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Three Blocking Adverts at the network level.


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Old 28-05-2016, 17:49
Thine Wonk
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Look at the backlash BT etc had over the whole phorm issue. Any DPI from three and I'll be off taking my contracts with me.
That was because they illegally interfered internet connections without even informing the users and then replaced the content and planned to sell the data, again without even telling the customer.

O2 and some other networks collect user browsing and location data and sell it under different company names or partnerships with third parties, they provide no opt out in the apps or portals and don't tell customers, they just hide it in the T&C's

What Three are doing is really quite different, it is an Adblock option at network level just like browser plugins offer, from what I have heard it'll be controllable from MyThree. Three already do DPI for tethering detection and to optimise video streams.
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Old 28-05-2016, 19:37
moox
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What Three are doing is really quite different, it is an Adblock option at network level just like browser plugins offer, from what I have heard it'll be controllable from MyThree. Three already do DPI for tethering detection and to optimise video streams.
I thought 3 were planning to do that sponsored content/ads BS? So they will allow ads from companies that pay for the privilege of delivering to 3's customers.

That's a pretty egregious violation of net neutrality
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Old 28-05-2016, 19:55
lightspeed2398
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I think this is a bad idea on quite a few fronts.

Firstly as is pointed out by many, the potential Net Neutrality violations in the name of making a few extra pounds by Three through near extortion.

Secondly, the fact that it means Three will be taking a very close look at all that I would use on their network (not on them anymore, switched to EE 16GB a month ago) and whilst they do it already and I wasn't comfortable with it the fact that they're looking at everything rather than just tethering/video is a very uncomfortable situation for me.

Thirdly, I don't like adverts, but I accept their necessity, in a reasonable and proportionate manner, how else are we meant to fund the content on the internet. Fiver a month for each website? Microtransactions to view an article? Those alternatives are hardly better.

Lastly, the element of control and granularity, if I were to opt-in (might be mandatory one day who knows), is lacking compared to an extension on my browser and it offers few advantages over that.
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Old 28-05-2016, 22:47
jonmorris
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I thought 3 were planning to do that sponsored content/ads BS? So they will allow ads from companies that pay for the privilege of delivering to 3's customers.

That's a pretty egregious violation of net neutrality
Three restricts whatever it likes on Feel at Home, so has form.
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Old 29-05-2016, 14:06
Thine Wonk
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As long as people are informed and can easily opt in and out I don't care what they choose to 'offer' it's more what is enforced with no choice that gets me wound up.
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Old 29-05-2016, 14:25
alanwarwic
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A positve aspect for Three is that, by preventing sites from making a viable income, they can bring back cheap unlimited tarrifs

And injecting their own ads woud be the icing on a stolen cake. People like Ocom would look the other way while it all happens. All our regulators seem hands off goverment puppets.
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Old 29-05-2016, 14:41
Thine Wonk
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As I understand it, it's ad block right? So the idea is the ads are blocked at network level, I don't think they plan to replace the ads, they may have some revenue generation plan behind it e.g collecting user data, but that's no different to what O2, EE, Vodafone do.

What would be the point in ad block if it just replaced the ads with different ones, the idea is it blocks, just like the apps that are available for IOS or popular browsers, only at network level.
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Old 29-05-2016, 14:53
alanwarwic
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I was posting a possibility. Going in the blackmail direction is another option.
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/201...-adblock-plus/

Blackmail works.
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Old 29-05-2016, 15:16
Thine Wonk
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The Internet seems to work perfectly fine without fiddling from regulators, it finds it's own solutions. If you want to go down the route of waste of space over paid quangos dictating and ruling over every aspect of the Internet I suggest you vote to remain in the EU, as they have written a manual on everything else, I'm sure they'll do you at 10,000 page document that everyone has to follow and heavily regulate it all for you.

Personally I think the less governments and quangos interfere the better.
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Old 29-05-2016, 15:22
alanwarwic
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......Personally I think the less governments and quangos interfere the better.
It is lack of regulation, thus putting supreme power into the hands of none benevolent corporates and other influential elite why Britain is close to unsustainable debt.

I am hoping France gets the better of Google with regards to tax avoidance. There again, a small elite gain, all to be paid for by the National debt laden masses.
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Old 29-05-2016, 15:27
Thine Wonk
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Is it bollocks! Take the EU roaming rates, all the operators did was shift the prices elsewhere so different people fund the gap. You live in a dream world if you think you can regulate everything within an inch of it's life.

Tax collection is not regulation, it's just collecting taxes, that's a slightly different thing. Some say by having low tax you attract more big business and therefore have greater employment and more overall tax is paid.

My company for example has reduced it's head count in the UK and created more jobs in Ireland and Poland for tax reasons, that means thousands of people not being employed and paying tax, national insurance, business rates and making sales in the UK contributing to the economy, instead we lose investment to Ireland and other countries.

Anyway, tax isn't the argument here it's regulation, and I don't agree with very heavy interference and regulation, just let the free market work.
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Old 29-05-2016, 15:37
jonmorris
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I don't make much from my site ad wise, mostly because tech savvy visitors use ad blocks. But those that don't do contribute something towards hosting fees.

When Three kindly blocks ads, I'll get nothing. If Three inserts its own ads, it will profit from me.

I'm not too bothered as I get revenue from other work, but I can see some sites blocking Three users.
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Old 29-05-2016, 16:02
alanwarwic
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...
Tax collection is not regulation, it's just collecting taxes, that's a slightly different thing. Some say by having low tax you attract more big business and therefore have greater employment and more overall tax is paid. ...
Yes, the very same type of people who brought us the poll tax.

And tax regulation is too slack, likely courtesy of those funded by the tax avoiding elite.

Ad blocking is certainly corruption, it matters little that it comes from Three, usually seen by me here as a plucky underdog.
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Old 29-05-2016, 20:36
Gigabit
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I'm pretty sure it's not corporations that made the national debt so large, I'm fairly sure that's Labour's welfare spending at least in part.
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Old 29-05-2016, 23:20
jchamier
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I'm pretty sure it's not corporations that made the national debt so large, I'm fairly sure that's Labour's welfare spending at least in part.
and buying (sorry, rescuing) the banks are 85% of it.
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Old 30-05-2016, 00:00
nafanny29
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I wouldnt trust Three full stop. Anything they do is to either screw their users, add revenue, or both!
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Old 30-05-2016, 22:23
lightspeed2398
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Whilst I don't want to get into a public political debate, the purpose of the EU roaming stuff was to try and create a Single Digital Market as far as I understand it, not directly reduce the costs but more for the purpose of meaning that wherever you are in Europe it is as though you are home. I know many on here may not be keen but the EU to be fair publish a lot of details about the reasoning and the progress of it, more transparent than some domestic government initiatives. https://ec.europa.eu/priorities/digi...ngle-market_en
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Old 30-05-2016, 23:49
Informationwar
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I'm pretty sure it's not corporations that made the national debt so large, I'm fairly sure that's Labour's welfare spending at least in part.
I think you'll find that fractional reserve banking (look it up) is why the national debt is so large, you can blame the Rothschilds for that. We pay 30 billion a year in interest to the private Bank of England. Welfare spending would be easily afforded if the mega rich paid their fair share of tax. Tax avoidance costs the economy far more than welfare ever has or will!

I'm not a labour supporter by the way.
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Old 31-05-2016, 08:35
binary
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I don't make much from my site ad wise, mostly because tech savvy visitors use ad blocks. But those that don't do contribute something towards hosting fees.

When Three kindly blocks ads, I'll get nothing. If Three inserts its own ads, it will profit from me.

I'm not too bothered as I get revenue from other work, but I can see some sites blocking Three users.
Out of curiosity, can you say what approximate proportion of visitors to your site use some sort of ad blocking technology?
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Old 31-05-2016, 08:56
jonmorris
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I can't easily tell as I don't have a plug-in that detects it, so have to go by the page impressions as a whole and the impressions of ads which is a lot lower.

I'll have to look later and work out a percentage, but it won't be entirely accurate.
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Old 31-05-2016, 10:08
Chris1973
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I don't make much from my site ad wise, mostly because tech savvy visitors use ad blocks. But those that don't do contribute something towards hosting fees.
Me neither, I admin a couple of forums and a few hobby based blogs, no commercial or business activity as I just started them because I had an interest in the subject. However, over the last 12 years they have reached the point where their combined traffic requires them to be hosted on a VPS which costs £30 per month. Add to that the individual domain costs, license fees for the forum software and those expenses just to keep the sites online can all add up.

Until recently around 70% of those running expenses were funded from Adwords and Skimlinks, non of them my sites never earn a profit but that was never my intention anyway, I was just happy for the lions share of the expenses being covered simply from discrete adwords banners and links on keywords. However in recent years that has dwindled to less than 50% of the expenses being covered, and my day job wage is covering the rest.

If I was to pay myself even minimum wage for the hours I spent on them, approving registrations, filtering out the spam bots, improving SEO, dealing with exploits and writing the hundreds of pages of unique content which are on there in the first place those costs would be even more significant, however that is my choice and i'm happy to do it for free, but in addition to both my labour and free time being provided for free, I'm not happy for my wage to be picking up the shortfall in running expense cover. I'm sure that many others here, would feel exactly the same way, but how many of those same people are actively running adblockers and putting the owners of the sites that they visit in exactly the same position?.

It has reached the point where I feel I either have to shut some of them down, or start charging members for access. I'm sure we've all browsed such hobby run sites and taken advice on everything from fixing cars, choosing hotels or tips for our phones and it would be a shame if those impartial websites, owned by private individuals all began charging to access their content or just closed, leaving nothing but the commercial entities owned by big businesses.

I admit that I use an adblocker myself for the places where Ad's outnumber the content, however I do play a fair game and remember to disable and whitelist the places where its privately owned and run in somebodies' free time.
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Old 17-06-2016, 14:15
alanwarwic
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http://www.neowin.net/news/opera-par...take-now-fixed

Seems Opera accidently jumped the gun with their ad blocking.
Partner ads appeared at the same time but they have now been removed.

Monetary rewards being the aim of the game, I really expect they meant the ad hijack to be phased.

So, what is theft?
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Old 17-06-2016, 14:35
Thine Wonk
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The flip side is the ads have got much more and more data greedy and intrusive, giving customers the choice to turn on or off ads from their MyThree or whatever is not much different to a browser giving users the choice.

Three may find other value that Opera and other don't, like a massive drop in data and bandwidth costs. There could be a 90% data use, network capacity and bandwidth saving from web page requests on the table for Three for customers that choose to have it on.

Take the mobile forum here

With ads on - 171 requests, 1.3MB, 34seconds to totally load all ads and tracking
Without ads on - 32 requests, 110KB 986ms

Screenshots
http://imgur.com/a/iGeEt

Also remember - it's a trial.
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Old 03-09-2016, 15:14
japaul
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Three's plan to block ads may have hit a bump in the road. These are guidelines so it'll probably be up to Ofcom and other local regulators to judge.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37255727
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Old 03-09-2016, 19:53
jonmorris
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Three's plan to block ads may have hit a bump in the road. These are guidelines so it'll probably be up to Ofcom and other local regulators to judge.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37255727
Thank goodness. Now why isn't Feel at Home falling foul of the same thing?
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