Would it be possible to blacklist forbes.com links? They now block viewers who are using ad blockers, and have recently been serving advertising malware to visitors [1].<p>They also have awful interstitial ads [2] and, while they masquerade as a news organization, are actually a blog farm [3].<p>Blocking Forbes would be no great loss in terms of content, and would avoid a surprising amount of advertising- (and malware-) generated pain.<p>[1]: http://www.extremetech.com/internet/220696-forbes-forces-readers-to-turn-off-ad-blockers-promptly-serves-malware<p>[2]: <any Forbes article, e.g. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2016/01/08/meet-the-queen-of-imgur-the-image-sharing-site-thats-half-the-size-of-twitter/ ><p>[3]: https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3zs6qk/gq_and_forbes_go_after_ad_blocker_users_rather/cyp2uls?context=3#cyowy51
This seems to be becoming a lot more common.<p>Whenever I search for answers to Go-related questions, a website called "socketloop.com" is always the top search result. Although they have extraordinary SEO when it comes to serving content to Google or Bing crawlers, they don't serve traffic AT ALL to browsers with AdBlock installed.<p>Really frustrating... that blog site is turning into the "expertsexchange.com" of Go. I would rather just have its links excluded from my search results altogether. The crazy thing is that it's a one-man WordPress-like niche blog, for which I'd be shocked if it drew more than a few hundred bucks A YEAR in ad revenue anyway.
There's already a built in solution for this on HN:<p>- Upvote posts you like.<p>- Do not upvote posts you don't like.<p>- Use 'Flag' judiciously for content that you feel is not appropriate to HN.<p>- Let the HN ranking algorithm do its work.
I agree. Had a really shocking experience when I tried to visit a link and they kept telling me to "turn off ad blockers" to provide a better experience.
I don't like Forbes and can't remember a single Forbes submission on HN that I've gotten any value from, but this is just one in a long list of sites people believe should be banned from HN for reasons other than the content that they publish.<p>I don't think this is a can of worms anyone really wants to open.<p>If you don't want to unwittingly visit Forbes, edit your /etc/hosts file.
I'd prefer to decide for myself whether I want to click a link, thanks.<p>I'm sure you can find a suitable plugin or HOSTS file modification that will prevent you from accessing forbes.com even accidentally.
Is it possible? Of course it is! From their current site I gathered these domains (these are the ones <i>uBlock</i> doesn't block by default):<p>forbes.com<p>forbesimg.com<p>forbes_video.edgesuite.net<p>app-ab13.marketo.com<p>If you're using <i>uBlock Origin</i> you can simply click on the <i>uBlock</i>-icon on the top left in your browser, click on the grey bar on top of the box that opened, go to <i>"My Filters"</i> and insert the above snippet into the text box.<p>Edit: formatting
Seems like a VERY bold move, and something tells me that a lot of other sites are going to follow this idea, in many ways because it validates what others have been feeling already for so long; the loss of potential revenue.<p>I encountered this for the first time earlier today, and had to come back to the screen that tells you to turn it off at least 3 times, one can hope that it was just a 'temporary' hold to lure people in the idea, but no -- it's the real deal!
Agreed. Forbes is a mainstream news source and doesn't belong on HN anyway. They don't have articles of technical substance about computer hacking.<p>Edit: It'd be nice if the folks downvoting would take the time to explain how they feel about this topic. Are there Forbes articles that actually pertain to the act of computer hacking, and not just modern (computerized) business?
I agree.<p>But I would go even farther. Block every site where you won't be able to read the content without having Javascript enabled. I have experienced several blogs where you won't see anything without Javascript.
The New York Times is another one I can think of. I'm not against pay walls or ad blocking, but if, as a content provider, you choose to implement these sorts of "devices" than you can at least expect your content not to be shared around any more on link sites such as HN, i.e. you're not serving the community on those websites any more, your serving your customers. Which is fine, but I'm not your customer.<p>When ever I see a pay wall on HN these days, I "flag" it.