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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

#241

Post by eh9 »

warner25 wrote: post #53
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 run Firefox with uBlock Origin, and spend most of my time on pages like HN and other old-school forums that are mostly just text. My wife runs Chrome with all defaults and spends a lot more time in the mainstream web. Whenever she wants to show me something on her laptop, I think to myself, "how can she subject herself to this all day?!" For me, the experience in her browser is like being assaulted. She doesn't wan…

I tried to enforce ad blocking at the router level (pihole) but eventually had to change it to opt-in (DNS) because my wife wouldn’t stop telling me to turn it off when she wanted to click on Google ads.

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

#242

Post by hattmall »

bambax wrote: post #94
skummetmaelk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The funny part is I remember a time when even on HN the majority defended ads for a myriad of reasons, and one of those reasons was that people actually liked ads and wanted them. This line of reasoning has completely disappeared from the mainstream. I think that's a problem for the ad companies. They have not yet lost the war, but it seems they have lost the argument.

There was a time when I purposely unblocked Facebook ads because they were actually showing me some interesting content and products in a fairly non-invasive way.

And occasionally I still get those but lately almost all ads I see are some interesting headline that then takes me to a page with an for nonsense products every paragraph and an extremely fluffy article to tell me that dinosaurs had feathers / the Romans had steam engines or something similar.

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

#243

Post by 9dev »

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 strategy is smarter than it sounds at first. If you don't have any obvious criteria for comparison available, failing fast and iterating on that is a way to come up with criteria by yourself.

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

#244

Post by shadowgovt »

tasha0663 wrote: post #133
Macha wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, google can circumvent the ad blocker's attempts to block the ad playback from beginning, but if the first thing the ad does is have double verify check if you're a bot, and double verify's domain is in your adblocker's list, then the ad is going to fail and Google will try load some other ad once it errors out.

> double verify check if you're a bot I hate when they do this. I just leave and go somewhere else. I'm not submitting to Voight-Kampff just to see a LinkedIn profile.

That's win-win for the server. Servers start doing this because automated traffic is cutting into their ability to provide service to humans. If you're freeing up their traffic to serve other humans you're doing them a favor.

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

#245

Post by dheera »

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…

No guilt either. It's on them for making the ads so damn annoying with popups, modals, megabytes of JavaScript, interspersed with more subscription and GDPR popups, and shitting cookies all over my browser, and tracking my searches across sites, and sometimes covering up over HALF my screen on mobile.

No thanks. If they had stuck with a simple, in-line, hyperlinked image I would have probably not cared, but this is too much.

The way the ad is delivered is what is annoying and not the ad itself.

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

#246

Post by argomo »

Tenoke wrote: post #63
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.

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.

What's this mythical world where industry execs leave profit on the table because they aren't being squeezed by ad blockers? Have you tried watching cable TV? You know, the service that was originally billed as a way to watch tv without ads?

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

#247

Post by nescioquid »

capital_guy wrote: post #76
TheIronMark wrote: post #46

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 wan…

I don't recall how long ago this was, but I bought a digital subscription to The Economist only to discover the site refused to make good on my subscription while I had an adblocker active. I canceled the subscription explaining why.

I've since resubscribed as their site no longer does this. It seems so crazy to me that I tried to search for when The Economist changed their policy and found nothing relevant, other than a spate of 2015 stories about how they contracted with an ad-tech firm to determine how many subscribers were using adblockers, but the service subjected their readers to malware.

Newspapers have always made their money by selling their audience to advertisers. However, it wasn't too hard to ignore the ads in print and there is a limit to how malicious a print ad can be.

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

#248

Post by colordrops »

babypuncher wrote: post #205
colordrops wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember this. "People want personalized information on products they are interested in. How else would they find out about them?" As if people would be at a loss buying a car or breakfast cereal or a pair of shoes without ads.

It makes sense in isolated situations, like Netflix recommending content based on previous content you liked on their platform. I think it becomes creepy once that data leaves the domain where I originally generated it.

Is that really an ad though? A recommendation on the platform itself isn't an ad IMO.

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

#249

Post by unethical_ban »

cercatrova wrote: post #186

I have a list of adblockers I use, hope it helps other people here: Desktop: - Pi-Hole (network wide adblocking) - AdGuard (device wide adblocking) Web browsers: - uBlock Origin - uMatrix (not developed anymore but still works, can also use NoScript) - SponsorBlock (blocks in-video sponsor segments, intros, outros, filler tangents, etc in YouTube) Mobile: - Firefox for Android / Kiwi Browser (both have web extension…

Similar. Pi-hole, uBlock (desktop), vivaldi with adblocking (mobile, FF android has perf issues).

For the non-techie, Pi-hole isn't something I quickly recommend due to "knowing when it's the culprit", and the effort in disabling it.

I also have a simple Wireguard config (pivpn) installed as well and my mobile devices are set to always-on VPN for DNS only. Occasionally I will have to turn off the VPN to join certain public Wifi. also perhaps consider hosting your VPN on a well known port if you expect to be on restrictive networks.

Final note: Pi-hole and Pi-VPN(as a frontend to WG) can be hosted on any machine. I have them running on containers.

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

#250

Post by gzer0 »

armchairhacker wrote: post #198
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…

I type "reddit" after the query and Reddit usually has good recommendations. Yes, advertisers can and do try to invade subreddits posing as "real" users to promote sham products. But I haven't seen this actually working: sometimes Redditors recommend products which are way too expensive (still good quality, but the extra price really isn't worth it), but if someone recommends a genuinely crappy product, they get down…

I used to type “reddit” after my searches to look for genuine and real reviews, but even that is now being gamed.

Advertisers and shady affiliate marketing schemes have caught on and nearly every search result I try is now filled with junk, upvote farmed nonsense with fake accounts using similar naming schemes.

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