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Should I Block Ads?

shouldiblockads.com

121–130 of 161 posts

Re: Should I Block Ads?

#121
post #2

How many people actually disable their adblockers when sites don't allow you to access them if you have one enabled? It's just much easier to close the tab.

Some sites can be fooled using tools such as uMatrix which block elments at finer granular level, but is tedious to configure and not very friendly to non technical users. If I can't stop junk on a site that way, unless the information is really vital, I usually close the tab and forget about it.

Re: Should I Block Ads?

#122
post #2

How many people actually disable their adblockers when sites don't allow you to access them if you have one enabled? It's just much easier to close the tab.

It’s way more rewarding to use ublock’s little picker to block their overlay :) if that doesn’t work though, nope - close and move on.

Re: Should I Block Ads?

#123
post #73
post #2

How many people actually disable their adblockers when sites don't allow you to access them if you have one enabled? It's just much easier to close the tab.

I had to disable adblocker to view my old Yahoo mail inbox. I didn't find a way yet to safely switch from Yahoo to Gmail without potentially missing out on emails or lose access to sites registered using that email. I did disable it. I am not proud.

Really? I have an old Yahoo mail account I give out for companies I know will spam me. I use an ad blocker and have not had any problems with Yahoo mail. I don't use it daily, and it's not my main email client, but it works just fine. I'm on Safari with 1Blocker.

Re: Should I Block Ads?

#124
post #53
post #7

I was on a fresh setup recently and caught a glimpse of the raw internet on my way to install uBlock Origin and uMatrix. There are still fake download buttons everywhere. I can't understand how the non-ad-blocking world tolerates that stuff - no choice and no voice I guess? The amount of autoplaying videos was disturbing as well.

I send my friend a link a while ago and he complained to me. I tried it with ads off and it was horrible. Google actually got that right with their ads - they were non intrusive and fitted in. Facbook started ads well, but these days they are getting annoying.

They got it right initially, with ads being unobtrusive, but easily identifiable. Now, though, there is barely an indication that somebody paid for that link at the top. Moving the ads from the sidebar to the main results, slowly removing the yellow background, made Google ads be just as hostile, but in an insidious rather than overt manner.

Re: Should I Block Ads?

#125
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's our responsibility as parents in tech to teach our children to block all ads. My son hasn't browser the web without an adblocker, ever. I showed him what his favorite sites look like without an adblocker and he was really surprised.

Is it? Who will pay for the internet then? I almost feel guilty for blocking them in a way, I appreciate that we need to have some naive users to fund stuff. Some smarter sites ask you to voluntarily unblock their site. If its something I value I will actually do that. If it's forced upon my often I'll try and work my way around it.

Not the ad companies, and I'm not sure I'll miss the ad-funded internet. The internet services I use most often and enjoy are either paid or are essentially nonprofits.

The ad-funded internet seems to largely churn out a wealth of low-effort content mill sites polluting Google results. I won't mourn their death in the slightest.

Re: Should I Block Ads?

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adblockers stop sites from making money from those third-party ads . They obviously don't stop a shopping site from selling products or from GitLab.com registering users for GitLab services etc. If the way a site makes money is by abusing the visitors, adblockers stop the abuse and the money from that * side of things, which may be all the income they get, but not necessarily. So, this is not a simple yes/no situatio…

So they need a set bushiness and tech teams to build an internal ad stack, and try to get advertisers... many who wont buy in without 3rd party tracking to mitigate fraud.

> So they need a set bushiness and tech teams to build an internal ad stack

Somebody needs to take responsibility for the malicious and broken ads. I really don't care who does it; you can contract it out, or do it internally, just as long as the work actually gets done.

The work isn't getting done, right now.

Re: Should I Block Ads?

#127
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that most podcasts will go away if they can't make money via advertising, right?

None of the podcasts I listen to have ads, many use things like Patreon or have a "first hour free, second hour only for members" model.

This and, either way, you shouldn't care.

Heuristically, save yourself time and energy and snap to the game theoretical conclusion. You'll go out of your way and incur personal cost to be a good citizen and prop up this poorly-conceived system that relies on such good samaritanship, but will most people? LOL no. So it's futile anyway. Get the best deal you can and let come what may. :D If all podcasts go belly up and there'll be a post-ad-economy afterscape where all pocasts are somehow paywalled, so be it -- that would have happened anyway, regardless of what you choose to do, and it's hopefully a more resiliently-designed system which doesn't shoulder users with cumbersome ethical dilemmas.

Re: Should I Block Ads?

#128
post #67

Firefox running add-ons on Android made me switch to it on the mobile phone. It makes the mobile experience way better than Chrome and Brave.

If you'd like to run decent ad blocking extensions (or any extensions) on the Chromium side of things, give Kiwi a shot. Afaik the current Play Store/XDA Labs release is out of date on the security patches' side of things, but the developer is currently working on catching up. Also, the project went open-source not too long ago and apparently the dev's been working together with some devs of a different browser, so you can expect more Chromium browsers to implement support for extensions in the near future. https://kiwibrowser.com

And, well... There's also Yandex with their extension support, they deserve at least a mention. iirc uBO is broken there, but Nano works fine

Re: Should I Block Ads?

#129
If anyone is interested in how to set up a network-wide tracker blocker then I've written some guides on how to configure Pi-hole as a router and Wi-Fi range extender. This means you can force all traffic through your custom DNS, even devices from Google and Amazon that don't respect DHCP.

https://unop.uk/pi-hole-extended-part-1/

https://unop.uk/pi-hole-extended-part-2/

It's still worth installing privacy add-ons to Firefox but this helps with some profiling intrusions in mobile apps and Chromecasts etc. It also helps protect your less technical family members a little, although it obviously can't keep them completely safe from surveillance. Education is an important aspect too.

Re: Should I Block Ads?

#130
post #2

How many people actually disable their adblockers when sites don't allow you to access them if you have one enabled? It's just much easier to close the tab.

It's still worth it for them to ask if a non-zero number of people turn it off (and make them some money rather than none).

Option A: Decrease the amount your site is shared by X%. Get ad revenue from 100% of viewers.

Option B: Maintain current number of visitors. Get ad revenue from Y% of viewers.

Depending on the values of X and Y, the ad revenue may go up or down as a result of requiring unsafe browsing. Your conclusion assumes that X is always equal to zero.

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