|
Don, I'd love to implement some of your tools, but why is it necessary to push all our site traffic through your domain? For example, your Check Browser script for footers (every page in a PHP site): j. On 6/20/15 6:35 AM, Don Marti wrote:
begin Doc Searls quotation of Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 05:12:18PM -0700:This is a good discussion. Joe, thanks for pushing back. It’s essential that we not come from a complaining or victim position. The VRM work here is building from demand (that’s you and me) toward supply. If we focus on signaling, we need better tools than DNT and the current generation of ad and tracking blockers. Likewise the supply side needs better tools than the ones in the current marketing and advertising box. We can help with that. There are also many ways to meet in the middle.One important thing to remember is that as things stand, the adtech intermediaries are not "winning" while the users "lose". Adtech is a hard business -- a lot of venture capital, and a lot of development effort, all chasing a relatively small part of advertising. (Direct response has always been the low-budget side of the ad business, while the real money is in signaling/branding. Do you think there's more money in the business of using expensive technology to give people "80% off" -- http://zgp.org/~dmarti/images/wtf-adtech.jpeg -- or in the business of using your creative powers to convince people to pay _more_ for something?) Michael Eisenberg: Today, adtech is on the back end of the innovation curve. I think it would be correct to say that it is on the downward side of the slope (see figure below). It is not surprising anyone but rather optimising existing models and inventory. http://aleph.vc/a-call-to-israeli-engineers-adtech-is-not-for-you/ Most of the Lumascape is headed for consolidation, and most of the consolidation will come in the form of talent acquisitions. In an over-VC-funded business, that's life. Hope investors are playing with money they can afford to lose, and employees are using their adtech startup jobs to build skills and human capital. What does the precariousness of adtech mean for the fraud and malware problems? The "tech" people in adtech are chasing a small percentage of a startup lottery ticket that might pay off in 4 years. The "malware" people are chasing a much larger fraction of a low-risk cash payment, coming in 30 days, or even a week. Malvertising is a higher-paying, safer business than law-abiding adtech. And no place where criminals are better off than non-criminals is a happy place where most people want to be. We have no idea where advertising will end up, but we know that when it works, it has a history of supporting valuable information and cultural goods in pre-Internet media. And we know that it's not working very well on the web now. If everyone finds the best opportunity to fix a problem -- the fix that's in your power to make and that makes a positive difference -- then we'll get somewhere. Anyway, there's room in this discussion for both "manifesto on the future of business" and for "hey, paste in these 2 lines of _javascript_ to make things a little better, starting with the next click on your site." I'm working on the second one. The plural of "short-term fix" is "continuous improvement". 5 five-minute steps up It's not the responsibility of an individual site to fix the whole problem, but there are plenty of small tweaks that can help slow down data leaks, encourage users to adopt site-friendly alternatives to ad blocking, and otherwise push things in the right direction. http://zgp.org/~dmarti/business/five-steps/On Jun 19, 2015, at 3:46 PM, Gary Rowe ">< > wrote: T.Rob, Joe, All, While you both raise really good points, for me it is very simple…I want to know what I am signing up for before I sign up for it. Ad networks are not bad, but lack of choice is bad and often the game isn’t really clear. Nobody likes to feel like they are “duped”. When I watch free TV I expect to be presented with ads that I can decide to ignore or act on. When I read an print newspaper it is the same deal. Part of the challenge is that Internet advertisers and data aggregators keep raising the stakes but we don’t know if we are moving from a $1 table to a $5 table or to a $100,000 table. Am I leveraging a social network or downloading a document or doing a search and seeing an ad…maybe that is OK, but what if I’m receiving a thousand ads or this information, when correlated with other metrics causes me to not get credit? It is no longer just an ad that shows up when I use a service at a site, these ads can “live” with me for months, showing up as I navigate the Inte rnet, they can propagate malware, they can expose things I don’t want to expose (like perhaps a medical condition) and many other things I didn’t think I ever signed up for. And it seems like it is escalating. I’ll give a few personal example of what I’m talking about. I started helping a company several months ago in the social enterprise/integration space. Not having tremendous knowledge of that space I wanted a quick tech infusion and I downloaded several sponsored Gartner/Forrester reports, and several reports via Tech Targets and other content marketing companies. I knew the emails would be rolling in, but I received a lot of good information and this is how I was paying for it. There were a few surprises based on the number of emails and the pop-ups that seemed to pop up everywhere, but I got real value out of it and would probably do it again. Case two occurred a after I left Gartner and realized my COBRA was ending and needed to quickly get the family on a health care plan…I panicked and asked for help, made the mistake of putting my phone number in my inquiry for some research into health care alternatives. I almost immediately found a plan on my own and thought all was well. I was wrong, over the next week I received 100+ calls. After receiving several calls one morning I responded angrily to probably call 5 that day, explained that I just told them that not to call and the caller said they won’t call again, but they just bought this list and couldn’t control who else might have got the same list. This is in the category of getting no value, wasting a tremendous amount of time and not being aware of what I was signing up for until it was too late. I don’t need to block all ads, I just need to know the rules of the game before playing it. Gary Rowe On Jun 19, 2015, at 2:38 PM, T.Rob ">< > wrote:Joe,If you start with ad networks = malicious, then there isn't any room for constructive conversation.I didn't start with start with ad networks = malicious. I started with not liking to be tracked. Then news reports surfaced explaining how people are being harmed by malicious ads. The more news reports surfaced about how ad targeting helps spearphishing and waterhole campaigns. Then the stories about demographics that include categories for gullible seniors and other vulnerable populations. Then the stories about how the ad networks were used for a coordinated and concentrated two week sustained attack on selected US Government agencies and Defense contractors. It goes on. As much as you'd like to remove malware from the discussion, they are a big part of the problems with ads. Until the malware problem is addressed, to argue against ad blocking is to argue *for* security vulnerability and harm to recipients of those ads. It's like insisting any discussion of Gamergate focus on the issue of corruption in gaming journalism and totally ignore that it is associated with terrorism against prominent women. The window of opportunity to talk about ads without having to talk about malware closed when the ad networks became riddled with malware. Sorry. It is what it is.That's my point about it being an immature tantrum. . There's an in-grained cultural alienation of the ad networks, to the point where they, and their advocates, are dehumanized and made the enemy at all costs.It's interesting to me that you can talk about cultural alienation while in the same breath characterizing people who defend ad blocking as whiny, tantrum-throwing toddlers. You see no irony ion this?I don't believe most users are disabling ads for security or privacy reasons. They are disabling them because they don't want to pay the attention tax that finances the content.Believe what you like. Disconnect, Ghostery, NoScript, and others focus exclusively on the privacy and security aspects. Their market *is* people concerned about tracking and malware. The rhetoric of AdBlock Plus regarding "annoying ads" is legacy of their origin when that was the overwhelming concern. It is convenient for pro-ads people to talk about this as if it were the only issue, but it isn't. That discussion pretends ads blocked by privacy tools are part and parcel of the total lumped in with AdBlock Plus. A recent Pagefair study says only 45% use ad blockers to remove all ads. 30% said ads without tracking would be OK. 25% said they use ad blockers out of concern about performance and privacy. The numbers regarding privacy and tracking are fast growing. http://downloads.pagefair.com/reports/adblocking_goes_mainstream_2014_report.pdf Furthermore, nobody is providing reasonable alternatives. When site owners offer paid subscriptions, it is at $2 or $4 a month - $24 to $36 a year *per* *site*. Meanwhile at IIW when Sean told us about Mozilla's experiment with monetization of content, the said the per-capita allocation in the US was closer to $6 per person per year for *all* sites. I'd happily pay the $24 or $36 per year to remove all ads. That amount per site per year? That's ridiculous. Site owners cannot reasonably claim we rejected the subscription model when their ask for a single site is 4x a user's total ad allocation. All that said, this is kind of a Groundhog day. Not so long ago the discussion was about how Napster was going to kill the music industry. The problem was framed as one of music pirates posing an existential threat to music itself. Now iTunes and Amazon MP3 are thriving. The threat to music comes more from their monopoly power than anyone's disinterest in paying for music. The issue here isn't people stealing content any more than it was people stealing music. The issue is that the monetization of content is adversarial to consumer interests and expectations. Instead of working to come up with something users are willing to live with, the approach instead is more invasion, more coercion, and lately delivery of malicious payloads for a fee. If advertisers do not fix this, web site owners will package content and sell it like cable TV subscription bundles, leaving small site owners and advertisers out in the cold. I'd rather have the advertising than a hegemony of large content sites but I'm damn sure not going to be bullied or guilt-tripped into deliberately allowing malware onto my devices in the meantime, no matter what names people want to call me. Kind regards, -- T.Rob-----Original Message----- From: Joe Andrieu [ ">mailto: ] Sent: Friday, June 19, 2015 14:54 PM To: T.Rob; "> Subject: Re: [projectvrm] [ PFIR ] A former Googler has declared war on ad blockers with a new startup that tackles them in an unorthodox way T. Rob, You make my point for me. If you start with ad networks = malicious, then there isn't any room for constructive conversation. That's my point about it being an immature tantrum. There's an in-grained cultural alienation of the ad networks, to the point where they, and their advocates, are dehumanized and made the enemy at all costs. That sort of embedded bias isn't just distasteful, it's actively skewing the conversation into non-productive avenues and shutting down opportunities to understand how the architecture itself might be adjusted. I call it out because unchallenged biases are one of the most limiting and destructive habits in a community trying to find new solutions. If Project VRM wants to focus on whining about advertisers instead of finding better avenues of independence and engagement, that's a choice the group can make. I think its the wrong choice, but I'm just one of many here. T.Rob wrote:If I go to a web site where I can't get content without the ads, I do without the content. Large swaths of the Internet are dark to me. But it is hardly me "thumbing my nose at the man." It is me trying very hard not to have my devices pwned by "the man."Visiting websites, then selectively disabling those components that finance those websites is definitely "thumbing your nose a the man," akin to sneaking past the bouncer to avoid the cover charge. This is COMPLETELY different than disabling those components that put your computer or your digital life at risk. But people aren't talking about third-party malware protection or even third-party cookie anti-surveillance. The focus is on screwing the ad networks by blocking the ads. If your concern is about ad networks fundamentally threatening the health of your machine, deal with that issue. But being angry because the bouncer at the club closed the loophole that was letting you in for free... I have no sympathy for that, no more than I have for the punk teenager I see getting escorted out after getting caught. [Assuming he isn't being tased or pepper sprayed or otherwise assaulted in the process.] T.Rob wrote:I can understand the ad industry trying to act as if this were not at issue. I don't understand why it doesn't appear in your analysis. Are you saying I'm obliged to bear the risk of harm to get the content I want? Or do you deny the risk?Because I'm not conflating the display of advertisements with exploitation of the network. I don't believe most users are disabling ads for security or privacy reasons. They are disabling them because they don't want to pay the attention tax that finances the content. Start a thread about security & privacy if you like, but that's not what the Sourcepoint story was talking about. -j On Fri, Jun 19, 2015, at 07:54 AM, T.Rob wrote:Joe, I'd be more inclined to agree with that if the ads being served were not malicious. To equate this to a toddler's tantrum is questionable even if the issues were exactly as you describe them. But they are not. You totally omitted the facts that the ad networks are delivering malware en masse, people are being harmed, and it is because of, not in spite of, the deliberate obfuscation and complexity of the delivery system that there is no accountability for this. So when Source Point says they can "punch through ad blockers" and the industry acts as if all that is being delivered is benign, and continues to refuse any responsibility for their part in delivering malware onto our devices, then yeah some of us have a problem with it. If I go to a web site where I can't get content without the ads, I do without the content. Large swaths of the Internet are dark to me. But it is hardly me "thumbing my nose at the man." It is me trying very hard not to have my devices pwned by "the man." For example, look at "Kaspersky’s Security Bulletin Overall statistics for 2014" (http://iopt.us/1DvT43P) Of their "The TOP 20 malicious objects detected online" 12 are adware. Some pull quotes: "Noticeably, in 2014 there was an increase in the number of advertising programs in the TOP 20, up from 5 to 12 compared to the previous year and accounting for 8.2% of all malicious objects detected online (+7.01 percentage points). The growth in the amount of advertising programs, along with their aggressive distribution schemes and their efforts to counteract anti-virus detection, has become the trendof 2014.""The Trojan-Clicker.JS.Agent.im verdict is also connected to advertising and all sorts of “potentially unwanted” activities. This is how scripts placed on Amazon Cloudfront to redirect users to pages with advertising content are detected. Links to these scripts are inserted by adware and various extensions for browsers, mainly on users’ search pages. The scripts can also redirect users to malicious pages containing recommendations to update Adobe Flash and Java – a popular method of spreading malware." I can understand the ad industry trying to act as if this were not at issue. I don't understand why it doesn't appear in your analysis. Are you saying I'm obliged to bear the risk of harm to get the content I want? Or do you deny the risk? Kind regards, -- T.Rob-----Original Message----- From: Joe Andrieu [ ">mailto: ] Sent: Friday, June 19, 2015 1:30 AM To: "> Subject: Re: [projectvrm] [ PFIR ] A former Googler has declared war on ad blockers with a new startup that tackles them in an unorthodox way This is like a bunch of toddlers fighting over who gets to play with the doll. If you don't like the ads, don't go to those websites. You aren't forcedto.Sure, websites don't have the capability (or moral authority) to MAKE you see the ads, but that is absolutely the quid-pro-quo that is paying for the servers and the writers and the designers and the programmers and the sysadmins and the entire infrastructure that makesthat page possible.Yes, ad blockers are a technically and morally valid response. You can be a punk and thumb your nose at the "man" and while it may be rude to the hard workers who made it possible and ethically questionable... it's totally a choice you can make without breaking any laws or causing any real moral hazard. Mr. Barokas response is exactly the kind of counter you should expect. If you don't want to be a part of the quid-pro-quo, expect measures to be taken to limit the quid you get without that quo. What's ridiculous, IMNSHO, is that Sourcepoint is getting such a sour read from this list. Yes, it sucks if you want to demand you should get free content. But take a moment and read about how itACTUALLY works:==== Here's how Sourcepoint works: It will let a publisher decide how to present a message to a web visitor that has an ad blocker installed. The publisher could choose to circumvent the ad blocker and serve the ad, or it could say to the visitor "our ads pay for your content, how about you choose to allow them," or it could allow the user to choose their advertising experience (three ads for three stories, for example,) or the publisher could ask them to pay tosubscribe.Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/former-google-exec-launches-sourcepoi nt-with- 10-million-series-a-funding-2015-6#ixzz3dTt5IVBk ==== So, if you actually RTFA, you'll realize that Sourcepoint gives publishers a tool for increased engagement, and creates an opportunity for greater choice (if the publisher is willing to take that route). For the first time, publishers have the ability to have a conversation with site visitors in realtime, at the point of consumption, about what quid-pro-quo might work for both parties. Contrast that to the rest of the ad marketplace where there is almostzero ability to express intent to anyone.Sure, maybe most publishers are just going to take option A and be dicks about it. But publishers who want healthy relationships with their readers will explore those other options and there might actually emerge a different model for how we finance content. Withoutthat conversation, we got bupkis.Don't get me wrong, I think the whole ad-based business model is structurally amoral. Not immoral. Amoral. The alignment of interests are between buyers and sellers of ads, and our attention is just the sausage filling in the butcher's shop. So screw that. But wining about Sourcepoint is just an echo of the toddler crying"Mine!Mine! Mine!!!" As long as you're striving to put one over on the system, you should expect the system to respond in kind. Your actual freedoms here are not being compromised. You can ALWAYS stop going to the website. If one year you have a nifty tool that gets you out of footing the attention bill that finances the whole shebang, WhoohoO! Good for you. You got away with a few dollars worth of free media. When that tool stops working, suck it up and either build a new tool or accept that your parasitic free ride has cometo an end.-j On Thu, Jun 18, 2015, at 04:29 PM, Mark Lizar wrote:+1, Blocking ad’s is a consent preference. There is not contract or consent for serving ads, if someone blocks ad’s the website doesn't have to let a visitor have access tothe website.On 18 Jun 2015, at 18:36, Identity Coach ">< >wrote:Can't help but notice the entitlement in assuming that somehow we agreedto the ad-based model, or agreed by use of services from companies that choose this model over all other alternatives is somehow a meaningful assent to terms that most of us couldn't understand themeaning of if we tried.Yeah, I'm looking at Mr. "What Privacy?" Facebook and Mr. Do No EvilGoogle, two of a herd of bullies.-------- Forwarded Message -------- A former Googler has declared war on ad blockers with a new startup that tackles them in an unorthodox way http://www.businessinsider.com/former-google-exec-launches-sourc epoi nt-with-10-million-series-a-funding-2015-6 Speaking to Business Insider, Barokas explained that to solve the existential crisis ad blockers pose to publishers, Sourcepoint wants to help the publishing community solve two problems: It has the technology to punch through "all the ad blockers." And it wants to help publishers have a more open dialog with readers about the transaction that takes place when they consume content: The implicit (but often over-looked) understanding that publishers serve ads in exchange for content being presented for free. And that a transaction needs to take place in the first place because content requires investment. - - - As you probably know, I am *not* a fan of ad blocking in general, for a number of reasons. Whether or not the approach to the issue outlined here is practicable and what sorts of collateral push-back might be triggered are open questions at themoment.--Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein ( "> ): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com _______________________________________________ pfir mailing list http://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir-- Joe Andrieu "> +1(805)705-8651 http://blog.joeandrieu.com-- Joe Andrieu "> +1(805)705-8651 http://blog.joeandrieu.com |
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.19.
