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Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

imlefthanded.com

71–80 of 844 posts

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

#71
I hate auto-playing videos. Several news websites in Germany embed an auto-playing video in a news article. Often these videos have nothing to do with the article. And then there are some that even turn into a pop-up player when you scroll down.

What's the best way to block these videos (in Chromium)? I wouldn't mind a solution where videos are completely blocked with a whitelist, since I rarely consume videos except on dedicated video sites (e.g Youtube).

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

#72

No one likes ads, but the belief that you're owed content for free is absurd.

How about making content that people actually feel like they obtain value in their lives from. They'd pay for that. Instead we have the majority of content creators engaged in an arms race to hijack your attention and produce the most outrageous, rather than best, content possible because more outrage = more eyeballs = more ads.

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

#73
It's almost unbelievable how big the gap is. Sometimes I try to turn it off and check links before I share them to find out if they're actually good reading experiences. I've got a couple of sites that I used to reflexively share on social media that I've since learned not to because without an adblocker they auto-play videos at the top of the page - but I never ran into that behavior when I was using them, so I thought they were fine.

I think that introducing nontechnical friends/family to adblockers and helping them set one up can be a really low-cost but high-impact kindness, I encourage people here to do so.

Maybe it's an ADHD thing and I'm overstating this, but I personally see really tangible effects on my ability to concentrate based on how many ads I'm surrounded with. Even stuff like Sponsorblock, which is honestly mostly removing intros/outros has helped a lot with how I interact with Youtube. Sure there's data savings, page load time, etc... but I also vaguely suspect that constant web advertising just flat-out affects people's mood and ability to focus more than is commonly talked about.

Seriously, ask your family members about whether they adblock, and install Ublock Origin for them if they don't. If they're on Android, consider (with their permission) swapping out their browser for Firefox (or some equivalent) and installing Ublock Origin again. If they don't mind some very minor UI differences (and in my experience many people don't), then it's an immediate speedup and data savings at the cost of maybe 3 minutes of work and explanation.

The article suggests that roughly 73% of users don't use an adblocker. Some of those users are making a conscious choice, and that's fine, but a lot of them just don't know how to install one or don't know how they work. You don't need to be actually evangelizing ad blockers to still occasionally ask someone who's complaining about ads whether or not they realize that there's a really easy way to get rid of them.

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

#74

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 just upgraded after refusing. Mostly for mobile. On desktop my ad block works but on mobile it wouldnt. You can also shut off your screen on mobile and it continues to run with Premium. It kind of sucks that Youtube requires you to pay for this but I use Youtube enough to be okay with it.

I'm blocking youtube ads on my mobile quite okay and the experience is fine (IOS - AdGuard). There are some twitches here and there but it is very usable.

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

#76

No one likes ads, but the belief that you're owed content for free is absurd.

A lot of people are saying this but I disagree that you are either on one side or the other. If you pay a monthly subscription to the Washington Post, their website is still absolutely covered with advertisements - moving, video, intrusive advertisements that IMHO make the site unusable. So I'm not owed free content. I'm paying for it. And since I'm paying for it, don't shove a bunch of crap down my throat when I want to see the stuff I paid for.

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

#77
post #15

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.

I wish it had full addon support though, rather than just Mozilla's curated selection of 20 or so. I have to install an app to do twitter -> nitter redirection when it could just be a browser extension.

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

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I block ads on YouTube by paying for YouTube Premium.

I tried this, but it didn't work on the vast majority of videos I watch. They always seemed to have some or the other product placement inside. So I stopped paying, and installed a couple of adblockers.

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

#79
post #15

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.

They took that away awhile ago. Is it back now?

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

#80

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.

Ad-funded businesses are mostly bad for society anyway, hopefully if enough people get ad blockers their business models will become non-viable. So, those of us running ad blockers are actually providing a public service for free, it is quite generous!
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