On 10/3/2016 2:09 AM, Alec Muffett wrote:
Possibly partly true, but I consider other reasons that sites (essentially) block users, sometimes lumped with Tor users. "You can't use our site unless you allow cookies" WTH - Really? Why is that? Could it be that certain tracking - not just on that domain - won't work unless cookies are allowed? "You're using ad blocking software. Our site won't work correctly, if at all." [see #3 below] On many sites, Tor is lumped together with ad and script blocking browsers - unprofitable and often largely untrackable. We're no longer talking about a tiny % of users.On 3 October 2016 at 01:40, <bancfc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: While outreach and cooperation with some companies may work, do you notconsider that a sizable number of sites will always block anonymous traffic simply because they can not monetize it with targeted ads?Ah! That delightful old argument. I've heard it a lot, and I am afraid that it is all of groundless, incorrect and demonstrably silly. :-) In three bullets: 1) If less than 0.1% of the people who use your site do so "anonymously", the amount of ad-revenue associated with them is negligible. There are bigger leaks to plug.
Are you saying that TBB is the only browser used for malicious purposes? :) That other browsers can't be or aren't adapted by skilled users for similar malicious or unwanted behavior? I don't really buy that. For one thing, it's too slow. Even using a plain browser with a proxy - which I rarely do - I'm seldom blocked. Disregarding financial sites. But Tor is blocked all the time on these same sites. They don't say you're blocked, you just can't get in or use the site - even with scripts allowed. I can use many federal govt sites just fine with TBB, but I can't do a Google search? Talk about scraping!2) In my experience the "blocking" that companies do to Tor (and similar) is 100% grounded in the threats from spam, scraping, testing phished credentials, and other forms of bad behaviour.
I can't speak for everyone, but if ads were - still - presented as just ads, and trackers weren't trying to record everything you do across the entire internet, sell that data, provide it to the govt - on request, for a fee, then I wouldn't mind allowing small ads. WAY back in the day, I'd click on some ads of free sites that I wanted to support. That was way before things got to present practices. Now, there's no way I'll let them record every move. My medical issues, political interests, legal matters...3) I would bet a substantial amount of beer that anonymous proxy networks are negligible threats to advertising revenue in comparison to "People on the Clearnet who use AdBlock+".
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