[HN Gopher] Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experien...
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Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different
web
Author : decrypt
Score : 613 points
Date : 2022-01-31 16:26 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (imlefthanded.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (imlefthanded.com)
| parsd wrote:
| I've started to think about it differently. I no longer use any
| ad blockers. I actually want to experience the web (and its
| decline) the way it is, to take it all in, feel the pain and
| strengthen my patience in the process.
|
| Also, when I visit a website that is truly obnoxious with its
| ads, I simply leave immediately and never go there. You build
| your own filter of bad actors, behaviors, and concrete sites. You
| don't need to block everyone, you simply walk away from abusers.
| You want to take notice of improper behavior before consciously
| and deliberately boycotting it.
| teddyh wrote:
| Ads may be painful, but they are also insidious. That's why
| they work. I avoid ads not because they're painful (although
| most are), but because I simply don't want to be influenced by
| whoever paid the most money to influence me.
| kingcharles wrote:
| For some, it is literally impossible.
|
| In my current home it's not sanely possible to get wired
| Internet, so I started by just using the 40GB data allowance on
| my phone. This was a huge mistake. With the modern Web and
| being ultra-careful about my browsing, I would still chew
| through the whole lot in a week. It was costing me insane
| amounts to keep my phone online.
|
| See the OP's article - one page can be 250MB! And my data
| allowance was large. Many people only have 2GB on their phones.
| 8 web sites and they are done for the month.
| elefantastisch wrote:
| I feel similarly. My default browsing mode is Firefox with
| enhanced protection on, but other than that, I don't use any
| kind of ad-blocking. But I also pay for Spotify and YouTube
| Premium. Other than that, sites like HN, SO, shopping sites,
| etc. don't have a lot of ads anyway. On the rare occasion I
| find myself on a site plastered with tons of ads, I just deal
| with it for a short while (local news I need to read) or leave.
| I'm actually kind of struggling here to find a site with a lot
| of ads. It seems to me like despite the concerning growth of
| ad-tech, for the internet that I care about, ads are either
| optional (removable for a fee), unobtrusive (like DDG), or a
| signal of poor quality and I won't want to go the site anyway.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| No thanks for me. Advertisements if nothing else consume too
| much of my local compute resources for zero benefit to me. Why
| should I give them this free compute?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Why should I give them this free compute?_
|
| Why should they give you free content?
| aembleton wrote:
| They choose to. My user agent just doesn't connect to all
| of the domains that they ask it to.
| razakel wrote:
| They transmitted it into my house. I didn't ask for it.
| DesiLurker wrote:
| doesnt works for me, the only places I disable my adblocker is
| basically financial websites & healthcare related stuff. other
| than that it is all off.
|
| Another thing is, since these adblock extensions get cleartext
| view of all the site you visit, you really want them to be
| completely open sourced. So only ublock origin for me.
| whoibrar wrote:
| This has to be the most unpopular opinion so far
|
| I have a few questions for you
|
| 1. How long have you been doing this ? 2. What do you think of
| other (not just monetization) ways ads are bad as in bloating
| the web, privacy and security issues ? 3. What if you truly
| need to access a website but it has too many ads ? You give up
| ? Use adblock ? Continue with ads ?
| lanstin wrote:
| Fortunately goverment and b2c things like banks and insurance
| dont show ads, tho they are probably selling your data
| reaperducer wrote:
| Actually, I have seen government web sites with ads in the
| last couple of years.
|
| The Cook County (Illinois) Assessor used to have them.
| There's a new assessor now, and a new web site design, but
| you can still see the space for the banner ad on
| archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20130708043842/htt
| p://www.cookco...
|
| As for banks, yes, some banks to have ads for other
| companies on their web sites. I see them when I pay my
| bills online. Not all, but some.
| [deleted]
| parsd wrote:
| 1. Been doing this for a few months, using only Safari for
| all my browsing. 2. My big annoyance is the weight on the CPU
| and battery. I have this sick pleasure from opening the
| network tab and seeing hundreds of requests filling my
| machine with garbage. :) 3. I often disable JavaScript
| temporarily with a hotkey - in macOS, you can map this action
| to any combination. This works incredibly well. Once I am
| done with the page, I re-enable it with a single keystroke. I
| only wish Safari did this just for the current page and not
| the entire browser.
| recursive wrote:
| Not the parent, but I've been doing the same thing. For maybe
| a slightly different reason.
|
| 1. Since the 90s. 2. Needs to be solved by user agents. Ad
| blockers generally work by host name or css selector. This
| doesn't filter out any of the bad guys that are really
| trying. 3. Continue with ads I guess. This doesn't actually
| happen in real life as far as I can tell.
|
| The reason I don't use an ad blocker is that I like being
| able to see what's going on inside of a web browser.
| Prevalence of ad blockers creates an incentive to do canvas
| rendering based on a DRM-obfuscated data blob. That's worse
| for everyone.
| CubsFan1060 wrote:
| Not OP, but I find your questions interesting.
|
| I find it intriguing that only in the digital age have we
| sort of decided that the creator of something doesn't get to
| dictate the terms of its use.
|
| >3. What if you truly need to access a website but it has too
| many ads
|
| At least for me, I assume that they created the necessary
| content and get to decide how it's made available. It seems
| like only in the digital age do we even consider "I don't
| like your terms so I'm taking the content anyway" an option.
| thewebcount wrote:
| > I find it intriguing that only in the digital age have we
| sort of decided that the creator of something doesn't get
| to dictate the terms of its use.
|
| Nonsense. Broadcast TV and radio are the same. I use a TiVo
| for broadcast TV and use the skip ads function.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| TiVo is very much a part of the digital age, it's
| literally called a "Digital Video Recorder".
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > I find it intriguing that only in the digital age have we
| sort of decided that the creator of something doesn't get
| to dictate the terms of its use.
|
| Except that's not true. Mark Twain and Shakespeare cannot
| tell you you're interpreting their works incorrectly. JK
| Rowlings cannot stop you from making paper mache out of her
| books. I can timeshift and spaceshift content with tape
| recorders, VCRs, TiVo and more.
| WA wrote:
| Your printed newspaper can neither build a profile of you.
| Nor mine shitcoins.
|
| We have to consider this in the digital age, because in the
| analog world, ads have very limited impact.
| XorNot wrote:
| There's also 4: It's not possible to consume content and
| _not_ be affected by it. How okay are you with the fact that
| corporate messaging is a dominant mode of influence in your
| life?
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| It's not just ads, it's also about blocking potential security
| threats with third party scripts and rogue domains, especially
| on "adult" websites such as xxx, crypto, piracy related stuffs
| and what not.
| hackerlytest wrote:
| That's actually a pretty good strategy and I am inclined to try
| it.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Someone just convinced you to voluntarily watch more ads.
| hackerlytest wrote:
| I sympathize with small creators and sites that rely on
| these kinds of money and are not obtrusive. It's just a
| test though. I will probably be back on adblocker by
| default.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I no longer use any ad blockers._
|
| I'm OK with most ads. I understand why they exist.
|
| What I would like is something like an ad blocker that only
| blocks the tracking and surveillance.
| gwd wrote:
| > What I would like is something like an ad blocker that only
| blocks the tracking and surveillance.
|
| Aren't there lots like this? At some point Ghostery did that:
| It would show you static banner ads no problem; it would only
| be the crazy javascript advert-bidding-based-on-surveillance
| things that wouldn't show up.
| aembleton wrote:
| Privacy Badger only blocks tracking and surveillance.
|
| https://privacybadger.org/
| mjhagen wrote:
| Thank you for your service.
| jb1991 wrote:
| I have a similar perspective when dealing with cookie popups,
| since such a perspective is necessary for something you cannot
| block even if you wanted to. Those with enough annoying popup
| hoops just get the Back button from me.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| PiHole is the first thing I install on my network and configure
| it as DNS via DHCP.
|
| Makes everything bearable. It doesn't get rid of every ad, but it
| still lightens the load.
| tunesmith wrote:
| It's interesting working for a large employer that relies on ad
| revenue. Among employees there's understanding that ad blocking
| bites into our revenue. I'm sure some of the employees use ad
| blockers themselves, though. And when we get customer complaints
| about the site acting wonky, they're pretty open about using ad
| blocking. Sometimes it's possible that the ad blocker itself is
| what causes the issue. There are be a couple of opinions that
| folks that use ad blockers are on their own and that we won't
| cater to them, but the more dominant position is that the people
| complaining are our most active users and help drive engagement,
| so there's still a strong argument for the site working well in a
| "degraded" (ad-blocked) mode.
|
| There's still a sweet spot to aim for that is ad-compatible. For
| one thing, limit CLS, because I think content that jumps around
| due to ads has got to be one of the biggest drivers toward
| reaching for an ad blocker.
|
| Also, some widely-used ad systems are not all that compatible
| with single-page apps. (Looking at you, gpt.js.) Even if you call
| their cleanup methods after destroying an ad, you'll have a
| memory leak on the browser side if you don't completely reload
| the page/app. So users complain about the SPA "bogging down" as
| they use it, and they'll often (correctly, even if accidentally)
| blame the ads. So the ad systems have got to buckle down and fix
| their own problems if they don't want to drive users toward ad
| blockers.
| drusepth wrote:
| The only reason I occasionally use an adblocker is to try to
| experience the web how what seems like a sizable subset of users
| experience it, for that shared experience. Honestly, the two
| don't seem that different in most cases outside of the worst ad-
| ridden sites.
|
| Side-note: I don't run ads on any of the sites I manage, yet deal
| with dozens of bug reports each year as adblockers aggressively
| find new ways to break sites. IME, ad blockers are about as much
| as a nuisance as the ads themselves.
| ratsmack wrote:
| I have never used an add blocker. If the page is too intrusive
| with toxic adds, I just close the page. Also, if I go to any page
| that launches a pop-up to subscribe or some other stupid crap, I
| again just close the page, never to return.
|
| I wish more people would do this.
| iamwpj wrote:
| I'm with you on this. Toxic internet is toxic even if you block
| the bad stuff. Don't go there.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > I wish more people would do this.
|
| Different people view different webpages due to different
| interests. And different people also have different thresholds
| for what would be "toxic adds". I know a lot of articles posted
| here would fail that threshold for me.
| anonymousab wrote:
| >autoplaying videos
|
| I'm still looking for a block list that simply removes all video
| content from various franchise and local news sites. It is rarely
| actually relevant to the article, and is often vastly less
| information dense.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Doesn't Firefox block autoplaying videos by default as of
| recently? It does for me anyways.
| ameister14 wrote:
| you can update your own block list, can't you?
| anonymousab wrote:
| Yeah, it's more that I will run into an article on some local
| news site I've never visited before far more frequently than
| I'll end up on one I looked at previously.
|
| They all seem to implement an ever-so-slightly different
| player, which means manually blocking the unique element (s)
| each time.
|
| Definitely a use case for a standard community sourced list.
| coldpie wrote:
| NoScript fixes this (and a whole hell of a lot of other webdev
| sins).
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| At some point we need to decide as a culture to reject
| advertising. Stop putting ads on our own websites and apps, stop
| linking to sites that advertise. Either charge me money for the
| content or give it for free. The world will become a better
| place. Less compromises and capitulations to advertising
| companies, less mindless consumerism, less distractions. More
| funding for actually good content (thus a monetary incentive to
| create it), lower consumer prices (from less money spent on
| advertising).
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I am shocked every time I use my wife's computer and the ad
| blocker isnt there. I don't even understand how you could use the
| web on a regular basis where you have to duck, dodge, and weave
| better than Ali to avoid some type of disturbance.
| raz32dust wrote:
| Curious - why does Youtube not figure out how to outsmart ad
| blockers? Is it technically not possible to embed ads into the
| video such that the ad blocker cannot detect it?
| alkonaut wrote:
| Some script has to pay attention to whether you watch it so
| presumably there will always be a browser state that knows
| whether an ad is being watched.
| sxv wrote:
| Good question. It is a cat and mouse game but certainly
| possible for YouTube to (at least) only release part Y of the
| video after a certain amount of time has elapsed since part X
| was released. And if YouTube really wanted to seamlessly glue
| the ads and video together, I think it would be insurmountable
| from an adblocker's perspective.
| taildrop wrote:
| Ad blocking is a security issue. When web sites start taking
| responsibility for their ad content, we can have a discussion on
| if it is "theft" or not. As long as they farm their ads out to
| third party providers and wash their hands of any of the security
| implications and responsibilities, I will continue to block them.
| jedberg wrote:
| For the longest time I refused to install an adblocker. I worked
| at a company that made most of its money from ads, and it felt
| hypocritical to run an ad blocker. Also I wanted to experience
| the website the same way as the users do.
|
| For a long time I told people "my brain is my ad blocker I just
| ignore it". But after a while I just couldn't stand the web
| without it anymore. Websites got _so bad_ I couldn 't find the
| content anymore. My CPU would spike to 100% on some web pages and
| my laptop fans would spin like crazy.
|
| It makes me sad but now I install an ad blocker on every place I
| can.
| schnevets wrote:
| I'm very surprised the article went into the technical (web
| site sizes) instead of the psychological. People using the
| advertised web cannot visit a page without being bombarded by
| political surveys ("Are your gas prices higher under Biden? WE
| WANT TO KNOW"), extraneous goods (Show your love with a "My
| husband is a Rick and Morty fan born in March whose area code
| is 212!" t-shirt!), and deceptive practices ("Everyone in your
| area is saving on real estate taxes with this one weird
| trick!")
|
| I was shocked when uBlock got flack for arranging an
| "Acceptable advertising" practice on their filter. It seems
| very similar to centralized regulations in broadcast to me.
| Larger, more established firms agree to a set of rules for the
| benefit of consumer and provider.
| commoner wrote:
| > I was shocked when uBlock got flack for arranging an
| "Acceptable advertising" practice on their filter.
|
| The Acceptable Ads program started in AdBlock Plus (owned by
| Eyeo) in 2011. In 2018, uBlock (not to be confused with the
| highly recommended uBlock Origin) was acquired by AdBlock
| (which was itself acquired by an anonymous buyer in 2015, not
| to be confused with AdBlock Plus) and then implemented Eyeo's
| Acceptable Ads program by default.
|
| The complaint against the program is that it turns Eyeo* into
| a rent-seeking middleman that profits from giving its users a
| degraded experience compared to ad blockers that block
| without selling exceptions, such as uBlock Origin. Eyeo is
| acting just like an ad seller, taking money from advertisers
| in exchange for its users' attention.
|
| * And other companies? We don't know for sure who acquired
| AdBlock and uBlock, but it wouldn't be surprising if Eyeo did
| or if they have a common owner.
| [deleted]
| btdmaster wrote:
| This may be an extreme take, but recently I've been removing
| websites with Google Analytics et al. from my bookmarks. If the
| user is not being respected when it comes to tracking what that
| does hint at when it comes to content?
| karxxm wrote:
| Am try to raise my 3yo daughter completely ad free. When watching
| a show, we exclusively use paid providers like YT, Netflix,
| Disney where no ads are present. Additionally, AdGuard helps
| removing some annoying Ads from minigame-Apps. For now, she is
| very young and it doesn't matter so much. But still, I want to
| keep up with this as long as possible. No free TV and no ads on
| web for her!
| voidfunc wrote:
| I haven't seen an ad on the internet in at least a decade so this
| sounds about right.
|
| My mom recently somehow managed to disable the ad-blocker I have
| setup on her computer and was blown away by how much advertising
| is on the internet.
| marcodiego wrote:
| I wanted to show a video on YouTube to a friend. He passed me his
| cellphone. I searched and found the video and then something very
| strange happened: a completely unrelated something started
| playing. I said "Sorry I don't know what is this. This has
| nothing to do with what I wanted to show you." He then explained
| me that was just an advertisement and the video would play soon.
|
| People are used to abuse. My internet is very different from the
| internet most people use. I feel sorry for them.
| chefandy wrote:
| I miss them. I uninstalled mine after taking on more design
| responsibilities. Experiencing end-user inconveniences in-
| context is beneficial to design work. Profiling data and
| emulator testing won't viscerally inspire the _" hold on-- this
| is a bridge too far"_ interventions Conde Nast should have
| cultivated.
|
| For example, if you were making a transit app, a savvy iPhone
| 13 ProMax user with a top-tier data plan will see very
| different problems (or at least see different priorities) on
| their commute than your Uncle Sidney with his belt-holstered,
| used, Samsung Galaxy J2 running on Ting Mobile. They're both
| important, but in the tech world, you have to dig a lot deeper
| to get the Uncle Sidney perspective.
| pwython wrote:
| Just curious, if you owned YouTube with an overhead of tens of
| millions of dollars per year, how would you monetize it without
| ads/commercials, just to even keep up with operational costs?
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I'm honestly appalled by the price for YouTube Premium. It's
| $15/month. That's the same as HBO Max, almost twice of
| Disney+ and more expensive than F1TV or Showtime which come
| in around $10. Per month this is 50% more than Prime! Only my
| UltraHD Netflix plan is more expensive. This price to me is
| outrageous, given that Google, unlike everyone else listed
| here, doesn't provide any of the content and their services
| is known to be awful/non-existent. All they do is in essence
| provide the platform.
| 0h139 wrote:
| > All they do is in essence provide the platform.
|
| That's not quite correct. YouTube pays out creators who
| monetize their channels using YouTube ads (separate from
| any sponsors in the video itself). The amount paid out
| varies but is around $3-5 per 1000 views.
|
| With YouTube Premium, among other features you get to avoid
| seeing ads. But Google still pays out creators a share of
| the YouTube Premium fee. See
| https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6306276
| Jensson wrote:
| Google shows you content they have licenced just like
| everyone else. It isn't like Netflix made all the content
| they host etc, Netflix also licence content from third
| party creators so they can host it, Google just doesn't
| have a filter and instead accept everyone who wants to put
| stuff there, and then by paying you support those smaller
| content creators rather than just Hollywood or other big
| studious like you do when you pay for Disney.
|
| So from my perspective paying for YouTube is more important
| than paying for Netflix, since with YouTube you help
| support smaller creators, while with Netflix money gets
| consolidated into big names and brands. The platform takes
| a cut at both, but it is still better to have some go to
| small creators instead of everything going into giant
| corporations.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| Keep in mind that Youtube premium is effectively a music
| platform as well, although you can make the same argument
| about Prime. Ultimately it depends on what content you
| consume, I spend a lot of hours on youtube and consider the
| advertising avoidance worthwhile for myself.
| synergy20 wrote:
| I bought prime youtube, it's basically a pay-to-get-rid-of-
| my-ads, fine with me but yes lower price will be better.
| maybe that's what they earn from a visitor per month via
| selling ads?
| kmonsen wrote:
| But you might as well just install an adblocker instead?
| It is free and there are no ads.
|
| They can block people who are using adblocker from
| watching, as long as they don't do that I can't really
| see any moral grey area here.
| deergomoo wrote:
| I initially balked at the price until I realised that I
| probably watch 2-3x as much YouTube per month as I do
| Netflix, which I was already happily paying for.
|
| It's nice to know I'm directly supporting the channels I
| watch too, as I can't feasibly sign up to dozens of
| Patreons.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| And even if you pay for YouTube, you'll still get ads,
| despite YouTube detecting and tracking advertisements in
| videos.
| pwython wrote:
| YouTube itself doesn't serve ads if you're paying for
| premium. Outside of that, sure, content creators can do
| their own "sponsored by" ad segments within their videos.
| gitgud wrote:
| It's worth it in my opinion:
|
| you can listen to any video on mobile in the background,
| also no ads on mobile (so you don't need some hacky 3rd
| party app)
|
| And you get YouTube music, which is comparable to Spotify
| (I prefer it in fact)
|
| There's more content on YouTube then any other video
| platform, so in my opinion 15 per month is worth it
| elliekelly wrote:
| Charge the content creator based on tiered usage. Why does it
| have to be different from any other hosting service?
| elorant wrote:
| With AdWords text ads at the bottom of the video. Which is
| something they already do. It's less intrusive than showing a
| thirty second commercial in the start of every video.
|
| Also, YouTube has a data trove of metrics that interest
| advertisers. Why not selling those? You have a commercial
| page that let's say sells clothes and you want to upload a
| video to target women aged 18-25. Here's the data to show you
| what you need to do, and we'll charge you $15k to give you a
| detailed report. Brands would go bananas for metrics like
| these.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Not my problem.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| There was a weird movie with Justin Timberlake called "In
| Time" and I would use that model.
|
| The moment a video is born, it lives until its sponsored time
| runs out.
|
| If a content creator wants to leave something up and reap
| some internal ad-sales, or tip-generation scheme... they just
| have to sponsor the video with more time.
|
| People who like it, can also sponsor it.
|
| And sure, have some sort of "Library of Congress" feature to
| save videos deemed as significant...
|
| But once the time is up... the video is gone. Exists only in
| memories.
|
| Seems like a huge portion of videos are just taking up
| space... start pruning.
|
| And a lot of videos... they don't matter. 40 different
| versions of the same old song, 20 different shots of the same
| sports blooper, 900 different versions of the same boring
| news cast. Like... none of these need to be on there taking
| up space / inflating the hosting bill.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Cold storage is next to toilet paper on their expense
| sheet. The vast majority of cost is in processing the
| incoming video and serving it, somewhere on the order of
| 25x more than the cost of storage if I recall an analysis
| from a ways back. Deleting the old content with such a
| system doesn't save much money, doesn't sound good to the
| users, and adds complexity. It'd be an interesting take on
| a popularity algorithm but they always seem to be toying
| with that too much as it is.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| When YouTube was primarily cat videos, it made sense as an
| ad-supported platform. Now that it's dominated by medium-to-
| high-production-value content creator stars, a subscription
| business model would be a much better fit.
|
| It's actually amazing that Google has let Patreon eat its
| lunch on this front, the latter becoming the predominant
| platform for direct monetization while YouTube continues
| playing the chump's game of seeing how much advertising they
| can inflict on users before they revolt.
|
| [edit] I'm well aware of YouTube Premium, but Google's
| insistence on bundling it exclusively with YouTube Music
| greatly limits its appeal. If they offered a standalone
| subscription (as they are piloting in some European markets),
| they could probably expand their subscriber base by a
| significant factor.
|
| Put another way, if Netflix were only available as part of a
| bundle with a cable subscription, do you imagine they'd have
| more or fewer subscribers than they do right now?
| jpambrun wrote:
| Sounds like you ignore that YT has a subscription business
| model along side the ad-based one..
| pengaru wrote:
| Subscribing to what amounts to a search+CDN video w/ads
| service wholesale isn't even in the same ballpark as
| throwing money directly at the creators you want to
| support.
|
| The salient point is YouTube/Alphabet has completely
| missed the opportunity of facilitating Patreon-style
| commerce, despite being best positioned to do so.
|
| But instead of enabling creators to receive money
| directly from audiences, an advertising juggernaut like
| Alphabet would probably rather keep their volunteer
| content creators incentivized to be shills desperate for
| advertising dollars.
|
| I predict all the quality creators capable of garnering
| support via systems like Patreon will eventually abandon
| YouTube altogether, leaving YouTube to become even more
| of a raging dumpster fire of advertising upon advertising
| upon advertising masquerading as content from
| "influencers".
| julienb_sea wrote:
| Youtube has a Patreon competitor service literally built
| into the platform, you can "Join" a channel and it
| behaves exactly like Patreon. They were just very late to
| the party and most creators promote their Patreon more
| heavily.
| pengaru wrote:
| Is that something only available to paying subscribers?
|
| I've never even had a YouTube login, but the few channels
| I access fully via the web interface only ever spam me
| with YouTube Premium offers for eliminating ads.
|
| There's _zero_ offering /marketing of direct-to-creator
| subscriptions, not that I've seen.
|
| There's also _zero_ chance of my buying YouTube Premium,
| but a non-zero chance of my giving money exclusively to
| the specific creators I value - even if YouTube took
| something along the lines of a haircut for making just
| those channels ad-free.
|
| Hopefully the difference is clear.
| Scarblac wrote:
| But Youtube does have a subscription business model? You
| can pay for Youtube Premium (
| https://www.youtube.com/premium ) and see it without ads,
| with downloads for offline viewing and listening, and so
| on. Almost exactly like Spotify.
|
| People just ignore the ads instead.
| oivey wrote:
| They suggesting a model where you subscribe to individual
| YouTube channels rather than the platform.
| vengefulduck wrote:
| You can do that too.
|
| https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7491256?hl=en
| [deleted]
| Atlas667 wrote:
| Alas! Your question reveals how capitalist production is both
| for the consumers but at the same time must contradict the
| interests of the consumers.
|
| I'm waiting for the day when we can solve these ills of
| private property with technology.
| somethingAlex wrote:
| People seem to invoke the word capitalism whenever things
| aren't a utopia for everyone involved. Still, even without
| capitalism, you'll have to contend with the issue of how to
| cover operational expenses. Say some, more centralized,
| agent decides YouTube is worthwhile - how would it get paid
| for? A state sponsorship made possible by a tax of some
| sort? Perhaps it would transition to be completely pay-to-
| play?
|
| The employees and servers are expending real energy keeping
| YouTube operational. Meaning, whether it's through ads, a
| more centralized body stepping in, or some other less
| pervasive, opt-in business model - the thing needs to cover
| its own costs. I don't think a lack of private property
| would solve much there.
| y4mi wrote:
| > _Still, even without capitalism, you 'll have to
| contend with the issue of how to cover operational
| expenses_
|
| You're still thinking in the framework of capitalism.
|
| Let me be clear that I think that doing anything but
| capitalism is bound to fail while we're living in a
| resource restricted reality.
|
| Nonetheless, if we want to think about it for arguments
| sake: there are no _costs_ associated without capitalism,
| only necessary work and resources. It 's really hard to
| think without the restrictions of capitalism for me,
| because that's the only way I've ever experienced and
| it's so effective at prioritizing resources and
| productivity. Anything else has historically always
| fallen short.
|
| Though it's still a pretty fucked up and heartless system
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > Nonetheless, if we want to think about it for arguments
| sake: there are no costs associated without capitalism,
| only necessary work and resources.
|
| That's just redefining the term _costs_ to not include
| work and resources. The term _resources_ alone makes up
| nearly every operational cost possible: time, man power,
| CPU power, metals, environment, ...
|
| Capitalism has nothing to with defining what something
| costs, it has everything to do with resource ownership
| and its distribution.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > Nonetheless, if we want to think about it for arguments
| sake: there are no costs associated without capitalism,
| only necessary work and resources.
|
| "Necessary work and resources" is exactly what is meant
| by _costs_. Scarcity is a property of the universe we
| live in. Capitalism doesn 't prescribe or create
| scarcity, it just offers a framework for dealing with it.
| All other systems also have costs and operational
| expenses--they just aren't borne primarily by those
| making the decisions.
| hbgl wrote:
| By building a profile of each user based on their viewing
| history and then when they use the search engine that I also
| own I would show them personalized results with sponsored
| links to products to buy. Plus I would be selling that
| information to third parties. And then I would of course also
| show some ads to all of the the normies that surf without an
| adblocker.
| danuker wrote:
| Why not both? I get nothing but ads on Google lately.
|
| I often bypass to Wikipedia, because it shows me what
| something is, not only where I can buy it.
| pwython wrote:
| You wouldn't even come close to breaking even from
| display/search ads like you mentioned. Advertisers would
| rather pay a lot more for pre-roll video ads, even if the
| user doesn't click. Those video ads usually result in a
| much higher ROAS. And people searching for funny cat videos
| on YouTube is a hell of a lot harder to categorize and
| monetize than traditional SERP.
| marcodiego wrote:
| I don't think everything needs to be monetized. I wouldn't
| monetize it, I'd use a p2p protocol like peertube.
| danuker wrote:
| So, it would be a public service?
|
| It was kind of like that when interest rates were near
| zero, affording endless deferral of income.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I would gladly pay for an ad free youtube if they weren't
| also stealing my data.
| Aachen wrote:
| This. I'd have been paying for years if it weren't Google
| who'd only use the payment details to link it to an
| identity. I have and pay for Spotify and Netflix because
| they're independent companies without an ad and tracking
| business as their main profit center, I'd be happy to add
| another video service to the mix. I've tried Nebula but saw
| all the interesting content ever posted (it's that small)
| in two evenings.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I switched from iphone to android just because I could install
| youtube vanced (and really any apk I want). I'm done with
| walled gardens.
| fraktl wrote:
| [deleted]
| rd_police wrote:
| zagrebian wrote:
| Sorry but a short ad in front of a video is not abuse.
| kome wrote:
| it is abuse, all non requested & for-profit message is abuse.
| 2dollars27cents wrote:
| It is not abuse. You are using the platform, the platform
| is monetized through ads. You requested it when you agreed
| to view any content on their platform.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Use the Vanced app. It's ad free youtube
|
| Edit: https://vancedapp.com/
| marcodiego wrote:
| I use NewPipe.
| danuker wrote:
| Even better - cheers to software freedom!
| sushid wrote:
| I find this pretty confusing. How is showing ads abuse?
| yosamino wrote:
| Advertizement uses your brain power to process stimuli for
| the purpose of trying to sell you things that you do not
| need.
|
| You did not ask for your brain to be stimulated like this -
| what you did ask for is the content that comes after ad.
| That's the thing you consented to.
|
| Ads abuse your desire to watch something that you want to
| watch, by cramming in something that you did not want,
| leeching your precious time and brain-processing energy, in
| order to sell you something that you did not want to have in
| the first place.
| mplewis wrote:
| I once sent a link to a news article to a friend at work. He
| became angry at me because the link I had sent him was to a
| malware-infested shit site. It wasn't, but the ads in the
| site I had intended to send had taken over his browser and
| made it indistinguishable from a malware link.
|
| That's how showing ads on your site is abuse of the user.
| chki wrote:
| You've just shifted the goalposts significantly and did not
| really reply in good faith. Showing ads is very different
| from linking to malware. Especially on YouTube the amount
| of malware is probably very low since everything is
| sandboxed.
| cartesius13 wrote:
| I think the point is that putting so many ads on a page
| to the point of it becoming indistinguishable from a
| malware infested shit site is a form of abuse to the
| user. I personally agree with this take, if that's what
| he meant
| mrweasel wrote:
| One of the services I happily pay for is Youtube Premium,
| though I could do without also having to pay for Youtube Music
| at the same time. I have same experience as you, when I somehow
| not logged in to Youtube. It's a surreal mess and it's the same
| 5 - 10 ads, if it's that many, on repeat. It's unusable.
|
| Technically I don't use and ad block, I just run DuckDuckGo's
| privacy plugin. You can show me ads, but not track me, weirdly
| enough it's 98% the same result. It facinating that ad tech
| cannot see the difference between ads and tracking.
| dylan-m wrote:
| YouTube's ads are a colossal mistake waiting to happen. Back
| in the day, Google was successful because they realized
| advertising on the web was a problem: ads were trying too
| hard to grab attention, resorting to hostile tactics that
| basically forced people to run ad blockers. Google said
| "okay, what if ads were simple blocks of text that - while
| not as loud and screamy - got more impressions because they
| aren't terrible?". And over time everyone agreed with them
| and they made billions of dollars.
|
| Somehow, (probably because there is no competition - _yet_ ),
| Google has not applied this reasoning to YouTube ads. YouTube
| ads are often louder than regular videos (which they could
| fix on their end if they cared), they are sometimes insanely
| long (I recently got an "ad" which was a _40 minute_ "free
| music" thing), and depending on the video they can pop pop up
| at terrible moments. They still haven't figured out that
| YouTube is loaded with exercise videos - a content category
| which has exploded since 2020 and where YouTube enjoys a
| tremendous lead on the competition. Rudely interrupting one
| of those is _bad_ and brews resentment. Instead of doing
| that, they could plaster the entire video with unobtrusive
| ads and people would both look at the ads and be happy with
| the service.
| baud147258 wrote:
| well, I remember watching an ad for youtube premium (or
| whatever is called the subscription to remove ads) which
| was presenting the 'no more ad breaks in the middle of
| videos' as a selling point. So at least some people at YT
| are aware of that issue
| yreg wrote:
| A few years ago I was eating in an indian restaurant and I
| noticed a muted TV on the wall playing MKBHD's review of
| some drone. I was very confused why would they decide to
| show that. As I was eating the video ended and I realised
| the full review was an ad that played inside a 10 hour
| atmospheric video the restaurant intended to play.
|
| I found it pretty smart, because I can imagine myself
| succumbing to watching a full video that was inserted as an
| ad if it's interesting enough.
| freebuju wrote:
| No. You are just a MKBHD fan. There's nothing more to it.
| Someone else who doesn't know who Marques is will see a
| talking head interrupting the relaxation video. For the
| restaurant owner, it means they cannot rely on YouTube to
| play requested video content as commanded. This proves
| the point even further, technology instead of being
| smarter in the case of YouTube here, has grown to become
| an annoying anti-consumer product that constantly moves
| in the opposite direction of the user.
| yreg wrote:
| You haven't understood me. I found it ridiculous playing
| in a restaurant. It was muted anyway.
|
| However, if I was at home, opened YouTube just to
| entertain myself and opened one of the algorithm
| suggested videos, then - in that situation - an
| interesting video from a channel that is unknown to me,
| inserted as an ad could hook me and could lead to me
| subscribing to said channel.
| freebuju wrote:
| I think I got what you narrated. The element of surprise
| is your response to recognizing MKBHD's content playing
| at an unexpected unusual venue.
|
| Instead of that suggestive ad being inserted into the
| video. Why not use auto-play or recommended videos
| section? Suggested videos in the menu work great, better
| even, in your case scenario for content discovery.
|
| I don't watch YouTube with ads and I don't subscribe to
| YouTube Premium but I pretty much doubt in-video content
| suggestions disguised as ads will do a better job of
| predicting what I'll watch next over menu video
| recommendations.
| djhn wrote:
| Strange that MKBHD (an ad funded media of sorta itself)
| would pay to get people to watch the content. What's the
| reasoning here? Additional reach for a sponsored video?
| yreg wrote:
| My guess is that a viewer who doesn't know him might get
| to know him, perhaps even check other videos or
| subscribe.
| no1lives4ever wrote:
| I guess the only reason youtube ads exist is to get people
| to pay youtube to get rid of ads.
|
| My parents have a smart TV and the youtube app w/o the paid
| youtube premium makes it a really bad experience. On iOS
| devices, I have yet to find a free ad blocker that properly
| blocks youtube ads after they put in new measures to defeat
| content blocker based ad blockers.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| It also provided some incentive for creators to edit and
| post video.
|
| I had a problem that I figured out the solution to and
| put up a video of it that made me a few dollars a month.
| Then YouTube moved the goalposts and demonetized it
| because I don't (and frankly, won't) have 1000
| subscribers.
|
| So that's the end of my video posting on YouTube. I've
| discovered some "hack" repairs to other devices (common
| washing machine and MacBook speaker issues), but you
| won't see my solutions on YouTube, just 99 videos saying
| to replace it or fumbling with software settings that
| aren't the problem.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Please share your knowledge, if you don't expect to have
| 1000 subscribers surely you wouldn't expect revenue
| anyway. Maybe a better approach would be to encourage
| 'buy me a coffee' donations. Either way, you're punishing
| society for google being an asshole.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Google had to use 'better' ads to drive out competition
| early on, but now that they're the biggest bully on the
| block, they'll serve whatever obnoxious and high revenue
| ads they want to.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| That's what's happening.
|
| Without any html/css/<script> intervention on my website,
| Adsense has been able to enable additional ads that stick
| to the bottom of the screen and another that pops up
| before going to another page. It's all opt-in, but
| through the Adsense portal.
|
| It's all automagic now, over and above the blocks I had
| inserted.
| rchaud wrote:
| I feel that there is a generational gap between Youtube users
| that correlates with whether they will pay for premium or
| not.
|
| People in their late 20s and 30s who remember Youtube as a
| catch-all location for lo-fi homemmade videos with few ads
| may not feel that YT premium is worth it, particularly if
| they already use adblockers, and don't use it much on mobile
| (where adblocking isn't possible without modded APKs). This
| generation also remembers torrents and Limewire, before
| Spotify made everything super-convenient.
|
| Those who are more familiar with 'modern Youtube' with
| multiple pre-roll ads, clickbait and and influencers
| everywhere may be more receptive to paying just to get rid of
| the constant ads.
| gpas wrote:
| > on mobile (where adblocking isn't possible without modded
| APKs)
|
| What's a modded APK?
|
| Firefox and other browsers like Vivaldi have awesome
| adblocking nowadays. There are alternative frontends like
| invidious.
|
| Newpipe is an oss app, perfect on Android. Vanced is very
| popular too but I never tried it.
|
| But with nextdns I don't need any of those. Only newpipe
| because, besides the ads, having to keep the display on to
| listen to music while running is just stupid.
| aembleton wrote:
| Vanced is a modded APK. It takes the YouTube APK and
| modifies it to block ads and sponsorship via Sponsorblock
| and lets you run it in the background with the screen
| off.
|
| NextDNS doesn't block ads on YouTube because they're
| served from the same domain as YouTube videos.
| gpas wrote:
| Oh I didn't know Vanced worked that way.
|
| And you are right. Ads are blocked by newpipe, nextdns in
| this case is worthless.
|
| Sorry for the misinformation everyone.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Huh? Firefox on mobile supports ublock origin. Or do you
| mean the app? Don't use the app.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I don't think it works on iOS. Works perfectly on Android
| though!
| [deleted]
| jmrm wrote:
| There is also the possibility of using YouTube Vanced and
| other similar apps (in Android at least) to do the same
| trick in a more comfortable way.
| Vrondi wrote:
| No. Stupidity knows no age limit, and a fool and his money
| are soon parted.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| _> One of the services I happily pay for is Youtube Premium,
| though I could do without also having to pay for Youtube
| Music at the same time._
|
| The forced bundling with YouTube Music is the only thing that
| keeps me from subscribing and keeping a trigger finger on the
| mute button (I use YouTube primarily on AppleTV). It's not
| even the price so much as it's the redundancy of subscribing
| to both Spotify and a lackluster Spotify competitor at the
| same time.
|
| The moment Google offers YouTube Premium Lite (an unbundled
| version they've been trialing in European markets) in the US,
| I'll subscribe and never look back.
| Raineer wrote:
| Yeah I pay the same. Sure I hate Google and yada yada... But
| if the call for money is "we will show you no ads, and your
| money will go to creators", and it is a realistic amount, yes
| I will pay it.
|
| I run ad-blockers everywhere (and I know there are ways to
| block YT ads), but will still pay if you give me this
| reasonable option.
| vlunkr wrote:
| The other thing they didn't get into here is that the quality of
| ads online is generally trash. In the old advertising world there
| was at least some thought and work put into ads. Now they are
| auto-generated nightmares. Check out this article from a few
| years ago if you want to see the worst of the worst:
| https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-intern...
| kryz wrote:
| Yeah, why would you not be entitled to that content for no
| commercial consideration...
|
| Frankly I don't understand the ethical position of people who use
| ad-blockers.
| [deleted]
| oblio wrote:
| People have probably forgotten. Old media had (has) about 20% of
| its space (newspaper pages or media time) taken up by
| advertising. That was the steady state for media. I don't think
| it was accidental, it was the equilibrium needed to fund the
| media. Plus advertising frequently was one of the flashiest bits.
|
| We're going to go back there, it's just going to take a few
| decades until the new media companies stabilize. Netflix has
| already started to ramp up its subscription prices, just give it
| some more time and more pressure to shareholders to increase
| revenue, ads will come and new subscription tiers will appear.
|
| C'est la vie, I guess. That's who and what we are as humanity.
| siskiyou wrote:
| The reason I use an ad blocker and noscript is because focused
| reading is impossible without these countermeasures. It's as if
| they don't want me to read and pay attention what they wrote.
| crumbits wrote:
| hoppla wrote:
| I swear the ad industry are in bed with cellular operators. Data
| usage from ads taps directly into peoples data plans, why would
| not there exist a kickback scheme for this?
| divs1210 wrote:
| that's... the whole point?
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Yep, I had a weird experience at a friends house when his smart
| TV youtube was playing ads every few minutes, while I was trying
| to listen to the Dead. Really killed my vibe maan. Apparently
| it's the uploader's fault for choosing to monetise.
|
| I cannot tolerate ads at all now. Part of my issue with them is
| that you have no control over what you are being shown,
| obviously. It's the same problem with all the new social media
| platforms, in general. Anything can popup. And once you've seen
| something, to cant unsee it.
| Havoc wrote:
| Yeah it is quite a jarring experience when Adblocking breaks for
| whatever reason.
|
| Actually built a small internal api end point that checks whether
| filtering works every 60s and that goes onto status tracker
| (Kuma)
| _wldu wrote:
| A friend (who does not use an ad blocker) showed me something on
| a website a few weeks ago and I was shocked by the invasiveness
| and aggressive nature of the ads. I asked him how he was able to
| use the web like this and he said it was annoying and that he was
| interrupted a lot, but he had sort of gotten use to it.
|
| There's no way I would use a browser without an ad blocker. Doing
| so is counter-productive and also a major security risk.
| dclaw wrote:
| I remember one time I was talking about web ads with a few
| friends and said something along the lines of 'you have to be
| stupid as fuck not to use an adblocker on the internet these
| days' and literally 3 out of 5 people immediately popped up and
| said they don't use them. All were using one within a week, lol.
| cercatrova wrote:
| I have a list of adblockers I use, hope it helps other people
| here:
|
| Desktop:
|
| - Pi-Hole (network wide adblocking)
|
| - AdGuard (device wide adblocking)
|
| Web browsers:
|
| - uBlock Origin
|
| - uMatrix (not developed anymore but still works, can also use
| NoScript)
|
| - SponsorBlock (blocks in-video sponsor segments, intros, outros,
| filler tangents, etc in YouTube)
|
| Mobile:
|
| - Firefox for Android / Kiwi Browser (both have web extension
| support so you can install uBlock Origin)
|
| - YouTube Vanced (alternate YouTube app blocks ads, also has
| SponsorBlock)
|
| - NewPipe (alternate YouTube app blocks ads, also has
| SponsorBlock via a fork [0], different UI than main YouTube app)
|
| - YouTube++ (for iOS, similar feature set as Vanced)
|
| TV:
|
| - SmartTubeNext (ad-free YouTube)
|
| [0] https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe
| degenerate wrote:
| YouTube Vanced is _miles_ above NewPipe in features:
| https://vancedapp.com - If you frequently watch videos on
| Android and haven't given it a spin yet, do so.
|
| SmartTubeNext is excellent on Fire Stick, if you can get the
| damn APK installed!
| sha-3 wrote:
| Also, isn't Vanced closed-source?
|
| I find the people behind it slightly sketchy.
| chagaif wrote:
| It's YouTube reverse engineered so it seems a bit difficult
| to open source something like that
| cercatrova wrote:
| Yes but NewPipe is a completely from-scratch implementation
| and has some unique features like 3x speed or downloading
| videos and audio. The NewPipe UI is not as good however, so
| it depends on what tradeoffs you want to make.
| ignoramous wrote:
| For text-heavy websites (blogs, news), I use _archive.is_ as a
| "wget" [0], as it were. It is unreasonably affective at
| rendering most javascript-driven pages too (like twitter.com).
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3083536
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Similar. Pi-hole, uBlock (desktop), vivaldi with adblocking
| (mobile, FF android has perf issues).
|
| For the non-techie, Pi-hole isn't something I quickly recommend
| due to "knowing when it's the culprit", and the effort in
| disabling it.
|
| I also have a simple Wireguard config (pivpn) installed as well
| and my mobile devices are set to always-on VPN for DNS only.
| Occasionally I will have to turn off the VPN to join certain
| public Wifi. _also_ perhaps consider hosting your VPN on a well
| known port if you expect to be on restrictive networks.
|
| Final note: Pi-hole and Pi-VPN(as a frontend to WG) can be
| hosted on any machine. I have them running on containers.
| catillac wrote:
| This is true with pihole. PiHole is one of my favorite pieces
| of software and true to this post opening a website off my
| home network can result in a horrible, ad-ridden experience.
| But installing PiHole seems to make a number of sites not
| work, or for example my devices stop updating because they
| can't phone home the update server, and it's difficult to
| describe to third parties how to address that. All good on my
| network, but it did take a little targeted whitelisting
| effort.
| darkteflon wrote:
| I used to run a Pihole, now I just point my router at
| NextDNS. Not an exact substitute but largely maintenance-free
| and low cost.
|
| Still occasionally breaks something you need, but there's no
| way around that as long as the web is such a mess.
| assemblylang wrote:
| There is also alternative youtube front ends that don't have
| ads, notably Invidious[0], and work in cases where the browser
| doesn't have or can't support extensions such as ad blockers.
| For anyone interested I run my own instance that is retro tech
| themed[1], and there is a public instance list with more
| instances[2].
|
| [0] https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
|
| [1] https://serenity.video
|
| [2] https://instances.invidious.io/
| ofou wrote:
| If you subscribe to YT, the ads are gone, plus music.
| ghusbands wrote:
| Though rewarding Google for an anticompetitive solution to a
| problem they created is... problematic.
| DavideNL wrote:
| There's also an iOS app for SponsorBlock now (safari
| extension.)
| junaru wrote:
| > YouTube Vanced
|
| I get why they want to stay anonymous but that website is no
| different from any other malware site - no source, no authors
| just some affiliate links. Putting your google credentials in
| an app like that is not something people should be comfortable
| with.
| fartcannon wrote:
| NewPipe let's you 'subscribe' to channels without giving it
| any credentials. You know, like how it used to be with RSS.
| The good way. The user empowered way.
| figbert wrote:
| > You know, like how it used to be with RSS.
|
| That, my friend, would be because it is RSS!
| TobTobXX wrote:
| IIRC, think NewPipe actually requests the channel pages
| and parses the html.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| https://github.com/YTVanced
| lokimedes wrote:
| Aside from the manipulative and downright unproductive type of
| economy we are left with, how much energy (in terms of Wh) is
| wasted by video ads? Energy doesn't lie, even if a publisher can
| seemingly offset their costs with a CDN. The real trouble is that
| energy pricing is not correlated with total cost of production in
| most countries. Could energy pricing that accounted for
| pollution, resource depletion as well as the production cost
| itself, help us as a species in removing such counterproductive
| businesses?
| foxfluff wrote:
| I believe there's also a substantial cost as e-waste when
| people dump devices that are no longer powerful enough to
| display ad-filled garbage without terrible lag and stutter.
| itvision wrote:
| I also have NoScript installed - it significantly decreases the
| amount of crap your web browser fetches and renders and thus
| makes browsing faster and consume less energy.
|
| And as mentioned by blakesterz in Private mode I have both uBlock
| Origin and NoScript disabled because multiple websites refuse to
| work otherwise.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I use uMatrix so I can enable scripts (and other resources) on
| a per-domain basis.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| You don't need NoScript with uBlock.
|
| It has an option for disabling JS (</> in its main drop-down
| menu).
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I still use NoScript because you can quickly enable bare
| minimum scripts to get a site working. After a while you
| develop a good intuition for what is making things not work.
| At first it is pretty daunting and I generally don't
| recommend it for the less savvy.
|
| If you just blanket turn off Js the internet basically is not
| useable.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| By default I visit with NoScript enabled. It usually works
| fine. Sometimes it doesn't, so I selectively enable scripts. As
| often as not, it doesn't help.
|
| If it's at all hard to make the site work for me, I give up -
| it's not as if there's a shortage of websites to visit. I know
| when I'm not welcome.
| zuminator wrote:
| I've had YouTube Premium since its inception. Whenever I'm around
| someone else who puts on a free-tier version of YouTube its
| rather shocking how frequent and intrusive the commercial ads
| are.
| kingcharles wrote:
| > Whenever I'm around someone else who puts on a free-tier
| version of YouTube its rather shocking how frequent and
| intrusive the commercial ads are.
|
| Also, when I accidentally open a video in a private browsing
| window where I'm not logged in. DAMN IT WHY IS ALL THESE ADS.
|
| Although, I have to say that the ads on YouTube were some of
| the most targeted of any site, and I would often sit through
| them.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I just upgraded after refusing. Mostly for mobile. On desktop
| my ad block works but on mobile it wouldnt. You can also shut
| off your screen on mobile and it continues to run with Premium.
| It kind of sucks that Youtube requires you to pay for this but
| I use Youtube enough to be okay with it.
| cma wrote:
| Ad block on firefox works on YouTube on mobile (Android) and
| there is another mobile firefox extension to allow background
| play.
| exhilaration wrote:
| The name of the Firefox Android extension that allows
| background play is "Video Background Play Fix":
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-
| backgro...
|
| Just install that and uBlock Origin and you're set:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/ublock-
| origin...
| eyeundersand wrote:
| On Android, Youtube Vanced (https://vancedapp.com/) is the
| best solution, in my experience. Used it for multiple
| years, no complaints.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Oh nice. I'll check this out. Thanks.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| I'm blocking youtube ads on my mobile quite okay and the
| experience is fine (IOS - AdGuard). There are some twitches
| here and there but it is very usable.
| hateful wrote:
| I ran ad blocking on Youtube for years, and I've been a Premium
| member since it came out (as Red back then). I can't stand ads
| and avoid them like the plague.
|
| Some ads still sneak into my world though. My current peeve is
| when going to a restaurant and they have "the game" on full
| blast. I'm perfectly fine with people watching/listening to the
| game - and half the time the restaurant is considered a "sports
| bar", so I get it. But what ends up happening is that those
| major games are mostly ads. And the ads are twice as loud as
| the game. So here I am, paying to eat at a place and I'm
| listening to ads. I've been tempted to ask the server if we'll
| be receiving a discount for listening to each ad like a mobile
| game!
| jerf wrote:
| Another alternative is ask them to turn it down and turn on
| CC.
|
| I wish more of these places would have CC on. Especially if
| multiple programs are on, you can't have the audio. There's a
| solution _right there_ , built right in, just waiting....
| page in the conversation about how accessibility can be
| useful to more than just the immediately disabled.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Maybe your sensorium is different than mine, but the
| motion, flashing, and colors of advertisements are just as
| irritating as the audio to me. This is especially true in
| an environment where there are lots of other conversations
| and sounds to compete with the TV noise.
|
| Unless the volume is turned up annoyingly loud, I find the
| visuals to be the annoyingly loud part: The subdued hues of
| the painted walls, tile floors, and wood trim reflecting
| back to my eyes from the ambient lighting are invisible
| compared to the 500 nits of flourescent colors jump cutting
| back and forth.
|
| Turning on CC but leaving the visual assault in place
| doesn't help my eyes much. I would feel less abused if
| they'd turn the screen off but leave the game audio over
| the radio.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Get a phone with an IR blaster and turn off their TV
| teddyh wrote:
| > _My current peeve is when going to a restaurant and they
| have "the game" on full blast._
|
| Get a TV-B-Gone.
| judge2020 wrote:
| AirPods Pro also work well.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I've bought the standalone keychain and the DIY TV-B-Gone.
| They're great but clunky. I bought a USB C IR blaster
| keychain hoping there'd be a TV-B-Gone app that could
| utilize it. No such luck.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Regarding this, sports bars in particular pay a pretty hefty
| fee to have public-view television service, especially
| regarding access to all pro-league games. I'm sure they'd be
| paying more in general if they opted to mute or turn off the
| screen during ads (since the network expects x% of the
| restaurant's viewers to see and hear the ad, so they get the
| advertiser to pay more for access to those viewers,
| subsidizing the restaurant's actual monthly bill).
| xfz wrote:
| I would eat elsewhere if at all possible. You might not have
| many options though, or maybe you're with a group of people
| who love advertising.
| spikej wrote:
| dude... go to a different restaurant. You might even find
| it's less crowded, and you get better service because there's
| no game on!
| munificent wrote:
| Depends on where you live. Here in the Pacific Northwest,
| there are plenty of TV-free restaurant choices. Back when I
| lived in the South, it was a lot harder to find.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| The gym that I go to (and pay for) have ads on most of the
| displays (some are running TV programs). Ads for local
| businesses and "upgrade your membership TODAY". It irks me. I
| don't want to be distracted by these flashing screens.
|
| But I guess there is no law that says that patrons should be
| shielded from ads. And I don't think they would listen if I
| gave them a complaint (why would they give up a source of
| revenue?). So I don't know what can be done about it short of
| a concerted effort by many members. And they (and myself)
| would probably not be motivated enough to go to that level of
| effort just to get rid of some irksome ads.
| Vrondi wrote:
| If there is another gym in the area with fewer ads, cancel
| your current membership, let them know the reason why, and
| go to the other gym. Let the new gym also know why you are
| switching to them.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| I have an ethical dilemma about YouTube. I hate ads, I hate
| Google, and I want to support the creators.
|
| For those reasons adblock is a must, and paying for YouTube
| Premium is not an option (I'm not going to voluntarily give a
| single penny of my money to Google)
|
| Sure, I've got CuriosityStream and Nebula subs, but not all
| content creators use those platforms.
|
| It is what it is.
| somerando7 wrote:
| The creators that are decently big (100k+) make enough money
| whether or not you ad-block. Don't worry about it.
| elwell wrote:
| They make enough money precisely because not everyone ad
| blocks. This seems like a fallacious argument.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| A lot of big creators take sponsorship deals and have in-
| video ads. I know most of the ones I watch do, and I
| actually don't even mind them. They're personalized to
| the content creator's content, and are usually as
| entertaining as the video's contents because of it.
| baud147258 wrote:
| To support the creators whose videos I'm watching on YT, I
| use a whitelist add-on that disable the adblocker on those
| channels. Though the add-on still allows me to skip the ad,
| which I'm doing when it's an ad I've already seen.
| cercatrova wrote:
| You can pay for their Patreon as well if you want
| judge2020 wrote:
| Nebula seems to split profit 50/50[0] while YouTube splits it
| 55/45 to the channel[1], and Youtube Premium views are
| regarded as being sometimes 10-20x the payout of an ad-
| supported view[2].
|
| 0: https://nebula.app/faq#:~:text=How%20do%20the%20creators%2
| 0g...
|
| 1: https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/youtube-partner-
| progra....
|
| 2: https://twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1486935690315112455?s
| =2... and https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/totalbiscuit-
| youtube-red-p...
| solarmist wrote:
| re: [2] I did not know that. This thread has convinced me
| to seriously look at paying for YouTube.
| [deleted]
| titzer wrote:
| I bet! I run an adblocker and it's a cat and mouse game with
| YouTube ads slipping through. Last breakage, before I
| reinstalled it, I was getting ad interruptions for the _same
| two_ stupid adds literally every 45 seconds.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Which ad blocker? I use ublock origin and I never see YT ads.
| titzer wrote:
| I agree uBlock origin is the best, but I am running Safari
| now, so I use both Adblock plus and Ghostery lite.
| tomp wrote:
| I use AdGuard, I don't see YouTube ads.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Problem is once an ad blocker's in the loop, the ad
| architecture's dataflow is damaged and it'll have to run
| fallback content.
|
| So you'll get whatever's in the B-list of ads and that may be
| just two.
| Macha wrote:
| Yeah, google can circumvent the ad blocker's attempts to
| block the ad playback from beginning, but if the first
| thing the ad does is have double verify check if you're a
| bot, and double verify's domain is in your adblocker's
| list, then the ad is going to fail and Google will try load
| some other ad once it errors out.
| tasha0663 wrote:
| > double verify check if you're a bot
|
| I hate when they do this. I just leave and go somewhere
| else. I'm not submitting to Voight-Kampff just to see a
| LinkedIn profile.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| That's win-win for the server. Servers start doing this
| because automated traffic is cutting into their ability
| to provide service to humans. If you're freeing up their
| traffic to serve other humans you're doing them a favor.
| Macha wrote:
| To be clear, advertising bot detection is different to
| website bot detection. The website bot detection is
| because they're worried about spambots filling comments
| or DDOS attacks. This is where you get the captchas. The
| advertiser bot detection is more for the case where the
| website owner is in on it and trying to boost their
| metrics to get more revenue from advertisers, and is more
| likely to be expressed via blank ad slots and demands for
| refunds from the website owner.
| xyst wrote:
| instead of paying for premium and all of that money going to a
| megacorp. I spent some money on a simple browser plugin that
| forces YT to use the HTML5 video player.
|
| Although every now and then an ad happens to pre-load before
| the video starts but I just refresh the video page and the ad
| goes away.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Premium views help a lot more than ad-supported views for
| creators, on the scale of 10-20x the payout per-view[0,1]
| (and it pays out regardless of the advertiser friendliness
| rating).
|
| This has been a hot topic lately[2,3], but at what point is
| you watching YouTube for years without ads, without paying
| for Premium, ethically stealing or "piracy"? YouTube was
| buying petabytes of Hard Drive storage a day in 2012 to keep
| up with the demand[4], i'm sure it's nearly an Exabyte a day
| or more right now, so it doesn't cost $0 for YouTube to run
| the service, they just happen to have enough people on Mobile
| watching and clicking ads to make a profit[5] and subsidize
| the rest of us.
|
| 0: https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/totalbiscuit-youtube-
| red-p...
|
| 1: https://twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1486935690315112455?s
| =2...
|
| 2: https://youtu.be/-znPFc-0VS8?t=149
|
| 3: https://youtu.be/6jUxOnoWsFU
|
| 4: https://sumanrs.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/youtube-yearly-
| cost...
|
| 5: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-
| al...
| xyst wrote:
| It's insane to me that people are arguing in favor of the
| advertisement companies simply because they pay the content
| creators a sliver of what they accept from the companies
| that use their ad platform.
|
| Here's my take. It's not "piracy" or "ethical piracy" (what
| the fuck?). The content creators put it out on YT with the
| expectation that it will get viewed. The little money they
| receive now is simply a bonus. It's only piracy if the
| content creator put it out on a platform for some dollar
| amount (ie, direct to consumer model) and then it is later
| re-uploaded for free by another channel or via other
| means..
|
| In other words, you can't claim piracy when the "price" is
| $0 up front.
|
| As for YT, I don't really care. They are subsidized by the
| data that is fed to them (ie, viewing history) and resold
| to advertisers. They get their nut.
|
| If anything, this should really push the forefront on
| innovation for a decentralized video streaming platform.
| One organization or group should not have this much power
| over who gets the "top views" via a proprietary algorithm.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The price of things don't have to be represented in
| dollar amounts. If I want to give you a free iPad for
| watching my 2 hour lecture, I don't expect you to put on
| some sunglasses and take a nap for 1 hour 55 minutes. If
| you do that, I don't have to give you that iPad even if
| you sued me for it.
|
| Piracy in general is just 'unauthorized use'[0]. YouTube
| requires you watch ads to use their website, so not doing
| that is piracy. The only reason there's no consequences
| for adblock are because (A) it'd be bad optics and bad PR
| to sue regular viewers, and (B) YouTube sees the value of
| subsidizing those who block ads as a plus, since it means
| they can keep their tight grip on where 'everyone' goes
| to watch videos and thus where creators are required to
| upload if they want people to see their stuff. If they
| blocked ~37% [1] of viewers with adblock, different
| services more lenient to ad blockers (at first) would be
| able to actually attract viewers and perhaps get the
| content creators to start dual-uploading their content.
|
| 0: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/piracy
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30151590
| commoner wrote:
| > YouTube requires you watch ads to use their website, so
| not doing that is piracy.
|
| Piracy is another word for copyright infringement.
| Blocking ads on YouTube is not piracy because you are not
| violating copyright law (in any country that I'm aware
| of) by viewing only a portion of the content that is
| delivered to you. DVRs do the same thing as ad blockers
| for TVs, but in the U.S., the courts have ruled that DVR
| services do not infringe the copyrights of media
| companies.[1]
|
| YouTube and other Google services don't forbid ad
| blocking in their terms of service.[2] If they did, there
| would be an uproar because Google itself includes an ad
| blocker in Chrome, which of course does not block any
| YouTube or Google ads.[3]
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/business-us-
| cablevision-cour...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms
|
| [3] https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/7632919
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| You're missing so much in this analysis - the big
| advertising companies do much more than show ads - they
| stalk you in excruciating detail, they resell your private
| life information to untold abusers who try to gain
| advantage from you.
|
| Taking advantage of you, by manipulating your mind is one
| of the basic premises of ads.
|
| In some ideal 'fair' world ads would just present
| information for you to make rational choices - but nope,
| the reality is the ads industry is based on
| emotional/psychological manipulation. If you seek to
| understand you can research about the evolution of the
| industry since the time of Freud where they co-opted
| psychological techniques to sell things by exacerbating
| people's psychoses.
|
| Put another way, your arguments would only make sense if
| the advertisers played fair but they are abusive and try to
| trick you. You can't make a fair deal with conniving.
|
| The reality of this is so bad that it is destroying our
| society - at what point is allowing massive scale
| psychological manipulation/abuse for profit destroying
| society?
|
| My post here is a bit ranty but I get upset at the lack of
| fair context in the presuppositions of your argument.
| Tenoke wrote:
| In all fairness, if the rest of us didn't run adblockers, they
| probably wouldn't need to be so aggressive with the ads for
| those that currently don't.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| I'm gonna guess that isn't the case, and that the percentage
| of people using ad blockers is still fairly low.
| ravar wrote:
| This strikes me as wishful thinking, adblockers are such a
| small minority. They are just following the incentives they
| would always follow, adblockers or no.
| throwaway744678 wrote:
| From the article, 27% of users; this is higher than I
| thought, and not negligible anymore.
|
| Note: I tried a few google search to find accurate data,
| but it goes all over the place; is there an accurate
| estimation somewhere?
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Finding out if someone is running an ad blocker is not
| easy. After all a good ad blocker tries to be stealthy
| about it.
|
| (anti ad blocker leads to anti anti ad blocker)
| mileza wrote:
| There are plenty of websites that detect that I'm using
| an adblocker. It's mildly annoying, but then I get to
| decide if what I was about to read was worth it.
|
| Most of the time it's journaldemontreal.com (and other
| Quebecor-related websites) that prevents me from reading
| their articles with my adblocker. Which is a blessing in
| a way, because it's basically a glorified tabloid with a
| lot of articles of dubious quality.
|
| I'm on Firefox with both AdBlockPlus and uBlock Origin.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Adblockers are at 27% just in the US looking at statista
| and other random sources, and the number is much higher if
| you look at the more relevant younger demographic.
|
| 0. https://www.statista.com/statistics/804008/ad-blocking-
| reach...
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| This is exactly the case. Every time someone starts ad-
| blocking, someone else has to assume that ad watch for them.
|
| Of course this isn't 1:1 parity in reality, but the ultimate
| manifestation of ad blocking is that.
|
| Google had a good system a few years ago that I was probably
| the only sucker who paid them for it (and probably why they
| stopped it). You could pay a chosen amount monthly, and they
| would not show you ads as a result. It wasn't perfected, but
| the concept was good for those who understand the problem and
| want to work towards a solution.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| >> Every time someone starts ad-blocking, someone else has
| to assume that ad watch for them.
|
| This is a completely unsubstantiated claim, and also false
| if you think about it.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| Aren't the people who use adblockers by definition those
| who are irritated by advertising enough that they wouldn't
| buy the products and services being advertised? If anything
| ad people should _love_ things like uBlock Origin, it means
| they 're not wasting their ad spend on people who aren't
| going to buy their products anyway.
| kzrdude wrote:
| I think that's wishful thinking. I might even think this
| about myself, that I don't care about ads. But they still
| have some effect I think. Sure, I rarely buy stuff online
| or anywhere, I just don't shop much, but I still get
| affected by ads.
|
| Some things about our brain we just can't change: we like
| things we've seen before. Both brands and people.
| Recognition makes a big difference, for example in
| arbitrary choices when shopping.
| whoibrar wrote:
| Which year was this ? Can you share more information
| regarding this ?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I want to say they stopped it in 2018? I don't remember
| the name of the program, and searching "google paying for
| no ads" brings up a ton of unrelated adwords stuff.
|
| I payed $5/mo and they would roll over unused funds. It
| worked pretty well, except that it would still show where
| the banners were, just blank whitespace instead of an ad.
| jsnell wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Yeah thanks, that was it.
| whoibrar wrote:
| Thank you (:
| redml wrote:
| There was a time back in the IE6 era where firefox didn't
| really have any market share and adblockers weren't really a
| thing.
|
| The advertising industry was really aggressive even then.
| Some publishers put as many popups and banner ads as they
| could. I'm not saying all publishers would do this, but I
| have to admit the worst actors are the ones I strongly
| remember.
|
| Only difference now is that there's a lot more tracking and
| ads are more insidious where they blend in with content now.
| argomo wrote:
| What's this mythical world where industry execs leave profit
| on the table because they aren't being squeezed by ad
| blockers? Have you tried watching cable TV? You know, the
| service that was originally billed as a way to watch tv
| without ads?
| judge2020 wrote:
| To be fair, if people stopped blocking ads I don't see them
| backing off on Ads any more; the increase in revenue and ad
| watch time would be kept as profit, since the current YouTube
| paradigm where they show 2 ads at the start and sometimes
| multiple mid-roll ads is so that they annoy you enough to
| sign up for Premium.
| tasha0663 wrote:
| You've put the cart ahead of the horse. Ad-blockers took off
| once they started throwing animated banners at us. Punch the
| monkey, win an ipod.
| Tenoke wrote:
| That's not really true. Youtube ads specifically were way
| way milder and rarer years ago when way less people used
| Adblock.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| And global warming was much milder when we had more
| pirates in the world [1]. Correlation is not causation.
| In the same period, YouTube's management style and
| public-facing attitude have changed dramatically,
| Google's general attempt at being the "good guys" has
| pretty much vanished, and beancounting has taken over as
| the guiding principle in many respects. I have zero
| reason to believe that had Adblocking not been a thing,
| there would have been any significant difference in the
| frequency or intrusiveness of the ads YouTube shows.
|
| [1] https://swizec.com/blog/pirates-downfall-causes-
| global-warmi...
| Tenoke wrote:
| Correlation is not causation but negative correlation is
| even more surely not causation and what I was replying to
| was
|
| >Ad-blockers took off once they started throwing animated
| banners at us
|
| which is still not true. When they took off the ads were
| still minimal.
| gifnamething wrote:
| That was when it was still a growing business. Uber was
| cheaper when investors paid for it, too.
| demindiro wrote:
| I doubt that. Even if adblockers weren't a thing they'd push
| more ads since it generates more revenue. It's probably also
| effective at annoying users into buying a subscription to
| avoid (most) ads.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| I feel the same when I accidently open the stock app instead of
| Vanced.
| idatum wrote:
| How far does YouTube Premium go as far as privacy? I never took
| a look at it carefully.
|
| My fear is I would pay the fee for no ads, but Google would
| still collect data on what I view and monetize that by selling
| me ads somewhere else.
| Macha wrote:
| YouTube Premium does nothing to stop Google using your
| youtube history to profile you and letting advertisers target
| ads at you on other sites using Google's data which is
| partially built on the youtube profiling.
|
| By not loading the ads at all, it may stymie non-Google ad
| networks attempts to profile you.
| judge2020 wrote:
| YouTube ads are based on your watch history, not some
| tracking pixel, so even a regular ad blocker on YouTube.com
| only blocks ads and doesn't help with privacy.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| I suspect that since you're a paying user, a more valuable
| customer, they'd want to mine your data more thoroughly to
| derive more profits in other ways.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I would suspect the opposite, once you start paying you go
| from being a product to being a customer.
|
| If youtube was 90% premium members, it would likely be an
| unrecognizably better platform, since users instead of
| advertisers would be the core profit center.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| In a normal world that would make sense but we're dealing
| with businesses and MBAs who need to incessantly increase
| their revenue. As a paying customer they could squeeze
| more, you're willing to pay. Non-paying customers are
| used as a product themselves but it's extremely hard to
| extract more.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| That's just normal business though, and my statement is
| intrinsically correcting for that.
|
| Netflix has the same MBAs and bean counters, but their
| product has no ads and orders of magnitude less
| clickbait. Its clear they make content geared for their
| users, not for their advertisers. Youtube is _very_ heavy
| with advertiser friendly content, and both creators and
| users pay heavily for that (but its *quote* Free!
| *unquote*)
| pvarangot wrote:
| Netflix productions do content placement. It's pretty
| sneaky and they do use social media accounts for
| shenanigans like fake posts on subreddits asking "What
| was that jacket in TVShow S03E04?" and another account
| responding with a link. Big brands with recognizable
| logos also do product placement on those. For fantasy
| shows they aim to own the merchandise distribution, but
| for stuff that happens on the real world there's always
| product placement and webpage placement and stuff like
| that going on.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I hardly see product placement as being even remotely
| close to what YouTube is doing. Its probably one of the
| most innocuous forms of advertising. Imagine a YouTube
| where the worst you can come up with is a guy drinking a
| coke during his video.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Yes, because it's done in moderation. Imagine if that was
| ramped up and 90% content was turned into product
| placement..
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| I experience this on my phone where adblock doesn't work that
| well. It's absolutely horrible to use the web there. The screen
| is already small, and then it gets filled with overlays getting
| me to use an app, ads, autoplaying videos, ...
|
| I'm at the point where my phone is just an alarm, instant
| messenger and casual camera, since other apps are also full of
| annoying ads.
| Quigglez wrote:
| Open ended question, is there a solution? Inherently people
| trying to make money from their website either have to charge
| people directly with money for access or indirectly by having
| them see/hear ads. Advertisers inherently want their ads to be
| seen/heard, which means there is pressure to make their ads more
| intrusive. Yet the more intrusive the ads become, the more
| annoyed the person accessing the content becomes (and thus
| perhaps becomes more likely to get an ad blocker). The more
| people that block ads, the more the website needs to make from
| each person who isn't blocking ads (likely meaning additional
| pressure to make ads more intrusive). What path are we headed
| down? What happens when so many people are blocking ads that the
| amount of value needed to be extracted from those who don't block
| ads is impossible to achieve? Does the internet consolidate more?
|
| I personally use ad blockers. Right now I'm browsing with
| Ghostery and AdBlock. I'm surprised that only 27% of people use
| them currently. Makes me want to check out my parents computers
| when I visit next and make sure they have an ad blocker
| installed. But back to the questions, does this mean that the
| contract between websites their visitors is inherently broken? Is
| the current situation a race to the bottom? Is that tenable?
| What's the alternative?
| xyst wrote:
| yea - it's called offering a product that is actually useful.
| Not this clickbait bullshit we see now.
|
| "Cops hate these 10 tips that save you money. #6 will surprise
| you"
|
| "Take a quiz to find out which Taylor Swift boyfriend you are"
| coldpie wrote:
| > Open ended question, is there a solution?
|
| Well, let's find out. Ads suck all of the air out of the room.
| If you provide your content through another business model,
| someone else can just copy your content and slap ads on it and
| make a few bucks. And because search engines function on those
| same ads, they're incentivized to send you to the spam sites
| instead of the real source of the content. If we kill ads as a
| business model, then we can start to explore other business
| models and find out what actually works.
|
| > Inherently people trying to make money from their website
| either have to charge people directly with money for access or
| indirectly by having them see/hear ads.
|
| No. There are other options. One example is the Patreon model.
| I pay for several creators who do not gate their content to
| payment. They make their content available to everyone, for
| free. I could view their content for free, but I want to
| encourage them to continue creating, so I pay them for it. Is
| it a viable option for every situation? I don't know. But the
| mere existence of ad-based business models means it's very
| difficult to explore non-ad-based solutions. For this, and a
| whole host of other reasons, using an ad-blocker is more
| ethical than not.
| xKuni wrote:
| > Open ended question, is there a solution?
|
| Regulation. It's a harsh measure, but I doubt there is another
| one. The last 20 years people tried to find alternative
| solutions. We have pay-walls, we have crowdfounding, we have
| various subscription models, I fail to see a solution that
| hasn't been tried, but yet every single year we get exposed to
| more ads. It seems extremly unlikely that there is something
| that could replace ads.
|
| But what is the logical solution when there is a damaging thing
| in society that can't be replaced by healthy alternatives? It's
| regulation.
|
| Now I know that a ban on ads seems unlikely. But I honestly
| don't think we have a choice. Because the alternative is that
| the ad-industry keeps creeping into every single aspect of our
| lifes, like they have done ever since their emergence. And with
| the advance of AR, smart homes and AI assistants this seems
| like a bad idea.
| cartesius13 wrote:
| If any regulation about ads ever comes into existence it will
| be against adblockers, making them illegal or something. Or
| do you happen to have billions and power and influence to
| lobby like crazy?
| xfz wrote:
| > > Open ended question, is there a solution?
|
| Spotify found a solution that works for music.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| benlumen wrote:
| I've used adblockers since they were invented and rarely
| experience the unfiltered internet.
|
| In recent years, though, I've wondered if it might actually be
| better to turn that all off. Are we adblockers just getting a
| more purified stream of clickbait "news" and enraging social
| media posts, without the ads there to remind us that it's all
| trash?
|
| I suspect so.
| foxfluff wrote:
| Yep. Most of the things you find with a Google search are
| obvious SEO trash even if you don't see the ads. The quality of
| the content reminds you that it's all trash.
| manishsharan wrote:
| What will be the long term consequences of majority of us using
| AdBlocks? And who will fill the void when running a website is
| economically unfeasible?
|
| Think of it like this : a majority of well respected publications
| are behind paywalls ; so people are consuming information from
| Facebook memes or WhatsApp posts or worse. And we know how well
| that is going for us as a society?
|
| YouTube ads are freaking annoying. But I know that the creators
| of those channels I watch depend on those to make a decent living
| and overwhelming majority of them are not rich.
| foxfluff wrote:
| > And who will fill the void when running a website is
| economically unfeasible?
|
| You mean who will fill the internet with SEO-optimized garbage
| and other trash that only exist to serve ad impressions? I sure
| hope nobody will.
| every wrote:
| I find the EFF Privacy Badger to be a nice compromise:
| https://privacybadger.org/
| TheIronMark wrote:
| No one likes ads, but the belief that you're owed content for
| free is absurd.
| dpedu wrote:
| The content is just a lure the creator and platform hope bring
| you in close enough to be hooked by an ad. Sometimes, the fish
| get away.
| depingus wrote:
| The belief that advertisers are owed my attention is absurd.
|
| Since forever, you could opt of viewing ads. Ad in a magazine?
| Next page. TV commercial? Great time for a bathroom break. But
| now advertisers have decided that you MUST watch their ad.
| There's a countdown timer for. If the browser loses focus, the
| timer stops. How long before they're tracking eyeballs for
| enforcement? Oh wait, not long at all.
|
| https://futurism.com/moviepass-eye-tracking-ads
|
| https://www.techspot.com/news/93055-meta-patents-hint-metave...
| robomartin wrote:
| > The belief that advertisers are owed my attention is
| absurd.
|
| You are trying to rationalize theft through self-righteous
| nonsense.
|
| If you don't want the ads, don't use the
| site/service/content. Simple as that. Anything else is you
| stealing it.
|
| You don't get to decide how a site pays for the cost of
| running their operation. They do. If they decide ads is the
| way and you don't like it, don't use their site. Stealing the
| content does not make you virtuous, no matter how you might
| attempt to distort reality. It makes you a thief.
|
| "I don't how you do things, so I am going to steal your
| product!"
|
| Yeah, that's a formula for a better society.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Who's stealing it? I asked for an article through the
| customary channels and they served it to me. Inside that
| article, they offered a whole set of embedded resources for
| me to choose to load, and I opted out of a lot of them.
|
| None of that remotely resembles theft.
| robomartin wrote:
| You have obviously convinced yourself it is OK to steal
| because you think it is OK to steal, because you think it
| is OK to steal. Good for you.
|
| What you never see are the jobs you might affect through
| your actions. You have actually convinced yourself that
| you are entitled to use someone else's work product
| without paying for it in any way. All I can say is that I
| hope one day someone does the same to you. Maybe then
| you'll understand that theft has consequences.
|
| If you don't like advertising, stop stealing the
| products, services and content it supports.
| depingus wrote:
| When there's a law that makes adblocking illegal. I will
| gladly leave the web behind forever. But to equate
| adblocking to stealing is hyperbolic nonsense. And to out
| right call me a thief is insulting. Looks like I struck a
| nerve; or maybe this whole thread did. Maybe you're in ad
| tech? I hope you are. I hope you read through this entire
| thread and soak in just how rotten your industry is; so
| reviled even here on HN.
| robomartin wrote:
| I am not in ad tech at all. Not even close. I am in
| manufacturing. And, yes, I use various advertising
| channels to find customers.
|
| Do you know what happens at this end of the scale when
| your 100% ad-blocked utopia becomes reality? Do you have
| any clue? Jobs evaporate. That's what happens.
|
| Calling you and others using ad-blocking thieves isn't
| hyperbolic at all. And, if you find it insulting, you
| should stop stealing.
|
| It is nothing less than delusional to convince yourself
| that you are entitled to the entire web without paying
| for any of it. Your solution for "I don't like ads" is "I
| will steal your product". That is morally decrepit. If
| you don't like ads, don't use their products. That is a
| morally supportable position. The other is just theft,
| regardless of how self-righteous you wish to be.
|
| You think you are entitled to free pizza. Everyone else
| pays your bill. Until more people think like you. And
| then reality hits: There was never any free pizza. And
| the pizza is gone. Along with the jobs and everything
| else it created.
| superkuh wrote:
| The fact that you're talking about "content" shows the
| commercial mindset. The web used to be mostly where people
| shared information and media about things they loved with no
| expectation of making money. It still is underneath all the
| commercial crap piled high within the walled gardens. Take off
| the profit blinders and see the web can be motivated by other
| things.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| I pay for more Content than I ever have. Ever.
|
| I have 600 records, pay directly for a YouTube show, pay for 5
| substack blogs, I have hundreds of dvds, 500books, endless
| video games for multiple consoles, Netflix, hbomax, Hulu,
| boomerang, Shudder, Amazon, I've had sling, CBS watch, wb
| archive, criterion, and others.
|
| I go through periods of Pandora or Spotify.
|
| The reality is every company wants to charge but they all want
| to be on the open web at the same time.
|
| Can't have it both ways.
|
| I control what downloads on the internet I pay for, on the
| device I own.
|
| If you didn't erect a paywalls? Your fault. Not mine.
|
| I wouldn't bed a stranger without a condom
|
| I don't browse without an ad blocker. Or privacy badger.
|
| People who understand ad blockers but don't use them are
| corporate sychophants.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Whats absurd is thinking I should allow attempts at
| psychological manipulation in my life.
| silisili wrote:
| Does anyone actually feel like they are owed anything for free
| (site seems down, apologies if the author said as much)?
|
| I will browse news and articles sometimes -because- they are
| free. If they were not, I simply no longer visit said page. I
| don't feel I'm owed their content in any way, and I'm OK just
| walking away if they decide to paywall it.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I don't think anyone feels they are "owed" anything. I do,
| however, feel I have the right to download whatever someone
| puts online, and not download and view the adjacent ads.
|
| Whether or not that keeps the lights on in that business is not
| really my problem. It becomes my problem if it's content I care
| about that disappears. Without ads, perhaps 90% of the free
| content of the web would disappear. Since I run an adblocker,
| I'm completely fine with that.
| cartesius13 wrote:
| I think that the idea that "people would largely stop making
| content for the web if that weren't ads" is a myth. Sure, the
| money seeking people wouldn't do it anymore and a lot less
| people would be able to make a living off of it. But think of
| all the web content makers that currently don't make a lot of
| money, which I believe is a lot of people since not everyone
| who has blog earns a living from it. I'm not saying we
| wouldn't lose anything but this idea the "90% of the web
| would disappear or be paywalled" is kinda insane and quite
| unlikely
| skummetmaelk wrote:
| How about making content that people actually feel like they
| obtain value in their lives from. They'd pay for that. Instead
| we have the majority of content creators engaged in an arms
| race to hijack your attention and produce the most outrageous,
| rather than best, content possible because more outrage = more
| eyeballs = more ads.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| No, they wouldn't pay for that. This is a dumb myth that
| people use to brush off their guilt. If something can be
| taken for free with no repercussion, _most people will take
| it for free_.
|
| We're in a feedback loop where content is being pulled
| towards the lowest common denominator of people who don't ad-
| block, which is a terrible uninformed click-bait hellhole.
|
| You can ad block, I do myself (with a pretty big whitelist),
| but understand that if you are not contributuing (money or ad
| views) your opinion of the internet is irrelevant. Start
| paying, _then complain as a paying customer_.
| skummetmaelk wrote:
| I support several content creators on Patreon because I
| greatly value their content and want them to continue
| making it. I realise not everyone is in a position to do so
| and that is fine.
|
| > If something can be taken for free with no repercussion,
| most people will take it for free.
|
| This is clearly not true. Netflix found massive success
| even though it was, and still is, incredibly easy to pirate
| everything you want to watch. Indie games with poor or non-
| existent DRM make money on Steam even though pirate copies
| exist.
|
| Yes, of course there is a loss to piracy. Is that loss
| greater than what surveillance capitalism is pushing onto
| us? I doubt it, but you may think otherwise.
| nescioquid wrote:
| Many sites on the internet provide little more than
| infrastructure and moderation for the content provided by
| users of that site. I think every one of those users has a
| relevant opinion about the internet itself whether or not
| they are forking over money or being subjected to
| advertising.
|
| The internet did not spring into being for the sake of ad-
| tech.
| foxfluff wrote:
| As long as it is possible to make money with ads, the web
| will be full of SEO-optimized trash, clickbait, and other
| worthless "content" full of ads, and it will drown out
| anything of quality. If you're giving them ad views, you're
| partly responsible for and contributing towards the sorry
| state of the internet. Start blocking ads, and ask everyone
| you know to do the same.
| TheIronMark wrote:
| > How about making content that people actually feel like
| they obtain value in their lives from.
|
| Not believing the content has value does not actually give
| you the right to get it for free.
| skummetmaelk wrote:
| That's not my point.
|
| My point is that content has evolved steadily into becoming
| something that a great deal of the population actually
| feels bad about consuming. They feel bad about losing hours
| on Youtube clicking video after video, but they can't stop
| because their brains have been hijacked by the fine
| interplay between algorithm and content creator driving
| this madness. Nobody would pay for this content if they had
| to. They don't event _want_ to watch it really.
|
| If content platforms were forced to have a subscriber
| model. People would only pay for what they actually _want_
| access to.
| capital_guy wrote:
| A lot of people are saying this but I disagree that you are
| either on one side or the other. If you pay a monthly
| subscription to the Washington Post, their website is still
| absolutely covered with advertisements - moving, video,
| intrusive advertisements that IMHO make the site unusable. So
| I'm not owed free content. I'm paying for it. And since I'm
| paying for it, don't shove a bunch of crap down my throat when
| I want to see the stuff I paid for.
| nescioquid wrote:
| I don't recall how long ago this was, but I bought a digital
| subscription to The Economist only to discover the site
| refused to make good on my subscription while I had an
| adblocker active. I canceled the subscription explaining why.
|
| I've since resubscribed as their site no longer does this. It
| seems so crazy to me that I tried to search for when The
| Economist changed their policy and found nothing relevant,
| other than a spate of 2015 stories about how they contracted
| with an ad-tech firm to determine how many subscribers were
| using adblockers, but the service subjected their readers to
| malware.
|
| Newspapers have always made their money by selling their
| audience to advertisers. However, it wasn't too hard to
| ignore the ads in print and there is a limit to how malicious
| a print ad can be.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| The belief that my computer/phone will download and display
| your ads is also absurd. It just won't, without my explicit
| consent.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I'm not owed free content; but nor do I owe anyone my eyeballs.
| If you put up a site on the public internet, then it's
| reasonable to assume the site's public. If it turns out my
| assumption is wrong, I just go away - I'm not going to argue
| with a webmaster who is determined to make me see stuff I don't
| want to see.
| massysett wrote:
| "But I think without the help of an adblocker I would find it
| much worse."
|
| Not at all. Because I don't use an adblocker, I don't visit
| websites that are infested with ridiculous numbers of ads. These
| sites are not worth reading anyway. I read sites I pay for, I go
| to my bank, I pay bills, I read Haskell API docs, etc etc.
|
| If I used an adblocker, I'd waste even more time on Internet
| garbage.
| Apreche wrote:
| To answer the question posed by the site. How can they afford
| 261MB page load instead of 5MB? Because the largest expense of
| delivering video, the bandwidth, is still very cheap. We're
| talking less than one cent per gigabyte. Even if ad rates are
| really low, they're bringing in more than 1 cent per ad play.
| aukhfauwhf wrote:
| > the bandwidth, is still very cheap.
|
| This is yet another example of US/BayArea Privilege blindness.
|
| It is NOT cheap in most places to the User. Including in the
| unprivileged-USA.
|
| The user pays a lot for that bandwidth. Specially now that
| everyone will unknowingly move to predatory 5G home services
| but let me try to stay on topic.
|
| People out of the Empire Center will pay both bandwidth and
| processing power. Where do you think all those old phones you
| trade in for the latest apple/Samsung ends up? Everyone is
| running phones that barely gets any security update anymore and
| is already slowed to the maximum by the OS itself. Trying to
| load and then display video ads is just evil.
|
| And that is not web only, Apps are worse. If you install Apps,
| all of them are following the standard set by amazon, newegg,
| etc... you will get video ads along your usual usage. Ads in
| between search listings, ads in your cart! and you have to be
| much more technical to block those.
|
| There's no escape paying the BayArea-cost.
| throwaway744678 wrote:
| The article and your parent are talking of the cost for the
| producer, not the user.
| agilob wrote:
| I always had adblocker since I got internet, someone told me to
| use it to reduce my internet bill when I paid per Mb. I always
| had AdBlock+ , it was the first thing I installed on my PC,
| always. I started seeing people complaining on too many ads on
| random websites and youtube, but I never noticed YT had ads until
| I saw discussions on it on reddit. Now I'm full time adblocker,
| Brave, ublock and DNS ad-blocks in OpenWRT.
|
| I think my habits and me installing adblockers for everyone
| resulted in worse web for everyone else, the more people block
| ads, the more ads there will be for the rest.
| WallyFunk wrote:
| > I would imagine margins are pretty thin these days if you run a
| magazine website. Advertising revenue isn't what is used to be
| and the money they make for each visitor is probably the lowest
| it has ever been
|
| Webmasters need to diversify their income streams. Obviously AD
| revenue doesn't cut it anymore. You need to implant affiliate
| links, do paywalls, paid subscriptions to content, and sell merch
| on a Shopify-powered site that is separate from the main
| magazine/blog. Ghacks for example sells software and services on
| their deals subdomain[0], but I'm not sure if it's that
| profitable.
|
| [0] https://deals.ghacks.net/
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| I stopped watching network TV in the 1990s when it reached about
| 25% ads (i.e. 7.5 minutes of ads in a 30 minute window. May have
| been only 7 minutes, memory is fuzzy now).
|
| The web was a relief. You could actually consume content and tune
| out the (then primitive, usually just a banner at the top) ads.
|
| The web, specifically un-adblocked Youtube, is now at about the
| same point as where I quit TV. Just not worth the aggravation any
| more. UBlock Origin has shifted things back into favour. But will
| "Manifest V3" tip things back to unbearable? We'll see.
| DesiLurker wrote:
| I did so too when I realized its actually worse, its about 19
| min play for 30 min 'show' & about 43 for 60mins for most
| popular shows (you can verify with imdb or 'otherwise'). thats
| on top of what we pay them monthly.
|
| the other hard rule I have is 'no news from narrated sources'
| so really no need to cable tv & have cut the cord for more than
| a decade now.
| ericd wrote:
| SponsorBlock is excellent, too, even gets rid of the multi-
| minute advertorial segments in the middle of videos.
| aembleton wrote:
| YouTube is still no where near as bad as commercial TV in the
| UK. It's when we visit relatives who still watch TV, that I get
| reminded how bad it is. YouTube has a couple of ads before a
| video and then a 10 second one every 10 minutes or so - but the
| ones on the TV go on and on. Probably 5 minutes of them every
| 20 minutes of TV.
| tardismechanic wrote:
| I seem to remember maybe 5 30sec ads so must be 2.5 minutes.
|
| I even vaguely remember this was lampshaded in Fresh Prince (?)
|
| Uncle Phil is having a heart to heart chat with young Nicky and
| in the middle says something like "ok nice talk see you in
| around 2 1/2 minutes" which I thought was hilarious
| tzs wrote:
| We had a couple effective strategies to deal with ads on
| network TV when I was a kid. I've found they they still work
| today.
|
| 1. If I was watching alone I would have a book with me. When
| ads came on I'd read the book until the ad break ended.
| Nowadays instead of a book it is usually an iPad, and instead
| of reading during the break I might work on a crossword puzzle
| in the NYT Crossword app or do some chess puzzles at
| lichess.com.
|
| 2. If I was watching with other kids we could talk about the
| show. Heck, we were kids...it was hard to get us to not take
| about the show _during_ the show. This also still works as an
| adult, with the only change being that the conversation is more
| sophisticated. E.g., kids might talk about how cool it was that
| Kirk made an improvised canon to shoot the Gorn, but adults
| might discuss the feasibility of actually making such a canon.
| (It probably isn 't feasible BTW. Mythbusters tried it and
| could not get it to work using the resources available to
| Kirk).
| iso1631 wrote:
| > If I was watching alone I would have a book with me
|
| That's shifting from the narrative of the show/film you're
| watching to a different activity
|
| > If I was watching with other kids we could talk about the
| show
|
| It takes us about 1h20 to watch a c. 40 minute show with my
| wife, but that's because we pause throughout to discuss it.
| Haven't done linear TV since c. 2000, went through a couple
| of years in the early 00s with a mythtv box recording shows
| off air (with 30 second skip forwards/10 second skip back -
| If I remember commercial breaks almost entirely 6 or 8 skips
| forward), then sky plus, but nothing for the last 7 years
| other than streaming.
| tzs wrote:
| For network TV the show producers know ahead of time where
| the ad breaks will be and structure the story so that they
| come between acts.
|
| I have noticed when things originally on network television
| end up on ad-supported streaming services the ad breaks
| sometimes no longer happen during natural breaks. When
| those same things end up in syndication on non-streaming
| cable or OTA channels the ad breaks usually do align with
| the natural story breaks. I wonder why OTA and cable
| channels can time things better than streaming services?
| Are the shows distributed in different formats to the two,
| and only one includes metadata on when the act breaks
| occur?
| xtracto wrote:
| I have no idea why a successor to TiVo never came out. The
| idea of "fast forwarding" TV ads was way ahead of its time.
| I've got cable TV and would pay good money for a service like
| that. The same applies to Podcast ads: I would pay for a
| podcast player (like Podcast Republic) that could
| automatically skip ads, and say let people mark ad segments
| in a podcast so that others could skip them.
| Macha wrote:
| > But will "Manifest V3" tip things back to unbearable? We'll
| see.
|
| Switch to Firefox now before Firefox market share dips to the
| level where publishers can justify not supporting it and you're
| stuck with only crippled adblocking forever?
| sneak wrote:
| If a browser doesn't render the web properly, that's the
| browser's fault, not the web's.
| razakel wrote:
| As Gabe Newell said, piracy is a service problem.
|
| Why in the hell would I pay PS60 a month _and_ have to watch
| adverts when I can just get it for free?
|
| Why do I have to subscribe to channels I have no interest in to
| get the handful I do want?
|
| It's like a baker who pads his bread with sawdust throwing a
| tantrum when customers start going elsewhere.
| iso1631 wrote:
| The youtube app on a phone has reached that level, and pihole
| doesn't help, so I only watch youtube on a browser with adblock
| now
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| YouTube Vanced.
|
| You're welcome.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| It would be nice if we had the option to ask for $1 to our
| visitors, but we don't because the credit card and payments
| racket works its magic. Just what are websites supposed to do to
| survive? Shutting down is not a valid answer
|
| Of course the #1 culprits are the advertisers themselves, because
| they don't care about their craft, they are lazy and just push
| all their money to google. But the web should be like an arcade
| machine where people can pay to get content, and current
| regulation makes that impossible
| ipaddr wrote:
| I keep ads on. It allows me to see content like the average
| person. I feel that gives me a better perspective.
| golemiprague wrote:
| ameister14 wrote:
| As to the reason it's worth it, here are a couple of reasons:
|
| When legacy media companies sell ad space, often they do not do
| so through an auction mechanism but through a direct purchase
| model. That means someone paid anywhere from a few hundred to
| thousands to be on that page. That gives them more of a client
| relationship and so they can feel more burdened to make sure
| advertising clients get 'visibility' and bang for their buck.
|
| Also, they can sell ads in their videos with estimated
| view/impression counts. If they autoplay, the view count goes up
| even if you're not watching the video so an unsophisticated ad
| consumer thinks the ad spend is justified.
|
| I don't run ad campaigns anymore, but I did for eight years and I
| always preferred no autoplay because intentional viewing is much
| more valuable for what I was selling.
|
| Use adblock.
| fleddr wrote:
| Until a decade ago, I've always tried to be the better person. I
| did not block ads and for sites that I liked, I even
| intentionally clicked on ads.
|
| I can tolerate ads. Also 10 on a page. And they can even blink.
| What I cannot tolerate is malware, personal data theft, and ads
| destroying the performance of any website. Ads have become a
| liability and advertisers have made it loud and clear that I'm
| not a human being, instead a resource to be exploited, and no
| tactic is below their standards.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Better yet, go all the way in with No script and experience an
| even better email. A lot faster, too. Enabling us even on a
| handful of sites has a measurable impact on battery life on
| underpowered devices such as phones.
|
| HN is working perfectly fine without js. For obvious reasons,
| most non video/chat/app sites work just fine as well.
|
| I write us for a living so I'm not against in the least. It works
| for me.
|
| My mind is blown every time I see what regular people experience.
| Horrible, though I am not sure it's worse than what we had to
| deal with back in the flash and days a decade ago. Could be.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| "I've been browsing the web with an adblocker for so long that
| I'd totally forgotten about the existence of ads being spliced
| into video content"
|
| Relatable. YouTube Vanced is a bigger feature for Android than
| iMessage is for iOS.
| smiley0r wrote:
| Insane when people tell me they pay for crunchyroll and youtube
| rabuse wrote:
| I have this moment when I have to use Youtube on my phone for
| some reason (such as a tutorial for how to fix something), and
| get blasted with 3 ads for a 1 minute video. I would never use it
| for long periods without an ad blocker.
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| youtube vanced or newpipe
| rabuse wrote:
| I'll try those out. Thanks!
| lanuk wrote:
| also FYI, neither of these 2 apps are on the play store
| nfriedly wrote:
| If you're on Android, try out https://vancedapp.com/ - it's an
| "Advanced" YouTube player, but they removed the "Ad"s (get it?)
|
| Also, there's an option to enable SponsorBlock, which can
| automatically skip over ads, introductions, etc. that are part
| of the original video.
|
| Vanced and Firefox's addons are two of the main things keeping
| me off of iOS.
| aniforprez wrote:
| I'm a dumb dumb. Didn't realise that about the name. That's
| really neat
| nfriedly wrote:
| Same, I didn't get it until someone on reddit explained it
| to me :)
| arcastroe wrote:
| This looks neat. But how do I know this won't isnt malware
| itself (or will become malware in the future)
| nfriedly wrote:
| Well, they have a pretty active subreddit at
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Vanced/ so you can see a few folks
| besides me championing it.
|
| But ultimately, you can either examine the binary yourself
| or else trust them.
|
| One point of note is that it does not automatically update.
| Whether you install it directly or use the manager app,
| there is always some manual process involved in updates.
| (The manager just notifies you when there is an update
| available.)
| cartesius13 wrote:
| You can't. It's some closed source blob that may very well
| become malware, assuming it isn't already. Use NewPipe
| instead
| hiena03 wrote:
| Firefox for Android supports uBlock Origin
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Brave blocks the ads without needing to install plugins
| sam0x17 wrote:
| I use Brave which somehow (not sure how) still does a much better
| job than whatever adblocking extensions I can find. I am also
| behind a PiHole firewall anyway, so most ad servers are blocked
| in the first place. Hundreds of websites that are completely
| unusable normally are completely usable as a result.
| pea wrote:
| An interesting thought experiment is how feasible and expensive
| would it be to run a large-scale PR and marketing campaign to get
| that 25% of adblockers to 50%, and how would this disrupt the
| current hegemony.
|
| If you were given the task "Remove $1BN of ad revenue. Here is
| $100M to spend.", how would you do it? I'd imagine it could be
| reasonably high leverage.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > and how would this disrupt the current hegemony.
|
| You would immediately see many more billions spent on making it
| illegal wherever it's feasible to do so. And, of course, an
| accelerated push to 1) neuter the ability for browsers to block
| content, how they block content, and what content they can
| block and 2) a push towards big bundles and blobs of content
| that can't feasibly be adblocked in realtime with the way
| current extensions work.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| With Chrome being about 66% of the browser market, it's a
| really short trip to get to this future. I sure hope that
| Apple considers it a strategic imperative to continue
| developing Safari.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is mostly why I support their restriction of only
| allowing Safari on iOS. Even though it might be an evil, it
| is a lesser evil than letting Chrome dominate, which seems
| all but guaranteed if they did not have iOS Safari to stop
| them.
| caaqil wrote:
| I got so used to having uBlock that I couldn't relate to the
| memes about YouTube adding multiple unskippable ads recently. I'm
| like "they did?". It _is_ like I browse a different web and it 's
| awesome.
| standardUser wrote:
| If companies chose to run simple, clean, quiet advertisements
| there would be no need to block ads. They have only themselves to
| blame for creating a nightmare user experience.
| ryangittins wrote:
| On an adjacent note, my mother is someone who doesn't do any
| streaming--just regular old cable TV with constant commercials.
| I've asked her why she puts up with it and she just says the
| commercials give her a nice break to get up and go to the
| kitchen, the bathroom, do chores, etc. In reality, I think it's
| just inertia more than anything.
|
| Recently though, she's been spending more time with my grandpa
| who streams everything. Last I talked to her, she said she felt
| very spoiled being able to watch whatever she wants, whenever she
| wants, with no ads. I'd tried explaining how great it is to her
| before, but I guess she had to live it to really understand how
| much better the other side is.
|
| Blocking or avoiding ads in every facet of my life is almost a
| point of pride for me. I'm always alarmed when other people are
| just cool with it.
| schleck8 wrote:
| The irony of the community complaining about ads that pins
| paywall circumvention methods in each thread about a paywalled
| article
| asteroidp wrote:
| Without aggressively blocking the hundred or more ads on a
| webpage, I honestly don't think the web would be that useful now
| a days
|
| Advertising has gone absolutely bonkers and filled the web with
| complete trash SEO farms with 40 links to some shitty slideshow
|
| I don't believe the web would have caught on like it did if this
| current condition was v1.0
|
| I wonder how much the website designer even views their own site.
| It's astounding anyone would approve of this. It now represents
| the brand as extremely low quality
| intsunny wrote:
| With Chrome's crippling of adblockers via their Manifest V3
| mandate, I wonder if Chrome users are in for a rude awakening of
| how hostile and repugnant the ad laden web has become.
| gketuma wrote:
| That is why I've been getting cozy with Firefox again. When
| Manifest V3 happens, FF hopefully will be our saviour.
| ronnier wrote:
| I've switched to Brave, plus DNS level blocking with pihole.
| ryangittins wrote:
| "People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into
| your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer
| at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make
| flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough
| and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV
| making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the
| most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they
| bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing
| at you."
|
| - Banksy
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| I guess, like the old bully adage, they're also being bullied
| themselves by the very same thing, but, as also with the adage,
| that's hardly consolation.
| cpeterso wrote:
| I read that supposedly Google had to rename elements of their
| website that advertisers use to manage their ad campaigns
| because the website would break when ad blockers blocked
| elements mentioning ads. So the people running these ad
| campaigns were themselves using sad blockers!
| Firehawke wrote:
| Even if the ads weren't obnoxious and in your face, there's still
| the elephant in the room of malware. Every ad group has been the
| carrier of at least one malware ad in the last few years-- it's
| simply not safe to browse the web without an ad blocker.
|
| The only way that'll change is if they go back to static
| images/text, and there's no way in hell the ad industry would
| ever allow that.
| mwattsun wrote:
| I started watching Adam Curtis' Century of the Self [1] recently,
| then decided to fact check [2]. Curtis makes out Sigmund Freuds
| nephew Edward Louis Bernays as the inventor of modern
| advertising, but he exaggerates for effect as usual. I've been a
| fan of busting ads for a long time, at least since I learned as a
| boy that I was being psychologically manipulated.
|
| _We 're an activist hub and the headquarters of Adbusters
| magazine, the journal of the mental environment. Since 1989, our
| international collective of artists, designers, writers,
| musicians, poets, punks, philosophers and wild hearts has been
| smashing ads, fighting corruption and speaking truth to power._
| [3]
|
| [1] The Century of the Self - Part 1: "Happiness Machines"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom
|
| [3] https://www.adbusters.org/about-us
| jhoelzel wrote:
| I use ublock and have setup a dns blocker through openwrt and
| have even added my own items to the blacklist. I am astoundished
| how much traffic leaves my machine "just sitting there".
|
| At this point my blocklist has something like 77.614 domains
| blocked and I do not believe that its going to get less.
|
| what is intersting is that I grew up with the uncensored internet
| and the things i found are not on the list of things that I
| definitly will block for my children.
|
| Its kind of the opposite approach of a censored web for children
| because to be honest im not so much worried about their
| activities, but far more concious of the bad actors out there.
| robomartin wrote:
| Well, I know this comment will not be well received, yet, I think
| it is important for this conversation to happen every time ad-
| blocking is being discussed. I know there's an underlying culture
| of being in favor of ad blocking on HN. I have no way of knowing
| if those being vocal represent a majority at all.
|
| Simply stated: If you use ad-blocking to not be bothered by ads
| on sites while using them, you are engaging in theft.
|
| There are not gray areas here. You are not paying for the service
| and are interfering with the service provider's ability to
| generate revenue. The implied contract is "I give you access to
| this content/service in exchange for the ability to advertise to
| you while on the service".
|
| Simple parallel: In exchange for being exposed to advertising at
| a restaurant, you get free pizza. You order some. When it
| arrives, you put-on blinders, cover your ears and eat all of it.
| You do this one, twice, many times, every time, for months,
| years. You are stealing pizza. The restaurant would be entitled
| to call the cops and have you arrested for theft. The pizza cost
| them money to produce and deliver, you are stealing it.
|
| If you don't their advertising policy, stealing the pizza isn't
| the righteous position. That's theft. Don't eat it. That's taking
| a stance based on your ethical position.
|
| What has happened to our culture that we got to the point where
| flat-out theft is rationalized as a moral and ethically positive
| position? This is crazy.
|
| What's next? You don't like not having money, so robbing a bank
| is OK? C'mon. Grow the fuck up. If you don't like ads, don't
| visit these sites, any of them. Don't be a thief and a hypocrite.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I do not enjoy ads and all that comes with
| it. However, I am not a thief and I am not a hypocrite. If I want
| the free pizza, if I want to use the services or content a site
| has to offer, I will not interfere with the way they choose to
| make money. It is their site. Their service. Their content. Not
| mine. I am not entitled to it for free just because I say so and
| I am certainly not entitled to steal from them.
| xKuni wrote:
| I heavily disagree with your analogy. In your parallel you are
| obviously assuming that there is a contract in place. And by
| covering my ears and eyes I'd be obviously breaking the
| contract and would have to pay the pizza or get punished in an
| appropriate manner. If there isn't a contract and the pizza
| place would just give you a pizza and some ads, and you ignore
| the ads, that would be completely legal and in no way or form
| theft.
|
| Now the thing with websites is, there is no contract. You just
| ask them for some content and they give you the content + ads.
| I'm free to ignore the ads. A good parallel would be a local
| newspaper that gets send for free to everyone, but also
| includes ads. I'm completely free to ignore the ads in this
| case. I would also be allowed to build a sorting machine that
| sorts out the ads before I ever have a chance to look at them.
| That's obviously no theft, after all they gifted it to me!
|
| And this is exactly what most websites are. They send me free
| content and include some ads, without any contractual
| obligation. If they don't want me to just see the content
| without looking at the ads, they can always set up a contract
| requiring me to look at the ads. Or only show me the content
| after I've seen the ads. Or do anything else, that isn't just
| sending me content and ads without any obligations.
|
| But until they do that, it's definitely morally right and legal
| to sort out the ads, just like I do with my local newspaper.
|
| And something that I want to touch on seperately because it
| really annoys me. It's completely ridiculous to speak about
| "theft". Theft always requires actively taking something. The
| taking part is really important when speaking about theft. But
| I'm not taking something from websites, I am asking for it and
| the website freely gifts it to me. On HN I'd really expect
| people to know how HTTP requests works. I'm not evading access
| controls, I'm not forcing them to give me the content, I'm not
| sneakily taking it away, I'm not hacking into their systems to
| take it.
|
| I ask via the official way to ask for the content and they
| decide to send it to me. What I then do with the content on my
| local system is completely irrelevant and I have to right to
| modify it however I want, as long as I don't make it public or
| use it commercially obviously.
| foxfluff wrote:
| > In exchange for being exposed to advertising at a restaurant,
| you get free pizza.
|
| Are you required to sign a contract for this exchange to
| happen? In that case, you would be breaching a contract, which
| is not the same as theft. If there's no contract, then I am
| free to go into a restaurant, plug in my earphones, keep my
| eyes glued to my laptop/phone and focus on whatever I want &
| ignore whatever else might be going on in the restaurant. While
| I sip my free pizza. If they have a problem with that, they
| could ask me to leave or not give me a pizza next time, but I
| most definitely haven't stolen anything.
|
| If they continue to offer me free pizza despite the fact that I
| don't give a shit about all the ads in the restaurant, that's
| their choice. Hardly any different from websites that continue
| to serve me despite the fact that I block ads.
|
| I've never signed a contract with a website where I agree to
| view ads.
| robomartin wrote:
| You can twist and turn your way around arguments and convince
| yourself that you are not a thief. That's fine. Good for you.
| Enjoy.
|
| Behind all of this there are businesses, which consist of
| people with jobs who have families and responsibilities. Just
| because you don't see the effects of your actions it does not
| mean there are no effects. You are stealing something that
| costs money to create and support and you have convinced
| yourself that you are entitled to that something.
|
| Few people enjoy advertising. I don't. And yet I understand
| that most of what's on the internet is financed this way. If
| everyone ran ad blockers the internet would collapse
| overnight.
|
| I have friends with small businesses who's families depend on
| being able to find customers through online advertising. Ad
| blockers have consequences for families just like theirs.
| mmettler wrote:
| Vaguely related: I've been using NextDNS for a while now, and
| it's wonderful. I subscribed to a paid plan just to support the
| company. Recommended, if you haven't already checked them out.
| whistl034 wrote:
| I don't use any "ad blocker" plugins, but I do use EFF's Privacy
| Badger, which blocks all cookies it determines are tracking
| cookies. Many websites deduce it'ss blocking their ads, because
| they're addicted to tracking us, but I feel no guilt. I wouldn't
| risk browsing without it.
| Karsteski wrote:
| I have friends who still don't use some sort of adblocking, no
| fucking idea how they browse websites without it in 2022. Anytime
| I've had to use a computer without uBlock Origin, they are
| horrible to use.
|
| Now I just recommend everyone Ublock Origin :)
| davio wrote:
| I'm in some weird Facebook limbo where I get zero ads (native
| app, browser with adblock turned off, etc.) Please don't tell
| Mark
|
| My wife is blown away when she sees my feed. It's like we've been
| using completely different apps for years.
| ronnier wrote:
| I run adblockers on the browser and block tracking/ad networks at
| the DNS level. My kids really notice when they use internet
| elsewhere.
| sebastien_b wrote:
| I call it a malware blocker, rather than an adblocker - here's my
| reasoning:
|
| One day I was on a classifieds site[1], browsing listings, when
| after a few pages, I was met with a page redirect to one of those
| scammy support center sites (taking over the browser), advising
| that my computer had been infected by a virus (obviously hadn't)
| and I needed to call in to "Apple's Support Center" immediately.
| This was on Safari (the newer useless extension-neutered
| version), on what I considered a reputable site. I tested again
| to make sure it was indeed the site that produced this, and sure
| enough reproduced it after browsing a few pages of listings.
|
| I advised the site that they likely had a rogue advert in
| rotation causing this, but as usual, the blame got put on me
| instead, claiming that it was probably some extension (didn't
| have any - they're basically useless on Safari now) or it was my
| ISP, _blah blah blah_
|
| That's the day I decided to use a real browser ("If it doesn't
| run uBlock Origin, it's not a real browser"), so I switched to
| Firefox and installed uBO. This is also when I decided to call
| such utilities as uBO "malware blockers" rather than "ad
| blockers".
|
| Websites can try to deflect the blame all they want[2], but in
| the end if visiting your website results in any attempts to
| compromise my computer, it's _your_ site doing it as far as I 'm
| concerned.
|
| If the website industry can't regulate itself to prevent such
| things, then I'm going to do it myself, and I'll push back on any
| claims that I'm using an "ad" blocker when I'm really guarding
| against malware attacks.
|
| [1] I'm loathe to name it since I don't recall which site it was
| specifically, but it was a classifieds-style site, with the
| reputation of, say, eBay-level recognition.
|
| [2] https://www.imore.com/content-blockers-bad-ads-and-what-
| were...
| recursive wrote:
| If it's not detecting malware, then it's not a malware blocker.
|
| As far as I know, ad blockers work based on host name and css
| selectors. If there was an actual anti-malware that was so
| trivially bypass-able, it would be laughed out of the room. uBO
| blocks hosts of advertisers. AFAIK they don't distinguish
| between malware and non-malware, nor do they detect malware
| from other sources.
| scubbo wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but I think that's actually counter-
| productive. To present things like uBlock as malware blockers
| suggests that "any ad which is not malware is fine". I think
| it's perfectly justifiable to guard against non-malware ads _as
| well as_ malware (ads or otherwise).
| sebastien_b wrote:
| I guess what constitutes "malware" is based on what the ad is
| doing - if it's benign, it's an ad and I'm fine with that. If
| it's hostile/tracking scripts masquerading as an ad, then
| obviously that's a problem. I call it "malware blocking"
| because of multiple past experiences like I mentioned above,
| and the way to avoid them is with these "ad blockers" (though
| I guess a more generic term, like "content blocker", is
| perhaps more appropriate).
|
| And I'm sure some would be quick to point out that running
| uBO as a "malware" blocker just happens to siphon up
| legitimate ads in the same bucket in the process (which is
| what I think is your point), and my reply to them is that the
| blockers typically won't block anything that comes from the
| same IP/domain as the site (as is explained in one of the
| linked articles). I think it's up to websites to run their
| ads in a way that doesn't trigger it to get blocked, because
| the detection pattern for most blockers is based on past
| abuse of these techniques.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| I'm very curious what would happen if Apple suddenly announced
| that for the next version of Safari (20% of browser market share
| when combining mobile and desktop), adblocking would be included
| and ask the user if they want it on.
| zwog wrote:
| I hate auto-playing videos. Several news websites in Germany
| embed an auto-playing video in a news article. Often these videos
| have nothing to do with the article. And then there are some that
| even turn into a pop-up player when you scroll down.
|
| What's the best way to block these videos (in Chromium)? I
| wouldn't mind a solution where videos are completely blocked with
| a whitelist, since I rarely consume videos except on dedicated
| video sites (e.g Youtube).
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| uBlock Origin works well for me in Chromium. It knows to
| autoplay on Youtube out of the box.
| danShumway wrote:
| It's almost unbelievable how big the gap is. Sometimes I try to
| turn it off and check links before I share them to find out if
| they're actually good reading experiences. I've got a couple of
| sites that I used to reflexively share on social media that I've
| since learned not to because without an adblocker they auto-play
| videos at the top of the page - but I never ran into that
| behavior when I was using them, so I thought they were fine.
|
| I think that introducing nontechnical friends/family to
| adblockers and helping them set one up can be a really low-cost
| but high-impact kindness, I encourage people here to do so.
|
| Maybe it's an ADHD thing and I'm overstating this, but I
| personally see really tangible effects on my ability to
| concentrate based on how many ads I'm surrounded with. Even stuff
| like Sponsorblock, which is honestly mostly removing
| intros/outros has helped a lot with how I interact with Youtube.
| Sure there's data savings, page load time, etc... but I also
| vaguely suspect that constant web advertising just flat-out
| affects people's mood and ability to focus more than is commonly
| talked about.
|
| Seriously, ask your family members about whether they adblock,
| and install Ublock Origin for them if they don't. If they're on
| Android, consider (with their permission) swapping out their
| browser for Firefox (or some equivalent) and installing Ublock
| Origin again. If they don't mind some very minor UI differences
| (and in my experience many people don't), then it's an immediate
| speedup and data savings at the cost of maybe 3 minutes of work
| and explanation.
|
| The article suggests that roughly 73% of users don't use an
| adblocker. Some of those users are making a conscious choice, and
| that's fine, but a lot of them just don't know how to install one
| or don't know how they work. You don't need to be actually
| evangelizing ad blockers to still occasionally ask someone who's
| complaining about ads whether or not they realize that there's a
| really easy way to get rid of them.
| frameset wrote:
| SponsorBlock is one of the coolest extensions of recent times.
| It's also a great example of crowdsourcing actually working for
| the benefit of the commons.
| xyst wrote:
| > I think that introducing nontechnical friends/family to
| adblockers and helping them set one up can be a really low-cost
| but high-impact kindness, I encourage people here to do so.
|
| I have done this in the past. However, I have discovered that
| most of the people I introduce to ad blocking will turn it off
| later. This is because some sites are able to detect when you
| are using an ad blocker and even provide steps to turn it off.
| While there are ways to get around this, most of the people
| just preferred to turn it off.
|
| It's quite sad, really.
| danShumway wrote:
| I don't know if it makes that much difference, but I like
| that Ublock Origin by default only disables itself for the
| specific site you click it on when you click the big power
| button. I always try to reinforce to people how to turn
| Ublock Origin off if they need to (and I like that Ublock's
| UI makes this really easy to do), because I'd rather they
| disable adblocking for one site than remove it completely
| from their browser.
| indymike wrote:
| The real question is, if you are going to autoplay a huge video
| is do video ad units perform better than anything else? Last I
| looked, video ads were pretty cheap, and didn't have good stories
| on conversion. Has that changed?
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| I have Ad-block but still see a lot of Ads. I started to shun
| certain websites (major news sites particularly) a while ago. The
| only occasions I turn it off is when I legitimately believe that
| authors deserve a bit of extra revenue from Ads.
| [deleted]
| blakesterz wrote:
| In FireFox I have my ad blockers disabled in Private Mode so
| nothing is getting in the way if I'm testing or some site is
| being weird. Sometimes it's SHOCKINGLY different how a page looks
| with the blockers in place. I really can't believe anyone would
| user a browser without an ad blocker if they knew how things
| would look while using one. The web is a much better place with a
| blocker in place.
|
| (Yes, I know, we get a huge amount of amazing "free" content
| thanks to the ads and assorted trackers and other garbage out
| there)
| aqaq2 wrote:
| If the ads weren't so bad in Android apps, I would think that
| maybe Google is trying to destroy the web with ads...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| intrasight wrote:
| One of my biggest concerns about the future of the "web" - like
| when it's built into our glasses - is that it will no longer be
| an open/hackable platform, and it will not be possible to
| create ad-blockers.
| robbyking wrote:
| A few years ago I had to use my mom's laptop to order dinner or
| something, and I couldn't figure out why the page I was on
| looked so _weird_. I double checked another site I visit
| regularly, and that site looked _weird_ , too: huge background
| images, videos everywhere, weird fonts, etc., etc. At first I
| thought her machine had a virus, then it dawned on me it was
| all ads! I installed an ad blocker, and the difference was
| night and day! The unfiltered pages were basically unreadable.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I'm using my own simplistic adblock at home (mostly because
| youtube ads driving me nuts) and I don't use any adblock at
| work (mostly because I'm too lazy to configure it). I'm not a
| fan of using browser extensions, especially those which require
| full access to every webpage, that's too much of attack surface
| in my opinion and ads are not that bad on websites I visit.
| DamnYuppie wrote:
| I use Firefox with Ublock Origin, Ghostery, and the YouTube
| Enhancer plugin. I get zero adds on YouTube with this setup!
| 20after4 wrote:
| uBlock alone seems to do the trick for YouTube.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| I think they're talking about in-video ads?
|
| I could be totally wrong, but ublock-origin just keeps
| certain things that match a pattern from appearing in the
| html. It can't remove the annoying "in-video" ads, right?
| eyeundersand wrote:
| uBlock Origin blocks in-video ads too! Not sure if this
| has been referenced elsewhere in the comments but their
| 'element picker' mode is also fantastic and extremely
| useful in making webpages with huge banners and popups
| less annoying. Honestly, being on the web without uBlock
| Origin (and Vimium) just feels like a sub-par experience.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| I block ads on YouTube by paying for YouTube Premium.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| It's not available in my country.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| I tried this, but it didn't work on the vast majority of
| videos I watch. They always seemed to have some or the
| other product placement inside. So I stopped paying, and
| installed a couple of adblockers.
| gundmc wrote:
| How do adblockers help with native product placement?
|
| Or are you saying you might as well not pay for premium
| if you'll still have to deal with the product placement
| anyway?
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| A combination of ublock origin and sponsorblock will make
| youtube completely ad free. Even the in video adverts are
| gone.
| gundmc wrote:
| Interesting, I hadn't heard of sponsorblock. Thanks!
| driverdan wrote:
| You can pay for YouTube Premium and still use
| sponsorblock.
| titzer wrote:
| Adblock Plus, uOrigin, and ghostery lite don't require
| basically any configuration. Just install the browser
| extension and enable it.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| Just a reminder that Adblock Plus has a pretty shady
| business model.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Yeah, they let some ads pass through. That is quite okay
| as compared to full on storm of ads.
|
| If there was no way to block ads Id probably be happy to
| downsize my internet usage.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| What is supposed to be shady about it?
|
| Their definition of "acceptable" seems straightforward
| and paying for certification seems like a pretty standard
| business model.
|
| If they were to bend their definition for money, that
| woukd be shady. Do they?
| lolinder wrote:
| The last time I used AdBlock Plus, I was horrified to
| discover that they considered Taboola (the clickbait
| network that, at least at the time, used shocking images
| to draw attention) to be "acceptable".
|
| I was browsing the web with AdBlock Plus and found myself
| assaulted by an image of someone's fungus-infected
| toenail or something similarly nauseating. I went to
| report it as a mistake on their forums only to find there
| was already a thread about Taboola, and they were firm
| that Taboola was "acceptable". The only way I can imagine
| ads like that made it onto their list was by paying
| _really_ good money.
|
| I went to uBlock that day and haven't looked back.
| Whatever definition of "acceptable" they were using, I
| wanted no part of it.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Adblock plus disables the blocking if you pay them
| protection money.
| criddell wrote:
| The ads themselves are an attack vector.
| rnd0 wrote:
| They have been for jeez, I think almost 20 years now?
| That's what pushed me solidly into the adblock (and then
| ublock) camp; the fact that the advertising industry has
| never been willing or able to police itself against bad
| actors and malware.
| simion314 wrote:
| Mozilla could do the right thing and endorse/review critical
| extensions so we know they are safer, but I don't think they
| have the guts to do it, or mention the word "adblock".
|
| As a power user I also set JS off by default and whitelist
| specific sites, and also use garbage websites in private mode
| so their garbage tracking is hopefully purged.
| detaro wrote:
| What is the "Recommended - Firefox recommends only Add-Ons
| that meet our standards for security and performance."
| badge they put on some extensions if not an endorsement? Or
| the "Adblocker staff picks" on the front page of AMO?
| simion314 wrote:
| Are those recommendation based on user ratings only? The
| issue with extensions is they can get hijacked and get
| malicious. A Mozilla created extension or endorsed would
| offer the warranty that there is no intentional malicious
| code in it. After your comment I checked the extensions
| page, seems there is something claimed about "security"
| but is too vague IMO.
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-on-
| badges?utm_conte...
| detaro wrote:
| ... no, as the page you link says, the extensions are
| reviewed by Mozilla employees.
| simion314 wrote:
| >no, as the page you link says, the extensions are
| reviewed by Mozilla employees.
|
| What this review means? Do you have a link? Is it
| reviewed by a security developer hired by Mozilla or some
| community person?
| derivagral wrote:
| Remember that viewing ads at all has also been an attack
| vector. As ever, make the judgement that best fits your
| situation.
| tedajax wrote:
| Ad networks seem like a significantly larger attack surface
| to me...
| strken wrote:
| Without ads, we'd have _different_ free content obeying
| different incentives, but it 's hard to say whether that would
| be better or worse. I've been reading a lot of free online
| fiction lately, where authors make money by selling early
| access to chapters on Patreon, and both quality and pay are
| often competitive with traditional book sales.
| samstave wrote:
| Uhm.... the perfect example is ublock origin with reddit.com
| vs. old.reddit.com
|
| Reddit.com is eye fucking cancer.
|
| Old.reddit.com is consumable....
|
| Interestingly, after a 15-year-long account I was "permanently
| banned" for TOS violations which cannot be determined... Reddit
| is dead to me. (Ill be deleting (scrambling) _millions_ of
| comments... I was top mod of a sub /r/ with 1.5 million users,
| which is now one of the most active /r/s...
|
| If anyone would like to buy my 15+ year old account, make me an
| offer.
| andai wrote:
| >free
|
| You pay, just not with money! (insert evil laugh)
| conception wrote:
| Honestly this is how I feel about television vs
| streaming/Plex/ahoy matey. Going to another home and watching
| live television is a terrible experience because of ads but
| people seem fine with it because it's what they're used to,
| they don't know better and it's harder to do if they know
| better... probably all the same reasons people don't use ad
| blockers and are fine with them.
| warner25 wrote:
| I run Firefox with uBlock Origin, and spend most of my time on
| pages like HN and other old-school forums that are mostly just
| text. My wife runs Chrome with all defaults and spends a lot
| more time in the mainstream web. Whenever she wants to show me
| something on her laptop, I think to myself, "how can she
| subject herself to this all day?!" For me, the experience in
| her browser is like being assaulted.
|
| She doesn't want an ad-blocker because they do break things at
| times and she actually likes seeing some ads and especially
| getting coupon or discount offers, using things like Rakuten. I
| know that you can fine-tune the settings of uBlock Origin, but
| she doesn't want to be bothered with that.
|
| I'm the weird one.
| eh9 wrote:
| I tried to enforce ad blocking at the router level (pihole)
| but eventually had to change it to opt-in (DNS) because my
| wife wouldn't stop telling me to turn it off when she wanted
| to click on Google ads.
| gigel82 wrote:
| Sounds familiar. Installed uBlock on hers and whenever a
| website doesn't work for any reason I get an earfull about my
| "damn adblocker"... :)
| squarefoot wrote:
| Been there done that. Advertising is a problem most non
| technical users aren't aware of (as a problem) and often
| they're used to it, but if you install an adblocker, they
| indeed see that as a change, therefore "you and your damn
| adblocker" will get the blame for each and every problem.
| In my opinion the only options are to either leave their
| browser as is or just installing Ublock Origin without
| telling.
| stn8188 wrote:
| Same... Used to have a Pi Hole on the entire network but
| had to remove it for this reason.
| bentcorner wrote:
| I have a Pi Hole as well and it's been pretty quiet in my
| house. I've had to whitelist a few sites (e.g., our kids'
| school gave out meeting links using tracking links in
| email that was blocked) but it's been pretty good.
| Definitely more upside than downside.
| WheatM wrote:
| Tenoke wrote:
| It depends on what you do on the internet. I rarely use an
| AdBlock on my phone, browse a lot from it and I don't find my
| experience hindered all that much. If AdBlock didn't exist on
| desktop my biggest gripe would be YouTube and then I'd just pay
| for it and call it a day.
| d1lanka wrote:
| I use Brave Browser along with NextDNS.io or a PiHole and
| 99.99% of ads and trackers are non existant for me
| reincarnate0x14 wrote:
| I feel zero guilt about ad blocking. There was some period of
| discussion on the subject back in like 2003 but the ad
| companies went to war against human civilization and there's
| been no going back. It corrupts and twists everything it
| touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash and an entire
| generation has now reached adulthood knowing nothing but that
| hustle touching every bit of media they ever interact with. Who
| even knows what they'll do with that.
|
| In 2005 or so there was a bunch of trojans going around for
| IIRC Blizzard games to steal account creds on various sites and
| my first response to that was "huh, that site has ads?"
|
| People give Brave grief over BAT, and maybe with good reason,
| but it's one the few efforts to try and bring some sort of
| involvement to the public side of it as to where the money is
| flowing that seems to have a chance of going anywhere.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Ad companies gave up any right to not be blocked decades ago
| when they were serving actively malicious stuff that would
| backdoor browsers and own earlier versions of Windows. Since
| then it has been irresponsible to use the internet without a
| robust ad-blocker.
| m12k wrote:
| The problem I have with BAT is that it tries to give me power
| over the commercialization of something that I don't want
| commercialized. It's like someone launched a "Basic Sexual
| Favor Token" to empower me to take control over the sex work
| I'm expected to perform every day. I have a hard time being
| happy that they want to empower me, because I'm too busy
| being aghast at their assumption that this aspect of my life
| is for sale in the first place and that I would be ok with
| that.
| 1shooner wrote:
| Could you describe the negative consequence of BAT for a
| website owner that doesn't want to sell ads?
| endominus wrote:
| Website owners no longer have a choice. Brave is
| incentivized to add ads to otherwise ad-free websites,
| and apparently does so as Matthew Butterick complains
| about; https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-
| brave.html
| 1shooner wrote:
| But you're not selling ads. The user has opted-in to
| seeing spamware that gives them OS-level notifications,
| right? Is this new? I guess I don't see the specific
| impact on web content producers.
| pl0x wrote:
| Brave is the wolves in sheeps clothing. I won't be
| surprised in the future if we learn Brave was using their
| browser and our data for shady things.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| Why don't you go prove it by checking our code and
| runtime network behavior? We pay bug bounties through
| hackerone.com/brave.
|
| Talk is cheap, especially stories that don't pass any
| kind of smell test: we would not take our life into our
| hands by collecting any user data, when it's easy to
| discover that for real hackers.
|
| https://brave.com/data covers our data policies for
| baseline and optional stuff.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| We don't and never have put ads in publisher pages. It's
| not ethical without site consent and our users don't want
| ads in baseline Brave.
|
| If Brave users opt into Brave Rewards for private user
| ads in push notifications (which, contra Butterick, do
| not belong to any page they might be near or above; they
| belong to the user's inventory, same as new tabs and
| unrelated windows of all kinds), we still wouldn't put
| ads in pages without both publisher and extra user
| consent (too many users still wouldn't want in-page ads,
| even if opted into user push notification ads).
|
| HN is full of made up nonsense about Brave, in spite of
| all the hackers here who can verify our open source,
| network behavior, etc. etc. This site has seen better
| days.
| tryptophan wrote:
| Oh hello! I recently tried brave and was relatively
| impressed. BAT is also an interesting idea, and I want to
| see it succeed!
|
| However, I also had negative opinions of it like many
| people here before I really dug into it. I think your
| marketing really needs some work. I don't exactly know
| what it is - it might not even be your fault. The
| negative view of crypto many have has been associated
| with it. I would remove all mentions of crypto from your
| website. If people really want to know how the tokens
| work, they can go into the documentation. Having the word
| crypto on your landing page does you no good.
| danShumway wrote:
| > for a website owner
|
| Not GP, but when I think about the negative consequences
| of BAT, I'm thinking about the user and society overall,
| not necessarily the website owner in specific.
|
| Monetizing attention is dangerous, and I think we should
| be a lot more careful about when we do so, as opposed to
| monetizing attention being the default way we fund
| everything online. BAT is in many ways less harmful than
| existing advertising networks, but it's still trying to
| find a way to ethically commoditize otherwise private
| attention/focus on what we read/see, and I think that the
| omnipresent commoditization of that attention/focus
| across society is harmful regardless of whether or not
| it's invasive or collects PII and regardless of whether
| or not users get paid for selling something that we
| shouldn't encourage them to sell. I think that this has
| an effect on how humans process the world, I think it has
| an effect on how much energy we're willing to devote to
| different tasks. I think it has an effect on attention
| spans, and on what types of content get made, and the way
| that we spread memes/culture, and how we interact with
| each other. I think it has an effect on market efficiency
| and on what products succeed. I'm not going to oversell
| modern advertising as some kind of giant monster that's
| responsible for all problems, but I think its effects are
| likely more negative than positive at this point and that
| we can build better systems that don't optimize for
| keeping people hooked on consuming content endlessly just
| so we can redirect some of that attention to a product.
|
| As a website owner, the social stuff still applies to me,
| I may not want my stuff commoditized at all. But I also
| recognize that users have the right to modify code
| running on their computer, including for the purposes of
| inserting their own ads, so if it's happening with the
| user's permission I can't really get mad at the user. In
| many ways I'm the least impacted person in this
| situation. However, that doesn't mean that I think
| Brave's system is good for the user or for society, and
| I'm not going to encourage people to use it.
|
| My feeling is that Brave is trying to reform a system
| that I would like to see destroyed.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Zero guilts felt.
|
| The art of not feeling guilt
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| YES. Every dark pattern in technology today is caused
| directly or indirectly by advertising. Privacy violations?
| Advertising. Bloated and unusable websites? Advertising.
| Addictive social media? Advertising.
|
| Blocking these ads is a moral imperative at this point. I
| don't feel guilty, I feel proud and I encourage every single
| person to do it.
| nsgi wrote:
| I wonder if part of the problem is that the people who
| develop websites and put the ads on (developers) are largely
| also the people who use ad blockers so they don't realise how
| bad the experience is for regular users
| rtsil wrote:
| Developers realize how bad the visual experience is, how
| the tracking scripts, the megapixel images and the huge
| videos are ruining their perfect pagespeed insights score,
| slowing down everything, eating the visitor's mobile plan
| and are an awful waste of energy.
|
| But developers don't control what marketing put in their
| sweet Google Tag Manager container(s).
| jmoreno94 wrote:
| Even if they did you think the average person is going to
| put their neck on the line over ads?
|
| How many UX designers just give into client demands, how
| many devs work extra hours to make up for bad management
| practices? How many managers are under pressure over sales
| created deadlines? How many sales people are under pressure
| over the company's target numbers?
|
| There will always be a few people who are willing to put
| their neck on the line but it'll require a culture shift
| before any momentum builds up and most feel comfortable
| protesting these practices at their workplace.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "It corrupts everything it touches into a constant hustle for
| eyeball-cash and an entire generation has now civilzation and
| there's been no going back."
|
| Nasty side effects: journalism suffers as "tech" prospers,
| less well-informed, more polarised society, freedom of the
| press is threatened (now by "tech" intermediaries, in
| addition to governments), justice system competes with
| "cancellation", etc. via "tech" intermediary "platforms"
|
| Consider downstream effects of all this on governance
|
| Journalism has declined in quality. But "tech" does not
| provide a solution or even a viable alternative, it is the
| cause.
|
| With journalism, advertising once supported far more unbiased
| reporting. This was too long ago for many younger folks to
| remember. People born into a world of "tech" companies
| happily accept today's lower quality "news"; many even try to
| profit from it. With "tech", advertising tends to support
| increased digital surveillance. Not a net gain for humanity.
| [deleted]
| ldoughty wrote:
| Me either...
|
| When I was younger I felt bad, but I also had no money.
|
| Now I get frustrated when I can't give a website I like and
| want to support a reasonable amount of money...
|
| Of course, if they feel their website is worth $120/year and
| I feel it's worth $10/year, there's a problem, but thats
| their business decision to say ad-free costs that much
| regardless of your level of consumption or desire for the
| content
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > There was some period of discussion on the subject back in
| like 1963 but the <tv> companies went to war against human
| civilization and there's been no going back. It corrupts and
| twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for
| eyeball-cash and an entire generation has now reached
| adulthood knowing nothing but that hustle touching every bit
| of media they ever interact with. Who even knows what they'll
| do with that.
|
| Fixed that for you ;)
|
| Like, I remember growing up absolutely surrounded by
| advertising. It was on the TV, it was on the radio, it was in
| newspapers and magazines. Literally every second page in a
| magazine was ads! It was crazy. I grew up with it (as did
| many of you).
|
| What were the major level societal consequences of this
| shift? And when did it begin? Was radio just as bad in the
| 30's?
|
| Are newspapers where it went wrong? Man, at that point we may
| as well go the whole way and blame the industrial revolution
| ;)
|
| More generally, advertising is a consequence of the economic
| system we've (somewhat) collectively as a species decided we
| want to achieve our goals. I doubt the first urban dwellers
| expected the vast new cities to be hives of disease, either,
| but them's the breaks.
| sjy wrote:
| > "It is inconceivable," said Herbert Hoover, secretary of
| commerce, at the first national radio conference in 1922,
| "that we should allow so great a possibility for service,
| for news, for entertainment, for education, and for vital
| commercial purposes to be drowned in advertising chatter."
| Hoover's remarks reflected the accepted wisdom of the
| times: that advertising on radio was unacceptable ...
| According to a report of the first conference, all agreed
| that "direct advertising in radio broadcasting service
| [should] be absolutely prohibited."
|
| Tim Wu, _The Master Switch_ (2011), chapter 5
| apricot wrote:
| > I feel zero guilt about ad blocking.
|
| The amount of guilt I feel about ad blocking is equal to the
| amount of guilt advertisers feel about bothering me with
| their ads.
| whoibrar wrote:
| This is the way
| soco wrote:
| codercotton wrote:
| [deleted]
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| That's awesome, never thought about it that way. Completely
| agree.
| xdennis wrote:
| The tracking is even worse.
| jjkmk wrote:
| 100% agreed. In fact I would feel guilty about not adblocking
| by supporting these types of practices.
|
| If a site is responsible I will add them to my white list.
| How do I know if a site is responsible If I'm blocking you
| might ask? Well you just know.
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| > the ad companies went to war against human civilization
|
| Upvotes the moment I read this. Yes. This is what they did
| and they deserve to be blocked in every way possible for it.
| adamc wrote:
| Well said. Periodically, I try to turn ad-blocking off
| because of my sympathies for various web sites. I always turn
| it back on. The web is now unusable without ad-blocking, at
| least for me.
| TheIronMark wrote:
| > I feel zero guilt about ad blocking.
|
| Why do you feel that you're owed free content?
| munificent wrote:
| There is, I think, a valid argument that we got here today
| because in the early days of the web:
|
| 1. People wanted content without paying for it.
|
| 2. Creators wanted/needed financial support to make and
| host their work.
|
| Advertising filled the void between those two things. You
| can think of it as sort of a natural, emergent property. No
| one _wanted_ advertising, but the way the individual actors
| behaved--web users preferring sites that didn 't charge
| them, creators that didn't advertise going out of business
| --led to the rise of advertising.
|
| I think that is part of why some people don't think of
| advertising as morally bad. No one deliberately nefariously
| foisted it onto the world, it just arose from the behavior
| of individuals. That behavior created an environment, and
| the environment evolved the dominance of ads.
|
| You can use that _exact same argument_ justify the use of
| ad-blockers now.
|
| People using ad blockers are not actively trying to harm
| creators. They are just using the web and tools available
| in the way that makes the most sense for them. This is
| exactly the same as when they chose to prefer non-paid ad-
| supported content before. The system gave them options, and
| they chose the ones that they prefer.
|
| Creators will in turn make the choices that make the most
| sense for them. If ad blockers mean that they no longer
| make money from ads, they'll find other ways to be
| sustainably creative. Markets aren't magic solutions to all
| problems, but in this case I think the market is working
| pretty damn efficiently.
|
| People are using ad blockers because _ads are bad for
| them_. If consumers improving the quality of their own life
| is a problem for the system, the system _should_ change.
| And in order to change, it needs systemic incentives to do
| so. Ad blockers create that incentive.
|
| An argument against ad blockers is essentially an argument
| for forcing users to consume something toxic. Imagine if
| McDonald's stopped selling burgers in isolation, required
| you to buy combos, and then forced you to drink your entire
| soda. When people who wanted to cut back on unhealthy sugar
| complained, they were told that _they 're_ the problem
| because McDonald's makes most of its profit from drinks. If
| they don't drink the soda then McDonald's won't be as
| profitable and then they won't be in business. That's
| basically the argument against ad blockers.
|
| But... a burger joint that forced you to chug soda _should_
| be out of business, or should at least have to change its
| pricing in a way that lets people eat in a healthier
| manner. Ad blockers enable consumers to "stop drinking the
| soda" in the attention combo offered by sites.
| dhosek wrote:
| It's not a question of being owed free content, it's a
| question of being able to access the content without being
| inundated with ads blocking the content from every
| direction. I give money to the content creators that matter
| to me (e.g., the very local newspaper, NPR, a few
| podcasts), but I remember the shock of seeing what life was
| like with a vanilla IE install on Windows with a work
| computer. After going to the website of the auto dealership
| to make a service appointment, I got continual ads for
| Chrysler automobiles (which means that for all the tracking
| the advertisers got negative value because I wasn't looking
| to buy).
| timeon wrote:
| I would gladly visit other sites but with SEO exploitation
| they are staying in the way. So maybe they owe us.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| On a similar sentiment to the GP's, I'm owed nothing.
|
| I will take the content as long as they don't bother
| blocking me, and will try to get more people to do the
| same. Their business model does not work if they start
| blocking everybody, it also doesn't work if too many people
| take the content without the ads. That means I'm helping
| them fail, what is absolutely good. The sooner they all go
| away, the better.
| [deleted]
| lolinder wrote:
| I'm not owed free content. What I _am_ owed is the right to
| determine for myself what code runs on my computer. Ads are
| visually oppressive, violate privacy, and are frequently
| vectors for malware. I am in no way obligated to allow any
| website to run them on _my_ computer.
|
| When a website wants to make viewing their ads mandatory
| for viewing their content, that is their prerogative. Most
| don't, and I'm not obligated to _volunteer_ my CPU for
| their ads.
| giaour wrote:
| I don't. I subscribe to the publications that I regularly
| read, but their websites are still mostly unusable without
| an ad blocker.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Reading some of your other content, it feels like you're
| presenting this false dichotomy between "free content" and
| "content supported by the most disgusting and shitty ads
| possible".
|
| There's a world of a difference between a Linus Tech Tips
| style sponsored segment and some jarring ad that constantly
| interrupts your YouTube video to scream at you about KFC.
|
| Same for text content where they'll insert outright scams
| that use disgusting or offensive images to farm clicks
| throughout the article.
|
| If advertising wasn't so obnoxious, people wouldn't go to
| such lengths to block it.
| xdennis wrote:
| I'm not owed content, I simply don't believe in copyright
| because it's impossible to actually restrict it practice. I
| base my morality on my conscience, not the law. I don't
| feel wrong at all to get information without paying to it.
|
| "Information wants to be free" used to be part of the
| hacker ethos.
| acdha wrote:
| I have complicated feelings on this -- content creators
| need to be paid for their work but the ad networks have
| done a ton of collateral damage, too: I've had major sites
| like nytimes.com or youtube.com send me malware via
| Google's ad network, and ads make the web significantly
| slower and less reliable. I avoided using an ad blocker for
| years but installed Firefox Focus everywhere a while back
| after getting tired of ads breaking things or using half of
| my data plan and 45 seconds to deliver a crappy 32kb JPEG
| along with 8MB of JavaScript.
|
| The big thing we need is some kind of action against
| Google: they currently are the best positioned to penalize
| operators of sites slowed by ads but the search team isn't
| going to cut into their ad business and Chrome is going to
| continue slow-walking attempts to make browsers restrict ad
| networks. It'd also be nice if there was liability for
| malware delivered by ads -- something like they have to pay
| a fine up front and try to recover it from their
| advertiser, forcing them to actually vet people first.
|
| What I'd like would be publishers self-hosting ads --
| forcing them to take more responsibility for the security
| risks -- and more effort into alternative payment
| mechanisms. I liked the idea of Google Contributor but one
| big challenge for that is that even a less half-hearted
| version probably wouldn't generate enough money to be
| viable because most people consider ads a reasonable cost
| for free content.
| lanstin wrote:
| Particularly since the prestigious sites like NYTimes are
| having their valuable users be tracked and monetized by
| otherpeople via the ad nwtworks. And the people paying
| for ads are paying for a lot of fraud. It is another
| industry where they got rid of scruples and now have bad
| actors up and down the whole ecosystem.
| fortunately/hopefully the whole experience is so
| unpleasant it is ripe for disruption.
| ratherbefuddled wrote:
| I'm not sure content creators need to be paid for their
| work. At least, not all. What internet surveillance does
| is motivate people to create awful content that nobody in
| the market would pay for in order to skim dollars from
| what is largely a privacy invading, fraudulent vacuum of
| an industry.
|
| People will pay for good content, they did for a long
| time before there was an internet or a surveillance
| industry. There were books, films, subscription TV
| services, paid for audio. There were also steady streams
| of novel manuscripts, demo tapes and screenplays that
| went straight into the bin because they were rubbish. Now
| the rubbish hangs around on a webpage surrounded by
| trackers, luring people in with clickbait titles and
| lies, and multiplying beyond the ability of even google
| to sort out.
| acdha wrote:
| That sounds like an argument for better payment
| mechanisms but people still need to be paid.
|
| Yes, people paid for content prior to the internet but
| there were also problems -- many good things went
| unnoticed because not enough discovered them while plenty
| of garbage got tons of attention because the creator had
| some personal connection to publishers, reviewers, DJs,
| etc. One of the things I loved about the rise of the web
| was that it provided so many opportunities to find things
| which weren't going to run in my local newspaper, be
| stocked by the local book or music shops (if you weren't
| lucky enough to have good indie options), or the pile of
| mud a lot of the big radio stations were often playing
| (this got a lot worse in the 90s when Clear Channel
| started buying all of the radio stations so questions
| about what got mainstream coverage in many markets came
| down to what one guy in Texas wanted).
|
| I don't want to lose that -- whether it's counterpressure
| to the huge race-to-the-bottom advertising market for
| more selective sponsorship, something like Apple/Stripe
| Pay to make it super easy for people to get paid for
| their work, etc.
| ratherbefuddled wrote:
| > That sounds like an argument for better payment
| mechanisms but people still need to be paid.
|
| Paying people for good content doesn't fix the problem.
| The internet is still cluttered with awful content
| drowning out the useful stuff. Not because people are
| trying hard and learning or just plain love their awful
| guitar playing even if nobody is watching, but because
| they're getting paid by surveillance. What we need is the
| absence of that incentive.
|
| This is one of those cases where the free market would
| actually fix the problem if there was some sensible
| regulation applied. Sadly it'll never be quick enough to
| catch up with the technology.
| tpoacher wrote:
| Insert Cathy Newman "So what you're saying is..." meme.
| reincarnate0x14 wrote:
| Why don't I get paid for my HN posts? Do I owe you for your
| reply? Do you owe me for this reply?
|
| You work out how we commoditize every interaction into tiny
| micropayments so MBAs are happy with our time allocations
| and let me know. Ads were tried, and it's been an absolute
| fucking disaster.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| This is maybe the _one_ thing where Bitcoin or another
| blockchain-based payment network could have been a net
| benefit in theory (both as a measure to prevent spam and
| to reward content creators)... but in practice it turned
| out to be nothing more than a giant planetary heating
| system.
| camgunz wrote:
| To my surprise, I discovered proof-of-work was originally
| an anti-spam solution for email! [0] Pretty interesting
| stuff.
|
| [0]: http://www.hashcash.org/
| lanstin wrote:
| or any open micropaymemts type platform. I always
| expected the journalists to make such a thing-pay
| whatever $50 bucks a month and it is split between the
| content publishers you visit. Better than a few people
| like me subscribing to as many papers as i can and most
| people being the prey of the asveetisers and having
| terrible roadblocks to just learning the news.
| TheIronMark wrote:
| > Why don't I get paid for my HN posts?
|
| That's between you and HN and has nothing to do with _my_
| consumption of your comment.
|
| > Ads were tried, and it's been an absolute fucking
| disaster.
|
| No one likes ads, but expecting free content is silly.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| Who is saying they expect free content?
|
| I'd pay a monthly fee for unmolested search results. I
| pay for Youtube Premium. I only watch ad-free content
| that I pay for.
|
| I don't want the content for free - the free stuff is
| usually worse in quality anyway. I just want to be left
| alone by advertisers. I don't need what they are selling
| and the reduce my ability to think. The sheer amount of
| noise they add to the world makes them a problem.
| TheIronMark wrote:
| > Who is saying they expect free content?
|
| Anyone using an adblocker is expecting free content.
| Minor49er wrote:
| I both pay for my ISP to connect to the web. I also pay
| to host web sites that I own which are low cost to me. I
| also want people to see them and don't run any sort of
| advertising or data collection on them. It's worth it to
| me to have my work and information available on the web
| for other people to use, and even has resulted in me
| profiting indirectly from it.
|
| If someone wants to turn a profit on their site, that's
| fine. Do I need to accept whatever they want to serve me
| when I visit their page? No. Do I need to buy a product
| from their store if it's not something I'm interested in,
| even though the payment may go to helping their hosting
| costs? No.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I would totally run an ad blocker that showed me static
| text or image-based ads. No JavaScript, no animations or
| video, and I'll happily view ads.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I pay for plenty of subscription streaming services "ad
| free tier". I buy in app purchases to remove ads. Back
| when I use to buy Windows PCs, I either bought from the
| MS store or business laptops to avoid adware.
|
| If I were to ever buy an Android phone (I wouldn't
| because Google). It would be a Google device.
|
| I also pay more for an AppleTV than a Roku because half
| of the Roku screen and the hard coded buttons on the
| remote are ads.
| gpas wrote:
| Do I also must feel obliged to read every ad page on a
| magazine? Can't change to another tv channel during the
| half time? Was I stealing when in the nineties I recorded
| movies on VHS skipping commercials?
|
| I would say no, and I think websites are not different
| from media I listed above. If they make or don't make
| enough money it's not my business. I am free to consume
| their freely distributed products as I like.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Remember when the internet was just a bunch of weirdos
| dialing in and communicating with each other / creating
| documents about subjects of mutual interest? Who should
| have been getting paid back then?
|
| I feel like there are some IRC channels that owe me some
| dividends.
| ratww wrote:
| The funny thing is that the content published for free by
| the weirdos from the past was 100x better that the ad-
| driven SEO crap we have today.
|
| Also, a lot of that content still exists but it is hidden
| behind the SEO garbage.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| This is just not true and is particularly obtuse. I am
| not expecting free content using an adblocker, there is
| often just no way to avoid ads with some products.
| munk-a wrote:
| I disagree. I use an adblocker because I refuse to be
| monetized via freemium tactics. I pay to support some
| sites that are of interest to me, on most other sites I'm
| never even given the option.
|
| Advertisements directly lower the quality of any content
| I'm consuming and I am expecting high quality content.
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| Why, life is full of free content. I sit on a park bench
| and talk to a friend we are providing free content to
| each other; when my son plays with our kids in the
| playground it is free content. When 22 strangers pay ball
| in the park they are providing free content to each
| other. Life is full of examples of people providing free
| contents to people around them, so why the internet
| should be the exception? This frame of mind that
| everything needs to be a transaction is rotten.
| camgunz wrote:
| > No one likes ads, but expecting free content is silly.
|
| It's not always possible to buy out of advertising. One
| of my fave sites anandtech.com has (I guess relatively
| reasonable) ads, and I can't subscribe or whatever to get
| rid of them.
|
| I'm also generally OK with Adwords v1.0 ads, which had
| virtually no chance of autoplaying a super loud video,
| running malware on my machine, breaking the layout of a
| page as I'm trying to click on something, or masquerading
| as genuine content.
|
| Ad blockers respond to the fact that users have very
| little ability to control their ad experiences, even in
| ways we probably think are appropriate like buying out of
| them. What you're implying here (ads vs. free content) is
| a false dichotomy.
| clairity wrote:
| it also doesn't matter whether a business offers
| subscriptions, because ads can (and will) always
| inevitably be layered on top as an additional revenue
| source. see newspapers, radio, tv, and even real estate
| for prior art in this regard, and cars, appliances, and
| other internet-connected goods as ongoing evolutions.
|
| ads vs. free content is indeed a very false dichotomy.
| giaour wrote:
| I don't mind ads on broadcast TV or radio because they
| fund the content and don't insist on tracking me.
|
| The privacy invasion that accompanies web ads leads me to
| treat them as malware and prevent their execution on my
| devices. I don't care about non-personalized ads (e.g.
| the 1P-hosted display ads on Ravelry).
| thewebcount wrote:
| > That's between you and HN and has nothing to do with my
| consumption of your comment.
|
| Oh the irony! Likewise, the agreement between the content
| company and the ad company has nothing to do with my
| consumption of the content. The content company agrees to
| show ads for the ad company. The ad company agrees to
| make ads for the content company to show and pay them to
| show the ads. I make no agreement with either. I download
| the content and choose not to download the ad. It's my
| bandwidth.
| barnabee wrote:
| I don't expect free content, I expect that if your
| business can't survive without ads it should disappear
| from the face of the earth.
|
| Going without is better than ad funded. The goal of me
| running ad blockers is not just to make my life nicer but
| to make ad funded shit (i.e. most of the current
| internet) unviable.
|
| Paywall away! If it's good enough for the money, I'll
| always pay for it.
| gpvos wrote:
| Actually, I don't. But what the ad companies do is worse
| than freeloading, so I'm still in the positive. And I do
| pay for services that I use a lot.
| cwp wrote:
| I can't speak for the GP, but here's my answer:
|
| I don't feel I'm owed anything. I just refuse to consume
| ads. Sometimes that means I pay a subscription fee.
| Sometimes I read it with my blocker on and the creator goes
| without revenue to get their message out. And sometimes the
| creator won't serve up their content unless I disable my
| blocker, so I shrug and turn my attention elsewhere.
|
| The problem for creators is that there's a glut of content
| online. It's just way more than _anyone_ needs. The best
| creators can afford monetize directly, the good ones can do
| custom ads integrated into their content, and the rest have
| to churn out clickbait, top 11 lists, and ludicrously
| "optimized" content laden with ad-network garbage. It sucks
| to be mediocre, but I don't feel I owe anyone that revenue
| stream.
| blindmute wrote:
| If they don't want me to have it for free, they should
| charge for it. And if no one would pay for it, it's not
| valuable content. Their poor business model isn't my
| problem.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Ad-funded businesses are mostly bad for society anyway,
| hopefully if enough people get ad blockers their business
| models will become non-viable. So, those of us running ad
| blockers are actually providing a public service for free,
| it is quite generous!
| philote wrote:
| To me it's not about getting free content, it's about not
| paying with my information and being unable to pay any
| other way. If a site wants to use ad networks that track me
| across the web, too bad for them. And also too bad if they
| don't offer a subscription model that disables ads AND
| tracking.
|
| Also, ads can be served in ways that makes blocking much
| more difficult. It's just harder to do, and harder to track
| users across sites. (and therefore, probably less lucrative
| to the site owners).
|
| What happened to serving ads based on site content? How is
| using poor algorithms that require a lot of tracking and
| then make bad guesses about your interests any better?
| tragictrash wrote:
| He's not owed free content, he's given it.
| dheera wrote:
| No guilt either. It's on them for making the ads so damn
| annoying with popups, modals, megabytes of JavaScript,
| interspersed with more subscription and GDPR popups, and
| shitting cookies all over my browser, and tracking my
| searches across sites, and sometimes covering up over HALF my
| screen on mobile.
|
| No thanks. If they had stuck with a simple, in-line,
| hyperlinked image I would have probably not cared, but this
| is too much.
|
| The _way_ the ad is delivered is what is annoying and not the
| ad itself.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Same, I pay for my internet connection and I get to decide
| which content I see and don't see. They're my resources. If
| you're going out of business because ad revenue, find a
| different business model. Nobody likes ads plastered all over
| the screen, the worst part is many ads are deceptive or as
| mentioned could lead to other nefarious acts. No thanks...
| ar_lan wrote:
| > I feel zero guilt about ad blocking.
|
| I don't know why anybody would feel any guilt. When cable was
| the only thing available, I would switch to my Gameboy when
| ads would come on and mute the TV, effectively blocking the
| ads. I'm always curious if people who shame others about ad-
| blocking similarly think that action was immoral and I should
| instead be forced to keep my eyes open with superglue when
| the ads came on.
|
| > People give Brave grief over BAT
|
| Many people are against crypto-currency with no reason other
| to be contrarian (or they just really, really, really love JP
| Morgan/Chase). BAT is not even required to be used to use
| Brave...
|
| I have mixed opinions on where the ad-blocking layer should
| live (I generally think at the router level), but there are
| some undeniable benefits to having at least some form at the
| browser-level as well, and I think Brave making this a
| default was a fantastic idea.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| Thanks for your kind words.
|
| Quick note on router level approach: without MitM and full
| JS/HTML/CSS runtime, can't block tracking and ads
| effectively.
|
| PiHole etc. are good but not sufficient to stop the latest,
| and with Google pushing for more AMP borg-ification of
| sites' content, getting into the 1st party content that
| unfolds only at TLS termination and JS execution is
| essential to blocking threats.
| skummetmaelk wrote:
| > It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a
| constant hustle for eyeball-cash
|
| This cannot be overstated. Everything today is a battle for
| eye-balls and ad money. The corruption is insane. You can't
| even buy appliances designed perform their function well.
| Instead you can buy cheap junk for less than cogs because
| they make money selling your data to ad companies instead of
| making money by making products that are actually good.
|
| The concept of "value" for consumers has been completely
| twisted and I am not looking forward to seeing where this
| race to the bottom will end up.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >The concept of "value" for consumers has been completely
| twisted and I am not looking forward to seeing where this
| race to the bottom will end up.
|
| For a lot of consumer tech companies, it's less about
| providing value to consumers and more about extracting
| value from them. Between vendor lock-in, privacy
| violations, and arbitrary one-sided changes in service,
| it's straight out of an abusive partner's playbook.
| deergomoo wrote:
| > Instead you can buy cheap junk for less than cogs because
| they make money selling your data to ad companies instead
| of making money by making products that are actually good
|
| Oh this heinous shit is not just limited to cheap tat.
| Samsung will happily sell you their highest end TVs for
| four figures with unremovable banner ads in the source
| menu.
| 58x14 wrote:
| Unauthorized Bread is an excellent novella about exactly
| this.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-
| bread-a-...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvbusjDOspQ
| bambax wrote:
| The funny part is I remember a time when even on HN the
| majority defended ads for a myriad of reasons, and one of
| those reasons was that people actually liked ads and wanted
| them.
|
| This line of reasoning has completely disappeared from the
| mainstream. I think that's a problem for the ad companies.
| They have not yet lost the war, but it seems they have lost
| the argument.
| robryan wrote:
| Around 2011 or so this was me. I generally didn't ad
| block and thought that seeing a few ads was a reasonable
| price for the free content online. Ads became ridiculous
| though and lost any sense of balance, the web became
| borderline unusable without one.
|
| I have sold on eBay for over a decade and at some point
| the desktop site became so slow as to be unusable with ad
| blocking. No idea who at eBay thinks getting in the way
| of sales to spam people with banner ads is a good idea.
| hattmall wrote:
| There was a time when I purposely unblocked Facebook ads
| because they were actually showing me some interesting
| content and products in a fairly non-invasive way.
|
| And occasionally I still get those but lately almost all
| ads I see are some interesting headline that then takes
| me to a page with an for nonsense products every
| paragraph and an extremely fluffy article to tell me that
| dinosaurs had feathers / the Romans had steam engines or
| something similar.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Yeah, I remember good ads there. Used to be the only
| reason I went on Facebook. I just checked to see what ads
| it would show these days. They were terrible and 4-5 of
| them had some hilarious typos in them.
| colordrops wrote:
| I remember this. "People want personalized information on
| products they are interested in. How else would they find
| out about them?" As if people would be at a loss buying a
| car or breakfast cereal or a pair of shoes without ads.
| notriddle wrote:
| I do think there's a reasonable argument for ads, since
| people don't always know what they could be looking for
| [1]. Independent magazines can serve a similar purpose,
| but the difference is between an organization that claims
| to be unaffiliated with the manufacturer, and needs to be
| constantly policed to make sure they aren't lying about
| it, and just being up-front about your affiliation, and
| only needing to be constantly policed to make sure you
| aren't lying about the product itself.
|
| Unfortunately, web ads suck. Because there isn't enough
| Gatekeeping(tm), I can't buy things from web ads, because
| the probability of it being a scam is too high.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_mLxyIXpSY
| colordrops wrote:
| If they didn't know what they could be looking for,
| perhaps they didn't really need the thing in the first
| place. If the product is good enough, then it should grow
| in usage through word of mouth.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| This exactly, most of this stuff will just end up taking
| up space in someone's basement for 20 years used maybe
| once or twice. Its not only a waste of money but raw
| materials and energy
| tehjoker wrote:
| I'm very anti-advertising but I think from a production
| standpoint this is yes and no. Without advertising, it
| doesn't make sense to put in the capital expenditure to
| create new products that require a high upfront cost
| because there's no demand for it. Advertising is used to
| create demand. Under a different economic model, this
| feature of the production environment would not be as
| necessary.
| colordrops wrote:
| Perhaps the capital expenditure shouldn't have been made
| in the first place. Our earth is careening towards an
| environmental cliff. We don't need people finding more
| ways emit CO2 into the atmosphere. If people really need
| the thing they'll find it and word will get around.
| malfist wrote:
| Full disclosure, I run ad blocker, I love my ad blocker.
|
| I get what you're trying to say, but here's a counter
| example. I have a hobby of astrophography. I live in a
| rural area without many other people nearby interested in
| the stars, much less a highly technical hobby like
| astrophography.
|
| Asking on message boards like cloudynights, or reddit
| gets you a lot of well meaning beginners offering advice
| outside of their skill level.
|
| I'm currently building an observatory and I need input on
| which mount to use in my observatory. I don't have a good
| concept of what to buy for it as I've only dealt with
| really beginner mounts and I'm not a beginner anymore,
| and there's no astrophography retail stores within travel
| distance. Online advice is poor and hard to weed out
| those who are beginners meaning well and those who
| actually know what they're talking about.
|
| However, to pull us back to what we're talking about
| here, I get a magazine for the industry called Sky and
| Telescope and it has ads. To me, ads are one of the best
| things about that magazine because it lets me know what
| options I have that I wouldn't otherwise be aware of, or
| have any way to compare.
|
| Though to be fair, ads in a magazine don't spy on you,
| don't infect your computer, don't move and steal
| attention and don't follow you around. But I think there
| is a place for targeted, well behaved ads.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Why not go to a university website with an astro dept and
| email some people?
| [deleted]
| babypuncher wrote:
| It makes sense in isolated situations, like Netflix
| recommending content based on previous content you liked
| on their platform. I think it becomes creepy once that
| data leaves the domain where I originally generated it.
| colordrops wrote:
| Is that really an ad though? A recommendation on the
| platform itself isn't an ad IMO.
| ipaddr wrote:
| It is and many get paid for it. You think those top prime
| picks are most viewed/best rate.. no they are picked by
| an editor for a variety of reasons some include clauses
| in deals or money spent/relationship with the studio.
| scarface74 wrote:
| That's not how Netflix works. Netflix pays a one time fee
| for content to be in its platform. It's not a pay per
| play deal like Spotify.
| pueblito wrote:
| That's definitely an ad
| onion2k wrote:
| _The funny part is I remember a time when even on HN the
| majority defended ads for a myriad of reasons.._
|
| There's quite a lot of HN readers who work for businesses
| that derive most of their revenue from ads (Google,
| Facebook, content companies, etc) so there's always going
| to be people here who are willing to stand up for ads.
| The famous Upton Sinclair quote is quite appropriate -
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something
| when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
| bambax wrote:
| Sure, but they must still exist -- yet we don't seem to
| hear them anymore.
| lubesGordi wrote:
| Allusions, Michael.
| ratww wrote:
| You still see from time to time, but such posts often get
| downvoted.
| exhilaration wrote:
| I would bet that most Google and Facebook employees use
| adblockers.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| When I worked at one of the above, it was part of the
| process for reporting an ads bug. First, disable your
| adblocker.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There are multiple reasons why it is hard to find good gear
| online.
|
| In the case of electronics and photography gear it takes a
| huge amount of reading between the lines to interpret
| reviews even assuming the reviews are honest.
|
| For instance at the Best Buy website there is a review for
| a photo printer where the user posted photographs of
| utterly ruined prints they made on this printer. Well, I've
| made prints like that too when I put the paper in upside
| down. That's what happens when you put the wrong side of
| the paper in.
|
| A decade ago the story about Sigma lenses on Canon bodies
| was that 90% of them were OK but 10% were defective in
| subtle ways (like the autofocus doesn't quite lock on)
| Sigma on Sony today seems to be better. When you're reading
| reviews though you have to guess "did this person get a bad
| instance of the product or did this person have the wrong
| expectations for how this was supposed to perform."
| armchairhacker wrote:
| I have a theory most ads (especially invasive ones) don't
| actually target most people, not just tech-savvy users but
| anyone. They target "dumb", very-manipulable people who see
| these crazy ads and actually spend loads of money on them,
| out of impulse or whatever reason.
|
| I feel cruel saying this but I really think it's true. Just
| like how most games have microtransactions because a
| minority of people who will spend an incredible amount of
| money on them. Most people are caught in the crossfire and
| ads just annoy them and steer them _away_ from the product,
| but mass advertising is an effective way to target the
| minority who ultimately spend enough on the product to
| offset the cost.
| andai wrote:
| Most ads I'm seeing lately have been on relatives'
| computers while using shady movie streaming sites. Most
| of the ads are deceptive things like, you click on the
| movie to play it and it opens a popup of a different
| movie, which then asks you to make a free account (and
| presumably uses those credentials to try and steal your
| other accounts).
|
| On the other side of the spectrum: using the Instagram
| app was the first time in my life I felt _positive_ about
| the ads I was being shown. I was shown ads for
| microdosing psilocybin (it 's legal here) which blew my
| mind hahah. It's almost like I got through the uncanny
| valley and into the other side where ads are _actually
| relevant!_
|
| Pretty weird since I almost never use Facebook. But I use
| Google, GMail and YouTube all the time ... and yet, the
| YouTube and Google Ads really suck! (They seem to be
| based on IP address rather than identity: I keep getting
| shown stuff that's obviously based on my housemate's
| browsing.)
|
| To be clear there was still the gross undercurrent of
| "okay, why the hell do they know that?" but it was nice
| to see it actually _working as intended_ for once.
| allenu wrote:
| You can't even pump gas without having an auto-play video
| start at the pump after you've started filling up your
| tank. I know I can choose not to watch the video, but I
| can't avoid hearing it play as I stand there waiting for my
| tank to fill up.
| patrickk wrote:
| > You can't even buy appliances designed perform their
| function well
|
| You can't research good appliances either online, because
| the SERPs are stuffed with SEO-ed blogs and sometimes
| industry magazines, monetized with Amazon affiliates or
| other networks, with titles like "5 best dishwashers in
| 2022". Unless you know someone in the industry or offline
| with knowledge you don't know what to buy.
|
| This is noticeable in many other consumer goods verticals,
| e.g. good luck researching decent home gym equipment that
| is durable and not overpriced with fat margins.
|
| There's no adblocker for this problem either. Google is
| complacent with their fat ad revenue and monopoly on search
| and doesn't care.
| robryan wrote:
| YouTube is pretty good here. The algorithm does a pretty
| good job at providing results that aren't the equivalent
| of blog spam and it is immediately obvious when you are
| watching a low quality video.
| Bendy wrote:
| And I learn that Google is actually upset that its search
| results are suffering degradation by rampant, runaway SEO
| --they reap what they sow, and at everyone's expense.
| Such brought to mind The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner as
| the web faces its own environmental collapse:
|
| "You...treated the world like a fucking great toilet
| bowl. You shat in it and boasted about the mess you'd
| made. And now it's full and overflowing, and you're fat
| and happy and black kids are going crazy to keep you
| rich. Goodbye!"
|
| Adblocking isn't simply convenience it's life-preserving.
| 14 wrote:
| This is something I had to teach my dad. But he believed
| it thoroughly until he had a few high purchase items fail
| outside of warranty. My advice to him has been look for
| customer reviews and he suspicious of the positive ones
| and aware of all the negative ones. My other advise is
| buy from a reputable distributor like Costco who makes
| returning something incredibly easy.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| The answer to deceptive online reviews is Consumer
| Reports. While the web initially made CR not worthwhile,
| as time progressed it's once again very valuable. I would
| never buy any appliances without paying for a
| subscription first.
|
| I'm doing this myself before I buy a treadmill. I want
| the most reliable one, not the most tech features, and
| while my hunch is Sole is the one for me based on their
| warranty, I'm going to confirm with CR before dropping
| $1,600 on one.
|
| The problem is that people plug their ears and put
| blinders on to avoid spending $30 for teardown advice
| from an outfit like Consumer Reports. Too cheap for their
| own good.
| [deleted]
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I love the 'best of' sites that only have Amazon links.
| If its not on Amazon it must not exist and could not
| possibly be the best, right? But some brand from China
| you've never heard of will be on the list.
| the_snooze wrote:
| I feel like "scale" on the Internet has gone completely
| off the rails and has become just worthless "noise."
| Sure, anyone can post and sell whatever they want, but
| you lose all notions of reputation and trust. It all
| becomes a shouting match among those who can ad-spam and
| SEO their way to the top. Those shitty fly-by-night
| randomly-named Chinese brands on Amazon come to mind.
| wldcordeiro wrote:
| See also Youtube/Spotify/etc view/listen/impression
| farms. It really does make it so much noise, you can
| pretty much guarantee any large scale account is using
| these too and bot followers because it's an arms race for
| attention.
| visarga wrote:
| > This is noticeable in many other consumer goods
| verticals, e.g. good luck researching decent home gym
| equipment that is durable and not overpriced with fat
| margins.
|
| I think Google dropped the ball on their search
| objectives in this department. Why is it so bad at
| helping us search products? If I specify something with
| 2-3 conditionals why can't it match all the clauses,
| filter out fake reviews, out of stock, not shipped to my
| region and such?
|
| They don't want to help us find what we want to buy, they
| want to sell us what the advertisers have to sell, and
| the two don't match. They want to sell us things we don't
| need, this is the reason we never buy anything from the
| ads and their whole industry is a scam.
| rq1 wrote:
| Try: Best dishwashers 2022 -amazon
|
| All websites with affiliated links disappear.
|
| You'll most likely end up on Reddit but sometimes make
| some good discoveries.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| I have yet to find a question Reddit has a good answer
| for, so I also add `-site:reddit.com` if my query has
| been SEO'd into a page full of their spam.
|
| The net-net of all of this is that I buy a lot more stuff
| from brick and mortar stores now, where they've done the
| curation, and will only carry the stuff that sells best
| per square foot, and minimizes their returns.
| ianai wrote:
| Pretty much my approach too. The one channel became too
| horrible so switch back.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| I type "reddit" after the query and Reddit usually has
| good recommendations.
|
| Yes, advertisers can and do try to invade subreddits
| posing as "real" users to promote sham products. But I
| haven't seen this actually working: sometimes Redditors
| recommend products which are way too expensive (still
| good quality, but the extra price really isn't worth it),
| but if someone recommends a genuinely crappy product,
| they get downvoted and replies saying "don't buy this"
| notriddle wrote:
| > Yes, advertisers can and do try to invade subreddits
| posing as "real" users to promote sham products. But I
| haven't seen this actually working
|
| Would you know if it did?
| armchairhacker wrote:
| so far all of the products i've bought have been decent.
| Also i see products i know are good recommended, and ones
| i know are bad people say to avoid
| gzer0 wrote:
| I used to type "reddit" after my searches to look for
| genuine and real reviews, but even that is now being
| gamed.
|
| Advertisers and shady affiliate marketing schemes have
| caught on and nearly every search result I try is now
| filled with junk, upvote farmed nonsense with fake
| accounts using similar naming schemes.
| zo1 wrote:
| This is one downside I will agree is a consequence of
| tracking technology on the web. There is no way for
| "genuine" discoverability to hide on the internet
| anymore. After a while, sites will start noticing that
| their purchase traffic is coming from Reddit so they'll
| start targeting it and before you know it, even the bad
| producers/products are being spammed there.
| ffwszgf wrote:
| This is 100% the case when I was looking for a VPN
| recommendation.
|
| So many of the Reddit threads were blatantly astroturfed.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Another think you'll see a lot of is bots looking for
| "listical" and blog info so some side hustle person can
| piece together an article on something they know next to
| nothing about.
|
| By the way, while I have you here, have you considered
| extending your used car's warranty?
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| yeah, the other day I ran afoul of that practice
|
| The top post in the relevant enthusiast sub recommending
| stuff to buy had no actual information, but it was
| stuffed with Amazon affiliate links. It was basically a
| "Top 5 X 2022" post except it was on Reddit instead of
| its own spam blog
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Meh if you put a little effort into it by checking the
| post & comment history of the person doing the review it
| should give you a clue. Sure some companies have bought
| accounts with lots of Karma and "good will" in the past
| but I think that's pretty rare.
| ratww wrote:
| For me the problem with Reddit is not even the
| astroturfing. It's that, similarly to SEO and Google,
| people have figured out the kind of posts and replies
| that get upvotes. So, on niche subreddits, you get a lot
| of folklore and second-hand advice repeated by people
| addicted to internet points, or, like other poster put it
| better below, _" well meaning beginners offering advice
| outside of their skill level"_. The Geil-Mann Amnesia
| Effect is strong in that site.
| Nowado wrote:
| I do this too, but that behaviour has zero way of
| noticing false negatives.
| williamdclt wrote:
| The only solution I found to that is to bypass google
| completely and directly go search on Reddit, where real
| humans have human opinions (sometimes HN, too).
| andai wrote:
| 4chan's /g/ for tech gear and /diy/ for bigger gear is
| great for that sort of thing. There's "generals" for
| common subjects like headphones, PC building etc, and
| "stupid questions thread" where you can ask about
| anything. Do note that 4chan can be very offensive and
| politically incorrect, you need a bit of a thick skin to
| get along there.
| SamBam wrote:
| And unfortunately, you're never really sure on Reddit,
| either. I found I was too willing to put those, what,
| 5-10 voices telling me to pick a certain brand up on a
| high pedestal, because they seemed like real people. They
| didn't sound like advertisers. But, honestly, how hard is
| it to fake 5-10 accounts to push your product, or buy
| high-karma accounts?
|
| My go-tos are sites like Wirecutter, where it seems like
| the hit to their reputation would be too high to be
| blatantly bought-out, even if they'll generally only hawk
| products that can be bought on Amazon or other sites that
| give them affiliate money. They're not always perfect,
| but I trust that they're trying to do what they set out
| to do.
| bluGill wrote:
| I find the best results on reddit when I look for the
| same company selling only that type of thing. They often
| moderate the sub on that topic and are very open about
| being a seller of it, and know their product. Note this
| is actually selling the product - not to be confused with
| amazon links. They need to have a real business, and
| while they moderate the sub they never have links to
| their store (instead it is search my profile to buy from
| me).
| BuckRogers wrote:
| I'm a Consumer Reports + self-investigation guy (using
| all sources). I do use Wirecutter but I put low weight on
| their ultimate recommendations. I use them to find what
| else is out there.
|
| The main issue with most review sites is that they're
| kids. Companies like NYT/Wirecutter don't want to pay old
| men that are experts in manufacturing. They hire kids
| with little life experience to review something like a
| washing machine. They haven't had 2 or even 1 washing
| machine in their entire lives. They wouldn't even be
| capable of doing a teardown. Let alone identifying which
| parts are quality vs not.
|
| Unless of course your main qualification is not trying to
| find something that is built to last. Which is the
| hardest thing to get these days. Finding garbage like
| electronics and software is easy. Everyone wants to sell
| you software rather than high quality manufactured goods.
| And I want the least software possible as I'm very anti-
| technology for a software developer.
|
| My research sources would be roughly in this order:
|
| 1. Consumer Reports (teardowns, can't beat this method.
| You pay them directly, if interested in least conflict of
| interest)
|
| 2. Wirecutter (good for a free source, but puts near-zero
| weight on reliability)
|
| 3. Amazon reviews (can find some old timers reviewing
| there but always keep in mind that most people aren't
| very intelligent. They maintain nothing and won't skim a
| manual)
|
| 4. Reddit (a lot of zero life experience kids on that,
| meaning generally anyone under 40)
|
| 5. Then whatever else you can find on the web
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Let me share a resource with you, where an experienced
| community with skin in the game review products under the
| context of bargain hunting! www.ozbargain.com.au
|
| Looking past the bargain and location aspects, this site
| is super useful for understanding products in greater
| detail
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| To be fair(er) to WC, most of their review introductions
| typically mention interaction with people with longer
| histories in whatever the relevant business is, so it's
| clear that they recognize their outsider status. How much
| interaction they really have with these niche experts and
| what impact it has on their reviews, I don't know.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| Consumer Reports does a great job at giving honest
| reviews. They go through multiple steps to ensure
| manufacturers don't know they're purchasing their
| products as well (to avoid getting beefed up 'review
| units').
|
| And no, their service is not supported by ads - You have
| to pay for a subscription. Consumer Reports needs to be
| mentioned more IMO. Because even on reddit, there are
| companies that offer advanced stealth-like astroturfing
| campaigns for products/services.
|
| The counterargument is that Consumer Reports could be
| intruded by corporate shills, but their reputation is
| solid and they've been around for a long time.
|
| Link: https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/index.htm
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I use CR, but they do miss the target sometimes. They
| extrapolate a lot between models, sometimes farther than
| I think is justified by saying they are 'similar'. And
| occasionally they make really boneheaded recommendations
| that I just don't understand. On their recommendation I
| bought a Samsung washer and dryer pair, which both broke
| within the first 12 months. A bit of research on the
| appliance forum, and it turns out that all the repair
| guys say pretty much the same thing -- don't buy Samsung
| appliances, they're unreliable crap. As someone who owns
| three Samsung appliances (the third being a
| refrigerator), I wholeheartedly agree. Never again.
| Refrigerators are notoriously unreliable regardless of
| manufacturer, but Samsung really sets the bar pretty low.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| wirecutter on samsung refridgerators seems like one the
| fairest assessments i've seen:
| https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/the-best-
| refriger...
| sho_hn wrote:
| Speaking of which, anyone know what happened at The
| Verge? It may not ever have been a bastion of great
| journalism, but these days 30-50% of the content is
| (occasionally well-targeted) product advertising or "you
| can now buy the Xbox here for the best price ever" or
| "Walmart has this promo right now". It's such a
| noticeable and abrupt change to the content mix.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| This was my experience when trying to buy a new fridge.
| Due to the design of my kitchen, there is a very narrow
| choke point leading into it. There is no door. As a
| result I have to very careful when shopping for fridges.
| Mostly simply will not fit.
|
| Almost everything about fridges nowadays wants to promote
| the virtues of the amazing new features associated with
| them.
|
| After hours of searching, I narrowed it down to 3 models.
| All were the most basic fridge & freezer combo I could
| find. Exactly one of them was in stock, so I got that
| one.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| consumerreports.org does exactly what you want, but you
| have to pay for it. if you don't want to pay for it, then
| you get what you pay for. google isn't complacent. google
| has a large number of paying customers that aren't you.
| you don't live in a socialist utopia. you live in a world
| where things cost money. you can pay for the information
| you want, or someone else can pay for you to have the
| information they want you to have.
| rsync wrote:
| "This is noticeable in many other consumer goods
| verticals, e.g. good luck researching decent home gym
| equipment that is durable and not overpriced with fat
| margins."
|
| I agree with you but there's a simple shortcut you can
| employ: purchase commercial/industrial models _that you
| see being used in industry_.
|
| Gym equipment is a good example: your local, serious
| weightlifting gym is probably using Hammer Strength
| plate-loaded machines and Rogue frames/racks.
|
| Cooking: Look in the commercial kitchen of a high end
| restaurant - that's where I first saw my commercial
| microwave being used.[1]
|
| TV: NEC P461 commercial display - I found the model
| number by climbing behind the arrivals/departures board
| at the airport.
|
| [1] https://shop.panasonic.com/kitchen-and-
| home/microwaves-and-m...
| flurie wrote:
| The irony of this is that Rogue's popularity is due in no
| small part to their close partnership with Westside
| Barbell, a quirky club obsessed with both high-end
| equipment and steroid usage in equal measure. There's a
| lot of bad equipment out there, but the majority of
| people, training at home or in a gym, do not need Rogue
| equipment, and I'm willing to bet that Rogue has higher
| margins than some of the other good equipment
| manufacturers.
| freedomben wrote:
| This is great advice. This is what I did when I was
| looking for a heavy bag and other equipment. I looked at
| what the dojo had and bought those.
| elkos wrote:
| But how the industry pulls that off? They do open calls
| for equipment and buy in bulk?
| taneq wrote:
| The industry has large, potentially repeating customers,
| who use the equipment until it fails and who often have
| the resources to sue if a supplier screws then over too
| badly. This moves the risk/reward sweet spot for vendors
| towards the "provide good product for fair price" end and
| away from the "build shoddy malicious crap and spend your
| money on advertising."
| yunwal wrote:
| It's the market for lemons problem. If it's your job,
| it's worth it to learn all you need to know to
| differentiate between junk and quality. If you're buying
| one of the 75 different appliances in your home, you'll
| probably just look at a review site, which can easily be
| gamed by companies selling junk.
| Drdrdrq wrote:
| > TV: NEC P461 commercial display - I found the model
| number by climbing behind the arrivals/departures board
| at the airport.
|
| Huh. Trying to imagine someone doing that and not getting
| detained. "I just wanted to read the model number,
| officer, I swear!"
|
| Other than that, good advice. :)
| rsync wrote:
| Well, it was ASE. It's a pretty chill airport :)
| whoisthemachine wrote:
| Agree with others, great advice. I suggested this once
| for my partner - she needed a laptop and loved her work
| laptop, so I suggested she look for a refurbished version
| of her work laptop for personal use, as business laptops
| often are fairly cheap after their warranty expires and
| the original owner returns it. She still uses it to this
| day.
| hattmall wrote:
| One market where this has always been a problem is tools.
| So almost 20 years ago we were told in shop class that
| the industry magazines and reviews were basically all
| paid for by manufacturers. The solution we learned was to
| always buy the cheapest option first. If it breaks or
| fails to meet your needs understand how and why and then
| move on to a more costly tool that you can demonstrate is
| better in the specific way you need it to be. Of course
| thats not always practical or feasible but for the
| majority of items it really is.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Sometimes the cost for a quality piece of gear is
| incremental though, so you buy a harbor freight
| thingamajig then it breaks so you buy the Milwaukee
| thingamajigfor twice the price, for a total of 300% of
| the cost of the original thing. You could have saved 30%
| in that case by just buying the good thing in the first
| place.
| munk-a wrote:
| Alternatively this thingamajig is so rarely used that you
| buy the harbor freight version and use it a few times a
| year. It becomes a life long tool and you save a fair bit
| of the price.
|
| The second time you buy a type of tool you definitely
| need to go for quality, the first time though, are you
| certain you're actually going to be constantly using that
| tool?
| aksss wrote:
| The only exception to watch out for is when buying a
| crappy version of x will negatively color your new
| experiences with an activity. Tools meant for precision
| but the cheap versions are plastic rattle traps that get
| out of calibration/alignment from basic use can be
| extremely frustrating to someone just getting started in
| an activity. The user may throw their hands up and quit
| whereas a good quality tool would have made their new
| hobby more enjoyable/accessible (e.g. no, it's not you,
| you're just fighting a really crappy tool every step of
| the way). Again, tasks/activities that require repeatable
| precision come to mind here.
| [deleted]
| ipaddr wrote:
| You risk saving 100% to save 30%.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| You have to expect that this will happen a certain amount
| of the time when you use the "buy the cheapest tool"
| strategy. Of course, really, it's not "buy the cheapest
| tool"; it's "buy the cheapest tool that could possibly
| work," sort of like "do the simplest thing that could
| possibly work" in agile.
|
| If the tool breaks quickly, that's not usually a terrible
| outcome. Most companies have at least a 90 day limited
| warranty you could take advantage of in that case. In
| many cases, you can even just return the damn thing to
| the store where you bought it and get a refund or
| exchange for a better tool. This, of course, assumes that
| the reason you needed the thing in the first place isn't
| incredibly time-sensitive, but, usually, it works out
| fine.
|
| Of course, if it lasts forever, then, great! But, in the
| intermediate scenario, where you encounter the limitation
| of the tool a little ways down the road, that's actually
| where this strategy shines, because you get a chance to
| upgrade to a better tool without wasting a ton of money
| on top of the line equipment right away. I know
| photographers who do this with lenses all the time:
| they'll rent a new lens for a week or something, go out
| and shoot it to see how it really works, and then
| determine whether they want to commit to it. $100 spent
| on a lens rental has saved some of my friends more than
| $1000 on glass they don't need. And, if they ultimately
| do end up buying the lens, that $100 is $100 well spent
| for peace of mind that they will actually get the use out
| of the thing that they actually bought it for. And, I
| think the Harbor Freight strategy makes a lot more sense
| if you view the initial purchase from HF as possibly a
| long term rental.
|
| Now, there is that one caveat that you need to buy "the
| cheapest tool _that could possibly work_. " If you're a
| professional machinist, for instance, don't go buying a
| $5 caliper and thinking that will be good. Go and spend
| the $150 or whatever on a Mitutoyo instrument to begin
| with, because you know damn well you will need it. This
| is just an example I pulled from personal experience, as
| I needed a caliper for hobby purposes a few years ago and
| ended up looking at things ranging from that $5 caliper
| on up to precision instruments. For my purposes, the low
| end is totally fine, because I don't need accuracy better
| than 0.1mm, and it's not my professional livelihood on
| the line. But, if you're a professional, never trust an
| instrument that doesn't come with a certificate of
| calibration.
|
| I've also used this strategy with good success on
| photography equipment, myself. I wanted a DSLR camera I
| could use to take pictures for hobby purposes, mostly
| intended for web use. I did a little research and decided
| that a used Nikon D3400 was for me. So, I went to eBay,
| found one that only had about 1200 clicks on the shutter
| that came with the 18-55 kit lens and the original box
| for $325 (tax and shipping included), and I bought it. I
| augmented that with a used 90mm Tamron macro lens for
| under $150 and I was good to go.
|
| It has one or two small limitations that either only come
| into play outside of the original use case I had in mind,
| or which aren't really annoying enough to mention, but,
| for the most part, it's been a spectacular camera that I
| spent under $500 on, as opposed to spending $1000 on a
| Z50 (or, you know, gone _really_ crazy and gotten a D850
| or a Z9), and then another $900 on a new Nikon 105mm
| macro lens, but, for my purposes, I can take photos that
| are 95% as good as what I could ultimately produce with
| the more expensive equipment, but, I can legitimately say
| this strategy has saved me over $1000.
|
| I did exactly the same thing when I started learning to
| play the cello. A new, carved wooden cello suitable for a
| student probably runs around $2000-2500, and that doesn't
| necessarily include a decent bow. This is also an
| instrument one will certainly grow out of if one
| continues playing. I did my research and went out and
| bought a Yamaha electric for $3000 and went to a cello
| shop to try out bows, ending up with a nice $1200 bow. I
| ended up with an instrument I'll never outplay and a bow
| that will last me years. The alternative would have
| probably been a much less playable bow and instrument, or
| a lot more money expended.
| bbarn wrote:
| I'd argue then that the level of usage dictated a better
| one. Most people don't actually use tools to failure.
| I've owned edging tools, routers, sanders, even a small
| metal lathe from Harbor freight that have handled 10+
| years of very occasional use just fine. If you're using
| things so much that they fail, yes, buy a more quality
| version. If it fails on the first use, Harbor freight
| happens to have a very generous return / exchange policy
| within the first 30 days.
| wyre wrote:
| Harbor Freight also has lifetime warranties on many of
| their products.
| dustymcp wrote:
| This is how my sad thought me to buy tools just seems
| insane to go expensive cause best every time..
| ineedasername wrote:
| This is why (in the US) I buy what I can from Harbor
| Freight. Unless it's something that can have critical
| safety issues if things go bad.
| Geezus-42 wrote:
| Buy the one from Harbor Freight, return it when it
| breaks.
| NovaS1X wrote:
| This is why I really appreciate YT channels like Project
| Farm.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| That guy gives masterclasses on fast, efficient data
| presentation with every video. I really appreciate his
| approach.
| reeddavid wrote:
| I've noticed a problem when I try to buy tools
| (especially automotive tools): The only tools available
| locally are cheap and crappy. I know they are crappy
| because half the reviews state that it didn't even work
| once.
|
| But I can't pay more to get a higher quality version of
| the tool, because the store doesn't even bother stocking
| a higher quality version.
|
| If I plan ahead, I can shop online and find a quality
| tool. But what I really want is the option to buy a
| quality tool during a weekend project.
| Terretta wrote:
| For a lot of people "cheapest tool first" is their goto
| (and not for the principled reason you shared).
|
| So eventually the cheapest tool makers get enough money
| to buy up the differentiated quality makers for their
| logo with enough branding power to price discriminate,
| and slap it on products from the same cheap factory line.
|
| Then, ugh.
| aksss wrote:
| A lot of times the price differential is such that I can
| buy two or three of item x for the price of a single
| premium version. If you seldom use the tool and it isn't
| getting handled a lot (transportation, etc), this is the
| way. You can replace the item and still come out ahead.
|
| There's also that motto of "I'm too poor to buy it
| twice", which comes into play when item y has a price
| like 75% of the premium version and/or you know the tool
| will have some rough travel and high demand, or time lost
| from outage isn't acceptable. Then just spend the money
| on known-solid brands.
|
| Reviews are an area where I really value specialized
| forums more than social media or blogs or industry
| publications.
|
| In all cases with reviews even when no monetization
| involved, there can be a bandwagon mentality for brands
| and also people convincing themselves the high price they
| paid matters for something (even though it may not).
| 9dev wrote:
| This strategy is smarter than it sounds at first. If you
| don't have any obvious criteria for comparison available,
| failing fast and iterating on that is a way to come up
| with criteria by yourself.
| kuboble wrote:
| It requires a strong character to throw away things when
| they don't work well. I bought the cheapest drilling
| machine and it is so bad I end up borrowing one from a
| neighbor when I need to drill something. But I can't make
| myself to throw away the useless one.
| ratww wrote:
| I'm also unable to throw things away, but I do give
| things away or sell at a fraction very often. It's also a
| fun past time. I don't have anything useless at home
| anymore.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Where I live, Craigslist works really well for this
| situation - someone will take it away for free for sure
| and you might even be able to get something for it.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| This is what I do. I just put in "first email I get gets
| it" people will be at your house in an house or less to
| grab it. I'm always honest like "The bearings seem a
| little wobbly to me, but if you want it, it's yours if
| you can show up and pick it up today"
| quercusa wrote:
| Harbor Freight is there for you!
| bbarn wrote:
| Harbor Freight's "low quality" tools will work for a
| great many average home owners doing some upgrading or
| light work. We absolutely fall into the trap of wanting
| the best thing ever, but how many people actually need
| the top of the line Milwaukee or Makita brand biscuit
| joiner for the 2 tables they ever make at 200$, vs the
| Harbor Freight one at 60 that you can probably find a
| coupon for to make it 45-50?
|
| On that note though, an even worse practice is when a
| brand achieves notoriety for quality and starts making
| "light" versions of their tools. One example of this
| before they went belly up was Craftsman making nearly
| identical looking "Sears" brand that weren't covered by
| the craftsman warranty. Bosch also did this with pimping
| out their brand name to extend to rather crappy home
| appliances here in the EU. Black and Decker was
| synonymous with reliability in the early 80s, and I still
| have some jigsaws and circular saws from my dad that work
| great from that era, but anything from them now is
| arguably worse than the cheapest things you can buy at
| Harbor Freight.
| barrkel wrote:
| I'm sure a bunch of executives made nice bonuses selling
| the brand value down the river, though.
|
| It's an incentive problem. It's extremely difficult to
| get incentives aligned over a timeline longer than a few
| years that it might take for options or stock to vest or
| clawbacks to expire.
| brewdad wrote:
| I managed to get a 48" flex bit stuck in my wall when I
| was running ethernet last summer. Since it was the last
| hole I needed and it only cost me $9 at Harbor Freight, I
| left it in the wall and called it good. The $90 bit from
| Home Depot probably would have meant removing a bunch of
| drywall and then having to patch it.
|
| The batteries on my ~20 year old Craftsman cordless drill
| are finally getting to the point where they won't hold a
| charge. I'll probably have to bite the bullet and wade
| into the mess of "brand-name" tools the next time I have
| a significant project.
| Vrondi wrote:
| For your 20 year old Craftsman, seriously look around for
| aftermarket replacement batteries. You might find them
| out there for pretty cheap. I did for my DeWalt.
| secabeen wrote:
| For a replacement like that, it's probably worth watching
| for Father's Day and other sales. With cordless tools,
| you're really buying into a battery accessory system, and
| it's good to know what tools are available for the
| battery you select.
| bbarn wrote:
| 100%. One of the areas I will spend more on is cordless
| tools. The modern Dewalt stuff has built me a deck and a
| campervan, and when it comes to lawn tools the E-go stuff
| has been fantastic. Both of those definitely locked me
| into a "system" as you say but both also covered just
| about any future use case I would have.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I have a 72 inch drill bit "stored" up in my attic
| amongst the rafters. There was one particular location
| where I really needed it at that time, so I just left it
| up there. I think it costs $15 off Amazon. If I never
| need it again, I figure I can deal with the hassle of
| getting it down from the attic.
| version_five wrote:
| Just an aside as a former carpenter:
|
| Battery powered hand tool systems are a big cost now,
| especially that brushless motor have got so good. Its
| important to think about them as a system, like will
| replacement batteries still exist in 2 years, can more
| tools work with the same battery, etc. That makes it
| harder to try something and see how good it is. I agree
| with you re many tools though. For tools I'd recommend
| talking to someone who works with them daily to get a
| real opinion, and wouldn't trust anything I read
| aksss wrote:
| Batteries are a point of vendor lock-in and forced
| obsolescence. Not saying modern tech isn't great, but
| young me who spent all that money tooling up with
| cordless has changed to older me who honestly prefers
| corded or hosed (or even ICE) tools when the application
| allows for it, not just for the longevity of the tool but
| the power (amps/psi), lighter weight, and availability of
| service (no issues with charging, temperature problems,
| etc) during a job.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Can anyone explain why such systems are so seemingly
| successful? I find it surprising. It seems great to
| create vendor lock-in, but they also change the form
| factor frequently enough that you have to replace your
| entire system in order to benefit from it being a system
| anyway; at which point you might change vendors. It feels
| like the first vendor that stops changing form factor
| wins; but they all still keep changing them.
|
| My best guess is that by doing this they can raise
| margins on some items by making them lower quality or by
| charging more than they could otherwise get away with. If
| a brand has a great tool X, you might buy their lousy
| tool Y just to be able to use the same chargers and
| batteries.
|
| For me, anyway, as a non-carpenter, I just end up with an
| annoying bespoke set of chargers and batteries.
| bluGill wrote:
| The major brands do not change formats often. The store
| brands do change formats though. By Milwaukee or Dewalt
| and you will have tools and parts for many years, or even
| Ryobi if you want to save a penny. (There are others,
| just the 3 that come to mind).
|
| The thing about their system is the whole only works so
| long as they keep you locked in. Once you make a choice
| you are locked into that choice and won't be looking at
| alternatives - but if they change batteries you suddenly
| are faced with the loss of your entire investment and so
| you are likely to look at the competition and might buy
| something else. That makes changing battery formats less
| attractive to the big brands trying to get people who buy
| a lot of tools.
|
| The store brands have a different motivation: they know
| you won't be buying them again anyway, so they don't
| care. Changing formats means they can come up with some
| tiny reason the new one is better and try to sell the
| next customer on how their new battery is better.
|
| If you are not a buying a lot of tools your plan isn't
| bad, just throw away the tools when the batteries die in
| 10 years. The tiny reasons some battery is better - over
| 10 years might add up to something slightly better than
| before anyway.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Never leave out Makita if mentioning electric tools :)
| mindslight wrote:
| In the days of Amazon (aka Aliexpress) that advice has to
| become more nuanced though. You still need a baseline of
| fitness-for-purpose rather than one-click buying a GENSYM
| Cordless Drill and thinking it might possibly suffice.
| And the traditional go-to of (brick and mortar curated)
| Harbor Fright has become somewhat expensive thanks to
| Trump's inflation, as well as increasing margins due to
| popularity (see also: Monoprice).
|
| There's also just quality of life. As a DIYer I'm not
| particularly concerned about wearing out tools. But still
| I might want to pay more for better ergonomics, ecosystem
| compatibility, power, tolerances, or other non-longevity
| qualities, rather than being stuck with an adequate but
| suboptimal tool that gets the job done while bothering
| me.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > . It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a
| constant hustle for eyeball-cash
|
| Indeed. Even with an ad blocker, you have this issue where
| your momentary attention on the internet (say by visiting a
| site) is presumed to have value. So anything to get you to
| click on some shitty link.
| city41 wrote:
| The one that really got me was now fortune cookies have ads
| on them. If there is a blank surface, eventually it will be
| replaced with an ad.
| krsrhe wrote:
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > There was some period of discussion on the subject back in
| like 2003 but the ad companies went to war against human
| civilization and there's been no going back.
|
| I believe this is true about society in general and has gone
| on since _long_ before 2003. Almost every ill in modern
| society can be drawn back to some people doing their best to
| convince other people to buy shit from them. At this point, I
| think we should make a serious political effort to outright
| ban advertising and marketing entirely. Whatever the results
| of that are, I seriously doubt they 'd be worse than what we
| have.
| eternalban wrote:
| There should be no guilt and I'm surprised at even the notion
| as a possibility. If someone pays for a billboard that does
| not in any way entitle them to my choosing to look away.
| That's all an ad blocker does: enforce your choice to ignore
| advertising by not looking.
| raflemakt wrote:
| I never used an ad blocker. I think ads are a symptom of our
| time, and although I understand that not everyone would (or
| should) follow this idea, I will neither ignore or treat a
| symptom but rather watch it closely as one should with
| enemies. Most people on this planet is not using ad blockers
| so there's an inequality issue, and hiding the effects (ads)
| of a problem will further stop us from taking systematic
| action.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Reminds you to keep your anger hot. Better than what I'm
| going to do, which is block ads with extreme prejudice
| until the one day when google/apple/mozilla flips the
| switch and adblockers don't work anymore.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Ad blocking these days is actually just a security measure.
| When sites like nytimes.com serve malware through third party
| ad networks they've put on their page, it's silly to _not_
| use an ad blocker.
|
| On sites that handles all their own ad sales and display
| directly, I still see their ads.
| Lammy wrote:
| Isn't it fun how our years of combined nerd opposition toward
| surveillance of Internet infrastructure was a total waste of
| time when all it took was flashing some cash to make
| advertisers implement even more intrusive client-side
| surveillance in a distributed infinitely-scalable way
| instead?
|
| Even our response to the Snowden releases was to get Google
| Analytics running over TLS and to make it even harder for a
| normal solo person to host a website that isn't through one
| of the major silos.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| There was a report last year that more than 37% of UK traffic
| in people under 30 had an ad blocker enabled. I think the
| analytics market is going to have to shift to server-side
| tracking in the next 5 years if this trend continues globally.
| I welcome it, though.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Server side tracking is already happening. It's not new or
| yet to be developed.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Not implying at all that it isn't developed -- back in the
| early 00s this was the only way we could do tracking
| largely. But Google Analytics is completely blind when you
| block it, and that's a huge percentage of the market. For
| example, simply loading a 1px image (the old way of doing a
| lot of server-side tracking, and still the state-of-the-art
| way of doing email tracking) is insufficient when the
| client is hard blocking the ad server. In that scenario the
| only way to do it is server-side at the actual web server
| serving the web page (not some third party ad server), and
| most large analytics services don't offer anything like
| that anymore.
| notyourwork wrote:
| > But Google Analytics is completely blind when you block
| it, and that's a huge percentage of the market.
|
| Consumers of GA may be blind, I'm guessing (confidently)
| Google and other big players are far from blind today.
| mikehollinger wrote:
| I had this happen to me when the poker planning widget we were
| using was offline (can't complain about free services). I
| googled around then found something, gave it a go on my system,
| and then gave it to my team. When someone started sharing their
| screen, I was embarrassed by the amount of highly personal ads
| that I saw (fat loss, vacation things). I saw none of that. I
| felt terrible for suggesting it. No one else seemed to notice
| or care, but - it's amazing.
| krsrhe wrote:
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > I really can't believe anyone would user a browser without an
| ad blocker if they knew how things would look while using one.
|
| I don't use an advert blocker but I know what they look like.
|
| Why? The adverts don't really bother me and I also think
| they're dubiously moral.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Do you also read all the spam flyers and emails you get?
| thrower123 wrote:
| At least with the physical spam, I can use it in my
| woodstove as a firestarter.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Why do you feel you deserve free kindling?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Not sure where you've gotten that idea from? I don't
| think anyone is arguing that. They say they're burning it
| if it's sent to them, at which point it's their property.
| danShumway wrote:
| > at which point it's their property
|
| This is a big part of why the implicit deal argument
| doesn't really make sense. If a website sends me
| information then the information is on my device just
| like a letter, so I should be able to do what I like with
| it. The framing of this as an agreement between the
| user/publisher that we accept or reject skips over the
| question of whether it is even possible or moral in the
| first place for a website operator to try and offer an
| unsigned contract that removes user autonomy/rights, and
| whether it is moral in general for us to normalize that
| kind of contract.
|
| The way that online advertising gets phrased sometimes is
| that you have something free that's being given to you,
| and consumers with ad-block are going out of their way to
| take more or to change the content of the webpage. But
| that's not really what's happening -- what's happening is
| that something is being given to me for free, and then
| the person serving that content is asking to come into my
| house (computer) and they're saying that they should be
| able to tell me what to do with the content after it's
| entered my house. Adblocking is the same as throwing out
| the spam mail from your mailbox without opening it, and
| anti-adblocking normalizes the idea that it's acceptable
| for a business to guilt or pressure people into reading
| junk mail.
|
| If an industry did ever start trying to guilt people for
| not opening every single physical letter that was sent to
| them, it would be good to push back against that industry
| even if the industry was only trying to make a moral
| argument and not trying to pass laws. Some implicit
| contracts are so inherently invasive that they should be
| rejected at a conceptual level -- not merely rejected by
| turning down the contract, but by vocalizing, "I refuse
| to normalize or acknowledge the concept that a remote
| operator in another state has any moral claim whatsoever
| in any situation over what a user-agent does with
| information that is in my home." So we reject the concept
| of a website delivering content in exchange for
| delivering ads not because we deserve anything for free,
| but because we don't believe website operators have any
| authority (legal or moral) to set up this kind of
| contract, and we think it is borderline immoral/invasive
| for them to assert that they do. Even allowing their
| expectation to alter browsing behavior or treating it
| like a contract we have to reject gives it more
| legitimacy than it deserves.
|
| It's the exact same reason why we all reject the implicit
| social contract where advertisers expect people to leave
| their volume turned all the way up for commercials, or
| for screen readers not to skip ads during navigation
| around the page to different sections. Remember that
| advertisers are actually the people paying for this
| content, and their implicit contract with users is based
| around actual _attention_ -- not for allowing code to
| run, not for rendering the ad on the page. Advertisers
| have an implicit contract with us where we alter our
| purchasing behaviors and pay attention to their products
| in exchange for free content. But by and large, all of us
| (including anti-adblock advocates) reject that agreement
| and say that advertisers have no moral authority to
| demand that. We all kind of recognize that accepting this
| contract with advertisers and shaming people for walking
| out of the room during a TV commercial would be
| infringing on something vaguely sacred -- people 's
| rights to consume content how they wish within their own
| homes and to pay attention to what they want to pay
| attention to.
|
| But then anti-adblock advocates try to draw a line saying
| that it's OK for a user to ignore advertising _unless_ a
| user-agent helps them. That just doesn 't really make any
| sense, it doesn't make sense to say that pressing a
| button to mute a TV is morally better than having the TV
| press the button itself; both outcomes are exactly the
| same. The only place to draw that line that stands up to
| scrutiny is around the users "home" -- to say that once
| content enters their network, be it physical junk mail,
| or TV commercials, or online ads, users are then free to
| do what they wish with it even if it's to burn it and
| never open the envelope -- and no one has the moral
| authority to dictate what users do with that information
| or to force them to read it regardless of how much other
| stuff is being given away for free.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I think you're exaggerating my point of view.
|
| Do I think it's fine to walk away during an advert break
| on a US TV station or to mute? Yeah that's fine.
|
| Can you cut up your magazine and reconstruct it with the
| advertising pages removed? Yeah fine.
|
| Both are different from advert blocking because of the
| automation and the specific targeting of the workaround.
| I think that's where it crosses into not morally
| reasonable.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| No? I'm not sure that's the gotcha you think it is - I also
| don't read random web pages that I'm not interested in, and
| I don't sit and 'read' adverts on pages I am reading.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I guess I assumed too much, then -- where's the dubious
| morality come from?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Because the implicit agreement of a site with adverts is
| that the content's available to you with the adverts on
| it. If you don't like that you don't have to read it, but
| if you remove them automatically then I think it's hard
| to argue you aren't breaking an implied agreement.
| davidgerard wrote:
| There's also the implicit agreement they won't malware
| you, but they already violated that one good and hard.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Three thoughts about this:
|
| * This implicit agreement is too open to exploitation.
| Many people don't understand the depth of the tracking/ad
| ecosystem. If the full cost were explained to them, they
| might not agree to that exchange. I think I do understand
| it (well, probably it is worse than I expect, but
| whatever), but if the ad companies get to interpret this
| implicit relationship in the way that benefits them, then
| why can't I? I think the agreement should be explicit,
| and some sites do make it explicit -- they block people
| like me. Fair game! I'm sure they won't miss me, I can be
| quite annoying.
|
| * I'm not sure I believe in this implicit agreement
| anyway. From the beginning, the design of the internet
| has been that information is sent to the browser, and
| then rendered in line with the client's needs. If I use
| elinks, lynx, or some graphical browser without
| javascript is that morally dubious? What if I'd like to
| minimize the amount of javascript I run, but selectively
| enable it as necessary, like umatrix?
|
| * The underlying goal of the people placing the ads is
| not just to get something rendered on a screen somewhere,
| right? Their goal is to capture some attention. As you
| say, you don't read the ads. I could browse a while and
| train myself to ignore them too. At which point... the
| person who placed the ad still doesn't get what they
| wanted. At least if I block the ad, there's at least some
| chance that they'll detect that, and maybe the poor fool
| who paid for the placement can get a refund.
| djoldman wrote:
| webarchive cache:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220131163244/https://imlefthan...
|
| outline.com: https://outline.com/5HuFGj
| oldiphone wrote:
| I used to use adblockers but then certain websites stopped
| working and displayed banners saying to turn of my adblocker, so
| i did, and then it all seemed kind of pointless.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Server may have melted into a left-handed puddle:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220131163244/https://imlefthan...
| [deleted]
| led76 wrote:
| I have no Adblock on my phone and it's unbelievable how many ads
| some sites put up.
|
| Many times I have to hunt for the second half of the article past
| five or six full image ads and sponsored content.
|
| This feels like a death spiral - the more Adblock the more ads
| they'll put up to get seen by a smaller segment of users.
| coldpie wrote:
| Firefox for Android supports uBlock Origin. Works great, highly
| recommended.
|
| iPhone solutions seem less advanced, unfortunately, but they
| exist. Personally I use one called "Adblock Pro," but that's
| not an endorsement, just the one I tried that has stuck.
| vehemenz wrote:
| Adguard for Safari does the trick for Safari on both iOS and
| macOS.
|
| I've tried others, and they don't seem to do much. Adguard
| works as well as uBO 90% of the time.
|
| I only see a difference when visiting actual malicious sites,
| like pirated sports streams, where Adguard might occasionally
| lets a pop-under through.
| duxup wrote:
| What I find interesting is that in my experience people with lots
| of add blocking are more likely to pass on HORRIBLE links. They
| don't know and thus pass on garbage sites (full of ads and such)
| where the folks I know without ad blockers are more careful of
| what they subject their friends to.
|
| It's a weird situation.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| It's not just ads that contribute to link sharing nightmares.
| If you leave certain query parameters in a Twitter link you get
| a hard login wall after about 10 seconds if you aren't logged
| in. Other sites such as Quora do something similar: redirect
| you to a login wall if you click to expand an answer (only if
| some url query param is present). On Twitter that behavior is
| much worse, of course. To view a reply thread you must click
| the share button and manually copy and paste it into a new tab
| or you'll get a login wall. It's truly amazing how hostile big
| players are to UX when they aren't getting their way.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| The site appears to be hugged to death...but the thrust of the
| idea seems pretty obvious on the surface...I'd add that it also
| probably follows financial, if not technically savvy groups.
|
| The person with a $50 Walmart Burner phone's experience will be a
| WHOLE LOT DIFFERENT from the person with the $1100 smartphone
| with ad blocking turned on.
| knaik94 wrote:
| Thankfully, with android, firefox still has addon support so
| ublock origin can still be used regardless of price point.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| I used to do this till I moved to brave
| Macha wrote:
| I wish it had full addon support though, rather than just
| Mozilla's curated selection of 20 or so. I have to install an
| app to do twitter -> nitter redirection when it could just be
| a browser extension.
| contravariant wrote:
| It is possible to use your own list of addons, but it's
| needlessly difficult [1]. I hope they will support a
| slightly less insane workaround eventually.
|
| [1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-
| extensio...
| Zak wrote:
| I switched to Kiwi because of this.
|
| I occasionally check to see if Firefox has unbroken
| extensions on Android and won't be back to using it as my
| primary browser on my phone until it does or Kiwi ceases to
| be an option.
| tomrod wrote:
| They took that away awhile ago. Is it back now?
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| It's been back a while but only for curated addons. It must
| have been quite a short time that ublock origin in
| particular wasn't available.
| NazakiAid wrote:
| Yeah, the Walmart burner phone will literally end up burning
| vhiremath4 wrote:
| I wish I had a better way to support content sites without paying
| for individual websites. I'm guessing this would never happen,
| but I would definitely pay a single monthly fee to get access to
| all the major news sites and if it helped ensure some level of
| journalistic integrity.
| volkse wrote:
| Apple news, youtube, netflix, disney+hulu+hbo, and amazon
| prime.
|
| All of this together is more than enough content to satisfy a
| lot of tastes in my opinion. And you wont have to look at a
| single ad
| jcpham2 wrote:
| Adblock on my openwrt router is like my bare minimum to surf the
| web. I'm aware of pi-holes and per device ad blocking via add-
| ins/vpns/whatever but it's so dead simple to handle this at the
| gateway level it's difficult to imagine doing it any way else.
| ineedasername wrote:
| For a while I didn't bother with an adblocker. After countless
| data breaches and tracking that can still be done even with an
| adblocker, so I was mostly apathetic about the privacy factors.
| That was 3-4 years ago.
|
| But I had a fast computer, lots of ram etc., yet still I noticed
| that websites were getting progressively slower and slower. And,
| as mentioned in the article, auto-playing video ads proliferated
| and became massively annoying. So I took the time to setup uBlock
| Origin, and gradually zapped elements on sites when they still
| made it through.
|
| The difference was huge. Yes, the annoying auto-play ads (mostly)
| went away, but even more was the overall browsing speed was a
| huge improved. It was almost like the very early 00's when I went
| from dial-up to broadband.
|
| It was only at this point that I realized just how much ads
| massively bogged down the internet.
| jordanpg wrote:
| Ads are such a strange cancer on the internet. So ugly, so
| without value, such a waste of time, such a sinkhole of precious
| attention.
|
| And yet -- would the modern internet even exist but for ads? I'm
| not so sure.
|
| It seems there is a bifurcation, even among those of us with the
| technical know-how and resources to live ad-free lives: those who
| tolerate ads, and those who do not.
|
| I count myself in the latter group. I will be happiest if I go
| the rest of my life and never see another ad, in any form, again.
| I will go to great lengths and expense to avoid them. It is self-
| evident to me that they are toxic, to my own psychology, at
| least.
|
| The dichotomy brings to mind the "edit streams" in Neal
| Stephenson's latest, Fall: an internet essentially stratified by
| class. Who has the money and resources to filter the shit out and
| who doesn't.
| lopis wrote:
| I believe that in an Internet without ads, services would be
| either state sponsored utilities for their citizens or cost
| something to use. The economy would be vastly different and
| careers like YouTuber or Blogger would not be possible. But
| also depends what kind of ads we're talking. "Influencers" are
| human ads.
| [deleted]
| nathias wrote:
| yea, I can't use the web on mobile, its insane how patient people
| are with exploitative tech
| [deleted]
| Zak wrote:
| Adblockers are available for several mobile browsers; system-
| wide adblocking exists, but tends to be more work. What is
| keeping you from using an adblocker on mobile?
| nathias wrote:
| are there good system-wide adblockers for ios? I hate the
| whole mobile experience, tbh so I didn't invest much time
| into it and just don't use it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Content blockers. Firefox Focus is free. Wipr is paid
| option I use. Adguard is another free and paid option.
| makecheck wrote:
| Frankly I have no problem with ads that are simple
| (text/images/untracked). The ad industry has made it clear they
| would rather be utterly obnoxious and creepy so _therefore_ as
| far as I'm concerned they can wither and die.
|
| Firefox+addons seem to work best for blocking ads which is why I
| am increasingly concerned about that browser being marginalized.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| Schools. If you have kids that go to school chances are the
| teacher regularly uses youtube. Without adblockers.
|
| Do everyone a favor: talk to your kid's school, the IT guys
| there, and have then install ublock.
|
| All parents, teachers and kids will adore you.
| Geee wrote:
| Youtube, especially, turns into a whole different experience. Ad
| in front of every video makes it impossible to quickly browse and
| sort through videos. I might watch just a few seconds and then go
| to the next one. When ads are enabled, the experience is so
| painful that I'm not likely to use Youtube this way any more. I
| have to watch an ad _before_ I 've made the decision if I want to
| watch the video.
| notapenny wrote:
| Youtube is the reason I installed an adblocker in the first
| place. I don't mind watching an ad, but at some point they went
| from an ad every other video, to unskippable ads in-front of
| every video (love a 1m ad on every 10s video when I'm just
| browsing clips) and mid-content ads that literally just cut in
| and disrupt what I'm watching.
| lopis wrote:
| During the holidays, YouTube was showing me 2 15-second ads
| every single video. I stopped using the app and stuck to the
| browser. Then I found out about vanced from HW. I'm sorry to
| my followed channels but it became unbearable.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _love a 1m ad on every 10s video_
|
| Christmas 2020 I tried to watch midnight Mass from Saint
| Patrick's Cathedral in New York on YouTube. (Not live;
| after.)
|
| SIX MINUTES of commercials at the start, and the rest of the
| program had TWENTY-SIX commercial breaks.
|
| I haven't watched YouTube since.
| sixothree wrote:
| What is happening is they are pushing you to Youtube
| Premium.
| xemdetia wrote:
| I think the other thing that pushed me to put it back on
| after experimenting with it off was the absolute dearth of
| inventory Youtube apparently thought was appropriate to show
| me. I watch a lot of content of various lengths in a lot of
| various fields but I would get the same one or two ads for
| days. Then I started getting the 10m+ ads that seem to be
| randomly OK for some reason? I don't think I could stomach
| another experiment.
| souldeux wrote:
| I've been using and loving this:
| https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext
| aembleton wrote:
| That looks really interesting. Thanks
| WA wrote:
| Well, you can buy YouTube premium and have no ads.
| deergomoo wrote:
| I happily pay for YouTube Premium because I watch tons of
| niche stuff that creators are able to make a living off.
|
| YouTube has a lot of problems, and the ads for non-Premium
| users are probably going too far, but I find a lot of value
| in consuming and supporting a wealth of high quality content
| on obscure topics.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Or you can install an adblocker instead which also blocks
| much of the surveillance. There's also sponsor block which
| blocks ads that even paying customers are forced to see.
|
| Don't support these advertisers in any way. Especially
| Google.
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