No. As a blogger I know how important are ads to content producers. Yes, I know ads are ugly, boring ang and annoying, but is it fair to remove them? It's just another form of piracy.
Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?
91–100 of 102 posts
Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?
#92Ad 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.…
I use hosts for ad blocking and for testing locally. I guess I get a bit of junk in my logs but I've never really seen it as a problem.
I keep meaning to see if I can serve up transparent swfs and html snippets automagically but I've never got around to it.
You list two utilities for a single browser. If you use other browsers do you need other apps?
The interesting thing about my hosts table is that I never bother carrying it across to a new computer and I only add domains to it when they actively irritate me. Even so, even companies like Google who are supposed to do non-intrusive "targeted" ads end up in there.
Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?
#93Ghostery, AdBlock and ClickToPlugin. If ads were static and sites didn't have 10-15 social widgets, etc, I wouldn't bother. Animated ads and the slow load times of the many social widgets drive me over the edge. And this is on desktop. Many sites today are so heavy I avoid them entirely on my first gen iPad mini as they crash Safari about half the time. Once upon a time, you could just disable javascript as a workaro…
Use privoxy as an ad blocking proxy for your iPad
Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?
#94yes
Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?
#95I allow ads, but do not re-visit sites with terrible ads, and immediately close pages of sites with even worse ads.
Some things are makin me lean toward using adblockers: being unable to opt out of gambling or alcohol ads; being unable to temporarily opt out of ads when my child is using my computer - these make me want a good ad blocker.
Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sorry, I just don't see a big problem with it. What companies have gone out of business because of this? Have you got any statistics to share?
Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sorry, I just don't see a big problem with it. What companies have gone out of business because of this? Have you got any statistics to share?
I haven't talk about business that went out of business because of that. If you remove their only revenue... how can they stay in business without creating paid content? Reddit is a good example, they now have subreddit restricted to people with gold. Multiple news website switched to paywall. Surely they haven't gone out of business, they changed for an internet where you not only have to pay for access but also for content. I'm not saying it's bad to have to pay for content, content creator also need to get paid, I'm saying it's an restriction that's against what I would call an healthy internet.
An healthy internet would be one that have both, sadly ad block doesn't allow that, it force them to ask for money even though they don't wan't to or it doesn't make sense for them to. If there was a business in selling that information or service, then someone would do it, why don't you?
I would really love to see ads provider offer a way to pay to get no ads. You see 1000 ads a month which cost usually $5 cpm? Then you pay 5$ a month and you get no ads. I would gladly pay for that on Youtube, in fact I would probably pay more than what's they get from ads because of the quality of content.
Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
I use hosts for ad blocking and for testing locally. I guess I get a bit of junk in my logs but I've never really seen it as a problem. I keep meaning to see if I can serve up transparent swfs and html snippets automagically but I've never got around to it. You list two utilities for a single browser. If you use other browsers do you need other apps? The interesting thing about my hosts table is that I never bother c…
Yes, you need to install each extension on each browser / user account. It's basically just a one time setup hit, although one of the few I haven't automated away.
I currently use chromium but without any ad blocker, for viewing documentation and the like (and the occasional incognito window, especially for Amazon which loves to spam you based on searches)
I'm liking the idea of a per-machine setup, but I'd look into rewriting proxies (like privoxy) for that. I personally want every known ad/tracker/etc blocked without interaction - one person cannot hope to easily keep up with the machines are doing, but so far via crowdsourcing it seems like we can.
Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?
#99Good lord, Yes. Disconnect, AdBlock, NoScript & a pretty hefty hosts file. I'll happily whitelist any site that:
1) Doesn't try and track the crap out of me. 2) Doesn't shove ads in my face. 3) Doesn't autoplay video/sound ads.
It doesn't seem like a huge amount to ask really, but the tracking is out of control in particular and just an enormous threat to privacy.
Re: Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?
#100Used 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.
I recommend uBlock (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock). Really lightweight, does the job perfectly.