Ad blockers are part of the problem

Re:Ad blockers are part of the problem by mnw21cam on Monday November 21, 2016 @08:10AM (#13005082)

> But even scientific papers often have lines saying "Sponsored by NSF grant #1234."

Yeah, this brings a whole new slant onto the argument. It may be that there is some text attached to a document that must legally accompany that document. For instance, would it ever be alright for an ad-blocker to remove something like "Copyright 2018 ACME corporation"?

In what way is "This work was supported by a grant from ACME corporation" different?

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Re:Ad blockers are part of the problem by omginternets on Monday November 21, 2016 @11:22AM (#13006558)

The NSF grant funds public research done (in principle) for the common interest.

ACME's logo on public research has little or nothing to do with ACME's logo on a private, commercial website. In the former case, it's a certification and proof-of-work (on behalf of the NSF). In the latter case, it's literally commercial advertising. I think comparing advertising to public research is a big fat red herring.

Here troyhunt.com has a business problem: environmental forces make "simple" sponsorship an unreliable source of revenue. It takes few users to get the sponsorship link blacklisted on EasyList as intrusive (read: unpalatable) advertising. Clearly, you cannot make money doing things this way.

There are no easy solutions, but native advertising seems to work.

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