Monday, August 15. 2005
Anonymizer and ad-blocking Proxy (tor and privoxy)
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Blocking ads on the Internet makes no sense at all (and incidentally, doesn't have anything to do with privacy). Advertising enables the net to provide great content for free. Isn't that a *good* thing?
Dear Carmel,
the net offers great content without any advertising banners for years!
Ever seen a wikipedia or a google banner? Good content spreads via word of mouth advertising and not via flashing and popping, anoying stupid blinking silly banners.
Privoxy simple hides that kind of content and enables me to contentrate on the real import content.
And hey, if you like the advertising, nobody forces you to use privoxy!
the net offers great content without any advertising banners for years!
Ever seen a wikipedia or a google banner? Good content spreads via word of mouth advertising and not via flashing and popping, anoying stupid blinking silly banners.
Privoxy simple hides that kind of content and enables me to contentrate on the real import content.
And hey, if you like the advertising, nobody forces you to use privoxy!
I'm afraid you completely misunderstood me. I'll try to be clearer.
I'm not saying the ads advertise the good content - I'm saying they *pay* for it. The content on most commercial content providers, like anandtech.com, yahoo.com etc., is paid for by advertiser money. These are all professional writers that make a living producing content and putting it on the Internet for all to read, and they are only able to do so because companies choose to pay them for putting ads on their sites. All this content will be gone if online advertising fails.
Let's look at your examples. Wikipedia is content written by people at their spare time, without compensation, with donated hosting and bandwidth. This is great; but it's rather unique in the Internet landscape. You can't expect all sites to use this model. Just look how much money they need, which they hope to get from donations: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Budget/2005. I'm certain you personally donated to keep them alive; but do you think you can afford the money to pay for each and every site you read or use?
Google doesn't actually provide content, but it does provide many services, mostly around searching and email. Since you never paid Google anything for its services, it wouldn't surprise you that Google's huge profits come exclusively from advertising. There are indeed ads on every Google search results page (when the query contains a keyword bought by an advertiser), and many sites display ads that come from Google. Google can only offer free services and develop new ones because of these ads. If everyone had a program which blocked all advertising, Google would immediately disappear, as would Yahoo, MSN and many other services.
Of course I don't like watching advertisements. But I know it's a small price to pay to have money flowing in the direction of web content and services. Think about it: companies that make cars, shoes, soft drinks and so on give the sites and services you use huge amounts of money. All they ask in return is to pollute part of your screen with a banner. I think it's a fair deal. If the banner actively offends you, like flashing and swirling and generally being annoying, you have every right not to display it; but not downloading just isn't fair. You're not doing your part of the deal with the site you're reading. You're taking their work but not rewarding them with advertiser money.
You can say 'but I can technically get the content *and* not see advertising, so I win twice!', but that's incorrect. You also lose. Stopping ads makes web advertising less attractive, which means less money to ad-supported content. By not getting ads (I'm not talking about actually displaying them, of course) you're hurting the sites you use, causing advertisers to give move their advertising dollars from these sites to others.
Using privoxy to block ads is bad netizenship and very selfish, as it actually damages the business model that funds most of the Internet. When you use privoxy like that, everyone gets hurt. The right thing to do is have your browser (or proxy) download advertisements and not show the annoying ones, be it flash, animated GIFs, or even text ads. A little better would be to allow some ads (like text ads) and actually click them from time to time.
I'm not saying the ads advertise the good content - I'm saying they *pay* for it. The content on most commercial content providers, like anandtech.com, yahoo.com etc., is paid for by advertiser money. These are all professional writers that make a living producing content and putting it on the Internet for all to read, and they are only able to do so because companies choose to pay them for putting ads on their sites. All this content will be gone if online advertising fails.
Let's look at your examples. Wikipedia is content written by people at their spare time, without compensation, with donated hosting and bandwidth. This is great; but it's rather unique in the Internet landscape. You can't expect all sites to use this model. Just look how much money they need, which they hope to get from donations: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Budget/2005. I'm certain you personally donated to keep them alive; but do you think you can afford the money to pay for each and every site you read or use?
Google doesn't actually provide content, but it does provide many services, mostly around searching and email. Since you never paid Google anything for its services, it wouldn't surprise you that Google's huge profits come exclusively from advertising. There are indeed ads on every Google search results page (when the query contains a keyword bought by an advertiser), and many sites display ads that come from Google. Google can only offer free services and develop new ones because of these ads. If everyone had a program which blocked all advertising, Google would immediately disappear, as would Yahoo, MSN and many other services.
Of course I don't like watching advertisements. But I know it's a small price to pay to have money flowing in the direction of web content and services. Think about it: companies that make cars, shoes, soft drinks and so on give the sites and services you use huge amounts of money. All they ask in return is to pollute part of your screen with a banner. I think it's a fair deal. If the banner actively offends you, like flashing and swirling and generally being annoying, you have every right not to display it; but not downloading just isn't fair. You're not doing your part of the deal with the site you're reading. You're taking their work but not rewarding them with advertiser money.
You can say 'but I can technically get the content *and* not see advertising, so I win twice!', but that's incorrect. You also lose. Stopping ads makes web advertising less attractive, which means less money to ad-supported content. By not getting ads (I'm not talking about actually displaying them, of course) you're hurting the sites you use, causing advertisers to give move their advertising dollars from these sites to others.
Using privoxy to block ads is bad netizenship and very selfish, as it actually damages the business model that funds most of the Internet. When you use privoxy like that, everyone gets hurt. The right thing to do is have your browser (or proxy) download advertisements and not show the annoying ones, be it flash, animated GIFs, or even text ads. A little better would be to allow some ads (like text ads) and actually click them from time to time.
Welcome to evolution, advertising is not only irritating, but it wastes everybodies bandwidth, ISPs, small companies, SME, etc.
I recently had an indepth debate about how many people we're going to put out of jobs because we're blocking spam. Perhaps the internet should be run by the people and not the corporations. Google definetly won't take a hit because people don't find their non-graphical advertising irritating.
Yahoo will simply follow suit and advertisers will just start finding other ways to advertise behind the scenes, text only, no graphics, a few bytes here and there.
Most of the people affected by removing advertising from the internet shouldn't be advertising, I really don't care about smileys and I know almost nobody that does, but, that stuff keeps getting blasted in my face for bored house wives and 16 year old girls with nothing better to do with their time, unproductive members of society who aren't going to pay for anything or contribute anything to the internet, that we can do without.
I recently had an indepth debate about how many people we're going to put out of jobs because we're blocking spam. Perhaps the internet should be run by the people and not the corporations. Google definetly won't take a hit because people don't find their non-graphical advertising irritating.
Yahoo will simply follow suit and advertisers will just start finding other ways to advertise behind the scenes, text only, no graphics, a few bytes here and there.
Most of the people affected by removing advertising from the internet shouldn't be advertising, I really don't care about smileys and I know almost nobody that does, but, that stuff keeps getting blasted in my face for bored house wives and 16 year old girls with nothing better to do with their time, unproductive members of society who aren't going to pay for anything or contribute anything to the internet, that we can do without.
About me
You can find my web page with links to my work as a journalist at https://hboeck.de/.
You may also find my newsletter about climate change and decarbonization technologies interesting.
Hanno Böck
mail: hanno@hboeck.de
Hanno on Mastodon
Impressum
You may also find my newsletter about climate change and decarbonization technologies interesting.
Hanno Böck
mail: hanno@hboeck.de
Hanno on Mastodon
Impressum
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