Technology

i know this may go against the general attitude here but i gotta say this does make me a little sad when i think about it. and i use adblockers as well, but i never knew what the numbers were. when it's put into context like this it's hard not to be discouraged by the fact that this is still probably a minority of users. i mean what the hell, how are people still using the internet with ads turned on.

I used my mother's laptop once 2 years ago, and i was like, how the fuck do you people browsing without an adblock?

The fbi suggests using an ad blocker. Guess what an ad blocker is as important as an antivirus.

I don't mind the old system of one or two ads on a page or a 10-second ad at the start of a YouTube video if they don't track their users. But these days it is growing out of proportions, we are almost at American television with the amount of ad breaks in a YouTube video, and it's absurd.

gasp you mean to tell me you DON'T like 20 million videos playing over the top of the recipe that you're trying to read while trying not to burn dinner? unbelievable.

smh these motherfuckers are so brazen

The ad industry is an abusive ex that complains when you defend yourself.

Maybe the problem is the advertisers and not the consumers. Jeeeesus.

People don’t mind ads for the most part it’s the fact that they take over 3/4 of the screen and generally try to be as obnoxious as possible.

If we stuck with banner ads no one would care, but they just had to make ads as shitty as possible.

US trade association News/Media Alliance announced it had secured the takedown of 12ft.io

Oh thats why that stopped working. Bunch of jerks.

I have said it before and I'll say it again.

Adblockers are a critical part of any modern computer's security suit, and everyone should use them.

I won't even consider removing mine unless the owners of a site with ads take full responsibility for any dammage to my computer coming from visiting their site with out an adblocker.

This is due to the fact that ads can be hijacked and infect your computer with malware just by accessing the site.

I have also experienced my browser being hijacked by clicking a link that was compromized, it redirected my browser in a loop, then opened a javascript password popup box that took all focus from the browser window and refused to go away, while the page below displayed a message that I needed to call tech support.

It was very annoying to resolve, Firefox would by default restore any pages that was open in a tab if the browser crashed, and since the password prompt was stealing focus from the browser window, I had to kill it through the Task manager, which restored the page on start up....

I had to create a new profile, then it it solved it

“The growth of dark traffic undermines the ability of publishers to fund the production of quality content, or even operate as a business. We must recognise users are not the main driver causing this.”

"It’s demonetising publisher content at scale without user consent."

They act like we don't know what we are doing and want the ads. People who block ads in browsers like ddg and brave choose those browsers for that reason.

Ads are out of control, they fill my day.

My home, my rules. Ads are not allowed on the devices i BOUGHT.

99% of the targeted ads i get tend to be targeted at someone who has a family and makes 3 times my wage, so you're wasting business resources for your own gain and wasting my time by serving them to me.

So fuck off outta my house.

I have my entire network running with a DNS that blocks all advertising by default. And then, just to make absolutely certain, I run browsers with UBlock Origin on them.

Advertising should be illegal. Huge waste of money and everyone's time.

Proud to be part of a growing tradition.

Seeing static banner ads on 2000s websites without popups or tracking: 🤷‍♂️

Blocking ads on Firefox after popups and other crap started: 😀

Browsing the internet on Android before I realised the browser supports addons: 🤮

Blocking ads and tracking on Android via uBlock origin and Privacy Badger: 😀👍

My feeling of guilt when scummy megacorporations miss out on ad revenue:

25 years of adblockers and that is the single most important thing that keeps me from cutting myself off the web. I've donated money to adblockers and will continue to do so until I die! I send emails to the web sites that ask me to remove the blocker to tell them I will not and that there are many other sites that welcome my adblocking ass!

It's not about blocking ads for me, that's a happy side-effect, it's about owning your computing and taking the necessary protection against tracking. Before "ad blockers" existed I spent a lot of time manually configuring my browser to block websites from connecting me to unnecessary, potentially intrusive third party servers, after all it's my browser and my internet connection. Now uBlock Origin does that for me, it's not an ad blocker, it's a wide spectrum content blocker and the user should have the final say on what they connect to. I think we should stop calling them ad blockers.

Using an ad blocker makes me tech savvy? Oh, la, la. Hand me my monocle and glass of schardonayegh.

Only a billion. Need to quintuple that.

Let me know when you can't inject malware via ads....

Besides the trackers and malware, ads can be categorised as a flaw in technology. A kind of software parasite that uses a computer's resources without providing any additional functionality to the user.

And I'm one or them. Every time I turn it off things become legitimately unusable.

I didn't mind having a couple of static ads on a page. But now it's so much. So many dynamic ads, autoplaying videos, popups asking you to sign up to a newsletter, etc. No thanks.