“Ghost shark” captured on camera for the first time

Re:“Ghost shark” captured on camera for the first time by yossarianium on Monday December 19, 2016 @11:54AM (#13212770)

I am really hoping that companies are measuring the bounce rate for these types of tactics.

When I see one of these I could become a subscriber and log in, I could whitelist the site's advertisements, or I could open Web Inspector and disable the popup layer manually, but I don't do anything of these things. I acknowledge its existence and hit the back button.

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Re:“Ghost shark” captured on camera for the first time by kefka on Monday December 19, 2016 @12:08PM (#13212903)

I just sent a LinkedIn email (yeah, spammy horrendous-ness all of its own, but I digress) to Malcolm CasSelle, the CTO of Tronc, the owner of the Chicago Tribune. This is the contents.

_________________

I'm [kefka], a systems engineer. I regularly read Hacker News, https://news.ycombinator.com . A user linked to a story on your property, ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13206294 ) which goes to ( http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-ghost-shar... ).

It's the response that your website gives me when I try to go to said link: " Advertising revenue helps support our journalism To read today's stories, please turn off your ad blocker or subscribe"

I get that your company needs to make money, which I greatly understand and get. However, asking me to quit my adblocker or otherwise disable it is unconscionable. Advertisement servers have been one of root ways drive-by attacks are dome on users, combined with Javascript attack ads that end up with millions hacked. Forbes themselves, with a day of implementing the same Adblock-shaming techniques ended up being the site that infected 3 million with DDOS clients.

I am not against subscriptions, or static advertisements. You have to make money as well. But there's ways to run effective advertisements without alienating users.

But, if a program demanded you to disable your antivirus, would you? (That's the kind of situation I'm at).

Sincerely, [Kefka]

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Re:“Ghost shark” captured on camera for the first time by jawilson2 on Monday December 19, 2016 @01:19PM (#13213577)

> Advertisement servers have been one of root ways drive-by attacks are dome on users

I hope this isn't a copy-paste of what you actually wrote.

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Re:“Ghost shark” captured on camera for the first time by user5994461 on Monday December 19, 2016 @03:42PM (#13214812)

As if that guy had any clue what are "javascript" "drive by" or "DDoS".

Might as well have sent an email in chinese.

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Re:“Ghost shark” captured on camera for the first time by callahad on Monday December 19, 2016 @12:16PM (#13212981)

This one also sets the body to `overflow: hidden` and has a scroll event listener that tries to prevent scrolling the document. At which point I bounced.

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Re:“Ghost shark” captured on camera for the first time by spullara on Monday December 19, 2016 @01:10PM (#13213504)

Why would they care if you bounce if you aren't paying? My guess is that the possibility that you might share it with others is low enough that it is probably better for them if you don't get value from the site if they don't get value from you.

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