121–130 of 238 posts
It's always an insane experience when you hop on someone's laptop/PC who has zero ad blocking installed. POV: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/iV3js9pd5IE
I have a confession to make. I don't really have ad-block. If your site is too ad-infested, I stop using it.
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I just go to ublock origin on firefox and install it, they'll never ask about it; i'm just doing them a solid.
Given the numbers of times I've had to disable ad blocker to fix some janky page I have to use, I don't think installing an ad blocker without explaining or even mentioning it is a friendly act.
Usually if I'm on somebody else's computer it's because they need me to fix things for them, or speed things up or 'make it better' which means it's getting adblock. The amount of modals and tricks and things they fall for especially my elderly neighbors or people wanting their business laptops setup especially Windows that have jank ass webpages that have the 'Download' link be some arbitrary .exe for something completely not what they wanted to download put something on their system is crazy.. hell even Youtube is giving people scams.
I just fixed some women's sobriety center's computer for free and their user account had some anti virus secure browser opening 20+ 'browsers' on boot for 'AG' free anti-virus.
Never had an issue with ublock breaking anything important for me. Air travel, hotels, ordering things online, if something says disable my adblocker I close it out and never go to that domain again.
To each their own though. I don't do ads though and will save every soul I can. Ad-tech is cyber terrorism at this point, and I stick to my guns.
It's always an insane experience when you hop on someone's laptop/PC who has zero ad blocking installed. POV: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/iV3js9pd5IE
I have a confession to make. I don't really have ad-block. If your site is too ad-infested, I stop using it.
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This is completely meaningless. In any population big enough theres going to be a high variance in behaviours, including morality. Expecting all individuals in a huge collective to all behave "good" with little / no inforcement is incredibly naive at best and dangerous at worst. Not only that, but you're wrong on a technicality too - > and every single one of those ads were programmed by... a software engineer! Many…
> This is not a rhetorical question, How do you expect all software engineers to be unified on a single solution to ad bombardment, given the internet is international, driven by market dynamics and capitalism and a non-trivial number of programmers are beholden to tyrannical managers By developing a consensus that it is not ok to do that type of behavior (bombardment of ads, surveillance capitalism, etc) and changin…
That sounds cool...but such coordinated, idealistic behavior never occurs in human beings.
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That feels like a pretty fair approach. If you don’t mind, I’m truly curious why you don’t Adblock? There’s no wrong answer here. ;)
Not the GP you are asking, but I do not use an ad blocker because I predominantly use Safari as my browser. I would absolutely love one, but after Apple made all those API changes years back, I gave up trying to find one that works well and is privacy friendly.
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This idea that content owners need compensation for making their content available needs to go. There was an entire generation of kind souls doing exactly that until the culture was suffocated to death by late-stage American capitalism. I and many others gladly made content available to others at our own cost. The mission of making knowledge available to those less fortunate than oneself (especially in this inflated…
I'm with you. I really am. I genuinely miss the web when it seemed wild and free and not just a collection of five companies. The problem is that the old way is dead. And its own popularity killed it. Just for example; There is no way a video hosting site the size and scope of YouTube could have possibly existed when the Internet was a hobby. What do we do with that?
So many sites just cramming ads into every single square inch of their sites ruins it for almost everyone else. I get a visceral reaction to banner ads now.
I totally understand the economics of it, and the fact that you can't bootstrap something like Youtube by charging for it, but that's just how it is. It's a shame that the responsible sites are getting painted with the same brush, but so much of the internet has gotten so insanely greedy with ads that there's just no other choice.
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I've been debating with my neighbor the last few years about whether artists are still artists if they're charging for their "content". It's a bit of a facetious argument, but directionally if you have something you want people to hear, isn't the audience doing the favor by listening? Similar points have been made about Twitter (and social media generally) that folks have the right to say what they want, but not necessarily to be heard. A person can tweet, but not only can others block them (or just ignore and scroll by), the platforms/algorithms can not prioritize them in feeds. Folks aren't owed an audience. It's possible content is for the author. When it isn't, when authors wouldn't have put it up if it weren't for ad income, I feel less worried about what we're losing. That said, if I had to pay for everything, I would certainly read/watch less stuff I like too.
Wonder if someone would make a YouTube video talking about using uBlock origin to block YouTube ads, citing FBI's recommendation, see if it gets taken down by violation of YouTube's ToS.
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Funny how here's HN, a site full of Software Engineers complaining about ad bombardment, and every single one of those ads were programmed by... a software engineer! We (as a profession) are the ones doing this! "Oh, but boss told me to do it!" some will say, as if it's a good excuse. Regardless of which manager told which developer to do it, at the end of the day, a developer typed in the code and pushed it to prod.…
How many software engineers here work in defensive cybersecurity? Well, why they do they have jobs? Because of other software engineers who work on the offensive side. I guess all the cybersecurity engineers should just quit because they're the ones to blame for all the malware... Similarly, the only reason humans work as police is because humans commit crimes. So humans are really to blame for this problem.