Becoming more and more obligatory for BB posts that talk a good game, but walk really lame:
Privacy Badger detected 23 potential trackers on this page.
I use Privacy Badger (obviously). FOSS anything whenever possible (plenty of stuff on F Driod). DNS66. Firefox Focus. Duck Duck Go’s Privacy Browser. uBlock Origin. Donate to EFF whenever I have extra cash on hand (actually, I’d love to give them all a big hug.) Currently moving away from Chrome on desktop. Longer range plans include ditching Google anything and everything. Don’t even remember what else I “use” at this point. Still, the ads come, tho I can’t image what the web is like on a system w/ no blockers of any sort.
Explain to me how EME is going to be used to serve ads in any way, outside of ads in protected media?
The idea of trying to use DRM (and all the code and license infrastructure that goes along with it) to support an ad network is absolutely ludicrous. Not to mention EME is concerned with media elements, not the underlying container elements, so adblockers will function the same way as always: by not loading the parts of the page that display them.
This story is just an EFF solicitation pretending to be actual content. On the topic of ad-blocking and EME, if it was possible to use DRM to prevent ad blocking, I’m sure Boing Boing would be doing it. As others have pointed out, their advertising is pretty invasive if you don’t have an adblocker, which means they’re counting on the revenue stream from it.
The risk of malware-infected ads is enough to justify adblockers on its own. (Yeah, I got a rootkit on my laptop that way-- it got fixed, but until then, it was basically a pretty brick.)
But for those of us who do a lot of browsing on mobile, adblockers serve another purpose. Ads gobble up massive amounts of data, especially animated/video ads. To avoid overages, I got my first blocker, and it made a significant difference in usage from the moment I turned it on.
For my phone, I use AdGuard with Disconnect; they work pretty well together. My Kindle’s AdGuard has DNS request blocking, and it’s been amazing seeing how many entries the logs list.
(I try not to leave websites in the lurch; I make affiliate purchases when I can, and I’d gladly pay a small subscription fee for my favorites, like the BBS.)
I don’t mind a few ads providing they don’t interfere too much with my browsing and usually turn off the addblocker for sites I value e.g. boingboing (people gotta make a buck).
What I really hate are scripts. Take ages to load, slow everything down and god knows what half of them are for. Recently my broadband’s been like a '90s dial up.
I recommend no-script. Shuts down everything unless you allow it.
Coming to read this article I now get, on top of the usual ads, a ticker-tape for ExxonMobil anchored to the bottom of my screen. Its getting harder to not block everything here too…
I’ve noticed that on some sites where I have uBlock turned off but Privacy Badger turned on (well, Stereogum specifically) that I don’t get shown ads, which is odd.
Didn’t they try something like that a few months back (I’m a little hazy, something along the lines of 5c per article?), which didn’t go down too well.
Occasionally uBlock Origin will stop working briefly and I’ll have to view a page with ads and quite frankly I don’t understand how people can do it. I’ve only just found that youtube has ads floating at the bottom of the screen, as well as interstitial adverts, (these are all absent with an ad blocker). If I had to use youtube like that I think I’d just stop, or at least drastically cut down on watching things.
It’s the same with any site that just refuses to let me see a page because I’m running an adblocker/in the EU/have gone over my 5 free articles this month, I just close the tab and go on with my life.
I am all for ads because that is how most sites keep the lights on, and every so often an ad is actually relevant and useful to me.
But as of the past few weeks the ads on BB are awful. They are blocking content, auto playing, causing slow load times on the site pages itself…seriously frustrating.
I want y’all to keep the lights on, but I wish it was formatted better in terms of integration into the site.
Which is weird on many levels. BoingBoing already implemented native advertising revenue strategies that are immune to adblocking: affiliate marketing links to companies like Amazon and the BoingBoing branded StackSocial store front. So the aggressive, user hostile auto play videos are a bit of a head scratchier for me. They don’t seem on brand.
I’m a fan of the sites that put up a small banner at the bottom saying “we see you’re using an adblocker. We totally get it. Here are other ways you can support our work”. I have bought a few items at the BB store. Happy to support them that way. I’ve paid directly to individual writers, or used a quick online form to pay a few dollars toward a larger organization (the Guardian, say). On the other hand, the more intrusive the ads, the less likely I am to reward their actions by buying anything, either from the ads themselves or from the site forcing the ads on me.
In a healthy market with many content providers, this is definitely true.
In a monopoly or oligopoly providers don’t have to care about that all that much, especially if government is lobbied to create additional barriers to entry. If there would be only two providers and both required system supporting EME, there wouldn’t be an option to go elsewhere.
