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Ads chew through half of mobile data

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Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#101

Post by crazygringo »

Surprising they don't mention what I imagine has to be the obvious culprit: video ads.

It's not even about advertising for me -- static ads don't bother me that much. But whenever there's autoplaying video in the corner of a page, I hate it so much. Whether it's an ad, or a news site that inexplicably thinks I want to multitask and watch their news channel at the same time I read their article. It's genuinely hard to read the article when there's constant motion an inch or two away at all times!

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#104

Post by bmicraft »

everdrive wrote: post #71

Honestly, just stop using your phone most of the time. You can try to keep up with the adblocking arms race, but it is ultimately a losing battle. It's not actually difficult (in principle) to avoid mobile ads: don't use your phone in the first place, don't browse to web pages, and don't install apps. For anyone who says "but what if I'm out and I need to?" -- that's a fine exception if you're not actually using your…

> You can try to keep up with the adblocking arms race, but it is ultimately a losing battle

I've never felt that way with uBlock in Firefox for Android. Installed it years ago and don't even need to give it a second thought.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#105

Post by Vinnl »

encom wrote: post #94
nine_k wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox on Android does work and does run uBlock Origin all right. I only start Chrome if some very stubborn (usually financial) site fails to work with Firefox + ad blocking; this happens maybe 3-4 times a year.

But how long is manifest v2 going to survive on Firefox?

Firefox's v3 implementation still supports the necessary APIs, and there's a public commitment to keep them.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#106

Post by nytesky »

metabagel wrote: post #25

A lot of web pages only work for me on my iPhone if I use reader mode. Otherwise, the page keeps resetting over and over again. Firefox, but I assume Safari is probably the same, since Apple mandates they all be based on WebKit.

What web pages are you seeking out? I feel like I read hacker news, the New York Times and some local Reddit channels more or less. Search is so squirrelly and the passion GeoCities pages or Uni home pages are long gone, and blogs are corrupted by insidious sponsor endorsements, let alone ads?

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#107

Post by kivle »

nine_k wrote: post #76
encom wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who switched from Iphone to Android, Adguard is very poor compared to uBlock, and it was in fact one major reason (of several) why I switched. But now that Google is killing adblockers, I might just stop browsing the internet entirely.

Firefox on Android does work and does run uBlock Origin all right. I only start Chrome if some very stubborn (usually financial) site fails to work with Firefox + ad blocking; this happens maybe 3-4 times a year.

Hopefully Firefox will keep support for manifest 2 for the foreseeable future since they also have their own extension "store". In Chromes extension store new downloads of Ublock Origin have already been disabled and existing installations are slowly being disabled as they roll out the changes. I'm still on Vivaldi, but will be switching to Firefox very soon.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#110

Post by everdrive »

blueboo wrote: post #79
everdrive wrote: post #71

Honestly, just stop using your phone most of the time. You can try to keep up with the adblocking arms race, but it is ultimately a losing battle. It's not actually difficult (in principle) to avoid mobile ads: don't use your phone in the first place, don't browse to web pages, and don't install apps. For anyone who says "but what if I'm out and I need to?" -- that's a fine exception if you're not actually using your…

Considering we have 25 years of adtech and we presently have multiple effective solutions for adblocking on mobile and desktop, I’d need some additional evidence to be sure that is “ultimately a losing battle”.

So I consider myself to be pretty aggressive compared to the normal user when it comes to adblocking. I use Pihole, pfsense (just some blocking IP lists), ublock origin + custom filters & lists, noscript, and also just have a firm household policy about unavoidable ads. (companies have a "1 strike you're out" policy in my household for anything egregious. Spotify earned a lifetime ban probably over a decade ago. It's likely the original offense has not been relevant for years, but I don't care. They're out of the running permanently.)

That said, there's a lot of time and energy keeping up with what works, and what does not in the ecosystem. From the pfsense (ie, IP blocking) side of things I'm wholly dependent on filter list authors -- and of course IP blocking ads is marginally effective at best. From the pihole side of things, you have similar problems: dependency on domain lists, and the ever-looming threat of server-side ads. The only reason pihole (or any DNS-based blocking in general) is not wholly useless is because it represents a minority of users. If the technique were even marginally popular, the industry would move on and render it almost totally useless. uBlock origin suffers similar problems, and of course Google has moved to neuter it via Manifest v3. They are also in something of a tug of way with Youtube, and I get the sense that if they really wanted to, they could easily circumvent the plugin. As could any other website. I'm not really worried about losing Youtube, mind you, but it feels pretty clearly that the door is closing on the ad-free internet. And worse, the time when the users on the internet had more power than corporations is dying with it.

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