Earlier quoted context omitted.
it is no more theft than smelling the cooking of a restaurant.
I don't think it's theft but I also don't think it's really equivalent to that either. After all 1,000,000 people can smell what the restaurant is cooking for another customer and it doesn't cost the restaurant any more than if 0 people did because the restaurant is letting the scent go out either way. On the other hand if 1,000,000 people watch a 100 MB video and block ads it certainly costs the content provider a l…
uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox
341–350 of 416 posts
Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
Solution: don’t play games or use any app where the business model isn’t “I give you money and you give me goods and services”. I have one ad supported app on my phone - the Overcast podcast player. That’s only because the author created his own non scummy ad network and I find ads on the podcast player that advertise other podcasts useful. If I didn’t, I would pay him too to get rid of ads.
That only works when they're willing to take your money and willing to then not show you ads or track you. Lots of places won't take your money and only do ads, and an upsetting number are happy to take your money and then track you and/or show you ads anyways . (My "favorite" so far is Hulu, who has the audacity to call their paid plan "no ads" and then include ads.)
When I did buy Windows PCs, I either bought from the business division of Dell or the Microsoft store specifically because they weren’t bundled with adware.
Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
Solution: don’t play games or use any app where the business model isn’t “I give you money and you give me goods and services”. I have one ad supported app on my phone - the Overcast podcast player. That’s only because the author created his own non scummy ad network and I find ads on the podcast player that advertise other podcasts useful. If I didn’t, I would pay him too to get rid of ads.
That's great. I'm glad you have balanced out your morality and online browsing. We will all sleep easier tonight.
Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blame government for not understanding unintended consequences when they pass laws regarding tech (GDPR)
The law says that agreeing or disagreeing should be equally easy. Companies are breaking that law.
Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're two. It's so useful. I use it on those website who display the "accept all cookies", specially on those ones because I'm tired of denying cookie usage. I still don't understand why Firefox, champion of privacy, doesn't make a uBlock native.
Blame government for not understanding unintended consequences when they pass laws regarding tech (GDPR)
In fact, a confusing banner that makes you play a minigame to get the respect for your personal information that you have a legal right to (in the EU) is explicitly disallowed.
And if you don't want any banners, then don't collect any information you don't have to. If it's actually technically needed, you don't need consent. For example, Wikipedia has lots of cookies for things like UI elements and they don't need a banner.
Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox
#346The most popular extension, and the 2nd most popular, just like the 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th most popular, are ad-blockers. I guess it's only marketers that love targeted ads...
I sometimes wonder if adtech devs also use adblockers.
Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
The law says that agreeing or disagreeing should be equally easy. Companies are breaking that law.
Personally, I rarely come across a site that makes it harder to agree than disagree. I find both paths equally annoying.
https://twitter.com/cookieshame
One interesting thing is that loads of sites use OneTrust to implement illegal banners. However OneTrust has a compliant banner on their own site.
So they can do it, but most sites deliberately configure it illegally.
Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have so many customer support issues to deal with because some of the SaaS platforms we use are not compatible with ad blocking software. That's amazing. I hope this keeps happening until businesses are forced to fix their sites to make it work with uBlock Origin.
"I hope this keeps happening until businesses are forced to fix their sites to make it work with uBlock Origin." I very much this is going to happen on a large scale unless there's legislation demanding it. Businesses want to serve up ads and track their users both because: 1 - it's profitable 2 - it gives them insight in to what their users want, so they can improve their products and come up with new ones Supportin…
I'm okay with that.
Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the other way around: when advertisers and website owners decide to leverage the internet, the largest distribution channel in the world at no expense to them, agree to the "public square" terms. If they dont like the terms, they can always build their own distribution channel and set whatever rules they like. Advertisers are the real freeloaders here.
I don't think distribution channel can be ad-free as such, let alone claiming every page on the internet needs to agree to this. Would be great if I can get access to superb resources without paying for them but that is not going to happen, hence ads. If you don't like ads (or block them), how come you are not a freeloader?
They sent us the web page for free. It's their choice, they don't get to shame us for it.
They did that because they assumed we'd look at the ads. The chance that this assumption would turn out to be false was always there. There's just no way they didn't know about this risk.
What's happening is we don't want to look at this noise. We're not gonna do it. They need to accept that and move on instead of shaming us for invalidating the silly assumptions their business model is based on. Where does it say we're obligated to "give back" in exchange for their "free" content? That's just an idea they made up. They got it into their minds that we are "supposed" to pay them back by viewing ads when we are under exactly zero obligation to do so. They are not entitled to our attention.
Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
DNS filtering sucks and can't filter ads served from the same domain as content, if all you can block is a FQDN, there's an absolute shit ton of trackers and ads that are getting past you. This is why piholes are awful. I don't know why they get such high praise - it's just a crappy DNS filter that blocks like what 40% of the ads you see?
PiHole is not awful. It greatly enhances the blocking provided by browser plugins. Most valuably, it blocks an enormous amount of ads in non-browser apps. If I'm using e.g. the BBC app on my phone, PiHole blocks most of the ads (or at least it used to; I haven't checked recently). It also blocks ads in smart TVs and other places where you can't install uBlock.
yes, it can block SOME ads in apps. it's also really good at breaking access to said apps too, then you must spend a great deal troublehsooting apps one at a time.
IMHO - ublock on the browser, pay for apps that have adfree versions, don't use apps that don't, and pirate the rest.