EnviroChem wrote:
Agreed
The only way to stop the privacy abuse is to stop communicating with organizations whose entire business model is based on intrusiveness.
The only way privacy violations will go away is if we begin treating advertising networks like spammers, in that any communication between our systems and theirs is seen as undesirable.
Black hole lists are called black hole lists for a reason. They work because they dispose of all communication from an untrustworthy party.
EnviroChem wrote:
Not as much as you think. As Wladimir found in his survey, only a small percentage of users who use ad-block are against all ads. They are simply trying to get relief from the worst ads. The thing is by the nature of who is willing to take the time to maintain filters, ad blocking tends to be an all or nothing affair.
No, he found that a minority hated the industry on matter of principle. The remainder doesn't like ads; the remainder might be willing to tolerate some. Tolerance is not the same as liking something.
The bottom line is that people who have chosen not to see advertising feel that advertising does not benefit them. They see the lost advertising as lost junk, not lost content.
ABP is like an online version of the do not call list. A person who signs up for the do not call list really does not want to be called, because that person is unwilling to buy from telemarketers. Do not call means do not call, not only call me with something good.
You have to understand that every advertiser thinks their campaign is wonderfully helpful and should always get through. Getting it through is their job.
EnviroChem wrote:
If the goal is to change the nature of ads on the Internet, 3rd party ads have to be accepted or there will be zero buy in from websites to change behavior to get white listed.
Third party ads are fundamentally incompatible with a system which assures users of respect for their privacy.
Why should we care about "changing" bad behavior when we already have an effective tool to completely isolate ourselves from their bad behavior?
On a personal level, I don't care about the privacy practices of third party ad networks as it relates to myself, because I am not exposed to such junk. Their inability to weasel onto my system means that whatever privacy invasions they have in store for me are never executed.
That problem, for me, is solved. Why should we regress back to allowing an inch and hoping they don't take a mile?
EnviroChem wrote:
For the most part you are correct. Ads can still be targeted contextually to the content of the webpage, with a certain degree of success, but these aren't as effective as microprobed ads.
The nature of intrusive advertising is not going to change. In fact, the direction of technological change, in better hardware, better software, and pervasive spying apparatuses (like Facebook) means that the problem will only grow worse.
Ad networks have to compete because the ad buyers demand it. Any ad network which truly believes in "don't be evil" will be run out of business because they can no longer compete.
We are witnessing a race to the bottom.
Intrusive advertising
WILL NEVER go away. We cannot change the intrusive behavior. All we can do is lock out the intruders.
EnviroChem wrote: track" feature will eventually force changes within the ad industry. The tracking issue goes well beyond ads. Sites track users in many different ways. I'd bet most sites have Google Analytics code on them and bigger sites can track repeat users to a certain degree with internal cookies as well as server logs.
No, it won't. Privacy intrusions don't happen but for a fundamental lack of respect for users by advertisers.
Even if DNT gets legal backing from the government (or, more specifically, every government in the world, because the Internet is global), advertisers will still be looking for ways to game the system.
DNT operates on the honor system; the problem is that the counterparty has no honor.
EnviroChem wrote:
Agreed.
If ABP is no longer loyal to users, first and foremost, and to the exclusion of other loyalties, then how can users trust it?
EnviroChem wrote:
This goes back to what Wladimir's objectives are. If he is simply providing an addon to users, then you are correct. If on the other hand he wants to use ABP as a social engineering tool to clean up the Internet in general by giving websites a reason to use unobtrusive ads, then this option has to be opt-out in order to get the critical mass needed to provide sufficient incentive for advertisers to change. ABP also must have a big enough percentage of all users on the Internet for advertisers to feel the pain of being blocked. If only a few percent of all users are blocking ads, then this option might not have the critical mass to make it worthwhile for websites to use less intrusive ads.
Philosophical objectives should take second priority to meaningful, informed consent.
If ABP is a social engineering tool then users have no reason to trust it.
If ABP exists to empower users to take back control of their own browsers then it must put user respect at the forefront of its principles.
Read the mission statements and manifestos from the big FOSS community projects.
You will find user control as the first and foremost goal.
The ABP project should adopt a policy of "do no harm." This means opting in to the ads, given the many examples in this thread of people who don't know enough to make an informed decision to opt out.
Expecting a computer novice to understand the dangers and pitfalls of advertising is like expecting an eight year old to understand the dangers of cigarettes. There is plenty of precedent for why it is right to protect individuals from harm they do not understand.
EnviroChem wrote:
The vast majority of users don't understand how modern advertising works, nor of the privacy implications. Given the way people sign up for sites like Facebook they don't seem to care either. Nobody with the slightest bit of concern about privacy would ever sign up on Facebook, but it is the most popular site on the Internet.
This is why they should be protected.
The vast majority of eight year olds don't understand the harms of cigarettes or their addictive nature, thus we have determined it is a good idea to prohibit selling cigarettes to eight year old children.
Those who understand the issues at hand generally take a negative opinion. Some geeks suck it up and deal with Facebook anyway, but they aren't thrilled about how that company does business.
EnviroChem wrote:
This could be changed legislatively and with massive social pressure with the help of organizations like Mozilla.
No, it won't.
They will never show respect for privacy.
The most we will get is a respect for the consequences of breaking the law, which means they will always be looking for loopholes and ways to return to the glory days of profiling people.
If they don't respect people now, when they have full power to choose between right and wrong, the respect will not be there even if the law forces them to behave differently.
The intrusive and aggressive nature of advertising doesn't come into being without the efforts of people who view users as some sort of undignified, depersonalized collective livestock (generally called "consumers"). Given the freedom to do what they want, they have shown that, in their hearts, they don't care about us, and only seek to profile and manipulate us. That is evidence of their fundamentally dishonest nature and utter lack of regard for the feelings of users.
EnviroChem wrote:
Wikipedia is a bad example because for the most part its information was gleamed by contributors "researching" information from other sites. In my case I had to submit DMCA take down notices for several articles the Wikipedia contributors lifted from my site and submitted as their own work. Nonprofit sources still need a source of revenue to produce quality content. The Internet would be a pretty barren place if it could only rely on those who are willing to produce content and/or provide services without some form of compensation. The Internet is no different than the real world, people still need to be compensated for their efforts so that they can live. People will first spend their labor and efforts on endeavors that makes them a living.
Wikipedia is an excellent example, but that is beside the point.
Nobody is arguing for a communist Internet completely devoid of money and commerce. What we want is for the abuse to stop, and stopping that requires completely blocking out entities which are inherently abusive.
Just as perverts objectify women as being only useful for sex, advertisers objectify users as being only useful for money. They don't want to solve our problems, they want to empty our wallets. You are not a human being to them - you are a walking wallet.
The Internet has too much content, with most of that cheap, worthless, low-grade content having been produced to generate ad impressions. Google results are polluted. "Review" sites shill for the products they advertise. The quality of news is on the decline. Articles get broken into 8 pages and picture galleries which should be on a single page now require 25 different clicks. Idiots churn out garbage splogs to pollute our search results. Serious topics, like human sexuality, have become completely drowned out by commercialized noise.
You will need to search hard for objective advice on certain topics, like home loans, because the constant shrieks of marketers have come to dominate the conversation.
Objective reviews? Forget about it. There is much more money to be made hawking everything as the latest and greatest.
Email was the first casualty of the culture of advertising. Email began to wane in usefulness once advertisers figured out that a spam spewer could crank out 100,000 worthless advertising messages in the time it took a human to compose one meaningful email.
Advertising is the linchpin which holds all this together. If advertising takes a huge hit, the money which incentivizes much of the junk and noise dries up.
EnviroChem wrote:
Unfortunately you are right about this. I'm sure I could be much more successful if I were willing to employ more dubious methods to monitorize my site and drive traffic to it.
This is a natural consequence of the culture of advertising.
The root cause is the advertising, not the people who use blockers to get away from it.
Sites will continue to write puff pieces hawking products on which they receive commission as long as that is a viable business model. The rest of us not participating in that racket must sift through the hopelessly biased sites to find a real review, which usually comes from a forum for enthusiasts. I have a lot more trust in a 16 year old kid posting his folding and encoding scores - because he loves his rig - than I do in a commercial site who gets free gear, sings the praises of their free gear, then collects a paycheck selling that gear to those without ad blockers.
EnviroChem wrote:
At least the smaller sites have a means to survive. However, I agree that having the means to monitorize these small sites controlled by a couple big companies is not good for society. I sorely wished there was more viable choices of ad providers to choose from.
As I pointed out above, we're better off if a lot of the smaller sites don't survive.
The ones we want to survive are those written out of passion, not the need to churn out cheap content to make next month's rent.
Online advertising will always be dominated by big companies. The features demanded by ad buyers can't be efficiently delivered at smaller economies of scale.
EnviroChem wrote:
Website hosting costs is not even a factor in running websites anymore. The biggest cost is producing good content and/or service.
What does it cost us to have this meaningful discussion about online advertising?
What does it cost an ad agency to have an intern write the top 20 reasons a business needs to advertise more?
Which contributes more intellectual capital to mankind?
EnviroChem wrote:
This is a matter of opinion that could be debated. I personally love all the free content/services on the Internet that I'm able to benefit from thanks to advertising. Beyond the Internet, advertising provides free radio and TV programs, most newspapers are mostly funded by advertising. In fact our town has a weekly newspaper that is delivered to our doorstep for free and it actually has some pretty good local stuff in it. Without advertising local papers like ours could never survive.
Advertising is not good nor bad, it is simply a tool that can be, and often is, misused.
Meatspace media is a bad example due to the much higher overhead.