I genuinely don't know how people manage without ad-blockers and other declutterers. The amount of utter shit that gets in the way of what you're trying to look at is mind boggling.
Do you want cookies? Do you want to share your details with 1049 trusted data partners? How about the top half of the screen taken by a video ad with a close button that isn't going to work? How about a redirect to something else entirely? How about the back button not working unless you spam it really quick?
This is a war, and we didn't start it.
Old guy checking in. When ad blockers first became a thing, my then-teenaged boys started using one and were trying to talk me into it. I was pretty dubious. I said my concern was that the model most of the web was built on was ad-supported. That is, people created content on the web to try and get visitors, and made money by selling ads on their site, or used monetized links. If everyone started using ad blockers, I said, that model would break down and either people would stop creating content or they'd go to a new model, like subscriptions. I figured few people would take time equivalent to a full time job to create content for free.
I think that largely came to pass. A lot of great online publications have closed their doors, and the are lots of paywalls now. The things is, the sites are just as much to blame. Most people wouldn't have been driven to use ad blockers if the ads hadn't gotten so untenable. A banner or a box here or there is one thing, but when there are a giant number of pop-up windows, autoplay videos, windows you can't back out of, and all the other hellish stuff, people are going to be highly motivated to find a way to stop it.
That whole arms race was one of the things that ruined the internet, in my opinion.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/majority-of-americans-now-use-ad-blockers/ar-BB1kEhis
That's why ads are now being tested on the OS level.
The Censuswide report indicates that 66 percent of experienced advertisers use ad blockers.
lol
I refused to use adblockers on principle - not because I thought multibillion corpos needed more money, but because I recognized that sites using ads to sustain their business model needed views to maintain their viability in our fucked capitalist system.
Then Youtube swapped to three unskippable fucking ads after every video.
Now I just whitelist decent sites and let Adblock take care of the rest.
We should be more grateful for these people. Our adblockers function because they don't bother using them.
The moment that most of society starts using adblockers is the moment they become defunct when the big corporations begin actively fighting them. I've already witnessed this with YouTube Vanced/Revanced.
Remember in Futurama when Fry finally goes online in the future and get attacked by ads. Or similar in Altered Carbon with whatever that contact-lens-AR thing was and the character spins out.
I think we don't give gradual acclimatisation enough credit here. Most of my students have never heard of Firefox and tools like ublock origin because they're acclimatised to the mobile ecosystem
"How do I install something? I use the app store."
"Oh, but I already have the internet on my phone, why would I want a 3rd party app to use the internet" (think old people who mix up AOL with the internet in reverse!)
As soon as I show them, they convert in seconds - they've forgotten web pages without adverts can exist.
I was already sick of all the freaking Taylor Swift ads but Roku announcing that video ads are coming to the home screen was the last straw for me. Finally set up a Pi-hole and Roku ads are gone. I know it's an ongoing war and this is just one battle, but damn it's nice right now. I even became a supporter on Patreon. ❤️
I still run uBlock Origin on all my browsers, though.
Because they're not the "default". Most folks stick with whatever comes on their device by default; Edge on Windows, Safari on MacOS/iOS, Chrome on Android, etc. Anything beyond just picking it up and turning it on requires forethought and effort, which most users don't care about.
You are drastically overestimating the average persons technical competency.
Google being the default on Apple devices was literally all they needed to do for the vast majority of web searches on iOS devices. And it’s a baked in setting, no need to install anything.
I learned recently that banner ads on websites and apps track your physical location, which is then sold to all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons.
"The door is there, for anyone with a sincere, passionate desire to learn. Which sounds really nice, 'anyone with a sincere and passionate desire to learn.' I just eliminated 90% of the world. 90% of the world wants to sit at home and watch Honey Boo Boo." --Chris Boden.
Sophisticated, powerful technology able to revolutionize the world becomes not only available but cheap, half the world's population carries around a supercomputer in their pocket with an always-on connection to the sumtotal of all human knowledge, and that device's user interface is designed to express little more than "Dat wun daddy watch me dat video dat wun now!" Because that's the level at which nearly everyone is willing to approach computers.
I had to force my wife to install one, like bish how can you even handle the amount of ads you get spammed with.
Probably because they were never told they were a thing, let alone, how to install them
Is AdBlock plus actually open source?
No idea what adguard is, I used adblock plus before thought I'm not using it now as for why I'm not using it I have no idea but I think some ads were getting through otherwise I would not have switched form it. For a few years now I use Ublock and never had a problem with it, in fact it's the first thing I install on any machine after I finish install an os on it.
Whitelist firewall - I have become adpocalypse, destroyer of bad sequels, lover of Web One.
Unpopular opinion incoming:
You know when you were playing hide and seek, found the perfect hiding place, and you reject anyone else who tries to hide in that place?
DON'T TELL ANYONE ABOUT ADBLOCKERS!
Seriously, corpos will crack down hard. I mean, real hard on adblockers. This is an arms race that corporations have not yet realised because not enough people are using ad blockers. However, if more and more people are using it, then corporations will also be trying to catch up and that is something they will win because of greater resources.
This will be like with VPN; as many VPN IP addresses have been flagged and blocked as the service became more popular. And some of these VPNs have not updated the IP addresses making access to many websites nigh impossible or awkward-- unless you want to trawl through countless addresses. I'm afraid the same thing will happen with adblockers. This is something that open source adblockers could not easily win-- if they could win.
I've used adblockers so long, when we got a DVR cable box, I would always keep everything rewound by 10 minutes specifically to skip all the commercials so I wouldn't have any on TV, either.
I would imagine it boils down to the ads don't bother them.
brave has a one built in 🙏
ublock origin, brave with aggressive adblocking and adguard for desktop with some kind of adblocking DNS
and then, you will finally be able to enjoy websites without any bullshit.
It wasn't always like this. it used to be the case that one form of adblocking was enough. And I really want the internet to go back to the way it was 15 or 16 years ago when you didn't need to be careful about what you said online and keeping windows machines secure was simple as long as you knew what to get.
Lots of unpopular opinions in here and I'm willing to add mine to the mix.
I'm well aware of ad blockers, and use them occasionally. I also block trackers like pendo through DNS entries on my router. I pay for YouTube.
But I also allow ads and welcome them.
I remember when you couldn't get email unless you were in a school or paid for it. I remember a time when the fastest Internet loaded images line by line. I remember an Internet without videos, or even GIFs.
Services cost money. You use the service, you are the commodity. I've accepted this. A few ads don't kill me and it helps to support providers. I'm quite numb to ads.
Yes they are tracking me and selling my data, but what does that actually mean? I get more targeted offers. More targeted ads.
We've become scared of being tracked by corporations, but for what reason?
Providing content costs money. The days of the free Internet will quickly come to an end without advertisers.
