Who doesn't use an adblocker and why?
Wondering how much of the Lemmy user base wouldn't use an adblocker. If you do use one what other blocking do you use to circumvent data collection, YouTube and reddit front ends and things alike?
Wondering how much of the Lemmy user base wouldn't use an adblocker. If you do use one what other blocking do you use to circumvent data collection, YouTube and reddit front ends and things alike?
I don’t block anything. I work in accessibility, so it’s important to me to know what the experiences are like for my fellow users with disabilities. I also don’t want to recommend sites or apps that are riddled with inaccessible ads. I’d rather not give them traffic at all. Though even though I let them track me, I still get ads in a language I don’t speak for cars I can’t drive. What’re they doing with all that data?
So me seeing ads in random languages is not me being clever with identity obfuscation, but big data being big stupid?
And thank you for your work in accessibility 🫡
Apparently! I don’t hide my data in any way, and constantly get ads in languages I don’t speak. Usually French, but sometimes Hindi or Chinese. And as a blind person myself, I’m not sure that my well paid full time job working in large enterprise and big tech accessibility is altruism deserving of thanks haha.
How are you presumably having websites presumably displayed in one language and ads displayed in another language?
I assume it’s because I live in Canada, and big American data just assumes all Canadians speak French. I regularly get French ads on English websites.
Right, thought it was a trick and I was intrigued.
If you presume it, it will come
The biggest thing I miss from seeing ads is knowing what movies are in theaters... And I never think about looking haha.
2 alternatives could be to follow an RSS feeds for trailers or turn on notifications for a movie trailer or review YouTube channel.
That is an excellent idea. Haven't done rss feeds in a long time.
Lady I used to sit next to at work didn't use an ad blocker. She also would have like the "do you want to install this plugin?" thing open in her ide for weeks. I don't know how she did it. She's a software developer so she's reasonably tech literate. It just didn't bother her enough to think about doing something about it.
reminds me of one of my coworkers years ago, we all had cubicle desk computer jobs but oh Lord she had so many scribbled on post-it notes stuck all over her cubicle and all over the edge of her computer screen 🤦♀️ She was an older lady close to retirement age.
Some people just prefer post it notes.
I used to use a notepad but now there's too much going on so I have to use a spreadsheet.
I asked a friend of mine about this recently and she told me it was because it helps her kids learn patience.
That got me thinking about it, I personally learned a rather large amount of patience because of ads when I was growing up so it made a lot of sense to me.
Ads growing up didn’t track you all over the internet.
Ads teach people patience? That is the worst justification for ads I've ever heard. She's probably in the advertisement industry so she's pro-ads.
or she's not computer literate enough to install ad blockers and too proud to admit her lack of computer literacy.
Holy shit, this is worse than reddit lately. You read an anecdote about a lady, made up her whole life and got angry about what you just made up. Fucking hell.
And as the coup de grâce, their name is LemmyKnowsBest.
Not her whole life, just the argument she was using.
No, they have a point. In hindsight, I definitely can see how the unskipable ads of cable TV resulted in a greater deal of patience. I'd be interested to see a more academic study of it, but anecdotally I definitely can see it.
As long as she doesn't buy anything they ask for that is coming from ads and tells them that the products advertised are probably the worst of their kind I would be okay with it.
I have AdNauseum on with the "Hide Ads" button unchecked and "leave non-tracking ads alone" option enabled. Privacy Badger is on too to detect tracking scripts.
I can safely ignore ads generally but what I want is to discourage the practice of annoying placements to farm clicks. If they want clicks then they can have as many of my fake ones as they wish.
Firefox on maximum security will get rid of all cookies when you close the window (ie exit from Firefox, not just close the tab). If there are sites that require cookies, you can use Firefox containers to stop it collecting data across other sites).
I do use adblockers but there are sites which deserve the revenue (and don't bombard you with shite) so I try to remember to whitelist them. But I'm not as diligent about this as I should be. Someone does have to pay for it and we don't have a decent system to do that without advertising (yet). I can't subscribe to the eleventy million sites I visit so advertising is a necessary evil (atm). Obviously, denying bad sites the advertising revenue is a public service, so there's that.
People who aren't trying.
Because.
I only recently started using uBlock but it's not really because of ads (which I don't mind too much as long as they don't prevent me seeing the page content). I use it mainly to automate the rejection of cookie popups, which have become absolutely absurd.
I know some of family don't because they mostly rely on mobile devices and devices like Chromecasts where installing ad blockers can be a challenge. They don't use traditional computers.
They know apps like NewPipe exist but the effort to port things over or not get recommendations is too much for them.
I do use ad blockers and open source front ends/software/alternatives. Ex. AntennaPod instead of Spotify for podcasts and Linux instead of Windows because I didn't like ads in the start menu (amongst numerous other things).
I'm so proud of my kids who will demand adblockers if something in their YouTube app or their browser is broken. Even though they like to see toy ads now and then. But when they get the amount a regular mortal receives it's too much, even for them.
I get you. I like receiving honest real reviews for things rather than be advertised to. Let their quality speak for it. I also hate even minor spoilers for movies/TV shows/video game that you see in trailers.
I just don't usually find ads to be intrusive enough to have blocking them be worthwhile.
As others have said, I don't mind supporting small content creators by watching the ads.
Edit: imagine getting downvoted for an honest answer lol. So sorry that you don't like my opinion!
I don’t because I work in SEO and I need to see how some things just work to troubleshoot or find hidden gems from competitors.
However, on my home computers I absolutely do!
I didn’t until recently. I wanted to give companies I valued credit, in some way. But, ads are completely out of control and it broke me so I started using ublock a few months ago. It’s so much better and I’m not looking back.
Laziness.
Plus, if it’s too many ads and too much tracking, maybe it’s my using the thing that’s the problem.
This is my exact feeling as well. Too lazy to worry about blocking the ads; too dissatisfied if I have to deal with too many ads.
Yea. And all the work and effort put into ad blocking maybe could have been better spent on working how to create spaces and platforms that didn’t require ads?
Can’t help but feel we have moved on from the expectation of things being free on the internet and that ad blocking fanatics are a little stuck in the past.
Y'know, I used to feel the same on that sentiment, but then I realized it's like me saying "why invest in suntan lotion when you can stay inside on hot days?" But some people like to go out into the sun even in summer, so wearing suntan lotion is the smart, sane thing to do. Just because I like to reminisce about how nice it was to go for a jog in the winter doesn't invalidate that people like to go to the beach in the summer.
I think we absolutely should expect and strive for a better, more free internet. But if you're gonna tread the risky waters of the internet, then you should put on some adblock.
Some of us are ignorant though, so I'll continue raw-dogging the internet and probably get my identity stolen again.
I have been using adguard dns on my phone for years. For the past one year or so also using adblockers on browser (Firefox). Used to watch youtube with ads. Got fed up moved to watching youtube in browser with adblocker, then finally moved to newpipe sponsor block when youtube started adblocker shenanigans. For pc I use cloud flare dns, regular adblockers (Firefox) and keep privacy and security settings on strict.
I would use one, I'm not opposed, but I've just never bothered. I don't use a lot of sites with prominent ads.
I don't use ad blockers on YouTube because the creators that I watch on YouTube are people who I actually care about. I watch content on YouTube from real people who I want to be able to profit off of me watching their video. Ad blockers are effectively piracy, your taking the content without the agreed upon price, in this case, the price of the content is the ads.
And I don't make that comparison to convince anyone that they shouldn't use an ad blocker, I just think the decision of where to use ad blockers should be made with the understanding that you are pirating any content that you consume while using an ad blocker. Are you willing to pirate something from some random mega corporation? I am. Are willing to pirate content from this niche 3D printing YouTube content creator that you enjoy? I'm not.
As a default, I do use an ad blocker, but I will disable the ad blocker for any website that I can trust enough to not have malicious ads, especially websites that i want to financially support. Because for me all it means is sacrificing a little bit of bandwidth to load the ad that I'm just going to ignore anyway.
You say you'll disable the ad blocker for sites that don't push malicious ads? I've reported half a dozen deepfake "investment" ads on YouTube in the last couple of months, and they have done nothing about it. The ads YouTube pushes are horrible!
People advertising shady things is not the same thing as a malicious ad, at least not in the context of the point I'm trying to make. By malicious ad I'm referring to those things that pretend to not be an ad at all, they pretend to be the download button or a notification of an unread message, or something along those lines.
I may not be using the terminology exactly right, but that's the kind of thing I'm referring to. And YouTube does. A YouTube does a perfectly fine job at being transparent when something is an advertisement and when it's organic content. They're not maliciously being deceptive at what is an ad and what isn't.
At what point was a price agreed upon?
The price was agreed upon in the same way that the price in the grocery store is agreed upon.
The content provider set the price, in this case, the price being consuming an advertisement.
To be totally clear, I absolutely advocate for piracy in some situations, I'm not going to get into the weeds and talk about the specifics when I do or do not advocate for it, but to extend upon the grocery store analogy, there are also some situations where I would absolutely advocate for someone to steal from the grocery store. And I'm not going to get into the weeds and talk about the specifics for when I do or do not advocate for that either. The point though is by calling ad blocking piracy I'm not making a moral judgment on whether or not it is right or wrong, I'm just pointing out that it is functionally the exact same thing.
Usually when you click on 'I Agree'
ToS holds no power in a court. Real agreement do.
We're not talking about what holds power in a court, we're talking about functional reality.
What you can get away with on a technicality in court is irrelevant to whether or not it's piracy.
By a legal definition, no, ad blocking is probably not piracy. I'm no lawyer but I would wager that Piracy is probably more strictly defined than that. My point though is that it is functionally the exact same thing as piracy.
Ad supported content is distributed based on the advertising income paying for the distribution. If you are blocking that advertising in a way that prevents compensation to the content creator you are consuming that content without the creator getting paid the price that they set for the content.
I cleanse my conscience by supporting many of them on Patreon.
Accidentally clicking on clickbait without an adblocker directly results in a spammer getting money, and that just makes me feel like crap. There's so much spam out there that wouldn't exist without ads, which makes it harder for quality creators to get attention and fair compensation. I feel I can only engage with the internet ethically by refusing to participate in the ad economy.
It sucks that alternative payment models like Brave's "Basic Attention Token" (or a fairer alternative) never got popular. The idea was to track the creators of websites/videos/etc. you visit and automatically split your monthly donation between them. IIRC it was proportional to the number of ads blocked for each creator, but you could tweak creators' multipliers to deny profit to spam and reward higher-quality creators. I'd also accept microtransactions for individual videos, news articles, etc. but no platforms for these exist because the big players in internet monetization are all so focused on ads.
Yes! This is exactly the kind of thing I'd rather see too. More directly financing the creators you enjoy.
Nearly everyone uses at least some level of adblocking. Pretty much every major browser blocks pop-up ads by default, so the people who are too lazy or computer illiterate to do anything other than the default are still going to have some ad blocking.
Internet Explorer 6 added this feature in 2001, so even your grandpa still stubbornly running his end of life Windows XP probably has a popup blocker.
I don’t use an adblocker when I browse in ios because I don’t know how to
I don't use one because I feel that the more people use ad blockers, the more intrusive and annoying the ads will be for people that aren't using one, and less overall content will be available for free. The only ads that I can't stand are video ads, and that's why I have YouTube premium.
The more intrusive and annoying the ads become, the more people will retaliate. This is war. eventually we will smash out those annoying ads. somehow. There must be some other more civilized pleasant method for companies to make profit. This is getting out of hand.
I mean, there are other civilized pleasant methods for companies to make profit. For users to pay.
That's why lots of places now have an ad-free subscription option. If you really want to smash out ads, pay for the ad-free subscription service.
well I remember in the late 1970s when cable TV became a thing, the concept was you pay for it so there are no ads.
Then guess what happened?
few years later we were still paying for cable TV and then they started including ads. We were outraged at first but then it became normal and we got used to it.
Now YouTube is doing it, including ads even though we're paying for it
Amazon prime is doing it, including ads even though we're paying for it
and other streaming services, I can't name everything but pretty much every company is doing it. Even though people are paying for the service, there are still ads.
YouTube is not doing it, I use YT premium and I never get a single ad. Ever.
And I know that ad supported cheaper versions of a lot of streaming services are becoming more common, but, to my knowledge, all of them have an ad free option. It may be more expensive than their cheapest tier, but they do have an ad free option.
If you want to see the internet less dependent on ads, the only way to do that is to be willing to pay for it yourself. Because streaming video content online is actually extremely expensive to do. And someone has to pay for it. If you as the consumer aren't paying for it then someone has to pay for it on your behalf. They're only going to do that if they can get something out of the deal.
*yet
It will come, once their subscription gets traction.
YouTube subscription does have traction... And like I said, every streaming service has an ad free option. Some of them have an ad supported cheaper option, but they all have some option that allows you to consume the content without ads. It seems like you're kind of just talking out of your ass.
There's an economics of everything at play here, broadcast television had ads, cable TV at first didn't but it was also significantly more expensive. Cable TV wanted to lower prices to attract more customers, and in order to do that they started receiving more money from advertisers to make up the difference. Not all of the cable TV channels did this. However, even to this very day there are plenty of cable TV channels that don't have ads. They are considered the premium channels that you have to pay extra for.
The same thing is going to continue to be true on the internet as well, You will always have options to avoid ads by paying for the content that you want.
YT Premium may not have ads, but they sell your data anyway.
And that's why you fuckin SUCK
On top of an adblocker, I use Pi-hole/Adguard home for DNS blocking.
For added privacy, I also use my own unbound DNS server, which can be easily setup with Pi-hole, so that I make as few external DNS requests as possible.
I turn off my adblocker for YouTube if it's a creator who should be getting revenue from the video. I'm not happy with Google's cut of it though...
I use an ad blocker, and in addition also use Pi-hole for network-wide domain based tracker blocking. I use tailscale to use this on my phone, but also have Tracker Control (the real version installed from F-Droid) to do something similar if for some reason I need to disable Tailscale (only one can be used at once, as they both use the VPN method).
No, because I want the content that I consume to be financially viable. You either accept the ads, or seek out other sites with other payment models.
can i have sex with your spouse too
I don’t, without the advertising a lot of the content can’t exist and I like the context to exist.
If you pay them a single one time purchase of £1, that will be worth more to them than all the adverts you ever have or will watch.
This is a double edge sword.
Ad revenue has enabled poor content to exist.
Ads on useful content detracts from that content, and disrespects a user's time/attention.
Because I am not sure if I want a 3rd party "controlling" my trafic. It sucks that my behavior is shared around in ad networks but I am not sure if the ad blocking components are more trustworthy. There are certainly good solutions out there but I am sceptic of the explosion of new ad blocking tools. Having said that, I never did a deep research to check if my scepticism is justified..
I use uBlock Origin and Consent-o-Matic. Works like a charm!
One question though.
Can't you enable a filter list on uBlock Origin that removes all cookie consents?
I think I have it on. It's under "Annoyances". Maybe it's not as good since you have them both?
I'm sure there is, but tbh I don't know how, since I don't need it.
The way Consent-o-Matic works is that it accepts all, securely deletes all of it immediately before it can do anything. That way the site thinks you have all of it so it won't ask again, but you actually get none of it.
All this plus removing the consent- and other pop-ups for you. A few of the nastier pop-ups might be on your screen for a tenth of a second or less as Consent-o-Matic gets rid of it for you, but otherwise it's like they were never there to begin with!
Consent o matic is a new one for me. Thanks!
You're very welcome!
My mom uses Edge, told me not to block Facebook ads and clicks on most of the clickbait articles on her MSN home page. It's like she WANTS them to collect as much data to sell and spy on her as much as possible 🤦