It is built on top of unlock origin and will silently click on the ads in the background to mess with your digital footprint while costing advertisers money who use pay per click.
How does AdNauseam "click Ads"?
AdNauseam 'clicks' Ads by issuing an HTTP request to the URL to which they lead. In current versions the is done via an XMLHttpRequest (or AJAX request) issued in a background process. This lightweight request signals a 'click' on the server responsible for the Ad, but does so without opening any additional windows or pages on your computer. Further it allows AdNauseam to safely receive and discard the resulting response data, rather than executing it in the browser, thus preventing a range of potential security problems (ransomware, rogue Javascript or Flash code, XSS-attacks, etc.) caused by malfunctioning or malicious Ads. Although it is completely safe, AdNauseam's clicking behaviour can be de-activated in the settings panel.
That feature it uses to silently click ads increased the RAM usage of my browser by a lot on two separate systems (my android phone, and my PC) and since I really do not give an extra fuck about clicking ads in the background (Google still makes millions, and the plugin dev is also using the clicks to make money via affiliate) and I only care about blocking them, I went back to uBlock Origin.
and the plugin dev is also using the clicks to make money via affiliate
That's actually kinda brilliant and I'm jealous. I might actually install it just to reward his intelligence. I can't blame him for doing it, I'd do it too if I was in his shoes; I wish I'd thought of it first.
google (and other ad companies) keep a digital profile (or footprint) of all your clicks. so, for example, if you click on an ad for a fantasy book, they will save that you are at least interested on fantasy books, giving you more ads for that. in theory that might not sound so bad ("hey, at least the ads will be more relevant") but in reality the amount of data that they store is incredibly invasive.
by clicking random ads, the quality of that profile would go down, as it will no longer be your true interests, thus "messing with digital footprint"
Worse actually, since we usually visit a subset of the web, and by "fake clicking" all the ads of all the websites we visit, we actually give google a pretty good profile of the websites we visit, and that's bad. Fake clicking is not as private as people think it is.
It still only clicks ads of the webpages you visit, which again is a pretty good tracking pattern. I prefer to be tracked as "blocks all of them" than "clicks all the ads of these webpages, which are about XYZ, so they must have interests in XZY, which is actually true since I did visit those websites".
I genuinely don't know how people manage without ad-blockers and other declutterers. The amount of utter shit that gets in the way of what you're trying to look at is mind boggling.
Do you want cookies? Do you want to share your details with 1049 trusted data partners? How about the top half of the screen taken by a video ad with a close button that isn't going to work? How about a redirect to something else entirely? How about the back button not working unless you spam it really quick?
There's also the fact that on mobile ads use up your data. I'm not paying for a data plan so advertisers can use it to shove ads down my throat because I wanted to check the weather. I've used the mobile brave browser for a few years now and I will never go back. I don't go through nearly as much mobile data as I did prior to using ad blockers.
Plus, putting ublock on my PC made youtube usable again. No more ads that are longer than the video I'm trying to watch.
I don't know how people tolerate the constant ads either. It was driving me insane and genuinely pissed me off.
Do you want cookies? Do you want to share your details with 1049 trusted data partners?
They click this thing once. 1 time only for years of "not being bothered by it" (that they notice actively).
I agree it's total shit but it is from a regular user point of view, easier to use the "i agree" button on most of that stuff once, than to try to avoid it. Constantly on the same few websites anyhow.
Still doesn't explain the no ad-block for me though, it's a whole lot easier on the mind to browse ad-free, it is well worth the tiny effort of using ff and activating ublock...
People just got used to having ads shoved down their throats? I am not one of them though, I use uBlock Origin with pride. But most people simply deal with the baggage.
Do you want cookies? Do you want to share your details with 1049 trusted data partners? How about the top half of the screen taken by a video ad with a close button that isn't going to work?
"Oh, you want to opt out? First click this tiny 4 pt text next to
>>> AGREE TO EVERYTHING <<<
[ⁿᵒ ᶜᵒᵒᵏᶦᵉˢ ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ]
then uncheck what you don't want us to track, then click "I don't not want to be tracked across the Internet for marketing purposes forever and ever."
We value your privacy!*
*(We just value it just a little more if you're subject to GDPR or California law...)
Old guy checking in. When ad blockers first became a thing, my then-teenaged boys started using one and were trying to talk me into it. I was pretty dubious. I said my concern was that the model most of the web was built on was ad-supported. That is, people created content on the web to try and get visitors, and made money by selling ads on their site, or used monetized links. If everyone started using ad blockers, I said, that model would break down and either people would stop creating content or they'd go to a new model, like subscriptions. I figured few people would take time equivalent to a full time job to create content for free.
I think that largely came to pass. A lot of great online publications have closed their doors, and the are lots of paywalls now. The things is, the sites are just as much to blame. Most people wouldn't have been driven to use ad blockers if the ads hadn't gotten so untenable. A banner or a box here or there is one thing, but when there are a giant number of pop-up windows, autoplay videos, windows you can't back out of, and all the other hellish stuff, people are going to be highly motivated to find a way to stop it.
That whole arms race was one of the things that ruined the internet, in my opinion.
I also think a lot of people who grew up on the internet have completely and totally forgotten about how bad it really was. They had ads that would take over your computer, ads that would download viruses, ads that would use your modem to dial 1-900 numbers, ads that would open 800 uncloseable web pages full of porn and start playing loud screaming music and moaning sounds to gather the interest of every other person in the house just a shame you for using the internet.
And dear Jesus don't forget about the fucking toolbars. Dozens upon dozens of toolbars installed in every browser, everything from bonzi buddy to AOL email, detecting that a picture would be loaded on your screen and replacing it with one of theirs as an ad link.
Ad blockers have been necessary to use the internet for the last 20 freaking years.
If you're not the kind of person who would go to the STD clinic and fuck every person there without a condom, you should never use the internet without an ad block.
Going to my parents house to help fix why their computer was "running slow" and like 6 inches of their browser was all toolbars that they had no idea how they got there nor knew what they did.
Yeah, and that's what I mean when I say that the sites brought it on themselves. If the ads started reasonable, like what you'd see on the old Sunday newspaper, three wouldn't have been much reason to block them.
You also have to add on the privacy issues with all the tracking, that also drove people to use them.
In the wake of a bunch of BS, Google came along with rather nice and unobtrusive ads, and it seemed to catch on. Then over the last decade, it's really gone way downhill again.
Yeah, I didn't mind an ad on the side of the screen when all of the content was front and center. But the problem is is that when you make it so that a company's livelihood depends on forcing users to do things they don't want to do, and there's no regulation on that whatsoever, it's just going to go downhill very quickly and if you think this is bad it can get much much worse.
I'm kind of surprised that isps are not injecting ads into your browsing and forcing you to watch ads just to use the internet that you paid for.
They could even charge you like a $10 a month up charge fee for ad-free internet and say that we're not going to block the ads on the rest of the internet you just won't get additional ads from us.
I'm kind of surprised that isps are not injecting ads into your browsing and forcing you to watch ads just to use the internet that you paid for.
If I recall correctly, during one of the more recent public debates around Net Neutrality in the US, it came out that certain ISPs were doing just that. Some people were showing screenshots of ads showing up inside their steam client (which runs the storefront and community sections as webpages).
I think it is worth mentioning that patreon also surfaced as a means to provide income for creators. Whether this was a direct result of ad blockers may be debatable. However, patreon certainly provides creators with an avenue to generate income that is not dependent on ads services.
Then there are also creator focused platforms like nebula and curiosity stream, which aim to provide creators with a fair share of generated revenue.
All in all, my take on the developments over the past ten years or so is that ad revenue sharing (with creators) provided an important impulse to establish the field of online content creation, and that shortcomings of this model are now being addressed. Mainly to funnel more money to the content creators rather than platform owners.
I think the last really big hurdle to an actually democratized internet is that we need to make it easier to host at home.
Asymmetrical download upload is such a fucking pain. I would rather have 100 down and 100 up then 400 down and 5 up like I currently do.
On top of that, there aren't a lot of good systems in place to enable me to host a website from home. If IPv6 were common it would be easy for me to secure a static IP address and to point that to my DNS resolver and attach my domain, but since I've got to be on an ipv4 system since no provider in my area provides an on-ramp to IPv6 and even if they did the Grand majority of Internet users cannot resolve IPv6 addresses, it's dead in the water.
If every person in America had symmetrical upload download and a static IPv6 address for their home, we could get rid of the grand majority of the content provider and hosts and instead use democratized systems like bluesky and Kbin and Mastodon and free tube without having to worry about these multi trillion dollar companies' bottom lines.
The asymmetrical internet speeds are intended to keep hobbyists and small businesses from self-hosting, thereby driving traffic to larger companies. I wonder if ISPs get any kind of kickback from large companies like AWS, cloudflare, or digital ocean. Like, reduced hosting costs for their websites and internal cloud services.
Takes tinfoil hat off
The reality is that it's probably a lot cheaper for ISPs to make connections asymmetrical because it effectively lets them pump up their download speed numbers for free. However, ISPs really should give customers the option to custom allocate bandwidth. Instead of saying X upload, Y download, you get X Mbps maximum and can choose the upload/download split.
That would definitely be fair. Like even limit the ratio between tears just give me the option to have the internet that I want at my house without paying for business internet prices.
I'm not asking for symmetrical gigabit with a static ipv4 address on a fiber line with unlimited bandwidth. I just want a decent amount of bandwidth, 50-100mb up, a static IP address that is IPv6, and I'm okay with a ipv4 address that changes.
They've had a really long time to simply flip the switch in the routers that they use to also transmit IPv6 addresses and they are not doing it.
Their hardware is not old enough in most cases to not have IPv6 available by default in the hardware and firmware, they are just intentionally choosing not to activate it.
Are there any benefits to having a static IP, aside from self-hosting purposes? Is it somehow faster or more responsive? I'd think dynamic IPs would be better (ignoring self-hosting) because at the very least, they'd allow you to dodge (d)dos attacks (which can happen with games, people sometimes get salty enough to attack other players IPs if their IP is exposed).
Dynamic IPs were primarily a way to get around a limited pool of IP addresses. That's all. Local IP addresses (think 192.168.x.x) were created for the same reason.
The NAT your home internet modem uses in providing your local network IP does provide a hard firewall between your computer and the internet, but that is more a side effect of the technology than anything else.
The only use or reason for having a static IP is to have a domain name that resolves to that IP and knowing that the domain register can set the IP address and it's good until everything falls apart for lack of payment.
The other use of having a static IP is for a VPN, to remote back into your home network. Technically you can use both of these services with non-static vpns because most people's home internet does not change their IP addresses that often and there are services called dynamic DNS resolvers that you can get to constantly update your rotating IP address to a specific domain name.
You will not see any speed increases or throughput increases from having a set ip, it just simplifies running a home domain or home network because then you don't have to worry about ddns.
My dream for the past 3-4 years is something like a raspberry pi that you could just plug into power+internet+a chunky hard drive at home to have your own kbin/masto/lemmy/peertube instance.
I don't know how one can bring this about, though, in a more meaningful way than yet another hackaday.io post.
I don't know if "appliance" is how I would describe it but, yeah, something that's as plug-and-play as possible. I guess in the sense that off the shelf, it would be as easy to use as a dishwasher or toaster.
Until I became aware of the fediverse and activitypub, I thought that any such project would be doomed to fail - like most of the smart home market, you're tied to the manufacturer not only for compatible hardware but more crucially to talk with their servers.
Now I'm starting to think it is feasible, but still too many unknowns to bet a business on it.
Eh, I'm not sure it's much improved. In the ad model, the content creator owned the site and got money from selling ads. The more traffic they got, the more they could charge. In the new model, a corporation owns the site and takes a cut of whatever the creator generates.
Not necessarily. For instance, YouTube uses the old ad model and is of course not creator owned.
Additionally, you can use patreon while also using (and capitalising on) your own content distribution systems.
This is all to say, I do think the ad model may stay somewhat relevant, however, I also think that other income avenues are helpful and enable content creators more flexibility in terms of the manner in which they think they can best reach their audiences while generating income
Worth pointing out that ad blockers don't work for ads that are inserted into a video stream, so there was no need to change that model there. Also, YouTube is an example of a site that's not owned by the content creator. YouTube makes the money from the ads, then gives the significant creators a cut.
I wonder how stable the situation for in-stream ads really is. Paid sponsorships are nothing new, yet with browser extensions like sponsorblock becoming more and more popular I doubt the arms race will stop any time soon.
Not sure if arms race is the right way to put it when 1 side is deploying nukes and the other is only deploying shields. Money ruined the internet, ads is just one way how it did that.
That actually is a major facet of the military arms race. Side A develops a missile. Side B develops an anti-missile missile. So side A develops a missile with multiple warheads or builds more missiles so they won't all be shot down, etc. The defensive systems spawn the development of more or more-devastating offensive systems.
I used to not care about ads in Google because they were minimal. I was OK with ABP "acceptable ads".
But I've since gone full scorched earth. Fuck them all, their trackers, their fake news, the terrible products. I'm still OK with ads in my search results (no longer using Google) because they are often relevant to something I'm looking for. But for the rest, the Web stopped deserving my respect. I don't consume that much content online, and I pay for most of the few things I do consume.
As a software and data guy, having my search results tainted by paid content is pretty infuriating. I wouldn't care if there were ads to the side or something, but I find things like Amazon's search results almost completely unusable. And early on I used to point out to people how amazing Amazon's search engine really was. It was a marvel at getting you to exactly what you were looking to buy. Now it's optimized for showing you what they want to sell.
It really doesn't matter what the users did in response, because the MBAs' greed is such that they would have eventually ruined everything anyway no matter how compliant or patient the users were. It doesn't matter how much they get, it's never enough.
I’m also old (well, middle-aged is the right word I guess), but having lived through the adpocalypse that was the early 2000s, when the majority of sites were rushing to demonstrate their lofty stock valuations and satisfy their debtors by bringing in as much revenue as possible no matter the cost to the user base, I never really had that much patience for this business model, especially not once they discovered the concept of pop-ups (or worse, pop-unders).
I’ve also personally worked for a site whose business model was entirely based on SEO and click funneling and that has further eroded my patience to pretty zero. Pretty much none of our developer meetings were ever about “how can we make the product more useful to our users so they’ll actually WANT to come back”, it was always “our numbers are declining, how can we jam in more ads in order to meet the quarterly revenue goals?”
Yes, there are some sites that DO work hard to make actual, original content in order to earn those clicks, but for the most part, it’s an amoral, downright parasitical industry that doesn’t deserve any sympathy or goodwill.
I doubt very much adblockers are to blame for that. They're a convenient excuse for those trying to squeeze as much money as possible from their users... but they would have gone that route no matter what. It's just the nature of the economic system we live in.
I'm perfectly happy to pay for things I value, especially if the alternative is being forced to pay with my time and attention. The evidence also doesn't entirely support your argument, since plenty of places that you pay for still try to show ads.
The evidence also doesn’t entirely support your argument, since plenty of places that you pay for still try to show ads.
Where was it ever said that a site could only use one model? The same is/was true of newspapers that cost you a subscription but also sold ads. Without the ads, the subscription would be much more expensive.
I personally am unlikely to pay for a huge variety of news sites and other publications, but I really appreciated having access to all that content for free. Sure, I might pay for one or two especially valuable sites, but my personal opinion is that it was better when the sites were making enough money to make it worthwhile for them by selling a reasonable amount of advertising, and the content was free to the users.
If your claim were accurate, they wouldn't have to resort to putting ads on websites that are subscription based.
Unless you want to make the argument they're just greedy bastards, which then means your first argument is bull, because they were already greedy bastards enshittifying it all well before adblockers were even close to commonplace.
And again, adblockers even today account for a fraction of users.
42% is a fraction, but it's a huge fraction. Higher in some demographics, lower in others.
If your claim were accurate, they wouldn’t have to resort to putting ads on websites that are subscription based.
How do you figure? Most business ventures will ask themselves how much a customer would pay for their product. If the answer is lower than enough to make product, they either won't enter the market or they'll figure out a way to lower the price. Selling ads is a way to lower the price. Also worth noting that ads used to generate a lot more revenue than they do now.
As I said elsewhere, for most products, the makers ask how much they think people would be willing to pay for it. If that price is lower than an amount that would generate reasonable profit, they'll either no go to market or they'll look for ways to reduce or offset costs. Ads are a common way of keeping the price within what people are willing to pay.
You're right that ads supported the model, but the model was also generally anarcho-communist in nature. That people wanted to experience it without ads was expected, and considered fine. It is fine.
The more popular ad blocking gets, the more I worry about the ad industry lobbying to criminalize blocking ads as "theft of revenue" or some insane concept along that line.
And you just know the burden of that new criminalization won't come with the expensive and long legal procedures needed to bad all the ad blockers but instead will just be a piecemeal tax charged to consumers
I've noticed that spurts thing too. I'm a sole proprietor so I also get endless business loan text spam. Those also seem to go in spurts for some reason. One week I'll get two a day and then nothing for the next couple weeks.
nowadays there's not even that much to learn, probably biggest difference is just the file system, and getting out of the horrid habit of downloading programs from the browser.
primarily like on mobile, you just download from the "app store".
This can either be done via terminal (something like "apt install blender") or via a graphical program like Discover for the KDE desktop, in which case it's literally just like a mobile app store where you search for the program, click "install" and that's it.
There are some alternate ways of installing programs, which can involve downloading from a website, but that's for getting the very freshest release of a program or for very niche projects that aren't included in the distro's software repository yet.
So if you're an android power user it's exactly like that, most apps come from the store, but some apps you have to download from the web.
I refused to use adblockers on principle - not because I thought multibillion corpos needed more money, but because I recognized that sites using ads to sustain their business model needed views to maintain their viability in our fucked capitalist system.
Then Youtube swapped to three unskippable fucking ads after every video.
Now I just whitelist decent sites and let Adblock take care of the rest.
I wish I could semi-whitelist (graylist?) many websites, like allowing only "acceptable ads" so that the website can pay for costs and make a small profit while not blowing up my screen with ads. At the same time, many websites (Reddit, most recipe sites, and any text site with an autoplaying video) absolutely deserves a full ad blacklist for disrespecting their users so much. Still other websites deserve a full whitelist.
Yeah I whitelist as much as I can, but the default is to block because there will be sites that I visit once that would be unusable otherwise. If I find myself visiting more than once, I turn off the ad blocker to see if the site is still usable. If it's not, sorry, no ad revenue for you, shitty site.
I block all ads, everywhere, period. No whitelists, no nothing.
Because I got sick of ending up with malware infected ads and having to clean up my computer (back when I was on windows, I'm sure the days not far off where linux will have the same problem)
All these companies crying about ad revenues and shit? If they ever policed the ads they force down our throats for content, So they didnt serve malware, or obnoxiously loud or long ads, or any other bullshit, then people wouldnt have to need ad blocking tools.
IDK, it's kinda like being a germaphobe and avoiding the general public because they're unwashed and filthy, but still allowing certain people to visit you once you've assured yourself they practice regular hygiene, no?
Cause getting a cold isnt going to turn you into a botnet or steal your banking information or encrypt your house and hold it for ransom.
If you want a bodily example, Its like wearing a condom when you have random sex with strangers. Unless you are looking to catch something horrific, you use protection, every time, all the time.
getting a cold isnt going to turn you into a botnet or steal your banking information or encrypt your house and hold it for ransom.
Actually, yes, it kinda is. If you catch a virus, it basically uses your body as a host to produce more of itself to send out and infect others with, just like a botnet. And I'm no medical expert but I'm sure you could find a similar equivalency for the other example. There's a reason the term "virus" was adopted into computer science, because certain software can exhibit much of the same behavior as the real life thing. It's just art imitating life, that's all.
If you want a bodily example, Its like wearing a condom when you have random sex with strangers. Unless you are looking to catch something horrific, you use protection, every time, all the time.
Even then you might end up choosing not to use one, if you do end up meeting that special someone and get them tested for STIs.
I doubt people are using better options as an argument for this. The Youtube stuff makes the news like every other for blocking people, yet I haven't noticed any of it. If it weren't for lemmy and reddit spamming it I wouldn't have known it was possible and I'm not even doing anything crazy. Just Firefox and ublock. If people were using great options, it wouldn't have even been making the news because no one would have noticed.
We should be more grateful for these people. Our adblockers function because they don't bother using them.
The moment that most of society starts using adblockers is the moment they become defunct when the big corporations begin actively fighting them. I've already witnessed this with YouTube Vanced/Revanced.
I've been using it for years. About six months ago or somewhere around that, YouTube started a small campaign against adblockers though. In that campaign, they actually forced Vanced to rebrand to Revanced due to a lawsuit. It was in this time that through the campaign more people became aware of adblockers.
This actually sucked for users like me. The amount of times I'd have to repatch Revanced due to the constant updates was awful. It's more stable now, but if this ever happens again it will be annoying.
If people bring attention back to adblockers, then it will be like this again. Sites will be threatening legal action and restructuring themselves to break adblockers, while adblockers will have to constantly update in order to stay functional.
To be fair targeted ads based on what I like I don't find as a problem as long as they are not intrusive and very in your face! But due to how bad most ads are I don't see even those as I always have adblock on!
I enjoy manipulating the advertising targeting algorithm to give me advertisements for industrial machinery, cloud computing, surveys, targeted advertisements, and other things I am not remotely in the market for.
Remember in Futurama when Fry finally goes online in the future and get attacked by ads. Or similar in Altered Carbon with whatever that contact-lens-AR thing was and the character spins out.
Donation, federation (spreading the load so that a single person's hosting cost are easy for them to cover), non-intrusive premium features, public funding
I think we don't give gradual acclimatisation enough credit here. Most of my students have never heard of Firefox and tools like ublock origin because they're acclimatised to the mobile ecosystem
"How do I install something? I use the app store."
"Oh, but I already have the internet on my phone, why would I want a 3rd party app to use the internet" (think old people who mix up AOL with the internet in reverse!)
As soon as I show them, they convert in seconds - they've forgotten web pages without adverts can exist.
When I see a person with no ad blockers use the web my brain breaks seeing all the ads. Advertising is a malevolent force. Anyone who works in marketing ranks just above people who join the armed forces, police, and weapons manufacturing in my book. I think of big tobacco as better people.
Kinda not? In many places is illegal to advertise tobacco, and the marketing people are the same who do the anti-tobacco campaigns and many other PSAs.
You could kinda say that marketing people were the ones who ended Pinochet dictatorship even, every tool can be used to do harm, but just as the tool a mugger uses to stab a victim is a knife, knife as well is the scalpel that a surgeon will use to save that person, a tool on it's own rarely is good or bad, and marketing is a tool.
I'm not saying that they're marketing is not annoying or many times bad, just that that is not inherently bad.
The point of marketing is to make people buy stuff they wouldn't have bought otherwise, through manipulation of the brain.
They are directly responsible for our overconsumption and by extension the huge amounts of plastic waste in the ocean, the destruction of ecology and climate change.
They are most definitely way worse than tobacco, at least they only damage the body and the people around the user.
Freetube is great. I just wish the UI was better about bookmarking playlists and there was some way to sync my progress across devices, including Android
Have you tried the GrayJay app? I've been using it to cast Twitch and youtube to my TV, Download videos, and its got polycentric which is some kind of alternative to youtubes comments for videos
I'm not sure, but you can login to youtube from the plugins and YouTube can sync the watch history its under sources > YouTube > provide YouTube activity.
I was already sick of all the freaking Taylor Swift ads but Roku announcing that video ads are coming to the home screen was the last straw for me. Finally set up a Pi-hole and Roku ads are gone. I know it's an ongoing war and this is just one battle, but damn it's nice right now. I even became a supporter on Patreon. ❤️
I still run uBlock Origin on all my browsers, though.
My dodgy friend, I have appealed to my wife not once or twice but three times that we should drop all our subs and return to those placid waters that I sailed in my younger days. She has yet to relent in her view that we should stay on the right side of the law. I look for any opportunity to press my advantage. Do you have a suggestion as to the perfect argument that will sway her?
Tell her that the scurvy money lubbars have formed a trade organization that hoards booty. Money be a terrible temptation for sin and removin temptation from them is the only Christian thing to do. Iffen yee fly the flag of a different country and only dock at exclusive ports they will never catch yee.
Yee can even rig yer ship to scuttle the moment yer actual flag is raised.
Sonarr and radarr can automate torrent gathering. They can read a list of shows from places like Trakt, then ask torrent sites for the download once it becomes available.
Public torrent sites are less reliable and under relatively more surveillance. Private trackers are a good option, but it takes a bit of effort to gain entry and maintain membership.
There are also platforms like Seren or Fen, which are addons for a media program called Kodi. These programs can automate streaming from non-torrent sources. Free sources can have limited bandwidth, but it's watchable usually. You'll get the occasional gap in an episode. Paid services like Real Debrid can offer faster streaming and better coverage.
Because they're not the "default". Most folks stick with whatever comes on their device by default; Edge on Windows, Safari on MacOS/iOS, Chrome on Android, etc. Anything beyond just picking it up and turning it on requires forethought and effort, which most users don't care about.
Note that PiVPN is only being maintained on a “best effort” basis, so you may wish to look into the component parts separately and just install that way.
I used to use it all the time, but after a few years I got tired of constantly playing a game of "which blocked script is breaking everything this time" every time I visit a new website.
I wish I could remember the discussion (ADHD), but I remember someone pointing out to me a few years back that Ublock Origin makes NoScript redundant. It does have the ability to block scripts, it just enables them by default instead of blocking them. Don't quote me on this but I believe the reason was because it only blocks malicious Javascript.
You are drastically overestimating the average persons technical competency.
Google being the default on Apple devices was literally all they needed to do for the vast majority of web searches on iOS devices. And it’s a baked in setting, no need to install anything.
I learned recently that banner ads on websites and apps track your physical location, which is then sold to all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons.
"The door is there, for anyone with a sincere, passionate desire to learn. Which sounds really nice, 'anyone with a sincere and passionate desire to learn.' I just eliminated 90% of the world. 90% of the world wants to sit at home and watch Honey Boo Boo." --Chris Boden.
Sophisticated, powerful technology able to revolutionize the world becomes not only available but cheap, half the world's population carries around a supercomputer in their pocket with an always-on connection to the sumtotal of all human knowledge, and that device's user interface is designed to express little more than "Dat wun daddy watch me dat video dat wun now!" Because that's the level at which nearly everyone is willing to approach computers.
Because for many (including me) it's by far the best one. I get a system-wide adblocker and vpn on my phone and computer with really good apps. Nothing else has been both so good and easy so I'm more than happy to pay for it, it's also only $30 per year. I really like their telegram group too, they post news and articles both from them and others about anything related to privacy and so on. They recently wrote about Microsofts addition of ads in Windows and released an update that disabled those.
Alphabet's cracking down on blocking YouTube ads - nothing works at the moment that I've found. So, no YouTube, cause that shit's a dumpster fire without functional adblock. I mean, it's a dumpster fire anyway, but it's at least trash I can sort through.
I have Adblock and uBlock Origin on Chrome and never see YouTube ads. I assume uBlock Origin does the trick alone. (I know I should switch back to Firefox, but I'm too lazy if it's working.)
Adblock Plus still works for me on YouTube. I click a video, and when it loads there's a quick flash where the ad would have played then the video starts. So it looks like it's just autoskipping them quickly without displaying anything. Not even the 5 second thing happens.
You know when you were playing hide and seek, found the perfect hiding place, and you reject anyone else who tries to hide in that place?
DON'T TELL ANYONE ABOUT ADBLOCKERS!
Seriously, corpos will crack down hard. I mean, real hard on adblockers. This is an arms race that corporations have not yet realised because not enough people are using ad blockers. However, if more and more people are using it, then corporations will also be trying to catch up and that is something they will win because of greater resources.
This will be like with VPN; as many VPN IP addresses have been flagged and blocked as the service became more popular. And some of these VPNs have not updated the IP addresses making access to many websites nigh impossible or awkward-- unless you want to trawl through countless addresses. I'm afraid the same thing will happen with adblockers. This is something that open source adblockers could not easily win-- if they could win.
they will try to crack down on it either way, might as well go out with a fight. The more popular it is to use adblocking and the less niche weirdo psycho, the less "normal" it is for whatever shit they wanna do, however far they want to go to literally force bullshit into your brain wether you want it or not.
Amigo - the corpos already know. They also know that anyone who hates ads enough to install and maintain ad blockers is also not going to click on ads. They're wasted impressions. The amount an advertiser pays to put an ad in front of you is a rounding error compared to the amount they pay when you click.
When I worked at G I had a Linux laptop. It came pre-installed with Firefox and uBlock origin in addition to Chrome.
If Google is distributing Firefox with uBlock internally to employees they know about ad blockers.
It's similar to how scam emails always have egregious spelling errors: they're trying to select out the people that won't fall for the scam.
No idea what adguard is, I used adblock plus before thought I'm not using it now as for why I'm not using it I have no idea but I think some ads were getting through otherwise I would not have switched form it. For a few years now I use Ublock and never had a problem with it, in fact it's the first thing I install on any machine after I finish install an os on it.
I've used adblockers so long, when we got a DVR cable box, I would always keep everything rewound by 10 minutes specifically to skip all the commercials so I wouldn't have any on TV, either.
Too much work, in all honesty. Also our Internet service provider also provides the router and I'm not sure about replacing it. We have a bulk deal with the whole building.
I'll just keep muting the ads and look away while I do the countdown in my head lol. It's very seldom that I watch YouTube on my TV anyway. 😌
A good portion of the news sites I read. If I divide the total area that goes for text and ads, it's around 35-65. Then there's taboola ads that show at the bottom, before the related articles. uBlock also stops the majority of stupid "WAIT, SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER" modal that shows up as soon as the mouse exits the window
Any shopping sites is chock full of trackers and external ads, too. Lemme browse shit in peace.
Back in the day, a man wasn't really a man unless he changed his own oil and tuned up the car himself. That mentality has reemerged in the 21st century.
There's a clear concerted corporate effort to push this idea that everything one uses every day is
some kind of black box appliance devised by sacred holy wizards, you couldn't possibly hope to understand.
You ought to just trust them. They want what's best for you.
And don't worry if anything goes wrong! There's some service, product, or replacement ready to be sold to you by "qualified professionals." Convenient!
Remember, you're too stupid to understand how any of this works. Don't touch it.
Doesn't matter. Light switches to email to cars. Nobody knows how it works even on an ELI5 level.
I can't be an expert in all things but how are people comfortable with this level of ignorant dependence? Even to the point of defending it? "I shouldn't have to know how my car/computer/whatever works." I've literally heard this.
Boggles the mind.
People are capable of a great many skills and holding a lot of knowledge about a great many things...and yet a majority are taught not to learn anything after school, maybe know how to do a job, and otherwise can't handle any task that doesn't involve a credit card payment.
Lots of unpopular opinions in here and I'm willing to add mine to the mix.
I'm well aware of ad blockers, and use them occasionally. I also block trackers like pendo through DNS entries on my router. I pay for YouTube.
But I also allow ads and welcome them.
I remember when you couldn't get email unless you were in a school or paid for it.
I remember a time when the fastest Internet loaded images line by line.
I remember an Internet without videos, or even GIFs.
Services cost money. You use the service, you are the commodity. I've accepted this. A few ads don't kill me and it helps to support providers. I'm quite numb to ads.
Yes they are tracking me and selling my data, but what does that actually mean? I get more targeted offers. More targeted ads.
We've become scared of being tracked by corporations, but for what reason?
Providing content costs money. The days of the free Internet will quickly come to an end without advertisers.
"We've become scared of being tracked by corporations, but for what reason?"
The line between corporations and government is increasingly blurring. The amount and types of data and the ease and lack of any restrictions on the data corporations collect. To make a statement like this in the wake of project Nimbus is an indicator of naivety permissible to you by a fortunate and comfortable life. Situations within this world can turn on a dime ; I emplore you to think of the worst case scenarios with corporate data sharing if not for the future well being of yourself, than at least to minimize the support of these practices which are currently and will continue to negatively affect others. What was once considered fringe paranoia with use of these "free" services is now clear and present danger.
This is why we need consumer focused privacy laws. Within our lifetime there will no longer be free content or we will not be able to escape ads (Idiocracy style).
Agree better laws are needed for this, but ultimately there is plenty of room for free content with ads - you aren't remembering that there was good information, entertainment, and even services before the ad drivem corporate internet took over. Some things of value maybe shouldnt be free / could be better if they weren't. I'm not sure where the happy medium lies, but it has gone far too far in one direction and complacency feeds the fire.
And how much of that content was provided at a loss?
YouTube has always had ads. But less usage meant less cost. If 40% are using ad blockers, more ads will be shown to the 60%.
There is an unspoken agreement that if you consume you allow the ads. By using ad blockers, we've brought a lot of this on ourselves.
That being said, my views are very fantastical. Profit is the ultimate driver and very few (wiki who doesn't even use ads) are only hoping to cover costs.
My problem main problem with ads is that websites like YouTube and SoundCloud are locking content they don't own behind ads. But they'll remove those ads if you pay them money. I know some creators allow monetization on their channels, but I've watched plenty of videos and streamed several albums that were uploaded by people who didn't own the content and it's still locked behind ads.
Adnausem
It is built on top of unlock origin and will silently click on the ads in the background to mess with your digital footprint while costing advertisers money who use pay per click.
Google:
There are tools that allow people who buy ads to compare the performance of their ads with their own metrics.
The more ineffectual an ad platform is, the less likely ad purchasers are to purchase ads.
If 20% of American internet users used ad nauseam it would cause significant financial damage to ad companies across the globe.
Google might not care, but if enough people install it, their advertisers sure will.
That sounds neat, but it means those ads are at least partially loaded on the background, which is also bad
only the URL is loaded.
https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnauseam-click-ads
It just sends a request to the ads
That feature it uses to silently click ads increased the RAM usage of my browser by a lot on two separate systems (my android phone, and my PC) and since I really do not give an extra fuck about clicking ads in the background (Google still makes millions, and the plugin dev is also using the clicks to make money via affiliate) and I only care about blocking them, I went back to uBlock Origin.
That's actually kinda brilliant and I'm jealous. I might actually install it just to reward his intelligence. I can't blame him for doing it, I'd do it too if I was in his shoes; I wish I'd thought of it first.
The developers are three wealthy tech-bros, not one guy struggling.
Ah, well. Still pretty smart, though I'm a bit less interested now.
Is that considered click fraud or is that only when an advertiser intentionally gets competitor ads clicked, and similar behaviors?
Not saying anybody [here] cares just curious (as a Ublock Origin user)
I think it is when a competitor does it in an attempt to make the advertiser lose money.
This is why I browse lemmy instead of reddit
what do you mean by 'mess with digital footprint'
google (and other ad companies) keep a digital profile (or footprint) of all your clicks. so, for example, if you click on an ad for a fantasy book, they will save that you are at least interested on fantasy books, giving you more ads for that. in theory that might not sound so bad ("hey, at least the ads will be more relevant") but in reality the amount of data that they store is incredibly invasive.
by clicking random ads, the quality of that profile would go down, as it will no longer be your true interests, thus "messing with digital footprint"
That seems like the only way you don't get an accurate profile is if the ad is completely unrelated to the page content.
Seems like not clicking on any ads should have the same outcome...
I don't see ads, so who knows what is in my profile.
Worse actually, since we usually visit a subset of the web, and by "fake clicking" all the ads of all the websites we visit, we actually give google a pretty good profile of the websites we visit, and that's bad. Fake clicking is not as private as people think it is.
You get tracked based on how you interact. This obfuscates that beyond just "I block all of them".
It still only clicks ads of the webpages you visit, which again is a pretty good tracking pattern. I prefer to be tracked as "blocks all of them" than "clicks all the ads of these webpages, which are about XYZ, so they must have interests in XZY, which is actually true since I did visit those websites".
Google tracks everything you do so they can deliver targeted ads to you
By clicking every ad it is harder for them to build a profile
They also take these profiles and sell them so companies know what demographic to focus on
I don't suppose it can run in ublock's hard mode?
by the look of it, yes it can.
I genuinely don't know how people manage without ad-blockers and other declutterers. The amount of utter shit that gets in the way of what you're trying to look at is mind boggling.
Do you want cookies? Do you want to share your details with 1049 trusted data partners? How about the top half of the screen taken by a video ad with a close button that isn't going to work? How about a redirect to something else entirely? How about the back button not working unless you spam it really quick?
This is a war, and we didn't start it.
There's also the fact that on mobile ads use up your data. I'm not paying for a data plan so advertisers can use it to shove ads down my throat because I wanted to check the weather. I've used the mobile brave browser for a few years now and I will never go back. I don't go through nearly as much mobile data as I did prior to using ad blockers.
Plus, putting ublock on my PC made youtube usable again. No more ads that are longer than the video I'm trying to watch.
I don't know how people tolerate the constant ads either. It was driving me insane and genuinely pissed me off.
They click this thing once. 1 time only for years of "not being bothered by it" (that they notice actively).
I agree it's total shit but it is from a regular user point of view, easier to use the "i agree" button on most of that stuff once, than to try to avoid it. Constantly on the same few websites anyhow.
Still doesn't explain the no ad-block for me though, it's a whole lot easier on the mind to browse ad-free, it is well worth the tiny effort of using ff and activating ublock...
People just got used to having ads shoved down their throats? I am not one of them though, I use uBlock Origin with pride. But most people simply deal with the baggage.
Ever seen the kind of messes most people drive around with inside their cars? I think that might explain a thing or two.
"...How old are these french fries...?"
🤢
"Oh, you want to opt out? First click this tiny 4 pt text next to
>>> AGREE TO EVERYTHING <<<
[ⁿᵒ ᶜᵒᵒᵏᶦᵉˢ ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ]
then uncheck what you don't want us to track, then click "I don't not want to be tracked across the Internet for marketing purposes forever and ever."
We value your privacy!*
*(We just value it just a little more if you're subject to GDPR or California law...)
And if you do manage to opt out, we'll ask you again next time you visit.
Old guy checking in. When ad blockers first became a thing, my then-teenaged boys started using one and were trying to talk me into it. I was pretty dubious. I said my concern was that the model most of the web was built on was ad-supported. That is, people created content on the web to try and get visitors, and made money by selling ads on their site, or used monetized links. If everyone started using ad blockers, I said, that model would break down and either people would stop creating content or they'd go to a new model, like subscriptions. I figured few people would take time equivalent to a full time job to create content for free.
I think that largely came to pass. A lot of great online publications have closed their doors, and the are lots of paywalls now. The things is, the sites are just as much to blame. Most people wouldn't have been driven to use ad blockers if the ads hadn't gotten so untenable. A banner or a box here or there is one thing, but when there are a giant number of pop-up windows, autoplay videos, windows you can't back out of, and all the other hellish stuff, people are going to be highly motivated to find a way to stop it.
That whole arms race was one of the things that ruined the internet, in my opinion.
I also think a lot of people who grew up on the internet have completely and totally forgotten about how bad it really was. They had ads that would take over your computer, ads that would download viruses, ads that would use your modem to dial 1-900 numbers, ads that would open 800 uncloseable web pages full of porn and start playing loud screaming music and moaning sounds to gather the interest of every other person in the house just a shame you for using the internet.
And dear Jesus don't forget about the fucking toolbars. Dozens upon dozens of toolbars installed in every browser, everything from bonzi buddy to AOL email, detecting that a picture would be loaded on your screen and replacing it with one of theirs as an ad link.
Ad blockers have been necessary to use the internet for the last 20 freaking years.
If you're not the kind of person who would go to the STD clinic and fuck every person there without a condom, you should never use the internet without an ad block.
Going to my parents house to help fix why their computer was "running slow" and like 6 inches of their browser was all toolbars that they had no idea how they got there nor knew what they did.
Oooh a free lobster dinner!
This is a thing of sheer beauty ❤️
Triggered!! 🤣
Yeah, and that's what I mean when I say that the sites brought it on themselves. If the ads started reasonable, like what you'd see on the old Sunday newspaper, three wouldn't have been much reason to block them.
You also have to add on the privacy issues with all the tracking, that also drove people to use them.
There was a sort of nice period.
In the wake of a bunch of BS, Google came along with rather nice and unobtrusive ads, and it seemed to catch on. Then over the last decade, it's really gone way downhill again.
Yeah, I didn't mind an ad on the side of the screen when all of the content was front and center. But the problem is is that when you make it so that a company's livelihood depends on forcing users to do things they don't want to do, and there's no regulation on that whatsoever, it's just going to go downhill very quickly and if you think this is bad it can get much much worse.
I'm kind of surprised that isps are not injecting ads into your browsing and forcing you to watch ads just to use the internet that you paid for.
They could even charge you like a $10 a month up charge fee for ad-free internet and say that we're not going to block the ads on the rest of the internet you just won't get additional ads from us.
If I recall correctly, during one of the more recent public debates around Net Neutrality in the US, it came out that certain ISPs were doing just that. Some people were showing screenshots of ads showing up inside their steam client (which runs the storefront and community sections as webpages).
I think it is worth mentioning that patreon also surfaced as a means to provide income for creators. Whether this was a direct result of ad blockers may be debatable. However, patreon certainly provides creators with an avenue to generate income that is not dependent on ads services.
Then there are also creator focused platforms like nebula and curiosity stream, which aim to provide creators with a fair share of generated revenue.
All in all, my take on the developments over the past ten years or so is that ad revenue sharing (with creators) provided an important impulse to establish the field of online content creation, and that shortcomings of this model are now being addressed. Mainly to funnel more money to the content creators rather than platform owners.
I think the last really big hurdle to an actually democratized internet is that we need to make it easier to host at home.
Asymmetrical download upload is such a fucking pain. I would rather have 100 down and 100 up then 400 down and 5 up like I currently do.
On top of that, there aren't a lot of good systems in place to enable me to host a website from home. If IPv6 were common it would be easy for me to secure a static IP address and to point that to my DNS resolver and attach my domain, but since I've got to be on an ipv4 system since no provider in my area provides an on-ramp to IPv6 and even if they did the Grand majority of Internet users cannot resolve IPv6 addresses, it's dead in the water.
If every person in America had symmetrical upload download and a static IPv6 address for their home, we could get rid of the grand majority of the content provider and hosts and instead use democratized systems like bluesky and Kbin and Mastodon and free tube without having to worry about these multi trillion dollar companies' bottom lines.
puts on tinfoil hat
The asymmetrical internet speeds are intended to keep hobbyists and small businesses from self-hosting, thereby driving traffic to larger companies. I wonder if ISPs get any kind of kickback from large companies like AWS, cloudflare, or digital ocean. Like, reduced hosting costs for their websites and internal cloud services.
Takes tinfoil hat off
The reality is that it's probably a lot cheaper for ISPs to make connections asymmetrical because it effectively lets them pump up their download speed numbers for free. However, ISPs really should give customers the option to custom allocate bandwidth. Instead of saying X upload, Y download, you get X Mbps maximum and can choose the upload/download split.
That would definitely be fair. Like even limit the ratio between tears just give me the option to have the internet that I want at my house without paying for business internet prices.
I'm not asking for symmetrical gigabit with a static ipv4 address on a fiber line with unlimited bandwidth. I just want a decent amount of bandwidth, 50-100mb up, a static IP address that is IPv6, and I'm okay with a ipv4 address that changes.
They've had a really long time to simply flip the switch in the routers that they use to also transmit IPv6 addresses and they are not doing it.
Their hardware is not old enough in most cases to not have IPv6 available by default in the hardware and firmware, they are just intentionally choosing not to activate it.
Are there any benefits to having a static IP, aside from self-hosting purposes? Is it somehow faster or more responsive? I'd think dynamic IPs would be better (ignoring self-hosting) because at the very least, they'd allow you to dodge (d)dos attacks (which can happen with games, people sometimes get salty enough to attack other players IPs if their IP is exposed).
Dynamic IPs were primarily a way to get around a limited pool of IP addresses. That's all. Local IP addresses (think 192.168.x.x) were created for the same reason.
The NAT your home internet modem uses in providing your local network IP does provide a hard firewall between your computer and the internet, but that is more a side effect of the technology than anything else.
The only use or reason for having a static IP is to have a domain name that resolves to that IP and knowing that the domain register can set the IP address and it's good until everything falls apart for lack of payment.
The other use of having a static IP is for a VPN, to remote back into your home network. Technically you can use both of these services with non-static vpns because most people's home internet does not change their IP addresses that often and there are services called dynamic DNS resolvers that you can get to constantly update your rotating IP address to a specific domain name.
You will not see any speed increases or throughput increases from having a set ip, it just simplifies running a home domain or home network because then you don't have to worry about ddns.
I've got symmetrical gigabit and an IP address I can remember
Just because you are 1/8th immortal does not mean that you get to rub it in our faces.
My dream for the past 3-4 years is something like a raspberry pi that you could just plug into power+internet+a chunky hard drive at home to have your own kbin/masto/lemmy/peertube instance.
I don't know how one can bring this about, though, in a more meaningful way than yet another hackaday.io post.
I feel like I have seen something like this. Just an all-in-one home server box.
I know you can make one but I get what you're saying is that you want it to be an appliance.
I don't know if "appliance" is how I would describe it but, yeah, something that's as plug-and-play as possible. I guess in the sense that off the shelf, it would be as easy to use as a dishwasher or toaster.
Until I became aware of the fediverse and activitypub, I thought that any such project would be doomed to fail - like most of the smart home market, you're tied to the manufacturer not only for compatible hardware but more crucially to talk with their servers.
Now I'm starting to think it is feasible, but still too many unknowns to bet a business on it.
Eh, I'm not sure it's much improved. In the ad model, the content creator owned the site and got money from selling ads. The more traffic they got, the more they could charge. In the new model, a corporation owns the site and takes a cut of whatever the creator generates.
Not necessarily. For instance, YouTube uses the old ad model and is of course not creator owned.
Additionally, you can use patreon while also using (and capitalising on) your own content distribution systems.
This is all to say, I do think the ad model may stay somewhat relevant, however, I also think that other income avenues are helpful and enable content creators more flexibility in terms of the manner in which they think they can best reach their audiences while generating income
Worth pointing out that ad blockers don't work for ads that are inserted into a video stream, so there was no need to change that model there. Also, YouTube is an example of a site that's not owned by the content creator. YouTube makes the money from the ads, then gives the significant creators a cut.
I wonder how stable the situation for in-stream ads really is. Paid sponsorships are nothing new, yet with browser extensions like sponsorblock becoming more and more popular I doubt the arms race will stop any time soon.
Not sure if arms race is the right way to put it when 1 side is deploying nukes and the other is only deploying shields. Money ruined the internet, ads is just one way how it did that.
That actually is a major facet of the military arms race. Side A develops a missile. Side B develops an anti-missile missile. So side A develops a missile with multiple warheads or builds more missiles so they won't all be shot down, etc. The defensive systems spawn the development of more or more-devastating offensive systems.
I still see one party racing with arms and one party trying to survive.
I used to not care about ads in Google because they were minimal. I was OK with ABP "acceptable ads".
But I've since gone full scorched earth. Fuck them all, their trackers, their fake news, the terrible products. I'm still OK with ads in my search results (no longer using Google) because they are often relevant to something I'm looking for. But for the rest, the Web stopped deserving my respect. I don't consume that much content online, and I pay for most of the few things I do consume.
As a software and data guy, having my search results tainted by paid content is pretty infuriating. I wouldn't care if there were ads to the side or something, but I find things like Amazon's search results almost completely unusable. And early on I used to point out to people how amazing Amazon's search engine really was. It was a marvel at getting you to exactly what you were looking to buy. Now it's optimized for showing you what they want to sell.
It really doesn't matter what the users did in response, because the MBAs' greed is such that they would have eventually ruined everything anyway no matter how compliant or patient the users were. It doesn't matter how much they get, it's never enough.
I’m also old (well, middle-aged is the right word I guess), but having lived through the adpocalypse that was the early 2000s, when the majority of sites were rushing to demonstrate their lofty stock valuations and satisfy their debtors by bringing in as much revenue as possible no matter the cost to the user base, I never really had that much patience for this business model, especially not once they discovered the concept of pop-ups (or worse, pop-unders).
I’ve also personally worked for a site whose business model was entirely based on SEO and click funneling and that has further eroded my patience to pretty zero. Pretty much none of our developer meetings were ever about “how can we make the product more useful to our users so they’ll actually WANT to come back”, it was always “our numbers are declining, how can we jam in more ads in order to meet the quarterly revenue goals?”
Yes, there are some sites that DO work hard to make actual, original content in order to earn those clicks, but for the most part, it’s an amoral, downright parasitical industry that doesn’t deserve any sympathy or goodwill.
It was already being enshittified, adblockers had fuck all to do with it since even today they represent a fraction of all users.
The jack wagons who decided to push web 2.0 as a money making gig are to blame, not the users.
I doubt very much adblockers are to blame for that. They're a convenient excuse for those trying to squeeze as much money as possible from their users... but they would have gone that route no matter what. It's just the nature of the economic system we live in.
No, that's what ruined the web.
I'm perfectly happy to pay for things I value, especially if the alternative is being forced to pay with my time and attention. The evidence also doesn't entirely support your argument, since plenty of places that you pay for still try to show ads.
Where was it ever said that a site could only use one model? The same is/was true of newspapers that cost you a subscription but also sold ads. Without the ads, the subscription would be much more expensive.
I personally am unlikely to pay for a huge variety of news sites and other publications, but I really appreciated having access to all that content for free. Sure, I might pay for one or two especially valuable sites, but my personal opinion is that it was better when the sites were making enough money to make it worthwhile for them by selling a reasonable amount of advertising, and the content was free to the users.
If your claim were accurate, they wouldn't have to resort to putting ads on websites that are subscription based.
Unless you want to make the argument they're just greedy bastards, which then means your first argument is bull, because they were already greedy bastards enshittifying it all well before adblockers were even close to commonplace.
And again, adblockers even today account for a fraction of users.
42% is a fraction, but it's a huge fraction. Higher in some demographics, lower in others.
How do you figure? Most business ventures will ask themselves how much a customer would pay for their product. If the answer is lower than enough to make product, they either won't enter the market or they'll figure out a way to lower the price. Selling ads is a way to lower the price. Also worth noting that ads used to generate a lot more revenue than they do now.
"Without the ads, the subscription would be much more expensive."
That's not at all how it works. How is it that adults think prices are based on costs? They teach supply and demand in high school.
As I said elsewhere, for most products, the makers ask how much they think people would be willing to pay for it. If that price is lower than an amount that would generate reasonable profit, they'll either no go to market or they'll look for ways to reduce or offset costs. Ads are a common way of keeping the price within what people are willing to pay.
No, that assumes that prices are based on cost, which is not true. Ads are a way to make money on top of what people will pay.
He didn't write a multi page thesis covering every single use case, quick tell him he's wrong!
You're right that ads supported the model, but the model was also generally anarcho-communist in nature. That people wanted to experience it without ads was expected, and considered fine. It is fine.
The more popular ad blocking gets, the more I worry about the ad industry lobbying to criminalize blocking ads as "theft of revenue" or some insane concept along that line.
And you just know the burden of that new criminalization won't come with the expensive and long legal procedures needed to bad all the ad blockers but instead will just be a piecemeal tax charged to consumers
I feel like a big setup for this is all the "forced binding arbitration" TOSs that are quietly being pushed for EVERY service.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/majority-of-americans-now-use-ad-blockers/ar-BB1kEhis
That's why ads are now being tested on the OS level.
lol
That, and the spam texts and calls. I hit the wall with this last night, and finally got a call/text screening app. fuck that noise.
I just don't even answer my phone anymore unless I recognize the number. It's exhausting.
You're supposed to be able to in the US too, but most of the spammers don't care about the law unfortunately.
I was spending way too much time blocking numbers. I legit got 3-4 calls a day and about the same for texts. It seems to go in spurts though
I've noticed that spurts thing too. I'm a sole proprietor so I also get endless business loan text spam. Those also seem to go in spurts for some reason. One week I'll get two a day and then nothing for the next couple weeks.
If you're on Android, checkout Yet Another Call Blocker. Works great, I've used it for 10 years now.
Time to learn how to Linux, I guess...
nowadays there's not even that much to learn, probably biggest difference is just the file system, and getting out of the horrid habit of downloading programs from the browser.
Where do you download programs from?
primarily like on mobile, you just download from the "app store".
This can either be done via terminal (something like "apt install blender") or via a graphical program like Discover for the KDE desktop, in which case it's literally just like a mobile app store where you search for the program, click "install" and that's it.
There are some alternate ways of installing programs, which can involve downloading from a website, but that's for getting the very freshest release of a program or for very niche projects that aren't included in the distro's software repository yet.
So if you're an android power user it's exactly like that, most apps come from the store, but some apps you have to download from the web.
The repository of the distro that you're running or flathub. Sometimes also an AppImage from a GitHub/GitLab releases page if it's an obscure program.
The other 33 are lying.
I refused to use adblockers on principle - not because I thought multibillion corpos needed more money, but because I recognized that sites using ads to sustain their business model needed views to maintain their viability in our fucked capitalist system.
Then Youtube swapped to three unskippable fucking ads after every video.
Now I just whitelist decent sites and let Adblock take care of the rest.
I wish I could semi-whitelist (graylist?) many websites, like allowing only "acceptable ads" so that the website can pay for costs and make a small profit while not blowing up my screen with ads. At the same time, many websites (Reddit, most recipe sites, and any text site with an autoplaying video) absolutely deserves a full ad blacklist for disrespecting their users so much. Still other websites deserve a full whitelist.
Never see ads using ublock
Yeah I whitelist as much as I can, but the default is to block because there will be sites that I visit once that would be unusable otherwise. If I find myself visiting more than once, I turn off the ad blocker to see if the site is still usable. If it's not, sorry, no ad revenue for you, shitty site.
I block all ads, everywhere, period. No whitelists, no nothing.
Because I got sick of ending up with malware infected ads and having to clean up my computer (back when I was on windows, I'm sure the days not far off where linux will have the same problem)
All these companies crying about ad revenues and shit? If they ever policed the ads they force down our throats for content, So they didnt serve malware, or obnoxiously loud or long ads, or any other bullshit, then people wouldnt have to need ad blocking tools.
I block ads specifically so websites that rely on ads as revenue die.
You do know you can whitelist websites in order to selectively disable the adblocking in case you feel like they deserve your support, right?
Selecting which sites serves you malware kinda defeats the point of blocking ads in the first place.
IDK, it's kinda like being a germaphobe and avoiding the general public because they're unwashed and filthy, but still allowing certain people to visit you once you've assured yourself they practice regular hygiene, no?
No.
Cause getting a cold isnt going to turn you into a botnet or steal your banking information or encrypt your house and hold it for ransom.
If you want a bodily example, Its like wearing a condom when you have random sex with strangers. Unless you are looking to catch something horrific, you use protection, every time, all the time.
Actually, yes, it kinda is. If you catch a virus, it basically uses your body as a host to produce more of itself to send out and infect others with, just like a botnet. And I'm no medical expert but I'm sure you could find a similar equivalency for the other example. There's a reason the term "virus" was adopted into computer science, because certain software can exhibit much of the same behavior as the real life thing. It's just art imitating life, that's all.
Even then you might end up choosing not to use one, if you do end up meeting that special someone and get them tested for STIs.
Sure, choose not to use one.
Don't come crying to me to fix it when you pick up multiple nasty infections though. Go live with the consequences of your actions.
I appreciate your concern. Thanks for your input and have a nice day!
You do you
Although I pity you
Either that or they have 20 useless extensions.
Plot twist: they have extensions, but none are active.
Because Ublock Origin is better than AdBlock in every way? Or maybe because they're already using PiHole?
I doubt people are using better options as an argument for this. The Youtube stuff makes the news like every other for blocking people, yet I haven't noticed any of it. If it weren't for lemmy and reddit spamming it I wouldn't have known it was possible and I'm not even doing anything crazy. Just Firefox and ublock. If people were using great options, it wouldn't have even been making the news because no one would have noticed.
We should be more grateful for these people. Our adblockers function because they don't bother using them.
The moment that most of society starts using adblockers is the moment they become defunct when the big corporations begin actively fighting them. I've already witnessed this with YouTube Vanced/Revanced.
What's wrong with youtube vanced? It works just fine for me.
How long have you been using it?
I've been using it for years. About six months ago or somewhere around that, YouTube started a small campaign against adblockers though. In that campaign, they actually forced Vanced to rebrand to Revanced due to a lawsuit. It was in this time that through the campaign more people became aware of adblockers.
This actually sucked for users like me. The amount of times I'd have to repatch Revanced due to the constant updates was awful. It's more stable now, but if this ever happens again it will be annoying.
If people bring attention back to adblockers, then it will be like this again. Sites will be threatening legal action and restructuring themselves to break adblockers, while adblockers will have to constantly update in order to stay functional.
vanced did not "rebrand" into revanced.
revanced is a whole new thing build from the ground up
Interesting. It's maybe been like a year or so for me. I have had to repatch a couple times. Good to know I got more bullshit to look forward to.
Majority of society:
every time I hear the 3rd one I lose a little bit more faith in humanity
It's hard to comprehend their mindset
I can give you another one from my wife:
"I need to watch ads to get rewards or get lives for [whatever game she's playing on her phone]."
To be fair targeted ads based on what I like I don't find as a problem as long as they are not intrusive and very in your face! But due to how bad most ads are I don't see even those as I always have adblock on!
Your the problem.
I enjoy manipulating the advertising targeting algorithm to give me advertisements for industrial machinery, cloud computing, surveys, targeted advertisements, and other things I am not remotely in the market for.
Remember in Futurama when Fry finally goes online in the future and get attacked by ads. Or similar in Altered Carbon with whatever that contact-lens-AR thing was and the character spins out.
I don't know why people evangelize others using adblock. The more mainstream it becomes, the more likely websites use effort to stifle their use.
Just let's keep it on the dl so we benefit.
ublock does a good job of blocking ad block blockers at least on major sites.
I want businesses relying on ads to die though. Doesn't work if too few people use adblockers.
Whats your solution for covering hosting costs?
Donation, federation (spreading the load so that a single person's hosting cost are easy for them to cover), non-intrusive premium features, public funding
That cat got out of the bag more than 10 years ago.
I think we don't give gradual acclimatisation enough credit here. Most of my students have never heard of Firefox and tools like ublock origin because they're acclimatised to the mobile ecosystem
"How do I install something? I use the app store."
"Oh, but I already have the internet on my phone, why would I want a 3rd party app to use the internet" (think old people who mix up AOL with the internet in reverse!)
As soon as I show them, they convert in seconds - they've forgotten web pages without adverts can exist.
When I see a person with no ad blockers use the web my brain breaks seeing all the ads. Advertising is a malevolent force. Anyone who works in marketing ranks just above people who join the armed forces, police, and weapons manufacturing in my book. I think of big tobacco as better people.
Let's not exaggerate either, marketing people don't have their main motive of profit to make people addicted to a toxic and carcinogenic product.
Well those tobacco companies still have advertisements don't they?
Kinda not? In many places is illegal to advertise tobacco, and the marketing people are the same who do the anti-tobacco campaigns and many other PSAs.
You could kinda say that marketing people were the ones who ended Pinochet dictatorship even, every tool can be used to do harm, but just as the tool a mugger uses to stab a victim is a knife, knife as well is the scalpel that a surgeon will use to save that person, a tool on it's own rarely is good or bad, and marketing is a tool.
I'm not saying that they're marketing is not annoying or many times bad, just that that is not inherently bad.
...?
The point of marketing is to make people buy stuff they wouldn't have bought otherwise, through manipulation of the brain.
They are directly responsible for our overconsumption and by extension the huge amounts of plastic waste in the ocean, the destruction of ecology and climate change.
They are most definitely way worse than tobacco, at least they only damage the body and the people around the user.
I have no less than a dozen plugins in my browser to make the Internet usable. More than half is just for YouTube.
Took me some time to get used to, but I deactivated all the YouTube plugins and now use Freetube an my desktop/laptop.
Freetube is great. I just wish the UI was better about bookmarking playlists and there was some way to sync my progress across devices, including Android
Have you tried the GrayJay app? I've been using it to cast Twitch and youtube to my TV, Download videos, and its got polycentric which is some kind of alternative to youtubes comments for videos
That sounds cool! Can I Sync playlist watch history between Linux, Windows, and android?
I'm not sure, but you can login to youtube from the plugins and YouTube can sync the watch history its under sources > YouTube > provide YouTube activity.
There's no desktop app yet as of now.
I was already sick of all the freaking Taylor Swift ads but Roku announcing that video ads are coming to the home screen was the last straw for me. Finally set up a Pi-hole and Roku ads are gone. I know it's an ongoing war and this is just one battle, but damn it's nice right now. I even became a supporter on Patreon. ❤️
I still run uBlock Origin on all my browsers, though.
Yarr, this be the golden years for alternative home media platforms.
My dodgy friend, I have appealed to my wife not once or twice but three times that we should drop all our subs and return to those placid waters that I sailed in my younger days. She has yet to relent in her view that we should stay on the right side of the law. I look for any opportunity to press my advantage. Do you have a suggestion as to the perfect argument that will sway her?
Tell her that the scurvy money lubbars have formed a trade organization that hoards booty. Money be a terrible temptation for sin and removin temptation from them is the only Christian thing to do. Iffen yee fly the flag of a different country and only dock at exclusive ports they will never catch yee.
Yee can even rig yer ship to scuttle the moment yer actual flag is raised.
Solid suggestions! I'll keep at it.
My family was reluctant to watch movies from my jellyfin server until I told them I use a seed box to torrent and host the jellyfin server
Interesting! I didn't know this was a thing.
Sonarr and radarr can automate torrent gathering. They can read a list of shows from places like Trakt, then ask torrent sites for the download once it becomes available.
Public torrent sites are less reliable and under relatively more surveillance. Private trackers are a good option, but it takes a bit of effort to gain entry and maintain membership.
There are also platforms like Seren or Fen, which are addons for a media program called Kodi. These programs can automate streaming from non-torrent sources. Free sources can have limited bandwidth, but it's watchable usually. You'll get the occasional gap in an episode. Paid services like Real Debrid can offer faster streaming and better coverage.
All of this should be behind a VPN.
Disable ad blocking temporarily because it's not on the "right side of the law"
LMAO are you trying to get me divorced
Because they're not the "default". Most folks stick with whatever comes on their device by default; Edge on Windows, Safari on MacOS/iOS, Chrome on Android, etc. Anything beyond just picking it up and turning it on requires forethought and effort, which most users don't care about.
Well it's really due to the fact that most people are ignorant about computer technology. I personally use pi-hole.
Note that PiVPN is only being maintained on a “best effort” basis, so you may wish to look into the component parts separately and just install that way.
https://github.com/pivpn/pivpn/releases/tag/v4.6.1
Y'all ever try NoScript too? Freaking wild how some sites need to use like 30 shady JavaScript modules just to function.
It's a burden, but it blocks things like the "invisible facebook pixel" for instance...
I use noscript and ads don't load unless I whitelist them. Videos won't autoplay unless I whitelist them. I am the internet's bouncer
I used to use it all the time, but after a few years I got tired of constantly playing a game of "which blocked script is breaking everything this time" every time I visit a new website.
I wish I could remember the discussion (ADHD), but I remember someone pointing out to me a few years back that Ublock Origin makes NoScript redundant. It does have the ability to block scripts, it just enables them by default instead of blocking them. Don't quote me on this but I believe the reason was because it only blocks malicious Javascript.
I like noscript. It's pretty aggressive, but so are the trackers.
I use it and by default I block everything
You are drastically overestimating the average persons technical competency.
Google being the default on Apple devices was literally all they needed to do for the vast majority of web searches on iOS devices. And it’s a baked in setting, no need to install anything.
I learned recently that banner ads on websites and apps track your physical location, which is then sold to all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons.
"The door is there, for anyone with a sincere, passionate desire to learn. Which sounds really nice, 'anyone with a sincere and passionate desire to learn.' I just eliminated 90% of the world. 90% of the world wants to sit at home and watch Honey Boo Boo." --Chris Boden.
Sophisticated, powerful technology able to revolutionize the world becomes not only available but cheap, half the world's population carries around a supercomputer in their pocket with an always-on connection to the sumtotal of all human knowledge, and that device's user interface is designed to express little more than "Dat wun daddy watch me dat video dat wun now!" Because that's the level at which nearly everyone is willing to approach computers.
Why people pay for adblocker these day ? Adguard ?
Because for many (including me) it's by far the best one. I get a system-wide adblocker and vpn on my phone and computer with really good apps. Nothing else has been both so good and easy so I'm more than happy to pay for it, it's also only $30 per year. I really like their telegram group too, they post news and articles both from them and others about anything related to privacy and so on. They recently wrote about Microsofts addition of ads in Windows and released an update that disabled those.
$30 per year is a lot
And 30$ is subscription.
I would like to buy $30 once and for good. I don't want subscription app.
ublock and pihole here. Pihole is usually blocking 20-30% of all DNS queries for my home network. Smart TVs are the worst offender.
Same, only I use AdGuard Home instead of PiHole
Pihole checking in
Pi-hole with unbound
Pihole, the IT nerd way to get it done!
Checking in too lol.
pfsense with blockering
The hell diju say about my hole!
DNS based blocking only goes so far, it certainly isn't enough
What's private DNS and how do I use it?
I have Adguard and I believe it's using Google DNS.
Thanks.
All you do is set your DNS servers to dns.adguard-dns.com, and now ads are blocked system-wide. Even works on Android.
Hey thanks, I found it in the settings.
Lookup nextdns. They have guides
I use mullvad dns
Alphabet's cracking down on blocking YouTube ads - nothing works at the moment that I've found. So, no YouTube, cause that shit's a dumpster fire without functional adblock. I mean, it's a dumpster fire anyway, but it's at least trash I can sort through.
Ublock origin + Firefox works and if you're on android there's YouTube Revanced
Thank you, I'll give that a shot!
e: Worked, even on a Chromebook.
Unlock origin on Firefox on my devices haven't seen an ad yet
Throw in sponsor block and you miss in video ads too. Unless the vid was released like 5 mins ago
I have Adblock and uBlock Origin on Chrome and never see YouTube ads. I assume uBlock Origin does the trick alone. (I know I should switch back to Firefox, but I'm too lazy if it's working.)
Hah, you're right, works in Chrome too. Thanks!
I watch youtube daily and haven't seen an ad in I don't know how long. I use only firefox with ublock origin for adblocking.
Adblock Plus still works for me on YouTube. I click a video, and when it loads there's a quick flash where the ad would have played then the video starts. So it looks like it's just autoskipping them quickly without displaying anything. Not even the 5 second thing happens.
ReVanced for me
The built-in ad block for my browser seems to work for me.
Probably because they were never told they were a thing, let alone, how to install them
Is AdBlock plus actually open source?
I had to force my wife to install one, like bish how can you even handle the amount of ads you get spammed with.
There should should be an ad manager that wont actually block ads but let them load into a fake page that the user does not see
Isn't that what Adnauseam does?
Whitelist firewall - I have become adpocalypse, destroyer of bad sequels, lover of Web One.
Unpopular opinion incoming:
You know when you were playing hide and seek, found the perfect hiding place, and you reject anyone else who tries to hide in that place?
DON'T TELL ANYONE ABOUT ADBLOCKERS!
Seriously, corpos will crack down hard. I mean, real hard on adblockers. This is an arms race that corporations have not yet realised because not enough people are using ad blockers. However, if more and more people are using it, then corporations will also be trying to catch up and that is something they will win because of greater resources.
This will be like with VPN; as many VPN IP addresses have been flagged and blocked as the service became more popular. And some of these VPNs have not updated the IP addresses making access to many websites nigh impossible or awkward-- unless you want to trawl through countless addresses. I'm afraid the same thing will happen with adblockers. This is something that open source adblockers could not easily win-- if they could win.
they will try to crack down on it either way, might as well go out with a fight. The more popular it is to use adblocking and the less niche weirdo psycho, the less "normal" it is for whatever shit they wanna do, however far they want to go to literally force bullshit into your brain wether you want it or not.
Amigo - the corpos already know. They also know that anyone who hates ads enough to install and maintain ad blockers is also not going to click on ads. They're wasted impressions. The amount an advertiser pays to put an ad in front of you is a rounding error compared to the amount they pay when you click.
When I worked at G I had a Linux laptop. It came pre-installed with Firefox and uBlock origin in addition to Chrome.
If Google is distributing Firefox with uBlock internally to employees they know about ad blockers.
It's similar to how scam emails always have egregious spelling errors: they're trying to select out the people that won't fall for the scam.
No idea what adguard is, I used adblock plus before thought I'm not using it now as for why I'm not using it I have no idea but I think some ads were getting through otherwise I would not have switched form it. For a few years now I use Ublock and never had a problem with it, in fact it's the first thing I install on any machine after I finish install an os on it.
I would imagine it boils down to the ads don't bother them.
I've used adblockers so long, when we got a DVR cable box, I would always keep everything rewound by 10 minutes specifically to skip all the commercials so I wouldn't have any on TV, either.
brave has a one built in 🙏
I don't use adblock because it increase my browser fingerprint I just disable all JavaScript , no cookies and block tracker requests by my DNS server.
Is this a joke? All those things are going to make you stand out more than using adblocker
not exactly, JavaScript is the most important piece that sites uses to track users . Not the only but the most important
No.
i don't understand how brave gets so much rep
Because it's brave like a lion and not coward like a fox on fire.
There's a shitcoin associated with it.
All your "effort" gets flushed down the toilet with Brave lol
Will all of this finally get rid of the ads on the YouTube app on my TV?
No
If you have Android tv, you can use smarttube instead of the official one.
I do not. It's an LG with WebOS.
Too much work, in all honesty. Also our Internet service provider also provides the router and I'm not sure about replacing it. We have a bulk deal with the whole building.
I'll just keep muting the ads and look away while I do the countdown in my head lol. It's very seldom that I watch YouTube on my TV anyway. 😌
I don't use an ad blocker. What sites do you visit that you need one?
At work when I am googling for help some of the sites are obnoxious but not too bad.
A good portion of the news sites I read. If I divide the total area that goes for text and ads, it's around 35-65. Then there's taboola ads that show at the bottom, before the related articles. uBlock also stops the majority of stupid "WAIT, SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER" modal that shows up as soon as the mouse exits the window
Any shopping sites is chock full of trackers and external ads, too. Lemme browse shit in peace.
You're getting down votes, which is just silly.
Back in the day, a man wasn't really a man unless he changed his own oil and tuned up the car himself. That mentality has reemerged in the 21st century.
I don't think it should be tied to "manliness" but people should have some basic understanding of the tools they use and how they work.
This.
There's a clear concerted corporate effort to push this idea that everything one uses every day is
Doesn't matter. Light switches to email to cars. Nobody knows how it works even on an ELI5 level.
I can't be an expert in all things but how are people comfortable with this level of ignorant dependence? Even to the point of defending it? "I shouldn't have to know how my car/computer/whatever works." I've literally heard this.
Boggles the mind.
People are capable of a great many skills and holding a lot of knowledge about a great many things...and yet a majority are taught not to learn anything after school, maybe know how to do a job, and otherwise can't handle any task that doesn't involve a credit card payment.
Things could be so much better...
I got downvoted as well.
People really seem to take the idea personally.
Lots of unpopular opinions in here and I'm willing to add mine to the mix.
I'm well aware of ad blockers, and use them occasionally. I also block trackers like pendo through DNS entries on my router. I pay for YouTube.
But I also allow ads and welcome them.
I remember when you couldn't get email unless you were in a school or paid for it. I remember a time when the fastest Internet loaded images line by line. I remember an Internet without videos, or even GIFs.
Services cost money. You use the service, you are the commodity. I've accepted this. A few ads don't kill me and it helps to support providers. I'm quite numb to ads.
Yes they are tracking me and selling my data, but what does that actually mean? I get more targeted offers. More targeted ads.
We've become scared of being tracked by corporations, but for what reason?
Providing content costs money. The days of the free Internet will quickly come to an end without advertisers.
"We've become scared of being tracked by corporations, but for what reason?" The line between corporations and government is increasingly blurring. The amount and types of data and the ease and lack of any restrictions on the data corporations collect. To make a statement like this in the wake of project Nimbus is an indicator of naivety permissible to you by a fortunate and comfortable life. Situations within this world can turn on a dime ; I emplore you to think of the worst case scenarios with corporate data sharing if not for the future well being of yourself, than at least to minimize the support of these practices which are currently and will continue to negatively affect others. What was once considered fringe paranoia with use of these "free" services is now clear and present danger.
This is why we need consumer focused privacy laws. Within our lifetime there will no longer be free content or we will not be able to escape ads (Idiocracy style).
Agree better laws are needed for this, but ultimately there is plenty of room for free content with ads - you aren't remembering that there was good information, entertainment, and even services before the ad drivem corporate internet took over. Some things of value maybe shouldnt be free / could be better if they weren't. I'm not sure where the happy medium lies, but it has gone far too far in one direction and complacency feeds the fire.
And how much of that content was provided at a loss?
YouTube has always had ads. But less usage meant less cost. If 40% are using ad blockers, more ads will be shown to the 60%.
There is an unspoken agreement that if you consume you allow the ads. By using ad blockers, we've brought a lot of this on ourselves.
That being said, my views are very fantastical. Profit is the ultimate driver and very few (wiki who doesn't even use ads) are only hoping to cover costs.
There needs to be a balance.
Lol are you moral grandstanding against adblockers, fuckin weirdo
My problem main problem with ads is that websites like YouTube and SoundCloud are locking content they don't own behind ads. But they'll remove those ads if you pay them money. I know some creators allow monetization on their channels, but I've watched plenty of videos and streamed several albums that were uploaded by people who didn't own the content and it's still locked behind ads.
There is still a non zero cost associated with storing and streaming this content.
And profiting off of ads placed on stolen content is not a solution
Yeah I value my mental wellbeing more than these companies.
Constant exposure to ads is not good for your health, literally..