Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by spikej » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 5:32 PM UTC

hateful wrote: post #47

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 ran ad blocking on Youtube for years, and I've been a Premium member since it came out (as Red back then). I can't stand ads and avoid them like the plague. Some ads still sneak into my world though. My current peeve is when going to a restaurant and they have "the game" on full blast. I'm perfectly fine with people watching/listening to the game - and half the time the restaurant is considered a "sports bar", so I…

dude... go to a different restaurant. You might even find it's less crowded, and you get better service because there's no game on!

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

#122

Post by iso1631 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 5:32 PM UTC

MarkusWandel wrote: post #50

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…

The youtube app on a phone has reached that level, and pihole doesn't help, so I only watch youtube on a browser with adblock now

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

#123

Post by philote » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

TheIronMark wrote: post #51

reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #17

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.

To me it's not about getting free content, it's about not paying with my information and being unable to pay any other way. If a site wants to use ad networks that track me across the web, too bad for them. And also too bad if they don't offer a subscription model that disables ads AND tracking.

Also, ads can be served in ways that makes blocking much more difficult. It's just harder to do, and harder to track users across sites. (and therefore, probably less lucrative to the site owners).

What happened to serving ads based on site content? How is using poor algorithms that require a lot of tracking and then make bad guesses about your interests any better?

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

#124

Post by xfz » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

Quigglez wrote: post #97

Open ended question, is there a solution? Inherently people trying to make money from their website either have to charge people directly with money for access or indirectly by having them see/hear ads. Advertisers inherently want their ads to be seen/heard, which means there is pressure to make their ads more intrusive. Yet the more intrusive the ads become, the more annoyed the person accessing the content becomes…

> > Open ended question, is there a solution?

Spotify found a solution that works for music.

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

#125

Post by Workaccount2 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #65

itvision wrote: post #42

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).

I still use NoScript because you can quickly enable bare minimum scripts to get a site working. After a while you develop a good intuition for what is making things not work. At first it is pretty daunting and I generally don't recommend it for the less savvy.

If you just blanket turn off Js the internet basically is not useable.

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

#126

Post by patrickk » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

skummetmaelk wrote: post #60

reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #17

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…

> It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash This cannot be overstated. Everything today is a battle for eye-balls and ad money. The corruption is insane. You can't even buy appliances designed perform their function well. Instead you can buy cheap junk for less than cogs because they make money selling your data to ad companies instead of making money by making products that…

> You can't even buy appliances designed perform their function well

You can't research good appliances either online, because the SERPs are stuffed with SEO-ed blogs and sometimes industry magazines, monetized with Amazon affiliates or other networks, with titles like "5 best dishwashers in 2022". Unless you know someone in the industry or offline with knowledge you don't know what to buy.

This is noticeable in many other consumer goods verticals, e.g. good luck researching decent home gym equipment that is durable and not overpriced with fat margins.

There's no adblocker for this problem either. Google is complacent with their fat ad revenue and monopoly on search and doesn't care.

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

#127

Post by denton-scratch » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

TheIronMark wrote: post #46

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

I'm not owed free content; but nor do I owe anyone my eyeballs. If you put up a site on the public internet, then it's reasonable to assume the site's public. If it turns out my assumption is wrong, I just go away - I'm not going to argue with a webmaster who is determined to make me see stuff I don't want to see.

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

#128

Post by xyst » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #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 thou…

> 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.

I have done this in the past. However, I have discovered that most of the people I introduce to ad blocking will turn it off later. This is because some sites are able to detect when you are using an ad blocker and even provide steps to turn it off. While there are ways to get around this, most of the people just preferred to turn it off.

It's quite sad, really.

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

#129

Post by Geee » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

Youtube, especially, turns into a whole different experience. Ad in front of every video makes it impossible to quickly browse and sort through videos. I might watch just a few seconds and then go to the next one. When ads are enabled, the experience is so painful that I'm not likely to use Youtube this way any more. I have to watch an ad before I've made the decision if I want to watch the video.

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

#130

Post by parsd » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

I've started to think about it differently. I no longer use any ad blockers. I actually want to experience the web (and its decline) the way it is, to take it all in, feel the pain and strengthen my patience in the process.

Also, when I visit a website that is truly obnoxious with its ads, I simply leave immediately and never go there. You build your own filter of bad actors, behaviors, and concrete sites. You don't need to block everyone, you simply walk away from abusers. You want to take notice of improper behavior before consciously and deliberately boycotting it.