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Adblocking: How about Nah?

eff.org

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Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#91
post #77
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying you are wrong, but which European states is this common in? I’ve never noticed this, and many public spaces in Europe have a great deal of poster/bill board style advertisements. I remember reading Paris tried this, but that’s a long way from “common in Europe”.

The only example I know is São Paulo (not in Europe). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa

There are several US states (Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Vermont) that don't allow billboard advertisements.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#92
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying you are wrong, but which European states is this common in? I’ve never noticed this, and many public spaces in Europe have a great deal of poster/bill board style advertisements. I remember reading Paris tried this, but that’s a long way from “common in Europe”.

There aren't any billboards along freeways in Switzerland, e.g.

[deleted]

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#93
post #55

Did anyone ever investigate what benefits ads have to a population? It seems like a net loss to me, because ads are used to make people consume more than they need; ads make people buy the product with the biggest advertising budget instead of the best product; and while ads may make the internet "free", we are still paying for those ads indirectly. Why then, doesn't the government bring advertising to a halt? At lea…

>'Why then, doesn't the government bring advertising to a halt? At least they could start with targeted advertising as seen on the internet.' Interesting idea. I just read that over £20bn is spent a year on advertising in the UK. The problem is that things which are socially valuable - especially journalism, but also a lot of entertainment - are chronically dependent on advertising revenues. Netflix is an interesting…

>The problem is that things which are socially valuable - especially journalism, but also a lot of entertainment - are chronically dependent on advertising revenues.

I think calling journalism "socially valuable" is debatable.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#94
post #88

When I loaded the BoingBoing version of the article my browser contacted 53 third-party domains and a grand total of 373 cookies were set. The BoingBoing privacy policy does not mention "Do Not Track", usually a signal it is ignored, and it discloses nearly none of the third-parties. The cookie opt-out link goes to the NAI site which does not work on Safari because Safari won't allow the third-party cookies required…

Does that changes anything to the truth and validity of the points he is making, though ? Because if yes I would like to know what and how, and if no then this is an ad-hominem.

Nobody said advertising wasn't paying the bills.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#96
For many many years I resisted installing an ad-blocker. As someone who worked at a website that made the bulk of it's revenue from ads, it felt hypocritical, and also, I wanted to make sure that the experience of our website was bearable without ad blocking, by forcing myself to experience it every day.

I gave up about two years ago. The web just go so bad I had to install ad-block. My computer would spin like a jet plane at least once an hour due to insane advertising on a website consuming all the CPU.

I literally installed ad-block to save my computer hardware.

The ads don't even bother me that much. I used to always say, "my brain is my ad-block". It was the slow loading, CPU heavy ads that got me to turn.

If advertisers want to advertise to me, that's fine. I understand they need to make money. But how about not melting my computer in the process?

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#97
post #67

I don't actually want to block ads. If you want to put a small text or image blurb anywhere on the page... Good for you. I'll gladly accept those on a webpage so that the content creator can make a bit of cash. But these companies are intentionally blurring the lines between advertisement and digital surveillance. You don't need to collect everything about my operating system, browser, monitors, GPU, every click I ma…

Remember Gmail ads from like 2006? They were very minimal and on point. I was so optimistic thag the future of advertising was that.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#98
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying you are wrong, but which European states is this common in? I’ve never noticed this, and many public spaces in Europe have a great deal of poster/bill board style advertisements. I remember reading Paris tried this, but that’s a long way from “common in Europe”.

There aren't any billboards along freeways in Switzerland, e.g.

There’s usually no shortage of public ads for Swiss watches at Zurich airport. There is for sure no ban on advertisements in public places.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#99

It's somewhat ironic that this page contains the most impressive procession of banner ads that I've seen in a long while. And almost all of them keep changing every thirty seconds or so. Apparently I've been successful in systematically avoiding sites that would torture me like that. They may succeed once but only at the price that they won't see me again.

The EFF site is full of ads on your machine?!? That doesn’t sound right (and disabling ad block doesn’t cause it to serve any to me, unless you count the mailing list signup form after the article).

I’d guess that you are looking at a different page or your machine is compromised.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#100
post #94
post #88

When I loaded the BoingBoing version of the article my browser contacted 53 third-party domains and a grand total of 373 cookies were set. The BoingBoing privacy policy does not mention "Do Not Track", usually a signal it is ignored, and it discloses nearly none of the third-parties. The cookie opt-out link goes to the NAI site which does not work on Safari because Safari won't allow the third-party cookies required…

Does that changes anything to the truth and validity of the points he is making, though ? Because if yes I would like to know what and how, and if no then this is an ad-hominem. Nobody said advertising wasn't paying the bills.

Yes it says boingboing are hypocrites and not the right people to spread this message. At the very least they could have used this as an opportunity to say “you may have noticed we have tons of tracking on this article, here’s why...”.

There’s something to be said about being a trustworthy source.

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