Some ad-blockers are tracking you, shaking down publishers, and showing you ads

Re:Some ad-blockers are tracking you, shaking down publisher... by p4wnc6 on Wednesday March 02, 2016 @04:27PM (#11213156)

I think the MindGeek / Pornhub monopoly demonstrates the lengths to which content providers will go to avoid switching away from ad-based revenue, and also the extreme aversion consumers have to the entire premise of paying for creative content (whether through paid attention to ads or paid dollars to subscriptions).

Not even porn can get many people to prefer a subscription model or stop using adblockers. Good luck to everybody else ...

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Re:Some ad-blockers are tracking you, shaking down publisher... by Spivak on Wednesday March 02, 2016 @05:02PM (#11213388)

> Not even porn can get many people to prefer a subscription model

You say this like porn viewers don't have a huge incentive to make sure PORNHUB CO. doesn't appear on their bank statement or that some shadow profile isn't tracking their viewing habits. Hell, private browsing was practically invented for porn and [insert non-porn plausible deniability excuse].

I think the porn industry is in a unique position where if their stance was that highly regulated, completely image based, ads served securely through their domain was the means by which the site was funded while maintaining the viewer's anonymity they could find themselves on a lot of default white-lists.

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Re:Some ad-blockers are tracking you, shaking down publisher... by forgetsusername on Wednesday March 02, 2016 @05:43PM (#11213649)

>"porn viewers don't have a huge incentive to make sure PORNHUB CO. doesn't appear on their bank statement"

Do they? I mean, honestly, who isn't a porn viewer? Who on earth would you, personally, think it to be scandalous to have a porn subscription discovered on their credit card? Anybody? What is the incentive?

I thought OP's porn example was pretty good. The entire world crushes porn (even when it's taboo or illegal), and yet still refuses to pay for it.

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Re:Some ad-blockers are tracking you, shaking down publisher... by bcoates on Wednesday March 02, 2016 @05:48PM (#11213682)

I'm pretty sure people who have a not terribly high opinion of me would have it lowered still to discover I paid for porn.

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Re:Some ad-blockers are tracking you, shaking down publisher... by p4wnc6 on Wednesday March 02, 2016 @06:24PM (#11213903)

Eh, they are probably too busy looking at porn to care.

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Re:Some ad-blockers are tracking you, shaking down publisher... by ksenzee on Wednesday March 02, 2016 @07:22PM (#11214187)

> Who isn't a porn viewer?

Believe it or not, there are people who never watch porn. The industry's sleaziness turns some people off, and some people just aren't into it.

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Re:Some ad-blockers are tracking you, shaking down publisher... by pjc50 on Thursday March 03, 2016 @05:31AM (#11216029)

I think it's very insular to assume that what you think is normal is the same as what most people think is normal, especially when it's still newspaper scandal material.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/smith-ordered-... : mostly this was about putting the cable TV bill on expenses, but all the papers were particularly outraged at finding PPV porn on the bill.

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Re:Some ad-blockers are tracking you, shaking down publisher... by makomk on Wednesday March 02, 2016 @06:10PM (#11213814)

Also, the porn industry's billing practices are sleazy and full of dark patterns.

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Re:Some ad-blockers are tracking you, shaking down publisher... by malka on Wednesday March 02, 2016 @06:23PM (#11213896)

another effect of private browsing is that, by default on Chrome, extensions are disabled. Therefore it is possible they suffer less from ad blocking than the rest of the industry.

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