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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

#231

Post by oblio »

People have probably forgotten. Old media had (has) about 20% of its space (newspaper pages or media time) taken up by advertising. That was the steady state for media. I don't think it was accidental, it was the equilibrium needed to fund the media. Plus advertising frequently was one of the flashiest bits.

We're going to go back there, it's just going to take a few decades until the new media companies stabilize. Netflix has already started to ramp up its subscription prices, just give it some more time and more pressure to shareholders to increase revenue, ads will come and new subscription tiers will appear.

C'est la vie, I guess. That's who and what we are as humanity.

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

#232

Post by jbverschoor »

reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #17
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. W…

Zero guilts felt.

The art of not feeling guilt

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

#233

Post by souldeux »

Geee wrote: post #129

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.

I've been using and loving this: https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext

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

#234

Post by Minor49er »

TheIronMark wrote: post #172
bun_at_work wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is saying they expect free content? I'd pay a monthly fee for unmolested search results. I pay for Youtube Premium. I only watch ad-free content that I pay for. I don't want the content for free - the free stuff is usually worse in quality anyway. I just want to be left alone by advertisers. I don't need what they are selling and the reduce my ability to think. The sheer amount of noise they add to the world make…

> Who is saying they expect free content? Anyone using an adblocker is expecting free content.

I both pay for my ISP to connect to the web. I also pay to host web sites that I own which are low cost to me. I also want people to see them and don't run any sort of advertising or data collection on them. It's worth it to me to have my work and information available on the web for other people to use, and even has resulted in me profiting indirectly from it.

If someone wants to turn a profit on their site, that's fine. Do I need to accept whatever they want to serve me when I visit their page? No. Do I need to buy a product from their store if it's not something I'm interested in, even though the payment may go to helping their hosting costs? No.

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

#235

Post by tzs »

iso1631 wrote: post #140
tzs wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a couple effective strategies to deal with ads on network TV when I was a kid. I've found they they still work today. 1. If I was watching alone I would have a book with me. When ads came on I'd read the book until the ad break ended. Nowadays instead of a book it is usually an iPad, and instead of reading during the break I might work on a crossword puzzle in the NYT Crossword app or do some chess puzzles at…

> If I was watching alone I would have a book with me That's shifting from the narrative of the show/film you're watching to a different activity > If I was watching with other kids we could talk about the show It takes us about 1h20 to watch a c. 40 minute show with my wife, but that's because we pause throughout to discuss it. Haven't done linear TV since c. 2000, went through a couple of years in the early 00s wit…

For network TV the show producers know ahead of time where the ad breaks will be and structure the story so that they come between acts.

I have noticed when things originally on network television end up on ad-supported streaming services the ad breaks sometimes no longer happen during natural breaks. When those same things end up in syndication on non-streaming cable or OTA channels the ad breaks usually do align with the natural story breaks. I wonder why OTA and cable channels can time things better than streaming services? Are the shows distributed in different formats to the two, and only one includes metadata on when the act breaks occur?

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

#236

Post by NovaS1X »

hattmall wrote: post #221
patrickk wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

One market where this has always been a problem is tools. So almost 20 years ago we were told in shop class that the industry magazines and reviews were basically all paid for by manufacturers. The solution we learned was to always buy the cheapest option first. If it breaks or fails to meet your needs understand how and why and then move on to a more costly tool that you can demonstrate is better in the specific way…

This is why I really appreciate YT channels like Project Farm.

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

#237

Post by lanstin »

acdha wrote: post #111
TheIronMark wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I have complicated feelings on this — content creators need to be paid for their work but the ad networks have done a ton of collateral damage, too: I've had major sites like nytimes.com or youtube.com send me malware via Google's ad network, and ads make the web significantly slower and less reliable. I avoided using an ad blocker for years but installed Firefox Focus everywhere a while back after getting tired of a…

Particularly since the prestigious sites like NYTimes are having their valuable users be tracked and monetized by otherpeople via the ad nwtworks. And the people paying for ads are paying for a lot of fraud. It is another industry where they got rid of scruples and now have bad actors up and down the whole ecosystem. fortunately/hopefully the whole experience is so unpleasant it is ripe for disruption.

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

#238

Post by simion314 »

detaro wrote: post #23
simion314 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What is the "Recommended - Firefox recommends only Add-Ons that meet our standards for security and performance." badge they put on some extensions if not an endorsement? Or the "Adblocker staff picks" on the front page of AMO?

Are those recommendation based on user ratings only? The issue with extensions is they can get hijacked and get malicious. A Mozilla created extension or endorsed would offer the warranty that there is no intentional malicious code in it. After your comment I checked the extensions page, seems there is something claimed about "security" but is too vague IMO.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-on-badges?utm_conte...

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

#239

Post by elefantastisch »

parsd wrote: post #130

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…

I feel similarly. My default browsing mode is Firefox with enhanced protection on, but other than that, I don't use any kind of ad-blocking. But I also pay for Spotify and YouTube Premium. Other than that, sites like HN, SO, shopping sites, etc. don't have a lot of ads anyway. On the rare occasion I find myself on a site plastered with tons of ads, I just deal with it for a short while (local news I need to read) or leave. I'm actually kind of struggling here to find a site with a lot of ads. It seems to me like despite the concerning growth of ad-tech, for the internet that I care about, ads are either optional (removable for a fee), unobtrusive (like DDG), or a signal of poor quality and I won't want to go the site anyway.

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

#240

Post by lolinder »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #118
red_trumpet wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a reminder that Adblock Plus has a pretty shady business model.

What is supposed to be shady about it? Their definition of "acceptable" seems straightforward and paying for certification seems like a pretty standard business model. If they were to bend their definition for money, that woukd be shady. Do they?

The last time I used AdBlock Plus, I was horrified to discover that they considered Taboola (the clickbait network that, at least at the time, used shocking images to draw attention) to be "acceptable".

I was browsing the web with AdBlock Plus and found myself assaulted by an image of someone's fungus-infected toenail or something similarly nauseating. I went to report it as a mistake on their forums only to find there was already a thread about Taboola, and they were firm that Taboola was "acceptable". The only way I can imagine ads like that made it onto their list was by paying really good money.

I went to uBlock that day and haven't looked back. Whatever definition of "acceptable" they were using, I wanted no part of it.

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