FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022) • Hacker News Board

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#41

Post by internetter » Sun, Sep 08, 2024, 10:46 PM UTC

hirvi74 wrote: post #29

Waterluvian wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Check this out: https://kaylees.site/wipr.html. It's no UBlock Origin, but it still does an excellent job on many sites.

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#42

Post by yard2010 » Sun, Sep 08, 2024, 10:47 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #31

Sephr wrote: post #19

Google has convinced regulatory agencies that they're not responsible for their own complicity with supporting link fraud. I wrote an article about Google's role in enabling link fraud[1], which shows how this is effectively a form of regulatory capture. Here's a particularly salient critique of these very same FBI recommendations, from my article: > The FBI suggests “Before clicking on an advertisement, check the UR…

Can’t an ad always just redirect traffic to a vanity URL while exposing a non-vanity URL to Google?

AFAIR it's against their code, they do have strict rules regarding their ads.

But it's funny I remember adsense fighting the bs fraud ads on the internet, only to become the bs fraud themselves..

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#43

Post by aflag » Sun, Sep 08, 2024, 10:47 PM UTC

taf2 wrote: post #37

I must be a strange person because I don’t run any adblocker… if I happen to need to visit an ad stricken site I just toggle on reader mode. Get my info and get out… I never have to worry about clicking on a search result and it doing nothing … but also I rarely visit these ad sites…. For the cookie banners I just inspect and delete the elements when they get in the way…

An ad blocker would save you some extra clicks.

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#44

Post by imoverclocked » Sun, Sep 08, 2024, 10:47 PM UTC

We still haven’t reached peak Idiocracy.

YouTube/hulu/disney+ still cut to ads instead of displaying them around the border of the content.

Carl’s Jr/Brawndo still haven’t purchased the FCC.

We are pretty close though.

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#45

Post by NegativeK » Sun, Sep 08, 2024, 10:48 PM UTC

taf2 wrote: post #37

I must be a strange person because I don’t run any adblocker… if I happen to need to visit an ad stricken site I just toggle on reader mode. Get my info and get out… I never have to worry about clicking on a search result and it doing nothing … but also I rarely visit these ad sites…. For the cookie banners I just inspect and delete the elements when they get in the way…

> I never have to worry about clicking on a search result and it doing nothing

I can't remember the last time I noticed that the ad blocker even existed on my machine. Occasionally some clever site will basically say "if you can see this, we're supported by ads and could use your help" -- but it doesn't break things and I don't see ad links in search results.

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#46

Post by Sephr » Sun, Sep 08, 2024, 10:50 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #31

Sephr wrote: post #19

Google has convinced regulatory agencies that they're not responsible for their own complicity with supporting link fraud. I wrote an article about Google's role in enabling link fraud[1], which shows how this is effectively a form of regulatory capture. Here's a particularly salient critique of these very same FBI recommendations, from my article: > The FBI suggests “Before clicking on an advertisement, check the UR…

Can’t an ad always just redirect traffic to a vanity URL while exposing a non-vanity URL to Google?

The core issue here is that Google does not effectively verify ownership of vanity URLs displayed to users. You may not ever connect to the vanity URL in the first place.

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#47

Post by Terr_ » Sun, Sep 08, 2024, 10:50 PM UTC

rkagerer wrote: post #17

I'd like to see society in general become less tolerant of unwanted ads. The original Google site hit the perfect pitch, where they set a few unobtrusive ones out of the way alongside your results screen. Ironic they pioneered and eventually normalized what is now an epidemic of user-hostile spam all over the web. I feel as a whole we lose a lot more productivity and focus to this than we gain in economic activity.

> The original Google site

For your nostalgia and/or despair, I found a chronological list of screenshots: https://scaledon.com/the-evolution-of-google-ads/

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#48

Post by vunderba » Sun, Sep 08, 2024, 10:51 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #30

vunderba wrote: post #25

PSA: Even among tech minded folks, a surprising number of people are still using adblock which is widely known to use sponsored whitelists to allow companies to bypass the filters. The gold standard which works as an extension in both chrome and Firefox is uBlock Origin , annoyingly not to be confused with uBlock. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ub…

> Also be aware that Google continues to add restrictions to extension permissions such that uBlock Origin may not be as effective as it once was. That's fine. I don't use a Google made browser, so this would not affect me at all. It would also be very easy for this to not affect you too if you just had the courage to stop being a sheeple

I'm not sure who this comment is directed at and I can't speak for everyone but I do think some people have to use Chrome as a requirement from their jobs - such as UI/UX testing for frontend development.

So for them, it's better than nothing.

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#49

Post by rty32 » Sun, Sep 08, 2024, 10:52 PM UTC

vunderba wrote: post #25

PSA: Even among tech minded folks, a surprising number of people are still using adblock which is widely known to use sponsored whitelists to allow companies to bypass the filters. The gold standard which works as an extension in both chrome and Firefox is uBlock Origin , annoyingly not to be confused with uBlock. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ub…

Not even that. Most of my software engineer colleagues do not use ad blockers at all. They are definitely aware of them, but they don't use them, and they don't bother to use them. Which is surprising.

You would expect that the people who have the ability to write perfect selector rules to block ads and understand how all of this works would be the first to use them. But no.

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#50

Post by vunderba » Sun, Sep 08, 2024, 10:53 PM UTC

simple10 wrote: post #39

vunderba wrote: post #25

PSA: Even among tech minded folks, a surprising number of people are still using adblock which is widely known to use sponsored whitelists to allow companies to bypass the filters. The gold standard which works as an extension in both chrome and Firefox is uBlock Origin , annoyingly not to be confused with uBlock. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ub…

Is the warning on uBlock Origin Chrome extension page due to it not using the manifest v3? Anybody know if uBlock is still the best option for Chrome?

Marginally related, I've heard that Brave (which is a chromium fork) is going to maintain support for V2 so uBlock Origin will continue to work on it, but I don't use it personally so take that with a grain of salt.