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Ads chew through half of mobile data

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Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#191

Post by kleiba »

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.

The way I see it: if your service forces me to watch ads or pay for a subscription, then I have two choices: either I watch the ads (probably not) or pay for the subscription (slightly more likely but it really depends), or I simply don't use your service. For the most part, I have gone with option #2 in the majority of cases so far.

I have no bad conscience whatsoever to use an adblocker. Heck, I get eye cancer every time I have sit in front of somebody's webbrowser who does not have an adblocker installed.

Even though I use the internet quite a bit as we all do, if the free internet were to go away tomorrow, I'd probably find something else to do with my time.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#192

Post by nytesky »

dingnuts wrote: post #120
nytesky wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What do you mean? Reddit and Hacker News are link aggregators -- aren't you clicking the links? or are you only reading the comments? There's a long tail of random websites linked to by sites like this one -- like the one in the OP!

Haha, true. But I think ad heavy pages are not promoted on HN at least.

And yeah, I do come for the comments.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#193

Post by freehorse »

acchow wrote: post #167
freehorse wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not get this argument at all. We all eventually bear the cost of ads by them adding cost to the products being advertised that we buy. Nothing is free.

There’s value ad with ads targeting. Otherwise we go back to the Television days when everyone watched the same ads

Value added for whom? And what’s wrong with ads depending on the content of a webpage rather than the user as profiled over other webpages?

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#194

Post by withinboredom »

lolinder wrote: post #169
dgrin91 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Virtually all news sites, regardless what side you agree with, have ads. Virtually all news sites, regardless of what side you agree with, are composed mostly of garbage designed to draw your attention, not inform you about things that really matter. They may provide some value in addition to that, but the advertising model ensures that they must hack your attention as their primary goal. > Basically all entertainm…

Reminds me of the days when ads were 5 or so minutes long, not just to convince you to buy it, but inform you why you should buy it. It wasn’t a dopamine laden 30s that tells you nothing about the product.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#195

Post by sethops1 »

rlpb wrote: post #129
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 internet as you know it is the value you get out of ads. I disagree. The value I get from the Internet is almost entirely from non-ad-driven sources. The ad-driven stuff is very low value to me.

Ironic you're posting this on Hacker News, which is fundamentally an ad for YCombinator.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#196

Post by tokioyoyo »

schiffern wrote: post #168
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsustainable for who? The websites use CDNs for dirt cheap bandwidth, mobile providers love that 20gb doesn’t go as far as it used to. It inevitably creates a synergy, between stuff like news websites and local telcos, and YouTube love it too. hell, it’s not like all bandwidth cost the same, especially when major orgs will cache + colocate or peer to your isps. If you’re a consumer you might be right, but your opini…

>Unsustainable for who? People who live on Earth? Bandwidth is never free from environmental impact, and given the same server/CDN/whatever the environmental impact will increase monotonously with increasing bandwidth use. Besides the FBI recommending it for security, running a good adblocker is one of the most "green" ways to reduce your footprint from internet usage. Regardless of how efficient the CDN, it still ha…

I've been long enough on HN to hear this argument since early 2010s, yet the market keeps proving everyone (including me!) wrong. Nobody cares if your website loads 20kb of text with a side of 1mb of ads. Most people are just swiping through megabytes of videos on TikTok and IG anyways.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#197

Post by wao0uuno »

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.

The alternative is hobby sites, sites that make money from sales like Steam and paid content. I’m honestly fine with that. Fuck ads. If I could remove all ad and data mining supported content from the web I’d do it without hesitation.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#198

Post by zzo38computer »

It is not only the data amount but also power. Those who display ads on your computer are stealing these things from you, so they are the thieves. However, it is not only the ads, but also other stuff, such as spyware, inefficient programming, excessive animations and fancy effects, etc.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#199

Post by encom »

kivle wrote: post #107
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.

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.

What's the last Chrome release that's going to support it? I'm going to pin that version for as long as possible.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#200

Post by freehorse »

adriancr wrote: post #123
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.

sucks to not have ublock origin.

Orion browser in iOS (by Kagi) supports ublock origin.

This is the main reason it has become my default browser there.

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