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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

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. W…

Quoted post unavailable.

Insert Cathy Newman "So what you're saying is..." meme.

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

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really can't believe anyone would user a browser without an ad blocker if they knew how things would look while using one. I don't use an advert blocker but I know what they look like. Why? The adverts don't really bother me and I also think they're dubiously moral.

Do you also read all the spam flyers and emails you get?

No? I'm not sure that's the gotcha you think it is - I also don't read random web pages that I'm not interested in, and I don't sit and 'read' adverts on pages I am reading.

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

#63

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.

In all fairness, if the rest of us didn't run adblockers, they probably wouldn't need to be so aggressive with the ads for those that currently don't.

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

#64
post #26

What I find interesting is that in my experience people with lots of add blocking are more likely to pass on HORRIBLE links. They don't know and thus pass on garbage sites (full of ads and such) where the folks I know without ad blockers are more careful of what they subject their friends to. It's a weird situation.

It's not just ads that contribute to link sharing nightmares. If you leave certain query parameters in a Twitter link you get a hard login wall after about 10 seconds if you aren't logged in. Other sites such as Quora do something similar: redirect you to a login wall if you click to expand an answer (only if some url query param is present). On Twitter that behavior is much worse, of course. To view a reply thread you must click the share button and manually copy and paste it into a new tab or you'll get a login wall. It's truly amazing how hostile big players are to UX when they aren't getting their way.

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

#65

I also have NoScript installed - it significantly decreases the amount of crap your web browser fetches and renders and thus makes browsing faster and consume less energy. And as mentioned by blakesterz in Private mode I have both uBlock Origin and NoScript disabled because multiple websites refuse to work otherwise.

You don't need NoScript with uBlock.

It has an option for disabling JS ( in its main drop-down menu).

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

#66
I use ublock and have setup a dns blocker through openwrt and have even added my own items to the blacklist. I am astoundished how much traffic leaves my machine "just sitting there".

At this point my blocklist has something like 77.614 domains blocked and I do not believe that its going to get less.

what is intersting is that I grew up with the uncensored internet and the things i found are not on the list of things that I definitly will block for my children.

Its kind of the opposite approach of a censored web for children because to be honest im not so much worried about their activities, but far more concious of the bad actors out there.

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

#67
I don't use any "ad blocker" plugins, but I do use EFF's Privacy Badger, which blocks all cookies it determines are tracking cookies. Many websites deduce it'ss blocking their ads, because they're addicted to tracking us, but I feel no guilt. I wouldn't risk browsing without it.

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

#68

I stopped watching network TV in the 1990s when it reached about 25% ads (i.e. 7.5 minutes of ads in a 30 minute window. May have been only 7 minutes, memory is fuzzy now). The web was a relief. You could actually consume content and tune out the (then primitive, usually just a banner at the top) ads. The web, specifically un-adblocked Youtube, is now at about the same point as where I quit TV. Just not worth the agg…

> But will "Manifest V3" tip things back to unbearable? We'll see.

Switch to Firefox now before Firefox market share dips to the level where publishers can justify not supporting it and you're stuck with only crippled adblocking forever?

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

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. W…

Quoted post unavailable.

Why don't I get paid for my HN posts? Do I owe you for your reply? Do you owe me for this reply?

You work out how we commoditize every interaction into tiny micropayments so MBAs are happy with our time allocations and let me know. Ads were tried, and it's been an absolute fucking disaster.

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