91–100 of 163 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's all fun and games until Google gets upset and locks you out of your gmail.
Well, don't use Gmail, or use a domain that you can move to any provider and keep a backup of you're email. If you put yourself in a place where someone can take everything from you than it's a real risk that they might.
It took me a long time to come around to using ad blockers. For a long time, my feeling was, "if you don't like ads don't use the web. You owe it to those websites to look at their ads". But then the ads just go so resource intense that I came around and finally installed an ad blocker. This however still feels one step too far. The ad blocker protects me from the resource utilization of ads. But if you're already bl…
Yes, the purpose is to inflict harm. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/malice
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People also commit terrorist acts and justify it as "ideological".
A lot of nefarious, brutal and unethical behaviour that is completely normalised in today's world will be considered terrorist or otherwise in the future. It is still ideological no matter how horrible we think it is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think using the cultural stigma of a "terrorist act" to make an analogy like that isn't very productive. It's as effective as saying "People also do bad things for ideological reasons", simply stating as fact that violating copyright is bad ignoring any of the nuance that was provided.
Violating copyright doesn't actively harm the copyright holder. Clicking on ads consumes actual real world resources of the ad network (which is passed on to the advertiser). This is basically stochastic terrorisim on a small scale.
Of course it does. It violates their rights.
> This is basically stochastic terrorisim on a small scale.
"Stochastic terrorism" is a nonsense concept anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like this reasoning. Either we voluntarily stop behaving in a way that advertisers don’t like or we will be forced to stop behaving in ways that advertisers don’t like. The only likely or rational future is that we all stop acting in ways advertisers don’t like, one way or another. We may be best served by proactively rethinking all of our computing habits to make sure they more closely align with AdSense’s goals f…
I’ve seen an incomplete proposal from an adtech CEO that suggests we have a global user ID that we set somewhere, somehow (the tech details aren’t worked out, but the data would be stored centrally in some ad watchdog type org, something like the PCI-DSS Council), and publishers could offer varying levels of access to their site for varying levels of access to your data for advertisements. The user would be able to r…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One that has us pay for websites would be far better. Including services like Gmail and such. We would be paying customers, not eyeballs for sale, and only websites deemed worthy of that level of loyalty would survive. Any websites that prefer it could still be free then, but the costs to host them would have to be paid by their owner (like most personal or business websites today), not sponsored by ads.
You’re speaking from the position of someone clearly privileged enough to afford all the services you’d like to continue using. There are vast swaths of t people for whom an additional monthly subscription to watch YouTube, have access to email, read the news, browse social media, etc just isn’t financially tenable. Especially in the year 2023 where technology and internet access is so crucial to survival, I’d prefer…
Yes things cost money. Why should the poor be subsidised in viewing a website when they arent buying the expensive products being advertised on it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Someone who installs this extension doesn't in my mind qualify to be defrauding anyone. Bluntly, it doesn't matter what you or I think -- what matters is what politicians, police, prosecutors and judges think. I don't see anything on the main github page that says the extension is intended to cause harm to the advertisers or the website, but IME governments have often not cared. And when 1M people in a country inst…
Stop being vague. Which specific law do you think that might violate. Provide a citation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's all fun and games until Google gets upset and locks you out of your gmail.
Well, don't use Gmail, or use a domain that you can move to any provider and keep a backup of you're email. If you put yourself in a place where someone can take everything from you than it's a real risk that they might.
And which ones are those? Once I've selected the right provider, how do I reliably implement my backups?
> If you put yourself in a place where someone can take everything from you than it's a real risk that they might.
I'll just go ahead and stop using every major software product created in the last decade.
Despite my sarcasm you're not wrong, I agree completely with what you're saying. But to follow your advice is not easy, especially for the average user. IMO it's a problem with the way software is made, and while many of us are vaguely aware of the problem, there's been little progress towards solving it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One that has us pay for websites would be far better. Including services like Gmail and such. We would be paying customers, not eyeballs for sale, and only websites deemed worthy of that level of loyalty would survive. Any websites that prefer it could still be free then, but the costs to host them would have to be paid by their owner (like most personal or business websites today), not sponsored by ads.
You know how you pay for cable, and Hulu, and Netflix, and still have to sit through ads? It would be like that. If I'm going to have to watch ads anyway, I'll decline paying for the service, thanks. And go on blocking the ads.
> https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause... >AdNauseam 'clicks' Ads by issuing an HTTP request to the URL to which they lead. In current versions the is done via an XMLHttpRequest (or AJAX request) issued in a background process. This lightweight request signals a 'click' on the server responsible for the Ad, but does so without opening any additional windows or pages on your computer. Further i…
Are they though? The most common one (X-Requested-With) isn't inherent to XHR, it's added by js libraries by convention.