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Poll: Do you use an adblocker?

news.ycombinator.com

101–110 of 218 posts

Re: Poll: Do you use an adblocker?

#101
i feel bad about it, and keep trying to stop, but every time i disable adblock i end up turning it back on after a few days. if ads were less intrusive, i wouldn't mind them but so many websites get wrecked by the ads (verge, i'm looking at you).

Re: Poll: Do you use an adblocker?

#105
I'm different in that I really enjoy a well prepared ad. Seeing how it is supposed to work on people is quite interesting. Even spam can be a good read as those guys sometimes really put such quality content together (from a writing POV) made more interesting by what they are trying to sell you.

Re: Poll: Do you use an adblocker?

#106
Not really, no. I mean, whatever degree of "pop-up blocker" that Chrome has built-in, but no specific "ad blocker." Honestly, I don't see the point. Banner ads don't affect me one way or the other, and they're even (rarely) beneficial on occasion. As long as the ad isn't creating pop-ups and pop-unders and shit, I don't much care.

Edit: Oh, there is one specific type of ad I find highly annoying and could possibly justify blocking... anything that makes noise without asking my permission. I tend to always have headphones on and have the volume up pretty good when I'm web surfing, and any stupid ad that starts talking or playing a jingle is annoying as f!#k. Fortunately they seem to be fairly rare. Enough so that the pain hasn't been enough to push me to install an ad-blocker anyway. But if more of those started to appear, I'd totally look for a way to block them.

Re: Poll: Do you use an adblocker?

#108
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All ads? Really? This whole website is, in a sense, a promotional vehicle for Y Combinator.

At best, it's a stretch to go from in-your-face, unsolicited advertisements to "promotional vehicle" which we all use willingly. In addition, there is a value associated with this website that you just don't get from ads.

The ads usually intend to add value. They just often aren't very good.

I don't think advertising is inherently evil (though I respect that some may disagree), I think the problem is that we're still in the early days of Internet advertising. The technique isn't quite there yet.

Re: Poll: Do you use an adblocker?

#109
I use a cocktail of AdblockPlus, Ghostery, NoScript, CookieMonster, and BetterPrivacy. I've used Flashblock in the past, and may use it again, but there are a couple of flash game sites I frequent and BetterPrivacy takes care of the persistent flash cookie issue.

All of these make browsing a lot speedier on my DSL connection. However, I'll admit they can also be a pain in the tuckus when wanting to log in, or a site requires JavaScript to view content. Still, I consider them worth it for "tracking" considerations alone.

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