Hacker News Reader

Comment by jklein11 | Hacker News Reader

Because how dare a company try to make money on a service they provide to us for free!

I don't believe that serving up malware is a legitimate business practice to make money.

Certain websites have had unintentional incidents regarding malware served by 3rd party networks. Using that as an excuse is perverse.

It happens quite frequently because of the way ad networks work. Ads are not vetted or regulated in any meaningful way and often ad networks will serve up ads from other networks so a content provider has no way of knowing the true source of the ads they're serving.

There's been a violation of the trust between content providers and consumers. Consumers have found ad blockers as a means to protect themselves and it's up to providers to now come up with a safer arrangement.

  unintentional incidents regarding malware served by
  3rd party networks

If I buy some burger patties from X-mart and there are razor blades in them, I don't give a shit about whether it was a party ten levels down their supply chain or if this is the only way they can make the level of profit they want. I'm just going to stop eating their burgers.

At least with food they are regulated and all parties in the chain will be investigated and held responsible for damages.

Requiring visitors to leave themselves open to such malware attacks is actually a perverse business practice.

No web browser user in 2016 needs to excuse themselves for practicing good web hygiene.

It is the right of a consumer to not patronize businesses with that particular monetization model

A site getting posted to HN is not forcing you to use it, nor asking you to agree with its aggressive anti-ad-block measures.

In a voluntary market such as the internet force is not part of the equation. I the consumer choose not the suuport aggressive anti-ad-block measures. I further am taking part in advocacy of removing aggressive anti-ad-block measures, or links to, sites I frequent. If someone posted links to trash you did not support you would of course not be forced to click it, but if you find a medium you enjoy frequently full of trash it would certainly be an annoyance.

You would be right, if hacker news would generate it's own content. But it doesn't.

Hacker news itself, is free from ads. Only the shared content might have it.

As I wrote, forcing people not to share certain content just flies in the face of hacker news and the free sharing of information.

We can advise not to use these sites, but never restrict the freedom to do so, because in the end the ad itself is not mandatory and you can ignore it. And frankly hacker news would become forbes 2.0, but in a different way.

If forbes wishes to use aggressive blocking strategies, it's their problem. They will be the ones in the end not having new readers.

The discussions are content.

Hacker News is filled with ads. It's run by Y Combinator, and you'll notice there are some "articles" you can't comment on. Those are sponsored ads from Y Combinator companies. Posts made about Y Combinator companies often skyrocket right to the top as well.

Haha, been here for quite a while now and haven't noticed these yet. Thanks for the clarification.

>Hacker News is filled with ads

Where "filled" means there are rarely job ads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11389835#11391805

No one argues that. It's much more dubious whether the consumer has the right to patronize a business in explicit disregard of the terms that business sets. If you don't want to see ads on Forbes, you can not go to Forbes. I'm not so sure you're entitled to just read Forbes without the ads.

I use an ad-blocker too. I'm just not so sure I'm defending some principled public good in doing so.

And that's kind of what OP is doing. He's saying "lets not even go to those sites". In a weird way, it's more ethical to just not share them, than to share them with ad-block users.

So don't do it. Nobody tells you to click on those links, and I'm sure you're intelligent enough to read a URL.

A website such as HN is inherently a filter on the worlds content. Imagine if all the worlds content was infront of you. You could say just don't click on what you don't want. But surely content filtered to what you want is better? I am asking for a filter, HN, to be more properly tuned. Saying just don't click on it ignores the inherent nature of the situation.

You seek to deny me content because of choices you have made.

I'm happy to subscribe to content.

Why is your choice somehow more right than mine?

The inherent nature of the situation is that most people have zero problem clicking on these links.

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