111–120 of 241 posts
I am honestly baffled sometimes how this all works... In my 30+ years of internet usage in one form or another I have rarely, rarely, rarely ever clicked on a freakin ad. Yes, I've generally had them blocked for the most part. But when they aren't blocked, I see what the content is and why would I even want to click on one!
Color me confused who is keeping the web running by clicking on ads.
I feel that we've done ourselves a disservice by referring to them as ad blockers rather than content blockers or, better yet, virus blockers. With malicious ads being the primary vector for compromising a person's computer, calling these tools virus blockers would not only be more accurate, but it would make it harder for sites to counter their use from a public relations point of view. Could you imagine visiting a…
this is how I feel about all advertisements
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Many websites indeed pester us to download their mobile app but I have yet to find one that forces me to? Do they actually exist?
Reddit forces you to download the app now. You can scroll like 2-4 pages worth of content and then it'll pop up asking you to open in app. On every page you navigate to from within the website you'll first get a pop up asking to choose between browser and reddit app.
There's a user setting for this, somewhere. I found it once. It's default on but once you un-check it you no longer see the app nags. It's great. And terrible they hid it like that.
--edit-- Or there was, damned if I can find it now.
Great article! It's funny to finally see ad blockers go "mainstream". My dystopian-future fear is that that Web Assembly will be the end of ad blocking (and the end of a web of connected web sites). Big sites will eventually convert to essentially "a web browser inside a web browser" so they have total control over the content and how it's displayed. Then ad blocking (and other customization) will be limited to "the…
> Big sites will eventually convert to essentially "a web browser inside a web browser" so they have total control over the content and how it's displayed. This has already happened: Just look at how many websites pester you to download their mobile app or even block content unless you access from the app. From a user functionality perspective the vast majority of apps do nothing a browser can't do. But the killer fe…
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I'm using old.reddit.com and wasn't aware they started doing this. Reddit is turning into a dumpster fire, it's bad enough I have to use the old UI so that it doesn't burn a hole in the cpu.
Forget the CPU usage, I only use the old UI because it's better/ I find it more usable. Or maybe I'm just getting old :D
Who is honestly clicking on all these ads that makes advertising worthwhile? I am honestly baffled sometimes how this all works... In my 30+ years of internet usage in one form or another I have rarely, rarely, rarely ever clicked on a freakin ad. Yes, I've generally had them blocked for the most part. But when they aren't blocked, I see what the content is and why would I even want to click on one! Color me confused…
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> Big sites will eventually convert to essentially "a web browser inside a web browser" so they have total control over the content and how it's displayed. This has already happened: Just look at how many websites pester you to download their mobile app or even block content unless you access from the app. From a user functionality perspective the vast majority of apps do nothing a browser can't do. But the killer fe…
Android + Magisk + AdAway
Great article! It's funny to finally see ad blockers go "mainstream". My dystopian-future fear is that that Web Assembly will be the end of ad blocking (and the end of a web of connected web sites). Big sites will eventually convert to essentially "a web browser inside a web browser" so they have total control over the content and how it's displayed. Then ad blocking (and other customization) will be limited to "the…
> Big sites will eventually convert to essentially "a web browser inside a web browser" so they have total control over the content and how it's displayed. This has already happened: Just look at how many websites pester you to download their mobile app or even block content unless you access from the app. From a user functionality perspective the vast majority of apps do nothing a browser can't do. But the killer fe…
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I think ads will be the reason Web Assembly takes off in a massive way, actually. Much harder to block ads if the site ships its own renderer and manages to hide or obscure its traffic. Then you're in to serious application-cracking territory if you want to block ads & tracking.
Web Assembly is just a runtime, like obfuscated JS it is sandboxed and still needs to access some standard APIs to at least conform to CORS. I don't see a problem to let plugins/browsers control `window.fetch` or whatever connection method the WASM code is going to use.
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They show the abstract or the same bit of the headline and maybe a paragraph you see when hitting the page. Googlebot doesn't get the full text.
I've definitely seen article text on Google that was not presented to me when I clicked the link, and not because the article was updated or something, but because I was blocked from seeing the article.