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Poll: Do you use an adblocker?

news.ycombinator.com

81–90 of 218 posts

Re: Poll: Do you use an adblocker?

#81
I haven't used an adblocker in years; I do use flashblock and nuke anything (to remove ads that appear over content).

Just these two are enough to deal with the most annoying ones, the rest of the ads don't bother me too much.

Re: Poll: Do you use an adblocker?

#82
post #46
post #15

Nope, never have. I have 99 problems but an ad ain't one.

I hate ads with a passion. If I had the power, I'd make unsolicited advertising illegal. If I hear or see an ad, I often make a mental note not to buy that product.

I feel you, but it's not really unsolicited is it? You're willfully visiting the website, after all.

Re: Poll: Do you use an adblocker?

#83
For those who are as paranoid as me about any sites tracking you, I recommend taking a look at: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy

It breaks the Internet a lot at first, but it gets better once you've used it for a while, allowing what makes sense. Nowadays I feel "exposed" without it.

Re: Poll: Do you use an adblocker?

#84
I don't visit websites that overly abuse ads. If I happen upon a site that forces advertisement on me, I close the window and move on. I'm generally consuming content that I can find on a variety of places. I'll simply try the next link in Google.

Re: Poll: Do you use an adblocker?

#86
If you were to have asked this about two weeks ago I would have said no. Sadly, performance and memory usage of javascript/flash has gotten to the point where I must use a script blocker. If the ad only contains a picture and does not load via js I will still see it; if the ad is on a page that I have explicitly allowed then yes as well.

Re: Poll: Do you use an adblocker?

#87
post #5

I use AdBlock and Ghostery. Ghostery is super useful. It throws out so much crap that I am not interested in. On sites like techcrunch, engadget or thenextweb it usually cuts the number of requests in half. Rant: It is sure getting out of hand in a big way: it is not uncommon for tech news sites to send you 1.5 MB of crap surrounding a simple 200 word story. I am getting so tired of that. Specially on mobile. My iPad…

I wouldn't touch Ghostery with a long pole.

Their parent company - Evidon - is suspicious. The FAQ on the site is choke-full of weasel words and wishy-washy statements on how they are not an "ad company" but rather an "ad assurance company". Skimpy on actual details too. They have changed their About summary now, but not long ago it basically said that they are in business of delivering better advertisement experience to the advertisers. Just ask yourself if instead of being tracked by multiple entities, you are OK with being tracked by one that gets your data resold to others. They are not a non-profit, so - as cliche as it sounds - you are their product.

Re: Poll: Do you use an adblocker?

#88
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use AdBlock, but I stopped using NoScript. NoScript essentially makes the modern web unusable. For 99% of the sites I visit I want them to be able to make my user experience more pleasurable through these technologies. It would be interesting to know how many devs consider NoScript users when designing websites. (I personally think it's too much effort).

I agree. And so when I go to a website that I trust , I enable its JavaScript. NoScript makes it easy to enable JavaScript from specific places and permanently ban scripts from other places. I prefer having the whitelist approach so that I can avoid accidents, such as clicking the wrong result from a search. I do have to occasionally play guessing games when I am on certain sites and want to enable media served by mu…

In windows I use Microsoft Security Essentials, otherwise, nothing else.

I don't use NoScript, and have never had anything install itself on any of my machines (to my knowledge at least - and as a dev I actively monitor CPU/Memory so hopefully would notice).

http://xkcd.com/552/

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