[HN Gopher] Ads chew through half of mobile data
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Ads chew through half of mobile data
Author : mahirsaid
Score : 191 points
Date : 2025-01-05 16:06 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nextpit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nextpit.com)
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Well, nextpit.com, you're really no better than the rest of them.
|
| This could have been a few kilobytes of static html...
| nerflad wrote:
| Blogspam singularity is imminent. Also: this 'article' is from
| 2016.
| lelandfe wrote:
| This is desktop, not mobile, but: I turned off ad blockers,
| scrolled to the bottom, and waited.
|
| 60.9MB transferred https://imgur.com/a/ftGkR3m. They are in
| fact worse than the rest of them. It is still going up as the
| ads rotate. I count 11 ad placements.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Saving the article text locally and gzipping it (which lacks
| html tags, but should be approximately right), it's ~1.5 kB.
| So 2kB for the article and say 5kB for a cacheable site-wide
| template is what things "ought" to be.
|
| My 1GB mobile data plan should be enough to read at least 10s
| of thousands of pages in a month. Instead at 60MB, I could
| read... 16. Naturally I never use mobile data, and my only
| real use for a phone plan at all at this point is being
| forced to have SMS for banking.
| benreesman wrote:
| I'm due for a new phone and I'm strongly considering going
| to a dumb phone with a tablet around the house for
| browsing. I can carry a Kindle or something to kill time
| waiting for a train.
| dleeftink wrote:
| Question for the thread*: are we at a point where we
| build apps that chew through ad/user data, but put
| ourselves in a position to not have our data chewed on?
|
| *Mostly asking because I have come across this sentiment
| before, not because I think op(s) are engaged in this
| fn-mote wrote:
| All of the people posting about adblockers have certainly
| done something about their rate of data use.
|
| Is the question "how many of you Adblock users also work
| in advertising tech?"
| jkestner wrote:
| I'd do that but a smartphone is unfortunately a great
| pocket camera. The sweet spot for me would be something
| like a modern version of the Nokia N95 -- great camera,
| unrestricted OS that lets me write apps in Python or
| whatever, and terrible web browsing experience.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| > 60.9MB transferred
|
| Opening this page 6 and a half times would exceed the monthly
| download limit on the first broadband internet plan my family
| had about twenty years ago in Australia.
| wiether wrote:
| Yeah I thought the same.
|
| Even though I use an adblocker, I got a huge table showing
| three Amazon products that took more space screen than any of
| the text block of the actual article.
|
| I can't even imagine how the site looks like without an
| adblocker...
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I saw no ads with Firefox/ublock origin.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| uBlock counter got up to 26 before I was done skimming the
| article.
| troupo wrote:
| On top of that they kindly share all your data with 383
| "partners", and you have to click "no" one by one to opt-out
| Biologist123 wrote:
| Fantastic example of a negative externality. Question: if the
| data costs were internalised, would an advertising-based revenue
| model be sustainable?
| noprocrasted wrote:
| Advertising doesn't inherently imply wastefulness or even being
| spyware or a malware & scam vector.
|
| If all the negative externalities were properly priced in, a
| lot of bottom-feeding crap at all layers of the stack will die
| off, but advertising itself will remain and would actually
| become _better_ as a result for all parties involved.
| tomrod wrote:
| Perhaps not inherently, but it certainly exists this way now.
| amelius wrote:
| The biggest negative externality of advertising is the fact
| that it drives mass overconsumption.
| Biologist123 wrote:
| If all the externalities were priced in, the model would
| certainly cease to exist. Several years ago I found a UN
| report saying the same about business more generally. I've
| recently tried to find it again, but it seems to have been
| removed.
| soared wrote:
| Yes - advertising is very profitable. Increasing the cost would
| lead to a short term reduction in spend by advertisers, which
| would squeeze the adtech industry. They'd respond with
| improvements to their specs which reduce bandwidth and return
| levels closer to normal. Totally fixable problem with the
| correct incentives.
|
| Interesting note, the privacy sandbox apis that google (was) is
| pushing were extremely bad for bandwidth to the point that in
| early tests our servers often did not respond in time to
| successfully bid in an auction. This occurred in many steps
| different steps of the auction (ssps as well). Google of course
| kind of moved away from this set up before fixes were
| implemented. (If the time between a user loading a page and the
| result of a programmatic auction is too long, ads may not be
| served)
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| I question the methodology of this: Enders used a browser that
| mimicked an iPhone 6 and accessed a total of eight "popular" news
| sites (though they didn't confirm what these were)."
|
| 'iPhone 6', an phone that's 10 years old. A sample size of 8 and
| undisclosed.
| malfist wrote:
| Article is 8 years old, so a 10 year old phone makes sense
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| Sample size, undisclosed, of 8 websites?
| didgetmaster wrote:
| It's not just ads. It's websites like nextpit that make you
| navigate through pop-ups and links just to get some basic info.
| quantumquetzal wrote:
| Aren't browser-extension ad blockers (uBlock Origin, AdBlock,
| etc.) not helpful for solving this problem? As far as I'm aware,
| by the time the ad can be blocked by such programs, you have
| already consumed the data.
|
| Wouldn't a better solution be DNS sinkholing, like PiHole or
| AdGuard Home?
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Ad blockers intercept the request and cancel it before it's
| actually made. It's wise to use both methods.
| GuestFAUniverse wrote:
| (Video portals aside) The text you want to read: a few kilobytes.
| The (oeconomical, an economical) cost of the ads surrounding it:
| several dozen to a hundred megabytes. You cannot convince me that
| this _isn't_ unsustainable quackery that got out of hands really,
| really bad.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| html email was the start of a slippery slope. i remember
| complaining about data consumption of non-text email BITD. that
| was when the state of the art for email servers was to dedup
| list email so that the server would save only one copy and just
| reference it for all recipients.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The (oeconomical, an economical)
|
| "oeconomical" is just an extremely archaic spelling of
| "economical", since the root word from Greek is "oikos", which
| Latinizes as "oecus".
|
| Why did you mention it? Do you see it as a separate word?
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Unsustainable for who? The websites use CDNs for dirt cheap
| bandwidth, mobile providers love that 20gb doesn't go as far as
| it used to. It inevitably creates a synergy, between stuff like
| news websites and local telcos, and YouTube love it too. hell,
| it's not like all bandwidth cost the same, especially when
| major orgs will cache + colocate or peer to your isps.
|
| If you're a consumer you might be right, but your opinions and
| feelings aren't of importance to those in power.
| schiffern wrote:
| >Unsustainable for who?
|
| People who live on Earth?
|
| Bandwidth is never free from environmental impact, and given
| the same server/CDN/whatever the environmental impact will
| increase monotonously with increasing bandwidth use.
|
| Besides the FBI recommending it for security, running a good
| adblocker is one of the most "green" ways to reduce your
| footprint from internet usage.
|
| Regardless of how efficient the CDN, it still has a lower
| footprint to not connect to it at all. >hell,
| it's not like all bandwidth cost the same
|
| I don't see where anybody says that, nor where that claim
| would be necessary to support the thesis.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| I've been long enough on HN to hear this argument since
| early 2010s, yet the market keeps proving everyone
| (including me!) wrong. Nobody cares if your website loads
| 20kb of text with a side of 1mb of ads. Most people are
| just swiping through megabytes of videos on TikTok and IG
| anyways.
| wiseowise wrote:
| "B-b-but this is necessary, because reasons"
|
| Also add security and privacy costs to this.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Ads? Which ads? None on my devices at least. Block the filth
| already, there is no reason to subject yourself or your family to
| it. Get a device which is under your own control - nothing made
| by Apple, get an Android device on which you install something
| like LineageOS or GrapheneOS or another similar AOSP-derived
| distribution, do not use unmodified stock Android distributions -
| and install several layers of content blocking. Use a VPN with an
| endpoint at your own router on which you have more content
| blocking, that way you can safely use public WiFi hotspots. I
| never see advertising and would not accept anything else.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Even an i-device can use adguard plus and get rid of most of
| the ads.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Most of the ads, except for those which Apple wants you to
| see, except for those in Apple applications, except for the
| fact that certain applications can not be changed because
| Apple controls which applications the device will use for
| given purposes, etcetera. Apple products remain under Apple
| control whether you like it or not unless they are
| 'jailbroken'. No, if you want as much control as possible
| Apple is not your friend.
| comprev wrote:
| Needs (2016)
| mikae1 wrote:
| GrapheneOS, Firefox/Mull and uBlock Origin. Nope. :)
| tomsmeding wrote:
| GrapheneOS unnecessary. Plain Android with Firefox and uBlock
| Origin suffices.
| nox101 wrote:
| ads aren't chewing though my mobile data. I generally don't go to
| any sites with ads. The few times I open a link and it's covered
| in ads I close the link.
| staplar wrote:
| I'm going to take a wild guess that most of the world ain't
| you?
| recursive wrote:
| Trivially true for all individuals. But also, anyone can use
| this solution.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| You might not be seeing visible ads but you're going to plenty
| of sites that are using tons of tracking pixels and making a
| lot of requests with and about various data you are providing.
| That might not be as data intensive as auto playing a video ad
| but it certainly makes a big impact overall.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Dunno, I have a 15gb/month through Mint and just use 1Blocker
| on iOS. I watch Youtube on 5G and use my phone like anyone
| else yet have data left over. So it doesn't seem like there's
| a lot of hidden data drain once you have a basic ad blocker.
|
| Overtly consuming rich media from Youtube, Music, and Twitter
| dwarfs the data consumption of Safari.
|
| Even your example of a tracking pixel is only going to be a
| handful of bytes.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The article was not written specifically about you as an
| individual. You might be confusing this discussion board with
| your e-mail inbox?
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| I've solved this by mostly not even using most sites on mobile
| anyway. The vast majority of whatever dreck is served up is
| purely worthless anyway, social network-powered chum, listicle
| nonsense, or whatever does load up reflows eleventy times and
| crashes the tab. This link included. What little is left beyond
| that is just shallow information that you can mostly get from the
| original sources (this link included).
| andrefuchs wrote:
| I'm using DNS66 on Android to block ads at the DNS level. I
| wouldn't browse on mobile without it.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Same, with NextDNS. I used to deal with rooting and Magisk to
| use a hosts file based approach (Adaware) but as Android has
| become more locked down, DNS blocking has become the much less
| invasive solution.
| overhead4075 wrote:
| This and Firefox on Android with uBlock Origin
| ziofill wrote:
| I love that the mobile version of the brave browser tells you how
| much data it saved you and how much time too.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Despite all their crypto bullshit and internal ad networks
| (which you can ignore/turn off), Brave mobile is great at
| blocking ads.
|
| For instance ive never paid for YouTube premium to get rid of
| ads on mobile and allow background audio (yes they charge for
| background audio). On Brave mobile you can turn on background
| audio for all media and ive never seen/heard a YouTube ad.
| erinaceousjones wrote:
| Firefox mobile is great for this too. uBlock + sponsorblock +
| the fact that FF continues playing media when it's
| backgrounded make listening to long videos (like publicly
| recorded university lectures etc) a real breeze, it's a
| godsend if you like to listen to lectures while on long
| drives etc
|
| Edit: ironically my post in this thread about how ads are
| partially enshittifying the internet, reads a bit like a
| sponsored endorsement for FF :-) ah well. It's still good.
| 0xpgm wrote:
| I agree, that is a pretty good feature. You start feeling good
| when the data saved is in the gigabytes and time saved viewing
| ads is in the hours
| smoovb wrote:
| I wish Brave had succeeded with their YouTube Premium model of
| web browsing. Let me pay one single provider to remove all web
| ads and paywalls, and that provider pays creators. Still a
| great mobile browser.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Desktop Brave does, too.
| metabagel wrote:
| A lot of web pages only work for me on my iPhone if I use reader
| mode. Otherwise, the page keeps resetting over and over again.
| Firefox, but I assume Safari is probably the same, since Apple
| mandates they all be based on WebKit.
| forgotacc240419 wrote:
| Same for me with Firefox, every video and ad coated site
| basically. iPhone 12 Mini
|
| Tbh it's probably been a net positive, I just instantly bail
| after the first refresh
| Bancakes wrote:
| You can try adguard on iOS. It's an app that you buy as an
| extension for safari but the block lists are very good and you
| can enable DoH systemwide as well.
| samtheprogram wrote:
| I was trying to figure out why this doesn't happen to me, and
| it's probably AdGuard. Highly recommended.
| encom wrote:
| As someone who switched from Iphone to Android, Adguard is
| very poor compared to uBlock, and it was in fact one major
| reason (of several) why I switched. But now that Google is
| killing adblockers, I might just stop browsing the internet
| entirely.
| bcraven wrote:
| Firefox on Android supports extensions so I have uBlock
| running.
| nine_k wrote:
| Firefox on Android does work and does run uBlock Origin all
| right.
|
| I only start Chrome if some very stubborn (usually
| financial) site fails to work with Firefox + ad blocking;
| this happens maybe 3-4 times a year.
| encom wrote:
| But how long is manifest v2 going to survive on Firefox?
| Vinnl wrote:
| Firefox's v3 implementation still supports the necessary
| APIs, and there's a public commitment to keep them.
| kivle wrote:
| Hopefully Firefox will keep support for manifest 2 for
| the foreseeable future since they also have their own
| extension "store". In Chromes extension store new
| downloads of Ublock Origin have already been disabled and
| existing installations are slowly being disabled as they
| roll out the changes. I'm still on Vivaldi, but will be
| switching to Firefox very soon.
| encom wrote:
| What's the last Chrome release that's going to support
| it? I'm going to pin that version for as long as
| possible.
| nosioptar wrote:
| I tried to switch from android to ios earlier this year.
| The browsing experience was so awful that I didn't make it
| a day due to the lack of ublock.
| grues-dinner wrote:
| The fact that Firefox has had a near-perfect ad blocker for
| years and years, and the internet has only got less usable
| without an ad blocker and it's still struggling to break 1%
| on mobile is just so strange to me. It should be marketing
| open goal. Especially as the biggest competition has a
| conflict of interest that prevents them ever doing ad block
| well, so they can't lose out to a pivot by Chrome.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| To anyone reading this, the free version works well also.
| hiimshort wrote:
| The same is true for me on Safari. I've tried with and without
| AdGuard and the experience on plenty of sites that I just want
| to get a quick tidbit from is awfully painful.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Those sites and their 2974 partners only want to serve your
| best interests by providing those quick tidbits.
| croes wrote:
| >since Apple mandates they all be based on WebKit.
|
| Unless you're a EU citizen
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| Based EU
| gibspaulding wrote:
| I haven't seen anything about this in a while. Do EU builds
| of Firefox actually exist yet? (Running on gecko)
| eptcyka wrote:
| Nothing is published yet. Whatever gecko build might be
| there might be whithering away on the vine, I don't believe
| Mozilla cares for supporting it just for the EU.
| nytesky wrote:
| What web pages are you seeking out? I feel like I read hacker
| news, the New York Times and some local Reddit channels more or
| less. Search is so squirrelly and the passion GeoCities pages
| or Uni home pages are long gone, and blogs are corrupted by
| insidious sponsor endorsements, let alone ads?
| dingnuts wrote:
| What do you mean? Reddit and Hacker News are link aggregators
| -- aren't you clicking the links? or are you only reading the
| comments?
|
| There's a long tail of random websites linked to by sites
| like this one -- like the one in the OP!
| nytesky wrote:
| Haha, true. But I think ad heavy pages are not promoted on
| HN at least.
|
| And yeah, I do come for the comments.
| mahirsaid wrote:
| I would prefer you to put hacker news in another category
| this site has quality information and comments unlike many
| other sites. This site also is not riddled with ads, which is
| a plus for all of us here. What makes you see that any other
| way?
| adriancr wrote:
| sucks to not have ublock origin.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I suppose, but Safari/Webkit shows that you can get what
| feels like 95% of the way there with static block lists which
| are ideal when they are sufficient.
|
| They're faster and they're trustless. The only attack surface
| of a block list is that someone removes their site from the
| list.
| adriancr wrote:
| you wouldnt have auto playing videos with ublock origin.
| 95% might be nice but theres a lot missing.
|
| The static blocklists can be defeated easily by having ads
| served by the same domain.
|
| In that case you are stuck due to apple's decisions.
| freehorse wrote:
| Orion browser in iOS (by Kagi) supports ublock origin.
|
| This is the main reason it has become my default browser
| there.
| bluedino wrote:
| Safari has been garbage in recent years on the iPhone.
|
| Pages are often unresponsive or don't fully load. Zooming
| breaks so many sites. I'm always closing Safari and re-loading
| pages.
|
| Are the web developers ignoring Safari? They can't be.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| iOS 18 really screwed up my phone. Never had this issue with
| safari before then.
| vrc wrote:
| This is the #1 reason for ad blocking in Eastern Europe and Asia
| (eg dolphin browser). It's also why the current "solutions" big
| tech is providing viz. privacy and non-annoying ads doesn't move
| the needle there.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| This reminds me of the very first prosecution against "Hackers"
| according to the lore of Bruce Stirling [0].
|
| Since there were no cyber-laws to charge trespassers on digital
| estate the intruders were charged with "stealing electricity".
|
| Perhaps we forget that ads are also a crime of resource
| misappropriation. Advertisers are not like vampires that are off
| the hook if you invite them in.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hacker_Crackdown
| freitasm wrote:
| I think ads on mobile apps is a much bigger problem for these
| users.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| "Don't worry. Now that net neutrality is certainly no longer a
| thing, arrangements can be made for adtech companies to pay ISPs
| directly to zero-rate their traffic. You won't benefit from this
| with any less ads or tracking, but your Internet bill may
| increase slightly less over time, at least until it's as high as
| your cable bill used to be."
|
| Ridiculous thoughts from my grandmother. I disagree. People still
| watch TV even though there are ad breaks, ads on top of the show
| you are watching, and product placement within the TV shows.
| People clearly want ads otherwise they would use alternate means
| to get the information, such as DVDs, books, libraries, non-
| online classes, or seminars. If mobile data pricing goes up and
| the cost of ads to the end user is too high, the free market can
| sort it out. Honestly it's hard for me not to believe that
| blocking ads is anti-capitalist and against the free speech
| rights of advertising companies.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Good one!
| __rito__ wrote:
| I just turn on Ultimate Data Saving mode, and then I add some
| apps to the exception list. I always also have Power Saving mode
| on, and that restricts background data usage significantly.
| staplar wrote:
| Ads are ok if they're fixated on a page and aren't intrusive but
| holy crap, some sites just takes to other sites when you click
| something and then when you come back it's not the same page so
| you got to go back again and the cycle resets. I can't imagine
| places where internet is super expensive and you deal with daily
| stalfosknight wrote:
| Some people still don't have unlimited data?
| foobarchu wrote:
| Correct. And scoffing at them won't change anything.
|
| Even if they didn't, the amount of data ads use massively slows
| down the experience of using the internet, especially when
| outside of a tower-dense area.
| corysama wrote:
| AFAIK, a lot of mobile ad blockers work by proxying your traffic
| through their servers.
|
| There may be more, but the only one I know works totally local is
| Firefox Focus.
|
| You can install it, set it as the ad blocker for iOS Safari and
| never actually use it as a browser.
|
| It's not 100.0% effective. But, it makes a big difference with
| minimal hassle.
| david_allison wrote:
| uBlock Origin is supported by Firefox on Android:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/ublock-origin...
| ghostly_s wrote:
| > AFAIK, a lot of mobile ad blockers work by proxying your
| traffic through their servers.
|
| I don't know what your basis is for this claim. Mobile Safari
| had an API for content filter lists, and every ad blocker I've
| tried required me to enable several of these filters through
| the system settings. I don't think there's any way an iOS
| extension even could configure a proxy without user
| confirmation.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| iOS ad blockers primarily work through the content blocker API,
| since several years ago. An app gives Safari a blocklist (which
| it's responsible for updating) and Safari applies that to any
| URIs it's asked to load.
|
| I've been using Wipr for a few years now. It's basically set
| and forget.
| CubsFan1060 wrote:
| 1Blocker works quite well as well.
| the_snooze wrote:
| My solution is a PiHole instance at home, combined with a split
| tunnel WireGuard connection to route my phone's DNS queries
| through it while I'm on the go. It's completely app- and
| platform-agnostic.
| dc3k wrote:
| i've been doing the same for a few years now. wireguard's "on
| demand" feature is perfect for this. the odd time i'll have
| to shut it off to get through a captive wifi portal, but
| otherwise it (along with browser ad blockers) has made mobile
| browsing significantly less terrible
| modeless wrote:
| Be sure to read my follow up article, "How ads are funding the
| services you request the other half of your mobile data from, so
| you can use them without paying except with some mobile data and
| some pixels on your screen."
| potsandpans wrote:
| I think I'll pass.
| techsupporter wrote:
| Does it have an in-frame modal that pops up immediately after
| page load to beg me for my email address?
|
| What about an embedded video window that covers the bottom
| 2/3rds of the content and follows with scroll?
|
| Oh and I hope you've not left out the absolutely mandatory
| "Read More" button that spawns a user interaction and auto-
| plays everything on the page.
|
| Those are all of my favourite things on the web and I really
| enjoy seeing them all over the place!!
| jl6 wrote:
| Popups onmouseout, recaptcha handwritten
|
| Newsletter signup, location permission
|
| Video covering every thing
|
| These are my favorite adtech offsprings
| modeless wrote:
| I hate intrusive ads as much as the next guy, but denying
| that ads have benefits and people overwhelmingly choose ad-
| supported services over paid ones is simply sticking your
| head in the sand.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Saying people overwhelmingly choose ads is conceptualizing
| things wrong. Take this blog: it just copied a BI snippet
| about a study some other party did. No one even linked to
| the original study.
|
| People correctly value this at $0. This post is noise, and
| things like it just make web crawling/search harder to
| scale.
| thfuran wrote:
| Paying with money is better.
| modeless wrote:
| People's revealed preferences are very clear, however much
| they deny it.
| kergonath wrote:
| "People" are actually more than one entity and can have
| different opinions about things.
| modeless wrote:
| Sure, and the vast majority choose ad-supported services
| over paid ones. Even many of the ones who claim to want
| to pay don't actually put their money where their mouth
| is when given the chance.
| 1propionyl wrote:
| Revealed preferences are not reliable in situations where
| individuals make choices based on factors other than their
| true preferences, such as... limited information, social
| pressure, financial pressure (!!), impulsive behavior,
| addiction, lack of technical knowledge to pursue
| alternatives (!!), or when their preferences change
| significantly over time or moment to moment.
|
| Recourse to "people have revealed their preferences" is the
| last refuge of the defenders of the status quo of deeply
| corrupted "markets".
| gotoeleven wrote:
| I would love to have a way to pay for most websites but
| experience shows that the genius MBAs get your subscription fee
| and then start tacking on ads and tracking anyway. So fuck
| them. ad blockers, proxies, pihole, vpns, whatever you have to
| do.
| modeless wrote:
| Google gave people that but ~nobody used it (it was called
| Google Contributor). Many similar stories over the years.
| People overwhelmingly choose ad-supported services over paid
| ones. Even when "MBAs" don't add extra ads on top or whatever
| other objection you have, it's all been tried before and
| failed every time.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Those sites should consider sending surreptitious crypto miners
| instead, which would be more ethical. Then they'd only be using
| energy instead of using energy and bandwidth and also spying on
| and manipulating people.
|
| Users should of course block all malware.
|
| The other obvious thing to consider is that if you're going to
| write an article to convince people of your opinion, I'm not
| going to pay you for that. You're the one trying to influence
| me!
| jcoletti wrote:
| Wipr has been pretty reliable for me on iOS. I know digital
| advertising has helped support many web innovations but it's just
| getting brutal out there.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| Install Brave browser. You probably won't go back if you try it.
| pier25 wrote:
| It's immoral that you cannot turn off videos in a browser and/or
| that this isn't the default option on phones.
| drukenemo wrote:
| I use Stopthemadness to stop video autoplay
| musicale wrote:
| The fact that we need a "stop the madness" app for Safari is
| proof of Safari's insanity.
|
| If Stopthemadness actually works reliably, it is also an
| existence proof that blocking video autoplay is possible, and
| that Apple is simply not fixing the "never auto-play" setting
| in Safari.
|
| Perhaps Apple and Mozilla should just remove the "never auto-
| play" settings in Safari and Firefox and say that they are
| doing so in order to empower web sites and adtech companies
| (including Google/youtube, who pays them a lot of money) to
| force you to view unwanted video advertisements.
| musicale wrote:
| I agree. It's insanely user-hostile that the "never auto-play"
| setting in Safari (for example) doesn't work and hasn't worked
| for years. To be honest, I have no recollection of it ever
| working reliably.
|
| Although it is an arms race and obnoxious web pages can have
| javascript/webassembly video players that render into a canvas,
| etc., I still blame Apple for not sorting this out, and even
| backtracking on click/tap-to-play.
|
| IIRC, at some point Apple did roll out default click/tap-to-
| play on iPhones, and there was a huge outcry from web
| developers (probably including Google/youtube) that it broke
| their sites. I expect the real complaint was that it interfered
| with pushing unwanted video advertisements.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You can do that easily on iOS.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| You probably mean "iphones" Android firefox does have an option
| to turn off autoplay (video and sound)
|
| It can't be set as default because most people are used to spam
| ads. Heck, most people seek them on tictok
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| It's easy enough in some browsers
| agilob wrote:
| > cannot turn off videos in a browser
|
| But ublock, VPN and DNS blockers are available on mobile
| aschla wrote:
| A solution:
|
| AdGuardHome and WireGuard running at home. WireGuard connects on-
| demand when I leave home.
|
| I choose to run it at home because there are cases where services
| and/or sites block datacenter IPs, and I have complete control
| over what and how I block, no proxying through any blocking
| service.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| A solution for you and some other tech savvy individuals; not a
| great solution for the rest of my family. Plus, it ignores the
| systemic problem in exchange for personal one-off bandaids.
| aschla wrote:
| A one-off solution like this is really the only type of
| solution we have in the face of a massive ad tech industry
| that largely piggybacks on top of, and inserts itself into,
| foundational network and web protocols.
|
| Fixing the problem itself would likely require legislation
| and regulation to get ad tech companies (or the companies
| that use the ad tech) to pay attention to the data use.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| So, there are two solutions - one-off bandaids, and
| legislation.
| j45 wrote:
| Many homes can run whole their route.
|
| Im curious how much time or money you'd be willing to invest
| and spend monthly to have this solved simply?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Homes, sure - what about mobile devices? What about the
| rest of my family who's not at home? What about the
| sysadmin work I'll have to put in to support this?
| sadeshmukh wrote:
| How do you set this up? I have no experience but would like to
| do something similar.
| aschla wrote:
| You can either set each up yourself, or there are a variety
| of containers available. A chatbot of your choice can likely
| guide you through it, since it'll depend on your specific
| network setup and how exactly you'd like it configured.
|
| AdGuardHome is fairly straightforward:
| https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome?tab=readme-ov-
| fil...
|
| And here is a nice script to install wireguard:
| https://github.com/angristan/wireguard-install
|
| And you'll likely need to forward the WireGuard port.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Only half? The number of pages I load that have a video playing
| in them would make me think it's way, way higher than that.
| znpy wrote:
| I assume the worst offender in this is youtube. It's awful
| because ads ALWAYS load immediately, but the actual media i want
| to watch always lags or is buffering.
|
| When i'm on mobile data advertisements are always super clear and
| in super high resolution, but i often get pushed low-res versions
| of the media.
|
| I really hope some better company comes and dismantles YouTube as
| a business.
|
| Edit: i'm using plain YouTube on plain iOS, so it's all on
| google/YouTube.
| everdrive wrote:
| Honestly, just stop using your phone most of the time. You can
| try to keep up with the adblocking arms race, but it is
| ultimately a losing battle. It's not actually difficult (in
| principle) to avoid mobile ads: don't use your phone in the first
| place, don't browse to web pages, and don't install apps. For
| anyone who says "but what if I'm out and I need to?" -- that's a
| fine exception if you're not actually using your phone the other
| 99% of the time.
| blueboo wrote:
| Considering we have 25 years of adtech and we presently have
| multiple effective solutions for adblocking on mobile and
| desktop, I'd need some additional evidence to be sure that is
| "ultimately a losing battle".
| everdrive wrote:
| So I consider myself to be pretty aggressive compared to the
| normal user when it comes to adblocking. I use Pihole,
| pfsense (just some blocking IP lists), ublock origin + custom
| filters & lists, noscript, and also just have a firm
| household policy about unavoidable ads. (companies have a "1
| strike you're out" policy in my household for anything
| egregious. Spotify earned a lifetime ban probably over a
| decade ago. It's likely the original offense has not been
| relevant for years, but I don't care. They're out of the
| running permanently.)
|
| That said, there's a lot of time and energy keeping up with
| what works, and what does not in the ecosystem. From the
| pfsense (ie, IP blocking) side of things I'm wholly dependent
| on filter list authors -- and of course IP blocking ads is
| marginally effective at best. From the pihole side of things,
| you have similar problems: dependency on domain lists, and
| the ever-looming threat of server-side ads. The only reason
| pihole (or any DNS-based blocking in general) is not wholly
| useless is because it represents a minority of users. If the
| technique were even marginally popular, the industry would
| move on and render it almost totally useless. uBlock origin
| suffers similar problems, and of course Google has moved to
| neuter it via Manifest v3. They are also in something of a
| tug of way with Youtube, and I get the sense that if they
| really wanted to, they could easily circumvent the plugin. As
| could any other website. I'm not really worried about losing
| Youtube, mind you, but it feels pretty clearly that the door
| is closing on the ad-free internet. And worse, the time when
| the users on the internet had more power than corporations is
| dying with it.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Well, I couldn't even tell you off the top of my head where
| I see ads these days on mobile outside of the odd news site
| that takes up <1% of my browsing.
|
| So I can't relate to this battle you paint that's so dire
| that we should stop using our phones.
| bmicraft wrote:
| > You can try to keep up with the adblocking arms race, but it
| is ultimately a losing battle
|
| I've never felt that way with uBlock in Firefox for Android.
| Installed it years ago and don't even need to give it a second
| thought.
| ausaus wrote:
| On Android I use Firefox with uBlock Origin and adguard DNS as a
| private DNS.
| kivle wrote:
| Worst example I've seen is an app called Foodora here in Norway
| (like Uber Eats, Door Dash, etc). On the order confirmation page
| where you're following your order status, following the driver on
| the map, etc, they would have video ads playing _uncached_. It
| was literally using like 1 MB/s of traffic continuously while you
| were checking the order page.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Surprising they don't mention what I imagine has to be the
| obvious culprit: video ads.
|
| It's not even about advertising for me -- static ads don't bother
| me that much. But whenever there's autoplaying video in the
| corner of a page, I hate it so much. Whether it's an ad, or a
| news site that inexplicably thinks I want to multitask and watch
| their news channel at the same time I read their article. It's
| genuinely hard to read the article when there's constant motion
| an inch or two away at all times!
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| Firefox has an option to turn autoplay (sound and video) off
| for those ads that get past ublock origin.
| schiffern wrote:
| uBlock Origin can also block media elements larger than X MB
| (I use 8 MB so it still loads large images), preventing the
| video from loading in the first place. Disabling autoplay
| prevents it from playing, but the video is still downloaded.
| pornel wrote:
| Ads work around lack of autoplay by loading massive image
| filmstrips containing video frames (often split across
| hundreds of image files), and animating that in JS or CSS.
| This has all the annoyance of autoplay, with even worse
| bandwidth and memory usage.
| alden5 wrote:
| That's your monkey brain hard at work making sure you notice
| movement that could mean danger in your peripheral vision,
| funny how much technology is built off of manipulating primal
| parts of our brains
| ngcazz wrote:
| If we're losing net neutrality then ad traffic should be entirely
| financed by ISPs
| syntaxing wrote:
| Paying $20 a year for NextDNS is easily my top value purchase.
| Makes browsing on iOS a sane experience.
| nytesky wrote:
| Let's take the moment to hat tip Hacker News for no ads!
| imoreno wrote:
| Maybe the ISP should start charging the ad network instead of the
| user for ad traffic. Then they can start blocking the ads of
| people who don't pay.
|
| The user, who pays for the service, is getting no value out of
| the ads and the advertiser is freeloading the ISP's technical
| infrastructure and userbase.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The internet as you know it is the value you get out of ads.
|
| You may hate ads, we all do, but at least recognize the hand
| that feeds you. The alternative is subscriptions for
| everything, and as far as I can tell that is far less popular
| than the ad model we have.
| rlpb wrote:
| > The internet as you know it is the value you get out of
| ads.
|
| I disagree. The value I get from the Internet is almost
| entirely from non-ad-driven sources. The ad-driven stuff is
| very low value to me.
| Uehreka wrote:
| If the most of the websites you visit aren't ad supported,
| then this article likely doesn't apply to you. It does
| apply to most people however.
| deadmutex wrote:
| Sure, and someone else can say otherwise. Comparing
| anecdotes doesn't provide a global view, IMO, and can lead
| to incorrect conclusions.
|
| Maybe better to look at data instead, e.g. Netflix ad-
| supported plans vs ad-free plans, or YouTube Premium vs YT
| ad-supported, etc.
| bdangubic wrote:
| you never used google search? if not you should check it
| out - it is not bad - https://www.google.com
| xigoi wrote:
| I prefer Kagi, which does not have ads.
| lukan wrote:
| Or chrome, or gmail, or firefox, or ... sadly most of the
| internet is financed by ads. Only some parts remain free
| of them. Wikipedia for example. And even HN here ... you
| can argue it is payed for by the occasional ads, or
| rather all of it is an ad for the VC ycombinator.
| JoshuaRogers wrote:
| Even Wikipedia feels like each page has a prominent "Plea
| from Jimmy Wales" ad at the top of every page (even after
| donating), even if it isn't billed as such.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Then you aren't visiting ads-loaded sites and they aren't
| using your data. Seems fine.
| sethops1 wrote:
| Ironic you're posting this on Hacker News, which is
| fundamentally an ad for YCombinator.
| mahirsaid wrote:
| Are you not benefiting from this site. I come here to
| read things and shelter with like minded peoples. I don't
| see ads.
| nickff wrote:
| Many of the YCombinator companies advertise jobs on this
| forum, and some also post 'demos', which are often
| advertising to potential investors, clients, and
| partners.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| They could serve non-targeted text ads. Those are very cheap
| to deliver and seem to work fine.
| freehorse wrote:
| If the ads were just text-based and related to the content
| I visit at the time rather than "me" I would have much less
| hate towards them.
|
| If I visit a webpage about CPUs I am probably interested in
| CPUs, maybe I am building a PC, send me ads about that
| which I may actually find useful. Why would you send me
| irrelevant ads about gardening just because I am into that
| also? If I am looking to buy a CPU I am not gonna click on
| something irrelevant like that.
| hinkley wrote:
| Speak for yourself. Some of us were on the internet before
| the ads.
| lolinder wrote:
| The valuable parts of the internet are, with few exceptions,
| ad-free. Forums like HN, personal blogs and sites, paid
| services--these are the places where real value is to be
| found on the internet.
|
| The ad-funded content and services are almost universally low
| quality and designed exclusively to hack brains to keep them
| scrolling, not provide real value. What few exceptions there
| are to this rule are not worth the enormous drain on society
| that the ad-funded model has been.
|
| > and as far as I can tell that is far less popular than the
| ad model we have.
|
| This is a classic market failure. Corporations have figured
| out how to manipulate people into pursuing the corporation's
| interest (scroll indefinitely through pages and pages of ads
| and spend money on the things so advertised) at the expense
| of the consumer's interest (do anything else with their time
| and money). Popularity is irrelevant when it's clearly
| achieved by exploitative design, not value delivered.
| dgrin91 wrote:
| Is this really true? Virtually all news sites, regardless
| what side you agree with, have ads. Basically all
| entertainment has ads (or subscriptions). Productivity
| stuff is either full of sales or upsells, aka ads, or
| alternatively sell your data (for future ads).
|
| Those are all valuable things. The ad free ones are the
| exceptions. More over they only exist ad free because the
| money comes from elsewhere.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Virtually all news sites, regardless what side you
| agree with, have ads.
|
| Virtually all news sites, regardless of what side you
| agree with, are composed mostly of garbage designed to
| draw your attention, not inform you about things that
| really matter. They may provide some value _in addition_
| to that, but the advertising model ensures that they
| _must_ hack your attention as their primary goal.
|
| > Basically all entertainment has ads (or subscriptions).
|
| Similarly, our entertainment options were better before
| they had to be designed to keep you on a specific
| streaming platform for a certain length of time.
|
| > Productivity stuff is either full of sales or upsells,
| aka ads, or alternatively sell your data (for future
| ads).
|
| Depends on who you're buying productivity stuff from. My
| Fastmail account does just fine with no ads and no data
| sales, and covers basically everything I need. Most other
| "productivity" tools I've tried have felt palpably
| exploitative.
|
| > More over they only exist ad free because the money
| comes from elsewhere.
|
| Ad-funded products are a civilization-wide trap like
| credit card rewards. They create an illusion that things
| are coming for free, but companies don't do this out of
| charity--they pay for ads because they have good data
| that strongly suggests that the people who see them will,
| on average, pay them back and more.
|
| I'd rather make the cost of a service explicit than hide
| it behind hard-to-quantify behavioral hacks.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Reminds me of the days when ads were 5 or so minutes
| long, not just to convince you to buy it, but inform you
| why you should buy it. It wasn't a dopamine laden 30s
| that tells you nothing about the product.
| mahirsaid wrote:
| Fast forward to now where essentially every YT ad is some
| guy convincing you his trading and market strategy is
| better than anyone else's.
| eesmith wrote:
| When was this time?
|
| I listened to "The Shadow" radio episodes from the 1940s,
| sponsored by "Blue Coal". At 0:45 of
| https://www.beyondthebreaker.com/the-shadow-of-blue-coal/
| "All signs point to a severe winter. Be prepared! If you
| want to be sure of even, dependable, helpful heat in any
| kind of weather, insist on Blue Coal. America's finest
| anthracite mined from the fields of northern
| Pennsylvania. The coal that is colored a harmless blue at
| the mine for your protection."
|
| That's about 20 seconds, and the blue color was 'a
| marketing ploy to distinguish its coal from that of its
| competitors. But the company took it one step further by
| actually promoting its product as being superior, longer
| burning, and even more "healthful" than other coal. No
| wonder the PR "spin" profession was so poorly regarded in
| that era!'
|
| Also, 1971's "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke", was 1
| minute long, and did not inform.
| icehawk wrote:
| Not really sure how you come to the conclusion those are
| all valuable things.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| News (especially national or global) is largely idle
| entertainment for middle class people, and comes with
| large servings of propaganda. Subscriptions/commerce are
| fine. Productivity stuff IME is almost all FOSS or paid
| for. Ads tend to optimize for the opposite of
| productivity: engagement.
|
| Existing ad-free because the money comes from somewhere
| is the point. That somewhere is more ethical and prevents
| the conflicts of interest that make ad-based services
| inevitably worth their nominal price.
|
| Some obvious very high value parts of the Internet with
| no monetization: government services and information,
| free educational materials from pre-school through
| graduate university and research level, basically all
| software I use, creative commons music, art, and CAD
| designs, forums and blogs where world experts like
| Terence Tao post, forums and blogs where hobbyists post.
|
| If you look to the Internet for ways to improve your
| life, you'll find the associated resources (which I'd
| characterize as the high value parts of the Internet)
| generally have no ads. It should be obvious why.
| beepbopboopp wrote:
| My brother in code, Hackernews is a blatant ad for YC, look
| at title bar. They just decided they could afford the
| subsidy to run it enough to be the sole supporter.
|
| In general, its easiest to charge the wealthiest group with
| the greatest motivation to spend and that combination means
| in almost all cases corporations are better customers than
| individuals. Hence, advertising replacing subscription.
|
| Additionally this why consumer internet is so hard to
| standup and SaaS feels so much easier to take from 0 to 1.
| imoreno wrote:
| The term is "content marketing", and yes, ads are ads but
| ultimately people trying to release quality content for
| free to shill their brand is not very high on the list of
| worst things about advertising, I'm sure you'll agree.
| 5evOX5hTZ9mYa9E wrote:
| The internet as we know it is a dystopian hellscape. As
| somebody who has been around long enough to remember the
| internet before every interaction on it was monetised, all I
| want is for the ad industry to die.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| As far as I can tell, subscriptions aren't a reliable way to
| opt out of ads and ad tracking. Look at cars, cable, Uber,
| Spotify, Amazon prime, newspapers, telecoms, ISPs, etc. They
| all show sponsored content and upsell services to
| subscribers.
|
| I've tried putting my money where my mouth is by switching to
| subscription services for everything and I _still_ have to go
| out of my way to avoid advertising with adblockers.
| drawkward wrote:
| Advertising is a virus. It infiltrates all ecosystems.
| imoreno wrote:
| I wonder if advertising really is a waste of time and
| money for the most part, and it's just that the
| advertisers are really good at convincing people
| otherwise.
| freehorse wrote:
| I do not get this argument at all. We all eventually bear the
| cost of ads by them adding cost to the products being
| advertised that we buy. Nothing is free.
| acchow wrote:
| There's value ad with ads targeting. Otherwise we go back
| to the Television days when everyone watched the same ads
| freehorse wrote:
| Value added for whom? And what's wrong with ads depending
| on the content of a webpage rather than the user as
| profiled over other webpages?
| lolinder wrote:
| Not to mention that treating ad-funded as equivalent to
| free arrogantly assumes that I, personally, am somehow
| immune to the manipulation inherent in advertising.
|
| Companies pay for ads because they have good reason to
| believe that some significant percentage of people who see
| them will buy something _that they otherwise would not have
| bought_. They spend enormous sums setting up the
| infrastructure to attribute sales to specific ads.
| Meanwhile we, the consumers, have no really good way to
| quantify how much drains from our bank accounts each year
| due to the ads we see.
|
| Might I be the exception to the rule and be un-
| manipulatable? Possibly. But I don't have a strong reason
| to bet on it, and I'd rather see the price of the service
| listed outright as a subscription than simply hope that the
| ad-funded version will net to a lower cost for me.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I have zero ads on my blog and instead I ask my readers to
| buy my books on my e-shop.
|
| Works well, last year I sold 5000 books this way.
| karaterobot wrote:
| You've got to say more about what you mean by that,
| especially how you know what everyone else finds valuable on
| the internet.
| icehawk wrote:
| The internet as I know it is the value I get out of
| interacting with other people.
|
| I've never had a moment where I've said "Oh, I'm glad that ad
| was there!"
|
| If a service can't be run unless it's through ads?
|
| Then perish.
| nickff wrote:
| HN exists to advertise yCombinator stuff! You seem to like
| this forum, yet you wish for it to perish?
| swayvil wrote:
| There is a feast. You get a crumb. The problem isn't that
| part of that the internet needs part of that crumb to
| function. The problem is that you get only a crumb. Let's not
| pretend otherwise.
| amluto wrote:
| Even assuming you're right in principle, there's a basic
| problem here: ads have value (to the advertiser, to the
| network, to the site showing them, and potentially to the
| user). And ads have costs paid by the parties other than the
| user (lots of money changes hands and some compute may be
| incurred, too), and that's fine, and the parties in control
| are strongly motivated to control those costs. But there are
| also costs that are effectively externalities as far as the
| companies involved are concerned, and those are bandwidth,
| battery usage, and degradation of the user experience.
|
| So if anyone wants to seriously call the modern ad system a
| benefit to the user, then those externalities should be
| controlled. Either the actual bandwidth costs should be
| accounted as losses to the user, or the advertiser should be
| forced to pay those costs. And I bet that ads would start
| using far less bandwidth with no change in appearance if the
| advertisers started caring.
| kleiba wrote:
| The way I see it: if your service forces me to watch ads or
| pay for a subscription, then I have two choices: either I
| watch the ads (probably not) or pay for the subscription
| (slightly more likely but it really depends), or I simply
| don't use your service. For the most part, I have gone with
| option #2 in the majority of cases so far.
|
| I have no bad conscience whatsoever to use an adblocker.
| Heck, I get eye cancer every time I have sit in front of
| somebody's webbrowser who does not have an adblocker
| installed.
|
| Even though I use the internet quite a bit as we all do, if
| the free internet were to go away tomorrow, I'd probably find
| something else to do with my time.
| wao0uuno wrote:
| The alternative is hobby sites, sites that make money from
| sales like Steam and paid content. I'm honestly fine with
| that. Fuck ads. If I could remove all ad and data mining
| supported content from the web I'd do it without hesitation.
| imoreno wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but you're disregarding the point
| of my (admittedly tongue in cheek) proposal. I'm not saying
| there shouldn't be ads. Currently, the ad industry is
| subsidized by consumers because they pay for the traffic.
| Instead, the advertiser should pay, since they get the most
| of it.
|
| Besides, this argument that without ads content can't exist
| is bogus. Firstly people have been creating art and knowledge
| without thought for pay since time immemorial, it's a basic
| human instinct. Were there ads paying for the paintings in
| Lascaux? In the early days of the internet there was little
| money to be made online, and yet the quality of the content
| was excellent - and yes there were banners and tracking
| cookies but it's interesting how the best sites had little or
| none of that, and when they did have ads the quality of the
| ads was very high too - relevant to the audience and not some
| worthless crap that is much worse than competitors.
|
| To this day people freely publish quality content with 0
| monetization, just because they want to. That type of content
| gets shared on this site daily. Technology has advanced
| greatly and simply putting a website up is very cheap now,
| and people have a decent number of hours to put into their
| hobby.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Bullshit. I guarantee you that if tomorrow, by some
| regulatory or technological magic, the vast majority of
| invasive ads were eliminated from online content and
| platforms, creators of content would still find ways to
| deliver the goods, simple because the interest would be
| there. This would happen even if people showed an enormously
| strong tendency of not paying for subscription offers.
|
| Before ads and ad "partners" became as pervasively parasitic
| as they are today, there was still plenty of fine content
| available online, much of it free of charge, and even now,
| many platforms exist that offer the same, or at least keep
| their ad systems unobtrusive to users.
|
| Also, as another comment below mentions, even when you do
| pay, many platforms still bombard you with ad garbage, or
| create frankly abusive bullshit like paid tiers in which you
| still can't opt out of ads. Looking at you and many others
| Netflix.
| SkiFire13 wrote:
| ISPs are likely happy about it, since it means users will have
| to spend more.
|
| Ads can also be easily hosted on CDNs, so their cost for ISPs
| can be decreased significantly compared to other more dynamic
| content.
| imoreno wrote:
| But it's a marketing win. Imagine an ISP that blocks most ads
| automatically, and what it doesn't block is excluded from
| your data cap. Shut up and take my money!
| Tarball10 wrote:
| That sets a terrible precedent. You do not want ISPs picking
| and choosing what content to deliver, or forcing content
| providers to pay extra to deliver content to their customers.
| agilob wrote:
| precedent? This is already a common practice. Since early
| 2010s ISPs were doing it in USA [1] and trying to lower net
| neutrality standards in Europe to do it [2]. That's how the
| whole net neutrality debate started in US https://en.wikipedi
| a.org/wiki/Ajit_Pai#Net_neutrality_in_the...
|
| [1] https://www.nexttv.com/news/netflix-ceo-some-big-isps-
| extrac...
|
| [2] https://epicenter.works/en/content/data-toll-deutsche-
| teleko...
| Tarball10 wrote:
| OP was suggesting an outright block of traffic from ad
| providers. I don't believe any US ISPs have gone to that
| extreme, at least not yet. They allowed peering points to
| become congested which affected Netflix traffic, but
| weren't blocking it.
| mahirsaid wrote:
| It will result in a more poor experience online. You want the
| people providing the service act on their own behalf. Not a
| more controlling entity to do so. I agree
| bowsamic wrote:
| Isn't this against net neutrality?
| agilob wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/02/technology/net-
| neutrality...
| bowsamic wrote:
| I'm not American so that's irrelevant to me anyway, I just
| think it's a moral good
| mannyv wrote:
| That would be against the whole idea of 'net neutrality.'
|
| Which is why I agree. The user is paying for those ads, and the
| infrastructure is being upgraded to serve those ads. Why do ads
| get subsidies?
| papavancato wrote:
| Got attacked by two ads immediately at opening the page
| dawnerd wrote:
| Ad people also don't even care about best practices. Many times
| years ago we'd see multi meg static banner ads. The situation
| isn't better today, massive gifs are still used in place of
| video.
| hinkley wrote:
| Few things are more soul crushing than having a VP of CTO
| mandate a bunch of metrics for page size and load time and then
| to have someone load up all your hard work with trackers,
| analytics and ads. Like what was the point of us doing all this
| now the page loads in five seconds so you can be nosey?
| hinkley wrote:
| iOS Safari has a setting that can use another app to do privacy
| controls and you can set Firefox Focus to be that app. It's very
| nice. I got tired of how slow pages were loading on my phone, and
| got fed up one day and turned it on.
|
| That and ads that resize and push down the content you're about
| to click on to make you misclick were the final straws.
| maxwellg wrote:
| I finally took the time this weekend to get the family switched
| over to using NextDNS. I use uBlock Origin on my laptop but it's
| nice to have something for mobile too. I've been getting heated
| when my partner hands me her phone to show me a recipe and it's
| completely covered in ads.
| ifdefdebug wrote:
| > but it's nice to have something for mobile too
|
| what's wrong with uBlock Origin on mobile? (available in
| Firefox)
| ornornor wrote:
| iOS and ad-blocking in apps that aren't Firefox on android
| zzo38computer wrote:
| It is not only the data amount but also power. Those who display
| ads on your computer are stealing these things from you, so they
| are the thieves. However, it is not only the ads, but also other
| stuff, such as spyware, inefficient programming, excessive
| animations and fancy effects, etc.
| gwern wrote:
| Original is https://www.endersanalysis.com/reports/blocking-free-
| world-t... but paywalled.
| ornornor wrote:
| If you have an iPhone, NextDNS is free/very cheap and blocks all
| ads everywhere (except in the YT app, for this you need to route
| the YT traffic over to Albania, they get no YT ads there for some
| reason)
| pvtmert wrote:
| I think the title needs 2016 since nowadays many ads transitioned
| from just pictures to even videos. Consisting much more than the
| text I read...
|
| I would even argue this is a larger issue than the JS bloat
| websites are having...
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