywalling does still incentivize things like misleading, sensationalized click-bait titles, but that's pretty much the norm everywhere.

Alternatively, if there was a subscription that covered a massive amount of blogs/news bundled into one low-cost subscription, that might also work. What I heavily doubt is if donation-based micropayments will ever find enough users to remain profitable.

[WillAdams]

Well, Ted Nelson wanted that w/ Xanadu and Autodesk spent a fair bit of money on that....

[neodymiumphish]

Not donation-based.

If you have a wallet configured to pay a microtransaction for each day you browse to a certain site (of for x # of page loads, although that could incentivize strange web site behavior to increase the number of pages a reader goes to while they visit), then your wallet pays the small payment when you first browse to the page and you get an ad-free experience.

Otherwise, ads or a subscription paywall, depending on how the site wants to manage revenue.

[shawnwall]

I believe that was an intent/goal of BAT in Brave.

[bigfishrunning]

And it was a fine goal, but BAT did so many shady things (like blocking ads but then showing brave's own ads), and the PR poison that is anything cryptocurrency, meant that it was ultimately doomed to fail.

[carlosjobim]

It has never worked and will never work. What has been proven to work is syndication, ie putting a giant amount of content behind a single paywall. Like Spotify, Netflix, Cable TV, other streamers do. Text publishers could easily do that if they wanted to. But it needs to be extremely broad, and not decided by ideological leanings or snobbery and such.

[azertify]

I can see Substack attempting this, and being opt-in for publishers. But I can't imagine this being good for independent publishers.

[Saris]

It's a tough question, I would be fine with ads if they were relevant to the content I'm looking at, minimal (ie; no motion, popups, covering up content), actually checked for safety so all the scam and phishing ads went away, and checked for performance so they didn't slow down a website so it's barely usable.

Maybe if adblockers become more widespread that will start to happen, right now ad networks seem to just allow anything.

Like if I'm reading a cooking article and there's an add to the side for some cooking gadgets or something like that, sure why not!

[WillAdams]

I would be fine with a mode where the ads were corralled at the bottom of the page, but not loaded, with a disclosure triangle which would then allow me the option of viewing them if the content was credible enough that it seemed to me that the site content creators could be trusted to have signed up for ads which might have merit.

[armadyl]

99.9% of people would not intentionally enable ads even if they liked the content this is an insanely unrealistic option.

[Gareth321]

When I look a decade ahead, I think the advertiser internet model is going to die. People won't be using search engines anymore. They'll be using LLMs. They won't be reading blogs anymore. They'll be asking their LLMs. They won't be looking at review or recipe or travel sites anymore. They'll ask their LLMs.

Of course this creates second order effects. If no one ever views the ads on the review and recipe sites, those sites will disappear. Then what do the LLMs reference? Parametric knowledge? Google is trying to get ahead of this with "Google Zero:" an internet in which one never leaves Google because they cache and serve everything a user could ever want. All stolen from other websites, of course.

I hope we end up back at the internet of the 90s. Small, unmonitised hobby spaces. Unfortunately bots will be 99% of all internet traffic within a few years, so how do we protect these spaces from unsolicited spam, disinformation campaigns, trolling, etc? We might actually go and touch some grass and re-learn how to socialise in person. This is not a bad thing.

[midnightbobarun]

I also like the more browsers have built-in adblock, but so far I've never seen any of them copy uBlock Origin's "element picker" (the little eyedropper tool) feature... it's good for getting rid of annoying stuff on certain websites and only uBlock Origin seems to do it. :(

[antonok]

Brave has it on both desktop and mobile https://brave.com/privacy-updates/34-block-page-elements-and...

[Xerox9213]

I also think it’s interesting that Ladybird is decidedly not including ad blocking, but leaving it to third party extensions. In some ways it makes a lot of sense to keep doing it that way.

[antonok]

Ladybird is natively integrating Brave's adblock engine https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/pull/9587

[shevy-java]

> Couldn't trust a company funded by Google to maintain an ad blocker.

Agreed. Google can not be trusted. They once tried to run the "acceptable ads" campaign. That one died down quickly after people pointed out the hypocrisy by Google. Nowadays it seems nobody likes Google anymore, so it is much easier to reject its various rubbish claims. See also how Google is waging war against ublock origin.