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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

#561

Post by figbert »

fartcannon wrote: post #419
junaru wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YouTube Vanced I get why they want to stay anonymous but that website is no different from any other malware site - no source, no authors just some affiliate links. Putting your google credentials in an app like that is not something people should be comfortable with.

NewPipe let's you 'subscribe' to channels without giving it any credentials. You know, like how it used to be with RSS. The good way. The user empowered way.

> You know, like how it used to be with RSS.

That, my friend, would be because it is RSS!

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

#562

Post by drusepth »

The only reason I occasionally use an adblocker is to try to experience the web how what seems like a sizable subset of users experience it, for that shared experience. Honestly, the two don't seem that different in most cases outside of the worst ad-ridden sites.

Side-note: I don't run ads on any of the sites I manage, yet deal with dozens of bug reports each year as adblockers aggressively find new ways to break sites. IME, ad blockers are about as much as a nuisance as the ads themselves.

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

#563

Post by lopis »

jordanpg wrote: post #490

Ads are such a strange cancer on the internet. So ugly, so without value, such a waste of time, such a sinkhole of precious attention. And yet -- would the modern internet even exist but for ads? I'm not so sure. It seems there is a bifurcation, even among those of us with the technical know-how and resources to live ad-free lives: those who tolerate ads, and those who do not. I count myself in the latter group. I wi…

I believe that in an Internet without ads, services would be either state sponsored utilities for their citizens or cost something to use. The economy would be vastly different and careers like YouTuber or Blogger would not be possible. But also depends what kind of ads we're talking. "Influencers" are human ads.

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

#564

Post by intrasight »

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…

One of my biggest concerns about the future of the "web" - like when it's built into our glasses - is that it will no longer be an open/hackable platform, and it will not be possible to create ad-blockers.

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

#565

Post by mortenjorck »

mrweasel wrote: post #342
marcodiego wrote: post #278

I wanted to show a video on YouTube to a friend. He passed me his cellphone. I searched and found the video and then something very strange happened: a completely unrelated something started playing. I said "Sorry I don't know what is this. This has nothing to do with what I wanted to show you." He then explained me that was just an advertisement and the video would play soon. People are used to abuse. My internet is…

One of the services I happily pay for is Youtube Premium, though I could do without also having to pay for Youtube Music at the same time. I have same experience as you, when I somehow not logged in to Youtube. It’s a surreal mess and it’s the same 5 - 10 ads, if it’s that many, on repeat. It’s unusable. Technically I don’t use and ad block, I just run DuckDuckGo’s privacy plugin. You can show me ads, but not track m…

> One of the services I happily pay for is Youtube Premium, though I could do without also having to pay for Youtube Music at the same time.

The forced bundling with YouTube Music is the only thing that keeps me from subscribing and keeping a trigger finger on the mute button (I use YouTube primarily on AppleTV). It's not even the price so much as it's the redundancy of subscribing to both Spotify and a lackluster Spotify competitor at the same time.

The moment Google offers YouTube Premium Lite (an unbundled version they've been trialing in European markets) in the US, I'll subscribe and never look back.

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

#566

Post by sam0x17 »

notyourwork wrote: post #305
sam0x17 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a report last year that more than 37% of UK traffic in people under 30 had an ad blocker enabled. I think the analytics market is going to have to shift to server-side tracking in the next 5 years if this trend continues globally. I welcome it, though.

Server side tracking is already happening. It's not new or yet to be developed.

Not implying at all that it isn't developed -- back in the early 00s this was the only way we could do tracking largely. But Google Analytics is completely blind when you block it, and that's a huge percentage of the market. For example, simply loading a 1px image (the old way of doing a lot of server-side tracking, and still the state-of-the-art way of doing email tracking) is insufficient when the client is hard blocking the ad server. In that scenario the only way to do it is server-side at the actual web server serving the web page (not some third party ad server), and most large analytics services don't offer anything like that anymore.

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

#567

Post by WA »

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.

Well, you can buy YouTube premium and have no ads.

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

#568

Post by no1lives4ever »

dylan-m wrote: post #411
mrweasel wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the services I happily pay for is Youtube Premium, though I could do without also having to pay for Youtube Music at the same time. I have same experience as you, when I somehow not logged in to Youtube. It’s a surreal mess and it’s the same 5 - 10 ads, if it’s that many, on repeat. It’s unusable. Technically I don’t use and ad block, I just run DuckDuckGo’s privacy plugin. You can show me ads, but not track m…

YouTube's ads are a colossal mistake waiting to happen. Back in the day, Google was successful because they realized advertising on the web was a problem: ads were trying too hard to grab attention, resorting to hostile tactics that basically forced people to run ad blockers. Google said "okay, what if ads were simple blocks of text that - while not as loud and screamy - got more impressions because they aren't terri…

I guess the only reason youtube ads exist is to get people to pay youtube to get rid of ads.

My parents have a smart TV and the youtube app w/o the paid youtube premium makes it a really bad experience. On iOS devices, I have yet to find a free ad blocker that properly blocks youtube ads after they put in new measures to defeat content blocker based ad blockers.

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

#569

Post by reeddavid »

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…

I've noticed a problem when I try to buy tools (especially automotive tools): The only tools available locally are cheap and crappy. I know they are crappy because half the reviews state that it didn't even work once.

But I can't pay more to get a higher quality version of the tool, because the store doesn't even bother stocking a higher quality version.

If I plan ahead, I can shop online and find a quality tool. But what I really want is the option to buy a quality tool during a weekend project.

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

#570

Post by Aachen »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #559
pwython wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, if you owned YouTube with an overhead of tens of millions of dollars per year, how would you monetize it without ads/commercials, just to even keep up with operational costs?

I would gladly pay for an ad free youtube if they weren't also stealing my data.

This. I'd have been paying for years if it weren't Google who'd only use the payment details to link it to an identity. I have and pay for Spotify and Netflix because they're independent companies without an ad and tracking business as their main profit center, I'd be happy to add another video service to the mix. I've tried Nebula but saw all the interesting content ever posted (it's that small) in two evenings.
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