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uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

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Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#431

Post by bitpush »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #411
Sophira wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eventually, this arms race ends with a computer vision model that looks at the screen, classifies visual elements as ads, and draws a rectangle over anything that looks like an ad. That isn't enough for me. I don't just want to not see the ads, I want to stop them being fetched entirely. There are two big problems with ads. * The ad network can build up a very complete profile of what you like, dislike, and general…

Furthermore, ads are a resource drain that should not be taking over our personal systems. The web started as this proposition: you send a request to remote computer. Request says "Hey... can I read a document named this?" and the computer shows you the document. Now this may have included images and external links and sound, and whatnot. But today, the web is more of an application delivery system too. So many reque…

> Request says "Hey... can I read a document named this?" and the computer shows you the document.

Did you not skip over a lot of steps in between?

User: Hey can I read a document named this?

Server: Sure, let me spend resources and spin harddisk and lookup the thing you wanted. Oh hey, I found it .. here ya go

User: Great.

----

You've conviently ignored the resources the "old" web had to spend to serve you. Nothing has really changed it. Also the thing you wanted, that was "source code". We just called it html. It is no different than javascript+css+html5.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#433

Post by inigyou »

pllbnk wrote: post #30
jcfrei wrote: post #3

Once LLMs get fast enough at processing real-time images Apple (or anybody really) can just roll out a browser rendering engine that just masks all ads. It will take a few years but the browser ad-business is in it's terminal phase.

The race of ending personal computing is there. I am sure big players want to control entire stack and users just sitting in front of dumb monitors consuming their ads.

It's a scam. Do not redeem (your money for a crippled device).

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#435

Post by colesantiago »

devilsdata wrote: post #397
yaportmax wrote: post #359

Controversial but honest question: How do anti-ads people propose the free open internet monetizes itself?

Easy. No corporate social media networks. Hobbyists run local light social networks (such as forums) again (like they do currently; see Mastodon, Lemmy), with super efficient SSR HTML that is cheap to host.

That doesn’t answer their question, like at all.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#436

Post by not_a_bot_4sho »

dofm wrote: post #310

This is the correct decision, IMO. I only use Facebook in a limited capacity (one phenomenal private group whose usefulness is unfortunately simply unmatched elsewhere, one infrequently updated page and a very locked-down, minimal personal profile). I think people need to understand what the purpose of Facebook is in terms of its function and constituent parts, in the Stafford Beer sense, and I think if enough people…

I don't mean personal offense to you but I find the heavily qualified "I don't support this person/organization but I support this person/organization" doublespeak to be frustrating.

Not just your comment. It's all over the place here.

But maybe I shouldn't be throwing stones in my glass house. I smoked cigarettes for a few years on college, knew they were terrible for me and for those around me, but continued for too long because I frankly enjoyed the pleasure.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#437

Post by titzer »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #315
titzer wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my brain developed that as a defense mechanism. The web cultivated a certain kind of blindness where I literally don't look at certain parts of pages because my brain has learned that there is never anything useful there. Sometimes I just cannot see things unless I force my eyes to move across the page linearly, top to bottom. This is pathological. Like I find myself not ever looking at the top result in a se…

> Something is seriously broken with computers and we can't seem to face it. It's not computers that are the problem, it's people. We've normalized (and even embraced) the situation where relationship between businesses and customers is adversarial. The phenomenon you're describing, known as "banner blindness", is just brain filtering out noise, but the thing is, that noise didn't get there by accident. What I can't…

> all these entrepreneurs are making explicit decisions to abuse their fellow human beings to smaller or greater degree, and everyone seems fine with it.

Local incentives. Every single person and entity is just maximizing their gain against the rules and rewards. The way you become really powerful and rich is to create an organization where all the local incentives keep funneling to you, sitting at the top.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#438

Post by joshuat »

ajkjk wrote: post #320
jimrandomh wrote: post #282

Eventually, this arms race ends with a computer vision model that looks at the screen, classifies visual elements as ads, and draws a rectangle over anything that looks like an ad. I am significantly less tolerant of ads than average people seem to be. (I think average people are making a horrible mistake about this, and are badly cognitively damaged by ads in ways they don't realize). If my choices are to look at ad…

I'm hoping we can mostly ban ads in my lifetime (on the basis that companies should not be allowed to freely try to manipulate unconsenting strangers. and that it makes the world suck to live in and we don't have to put up with that). Nothing would make me happier honestly.

This would also mean a lot of currently "free" services becoming paid in some other fashion, which I think people would be equally up-in-arms about.

I'm no fan of ads and I am willing to pay for services I use to avoid seeing them - but I've learned over recent years that most people simply do not agree with that premise.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#439

Post by ButlerianJihad »

bitpush wrote: post #431
ButlerianJihad wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, ads are a resource drain that should not be taking over our personal systems. The web started as this proposition: you send a request to remote computer. Request says "Hey... can I read a document named this?" and the computer shows you the document. Now this may have included images and external links and sound, and whatnot. But today, the web is more of an application delivery system too. So many reque…

> Request says "Hey... can I read a document named this?" and the computer shows you the document. Did you not skip over a lot of steps in between? User: Hey can I read a document named this? Server: Sure, let me spend resources and spin harddisk and lookup the thing you wanted. Oh hey, I found it .. here ya go User: Great. ---- You've conviently ignored the resources the "old" web had to spend to serve you. Nothing…

I did not intend to omit that, but the origin of the web was in a peer-to-peer, collaborative Internet that no longer exists.

Yes, the server resources that were necessary to serve web pages are the origin of advertising, because the admins somehow had to keep the lights on and their bills paid. I don't fault them for this. I don't begrudge them for being, basically, forced into carrying advertising because the freeloading users wouldn't settle for any other way. Advertising allowed a "free web" to continue unabated for a long time.

But advertisements don't need to be resource-intensive on the client side. They don't need to eat gobs of bandwidth, CPU, memory, or our eyeballs. But the fact that they do chew up these resources is partly for why they need to die now.

Server admins can pay for their resources however, and offset their costs however they please. I'm fine with subscription or pay-per-use models or whatever. I honestly have very little use for ad-supported models, and my daily web habits are such that I really don't visit ad-supported websites at all, except for YouTube, where I normally pay for a Premium subscription to completely eliminate all formal ads, anyway. And that's the way it should be.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#440

Post by ooterness »

bitpush wrote: post #431
ButlerianJihad wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, ads are a resource drain that should not be taking over our personal systems. The web started as this proposition: you send a request to remote computer. Request says "Hey... can I read a document named this?" and the computer shows you the document. Now this may have included images and external links and sound, and whatnot. But today, the web is more of an application delivery system too. So many reque…

> Request says "Hey... can I read a document named this?" and the computer shows you the document. Did you not skip over a lot of steps in between? User: Hey can I read a document named this? Server: Sure, let me spend resources and spin harddisk and lookup the thing you wanted. Oh hey, I found it .. here ya go User: Great. ---- You've conviently ignored the resources the "old" web had to spend to serve you. Nothing…

This argument makes no sense, because the CPU and disk resources required to serve up a modern ad (and the megabytes of JavaScript that come with it) are 100-1000x more expensive than just serving up the content.
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