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

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

#71

Post by dwild » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 5:46 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #67

spats wrote: post #9

no, don't be parasite

You seem to have it backwards. The ecosystem's parasites are the parties that corrupt useful information with distracting crap. Everyone who cares about the health of the web should run adblockers and install them for friends/family.

It all depends on your definition of health. I would probably not be here if it wasn't because of the free information on the information. If I had to pay for all of it, all of my youth wouldn't have been spend learning programming skills. For me an healthy web is one that is easy to access and cheap. You can't get this if everything is blocked by pay wall.

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

#72

Post by luxpir » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 5:53 PM UTC

Use NoScript and HTTPS Everywhere only in Firefox. Try to keep extension usage down. In Chrome I use Adblock only, and despite preferring it as a browser, end up sticking with the 'tracklessness' of the FF setup for the most part.

Specifically don't trust:

. Ghostery - openly resell data

. Disconnect - solid team, but one founder former NSA staff - not a watertight reason to distrust, perhaps people can vouch for him, but that's enough reason for me at this point, given it's far from the only choice

Trusting NoScript or Adblock as non-commercial, open source projects is easier, although again not 100%. Still, much better than the alternative.

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

#73

Post by mindslight » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 5:54 PM UTC

dwild wrote: post #71

mindslight wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have it backwards. The ecosystem's parasites are the parties that corrupt useful information with distracting crap. Everyone who cares about the health of the web should run adblockers and install them for friends/family.

It all depends on your definition of health. I would probably not be here if it wasn't because of the free information on the information. If I had to pay for all of it, all of my youth wouldn't have been spend learning programming skills. For me an healthy web is one that is easy to access and cheap. You can't get this if everything is blocked by pay wall.

I'm certainly not arguing for locking information behind paywalls. I too am where I am today because of free information on the web. But those sites did not have ads - they were published by people driven by having something to say, when the distraction of monetized shallow sites hadn't quite arrived.

It's harder today, but you can still manage to sift through the noise and find the rare gem of basic html, no ads, and very thorough independently-organized information. I would love if some search engine were to make an option to only return results from sites without ads - I believe the quality would be much higher.

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

#74

Post by WorldWideWayne » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 5:57 PM UTC

erickhill wrote: post #63

I wonder why this got knocked off the homepage? It was becoming a very interesting discussion with some fascinating poll figures. Sometimes I wish a "flag" had to come with a reason why... Bummer.

I didn't even realize that since I use http://hckrnews.com to browse the headlines.

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

#75

Post by WorldWideWayne » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 6:01 PM UTC

dwild wrote: post #71

mindslight wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have it backwards. The ecosystem's parasites are the parties that corrupt useful information with distracting crap. Everyone who cares about the health of the web should run adblockers and install them for friends/family.

It all depends on your definition of health. I would probably not be here if it wasn't because of the free information on the information. If I had to pay for all of it, all of my youth wouldn't have been spend learning programming skills. For me an healthy web is one that is easy to access and cheap. You can't get this if everything is blocked by pay wall.

We already have free and cheap content, so there's really no problem if savvy users block ads as they've been doing for 15 years.

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

#76

Post by vezzy-fnord » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 6:12 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #70

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #20

Ad blockers are easily fingerprintable, which is why I block ad trackers from my /etc/hosts file, using this wonderful list: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ You can also set up a cron job to periodically fetch and overwrite with an updated copy, such as once a week or so.

I always see this recommendation and write it off as people who probably don't know any better. But I noticed that you had also commented about Slackware, so I have to ask.. Doesn't using /etc/hosts in this way strike you as a bit "wrong" and terribly hacky with respect to blocking granularity? If I ever wanted to run a service on port 80, it seems like it would be annoying to configure it to avoid the dummy address.…

Well, yes, if you're on a server then polluting your hosts like that probably isn't good. I'm just a regular home user and more of a system programmer than a web developer, so for me it's fine.

It's also a rat race of sorts, as is inherent with blacklisting over whitelisting. But I don't exclusively use this approach either, I spoof user agents, referers, X-Forwarded-For headers and have Privacy Badger running on Firefox, as well. I just use hosts as an alternative to ABP in particular, due to the lower baggage.

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

#77

Post by IbJacked » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 6:19 PM UTC

I also use Ghostery and Adblock Plus, QuickJS (provides a toolbar button + hot-key for toggling JS support), and enabled "click to activate plugins".

I've tried not blocking, but on my 4 yr old MBP (Core 2 Duo) all the beacons, social buttons, flash ads, etc. simply slow my browser down to the point of frustration, particularly when scrolling.

Much of it is Firefox's fault though, as Safari scrolls smoothly on most of the sites that give me trouble in Firefox. I'm just not willing to give up my tagged bookmarks (even though I would like to, as now the bookmark syncing has become slow enough to make scrolling while syncing nearly unbearable... I might have a bookmark addiction;).

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

#78

Post by dwild » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 6:39 PM UTC

WorldWideWayne wrote: post #75

dwild wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all depends on your definition of health. I would probably not be here if it wasn't because of the free information on the information. If I had to pay for all of it, all of my youth wouldn't have been spend learning programming skills. For me an healthy web is one that is easy to access and cheap. You can't get this if everything is blocked by pay wall.

We already have free and cheap content, so there's really no problem if savvy users block ads as they've been doing for 15 years.

Even cheap content isn't an option, the simple action of doing a transaction wasn't possible for me (and still today I wouldn't wan't to pay for every website...).

The percent of people blocking increase everyday, it's no longer the simple tech-savvy consumer, it's much more.

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

#79

Post by JasonFruit » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 6:48 PM UTC

vitd wrote: post #38

JasonFruit wrote: post #32

I used to, but then I thought about some of the sites I use with great regularity that are supported by unobtrusive ads, a few of which are interesting to me. I'd hate to reduce their income and contribute to their eventual disappearance; it's worth a few ads to have them stick around. Sites with obtrusive, annoying ads? Well, I suppose I still use Facebook, but usually they help me avoid content-weak, ad-heavy trash…

Do sites get money when they show ads but nobody clicks on them? Or are most ads today only paid if a user clicks on them? Also, do you feel compelled to watch ads on TV when you have the option of fast-forwarding through them? If not, why is the web different? Just curious - I'm seriously not trying to be inflammatory.

No, I wouldn't feel a bit compelled to watch them on TV (if I watched TV); as dwild points out, the ad buyers pay no matter whether I do so or not.

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

#80

Post by gorhill » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 7:09 PM UTC

Ads are just a subset of the larger set of privacy invading techniques used by countless web sites. What is visible is a fraction of what is not visible.