German Publisher Axel Springer Bans Adblocking Users From Bild Website (axelspringer.de) 474
An anonymous reader writes: Major European publishing house Axel Springer has instituted countermeasures against users who employ adblocking software on its Bild news outlet, which represents a daily publication with a print circulation of 2.5 million. The website now presents readers with a request to either turn off the adblocking or pay a €2.99 monthly subscription fee. In a statement the company insists that online journalism must be funded by one of the 'two known revenue pillars' — advertising or sales.
Isn't this a no brainer? (Score:5, Funny)
It's why I don't use ad blocking software or disable ads on Slashdot.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
And it's why I do.
Re:Isn't this a no brainer? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's why I don't use ad blocking software or disable ads on Slashdot.
Most people wouldn't use ad blocking if the advertisers didn't allow malware laden ads be served to their PC's turning them into mindless drones for a botnet. They could fix that problem easily by turning around and vetting ads. Or if the ads weren't so obtrusive and annoying either. Bet we'll see within 3 months that they're reversing this stance, or within a year it shuts down.
Re:Isn't this a no brainer? (Score:5, Insightful)
exactly, adblock has become more important that antivirus
Re:Isn't this a no brainer? (Score:5, Insightful)
To be honest, I think it has more to do with page load times for most. The ads might be intrusive, but now with adblocking on my iPad pages load quickly, even with spotty Internet. The bidding game the advertisers were playing is a big part of their downfall.
The tracking does have its "creepy" factor, with ads following you from site to site... Despite having already made whatever purchase was under consideration.
Re:Isn't this a no brainer? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Isn't this a no brainer? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not trying to be a Google shill here, but this is exactly why I like Google's ads (or rather, liked, back when they were more obviously ads on the right side of the search results). If I'm looking for something, I might do a Google search for it; if one of the AdWords ads shows up, as a small text-only ad, and it's exactly the thing I'm looking for, that's a good thing IMO. I guess this is called "targeted advertising", and IMO it's the best kind. If I'm explicitly searching for something, or have some kind of problem I'm Googling for an answer to, having a small,text-only ad pop up with a product that solves my problem is a big help.
Re:Isn't this a no brainer? (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, you'll be sitting in that chair for weeks or months while they're still trying to sell you one.
Personally I find it hilarious. I sometimes go to Amazon and browse the infant stuff (formula, highchairs, strollers, cribs, etc) and then sit back and watch as the ads for that stuff follows me around the web for a month or two. Lol, it must really confound their metrics and ad data. And I've never even bought a child! :)
Re:Isn't this a no brainer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most ads aren't aimed at getting you to click on them and make a purchase. The goal of an ad is to put a concept in your mind. The purest form of this are the political yard signs. Nobody thinks, "I saw 90 signs for Bob and 110 signs for Mike; therefore I will vote for Mike." But people do respond to pressures like that; it creates biases and impressions that they don't even realize.
Even when you do your research, you are influenced by these. Most of the time, your research is going to be inconclusive. There isn't any "best chair"; at best, it's a matter of personal taste. Most products, from canned peaches to computers, will end up having similar specifications, but you'll have a preference because you like the flavor of this brand or the you had a good experience with that computer in the past.
Advertising helps put those ideas in your head. Just seeing it in the ads will give you a positive feeling toward the brand, if the advertising is well done. A lot of advertising is poorly done, of course, but a well-done ad can influence preferences in very subtle ways. That subtlety means it's aggravatingly hard to tell which ads work and which ads won't, but advertising continues to exist for a reason: it steers consumer preferences during the phase where they don't know what they want and end up trusting their instincts. Which applies to more purchasing decisions than most people realize.
Stupid advertisers want ads that they measure working by clicks, so they optimize the ads to attract clicks, but that doesn't drive purchasing. The best ads are the ones that consumers don't even realize they've seen, but just develop a cumulative effect of exposure. That's hard to do, and requires a lot of time, money, and effort to get right. Even then it's a crapshoot, like trying to write a popular song. But in the end, there's a market for so many chairs and so many peaches and so many computers, and advertising can steer enough purchases towards yours and away from somebody else's equivalent one in a way that merely improving the specifications can't do.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, for the price of a nice Zeiss mechanical focus lens you can buy three Nikon/Canon/ Whatever lenses and let them break.
Re: (Score:3)
TBH, my biggest beef with ads is their blinkiness. I don't mind static images, but I can't concentrate on an article when it's surrounded by blinky seizure-inducing ads.
Re: (Score:2)
And what in the world is up with the new "Popover Autoplay Movie Ads", especially displaying on my DATA restricted smartphone? IMHO it is "How to piss off your potential customers"
All I do is kill the page, go and try to find something else similar from another site that isn't trying so hard to hijack my phone.
Re: (Score:3)
To be honest, I think it has more to do with page load times for most. The ads might be intrusive, but now with adblocking on my iPad pages load quickly, even with spotty Internet.
The tracking does have its "creepy" factor, with ads following you from site to site... Despite having already made whatever purchase was under consideration.
Exactly.
The speed-up in load time is incredible with an ad-blocker. That alone justifies using one in my mind.
The protection against malware is another 100% stand-alone justification to me.
And finally, yes, the creepy tracking that is utterly worthless. I want to buy a widget, so I go to Amazon and buy one. And then for months every site I visit is filled to the gills with fucking widget ads. HELLO- I already bought my widget, I'm not going to buy another one. I'm already done and yet there's no feedback
Re: (Score:2)
They will never be able to vet all the ads. I used to work for a major news website and the Ad Ops people there were always swamped. They also only knew a bit of HTML. There is no way they will be reading all that minified javascript.
The only way to prevent malware from occasionally slipping through the cracks would be to remove scripting.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
And the obvious answer for sites like Bild is to stop allowing ads which use scripting. That's what we use ad blockers for now. If they want all their ads visible, they need to work with their advertisers. Or find another revenue source.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
They will never be able to vet all the ads.
So do it the sensible way, only show ads you have vetted. When (not if) a complaint comes in related to an advertisement, remove that one from the rotation to re-examine it.
If the web site administrators would show some effort to maintain a quality web site, we wouldn't have to block parts of pages for our own safety.
I have seen pages that actually do this, and their ads tend to show up even with adblockers because they are hosting the ads on their own servers and using a server-side script to decide which
Re: (Score:2)
I don't use an ad blocker at all; I use a tracker blocker. If Bild doesn't have a tracker, it can feed me ads, if I go there, which I have never done, BTW.
Ghostery, the plugin i use, winds up killing most of the ads, anyway, but I have no bad conscience about blocking those who would track me even if "do not track" is enabled.
End of Story!
Not necessarily malware... (Score:3)
I've had malware served as an ad, but that's unusual. The bigger problem is the sheer volume of stuff. One news site that I visit semi-regularly tries to load things from as many as thirty external sites - it varies wildly. I just now opened their page to see today's number: on the home page Ghostery blocks 12, AdBlock Plus another 4. Go to an article, and the numbers rise to 17 and 4. Sorry, that's just too much crap: I am visiting one site, not twenty-two. The site loads many, many times faster without al
Re:Isn't this a no brainer? (Score:4, Informative)
Remember when the New York Times decided to put themselves behind a Paywall? That didn't last a year. I suspect the same thing will happen here. People don't like ads. The answer isn't to block adblockers, the answer is to stop annoying the shit out of your visitors that they would WANT an ad blocker!
Re: (Score:2)
If Bild doesn't find a way to pay for its expenses it will shut down anyway. So will other sites. Ads or sales or shut down.
The bandwidth costs of getting the ads to the viewer, all the way from their server to my phone, should be part of their expenses.
Then they charge the advertisers enough to cover that expense.
Advertiser pays.
Re:Isn't this a no brainer? (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet wasn't devised as a revenue generating platform, just because you usurped it so doesn't give you a right to my eyeballs nor to demand payola for your content. Don't like it, tough shit.
Re:AdBlock+ = inferior & 'souled-out' vs. host (Score:4, Insightful)
All you're doing is making sure that I NEVER EVER use APK.
NEVER.
Re: (Score:2)
That would be awesome. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any of these commercial shit sites shut down yet. :(
Re: (Score:2)
Precisely. I don't use an ad blocker. I use a script blocker. All of the crap that gets dragged in by a modern site is somewhat mind boggling.
There is no way for ANY ONE to vouch for the safety of all of that.
Stop whining news media. Solve the underlying problem.
Re:Isn't this a no brainer? (Score:5, Informative)
It's a no brainer to block all ads and adblock-detecting scripts as well. I went there and could access all normal content with uBlock + noscript.
Yes. It's An Epic Fail. (Score:3, Insightful)
Their ad blocker banner requires JavaScript. Running NoScript circumvents it.
Re: (Score:2)
This has a countermeasure: deliver only the first paragraph to NoScript users (and to search engine robots), and deliver the rest through AJAX.
When the majority of search results have walls (Score:2)
If the majority of sites in the top ten results from a major search engine look like WSJ or Elsevier/Wiley journals, with a paywall or anti-ad-blocking measures required to view past the first paragraph, the web will become a more frustrating place. I have already run into this problem with paywalls when I search for certain linguistics topics on Google.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Isn't this a no brainer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Isn't this a no brainer? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's why I don't use ad blocking software or disable ads on Slashdot.
Imagine if, as you walk along a street in downtown the small shops, which depend on advertising (right?) have these little boards outside their shops with some advertising. Actually this is pretty normal in most places.
Now imagine you have to pay to walk down the street in downtown, a small fee which goes toward maintaining these advertising boards.
Now imagine if you accidentally touch one of these advertising boards theres a chance you'll get infected with the flu.
Now imagine instead of flu sometimes its zombie plague.
Thats what Internet advertising is like.
Re: (Score:3)
No, it's more like having somebody move the boards in front of you as you are walking. And if that doesn't work, they throw the advert at you.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Car analogy time!
So, suppose you're driving your car. Every once in a while, a great big billboard pops up in between you and your passenger, interrupting your conversation. Other times, the radio turns on by itself, blaring out annoying music while someone was trying to give you directions on where to turn.
Meanwhile, each time this happens, it uses up a bit of gas. By the end of the month you realize you've spent twice as much on gas as you thought you should have, given how much you drove. And the car
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If ads were simple images in-line between the text I would probably not block them. Otherwise I have no reason to let them through.
Score one for the Lord of Hosts (Score:2)
[on] my home consumer-grade broadband router [...] I had forgotten how many of the mainstream ad servers I'd manually blocked by hostname
APK would be proud of you.
Ads are fine (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ads are fine (Score:5, Informative)
So I decided to give them a try and comply with their request. Disabled uBlock and visited the site. To be fair there don't seem to be animated or noisy ads on there. The page was pretty slow to load due to the ad servers taking several seconds to respond. The site itself seems be be a "tabloid" style paper (I don't read German), with some soft porn on the front page (scroll down a bit) and crappy looking content.
Then I tried to read an article, and it displayed the first few lines and then demand â0.99 for the rest. Fuck you Bild, I accepted your ads and shitty Javascript and you still want me to pay for your content? I already paid!
Re: (Score:2)
it's logistically impossible to audit all the ads, especially for a publisher. They need to remove all the scripts.
Re:Ads are fine (Score:4, Insightful)
Like most internet things, media companies had a chance to get in front of this and condition people to pay for content at the outset. Instead they created overpriced paywalled gardens with minimal content, then watched as people went to ad-supported pay sites. Instead of lowering prices and offering a better product, they stopped charging and joined the race to the bottom.
The first domino has tipped (Score:5, Insightful)
If a site is important enough to me, I'll pay a nominal fee rather than slow loading times with what is often intrusive hogwash.
If it's not, the information I seek is probably available elsewhere.
Re:The first domino has tipped (Score:4, Insightful)
For me, there are 4-5 news sites I visit regularly that all push for subscriptions. $5/month each starts to be obscene if it isn't your only go-to source for information.
I'll be transparent after the advertisers are (Score:2)
I've been seeing more requests than ever recently to "please turn off Adblocker" while browsing.
I see the same thing and my response is basically that I'll turn it off when I am paid in cash to view the add AND all tracking data is provided to me for review and possible veto. Until then they can go perform sexual acts on themselves. Their bad business model is not my problem.
If a site is important enough to me, I'll pay a nominal fee rather than slow loading times with what is often intrusive hogwash.
Exactly. I do subscribe to a few sites that I find particularly valuable to me. The rest of them aren't valuable enough for me to worry about. If they paywall it off then I'll just go elsewhere but they aren't getting a penny
Re:The first domino has tipped (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been seeing more requests than ever recently to "please turn off Adblocker" while browsing.
Funnily enough, I see them too. I don't run an adblocker, though. I do however run noscript. I have no objection to ads in principle. However, I'm not running scripts unless I have a compelling reason to do so. So, if you want to show me ads, serve them up without Javascript.
If you want to hog my CPU and eat my battery... well, tough.
They'll invent "a compelling reason" (Score:2)
However, I'm not running scripts unless I have a compelling reason to do so.
Then watch sites twist overage costs on cellular and satellite Internet into such "a compelling reason":
"Many ISPs meter your data. To save you money, this photo collection uses WebP compression. There are two ways to view it: switch to a web browser supporting WebP, or enable JavaScript to use our Canvas WebP decoder."
"Many ISPs meter your data. To save you money, we deliver only the parts of the article that you actually read. To continue reading past the lead paragraph, please enable JavaScript."
Re: (Score:2)
My guess is that unobtrusive, text ads will become key again -- the thing tha
What happens when the content isn't worth it? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What happens when the content isn't worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The same thing that happens in the real world: you do without the product, and the seller does without the revenue. Quite simple.
And nothing of value was lost (Score:4, Insightful)
Bild is the worst example of German yellow press. I seriously doubt that people who are intelligent enough to install an ad blocker would read bild.de anyway.
Actually that seems quite reasonable (Score:2)
Neo's response to Agent Smith is in order (Score:4, Funny)
It seems that the news industry believes we cannot do without them, and that we must pay for the privilege of keeping them in business.
It's quite hysterical. They're in for a big surprise.
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't that apply to pretty much every business though? A business that doesn't make money doesn't stay in business too long.
No problem (Score:3)
As long as I can also block the request to turn off the ad blocker, so it looks as if the site is simply dysfunctional, I'm fine with that. I'm even fine with blocking the whole domain. Bild is the worst "newspaper" one could imagine, it's certainly not a loss for anyone.
Undetectable adblocker (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Would it be possible to create an adblocker that loads all the ads but replaces them with beige squares just before they hit the framebuffer? Or would the latest JavaShit technology still be able to detect these?
Yes, but part of the problem is loading ads, they can carry malware, they can play sounds, loading times and bandwidth consumption will increase compared to a regular AdBlocker. Plus, the best thing we can do is letting them know that we are not going to accept their ads.
Re: (Score:2)
Would it be possible to create an adblocker that loads all the ads but replaces them with beige squares just before they hit the framebuffer?
That's misses the point for most people.
Few people are bothered by the ad itself. They want faster loading time, less tracking, no obstruction, etc... It's like replacing TV ads with a beige screen, I don't really hate TV ads, but I hate it when my program is interrupted.
Re: (Score:2)
Put them on a very slow download rate, basically rate limit the ads so they take much longer to download than you would spend on the page.
To counter the malware aspect of ads, if you do nothing with the downloaded binary data then your chances of getting any sort of infection from it is effectively zero. It's opening them up and trying to parse the data that gets you into trouble.
Re:Undetectable adblocker (Score:5, Insightful)
Except if I don't trust it, why the hell would I download it? Why would I waste bandwidth on crap I don't want or trust?
The ad sources have already demonstrated themselves to be shady and not trustworthy.
The average web site seems to think 20+ external sites all tracking what you do is OK. Sorry, but I am not here to support the business model of 20 tracking companies who have nothing to do with me.
I won't click on the ads, and I sure as hell will keep blocking the hell out of them. If a website shows me the thing to turn on cookies, or enable javascript, or tells me that I can't see their site with an adblocker ... I'll simply leave.
All those external entities on a website who want my data can fully expect that I will block them as much as I can.
It's absolutely mind-boggling the sheer amount of CRAP in the average web-page, and once you start running the blockers and seeing just how much there is, the idea of turning off those blockers seems idiotic.
Re: (Score:2)
Put them on a very slow download rate, basically rate limit the ads so they take much longer to download than you would spend on the page.
Then watch the other elements on page not finish downloading until the ads are completely downloaded and their display is confirmed.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that DNS-level blocking is effective. It was effective for TWX, who blocked ads on a DNS proxy built into a home router [slashdot.org]. But it relies on an anomaly in the present web advertising market, namely that ads are delivered from a different hostname from the rest of the site. Thus a site can defeat it by serving the ads and the rest of the site from the same hostname.
the program I built for custom hosts file generation is completely FREE, no strings attached
Does it come with the ability and right to make and distribute improved versions? If not, that's a string [gnu.org].
Sandbox your browser already (Score:2)
If your web browser is vulnerable, then a script in a page that you view can attack your box even if it isn't an advertisement. Get a web browser that isn't vulnerable, such as a web browser that runs in a sandboxed process.
New model (Score:3)
1.Allow customers to make a single monthly payment, which would be distributed among participating websites according to some metric like pageviews or time-on-site
2.Force participating websites to commit to a no-ads policy in order to participate in the revenue
What will probably happen is that paid subscribers will continue to be served ads, especially from "acceptable" publishers.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't that how patreon works? Or some other service that started just a few days ago. (Sorry forgot the name. Typical Web2.0 I think. Waooaa, Paperoo, Readaa... a z might be missing.)
Re: (Score:2)
Won't somebody just game the system and force page reloads or some other statistic-generating scheme?
Re: (Score:2)
That's called cable television, right down to your last sentence.
This is probably the future. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with subscriptions is that you're giving them personal data that you wouldn't be giving them otherwise, data which is more valuable than the stuff gathered from advertising alone. There are also few guarantees that they won't contract out user tracking even there is no explicit advertising. Even the privacy policies aren't worth the paper they're not printed on. Most include a clause that they can change the terms at any time and most include a clause that they can share the data that they co
2.99? (Score:2)
I somehow doubt they actually get 2.99 euros in ad revenue per reader per month so as to make this a fair exchange. More like 0.10, maybe?
Re: (Score:2)
I was wondering if they always had that fee and if it was in lieu of ads or just a reduction in them.
Fuck you (Score:5, Informative)
Sell your own ads, publishers. That's part of your job. If you can't be bothered to do that, then I can't be bothered to help you get paid.
Just tried it (Score:4, Informative)
(Btw, just accessed it for testing, out of curiosity, not for reading the yellow news...)
Re: (Score:3)
With only Ghostery active in Firefox, I can't access bild.de.
It seems that the FF version I got here at work doesn't have the option to block JavaScript anymore, so can't test there how the site behaves.
Using w3m in cygwin though, I get all the (text) contents (aww, no boobies, probably the only reason one might want to visit bild.de in the first place).
So I guess their adblocker-detection is based on JavaScript.
For bild.de, I definitely don't consider it a loss, but I do hope certain other news sites don't
Re: (Score:2)
However, looking more closely, I actually do get some (fortunately rather unintrusive) ads. They are not on the title page, but on the top right side of some of the articles (such as the one about the "rules on the freeway", but strangely enough no other...). Sorry, I missed them earlier, as I didn't actually go to the articles, but stayed on the main page.
Dear Advertisers, (Score:5, Interesting)
Dear Advertisers,
We had a social contract. In exchange for our attention, you agreed to fund our entertainment. But you squandered that agreement and broke our contract. Simply getting our attention wasn't enough for you. In your zeal to make your ads stand out over the others, you started using insecure technologies that exposed your customers to attack. When you realized that your customers were commodities to be bought and sold, you tried to monetize us. You started using tracking cookies. You sold us to your friends and partners. You violated our trust. And now you're asking us to trust you again but you haven't done a single thing to earn that trust back. Quite the contrary, in fact, you continue to abuse us over and over.
Advertisers, you have asked us to return to the old model but have given us no reason to do so. I will continue to block your ads and your malignant tumors until you have proven without a shadow of a doubt that you have mended your ways. Until then, SCREW YOU.
Sincerely,
Your former customers
hmm, this is not working (Score:2)
looks like it fails to detect the use of noscript ;)
Works find for me (Score:2)
Well (Score:2)
Sounds Fair to me (Score:2)
We all have different reasons why to use adblocker - historically it was we didn't want to see ads or they made the viewing experience slower, and now malware.
And of course the content owner needs to pay the bills.
Previously many sites didn't have the option to allow viewers to pay a subscription fee. This seems completely fair trade. Another model is "pay what you want" (kind of the Public Radio/TV model in the USA).
Need a new form of adblock (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps what is needed is a new form of adblock, which actually loads the ads, possibly on a low priority basis*, but doesn't display them.
*Thinking along the lines of accept the first 1k of the ad, then go slow on the TCP responses, until the main-page/non-ad-identified bits have finished. I am looking for a system such that the ads are downloading to /dev/null while I am reading the ad-free page.
Of course the negative response to that will be to put some active content in the ad such that the article will not display until the ad "payload" is actively processed and phones home. Thus blurring the line between ads and malware even more than it is already. (at times)
(If someone is already doing this sort of thing, please don't flame me, just inform. Frankly, although I used to maintain block lists, etc., I gave up years ago. Well not completely; I do attempt to avoid certain publishers, but that is on a more manual basis rather than automated.)
Simple hack: disable Javascript? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Disabling Javascript is becoming less practical as now many sites are loading content dynamically. A lot of pages simply won't work, unfortunately.
Time for User TOS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok so your site needs money from Ads to survive, I get it, we all have to make compromises. But you are serving those ads via un-vetted bloated 3rd party scripts which can harbor malware, cost me time and money & track my Ass between sites. Therefore if you put up a page that asks me to accept your 3rd party Scripted Ads, I will send you a copy of my User Terms of Service for you to agree too. In which you will find clauses that require you to accept responsibility for all 1st, 2nd & 3rd party content and resources served by your site and all losses incurred should that adversely affect my systems, privacy etc.
Alternatively, if you wish to serve all Ads in a 1st party context without scripting then I'm powerless to stop you and would be much happier.
So in the end to me its not the Ads themselves that are the problem, but how they are delivered and what hidden factors are present that I consider a detriment to my using your site.
Malware-blocking (Score:5, Informative)
Christ, nearly 6MB in 642 URL requests just to load their home page once. Anyhoo, from two full fetches of their home page. Excepting the dozens of trackers and advert organisations that I haven't noted to be involved in malware, we have:
smartclip.net: Party to LG "Smart TV" spying without consent.
turn.com: Repeated malware advertisments to-date. Most recently infecting iPhones.
ads.yahoo.com: Repeated malware advertisments to-date.
serving-sys.com: Repeated malware advertisments to-date.
advertising.com: Repeated malware advertisments to-date.
adnxs.com: Repeated malware advertisments to-date, including Angler Exploit Kit via MSN.com
adscale.de: Malware advertisements.
adsrvr.org: Malware adverts, pushing virus-infected toolbars
rubiconproject.com: Repeated malware bundlers, unwanted toolbars, search result injectors, home-page meddling
mathtag.com: Malware advertisements.
openx.net: Repeated malware advertisments to-date.
bidswitch.net: Malware advertising. Most recently infecting iPhones.
This isn't advert blocking. It's a crucial layer of system security.
New generation of adblockers (Score:2)
When do ad networks get sued for spreading malware (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. If you want to block my adblocker, fine, I won't go there.
I find NO ad acceptable, but if web ads acted like newspaper ads and sat there, didn't try to distract me from reading, didn't take over my screen, didn't make noise, flash, throb, etc, I'd TOLERATE it.
These days, ad networks are so laden with malware and viruses (when is Google or another ad network going to get sued for not vetting content?) that an ad blocker is antivirus for your web browser!
Countermeasures (Score:2)
Major European publishing house Axel Springer has instituted countermeasures against users who employ adblocking software
No problem. I'm sure adblocking users will soon employ countermeasures against Axel Springer, if they still want to see it.
I'm surprised nobody ever mentions this (Score:3)
in discussions about Adblock defeat sites: Anti Adblock killer [userscripts-mirror.org]. Works dandy for me.
Smack (Score:2)
What we need are ad blockers that spoof being non-ad blockers
Very German (Score:2)
...to insist the world work the way you believe it should work.
Too bad that Capitalism will kick your ass.
This is exactly the right thing to do. (Score:2)
I wish more online pubs would do it. I'm not willing to look at ads, but don't mind paying for good content. I hope this works for them.
Doesn't work (Score:2)
I went there with AdBlock on and could read as much as I wanted to, view all the articles, everything.
Whatever they're doing, they're doing it wrong.
it does not work or is not yet on (Score:2)
No loss. Seriously. In more way than one. (Score:2)
Bild is the epitome of shoddy and sensationalist journalism in Germany, sort of like the Daily Mail in the UK.
I doubt the people smart enough to use adblocking read the Bild. And if so, all the better.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Hence the name: "Bild" (= Picture) "Newspaper" for people who hate to read, Or lack the brains to understand what they're reading.
A year's subscription to read one page (Score:2)
It's become common for a user to read only one article on each of ten sites [blockadblock.com] when he finds articles through web search, citations from other sites, or social sharing. How is anybody going to be willing to subscribe to each of those sites? A pay per page model would have to deal with transaction fees that payment processors charge, which are fairly large for the credit card networks. Even Bitcoin imposes a fee of 0.0001 BTC (currently 2.5 cents) on any transaction smaller than 0.01 BTC (currently 2.50 USD) to
Re: (Score:2)
It's most definitely NSFW (at least for US workplaces), with topless chicks on the front page. (Scroll down a bit and tits! Nice ones, too!)
As someone from the US I always just assumed in Europe any time you scrolled down it was tits. Even just walking down the street.
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And the site seems to work perfectly fine even with blocking the Javascript. Seems those scripts they want people to run are of no real purpose beyond tracking and ads.