"You are seeing this message because ad or script blocking software is interfering with this page"

That sounds more like BoingBoing has partnered with PACER :open_mouth:

BB can set what ever policies it wants, but the silent roll out of this massive change in ethos is pretty stunning. Iā€™d expect an advance notice of upcoming changes to manage expectations. Just throwing the switch like this seems like a serious glitch.

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Iā€™m kind of shocked there was no announcement or warning about this. Given BBā€™s anti-capitalist, anti-paywall, pro-adblock stances throughout the decades, quietly enabling this seems rather surprising and out of character.

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Hm. Given that itā€™s my most visited site ever, Iā€™d be happier with a one-off payment to BB directly than death by a thousand cuts via Google, but I imagine implementing that might have been more difficult than plugging the Google thingummy in.

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Doesnā€™t work for me in blog view.

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A heads up well ahead of time, or a post explaining whats going on wouldā€™ve been appreciated and courteous. I understand the why of the decision but i do have to question the implementation, hope that something can be done as an alternative to directly support BB that does not involve this ad pass nonsense. I have no intention of buying into such a thing.

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Sorry to hear that, it seems to be working just fine for me. Iā€™m running an update-to-date version of Firefox on Fedora Linux, so effectiveness on other versions or platforms probably varies.

FF on Ubuntu Mate w/ABP Privacy Badger and Ghostery

At the very least, Google/BoingBoing need to have an ā€œAll Accessā€ subscription for this ā€œlet us run tracking scripts and ads on your computer or pay usā€ service. People love Netflix because for a fair price you get un-metered access to decent content. The pay per page ā€œmicropaymentā€ concept has been much talked about in science fiction and IRL, but without a cap it seems like a horrific money sink with nearly unlimited capacity to suck money out of your account.

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Some advance warning might have been nice. Hey-ho.

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so long, boingboing

If itā€™s really that important, Iā€™ll put up with online casino entreaties for a bit. But as soon as I see anything resembling ā€œone trick of a flat bellyā€, I am done.

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Seems to be a Google thing. I expect to see it lots of places.

ā€œSimplify your life with one service.
Maintaining individual subscriptions with each website can be expensive and time consuming. Contributor simplifies all of that by allowing you to pay for only the pages that you view without ads. You can add many different sites to your Contributor pass, or use it only on Boing Boing.ā€

And if I read this correctly, you need to be signed in to your Google account for your pass to work.

ā€œSign in to Google (for example your gmail account) and use the web as you normally would.
When you visit a site that you have added to your Contributor pass all of the ads will be removed.ā€

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Amusingly, Privacy Badger and Ghostery appear to block the 2 sidebar ads still, itā€™s just the ones under the articles on the clickthroughs I see with ABP off.

Since this pay or be (more) tracked thing is a Google Service, I suspect that even if you pay per page to skip ads you will still see Stack Social/BoingBoing Store ā€œnative advertisingā€/ā€œadvertorialā€ posts and tracked Amazon Affiliate links. If that is the case it will be like Hulu, where you pay and still have to see ads.

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So itā€™s be tracked with ad scripts or pay to be even more tracked by signing in to Google. This seems antithetical to what I learned I should be comfortable with from reading about privacy and tracking on BoingBoing.

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Nah, iā€™d rather BB just have a native paid sub. I would rather not involve Goggle in the first place. Iā€™d throw 10-20 bucks for the year and not have to see a single ad and support the site, and not have to go through these 3rd party tracking/ad BS.

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I guess thatā€™s why we also have to allow google.analytics to see all our details when using NoScript. I allow lots of scripts but not google.analytics if I can help it.

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BBā€™s front page without an ad-blocker is terrible with its auto-play videos that follow you as you scroll and thereā€™s so many trackers.

If itā€™s a money thing, Iā€™d be happy to kick over a few dollars a month via Patreon to keep the site afloat. Ghod knows I use it enough. But this pay per article demand is just beyond the pale.

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And I whitelisted everything and had access ok earlier, and when I just went back to the main blog it blocks me with the nag screen again. I have no idea what else I need to turn off. BIG FAIL, BoingBoing.

ETA I turned ā€˜https Everywhereā€™ off and the nag went away. Really, BB? REALLY???

10 Likes