Adblockers stop publishers serving ads to (or even seeing) 1bn web users - Press Gazette
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I used the internet for a long time before ad blockers even existed. Everybody simply ignored ads, instead. But that wasn't good enough for the advertisers. They weren't happy unless we were forced to look at the ads. Extraordinarily obtrusive ads. Popup ads. Popunder ads. That's when people started blocking ads. When you realized that your browser always ended up with 20 extra advertising windows.
Nobody really cared about blocking ads until advertisers forced us to. They made the internet annoying to use, and sometimes impossible to use.
Advertisers couldn't just be happy with people ignoring their ads, so they forced our hands and fucked themselves in the process. Now, we block them by default. I don't even know any websites that have unobtrusive ads because I never see their ads in the first place.
Now, they want to go back to the time when we would see their ads but ignore them. Fuck off. We know we can't even give them that much. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile.
the big turning point I remember was a combo of popups and interstitial ads
Popups we all know and hate as they still exist and are disgusting. They were obviously gross and ate up ram and stole focus and shit
But the interstitial ads were also gross. You’d click a link and then get redirected to an ad for 10 seconds and then redirected to content. Or a forum where the first reply was replaced with an ad that was formatted to look like a post
Like adblocking was a niche thing prior to the advertising industry being absolute scumbags. The original idea that allowing advertising to support free services like forums and such wasn’t horrible, put a banner ad up, maybe a referral link, etc. but that was never enough for the insidious ad industry. Like every other domain they’ve touched (television, news, nature, stores, cities, clothing, games, sports, literally everything a human being interacts with).
The hardline people that blocked banner ads way back when and loudly complained allowing advertising in any capacity on the internet would ruin everything were correct. We all groaned because no one wanted to donate to cover the hosting bills (which often turned out to be grossly inflated on larger sites by greedy site operators looking to make bank off their community) but we should have listened
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I used the internet for a long time before ad blockers even existed. Everybody simply ignored ads, instead. But that wasn't good enough for the advertisers. They weren't happy unless we were forced to look at the ads. Extraordinarily obtrusive ads. Popup ads. Popunder ads. That's when people started blocking ads. When you realized that your browser always ended up with 20 extra advertising windows.
Nobody really cared about blocking ads until advertisers forced us to. They made the internet annoying to use, and sometimes impossible to use.
Advertisers couldn't just be happy with people ignoring their ads, so they forced our hands and fucked themselves in the process. Now, we block them by default. I don't even know any websites that have unobtrusive ads because I never see their ads in the first place.
Now, they want to go back to the time when we would see their ads but ignore them. Fuck off. We know we can't even give them that much. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile.
The main clencher that got me running a blocker were the few sites whose payload was 90% ad related and as long as the page was open it kept feeding me more ads until a gigabyte of RAM and 5% of my CPU were dedicated to something I wasn't even looking at.
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The trade body called it “illegal circumvention technology”
Lol. Fuck off.
What should be considered illegal circumvention is allowing articles behind a paywall to be included in search results.
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I used the internet for a long time before ad blockers even existed. Everybody simply ignored ads, instead. But that wasn't good enough for the advertisers. They weren't happy unless we were forced to look at the ads. Extraordinarily obtrusive ads. Popup ads. Popunder ads. That's when people started blocking ads. When you realized that your browser always ended up with 20 extra advertising windows.
Nobody really cared about blocking ads until advertisers forced us to. They made the internet annoying to use, and sometimes impossible to use.
Advertisers couldn't just be happy with people ignoring their ads, so they forced our hands and fucked themselves in the process. Now, we block them by default. I don't even know any websites that have unobtrusive ads because I never see their ads in the first place.
Now, they want to go back to the time when we would see their ads but ignore them. Fuck off. We know we can't even give them that much. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile.
Preach!!!
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I used the internet for a long time before ad blockers even existed. Everybody simply ignored ads, instead. But that wasn't good enough for the advertisers. They weren't happy unless we were forced to look at the ads. Extraordinarily obtrusive ads. Popup ads. Popunder ads. That's when people started blocking ads. When you realized that your browser always ended up with 20 extra advertising windows.
Nobody really cared about blocking ads until advertisers forced us to. They made the internet annoying to use, and sometimes impossible to use.
Advertisers couldn't just be happy with people ignoring their ads, so they forced our hands and fucked themselves in the process. Now, we block them by default. I don't even know any websites that have unobtrusive ads because I never see their ads in the first place.
Now, they want to go back to the time when we would see their ads but ignore them. Fuck off. We know we can't even give them that much. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile.
Ads used to be static text in the sidebar that the site owner manually put there. They didn't have any tracking and didn't slow down the loading time. Once they started adding images, I started using an ad blocker. I was stuck on dial-up until 2008 and a single, small image could add 10 or more seconds to the page loading time.
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Raw-dogging the internet without an adblocker is about as irresponsible as not using contraception
Perfection!
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Advertising should be illegal. Huge waste of money and everyone's time.
Like "back in the day" on TV: turning the volume of the ads up to be louder than the program you are watching; bells, horns, alarms; extremely misleading ads (people doing things absolutely stupidly, but suddenly better with product)... Loud and abusive scams is too much of it!
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The main clencher that got me running a blocker were the few sites whose payload was 90% ad related and as long as the page was open it kept feeding me more ads until a gigabyte of RAM and 5% of my CPU were dedicated to something I wasn't even looking at.
Ex was mad that my PiHole was blocking some FB stuff so I turned it off.
"The internet's slow."
Looked over her shoulder and pointed to her (still loading) screen:
"Ad, ad, ad, ad, ad, ad, ad, ad..."
"FINE! Turn it back on!"
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It's an interesting stance, but ask yourself, where is the line between advertising and promotion or sponsorship.
I think that requiring that advertising is factual might be a better way to address the issue.
Ultimately as a society we haven't come up with a better way to communicate the existence of products and services to each other, and we've been using advertising for 5,000 years or so.
The oldest advertisement in the world found in Thebes, Egypt | Did you know that
Did you know that first ever written advertisement took place around 3000 BC? The particular sign appeared on the ruins of the Egyptian city of Thebes.
Trip and Travel Blog (tripandtravelblog.com)
Here's how you make people aware of your products.
You sell a quality product for a reasonable price.
That's it.
Instead, capitolism has become this game of cat and mouse where the consumers ALWAYS lose. Just a game of shrinking product sizes, reducing quality, and raising prices. Little by little.
It's most obvious when you haven't had a product in a while, maybe years, and you grab it again. Only to realize they've gone through several iterations of enshitification.
When I was a kid, Andy Capps Cheese Fries used to be about as long as my pinky, and they were thick. Now it's like the length of my pinky until my second knockle, and it's like the same thickness as a pretzle stick. Sure, it's technically the same product, but everytime I buy them I realize why I was disappointed the last time I bought them. And I won't buy them for another 5 years. Maybe by then they'll be the length of my pinky nail and as thick as a sewing pin, but cost 8 dollars instead of the 25 cents it was when I was a kid.
They did a durability test on hammers. In one side was an old rusty hammer. It had a date of 1931 on it. In the other was a brand new hammer bought that same day from Home Depot.
The new hammer crumbled long before the 1931 hammer did. This test was done in 2017.
But I never buy products because they advertise. I buy them because I remember how good it was the last time.
Except now, you're advertising BAD memories. Because when I go in expecting this much, with this quality, and instead I get a fraction of it, with only a fraction of the quality.....congradulations. You saved money on production costs. You also pushed your customer away from being a repeat customer.
All this business schools, and all the data they have I'm sure shows that their way is better. So explain to me why it seems businesses these days struggle to make the line go up, but when I was a kid business was booming?
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Likewise, I can prevent anything from even entering my network that I don't want on it.
That's more to the point!
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Also, aren’t most folks using apps these days? I have elders and younger relatives that literally don’t know how to use a web browser.
I wouldn’t want to be a web publisher right now…
Whats not to know?
Step 1) Open the browser.
There is no step 2. Just go wherever you want, and read. Or watch videos. If you don't know where something is, search for it. The browser does all the work. That's like saying you don't know how to use a microwave.
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They call it "dark traffic" - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.
Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.
Good
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I still whitelist sites with sensible, unobtrusive ads. Axios for instance, which are mostly 1st party. But that’s increasingly the exception.
I had to rip APNews out when Google Ads tried to serve me malware.
What was the malware?
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They call it "dark traffic" - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.
Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.
I have said it before and I'll say it again.
Adblockers are a critical part of any modern computer's security suit, and everyone should use them.
I won't even consider removing mine unless the owners of a site with ads take full responsibility for any dammage to my computer coming from visiting their site with out an adblocker.
This is due to the fact that ads can be hijacked and infect your computer with malware just by accessing the site.
I have also experienced my browser being hijacked by clicking a link that was compromized, it redirected my browser in a loop, then opened a javascript password popup box that took all focus from the browser window and refused to go away, while the page below displayed a message that I needed to call tech support.
It was very annoying to resolve, Firefox would by default restore any pages that was open in a tab if the browser crashed, and since the password prompt was stealing focus from the browser window, I had to kill it through the Task manager, which restored the page on start up....
I had to create a new profile, then it it solved it
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They call it "dark traffic" - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.
Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.
Besides the trackers and malware, ads can be categorised as a flaw in technology. A kind of software parasite that uses a computer's resources without providing any additional functionality to the user.
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They call it "dark traffic" - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.
Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.
Almost 70. Spent way too many years watching cable shit tv. I hate ads. I fucking hate ads with a nuclear passion. I have ad blockers, pirated shit and some services that do not show ads so far.
If there are ads I find an alternative or read a book. Our teen son screams ad every time he sees one that sneaks through ad just to get me going. -
They call it "dark traffic" - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.
Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.
The only site I allow ads on is photopea.net because it's awesome and I use it regularly. Fuck ads otherwise
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Raw-dogging the internet without an adblocker is about as irresponsible as not using contraception
No
gloveblock, nolovebrowse -
Ads used to be static text in the sidebar that the site owner manually put there. They didn't have any tracking and didn't slow down the loading time. Once they started adding images, I started using an ad blocker. I was stuck on dial-up until 2008 and a single, small image could add 10 or more seconds to the page loading time.
2008! Bro I feel for you, retrospectively.
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Besides the trackers and malware, ads can be categorised as a flaw in technology. A kind of software parasite that uses a computer's resources without providing any additional functionality to the user.
Ads are malware (software maliciously made to do something the user doesn't want), yes. :3
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