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Users are massively giving their 1-star reviews to AdBlocker

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Re: Users are massively giving their 1-star reviews to AdBlocker

#41

Post by elvis10ten »

mikpanko wrote: post #14
zlg_codes wrote: post #11

Why is anyone not using uBlock Origin? Raymond's proven so far he won't be shady, and has made a tool that's incredibly resilient to anything the server side can do. The adblocker wars cannot be won by the serving side. There will always be a way to browse the Web without ads, or there will simply be fewer people using the Web; they will move onto other protocols where they can avoid ads.. at least until the marketer…

Does it work with the new Youtube ad blocker wall?

I find it funny that you are discussing how to block YouTube ads —- when you can just get YouTube premium. Makes me ask the age old question: how can creators supposed to eat?

Re: Users are massively giving their 1-star reviews to AdBlocker

#42

Post by smegsicle »

elvis10ten wrote: post #41
mikpanko wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it work with the new Youtube ad blocker wall?

I find it funny that you are discussing how to block YouTube ads —- when you can just get YouTube premium. Makes me ask the age old question: how can creators supposed to eat?

they can get a job??

Re: Users are massively giving their 1-star reviews to AdBlocker

#43

Post by desertrider12 »

goalonetwo wrote: post #24
desertrider12 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't for me - first I got warning popups, and eventually videos wouldn't load at all. I found a different extension called Ad Speedup that basically plays ads at infinite speed, so the ad's first frame loads, but then the video resumes. This is working reliably so far. I would also be interested to know if it still gives revenue to the channel because technically, the whole ad plays (just not at 1x speed).

are you using Firefox? I have issues with Chrome (to be expected), but not with Firefox.

Oh yeah, chrome. I was thinking the anti-block was tied to my account since clearing cookies and updating ublock's filter list didn't fix it, but I'll give firefox a try.

Re: Users are massively giving their 1-star reviews to AdBlocker

#44

Post by xvinci »

grogenaut wrote: post #26
zlg_codes wrote: post #11

Why is anyone not using uBlock Origin? Raymond's proven so far he won't be shady, and has made a tool that's incredibly resilient to anything the server side can do. The adblocker wars cannot be won by the serving side. There will always be a way to browse the Web without ads, or there will simply be fewer people using the Web; they will move onto other protocols where they can avoid ads.. at least until the marketer…

I would actually argue that "can't be won from the server side" is completely untrue. However ad companies don't trust websites to serve ads and report and so there are obvious to block setups because of that distinction, which is what makes ublock work. If there was trust between ad networks and sites it'd be a lot harder to block. I find it pretty ironic. and I continue to be surprised how completely terrible ad ne…

As a passionate competitive gamer since 20+ years I see a 100% parallel to the "Cheating" problem in PC games. There is a HUGE market there and a never-ending game of cat and mouse between cheat developers and anti-cheat developers.

I fundamentally see the same structure: A client-server relationship, some game developers DO trust Anti-Cheats to a huge extent and the AC tools even have ring0 power on your device. And every game ever is full of cheaters and most of them with 0 IT knowledge.

As long as you have access to the network connection or own the end device, I dont see how this can end well for advertisers. Maybe for a few days / weeks / months here and there, but at what price.

Re: Users are massively giving their 1-star reviews to AdBlocker

#45

Post by kjeksfjes »

zlg_codes wrote: post #11

Why is anyone not using uBlock Origin? Raymond's proven so far he won't be shady, and has made a tool that's incredibly resilient to anything the server side can do. The adblocker wars cannot be won by the serving side. There will always be a way to browse the Web without ads, or there will simply be fewer people using the Web; they will move onto other protocols where they can avoid ads.. at least until the marketer…

While it's hard to disagree, I'd like to remind everyone about that in many cases the alternative is to pay for services. The suckers who don't use AD blockers are effectively paying for our content.

Re: Users are massively giving their 1-star reviews to AdBlocker

#46

Post by zlg_codes »

grogenaut wrote: post #35
zlg_codes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point, but you also explained why it's not too much of a concern. There are ways to fully control it, but it's all server side. The best protected content is the content never served. They're stuck in a situation where the business model is pissing off (some of) their users, and they want to turn ad blocking users into either ad viewers (not going to happen) or paying customers (limited but possible suc…

You're both correct and also missing nuances that make it a lot more complex than what you're thinking. Ask yourself Why is paywalling different than ads that makes it more effective, then question if it actually is and if ads could be just as effective? I'm sadly not going to be able to explain more. Otherwise this would be a fun discussion. I do know with a low ad rate you could have people who block ads watch ads…

I'm not sure where you're going.

Paywalling doesn't have to be all or nothing, you could show thumbnails and preview clips, but then require payment/subscription once the vid's clicked on. Or track them server side and give a limited number of video minutes before they're prompted to pay up. I think it would be effective because it would retain the "hook" that typically generates traffic. Show just enough to make the "Subscribe" button look easy and cheap.

Native ads are annoying and thankfully skippable with things like SponsorBlock. Hard/impossible to block in the middle of a stream, though...

I remember when ads on the Web were just clickable banners or those silly animated GIFs. While they still took up way too much screen real estate, it was possible to ignore them to some extent. Now it's not that easy, and you risk security because of all the surveillance.

The people who avoid ads would rather not visit or use a site than reward the ad-shoving behavior. It's about time and respect; there really isn't any threshold that I will accept ads. If they ever play I reach to mute or switch or even close the tab. My attention isn't for sale.

Re: Users are massively giving their 1-star reviews to AdBlocker

#47

Post by ylee »

safety1st wrote: post #25
zlg_codes wrote: post #11

Why is anyone not using uBlock Origin? Raymond's proven so far he won't be shady, and has made a tool that's incredibly resilient to anything the server side can do. The adblocker wars cannot be won by the serving side. There will always be a way to browse the Web without ads, or there will simply be fewer people using the Web; they will move onto other protocols where they can avoid ads.. at least until the marketer…

> Is there nowhere in society considered sacred enough to not litter it with advertising filth? Yes, there is still a last bastion of focus, productivity and anti-distraction. It's the terminal, which is why I find myself using TUI apps more and more as time goes on. There are specifically a few principles we need to preserve to prevent the marketers from ever getting a foothold in the terminal. They are: general com…

>Yes, there is still a last bastion of focus, productivity and anti-distraction. It's the terminal, which is why I find myself using TUI apps more and more as time goes on.

Welcome to the club. I've been using Emacs for more than a quarter century, 99.9999% of the time text-only (whether Linux console, X terminal console, xterm, or SSH client) on a remote server. My email client is VM, written in Emacs Lisp. I've used it to read mail for almost as long as I've used Emacs. I tried Gnus a couple of times for Usenet but stayed with slrn because of Emacs's lack of multithreading. I've never tried Gnus for email because VM has always met my needs. VM (and ancillary tools, like Personality Crisis and mairix)

* does a great of job displaying HTML messages. For the very few that it doesn't, one keystroke sends the message to my web browser running locally.

* sends URLs I select (all from the keyboard) to the web browser

* opens images and attachments

* auto-adjusts the From: line of outgoing messages depending on the recipient

* archives messages to various folders using various criteria

* searches my archived mail going back a quarter century at lightning speed

Of course, I can write Emacs Lisp code of my own to extend any or all of the above.

VM isn't perfect. I'm sure that I could do all of the above with Gnus, and quite possibly am missing out on other features that VM lacks. Overall, though, I really feel like I have a superpower for email handling with it.

Re: Users are massively giving their 1-star reviews to AdBlocker

#48

Post by benterix »

dumbo-octopus wrote: post #38
safety1st wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there nowhere in society considered sacred enough to not litter it with advertising filth? Yes, there is still a last bastion of focus, productivity and anti-distraction. It's the terminal, which is why I find myself using TUI apps more and more as time goes on. There are specifically a few principles we need to preserve to prevent the marketers from ever getting a foothold in the terminal. They are: general com…

Funny you say that, I was just thinking earlier today back to the core-js drama. In short: the creator of a NPM package that is used by approximately everyone, everywhere, was facing a legal battle. He had been developing this package full time for years and did not have the cash on hand to hire a lawyer. He added a console log that ran on installing his package that said something like "If you're using core-js pleas…

> eventually going to prison for around 10 months

Sorry, I don't follow: going to prison for what? I fail to see the connection between screams in Github issues and going to jail.

Re: Users are massively giving their 1-star reviews to AdBlocker

#49

Post by benterix »

zlg_codes wrote: post #30
grogenaut wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would actually argue that "can't be won from the server side" is completely untrue. However ad companies don't trust websites to serve ads and report and so there are obvious to block setups because of that distinction, which is what makes ublock work. If there was trust between ad networks and sites it'd be a lot harder to block. I find it pretty ironic. and I continue to be surprised how completely terrible ad ne…

That's a good point, but you also explained why it's not too much of a concern. There are ways to fully control it, but it's all server side. The best protected content is the content never served. They're stuck in a situation where the business model is pissing off (some of) their users, and they want to turn ad blocking users into either ad viewers (not going to happen) or paying customers (limited but possible suc…

> they want to turn ad blocking users into either ad viewers (not going to happen)

Actually if a niche is well-defined, and you don't push anything off-topic, this can work very well.

My example: I often watch the DevOps Toolkit videos on YT (with the guy who works for Crossplane now), including sponsor block and often find something interesting and try it out. Some details to share:

* DVT advertised Civo as the fastest k8s (in terms of time between terraform apply and a running cluster). Since I set up k8s clusters very often and I'm fed up with usual waiting times (20-30 mins for EKS, 3 minutes for Civo) I decided to give them a try. But it was impossible to get the account verified - my card was added but they couldn't "verify my account", whatever that means. And only at that moment I discovered why Civo was faster than the rest: they used k3s instead of k8s! I don't mind, k3s is CNCF-certified (but so is Minikube...). So I was a bit upset this important detail was missing from the comparison.

* DVT advertised Hivelocity as the cheapest and fastest VPS, even cheaper than Hetzner (and they had a comparison table). Since I'm using Hetzner a lot I was curious to check them out and... for roughly the same price (around $4), Hivelocity has twice less RAM! Again, this little detail was missing from the ad.

As you can see, I not only watch the videos but also check the ads, even if they are misleading, and will continue to do so because they are interesting to me. The moment DVT introduces ads for, say, air purifiers, I'll start blocking ads. It's not that I'm not interesting in air purifiers, it's just it doesn't fit the context.

Re: Users are massively giving their 1-star reviews to AdBlocker

#50

Post by jsnell »

benterix wrote: post #48
dumbo-octopus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you say that, I was just thinking earlier today back to the core-js drama. In short: the creator of a NPM package that is used by approximately everyone, everywhere, was facing a legal battle. He had been developing this package full time for years and did not have the cash on hand to hire a lawyer. He added a console log that ran on installing his package that said something like "If you're using core-js pleas…

> eventually going to prison for around 10 months Sorry, I don't follow: going to prison for what? I fail to see the connection between screams in Github issues and going to jail.

He killed a teenager in a traffic accident, and needed money to settle with the victim's family to avoid going to jail.
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