HTTPSB just isn't userfriendly enough for me. I run Adblock (not plus though) + Ghostery, and perhaps they use more memory and CPU, but if they do I've never noticed nor cared about it. Their userfriendliness is amazing though. HTTPSB randomly cripples sites, much like NoScript, and I really can't be bothered to deal with that anymore.
With Adblock + Ghostery I feel completely in control. If I want to enable the Disqus script on a single page for a single session, Ghostery easily lets me do that. HTTPSB makes that hard, or perhaps I'm missing something.
Case in point: When I tried to post this comment, I got a "Dead link: users don't match" error which went away when I disabled HTTPSB.
I think a lot of people get the opposite feeling. HTTPSB lets you see everything in the matrix and toggle what you want to show. If you want the carefree experience you can use this strategy[0] to unblock everything and only rely on the blocklists to which you subscribe. I currently use this method and I all I really want now is a block list for cookies (and one as good as Ghostery's list).
I don't follow this logic. Both do generally the same thing, but with different approaches. This to me would make a comparison of the two different approaches very valid.
That's like saying that walking isn't an alternative to driving because there's no wheels. It's different, has a superset of functionality, and a different interface. It isn't a fork of ABP.
Adblock Plus / Edge has a "Fire and Forget" mode, as I described in my grandparent comment. HTTPSB does not. Hence, HTTPSB's functionality is not a superset of Adblock Plus/Edge's functionality.
Your analogy fails too. I use a manual javascript blocking add-on (noscript) instead of an automatic blacklisting one and its not a deal-breaker. Minor effort required.
Compared to other adblocking methods it's fast and does not use a lot of memory, but it's limited in what it can block (namely connections to specified hostnames).
You can allow everything by default too with HTTPSB (it still will use blocklists and protect you), so that you won't have to enable stuff for a website to work.
The power button is what I call "hard" allow all, i.e. it turns off completely matrix filtering.
The "all" cell (top left corner of the matrix) is a "soft" allow all, i.e. it allows everything except those hostnames and types of request which are not specifically blacklisted.
Sorry to be slightly off-topic, but since you mention NoScript and are familiar with that, this (HTTPSB) and ABP, can I ask. Is HTTPSB more of a NoScript alternative or an ABP alternative?
From the little experience I have with HTTPSB, I'd say that it was more of a NoScript alternative. It feels to me like a webbrowser firewall. They seem to have moved into the adblocking field now though. Here's how I see it:
* Adblock (Plus): Blocking ads, No / minimal user action required
* NoScript: Blocking scripts. Lots and lots of user action required.
* Ghostery: Block privacy intrusions. Basically an application-level firewall for the browser. In a normal firewall, you'd block e.g. port 80 from IP x.x.x.x. In an appliction firewall you simply block, for instance, bittorrent traffic. Minimal user interaction required, and where it is required, it's very easy to use.
* HTTPSB: A low-level web browser firewall ("block port 80 from IP x.x.x.x) that now also does (better) adblocking. The adblocking is on par with Adblock (plus): no user action required. The browser "firewall" is basically unusable. Lots of user interaction required, and when it is required, it's basically impossible to understand.
Sounds a lot like we need some volunteers to build a better UI for simple (adblock mode), a 2nd option to do a noscript equivalent, and a 3rd option for wild-west-browser-firewall mode.
Given that advertising pays for a lot of the services we all use, the use of Adblock and similar programs constitutes defection in game theory terms - the more people who do it, the worse off we all are - which means even if you choose to do it yourself (I personally don't), it is against your interests to encourage other people to do it.
Also, given that computing is one of very few areas of technology in which our species is still making substantial progress, and that progress is driven by market demand, even if you want to make your workload computationally cheaper for yourself, it is very much against your interests to encourage other people to follow suit; if every web browser starts using less memory, everyone is worse off.
I'm not going to start trying to persuade you personally to cooperate rather than defect - that's a value judgment you have to make - but please at least appreciate that it's a bad idea to encourage other people to defect!
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
The website as it displays on your computer using your computer memory and screen and CPU is your space, not the website's. So what Banksy says is even more true.
To use your analogy, your computer is your planet. If websites don't like that their ads can't get past your customs officers, that's their problem.
And the site is voluntarily serving you their content.
Your cooking magazine argument is specious: you're not requesting the website pay your bills. The analog would be a magazine which assaults you with inserts, pop-ups, fragrance scents, a 90:10 advertising-to-copy ratio (and most of the copy is product placements), and charges you $10+ for the privilege.
Oh yeah: that's what they do. Which is why I don't buy magazines (with very rare exceptions).
I think that the quote works for Internet advertising because the similarity is that the bus company or building owner, like a web site owner, chooses to take money from advertising companies because they offer the best return vs effort return. For their money the ad companies try to jam their message into your brain.
I like this quote, it's well laid-out, but I don't think the reasoning is sound. At heart, the argument it voices anger at advertisers for forcing you to see things you don't want to see and feel things you don't want to feel. That's exactly the reasoning used to limit individual freedom of expression in many places. It creates a victim (the passive observer) in order to vilify an otherwise victimless crime (the person expressing themselves).
For the record, I hate ads too, but I see it as a fair exchange.
Below, I've streamlined and abstracted the quote. If you stuck "women" where I say "insert target," this would mirror a lot of really repressive hate speech that's going on in many parts of the world.
>>
People are taking the piss out of you everyday... [They] take a cheap shot at you and then disappear... [They] make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making [you] feel inadequate. They have access and they bully you with it. They are (insert target) and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them.
Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head...
You owe [them] nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you.
You've entirely misunderstood both Banksy's quote and the conversation on this thread. He's talking about the co-opting of _public spaces_ for advertisement; Walking down the street is an activity that anyone has a right to do with no contingencies, and he sees being "forced" to see advertising as an intrusion on that activity. Whether or not you agree with him, that's certainly an internally consistent view of things.
On the other hand, what we're talking about here is explicitly choosing to request content from a webpage and then complaining that the ads are an intrusion. There's no analogue to "walking through a public space": no fundamental right to view content that other people made on exactly the terms that you deem acceptable. As poor a comparison as it may be, the comparison to shoplifting is FAR more accurate than the comparison to what Banksy is describing.
A website displays on _my_ computer. I should have more control over that "space" than a "public space", for sure. There's nothing wrong with wanting complete control of how my computer is being used.
If the business model of the advertisers requires that they trust that my computer displays their ads then I see it as their fault for misplacing their trust.
> A website displays on _my_ computer. I should have more control over that "space" than a "public space", for sure. There's nothing wrong with wanting complete control of how my computer is being used.
Who cares if it's _your_ computer? It's _their_ product or service you're using, which is offered to you under well-defined terms of use. You're free to not use it if you don't agree with the terms of use.
Let's assume that breaking the terms of use is illegal or immoral. Then how does doing it on _your_ computer absolve you of responsibility? A person's basement is also _his_ private space. Should he have free reign to hold people there against their will? Having a private space doesn't give you carte blanche, especially when other people are involved (e.g. the people who built the products or services you're using).
> If the business model of the advertisers requires that they trust that my computer displays their ads then I see it as their fault for misplacing their trust.
The essence of your argument is that whenever you can screw somebody over and they're powerless to stop you, it's their fault when you screw them over. This is not an argument I'd be proud to make.
By this logic, a local convenience store that hasn't installed security cameras is at fault when you steal from them, because they misplaced their trust in their customers. A woman walking alone at night is at fault when someone attacks her, because she misplaced her trust in society.
By the way, I use AdBlock. But I don't think your attempts at ethically justifying AdBlock hold any water.
The site sends a bunch of data to my computer. My computer can choose to render it or not, and make further requests e.g. from ad servers or not. If a bunch of people show up at my house and I only let some of them into my basement, that's not the same as kidnapping!
The position that an owner of a computer should be obligated to cede control of their computer to third-parties seems more ethically dubious to me than the position that they should not. I am certainly proud to make the argument that the owner of a computer should control its operation.
I would argue that terms-of-service "agreements" which assume I will cede control of my computer to a third-party are immoral. I find it offensive that anyone would argue that it's alright for others to tell me what I can do with my computer. I wish more people would take a stand against attempts to control how owners of computers use their devices. We might not have gotten ugly legislative constructs (like the DMCA in the US) if people had cared more about their rights.
The "essence" of my argument is this: Private owners get to control their computers (at least right now). It is a false reality to think things are different.
I don't think your analogies about unlawful detention of persons, theft of scarce physical goods, and some kind of victim-blaming rape accusation follow at all. I certainly can't formulate how to respond to these non sequiturs. Code executing inside a computer has very little to do with kidnapping, theft, or rape. I certainly don't see any of them as even remotely equivalent or analogous.
I might have made an argument about the "morality" of skipping commercials using digital video recorders (DVRs), which seems a lot closer to analogizing altering how a web site displays on my computer. Television producers are learning that owners of DVRs skip commercials and, rather than (for the most part) making arguments about taking away the rights of owners of DVRs, are moving to other business models (like product placement).
Rather than assuming my computer will display their Customers' ads (or doing odious things like trying to get laws passed to make private ownership of general purpose computers illegal) I'd rather see website operators move to new business models. If that means that some "free" services disappear then so be it. If a service can't finance itself by having its users be its Customers then I'd argue there's probably a pretty good chance we're better off without it.
(I do find it exceedingly amusing that you admit to using AdBlock yet make the argument you do. I haven't ever used any advertisement blocking software. I simply eschew services that I find inundate me with advertising, or just "look around" the ads when a service is compelling enough to use.)
That's like saying "I should have a say of what you put in your house, because it's my eyes that see it when I come over". If you don't like my house, don't come over. If you don't like a website, don't visit it. It's not yours, any more than you can dictate what goes on a TV channel just because your TV shows it.
I don't see arguing about the "house" analogy could be productive. Viewing a website causes code to execute on my computer. Changing how that code executes on my computer doesn't change the website for the owner or for others visiting the site. Having a physical presence in someone's home arguably causes physical changes in the world for the owner of the house and for others visiting. It's not a useful analogy for this argument, to my mind.
I do like the television analogy, though. Presumably you'd argue that I shouldn't be permitted to mute the audio, change the channel, or skip ahead or back in the video stream when the "owner" of the video being displayed says I shouldn't. Does that "owner" have some kind of moral right in how I "consume" their content? Sounds like an argument for the "broadcast flag" and even more draconian restrictions to make the television that I paid for and own "belong" to someone else. Yikes! I wouldn't want to "consume" that content or buy a television that had that kind of functionality in it. (I'm already frustrated enough at DVDs with "unskippable" material that, effectively, punish me for using a legally-licensed media in a legally-licensed player.)
Arguing that I shouldn't be permitted to alter how a website displays on my computer is, effectively, arguing that I don't actually own my computer when a third-party says that I don't. "In consideration for viewing our website you agree that you don't own your computer." I definitely wouldn't visit that website. Nobody says that kind of thing out right, though. Website operators just require silly things like DRM-plugins (Silverlight for Netflix, for example) that erode my control of my owner computer. I don't partake of those kinds of "services", personally, and I definitely wouldn't recommend them to others.
I'd like to live in a world with less advertising. Free services are of lesser concern. In terms of game theory it is absolutely, directly in my interest to promote systems that kill the effectiveness of blanket advertising and hopefully make it become a pointless exercise.
If we make it difficult for services to be ad funded, perhaps alternative methods of funding will emerge. Perhaps alternative methods of service delivery will emerge too which don't require large companies to build their own data centres (peer to peer, distributed).
I don't get rid of ads on my systems because they're annoying. I do it because they introduce massive single points of failure, they add massive centralised attack vectors which have in the past been exploited, and will be in the future too, and because they slow down web browsing.
If you care about security, you use an ad blocker.
The web is already full of stuff that is free and is not ad-funded. There are already many services that have free versions with paid advanced versions.
If everyone used ad-block, it would change the web. In some ways for the better, in some ways for the worse. It wouldn't destroy it.
Well there is one option for funding websites. I'm sure ingenious people will come up with dozens more. Instead of how it is now where they are forced to squander their creativity making sites that are ad-funded.
Not all of the web is ad-funded, and it's just a matter of us giving that part of the web a chance.
That's only a problem as long as ad funded versions exist. Get rid of the ad funded versions and it's no longer a problem, as the non-ad-funded versions will no longer have to compete with them.
Plus, many useful services will still have free versions, and then provided paid upgrades.
Plus, many useful services will stop being centralised, distributed, free, peer to peer versions will be created that cost nothing to host, and they will be popular, because there are no ad-funded versions to compete.
That's a false dichotomy that assumes there are only two solutions, ads or a paywall. There are other solutions, including ones that haven't been invented yet.
I will happilly pay for the service, as much, as advertisers earn on me. Sounds fair, and I doubt it will be a large sum, based on how often I click on ad's.
There are many different kinds of paywall. Some sites have early access to content and the ability to comment only for paying users.
Others have just one simple ad on the page, that is controlled by themselves, not a third party network.
The lovely thing about the internet is that there is an ever-increasing horde of people who will put their content out for free. For each purely ad-dependent site that goes, several sites - from free to paid - will take their place.
> Adblock and similar programs constitutes defection in game theory terms
Some would say that the following are also defections in the same terms though:
* Pop-up/-over advertising that gets in the way
* Pop-under advertising
* Auto-playing video that drains noticeable bandwidth and CPU power (and therefore battery) when mobile
* Auto-playing audio, usually at some horrendous volume
* Tracking us and storing derived data about our lives in quite some detail without our permission
* Collecting free information, wrapping adverts around it, and working hard to make sure the ad wrapped version comes up top in search results above the non-encumbered version (please don't try defend this in the general case with the word "curating")
Free services paid for by the above are only free is you consider the above and related matters to not be costs (which presumably you don't, which is fair enough).
I don't actually run adblock/noscript/what-ever, for performance reasons and because of the inconvenience of false positives and such: I just avoid sites that irritate me with the non-tracking-related stuff (to the point of having some blacklisted in my local DNS settings) and accept that no matter what I do I'm going to be followed by Google, Facebook, and their less reputable compatriots.
I hate ads so I'm going to block them. You can't just shove things in my face that I can so easily decline and except that to be a good business model. I fully encourage the death of the ad based business model for web content. If that means I would eventually have to pay for things I actually want then that makes way more sense to me. Honestly though a website shouldn't expect to make money for simply existing and getting views. They should have something people actually want and are willing to buy.
Why not encourage people to pay for services they use and enjoy? The ad-supported services have mixed motives at best and tend to compromise on privacy when it affects their bottom-line.
Also, there are other reasons for blocking ads besides simple annoyance. They tend to be hosted by 3rd party domains that can track browsing history across sites.
Micro-payments are a bad idea because making decisions costs mental energy, and the energy cost declines more slowly than the amount, so if you have to decide to pay a couple of cents to read an article, you end up spending more than a couple of cents worth of mental energy making the decision. It's a dead loss. Advertising is a better business model all around.
However, Micropayments are not the only alternative to Advertising, subscriptions are another choice which only need to be done once rather than repeatedly.
I'd like to see more site offer an ad-free subscription, in the way that Ars Technica or reddit do, to allow for an alternative to using ads to support content I'm interested in.
Patreon has an interesting model for creative content and one which I think will work for content producers who already have a good fan base.
I like what Blendle is trying when it comes to micropayments and newspaper articles. I've heard quite a few people talk about how they'd use it, and it's only just open to the public.
The most fascinating thing about Blendle to me is that most mainstream papers seem to be giving it a try. It not just niche publications.
I would like an opt-in "subscription service". I pay x$ per month and a program automatically divides that and donates to the various sites that I've used. There would also be some way to customize it to make sure that certain sites gets more money, and others less. In turn, maybe the websites register my donations via cookies and then cools down on the ads.
Whenever you read, watch and listen to content you want to support, you simply flattr it. Remember that you can flattr as many times you want during a month, as you never will exceed your chosen budget.
At the end of each month, we divide your budget into as many pieces as you made flattrs. For example 25 flattrs will divide your budget into 25 pieces. With a 10 euro budget, each piece is 40 cents.
You know that moment when internally you're smacking your forehead and making an O shape with your mouth. Now how come I didn't think of that idea? So simple. I hope it takes off.
I _hate_ ads, I hate them online, I hate them offline. I think they're a form of pollution. I'm with Bill Hicks on this one, people who work in advertising or marketing trying to figure out how to get people to buy crap they don't want need to take a serious look at themselves ( except Bill was a bit more blunt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo )
I often wonder if maybe some city somewhere will issue a blanket ban on advertising in public spaces to enhance the city-scape and draw in tourists. I know I'd visit. How wonderful to be able to look around and not have some corporation hijack your view and try to sell you something.
Just watched Hicks. I think the problem with ads is the process is corrupted rather than that it exists at all. You have a great business with great service but no one knows about it, it makes things better to let people know. The trouble is the ad space goes to those who pay most who tend to be those who overcharge for crappy stuff. Not sure what the solution to that is.
I am pleased to see this as I had been tossing around a similar idea as a first-line alternative method of moderation, where commentary/open collaboration would be restricted to those with skin in the game, so to speak, and more or less without concern for the degree of skin in play.
As far as distribution, is it correct that enrolled partners who host/integrate see a flat 5 percent, the flattr service gets 5, and "creators" see the remainder of 90 percent from a things share of committed flattrs?
I go on a blocking-spree for any site which (A) serve malware (B) unexpectedly plays sounds or epileptic animations (C) trashes site performance through a billion third-party loading items.
Even if it's just a lack of vetting by the ad-network, N-levels removed from the author, it represents a breach in that same completely-unspoken contract which I will take steps to protect myself from.
Finally, let's not confuse game-theory with "justice" or with our normative beliefs about how things should work.
By that logic, we shouldn't have done anything about pop-up windows with ads either? Yet we did, and the world was a little bit better for it. Naturally advertisers, being the sneaky shits they are, didn't learn their lessons and are now repeating the same tactics with javascript/html5 overlays. When those become too annoying, we will find a way around those too, and the world will keep on running.
To me, it's simple economics. If their contents is worth it, they'll find a way to monetize it. If they can't find a way to monetize it, then the contents wasn't worth it.
I'm with you on the first part, but I think the second is probably false. The commerce of information is very different than the sorts of commerce that gave rise to simple economics.
I'd love to see ads destroyed, but I wouldn't necessarily expect the economics of content to produce the personally or socially optimal content. We may need to be more deliberate about it.
if every web browser starts using less memory, everyone is worse off
This is gibberish. There's still plenty of demand for denser memory. You don't have to pretend that wasting memory on Adblock is somehow driving the progress of humanity.
You could argue the opposite in "game theoretic terms" since much of the advertising industry lives off user-tracking and privacy violations. It's bad privacy hygiene to allow all that tracking into your browser.
(Though I've switched to privacy badger since it's not the advertising in itself that's bad.)
I can't think of an ad-based internet service that is promoting the progress of the species. Most of them, like Facebook, would be better if they weren't trying to sell ads.
I rather pay a small amount for services which I really need and like then see all the crap all the time. Also I don't mind less, more quality services over crappy sites full of ads...
Publishing's seen many business models over the years. Information is hard, for a number of reasons, and advertising has been utilized for mass-media for much of the past century (longer in print).
I've disabled AdBlock after recent "revelations" about its memory consumption. I use only Ghostery for now. So, websites/advertisers are free to show me ads, as long as they won't track me. Guess how many ads I see.
That should be a solution: serve me a static, non-intrusive, lightweight, curated ad related to your content (not to my browsing history), serve me it from your server, not from some third-party ad farm - then I will gladly see it. Furthermore, it will work even if I won't click it.
This model worked for paper magazines/newspapers, and I have no clue why it shouldn't work in a digital era. At least as a damn fallback.
I don't have a problem with advertising; what I have a problem with is the huge increase in page load times with all the third-party garbage loaded. Up to ten additional seconds on some sites, which is preposterous.
I install Adblock because doing so makes web browsing somewhere around five times faster, which means I can finish it sooner and get back to work/play.
My hope is that adblocking will encourage advertisers to come up with better ways to advertise (technologically speaking) rather than synchronous files that prevent some web pages from loading at all on mediocre 3G connections, making life far more frustrating for everyone involved.
Care more about others user-experience and safety (I primarily use ABP and NoScript to block malware attacks) than the fact that if advertising becomes less effective other methods to pay for websites will have to be developed, so I recommend people use ABP.
Also, advertising isn't "free", there is still a cost even if I am not seeing the money directly leave my wallet every time I see an ad. I would rather the ad supported model died out, the only reason it came to dominate is because there wasn't the technology to support other options when newspapers were first developed.
I suppose I cooperate: I use Ghostery, but not Adblock, because I see the point about ad income but do not see that it justifies tracking. It doesn't seem to make much difference in practice. Once you've eliminated the ads that involve too much tracking, there's little advertising left.
I'm not sure whether this is good or bad, and what it says about the advertising business.
That's what I liked about Opera's content blocker. There was no black list to start with. But if you encountered a site with annoying ads, you could just block it yourself without much hassle. If the ad wasn't intrusive, you could just leave it there.
Ads pay for things simply because that was the first model that caught on.
Ad-supported content is not the only business model. Simply because one bunch figured out how to make the internet pay doesn't mean the problem must be solved in one and only one way from here on out.
I am of same believe. I don't use any ad blockers. And most ads don't bother me and sometimes I find useful stuff through ads. I don't even mind full page ads, that you have to view for 10 seconds before you can view the content.
But I hate ads that play sound. Those are serious distractions and usually I would close the page before I get a chance to view it. I wish we can just block only annoying ads.
I definitely agree that we take a lot of services for granted, but I don't think ads are the answer. For instance, a lot of sites I use daily accept donations (Reddit, Last.fm) and they offer some premium features for people who need them. Ads can be also incredibly annoying and sometimes considerably increase loading times.
I disagree with your basic assumption - that we want to preserve a web where services are paid for by advertising revenue. And so I actively encourage others to defect because I want to see that model come crashing down. The more people who do it, the better off we all are.
> the more people who do it, the worse off we all are
No, that's totally not true. The more people who do it, the more pressure on advertisers to actually make less distracting ads - so that people don't feel like they have to block them. That's good.
We are living in a world where resource depletion is a serious concern on the health and well-being of humanity. Advertisement encourages resource depletion. Therefore we shouldn't support advertisement at all.
And browsing without adblock means theat those who really pay for our services—people buying online ads—are being robbed.
They paid specific amount for a specific number of impressions. Ok, I browse without ad-block, buty I never click on ads. That means that all those impressions on the pages I visited are wasted. Sure, their owners get their money, but that's pure waste of money for the advertiser.
If majority would browse with ad blockers, well, maybe the price for ads would increase, I don't know. But putting the blame on ad block users is lame, all add block does is to stop wasting the money.
The vast majority has bought into the utter bullshit that advertising makes the web free. This delusion buries not only the fact that we have made a deal with the devil, but also that the deal really sucks. What we traded our souls for we don’t even get. The web would be both cheaper and better if we just paid for what we use straight up. And more importantly, society would be better. I'll explain all of these.
IT'S NOT FREE
We’re not Facebook’s customers, advertisers are (more on this below). But we are the advertiser’s customers, and the cost of the "free lunch" is simply shifted to the price of the things we buy from them. In other words we still end up paying for the full cost of Facebook (and even more, as I'll get to next). Costs may even shift regressively, to advertised products predominately consumed by those with lower incomes, in which case the poor are subsidizing the better off.
IT'S MORE EXPENSIVE...
Not only are you still paying for the full cost of the Facebook product you use, you are paying for all the advertising overhead: the costs of its advertising technology and infrastructure (huge, btw), the agency and creative costs (Don Draper and company have to pay for the hookers and scotch somehow, not to mention what’s-his-name who basically just lounges in his office barefoot thinking Japanese), and the advertiser's big marketing departments (that often outnumber and outspend the people making the product!).
The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks. – Jeff Hammerbacher, fmr. Manager of Facebook Data Team, founder of Cloudera
So in addition to the original product cost and the ad overhead costs, you are also paying the opportunity cost of an inferior product (as Dennis Curtis points out in the OP) as well as the engineering costs of figuring out how to optimize ad revenue, because that’s what happens when websites have to design to please advertisers over pleasing us, the users. Dalton Caldwell makes this point comparing Sourceforge to Github[1]. As ergo says in a comment[2], “If the new news feed is making their advertisers happy (and bringing revenue into Facebook), then that's what they optimize for.” As jfoster says in a comment[3], “Ad-supported models untie the relationship between UX and revenue.”
Furthermore, our identities and privacy are bought and sold to the highest bidders. And where do the bidders get their money? From us of course! A double whammy! We're trading our privacy for free product? Bullshit. We get personalization? Bullshit. Personalization means optimizing something for me, not optimizing for the advertiser. Again, we're not the real customer. We’re certainly not Google’s[4][5].
WAIT. IT'S EVEN WORSE...
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. – Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Think of the social costs of advertising. The web is infested with misinformation and manipulation. Beside the lying ads themselves, relying on a revenue stream entirely dependent on how many ads are seen severely affects the moral choices of those who decide what gets produced and how its presented. What are the costs of a misinformed and variously manipulated citizenry, of distortions to the free-market?
Knowledge and discourse are the lifeblood of both democracy, free markets, progress. The web, from the little scammy websites to the big brand ones that so many blindly trust, has a huge influence on who we vote for, what we buy, and most importantly, what we believe.
There is no free lunch, and there is no free web. This "free" ad-"supported" web we have is much too expensive.
[4] Lloyd made his pitch, proposing a quantum version of Google’s search engine whereby users could make queries and receive results without Google knowing which questions were asked. The men were intrigued. But after conferring with their business manager the next day, Brin and Page informed Lloyd that his scheme went against their business plan. "They want to know everything about everybody who uses their products and services," he joked. - Wired, http://www.wired.com/2013/10/computers-big-data/all/
Dont know why you got downvoted. But I agree that advertising is the key to web site revenue. Since the amount of people willing to pay are in extreme minorities.
I think the key is web page speed. Advertising slow down the page a lot and have adverse effect. Many uses Adblock / Ghostery just to speed up their internet browsing.
MY GOSH! I never realized how slow my page loadings were. Removed ABP (and a couple of extensions) after reading this and the memory consumption just went to 1/2 of what it used to be, the page loading times are just incredible... I always wondered why Chrome is soooo much slower compared to Firefox (ABP not installed on Firefox) but never investigated further.
Thank you so much!
Whenever I opened a new tab & typed something in the address bar, it appeared after a 1-2 second delay. I used to think that was absurd on part of Chrome. However after removing ABP, the problem's gone.
That 20K number makes me cringe. For now, a little bit of ads are fine :)
Yep. I run Privoxy and a DNS resolver configured to be authoritative for the worst 5000 or so ad farms. Zips along nicely, and works for every machine on the LAN or via remote VPN.
The thing with all these plugins, I shouldn't care as a user, I should be informed about these issues.
If you use http://www.sublimetext.com/ you will get a dialog when scripts are running slow, as in, "Script XYZ took more than 1 second to process this file, you can disable it"
All I want in FF or Chrome is the same.
"Adblock blocked the UI for 4 seconds"
"Adblock increased memory consumption by double"
Or they could even be more harsh and kill plugins that take too long and impact user experience like the Flash timeout.
Plugin memory usage tracking is only realistically possible for Chrome where plugins run in a sandbox with a really limited API. Even then, if the plugin manages to allocate memory inside a page's sandbox (for example, by injecting some CSS or JS in there), the reporting will be wrong.
The adblock plus problem is in fact one of those - it injects styles into pages in order to filter ads, which increases the memory footprint of the page. So neither Firefox nor Chrome can tell you 'adblock plus is increasing memory usage by X', because the memory usage is hidden along with everything else owned by the page, not by the addon.
Firefox is adding "add-on compartments" (bug 990729) that allocate separate memory arenas for each add-on. Firefox will be able to use this information to track (most) memory usage for each add-on.
It can already measure some parts of add-on memory usage, and you can see this by looking for "add-ons" in about:memory. Bug 990729 will improve the accuracy of the measurements.
Earlier today, and for the first time I recall, Firefox presented me with a slow startup notification. I had some very demanding programs running at the time and knew to dismiss the message without a moments thought. Some users might have responded to the notification.
I didn't click through to the help information at the time, but checking the source it looks like it takes you to https://support.mozilla.org/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fix-most... which suggests a reset. Some users might have gone down that path without recognizing that it would leave them without security related extensions and/or preference changes they had made. Not to mention other less important modifications. Most people don't even keep a log of their changes, making it difficult to get back to what they wanted.
Being informed of conditions that might need your attentions is desirable. However, that doesn't eliminate the need to understand why the conditions arose and what the consequences of different actions would be.
Doesn't the new Internet Explorer do this? I don't really use it that much, but I remember seeing a message suggesting I disable a plugin that was causing slow load times.
Yup, I believe you're right. It only pops up when it detects a problematic plugin. Although I can't remember if it monitors this continuously, or just when you launch IE.
Adblock+ has been fine for me. Has anyone had any problems?
Personally, Adblock+ has earned my trust over a long period of time, so it's hard to see myself switching to something else unless the reason was dire.
This is a response to an article[1] on memory use, and specifically a bug/limitation of ABP which causes it to use large amounts of memory (1GB+) on web pages which utilise many iframes.
As far as I know (anybody please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this), it's Adblock PLUS that can't be trusted. Adblock (without the plus) is a completely separate project that's much more trustworthy. Adblock PLUS basically usurped Adblock by appending a "plus", making it seem like it's somehow better than Adblock.
It's not like that. A long time ago (2005?) there was an extension for Firefox called "Adblock". Eventually the development of this extension died, and it got forked with the name "Adblock Plus" in 2006 or so.
The Adblock you're referring to (the Chrome-only extension, right?) was published in 2009. As you can see, Adblock Plus predates it by 3 years or so.
Could someone explain why Adblock injects CSS rules into the document? I presume it's to hide the ads, but what I don't understand is why that's the way it hides the ads. Why not simply remove the element containing the ad¹ instead? Additionally, presuming my earlier assumption is correct, if you hide the element with CSS, doesn't the browser still need to fetch the ad?
¹Get rid of as much crap ad HTML as possible. Ads seem to come layered in all manner of divs and iframes.
My understanding is that ADP removes elements wherever possible, and the CSS rules are there to catch the cases that remain. But that's about as far as my knowledge extends.
What other options do you see? Searching and manipulating DOM in JavaScript wouldn't be faster than a single CSS stylesheet. Remember that there are >20K rules in play.
20K rules probably isn't that big, when you compile that to an automata. Most nodes are probably behind the edges that never traversed.
If there would be an option for a extension to hook into DOM element creation (i.e. when browser parses HTML and builds a tree, it'd call some user-defined predicate function) - that would possibly solve the issue.
I believe CSS is slow because of cascading nature - it requires re-compiling it from the very plaintext source on every page view, to combine ad-blocking rules with others - this certainly could be optimized (if browser side would provide tools for that). No idea about horrendous memory usage, though.
To reduce the number of filters in Adblock, a simple way is to let it run for a few days with a popular black list such as EasyList. Then open the list in the preferences, sort it by number of hits, and unselect all the filters with 0 hits (there are so many of them, that probably something like 99% of them never get any hits). You can select the filters, and press "Space" to disable them all in one go.
ABP filters out (or, more correctly, modifies by styling them to not display) DOM elements, HTTPSB filters out HTTP requests. That's two completely different approaches, each with its own pros and cons, but neither is a real replacement for the other one (although both apples and oranges are suitable for eating).
On an unrelated note, a fun approach to fix ABP would be to introduce non-cascading style sheets, possibly with limited styling capabilities, specifically for adblocking. Those could be well-precompiled and run extremly fast while taking much less memory. But that would require hacking browser internals, so that's not gonna happen.
I have not had any significant problems with ABP, but after trying out HTTPSB earlier this week it's become my most essential extension. It's not as user-friendly as Ghostery, ABP and a few others, but I really appreciate its ability to quickly show me what's actually happening on a given page. I would love to see it develop into a general-purpose diagnostic tool. After only having it installed for a few days, it's hard to imagine life without it - which is about the highest compliment I can give.
Same - I installed HTTPSB as a dec tool, but ended up liking how much control it gives back to me about what is loaded on my pages. There was an initial period of frustration as I had to unblock the bare minimum required to make youtube/gmail/vimeo/facebook work as expected, and after that it's smooth sailing. ADP is gone, and I feel like I get my pages quicker and cleaner.
The only reason I'm using an ad blocker is because of Youtube's ads. I think the whole marketing industry took a big hit when Google introduced ads to Youtube, because lots of people were forced to install the ad blockers. All of my friends use ABP now......
As a temporary workaround for AdBlock (and for Firefox since it's not supported by HTTPSB), here's EasyList stripped out of all its CSS rules.
It obviously lets some banners slip through, but most of them are still blocked.
I solve the issue with a (free) OpenDNS account where everything in the (crowd-sourced) "Advertisers" list is just resolved to 127.0.0.1. This works for phones, tablets, and any browser on any OS in my home network.
The problem is what to do once I leave my home network.
I like it, though every once in a while something will be blocked in the middle of the screen and I can't dismiss the red blocked area to get to the actual content.
Why bother installing an ad blocker if your brain already has an ad ignorer plugin? Furthermore, this ad ignorer software is quite good at learning: the advertirzers may shift place and shape but it will only fool you once, or none. Hence the need of massive user bases on 'free' online services, because only a tiny percentage of brains fall for the ads and even a tinier chunk of these clickers turn into buyers.
I rage quit Firefox years ago because it's impossible to discuss it's critical perf issues without people pointing shifting blame to plugins. It got so bad I ran clean installs that never had a plugin ever, still had perf issues, and people on the internet simply refused Firefox could be at fault.
I switched to Chrome and have never looked back. I also have never had a single issue with any AdBlock plugin in Chrome. Maybe they're doing something insanely stupid. I don't know. I use Chrome where it just works so I also don't care.
Once you get past about 30 tabs, Chrome performance drops through the floor while memory usage just balloons; by contrast, both Firefox and Safari hold up pretty well. That, plus sending every keystroke in the URL bar to Google, and a bunch of really quirky UIs that I deeply dislike, keeps me from using Chrome for anything but testing.
Edit: This seems to be a controversial comment. I’m curious whether folks disagree with me that Chrome doesn’t work very well for many tabs, or if they think that’s irrelevant to the discussion, or what?
And the worst thing is: Chrome still doesn't properly support HiDPI on Linux or Windows. The bug got closed as: "Working as intended, just zoom into the page".
I don't think I've ever had the need for 30 tabs; the magic of the internet is that if I ever need to see a specific website, I can just type in a URL.
I use tabs/windows as a todo list. I have 84 tabs open in my main window, and 36 windows open. Mostly I have 1 window per task, each with a few to a dozen tabs of related stuff. When I complete a task (or decide not to pursue it) I close the window.
It's not the best way of organizing, but it actually fits my ADD/scattershot style of working pretty well.
I'm interested - what are each of your to-dos? Are they like, articles to read or are they actually specific pieces of work, say like, a wordpress page to edit?
A hobby web site I was editing where I got stuck on some css, a (long) video I want to watch, research for an audio program I'm designing, data about an electronics hobby project I want to start, 2 pull requests I need to follow up on, an appliance I need decide on and buy for my kitchen, a web forum I need to integrate into a site of mine, a couple bug reports I need to follow up on, an amazon page of a video game I heard was worth my time, etc.
So...just random stuff. Some are personal, some are professional, some are home related, some are just key nuggets of info to remind me of something I want to look into at some point.
Telling the user "you're doing it wrong" (especially for a very common use case/mode) is the wrong answer.
Mind, I've reached the conclusion that tabs are also the wrong answer, though I haven't sorted out quite what the right one is. Tab Outliner for Chrome (discussed on the following link) helps, but it's still not what I'm looking for, too manual. http://redd.it/256lxu
When somebody reports a performance problem with Firefox, the first question is always "do you have any add-ons installed" precisely because a lot of them do impact performance significantly. That's not necessarily bad -- e.g. I happily use ABP despite the memory and speed hit -- but there's a reason why it's always the first question.
Having said that, as a Firefox developer I'm sorry that people didn't believe you when you had problems. We're certainly aware that Firefox's performance did compare poorly to Chrome's, which is why numerous performance programs were introduced to fix this difference. MemShrink is the one I started about three years ago: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink. It has resulted in many fixes, both big and small, and it is ongoing. (Indeed, Firefox OS might not have been feasible without it.)
As some others have said, Firefox's performance is a lot better now than it was a couple of years ago. If you want to try it again and you have an old profile hanging around, I suggest that you "Reset Firefox" (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fi...) to clear up any lingering problems in that profile. Or you could just create a new profile. If you do try Firefox again, I'd be interested to hear how it goes. Thanks.
Hi Nicholas, I just wanted to say thanks for being the public face of MemShrink. It's really great to have such visibility into this important work in one place, rather than scattered around a bunch of dev blogs etc. Also the continued focus from one person over an extended timeframe really helps get stuff done, from my experience as a PM. Thanks again!
I run Chrome as my general browser and Firefox for development. So I use both in anger every day. I must say that FF has caught up, plus it feels like Chrome is starting to fall behind -- I regularly get lockups in Chrome (particularly GMail) and FF has made great strides. To the point that I might flip and use FF for my everyday work too.
Exactly right. Everything is comparative. If Chrome never appeared in the first place, Firefox may well still reign supreme. The problem is Chrome first appeared so god damn fast, and has better caching, advance / pre DNS lookup, rendering and responsiveness, startup speed etc. Firefox looked the IE of its days. Then Firefox did improve, ( at its own pace ) and Chrome manage to slip behind in multiple areas.
But i really wanted a third choice, WebKit based Browser that is Firefox Like ( Tab OverFlow. ) Or may be i should just buy a Mac.
I was in your situation. I switched from Firefox to Chrome and thought I would never go back. Funnily enough, I went back recently (a few months ago) and have really been enjoying the recent Firefox editions. Sure, they make some "interesting" design choices, but overall I believe it's really improved recently. You should really give it another shot.
I never have perf issues. My machine is not the newest, I run win7 and have serveral applications running next to it. I also don't see much difference between the sum of chrome processes and the single FF process (both ABP installed. FF full with different addons).
I switched to Chrome when it was new and everybody was telling me how slow FF was compared to that. I came back to FF because there was no relevant difference and I missed several AddOns as well as the oldschool win2k look I could give it. Today I use Chrome (adn Opera) as reference but it'll never become my main browser. The people who made me change, came back to FF, so I guess it wasn't such a big deal for them also.
Edit: I started to hate Chrome when I had to remove it from my parents PC every time I went there. I guess it's the Java Updater or something similar...
What you're saying applies to FireFox of years ago, but that's changed, especially with the big memory cleanup of a year or so ago. It now performs ~equal to Chrome under low stress and better under high stress.
With Adblock + Ghostery I feel completely in control. If I want to enable the Disqus script on a single page for a single session, Ghostery easily lets me do that. HTTPSB makes that hard, or perhaps I'm missing something.
Case in point: When I tried to post this comment, I got a "Dead link: users don't match" error which went away when I disabled HTTPSB.