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Ads chew through half of mobile data

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Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#251

Post by lolinder »

Vaslo wrote: post #245
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…

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 t…

A) I know I'm doing something right when I'm alternatingly accused of being a leftist and a right-winger. Thanks for providing the regular counter to the usual accusations I get of shilling right-wing politics! Can I quote you on that next time I get one of those?

B) If there's an argument against my stance in your comment here I'm missing it. I'd love to have a dialog if you have a counterargument!

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#252

Post by schiffern »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #248
schiffern wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'll say it again: combatting ecological impact is a game of pennies.

You're missing the point by complaining that it's a smaller impact than all the industry in China (what isn't?), because there's nothing I (or anyone else) can do to eliminate the impact of all the industry in China. That is not one of the available 'moves' in this 'game.' It's a red herring.

That's what I meant by "magic bullet" thinking: you imagine you can only do one thing, and that one thing must fix 100% of the problem. In real life this problem (like most problems) isn't like that.

Also adblockers don't waste my time, they actually save me time. As far as mitigations go it has a good cost-to-benefit ratio, hence "low-hanging."

  > focus your efforts into something scalable
Like, say, convincing lots of people (ideally some convenient population of technology thought leaders) that they should install uBlock Origin? :-)

But again, this premise that we're only allowed to do one thing is silly. I contain multitudes, and so do you.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#253

Post by jjav »

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 internet as you know it is the value you get out of ads.

No. I'm old enough to clearly remember the Internet without ads (commercial use was banned) and it was a far superior place.

Ads only add surveillance and noise and waste, zero value.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#254

Post by [deleted] »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #170
j45 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many homes can run whole their route. Im curious how much time or money you’d be willing to invest and spend monthly to have this solved simply?

Homes, sure - what about mobile devices? What about the rest of my family who's not at home? What about the sysadmin work I'll have to put in to support this?

[deleted]

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#255

Post by j45 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #170
j45 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many homes can run whole their route. Im curious how much time or money you’d be willing to invest and spend monthly to have this solved simply?

Homes, sure - what about mobile devices? What about the rest of my family who's not at home? What about the sysadmin work I'll have to put in to support this?

Support can be greatly minimized by using tailscale pointing at a router or docker routing internet outbound.

Re: Ads chew through half of mobile data

#256

Post by MrMember »

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…

The other day I was on a page with an autoplaying video. When I started scrolling it popped out into the corner so I closed it, and there was another autoplaying video underneath it. I've never seen anything like that and I just had to kind of look at it in amazement.
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