This is 100% the fault of shitty advertisers spamming us with literal scams, malware, and spyware.
I get that ads pay for a free internet. But that doesn’t mean that 60% of my screen needs to be malware to read a local news article.
Until advertisers act in good faith, I block as much as possible.
Or those scummy click bait ads disguised as related articles? They make my blood boil with how they prey on the vulnerable.
That’s all Google discover is on my phone… Ai generated articles that are just click bait.
is a new episode of RandomShow airing tonight?
Star Trek 31 confirmed to feature major tng character (from today)
blah.
Google is so bad for this, plus the fact that they were the ones who started rewarding clickbait articles.
In my mind though, MSN will never be dethroned from having the shittiest content.
It can’t, just check the windows thing which appears as a left sidebar in windows 11 or the edge default homepage
I’ve been seeing clips from Ready Player One recently and this reminded me of the main bad guy’s philosophy on advertising in the OASIS.
we estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual’s visual field before inducing seizures
Can’t help but feeling there’s some parallels there.
Seems unrealistic. In reality, they’d be asking how often the seizures occur and would figure out if the increased ad revenue from going to 90% would offset any potential lawsuits.
Used to be if I found the site of a newspaper I thought I liked, I’d turn off my ad blocker to see how it goes.
I don’t even try any more. Again and again and again, every time I turn it off the page gets so cluttered that following the article becomes a chore and takes up so many resources that even scrolling slows to a crawl. Ludicrous nonsense.
The cluttered pages with “videos” running all over the place is what frustrates me the most. I go in and disable javascript and see how it goes. Javascript seems to be the herpes of the internet as far as I am concerned.
I recently noticed a feature on iOS to open all new sites in Reader mode. It’s definitely more readable but mixed results when not everything is there
There’s got to be some sort of Accessibility violation here: where’s the EU when you need someone to stand up for consumers rights
Fr. I legitimately wouldn’t mind just a few banner ads to pay for things, but as per usual, the corpos got too damn greedy. So congrats, now you get no ad viewage from me.
Don’t forget those annoying floating ads and the tiny X that doesn’t actually close the ad
And the fucking videos that auto play in the bottom corner with audio. I think the old people that recently found out about internet are trying to turn it into regular TV.
It’s been years since I would browse the web with sound on.
I installed an ad blocker once I started getting unmuted video ads. I would be studying for an exam and suddenly start getting blasted with a super loud ad. This was in like 2015, before Chrome added the speaker icon next to the tab playing sound I had to look through every tab to find the source and mute it.
Plus they made the whole industry weird and obfuscated like bulk produce or something even though it didn’t need weird distribution models and dark unseen players in every corner of every ad bought and seen. Why is it this way? I honestly don’t know. How did advertisers willingly make it that way over just paying site owners or 1 aggregator or something… I guess Facebook has kind of become that now
This is 100% the fault of shitty advertisers spamming us with literal scams, malware, and spyware.
And the shitty websites running those ads with just a shrug of their shoulders saying “oops, 3rd party. I can’t be expected to control what’s on my website.”
Nah. While that obviously sucks, I personally don’t like people selling me shit. The ads are designed to occupy as much of my mental space as they can and that’s a serious breach of what’s most valuable to me.
Tragedy of the commons
Some folks still raw dog the net? Wrap that shit up
tbh it feels like most people I know use chrome or even edge without any extensions
Most Firefox users have never used extensions either. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/extensions-addons/heres-whats-going-on-in-the-world-of-extensions/
How is that even possible when I see plenty of extensions with millions of users? 😅
even without darkreader!
Unlike when your friends or parents might raw dog, you can put that adblock condom on their computers for them.
The main problem is 3rd party advertising. If the New York Times ran ads on their website like they did with the physical newspaper, we would not have this problem.
Publishers need to take direct responsibility for every ad on their platform.
Plausible deniability. Oh, a mildly sexual ad has shown to you? Someone probably approved it on the third-party site. Oh, you didn’t want to see it? Sorry, we got nothing to do with it.
Also scams and other grey-area shit.
I am surprised the reason for blocking ads doessn’t include making sites somewhat readable. I guess faster loading could be it? But generally it’s more of a layout problem than a bandwidth one.
I tend to not use adblockers, or when I do it’s on a black list system for worst offenders rather than by default. However, I absolutely refuse tracking, and if it’s the only option I go to firefox reader mode immediately.
The usual false dichotomy of “personalised ads or you’re killing us!” is not acceptable.
Ad tech IS the tracking, so if you’re not blocking ads, you’re not actually refusing said tracking. I think you might be conflating cookies with being tracking (they are), but that’s only a part of it.
I wonder why ad tech can‘t be „Let‘s show ads that correspond to what‘s being talked about on that website.“ Kinda like what Google suggested with Topics but without following me through the internet.
There is no real technical challenge in displaying ads that are based on the page content. But ads based on tracking users is much more profitable. Plus they can sell the data collected to anyone else that is interested.
Look, you need to understand that advertisers are Hell-bent on forcibly extracting as much money from you as possible. If they could strap you to a chair, hold your eyes open like in A Clockwork Orange, and then charge you for everything you so much as glanced at, they absolutely would.
If that’s not how you want to live, then they are your enemy.
You know i think i understand companies sometimes but then i keep being baffeld at how evil a company can be.
Apple for example had me surprised with the reaction to the DMA and i previously thought that they couldn‘t possibly suck harder wirh alö their anti-repair stuff.
I still have a bone to pick with Tim Cook himself for rendering my well working Mac Mini 2012 unusable for my app development job by simply not updating Xcode and introducing a breaking change that prevented me from adding support for new iOS versions to old Xcode.
The saddest part is, companies used to be required to act in the common good, but the courts have gradually jettisoned that concept for mostly bullshit reasons.
Because that’s not as profitable. That’s it. That’s the reason.
Don‘t you just hate it when
When capitalism
I wonder why ad tech can‘t be „Let‘s show ads that correspond to what‘s being talked about on that website.“ Kinda like what Google suggested with Topics but without following me through the internet.
They could be. Sites could talk directly to advertisers, and put the ad directly into the page itself instead of asking the ad server for a random ad. Most ad blockers probably wouldn’t notice it because it’s part of the actual page.
But then they’d lose out on the tracking data and would be responsible to make sure the ad doesn’t annoy the shit out of you, so they’re not going to do that.
I use them on my personal systems but not my work laptop. I have to use an ad blocker on my phone because so many sites, including “respected” news organizations, are an absolute mess when ads are enabled.
It’s bad when you go to one of the top news company’s websites in the US and there’s a pile of content covered by advertisements. I guess I didn’t need to read those sentences anyway.
I guess faster loading could be it? But generally it’s more of a layout problem than a bandwidth one.
There was a website which I allowed ads on to help support them. One day, I went to that site in my browser and my laptop fans spun up at that time. Turns out that ads on that site caused my processor usage to spike near 100%. A reload fixed the issue. Once that same thing happened 2 to 3 more times, I just blocked all ads on that site from then on.
There are times that people can’t throw the resources of an Intel i5 processor towards rendering the advertisements on one website. I would think that is more common these days with Chromebooks running the modern equivalent of a Celeron processor. Phones also don’t have much processing power to give and will warm up and drain batteries all towards the all important goal of “render those advertisements”.
I think people tend to allow advertising until it becomes a major problem that needs resolved (such as if the site is bogging down your computer or if the advertising makes the site unable to be read easily). Since those people would then need to fix the issue and hopefully fix it for good, it is easy and efficient to just block out all advertising forever.
I dislike the fact that “ads” can also include crapware being injected into my computer (viruses, tracking cookies, mysterious scripts, etc).
If you had nothing to hide, you wouldn’t mind Trojans! /s
And there are so many scam ads that look like UI buttons and such. I can see why people get fooled sometimes. Those sort of ads should automatically be rejected by af networks and the sites that host them. But $$$
Is this still really a thing? I remember getting some viruses from ads in the very early days of the internet, like late 90s / early 2000s, but can’t remember getting anything in at least the last ten years.
It’s currently late and I am on my phone, so I can’t research this too well, but for example this thread and official Microsoft link discusses th Adrozek malware which injects you with unwanted ads and information directly from your browser.
Sure, it’s not a virus in the older sense of the term where someone either burns your drive or takes over your computer and locks you out asking for a ransom, but it’s still piloting you unsuspectingly and you don’t want it.
I don’t think I could use the internet if I didn’t have an adblocker. Ads genuinely anger me. I think it’s just from the early days with pop-overs and unders, blinking, non-collapsible and the like holding content hostage. Intrusive or not, I’ll do everything I can to not see an ad.
using the internet without an adblocker is like fuckin a 5 dollar hooker behind a dumpster.
You’re gonna catch something nasty and go through a lot of misery.
ah, to the people downvoting you, you can’t even trust “legitimate” sites not to push malware. I would trust 4chan more not to push malware on it’s end users.
Without a condom.
Remember the mosquito banner? The one with the annoying mosquito sound?
I remember.
I use Mullvad so naturally, I can pick my exit country. Since I’m an iOS user (aka, no NewPipe etc) I always choose an exit country that is majority non-English-speaking. It makes the YT app adds so much more bearable if I can’t understand what they’re saying.
Yeah early days were really hard.
Many parts of the Internet has become functionally unusable without one. And given online advertising’s history as a vector for malware, as blockers are just the sensible choice.
The internet is unusable without an adblocker… I recommend uBlock Origin and Pihole.
Is there a big advantage to a pihole in addition to ublock?
Pihole will also block non-browser traffic (e.g. your OS phoning home). Adblocking extensions are typically restricted to just blocking traffic of the browser it’s installed on.
It also operates on your entire home network, so it can block junk traffic on devices that can’t run adblockers.
Got any simple guides for simpletons like me?
uBlock Origin at a minimum. But I would suggest a privacy focused browser. Librewolf, Mulvad or even Brave. Browsers leak so much information about you it is easy for sites to fingerprint and track you even with an ad blocker.
I know Librewolf is working on their DNS leakage (last section on privacytests.org), but they also allow you to select a privacy focused DNS server which is nice when you’re not on a network you own, so you can’t run PiHole.
I’ve been using an ad blocking DNS for years and would not consider using the internet without it. Since it’s a DNS it works everywhere on mobile or Wi-Fi. I just figured that an ad blocker of some sort is basically a digital condom and must be used. When I see people who don’t use one, I think they are crazy.
Had my boss trying to grab a pdf (crosswords, colouring pages, printed for kids in a pub) while using Chrome without any adblock extensions.
The volume of ads, trick links, and shite on that one website in particular was outstanding. She asked me if a link was OK to click. Promptly pointed out she should use Firefox (which has unlock and other extensions added) instead of chrome as the link she had clicked was for some sketchy software and not a crossword.
I can’t imagine the internet without ad blockers. Ublock is a great addition, removing elements from pages is a huge advantage. So many sites sling rubbish wherever they can.
Yep, i use UBlock as well as a second layer of defense. As Asher Roth says “when it comes to condoms, put two on”.
Edit: Just in case, do not actually use two condoms. They will break each other and you will end up a father.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
“when it comes to condoms, put two on”
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Do you only use a DNS ad-blocker or also a client-side ad-blocker?
Both, I use a DNS level ad blocker on my entire network and use UBlock origin on my browser. That way most ads are killed outside of the browsers as well and it keeps my system from contacting malware servers by domain name at least.
Edit: Mind you, most of my apps are open source and have no ads to begin with, but for the few that are closed source. That’s what the blockers are for.
I thought the text said “stop AIDS” but practically the same thing.
I used to not run an ad block. I figured the ads didn’t bother me so why bother?
Then I encountered a banner ad that screamed “HELLOOOOOOOOOO” anytime the mouse went over it and I couldn’t download an ad blocker fast enough.
Advertising companies will do anything they can to annoy the shit out of you, then act like people running ad blockers are the problem.
I was fine with unobtrusive ads, I was fine with a minute of ads before a YouTube video. But it got so bad it was constantly interrupting everything. Also want to know what’s extremely unpleasant? Political ads calling for a moral panic against you or taking bigotry against you as a general assumption. I’m not watching that bullshit. My life is better without ads
I once watched a 60 minute ad because I wondered (what would a 60min ad even be about) and I can’t remember
That shitty Epoch Times used to do that. I was watching a bunch of satire videos and one of their commercials was on, and I legitimately thought it was part of the skit because of how stupid it was.
Then it hit me it is a real ad. And real people are watching it. And that’s how I got radicalized even more.
Wow! Pranks from 2004 are ads in 2024.
Does anyone ever actually click on an ad? Like “hey thats cool I wanna check it out/buy it right here right now”?
I have adblockers active everywhere and only disable then somtimes for specific sites that really don’t work otherwise, but even if the unlikely case would come up that something is interesting I would just look it up separately? Mostly I just turn a blind eye on them anyway, but just wondering, some people gotta really click/buy from these ads? It just seems so surreal to me…
The only obvious ad I’ve ever clicked on was for a “free” IQ test. I figured I’d never done one cause they’re fake, but I had time to kill, so I clicked through. After 20 mins or so answering questions, it ended on a transaction page. The only way to see your “results” was by paying $20. I obviously didn’t pay, and instead tried to report the ad, only to discover that Google Ads has zero mechanism to even report scams to Google. After some research, it turned out that this blatant bait and switch scam had been operating via Google Ads for like 5 or 7 years. Google doesn’t give a fuck if scammers use it’s ad tech to scam your grandma or inject your system with malware, as long as they get paid for the privilege.
I’ve always used an ad blocker, but the whole experience reinforced how anti-consumer and pro-criminal surveillance capitalism is. Permanent absolute ad block — without exceptions — is how everyone should operate, because none of these companies deserve any trust whatsoever. Even if you trust the site you’re visiting, you can’t trust any ad company they utilize.
The only obvious ad I’ve ever clicked on was for a “free” IQ test. I figured I’d never done one cause they’re fake, but I had time to kill, so I clicked through.
That click should have lead you to a page that says ‘you failed’. 😂
The EU is currently testing a new payment framework that would make payments faster and easier and also enable very small payments.
This could finally enable micropayments in browsers (well, in Firefox and maybe Safari) which would eliminate intermediaries like Google and all the scummy ad companies and enable websites to work out deals directly with visitors on the spot (pay a very small amount like a cent or a fraction of a cent to read this article).
Obviously, Google will need to be dragged kicking and screaming into this.
I’m still not paying a fraction of a cent for the obviously LLM-generated bullshit that has flooded the internet.
And yet for content I can be reasonably sure is actually human generated (read: niche enough to not have been flooded to the point I no longer can trust the “usual”/“big” sites) I might consider paying for server costs a little.
If you’re walking around somewhere and you see a person or people offering a “free personality test,” do not take them up on their offer. They’re Scientologists. They once refused to let my mother leave back in the 70s until she said she would start screaming “rape.”
People definitely do. CTR (click through rate) is generally pretty low, even before the majority of Americans were using ad blocks. But it’s not 0
I’ve personally clicked on Instagram ads and made purchases from them. This has pretty much always been for various events, and I don’t really have any regrets there. I’ve seen some cool plays and gone to parties that I’d never have known about otherwise.
I can’t imagine what would ever drive someone to click on a random banner ad though.
My wife does. But she’s a sucker for “a good deal”
I dont ever click on them myself, but if I start searching for something I need/want, and I see a brand I’m familiar with thru advertising, I’m more likely to explore their product, at least. Simply just because, “of I’ve heard of this before”
Brand recognition is one of the key goals for running ads, it works.
But these are never real deals are they? At least I saw maaaaaaany bullshit fake deals, cant remember anything legit ever…
I also found my mum buying crap of instagram a while ago, but i kinda got to her to be a bit more mindful what she clicks on.
I have ad blockers everywhere, except native mobile apps. I’ve clicked on an Instagram ad for shirts. I bought the shirts. People keep complimenting me on the shirts. No regrets there
I guess that sounds reasonable. I sometimes miss seeing some of the cool stuff on instagram
I know ad rates and metrics are heavily based around click through, but does it even actually matter? I mean, TV ads are big money expensive, and nobody has ever clicked on those. I guess if you’re advertising a shitty mobile game or something then it matters, but does McDonalds or whatever even want you to buy a hamburger before you watch a YouTube video? That doesn’t really make a lot of sense.
As you’ve noticed, there are different types of ads. Not all have clicks as their goal. Some are just there to make you think about their brand, for example.
Not only did my late father-in-law click on ads, he also clicked on spam emails. Yes, his computer was super slow and I regularly had to clean off the malware.
Sometimes the sponsored links at the top of a Google search are exactly what I was looking for. I just need to quickly disable AdAway so that I can follow the link.
Yeah, can you take a “Veteran cybersecurity expert” who doesn’t generally use an adblocker serious?
Security knowledge and ethical concerns are two separate things. Whether we like it or not, we pay online creators through private data we must give to entities who will use it against our best interests.
Fuck that. We don’t have to give them anything. They need to show they actually have put in the effort to protect their viewers. Until then, I refuse to do anything less than use everything available to me to block their ads. The days of whitelisting websites is over.
Hahahaha!
The surprise is that apparently 28 percent of “experienced programmers” don’t have an ad blocker. I’m not sure how they got the data, but I wonder if their methods are up to the task of sorting out any possible inverse correlation between blocking ads and being willing to respond to polls.
There’s a surprising amount of programmers that don’t know basics of various parts of an operating system. I know people that know several languages, but get lost on installing a mod pack for a game or installing an app from within another app like a browser.
True. 100% Even today I had to screen share with our lead DB developer to show him how to create a key and ssh to a host.
Also worked with a guy who would design custom circuit boards for devices, but his windows skill was less than my mother’s (which is terrible)
Could he be Linux guy perhaps ?
Nope, just bad using any computer OS
“experienced programmers” in would have web developers fall under that umbrella, I’d guess web developers are less likely to adopt adblockers if their livelihood depends on them
experienced just means they’ve been doing it for some time, it says nothing about how well they do it.
Hence the quotations ;)
The engineer who sat next to me at my old job didn’t use an adblocker. She also would just ignore anything on the screen that wasn’t directly related to her task. There’d be “please update” OS popups or “do you want to install a plugin for markdown?” ide prompts on her screen for days. When I’d roll over to work on something at her desk I’d be like “how do you work like this?” she was like “like what?”
She was pretty good at engineering and generally smart. I don’t know how she did it.
I’m wondering about her reason for not using one too. What is the advantage?
She thinks the web can’t exist without ads? It can, because it did once.
20 years pro experience here: I run several different browsers in various states of blockedness for various reasons. But when I’m off the clock, of course, it’s firefox with ublock.
Maybe the pol was distributed via ads
My mom, in her 60s, is an experienced programmer. She programmed before she had the internet
Ads are just pure negative. There was even one study that calculated this as a direct financial negative, although unfortunately in narrow circumstances: it was calculated that for mobile users in the US, paying for the data transferred to display the ad was more expensive than what the site owner got paid for including it on his site.
That’s is indeed a pure negative - for the users. The site and the the mobile carrier both got paid.
Yes yes, capitalism good.
Don’t forget the company serving the ads, and also the company paying for them
