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I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

ryansouthgate.com

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Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#281

Post by 1dom »

jayd16 wrote: post #276
drnick1 wrote: post #246

"After years with Pi-hole, which now blocks over a million domains, I’ve become incredibly accustomed to a mostly ad-free web. Without realizing it, I’d forgotten what the typical internet experience feels like." It is estimated that between 30% and 50% of Internet users run ad blockers. I haven't see a single ad in years. Besides, Pi-holes are kind of overrated. First, ad blockers running in the browser are simply m…

Is that right? Mobile is like 60% of the web traffic and they don't really have popular and effective ad blocking.

There are native, easily accessible ublock variations for Firefox for Windows, Linux and Android.

A lot of nerds also have some form of private overlay network with default DNS to adguard or pihole or similar, again, making for identical adblock experience on all platforms.

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#282

Post by [deleted] »

ryandrake wrote: post #244
svieira wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a bit - I get ads for septic tanks because I have looked at them several times and tank companies continue to advertise for me because I might buy. I get ads for robot mowers because, again, I looked at them. I still see "the bottom of the barrel" ads occasionally, but it's very rare. Ad blitzes on the other hand ... (no, I don't want to build an app just-by-thinking-about-it) ...

At one point a few months ago, YouTube seems to have gotten the idea that I have some kind of bowel problem, and I'd constantly get ads about my "stuck poop." WTF? I'm watching a woodworking tutorial, I don't want to fucking hear about poop! Total bottom of the barrel.

[deleted]

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#283

Post by duxup »

mrweasel wrote: post #63

Other than the volume, one of the issues I have with these types of ads is that you're rarely able to report them as scams. Reddit have a similar issue. You can report an ad, but you have to pick "Other", there's no: "This ad is clearly a scam". That's by design obviously, because by removing the scams, most of the ad networks are left with very little inventory. Certainly not enough to fund all the ad supported serv…

The YouTube situation is weird. YouTube is competent platform, and has some good content on it.

Meanwhile when I watch YouTube I get a stream of: "5G blocking beanies", highly questionable medical products, gross out ads about poo and etc ...

It really degrades my view of YouTube / Google.

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#285

Post by accrual »

drnick1 wrote: post #246

"After years with Pi-hole, which now blocks over a million domains, I’ve become incredibly accustomed to a mostly ad-free web. Without realizing it, I’d forgotten what the typical internet experience feels like." It is estimated that between 30% and 50% of Internet users run ad blockers. I haven't see a single ad in years. Besides, Pi-holes are kind of overrated. First, ad blockers running in the browser are simply m…

I personally feel differently about the Pihole. I run one and it blocks a lot of telemetry traffic from smart TVs, apps like Netflix, etc. that are not originating from a browser. I'm showing a 23.1% block rate today.

But for my use case, I like having the Pihole UI to see the charts and it's nice for temporarily unblocking one domain, etc.

Here is an excellent alternative to running Pihole that I've used before: https://www.geoghegan.ca/unbound-adblock.html

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#286

Post by kbelder »

ryandrake wrote: post #244
svieira wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a bit - I get ads for septic tanks because I have looked at them several times and tank companies continue to advertise for me because I might buy. I get ads for robot mowers because, again, I looked at them. I still see "the bottom of the barrel" ads occasionally, but it's very rare. Ad blitzes on the other hand ... (no, I don't want to build an app just-by-thinking-about-it) ...

At one point a few months ago, YouTube seems to have gotten the idea that I have some kind of bowel problem, and I'd constantly get ads about my "stuck poop." WTF? I'm watching a woodworking tutorial, I don't want to fucking hear about poop! Total bottom of the barrel.

Several months ago, my wife bought several bottles of pureed pumpkin babyfood, because small amounts added to catfood can treat some feline stomach issues.

Now, we're getting diaper commercials all over youtube. I assume we're flagged in some database as likely having a new child, but you can't ever know for sure.

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#287

Post by tcfhgj »

fknorangesite wrote: post #273
thesuitonym wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that Hacker News does not advertise, and yet somehow you are here.

My dude, Hacker News is the ad. This forum doesn't exist to get you to comment on news stories; it exists to attract tech people to YC.

Hacker News is as much an ad as a good product producing a happy customer

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#288

Post by kbelder »

genewitch wrote: post #172
DelightOne wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet they tried an llm scam detector. It was too good so they didn't put it into production.

i can write that in like 2 minutes in any language you want. `pseudo main( return True )` There's a difference between "Need a tree cut down? I am licensed and bonded and cut down trees; call ###" and the sort of things that we all consider "ads". If someone can't see a difference, then that someone probably receives money from advertising.

Well, that code would be over 95% accurate.

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#290

Post by cm2012 »

mrweasel wrote: post #63

Other than the volume, one of the issues I have with these types of ads is that you're rarely able to report them as scams. Reddit have a similar issue. You can report an ad, but you have to pick "Other", there's no: "This ad is clearly a scam". That's by design obviously, because by removing the scams, most of the ad networks are left with very little inventory. Certainly not enough to fund all the ad supported serv…

This is the other side of ad tracking. Good ad tracking means much more relevant ads. The only advertisers that can afford to run on untargeted ad inventory are lowest common denominator products like teeth whitening and weight loss.
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