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Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

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Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#201
Google is full of shit. Remember when they pledged to "punish" sites that weren't "mobile-friendly," but then DISABLED ZOOMING on their own mobile site?

"You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks."

Why don't you FUCK OFF, Hacker News? Once per hour is "too fast?" What a bunch of pompous fucking pricks. Our time isn't free, assholes.

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#202
post #168
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s rough out there. Was helping a friend of a friend last night who had been scammed into giving out her Instagram password. They’ve change the email / phone / pw on the account. In her case the account is actually a substantial business (art) portfolio with a lot of followers. Naturally, after a little digging, I discovered that her email was using the same pw and had also been compromised (hackers deleted the ema…

Should be able to get that account back unless they stole her email as well. Typically the original email is able to recover the account and it doesn't matter that the hackers changed the email.

She managed to get it back now. Thanks.

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#203
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the internet is completely different without blockers. I install uBlock Origin on every browser I come across and I've gotten random comments from other users about how everything just seems better for some reason. Firefox supports uBlock Origin on mobile too, people love it when they try it out and find that there's no idiotic YouTube ads anymore. Firefox should just ship uBlock Origin by default and make it th…

For YouTube on mobile, you can get ad-free experience with their premium tier[1] or YouTube Vanced[2]. Both come complete with background playback and overlay player. [1] https://www.youtube.com/premium [2] https://vancedapp.com/

YouTube Premium makes sense if you're a heavy user of YouTube, but at my level of use, it would make more sense to have a $1-per-video pay-as-you-go model. Or a $5/day pass that doesn't renew would be good too.

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#204
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, I'm a pretty die-hard iOS person but ad blocking on iOS is a steaming pile of BS, to put it mildly. They flat-out don't work for 99% of ads. They're not ad blockers, they're domain filters, nothing more than a big hosts file, and they block absolutely nothing at the page/element level. The ad industry runs circles around 'ad blockers' on iOS. The lack of functioning ad blocking is by far the biggest downside to…

Simply not true. I have been using Firefox Focus and 1Blocker on iOS for years and ads are not significantly more noticeable than on desktop Firefox with uBlock Origin. I think you quite misinformed on this subject.

It depends on your level of blocking. I use 1Blocker and uBlock Origin, and find maximum blocking with 1Blocker to be roughly equivalent in blocking to the default "Easy mode" in uBlock Origin. "Medium mode" (combined with a few additional lists, e.g. cookie nag lists) in uBlock Origin blocks dramatically more crud.

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#205

Always block all ads. Make absolutely no exceptions. There is no reason to feel guilty about doing this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Well there are a few ways to think of that.

If you consider the cognitive load of people as the limited resource, ad displayers showing ads in their own self-interest are acting against the common good.

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#206
post #79
post #30

Reason #11520 for why ad blocking on the internet is an absolute necessity.

We should ban ads already.

I've actually moderated a bit over time. One of my favourite approaches is a regulatory approach that mandates that if you offer a free, ad-supported service, you must offer the service ad-free for a price, which is to be limited in proportion to what an ad-supported user is worth.

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#207

This is a really good argument not to "allow unobtrusive ads" in your adblocker. This is an example of an ad that would be allowed. Just FYI this is the default behavior of some adblockers, notably Adblock Plus.

The other reason not to allow it (and to replace Adblock Plus with e.g. uBlock Origin) is that Adblock Plus decided they like money more than actually limiting themselves to unobtrusive ads, and were allowing the disgusting Taboola/Outbrain/Clickbrain clickbait (not sure which of the three it was, all the same garbage) to be shown. The best part was that some websites had two versions, one more aggressive one, and a…

I believe it's Taboola, Outbrain, and Revcontent (possibly more since I last checked).

https://i.imgur.com/1OGHbAW.png https://i.imgur.com/4r7PAl7.png

(some slightly NSFW content in these example images:)

https://i.imgur.com/ZF9G7fZ.png https://i.imgur.com/hkkvuXd.png https://i.imgur.com/1N2o3QT.png

uBlock Origin with Firefox is definitely the way to go now: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#208
post #18

Having used some kind of adblocking, on all devices, for as long as I can remember, I realize I live in an alternate universe where all these scams don't exist [0]. If at some point adblocking is defeated I'm up for a very difficult crash landing into reality. [0]: almost; top results can be scams of course; but it's rare.

I had quite a rude awakening when I switched to an iPhone recently. I had to adopt NextDNS for its domain-level ad blocking, but it’s amazing how many ads still come through. I don’t know how people browse the web without any sort of ad blocking these days.

I've pretty much stopped browsing the web on my iPhone at all. The mobile web is broken. With all the banner ads and videos popping up, My 6 inch long phone is reduced to about 1 inch of readable text. It's like the 2000s again with the adspam, or maybe its always been like this and I've just been using an ad blocker this entire time.

Re: Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

#209

Where does H&R Block and other tax prep services fall into this? Arent they (more or less) simply collecting a fee for handling otherwise "free" processes provided by the state and federal governments? Not suggesting these nefarious actors, who rely on ignorance of the consumer, arent a problem

They don’t mislead customers saying that they are the IRS. I view my CPA as a domain expert anyway so while I could do my own taxes and have done so in the past.. but I agree the IRS already basically knows everything.
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