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Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

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Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#421

Post by cortesoft »

eatsyourtacos wrote: post #361
cortesoft wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree a lot of advertising is awful, but there is still some purpose in demonstrating your wares for potential customers. Suppose someone develops a product that you would love and would make your life better; how do you think you should find out about it?

>how do you think you should find out about it? Word of mouth, basically. Or searching for something that I need . What I hate most about advertising is it just shoves everything in people's faces and makes people think they need this and that. I find myself somewhat immune to ads (as much as one can be I guess), maybe I just programmed myself to ignore them growing up in early internet days. But it's so obvious the…

Word of mouth requires someone to learn about a product initially. Also, searching for something you ‘need’ presupposes that you know there is a product that addresses a need. You would never find improvements to things that you didn’t realize could be improved.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#422

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

petarb wrote: post #409

Thank you for all the NextDNS recommendations. I’ve been looking for something to help block adds that isn’t a VPN on iOS. Just curious what do folks think of AdGuard. I’ve seen that come up on Reddit but looking at their website it doesn’t look trustworthy and I couldn’t find info about what they actually track.

> AdGuard

I'm not sure why you found their site untrustworthy, but, I've used it for years and I'm a huge fan.

Anyway though, AdGuard on iOS is a VPN and I find it unreliable, on macOS it works great.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#423

Post by cortesoft »

haswell wrote: post #396
cortesoft wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree a lot of advertising is awful, but there is still some purpose in demonstrating your wares for potential customers. Suppose someone develops a product that you would love and would make your life better; how do you think you should find out about it?

I believe marketplaces could/would form, acting as aggregators for sellers to list and promote their goods, and for consumers to go shopping. In the 2020s, the web is nearing a level of criticality to a functioning society as the neighborhoods, towns, cities we access it from. Those physical properties are heavily regulated and with good reason.

A marketplace is limited… if you create a product that addresses an entirely new market, you wouldn’t be found.

Also, physical properties are heavily regulated partially because there is a limited amount of physical space for them.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#424

Post by disintegore »

ruined wrote: post #404
disintegore wrote: post #178

I categorically reject ads. I want them completely abolished. I will do everything that's in my power to get them out of my machines. If I had just a little bit more courage I would go out at night with cans of spray paint and deface billboards.

defacing billboards is more fun and easier than you expect

There's a "prepare, Jesus is coming" ad next to my workplace. It honestly looks like a grift. That sort of thing is NOT normal at all where I live. I'm honestly tempted.

Would be even more stupid to try after writing this post though.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#425

Post by hendersoon »

bloopernova wrote: post #5

Firefox for Android with ublock origin makes my mobile web browsing sane again. Highly recommended.

That only covers the browser; many mobile apps have embedded ads too. DNS-based adblocking is system-wide, even if it isn't as effective in the browser as uBO.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#426

Post by hendersoon »

chrisfinazzo wrote: post #317
Bedon292 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AdGuard Home is another option along with the PiHole another commented mentioned. I have that running at home forcing all port 53 traffic to it via the firewall. So ads are blocked on all devices on the network. So easy I sometimes forget I have it running and then I browse on mobile away from home and get bombarded with ads and am reminded why I do it. They do also have their own paid DNS service, but I haven't atte…

For this reason alone, I am seriously tempted by PiHole's companion, PiVPN. Browsing without this protection just seems crazy to me.

I keep my phone VPN'd to my home network via wireguard 100% of the time, pointing at my AdGuard Home hosts for DNS. This works great, the beauty of wireguard is it reconnects in under a second so it's never annoying.

You do need a reasonable upload speed to do this, though. Otherwise I guess you could use an "always free" VM at Oracle or something.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#427

Post by hendersoon »

lawn wrote: post #154
unicornporn wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really don't understand how most people can stand to browse with all the ads People don't browse, they app.

And they'll still see a ton of YouTube ads.

There are a couple of ways to block YT ads, but DNS-based adblockers won't do it.

On Android you can simply install an alternate YT client, boom, job's done. Works on Android TV also.

On iOS, the content blocker lists in Safari can block YT ads, but there's no way to block them in Google's YouTube app unless you jailbreak and install a modified app. So just watch YT in Safari.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#428

Post by anonporridge »

alickz wrote: post #193
disintegore wrote: post #178

I categorically reject ads. I want them completely abolished. I will do everything that's in my power to get them out of my machines. If I had just a little bit more courage I would go out at night with cans of spray paint and deface billboards.

I purposely look away when YouTube starts playing ads. It's silly I know, but I get a tiny amount of satisfaction from not letting them advertise to me.

Until they require video to be allowed for eye tracking so they can stop playing and force you to look at the ad while it's playing.

As in Black Mirror's 15 Million Merits.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#429

Post by squarefoot »

onion2k wrote: post #347
alexb_ wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% of users have no idea what any of this is.

Developer wages would crash through the floor and all the way down to the centre of the Earth if ad blockers really took off without users also accepting micropayments or subscriptions for web services at the same time. Maybe we should be a little bit glad that the main thing keeping massive amounts of money in tech is accepted by users. The key thing that most people in tech don't appear to grok very easily is that…

> Developer wages would crash through the floor and all the way down to the centre of the Earth if ad blockers really took off without users also accepting micropayments or subscriptions for web services at the same time.

Well, the problem is that there are no rules, morals, or code of conduit telling when it's too much, except for users leaving. In theory. However, unfortunately, most users adapt very easily to being thrown at their face more and more advertising every day, so we can't count on them. Just look at what advertising became since the late 90s until today: the number of ads and wasted bandwidth/storage/cpu cycles employed to send and show them grows every damn day, why should I think it's going to stop? For a while we thought that flashing banners were the root of all evil, but what about short articles ridiculously split in multiple pages so that they can show more ads at each 5 sentences ..er.. page change? Or articles altered (possibly by AI) so that they use like 3 times the necessary words so they become longer and can be split like the above? Or unskippable ads during videos, user profiling that is becoming so dangerously close to digital surveillance, etc. Just no thanks.

I wouldn't mind opening my adblockers if sites kept advertising to a reasonable minimum in which I can get some information about where to purchase a product I'm interested in: actually I want good non invasive advertising, but every time I tried to do that I quickly had to get back in disgust and set them tight closed again for almost all sites, save for the very few ones that still do the right thing: what once was a short blacklist transitioned over time to a nearly empty whitelist.

I have no trust in the system anymore. Until the day there are well defined and enforced rules, it will always keep choosing what brings more profits, that is, more and more advertising. Not holding my breath for that day.

Also, I think the current economic system would need some heavy modifications to adapt it to micropayments on a large scale for every service one could access to. What would be the expenses of a micropayments system that, say, charged one cent for daily usage of every now free or ad supported service out there? (Google, blogs, social media, etc). I mean, that would produce a huge number of extremely low value transactions; are we sure it wouldn't cost more than the profits it should produce?

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#430

Post by disintegore »

Bakary wrote: post #349
disintegore wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really care about their bottom line. They're the middle-men. Virtual landlords. They're there to squeeze the lemon. Not to say that the service they provide isn't useful. It's obviously more economical to operate media platforms at scale, and obviously most content creators don't have the technical ability to do it themselves. When you look at say, podcasts for instance, you have this giant shared wealth of f…

YouTube sounds replaceable or unimportant in an ethical sense but in a practical sense it's certainly not that simple from the POV of someone trying to build an audience for their videography or even the audience itself.

Total chicken and egg scenario. That's often the case with monopolies. However, to my knowledge Youtube doesn't force its content creators into exclusivity deals (like, say, Amazon with Kindle Direct) so there may be some leeway there seeing as posting your content on another platform isn't a major risk.
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