> Progress will be defined by decreasing the amount of obnoxious advertising, until we see that there is no progress and this is all talk.
uBlock Origin does a good job of that :).
> I do enjoy that both sides are trying to improve the situation, but I still feel like the ad industry has yet to acknowledge that they are the root cause of the problem.
Exactly. And I don't see the advertising industry as 'trying to improve the situation' they are reacting to loss of revenue due to ad blocking.
> How many payments from Comcast to New York Times happen per year? Hint, the number rhymes with buck mall.
I'm not good at rhymes and I have no fucking clue. Riddle my fiddle.
> Or, it's to inform you about the stuff that's out there. It's all perspective.
That's fucking cute.
> There's no one on the other side right now - ABP is at least bringing the people to the table.
What side? ABP isn't bringing anyone anywhere, they take kickbacks from companies like google in order to not block ads.
> If you don't like it, then turn on and pay for Google Contributor (see earlier disclosure about my employer) and then no ads AND the site you visits actually get paid.
Really? A google employee telling me to pay for google contributor? Bud, 'If you don't like it', you can tickle my ballsack. Rofl.
If you want to go that route, then none of the advertising companies, or companies that make money from advertising are providing the content either. There are several steps before the content comes from some person's mind to your computer, the ISP is one of those steps.
> Care to explain how this is backwards progress and lifts pressure on the industry?
You want me to explain how an initiative to not block a subset of ads alleviates the pressure from blocking all ads?
Seems pretty trivial to me.
> This is a company and extension that only makes it harder for the existing ad networks to continue.
Nope. They did make it harder before, when they weren't taking money from advertising companies to not hide ads, and weren't launching initiatives such as the topic of this thread.
> The fact is that advertising pays for much of the internet content you consume for free.
I've never had free internet... which ISP do you use?
> It's because of perverse incentives and a lack of regulation in the entire industry that force bad formats, fraudsters, malware, and the pursuit of data and volume to win over quality and user experience.
The whole point of advertising is to trick people into buying shit they don't need.
> As much as I don't care for the ABP approach, it's something that can be used to actually make progress and that's what this is, progress.
This is a step backwards, not progress.
> It's finally some outside pressure on the industry to change from the segment of the advertising mechanism that matters most - the people themselves.
Bullshit. This is a way of lifting the pressure on the industry, and this initiative is mostly supported by players in the industry. Not the people.
> most of us agree that there is no level of groping that's acceptable; whereas I _think_ that, even among those of us who would like a web with no ads, the position that there is no level of advertising that's acceptable is extreme.
Holy shit, could you not come up with a more loaded and ambiguous way of trying to justify ads?
> Nonetheless, since some people do use it, surely this divestiture from a conflict of interest is a good thing, even if it's not perfect.
What are you talking about? Google literally pays ABP to not block some of their ads.
I can't really think of any good forms of 'security through obscurity'. Is the elimination of buffer overflow vulns and sql injections a form of obscurity? Is SSL a form of obscurity?
> There's no way around the need for moderator intervention on a site like HN—the clue is in the word 'moderator' itself: left to its own devices the system runs to extremes and it needs a negative feedback loop to dampen it.
Then maybe the system needs to be changed?
> None of this is new information, btw. I've posted about it plenty over the years and am always happy to answer questions.
Is there anything in particular that should make us trust the information you provide? You could be lying for all we know.
> What do you do with a conscript who never wanted to be there and possibly fundamentally isn't suited to military life anyway gives up? Threaten them with legal action?
In some countries, you will get punished - get assigned bathroom cleaning for a week, get assigned lots of manual labor, or your whole squad gets punished which means they will have reason to 'motivate' you themselves. You can also go to military jail and get dishonorable discharged.
Basically, there is the carrot motivation method, and then there is the stick method.
The internet existed without ads perfectly fine. You can stop spreading this FUD bullshit.
> The very vast majority are fine with advertising
Show me the data.
> standards that everyone agrees on and moves forward with will create progress
'Standards that everyone agrees on'? Hmm, you guys forgot to mail me the survey. When do I get to veto these 'standards' if I don't agree with them?