deborah: the Library of Congress cataloging numbers for children's literature, technology, and library science (Default)
deborah ([personal profile] deborah) wrote2015-10-07 08:47 pm
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Advertsing: I want to be a good citizen and also safe

I dislike using ad-blockers, in general. I know investigative journalism and online fiction are both expensive to produce, and I want to support all of those content creators. To that end, I wish there were an ad broker that worked closely with the maintainers of Ad Block Plus and Ghostery, and committed to only providing ads which were guaranteed to (within reason):
  • Contain no malware
  • Contain no trackers
  • Contain no data scrapers or other hostile code
  • Not require risky tech (eg. Flash) to run
  • Not move

I know, that last one is unusual. That's an accessibility thing more than anything else; animated ads tend to use scripting rather than animated gifs for their movement (thus ignoring browser animation settings), frequently ignore WCAG, and -- my reason for loathing them -- are often a migraine trigger for me.

I used to browse with NoScript everywhere, but these days that breaks more of the web than not. Instead, I browse with Ghostery to make myself safe; I had to whitelist a few websites which break with Google Analytics off, and had to whitelist some of the A/B testing platforms and video CDNs, but otherwise that leaves the web fully functional. But I still have to use ABP to block two things: obtrusive animations, and links to clickbait sites which are disguised to look like links from the host site, and which frequently redirect to dangerous, malware-infested pages. (Actually, Ghostery catches most of those, too.)

I would be fine with ads plastered all over websites as long as they weren't highly likely to be malicious or dangerous to me! If ABP makes enough of a dent, I suppose, perhaps there'll be demand for it.

I'd kind of like to put some non-JS tracking code in my company's site to see how many hits we get with Ghostery on or JS off (though we're non-functional without JS, sigh.)
owlectomy: A squashed panda sewing a squashed panda (Default)

[personal profile] owlectomy 2015-10-08 01:14 am (UTC)(link)
I hate that I have to run Adblock all the time; but my work computers have little RAM and low bandwidth, and if I let ads run, I end up waiting and waiting for pages to load. I would resign myself to the amount of advertising on the web if ad brokers could just design for people with older hardware and low data speeds; actually, given the huge growth in mobile usage, it's astonishing that people aren't moving that way...
jesse_the_k: unicorn line drawing captioned "If by different you mean awesome" (different = awesome)

[personal profile] jesse_the_k 2015-10-09 02:17 am (UTC)(link)
I've experimented with AB and ABP and now run Ghostery alone (Safari on Mac), and my needs are like yours: moving stuff makes it impossible me to find the start of the next line in my reading (on good days) and migraine (on bad ones).

...given the increase in mobile usage, I hope this duplicative tracking infrastructure goes the way of the <blink> tag, and soon. Why can't someone provide a one-platform-for-all which supports ads & trackers from all possible advertisers. Then each ad broker wouldn't have to inject thousands of lines of JS for their particular system.

Ranting over now.
erika: (quotes: h2g2: hoovooloo)

[personal profile] erika 2015-10-21 10:12 am (UTC)(link)
There is a setting to allow unobtrusive ads. You may already have it turned on, as I believe it's on by default.