"Designed to stoke our most primal browsing habits"
May 22, 2017 7:53 AM   Subscribe

 
I hate these sorts of ads. I think they undermine the credibility of the companies that run them. When I get done reading a thought-piece on how our economy mistreats those at the lower tiers of society, only to then see a link that says, "Obama wants to pay off your mortgage!" Or, "Iowans get these special tax breaks!" Or, "10 Ways to Lose Weight! Number 6 Will shock you!" I get to a point where I am leery to even share the article I just read, and I often examine whether or not I still give it any credence. I fucking hate these ads. I find them disgusting and consumer hostile. Often they are filled with disgusting imagery "Cure your toe fungus!" Or whatnot.

I wrote a research paper on why these sorts of ads are killing the internet. If you are bored you can read it here: Begun the Ad Wars Have

If you are not using an ad blocker you really should be.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:01 AM on May 22, 2017 [51 favorites]




I was very careful about blocking ads for a long time. I used Adblock, but with a custom written list of ads I blocked, so I would only block really annoying ones, a very minimal set. One of the first ones on the list was a really creepy looking on from the bottom of The Escapist about fungus or something, that looked like teeth growing out of a finger.

Then I started getting ads trying to get me to install sketchy .exes from a hacked ad network, and I installed uBock and block them all.
posted by Canageek at 8:09 AM on May 22, 2017 [7 favorites]


Are there any good guides out there for blocking ads on phones? I've been using adblockers on my desktop for years but have had a hard time finding a solution for my android phone. There's nothing worse than seeing some unwanted video ad using up data on my phone and not really knowing how to do anything about it.
posted by msbrauer at 8:12 AM on May 22, 2017 [5 favorites]


I work for a media company and I've tried in my own modest way to get Outbrain off our web site. Unfortunately it makes money for us—not sure how much but it's not zero—and that overrides any consideration of not having a junky web site that insults our readers' intelligence.
posted by ejs at 8:21 AM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


I really think that Google sort saved online advertising back in the day by selling text-only ads and doing a reasonably decent curation job to cut down on the punch-the-monkey/flash game bullshit. The new ad networks feel a lot like the bad old days, and I don't know that there's any way to stop it.
posted by phooky at 8:24 AM on May 22, 2017 [11 favorites]


Yeah, I too once tried to be an upstanding Internet Citizen, only blocking aggressive ads ("punch the monkey!") but after the third or fourth major hack of an advertising network I just went ahead and blocked everything.

...I know advertising helps keep sites afloat, but a functional computer helps keep ME afloat. So let's make a deal, shall we?

I'll unblock advertising in exchange for a $15,000 bond to be held in escrow -- if malware reaches my computer via a hacked ad network, I get the $15,000. The next bond is then ratcheted up to $20,000.

Deal?
posted by aramaic at 8:25 AM on May 22, 2017 [38 favorites]


And half the ads use female body parts to sell stuff - you know, save over 50% on your insurance with a stock image of a woman that emphasizes her cleavage. Or, "look at this ugly woman" ads with zoom-ins on some celebrity's supposed jiggly thighs. It's disgusting and it absolutely colors my view of the content. How do you expect consumers to tell the difference between fake and real news when you are running scam ads?
posted by amanda at 8:25 AM on May 22, 2017 [15 favorites]


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posted by rebent at 8:28 AM on May 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


They are at once amazingly annoying and amazingly effective. While I am NOT a techie person, I AM an internet-y person being a fairly early adopter and also an old lady, and yet I STILL think things to myself like, "why yes, I am a bit interested in why Hollywood stopped working with that actor!" Just last night I googled Nancy McKeon from Facts of Life because I hadn't thought of her in years, but damned if I was going to click that breathless ad. (She's fine, married with a kid and probably wishes we'd all just leave her alone.)
posted by thebrokedown at 8:28 AM on May 22, 2017 [8 favorites]


As the owner/operator of a long-lived moderately-well-known website, I get emails from these companies almost daily. They claim they are offering relevant quality content, but it's obvious crap.

It's funny how their vocabulary has evolved over the years to try to sound more legitimate (e.g., from some recent emails, "We provide very high fill rate and will buy traffic from all of your geos" and "Your digital properties are a great fit for our target male demographic and we’d like to explore a partnership. If you have available video or display inventory for us we will be able to send you tags over shortly and begin increasing earnings on your inventory!") Fill rate? Geos? Inventory?

It's odd how Gmail's spam filters don't catch these, regardless of how many I have flagged as spam over the years.
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 8:30 AM on May 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


I really wonder at the otherwise reputable businesses that agree to host this kind of garbage. TMZ, sure, I get it. But CNN? Politico? They're trying to establish themselves as purveyors of objective journalism, quality content, and then they include this shit because it makes them an extra $1000 a week or whatever. It's an embarassment.

Also it cheapens the value of their own ad real estate. Not just folks like us who take the extreme option and aggressively block all ads. But also normal people who still have the ads turned on, but are being trained to completely ignore them because the content in those ad spaces is complete garbage. Google figured this out long ago on its own search results page, they often show no ad at all rather than a low value ad, to avoid ad fatigue in their users.
posted by Nelson at 8:42 AM on May 22, 2017 [8 favorites]


and yet I STILL think things to myself like, "why yes, I am a bit interested in why Hollywood stopped working with that actor!"

Yeah, I know what you mean. But then I realised that, not only do the articles linked from these shitty ads never answer whatever question forms in my head as a result of reading their copy, I could just as easily google the topic without clicking through if I really cared that much.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:43 AM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]




@Rhaomi, that's the one I remembered reading recently, but I had no idea how to find it. Thanks!
posted by tippiedog at 8:58 AM on May 22, 2017


msbrauer, use Firefox for Mobile with Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin. You need to configure the latter by enabling rules.

Firefox has its quirks but at least it's in your control.
posted by runcifex at 9:01 AM on May 22, 2017 [5 favorites]


msbrauer, In addition to those very good suggestions, you can switch your browser to a Chrome-based browser that includes an ad blocker. I use one called Brave Browser.
posted by montag2k at 9:07 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


I worked for a print media company for a decade and a half, and we also (obviously) had an online component. I also run a website that had ads, so I felt it would be hypocritical of me to block them. Eventually the ad dollars on my site went away completely, so I took the ads off entirely. And eventually the ads on the media sites got so egregiously abusive that I didn't feel bad blocking them either.

Life is too short to discriminate between good ads and bad ads. If good sites allow bad ads, then fuck 'em. I just block them all now and sleep like a baby at night. This is a problem the industry brought on themselves.

I'm not anti-advertising. I actually love good advertising, and advertising I am interested in. I will watch previews to movies one after the other, sometimes even sitting through an ad before I can see the ad I want to watch. I am one of those people more excited about the Super Bowl ads than I am in who is actually playing in the game. I love advertising. I will actually seek it out. But bad advertising, or exploitive advertising, ruins it for everyone.
posted by cjorgensen at 9:09 AM on May 22, 2017 [8 favorites]


Are there any good guides out there for blocking ads on phones? I've been using adblockers on my desktop for years but have had a hard time finding a solution for my android phone. There's nothing worse than seeing some unwanted video ad using up data on my phone and not really knowing how to do anything about it.

You could set up a Pihole on your home LAN and use it in conjunction with your phone (have the router push the Pihole address to the phone). Or you could try AdGuard (which works as a fake VPN) on the phone. (Contrary to the name, you do NOT have to use a Pi to run Pihole. I run it on an old Thinkpad running Debian Stable). Anyone that needs help/advice to set either up, MeMail/email me.

Glad to oblige.
posted by Samizdata at 9:12 AM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


msbrauer, In addition to those very good suggestions, you can switch your browser to a Chrome-based browser that includes an ad blocker. I use one called Brave Browser.

I use Brave on both my desktop and my tablet. The devs are surprisingly responsive and nice.
posted by Samizdata at 9:14 AM on May 22, 2017


For those who don't have a strict Reddit abstinence policy, there's a subreddit that spoils clickbait for you.

All purpose spoiler: It's always just some bullshit.
posted by ernielundquist at 9:19 AM on May 22, 2017 [23 favorites]


Nthing Firefox mobile with ublock origin. I will not buy a phone that forces me to use one browser without controllable ad blocking. I donate to Mozilla to keep the project alive. Google will still attempt to learn everything about you if you don't opt out.
posted by benzenedream at 9:19 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


autoplay video ads are the reason i'm not a TPM Prime member. while good journalism is worth it, you shouldn't have tried to extort it out of me, josh. making the free site a virtual ad hellscape, i think, wasn't really respectful of the longtime fans. otoh, ya gotta eat..idk
posted by j_curiouser at 9:27 AM on May 22, 2017


msbrauer, If you want to block ads on android, you can find programs to do it on fdroid. I use adaway, although that needs root. It works by replacing the hosts file. Netguard or adguard don't require root. I put one of them on a very non-techie friend's tablet -- I think it was netguard -- and it seems to work fine.
Again, get them from fdroid, because there is nothing that works available from Google play, and I would not install anything from any other repository.
posted by alloneword at 9:28 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


It is extraordinarily difficult to set up a filter for the outbrain type of ads, though, using ublock origin. There is a Christian news site that uses them. I have to look at it professionally. Not only are they often wildly inappropriate as to the subject matter, the code they use to place themselves on the page (which you need to identify to block them) is very obfuscated. Odd, that.
posted by alloneword at 9:31 AM on May 22, 2017


I'm an ad-blocking Nazi.

This ad-based business model racket needs to die in a fire.

Why? Because it's fundamentally nihilistic and cruel.

It is nihilist because it is a parasite that devours the host. But who will pay for the content? People ask. The reality is that there is no longer such thing as the content. The "content" is the media of the ads. The ads are the message that counts. The content is merely the delivery agent of those messages. You think the feedback-control capital flow cares about the "content"? What content?

It is cruel because it dehumanizes the readers, turning them into a product. You think the preference and behavior of the user trains the ad algorithms? It's the other way around. The algorithm trains you. The whole things is optimized for the single purpose of exploiting your attention capital and disadvantaged position in the information asymmetry, with maximal efficiency.

I don't flogging care about good content creators starving. I block ads very, very aggressively and I'm proud of it. This is total war and I have had no choice. The ad-trolls are threating about using the DMCA, the anti-circumvention clause, a piece of stinking excrement and instrument of brazen oppression, to reinforce their unholy profits. I say let them come and take it. Go ahead, make my day.

For those I care I tell them to "shut up and take my money." If they refuse and insist that I sell my mental equivalent of body parts instead, they're collateral damage in this war.
posted by runcifex at 9:34 AM on May 22, 2017 [14 favorites]


I'm a fan of ad blocking, I use uBlock Origin. But Brave Browser is an ugly, unethical company. Please don't legitimize them by using their product. Brave doesn't block all ads; it replaces ads with its own ads that make them money. It's outright theft from the publishers. Some of the ad blockers skim ad revenue too; AdBlock Plus for instance. Part of what's nice about uBlock Origin is it just straight up stops the ads entirely, so no one makes money. That's more ethical IMHO, at least their interests are 100% aligned with the user.
posted by Nelson at 9:39 AM on May 22, 2017 [9 favorites]


Good to know that about Brave.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:57 AM on May 22, 2017


Taboola and Outbrain, die in a fire.

The crazy thing is that these clickbait sites they send you to are themselves getting ads from better ad networks. I think the only value they add it their unholy inducement to click.
posted by GuyZero at 10:44 AM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


My local-area blog (Arlington, VA) just made the decision to remove these types of ads from their site. Whereupon me and everyone I know who reads it decided to whitelist the site. I was not the only person who wrote to tell them how much I appreciated them doing that - what a racket!

I use the F-secure free adblocker on iOS, and it works great, with uBlock Origin on my desktops. I do try to whitelist sites that I want to see succeed, and am using Patreon and subscriptions to others, so I don't think I have to feel bad about blocking everything. When I have to use someone else's computer, it's like it's a different and more annoying internet for them...
posted by gemmy at 10:56 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


God I hate those stupid "related content" links. I just despise them, they're awful. I want them to die. I want to punch site owners who use them. Sure, you complain to the site owners, and they give you the old "but it makes us money!" excuse. But that's bullshit. Ask them this: If the site was a brick-and-mortar store, would you allow a belligerent drunk to leer at incoming customers, rant incoherently about famous people, and vomit noisily in the nearest garbage can every so often, so long as he paid you $1000 a week? Because that's what those ads are doing to your site. Metaphorically.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:57 AM on May 22, 2017 [10 favorites]


I've been pondering this, in a late capitalism sort of way ... fundamental to the Western social contract is the idea that lying is bad because it undermines the ability to form contracts in society and thereby undermines society itself over time. So many business models are now predicated not on providing a quality product that the consumer wants, or even providing a shitty product that the consumer can make-do with, but constantly tricking and scamming consumers into things they DON'T want, DON'T need, and can't get out of. The fine print in your cell phone contract that is constantly shifting how it screws you. The way gyms won't fucking let you cancel. Malware in ads. All these companies that say, "I'll take a short-term financial gain by fucking my customers over," who then bemoan or actively try to legally prevent customers from objecting, eventually forcing customers to leave the entire market because they can't acquire a certain product or service without getting fucked. All these companies stampeding into "subscription" services because they incorporated planned obscolesence, then nerfed their product further so it broke all the time, leaving consumers to eventually throw up their hands in despair, so now everyone wants us to "subscribe" to a juicer because selling a good appliance once doesn't make enough money but selling a monthly fee gets you lock in .... Subscriptions is the next place that's about to become massively consumer-unfriendly in a ridiculous race to the bottom. There are so many companies I just dread having to do business with now and go out of my way to avoid. (I mean, this is part of why amazon is so massive ... there are so few companies that are customer-friendly these days that people (myself included) are willing to overlook an awful lot of monopolistic behavior and employee abuse because at least they're not inserting malware on my computer or signing me up for things I can't quit or refusing to let me return broken products! The other alternative is monopolistic behavior, employee abuse, AND fucking over the customer.) It just feels like it's compounding and compounding, into every area of life, where doctors are under the sway of pharma companies and food isn't created for health but to sell agribusiness and every contract has a hidden clause to screw me and politicians are all owned by lobbyists and it really does feel like some of the right-wing fascist trend in the West is driven as much by this complete collapse of honesty in contract and honor in commerce as by anything else. The world is unpleasant because corporations are determined to extract a short-term gain by undermining the honest contracts that create a society, and there's no way to fight that unpleasantness because we're too small and they're too big.

In a different rant, where I was feeling less philosophical and more lawyerly, this would be about how shareholder value maximization management is absolute bullshit doing long-term damage to corporations, and how it is not and never has been a legal obligation and how some fucking morons came up with this idea in the last 40 years and used it to destroy the American corporate landscape and they need to be stopped.

Anyway, internet ads, racing to the bottom and forcing people to block them because sites make short-term decisions about cash-flow without long-term considerations about readership. Or trust.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:58 AM on May 22, 2017 [17 favorites]


Taegan Goddard, proprietor of the mostly user-supported political news aggregator site, Political Wire argues that the long-term solution is paid subscription-based news sources. "Support real news with your money."(Boldface headings added:)

Fake News Is Just an Excuse
The problem for journalism is not fake news. It’s that news lacks a real business model. . . . Facebook [and] Google have taken over the entire market for digital advertising. And with good reason – they’re much better at it. . . .

It’s gotten so bad that many mainstream news sites actually show links to fake news as advertising. At the bottom of news articles you’ll see headings like “Related news” or “Sponsored links” or “You Might Like This” – these are often links to fake news stories.

In order to support itself, the traditional news media is willing to take ad dollars that actually support the publishing of fake news.
[. . .]
[N]ews organizations make their money selling advertising. They have no incentive at all to tell you that nothing happened. . . . Instead they add filler. They write 800-word stories that contain little information of importance or they air unedited Donald Trump campaign rallies in the hopes that he says something outrageous. This is not real news. Maybe it’s not fake news, but it’s not news either.
[. . . ]
The solution to this problem is to support real news with your money. Subscribe to a newspaper or website. Donate to National Public Radio. Don’t force real news organizations to rely on a broken business model.

The good news is that since last year’s election every major newspaper and magazine have seen huge increases in their digital subscribers.
Digital Advertising is Broken
There was a time when the publisher could sell advertisers access to an audience. The incentives were perfectly in line: Publishers who put out a quality publication attracted a quality audience which made sense to quality advertisers. All parties had a stake in the system.

But as publishing moved to the Internet and digital ads evolved, the incentives grew out of whack. Publishers no longer have a direct relationship with most advertisers. Instead they increasingly use ad networks [that] pool an audience across thousands of different publications and websites. Advertisers tell the network what audience they want to target and their ads are shown wherever those readers happen to be visiting. . . . This [creates the incentive for publishers ] sharing personal data about their readers and resorting to other reader unfriendly tactics. . . . Advertisers no longer care about individual publications since their audience may come from thousands of different sites.

To make matters worse, the Internet has a virtually unlimited inventory of ad space which drives prices down to ridiculously low prices. This often leads to ads that are in very poor taste.
User tracking by web advertisers undermines quality sites
An anecdote by Walter Mossberg about launching the tech site Recode:
About a week after our launch, I was seated at a dinner next to a major advertising executive. He complimented me on our new site’s quality. . . I asked him if that meant he’d be placing ads on our site. He said yes . . . then, after the cookies he placed on Recode helped him to track our desirable audience around the web, his agency would begin removing the ads and placing them on cheaper sites our readers also happened to visit. In other words, our quality journalism was, to him, nothing more than a lead generator for target-rich readers, and would ultimately benefit sites that might care less about quality.
This user tracking is undermining quality sites. Advertisers no longer care about quality news — or even real news. They just want to follow their targeted readers around the web and put their ads in front of in the cheapest way possible. With virtually unlimited ad inventory, it’s a race to the bottom.
Intrusive ads to fake news on real news sites
A digital advertising firm recently tried to convince me to put their ads on Political Wire because it would help sell memberships. Their reasoning was that the ads were so intrusive that readers would join so they could have the ads removed.

The ad units they were proposing included links to fake news stories. They showed me half-a-dozen otherwise reputable news sites which were currently running these lucrative ads.
Advertising partnerships with the Facebook fail
With the implosion of the digital ad model — which I have described at length — publishers hoped partnerships with Facebook might rescue quality journalism. The Verge reports it hasn’t worked out:
. . . results have been uniformly weak. “The revenue in no way backed up the amount of time that was being spent on it,” says Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, which represents many large publishers, including NBC, The New York Times, Conde Nast, ESPN, Slate, Business Insider, and Vox Media.

At the end of last year, DCN surveyed its members on the financial performance of content published to third-party platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Google’s AMP project. It found that not one publisher reported earning more money through Instant Articles than they did through their own properties.
Exodus of advertising dollars from newssites to Google and Facebook
New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg says advertisers have to step up to support the news media:
So, yeah, America’s Advertisers, I’m talking about democracy, and your role in it. News flash: You have one. Let me explain.

We are still very much in the midst of a fascinating, often exciting but sometimes scary digital transformation in which advertising dollars are moving to Google and Facebook in a hurry.

But as those dollars are moving toward Google and Facebook, they are often moving away from quality news and information providers, starving them of the direct digital revenue they need to pay for fact-based news gathering. Real news costs real money; fake news comes cheap.
However well-intentioned an idea, it will never happen. The reason advertisers are moving to Google and Facebook — and away from news sites — is that it just works better.

The digital news media needs a better business model. Pleading with advertisers to support news — against their own financial interests — is just not a viable long term strategy.
 
posted by Herodios at 11:37 AM on May 22, 2017 [5 favorites]


Patreons all the way down.
posted by tobascodagama at 12:13 PM on May 22, 2017


it really does feel like some of the right-wing fascist trend in the West is driven as much by this complete collapse of honesty in contract and honor in commerce as by anything else

Yeah. What difference does it make when Trump spouts bullshit when you are surrounded 24/7 by scammers? "Fat-free", "health food", "wellness", "weight loss", "free phone", "accredited course", "cheap refinancing", "make $30000 from home"... whether it's finance, pharma, or food, whether its academia or business or art, it seems as if everybody has a hustle in relentless, shameless bullshit, because nothing matters save money.
posted by dmh at 1:19 PM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


the long-term solution is paid subscription-based news sources

Yes, but what about the people who can't - or won't - pay? I have trouble seeing how a world where poor people and/or people who don't care enough to pay for good information being served whatever crap is left is good for, well, anybody.
posted by R a c h e l at 1:56 PM on May 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


Of course, that gets into the "business model" for Public Television (he said while watching the MisterRogers Marathon); get memberships from the "elite audience" and make it available to everyone. Of course, Patreon makes all kinds of 'tiers' possible and webcomickers who use it have a free site and separate 'members only' content (often including "see it first" of their main content).
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:03 PM on May 22, 2017


Heavy, string-free public funding seems like an alternate model. Politically untenable in the era of "Austerity Now, Austerity Forever", to be sure. But it'd solve the problem.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:33 PM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


I find Steven Black's hosts file repo to be incredibly useful, and it's made my browsing way faster. (or so it feels).

On the other hand it also blocks social networks, so you may want to selectively whitelist a few things.

All this shit really makes me want to run my own DNS server at home.
posted by ephemerae at 7:55 PM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


So, I work(ed) for a company that was doing similar things. It was under a broader goal to "personalize the internet", but providing article recommendations was as easy foothold to that.

All of us were genuinely conflicted about being part of the worst thing on the internet, and we really genuinely wanted to make it better. To show quality articles that you'd actually want to see.

Two problems kept us from achieving that goal.

The first is that people just click more on click bait. It works.

The second is even though we won every single metrics based head to head with Taboola, they would just throw money at the contract, and include a clause in the contract that those companies couldn't partner with us to do ANYTHING.

*sigh*
posted by flaterik at 8:21 PM on May 22, 2017 [4 favorites]


One thing that we would never do that Taboola does - we were pretty sure that they independently optimize metrics for photos and headlines/links.

That's why they are frequently unrelated - because they're not actually trying to keep articles with their correct photos.

I don't remember the source of the info, it's just something we shook our heads about.
posted by flaterik at 8:25 PM on May 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


I find Steven Black's hosts file repo to be incredibly useful, and it's made my browsing way faster. (or so it feels).

On the other hand it also blocks social networks, so you may want to selectively whitelist a few things.

All this shit really makes me want to run my own DNS server at home.


Check out Pihole. It works as a forwarding DNS server with caching, both IPv4 and v6, with integrated blocklist based IP blackholing, whitelisting and blacklisting (both string and wildcard based). Given the right system, setup is just about idiot proof, and the admin interface is a treat.

Plus it really allows to you realize exactly what is going on behind the scenes if you look at the query logs in the admin interface.

DISCLAIMER: Just a huge fan. Completely unrelated to the project.

Look here - https://pi-hole.net/

Also, completely free, open source, and aggressively developed.
posted by Samizdata at 8:46 PM on May 22, 2017 [5 favorites]


I use pi-hole at home and DNS66 when I'm out. Unfortunately Taboola and Outbrain seem to be resistant to the usual blocking methods.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 7:18 AM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


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