Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?

#41

Post by WoodenChair » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 5:03 PM UTC

I don't use an ad blocker for ethical reasons, but I'm curious what sites everyone visits so often that have such devastating ads? Safari shows my top sites as Hulu, MacRumors, Hacker News, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Gmail, GitHub, Amazon, Stack Overflow, Chess.com, and Wikipedia. Ads don't bother me much on any of these.

Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?

#42

Post by eli » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 5:04 PM UTC

vitd wrote: post #34

sheetjs wrote: post #27

Is there any good solution for blocking ads on iOS? Many sites are flat out unusable on my iPhone thanks to the obnoxious ads that take more screen real estate than the content

It's not an ad blocker per se, but the "Reader" feature is awesome. It still downloads the ads, but will display the important content from most sites without them, and in a legible font. It's the icon in the address bar that looks like greeked text. Click it, and it will go into "Reader" mode.

As an aside, it's just a modified version of the Readability algorithm, which you can also find on many other platforms.

Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?

#43

Post by peapicker » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 5:07 PM UTC

bhaile wrote: post #37

Used ad blockers for so long that I forgot about animated ads or things hindering content. But then I read: https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-plus... So I have disabled it now and do see a performance improvement. I'll keep researching this to find the optimal solution. Flash and other plugins are set to click to play though.

Same. I had noticed performance degradation in Chrome using ABP, and disabling made things fast again. Haven't enabled a blocker since.

Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?

#44

Post by theandrewbailey » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 5:08 PM UTC

spingsprong wrote: post #19

Not specifically, but noScript + flashblock ends up blocking many adverts.

I installed NoScript several years ago, due to security concerns. I noticed most ads went away by accident. It makes Firefox much faster than stock Chrome.

Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?

#45

Post by mejarc » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 5:08 PM UTC

Yes, absolutely. Maybe if ads were less obtrusive (not animated, didn't strobe, didn't take up > 5% of the screen on mobile) I'd keep them enabled.

Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?

#46

Post by sprokolopolis » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 5:08 PM UTC

I do use a variety of adblockers, but I use them more for privacy reasons than ad blocking. I would be ok with a few ads on a site, but I cannot support companies who want to track people all over the internet.

Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?

#47

Post by benbristow » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 5:08 PM UTC

Damn right I do.

I use Hostsman to automatically configure the MVPS hosts list. This blocks the ads at OS level; and works with every browser.

Then for extra backup I run (micro)Block on Opera just for those extra ads that slip by the hosts filter.

Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?

#48

Post by socratees » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 5:08 PM UTC

Adblock - to block all the ads, Abine TACO - To opt our of Advertising Networks, Abine - Do Not Track Me, Ghostery - To check which ad network is doing what.

That's what I have on my Chrome.

Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?

#49

Post by jamescun » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 5:09 PM UTC

I use Adblock and Ghostery. With Adblock I manage a whitelist of website to allow adverts on; typically sites I wish to support with ad-revenue and have a reasonable policy for adverts, Reddit's self-service advertising is a good example. I also use Ghostery to remove those social media buttons; for me they add no value, in addition to tracking my online usage for sale to advertisers and slowing down page loads.

EDIT: "reasonable policy" being no flash, no auto-play videos, no flashing banners and no javascript "pop-overs"

Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?

#50

Post by scjody » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 5:09 PM UTC

lmkg wrote: post #15

Voted 'yes,' but much less so than your average ad-blocker. I blacklist rather than whitelist, which is probably the opposite behavior of most people with blockers. I want to support sites that I consume content from, so by default I only block tracking beacons, not ads. I turn on content-blocking (or disable plug-ins/javascript) for specific sites when their ads make the site unusable. For example, nfl.com text arti…

What blocker do you use that has decent blacklisting support? I tried a few some months back and went back to Ad Block Plus with whitelisting.

I'd rather blacklist though. I want to support sites that use unobtrusive advertising, but block ads on sites that use autoplaying videos, distracting animations, disgusting pictures of yellow teeth, etc.