Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ads chew through half of mobile data

nextpit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 256 posts

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#181

Post by JoshuaRogers »

lukan wrote: post #151
bdangubic wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you never used google search? if not you should check it out - it is not bad - https://www.google.com

Or chrome, or gmail, or firefox, or ... sadly most of the internet is financed by ads. Only some parts remain free of them. Wikipedia for example. And even HN here ... you can argue it is payed for by the occasional ads, or rather all of it is an ad for the VC ycombinator.

Even Wikipedia feels like each page has a prominent “Plea from Jimmy Wales” ad at the top of every page (even after donating), even if it isn’t billed as such.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#182

Post by alden5 »

crazygringo wrote: post #101

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…

That's your monkey brain hard at work making sure you notice movement that could mean danger in your peripheral vision, funny how much technology is built off of manipulating primal parts of our brains

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#183

Post by ndriscoll »

dgrin91 wrote: post #163
lolinder wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The valuable parts of the internet are, with few exceptions, ad-free. Forums like HN, personal blogs and sites, paid services—these are the places where real value is to be found on the internet. The ad-funded content and services are almost universally low quality and designed exclusively to hack brains to keep them scrolling, not provide real value. What few exceptions there are to this rule are not worth the enorm…

Is this really true? Virtually all news sites, regardless what side you agree with, have ads. Basically all entertainment has ads (or subscriptions). Productivity stuff is either full of sales or upsells, aka ads, or alternatively sell your data (for future ads). Those are all valuable things. The ad free ones are the exceptions. More over they only exist ad free because the money comes from elsewhere.

News (especially national or global) is largely idle entertainment for middle class people, and comes with large servings of propaganda. Subscriptions/commerce are fine. Productivity stuff IME is almost all FOSS or paid for. Ads tend to optimize for the opposite of productivity: engagement.

Existing ad-free because the money comes from somewhere is the point. That somewhere is more ethical and prevents the conflicts of interest that make ad-based services inevitably worth their nominal price.

Some obvious very high value parts of the Internet with no monetization: government services and information, free educational materials from pre-school through graduate university and research level, basically all software I use, creative commons music, art, and CAD designs, forums and blogs where world experts like Terence Tao post, forums and blogs where hobbyists post.

If you look to the Internet for ways to improve your life, you'll find the associated resources (which I'd characterize as the high value parts of the Internet) generally have no ads. It should be obvious why.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#185

Post by beepbopboopp »

lolinder wrote: post #149
Workaccount2 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet as you know it is the value you get out of ads. You may hate ads, we all do, but at least recognize the hand that feeds you. The alternative is subscriptions for everything, and as far as I can tell that is far less popular than the ad model we have.

The valuable parts of the internet are, with few exceptions, ad-free. Forums like HN, personal blogs and sites, paid services—these are the places where real value is to be found on the internet. The ad-funded content and services are almost universally low quality and designed exclusively to hack brains to keep them scrolling, not provide real value. What few exceptions there are to this rule are not worth the enorm…

My brother in code, Hackernews is a blatant ad for YC, look at title bar. They just decided they could afford the subsidy to run it enough to be the sole supporter.

In general, its easiest to charge the wealthiest group with the greatest motivation to spend and that combination means in almost all cases corporations are better customers than individuals. Hence, advertising replacing subscription.

Additionally this why consumer internet is so hard to standup and SaaS feels so much easier to take from 0 to 1.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#186

Post by drawkward »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #158
Workaccount2 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet as you know it is the value you get out of ads. You may hate ads, we all do, but at least recognize the hand that feeds you. The alternative is subscriptions for everything, and as far as I can tell that is far less popular than the ad model we have.

As far as I can tell, subscriptions aren't a reliable way to opt out of ads and ad tracking. Look at cars, cable, Uber, Spotify, Amazon prime, newspapers, telecoms, ISPs, etc. They all show sponsored content and upsell services to subscribers. I've tried putting my money where my mouth is by switching to subscription services for everything and I still have to go out of my way to avoid advertising with adblockers.

Advertising is a virus. It infiltrates all ecosystems.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#187

Post by Mistletoe »

bluedino wrote: post #142
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.

Safari has been garbage in recent years on the iPhone. Pages are often unresponsive or don't fully load. Zooming breaks so many sites. I'm always closing Safari and re-loading pages. Are the web developers ignoring Safari? They can't be.

iOS 18 really screwed up my phone. Never had this issue with safari before then.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#188

Post by Mistletoe »

Bancakes wrote: post #39
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.

You can try adguard on iOS. It’s an app that you buy as an extension for safari but the block lists are very good and you can enable DoH systemwide as well.

To anyone reading this, the free version works well also.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#189

Post by maxwellg »

I finally took the time this weekend to get the family switched over to using NextDNS. I use uBlock Origin on my laptop but it's nice to have something for mobile too. I've been getting heated when my partner hands me her phone to show me a recipe and it's completely covered in ads.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#190

Post by amluto »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #126
imoreno wrote: post #117

Maybe the ISP should start charging the ad network instead of the user for ad traffic. Then they can start blocking the ads of people who don't pay. The user, who pays for the service, is getting no value out of the ads and the advertiser is freeloading the ISP's technical infrastructure and userbase.

The internet as you know it is the value you get out of ads. You may hate ads, we all do, but at least recognize the hand that feeds you. The alternative is subscriptions for everything, and as far as I can tell that is far less popular than the ad model we have.

Even assuming you’re right in principle, there’s a basic problem here: ads have value (to the advertiser, to the network, to the site showing them, and potentially to the user). And ads have costs paid by the parties other than the user (lots of money changes hands and some compute may be incurred, too), and that’s fine, and the parties in control are strongly motivated to control those costs. But there are also costs that are effectively externalities as far as the companies involved are concerned, and those are bandwidth, battery usage, and degradation of the user experience.

So if anyone wants to seriously call the modern ad system a benefit to the user, then those externalities should be controlled. Either the actual bandwidth costs should be accounted as losses to the user, or the advertiser should be forced to pay those costs. And I bet that ads would start using far less bandwidth with no change in appearance if the advertisers started caring.

Post reply on HN