I wonder how much data are eaten by analytics and telemetry.
Ads chew through half of mobile data
241–250 of 256 posts
Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data
#242Maybe 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 something in between alternative between these two extremes is universally working hassle-free micro-, or even nano-payments, with accordingly priced articles, without any further subscription pressures.
Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Advertising is a virus. It infiltrates all ecosystems.
I wonder if advertising really is a waste of time and money for the most part, and it's just that the advertisers are really good at convincing people otherwise.
Of course they are! That's the core of their 'craft' ;)
Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
Let’s be honest, general browsing internet usage is probably the least offensive use of energy in existence, particularly when talking about bloated filesizes of javascript. Feel free to disregard me while watching Netflix in 4k on Netflix approved hardware decoders on your 100 inch tv and surround sound, while using your heater to keep you warm, and enjoy your Uber eats hot chocolate for desert while scrolling tikto…
I don't disagree, but ecological impacts aren't addressed by one big magic bullet solution, it's a game of adding up pennies.
This is after focusing a lot on the other personal emission sources, but OTOH "install uBO and set it to Easy Mode" is one of the cheap and easy (low-hanging) interventions. Incidentally I generally watch videos at 360p, unless it's a lecture with small text on slides. Most 'taking head' content is just wasted pixels at higher resolutions.
Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data
#245Earlier 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…
This comment doesn’t make sense. Someone is paying for it, and sometimes those people paying for it are making money through advertisement to pay for this site (I.e. if Google “sponsors” your site.”
Someone is paying for it, there is no “failure” here. This is just classic leftist talk - you are welcome to create a new model and show everyone how it’s done. But then you will need money to host, code, etc. I’m happy to take something free if you want to pay for it.
Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you not benefiting from this site. I come here to read things and shelter with like minded peoples. I don’t see ads.
Many of the YCombinator companies advertise jobs on this forum, and some also post ‘demos’, which are often advertising to potential investors, clients, and partners.
If only someone made a userscript to automatically filter those out..
Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data
#247Not on my devices. Adguard DNS with Firefox and uBlock on desktop and Android phone.
Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let’s be honest, general browsing internet usage is probably the least offensive use of energy in existence, particularly when talking about bloated filesizes of javascript. Feel free to disregard me while watching Netflix in 4k on Netflix approved hardware decoders on your 100 inch tv and surround sound, while using your heater to keep you warm, and enjoy your Uber eats hot chocolate for desert while scrolling tikto…
I don't disagree, but ecological impacts aren't addressed by one big magic bullet solution, it's a game of adding up pennies. This is after focusing a lot on the other personal emission sources, but OTOH "install uBO and set it to Easy Mode" is one of the cheap and easy (low-hanging) interventions. Incidentally I generally watch videos at 360p, unless it's a lecture with small text on slides. Most 'taking head' conte…
I don’t think the savings of my browser are at all comparable to say, the Chinese industrial carbon footprint, not by a million miles.
A better approach than your current lifestyle would be to focus your efforts into something scalable that would actually have an impact rather than wasting your time.
Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data
#249Maybe 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 subscriptions for everything
That's a false dichotomy, the website earns $0.01 from my ad view(s) on a given page, why should that be replaced with a subscription? Just let me pay $0.01 to view the content.
Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox has an option to turn autoplay (sound and video) off for those ads that get past ublock origin.
uBlock Origin can also block media elements larger than X MB (I use 8 MB so it still loads large images), preventing the video from loading in the first place. Disabling autoplay prevents it from playing, but the video is still downloaded.
Does this actually work? Most videos on the internet aren't loaded as one large file, but as sequence of short few-second long chunks.