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Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

imlefthanded.com

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Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#11

Post by ameister14 »

As to the reason it's worth it, here are a couple of reasons:

When legacy media companies sell ad space, often they do not do so through an auction mechanism but through a direct purchase model. That means someone paid anywhere from a few hundred to thousands to be on that page. That gives them more of a client relationship and so they can feel more burdened to make sure advertising clients get 'visibility' and bang for their buck.

Also, they can sell ads in their videos with estimated view/impression counts. If they autoplay, the view count goes up even if you're not watching the video so an unsophisticated ad consumer thinks the ad spend is justified.

I don't run ad campaigns anymore, but I did for eight years and I always preferred no autoplay because intentional viewing is much more valuable for what I was selling.

Use adblock.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#12

Post by criddell »

vbezhenar wrote: post #6
blakesterz wrote: post #2

In FireFox I have my ad blockers disabled in Private Mode so nothing is getting in the way if I'm testing or some site is being weird. Sometimes it's SHOCKINGLY different how a page looks with the blockers in place. I really can't believe anyone would user a browser without an ad blocker if they knew how things would look while using one. The web is a much better place with a blocker in place. (Yes, I know, we get a…

I'm using my own simplistic adblock at home (mostly because youtube ads driving me nuts) and I don't use any adblock at work (mostly because I'm too lazy to configure it). I'm not a fan of using browser extensions, especially those which require full access to every webpage, that's too much of attack surface in my opinion and ads are not that bad on websites I visit.

The ads themselves are an attack vector.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#14

Post by simion314 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #6
blakesterz wrote: post #2

In FireFox I have my ad blockers disabled in Private Mode so nothing is getting in the way if I'm testing or some site is being weird. Sometimes it's SHOCKINGLY different how a page looks with the blockers in place. I really can't believe anyone would user a browser without an ad blocker if they knew how things would look while using one. The web is a much better place with a blocker in place. (Yes, I know, we get a…

I'm using my own simplistic adblock at home (mostly because youtube ads driving me nuts) and I don't use any adblock at work (mostly because I'm too lazy to configure it). I'm not a fan of using browser extensions, especially those which require full access to every webpage, that's too much of attack surface in my opinion and ads are not that bad on websites I visit.

Mozilla could do the right thing and endorse/review critical extensions so we know they are safer, but I don't think they have the guts to do it, or mention the word "adblock".

As a power user I also set JS off by default and whitelist specific sites, and also use garbage websites in private mode so their garbage tracking is hopefully purged.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#15

Post by knaik94 »

Damogran6 wrote: post #5

The site appears to be hugged to death...but the thrust of the idea seems pretty obvious on the surface...I'd add that it also probably follows financial, if not technically savvy groups. The person with a $50 Walmart Burner phone's experience will be a WHOLE LOT DIFFERENT from the person with the $1100 smartphone with ad blocking turned on.

Thankfully, with android, firefox still has addon support so ublock origin can still be used regardless of price point.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#16

Post by derivagral »

vbezhenar wrote: post #6
blakesterz wrote: post #2

In FireFox I have my ad blockers disabled in Private Mode so nothing is getting in the way if I'm testing or some site is being weird. Sometimes it's SHOCKINGLY different how a page looks with the blockers in place. I really can't believe anyone would user a browser without an ad blocker if they knew how things would look while using one. The web is a much better place with a blocker in place. (Yes, I know, we get a…

I'm using my own simplistic adblock at home (mostly because youtube ads driving me nuts) and I don't use any adblock at work (mostly because I'm too lazy to configure it). I'm not a fan of using browser extensions, especially those which require full access to every webpage, that's too much of attack surface in my opinion and ads are not that bad on websites I visit.

Remember that viewing ads at all has also been an attack vector. As ever, make the judgement that best fits your situation.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#17

Post by reincarnate0x14 »

blakesterz wrote: post #2

In FireFox I have my ad blockers disabled in Private Mode so nothing is getting in the way if I'm testing or some site is being weird. Sometimes it's SHOCKINGLY different how a page looks with the blockers in place. I really can't believe anyone would user a browser without an ad blocker if they knew how things would look while using one. The web is a much better place with a blocker in place. (Yes, I know, we get a…

I feel zero guilt about ad blocking. There was some period of discussion on the subject back in like 2003 but the ad companies went to war against human civilization and there's been no going back. It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash and an entire generation has now reached adulthood knowing nothing but that hustle touching every bit of media they ever interact with. Who even knows what they'll do with that.

In 2005 or so there was a bunch of trojans going around for IIRC Blizzard games to steal account creds on various sites and my first response to that was "huh, that site has ads?"

People give Brave grief over BAT, and maybe with good reason, but it's one the few efforts to try and bring some sort of involvement to the public side of it as to where the money is flowing that seems to have a chance of going anywhere.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#18

Post by tedajax »

vbezhenar wrote: post #6
blakesterz wrote: post #2

In FireFox I have my ad blockers disabled in Private Mode so nothing is getting in the way if I'm testing or some site is being weird. Sometimes it's SHOCKINGLY different how a page looks with the blockers in place. I really can't believe anyone would user a browser without an ad blocker if they knew how things would look while using one. The web is a much better place with a blocker in place. (Yes, I know, we get a…

I'm using my own simplistic adblock at home (mostly because youtube ads driving me nuts) and I don't use any adblock at work (mostly because I'm too lazy to configure it). I'm not a fan of using browser extensions, especially those which require full access to every webpage, that's too much of attack surface in my opinion and ads are not that bad on websites I visit.

Ad networks seem like a significantly larger attack surface to me...

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#20

Post by aero-glide2 »

zuminator wrote: post #7

I've had YouTube Premium since its inception. Whenever I'm around someone else who puts on a free-tier version of YouTube its rather shocking how frequent and intrusive the commercial ads are.

I feel the same when I accidently open the stock app instead of Vanced.
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