this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
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Every time I see an ad, I make a mental note to avoid the brand.
I would do this but I don't see any ads
I have always used an ad blocker in the browser, but i recently jumped on the DNS blocking train and it's like a whole new kind of awesome on my phone in particular.
I used to do that, but now I use apps without ads in them for the most part
Feels good, man.
What are ads? I saw one back in 2009, but cannot be sure.
Amen to that brother 🔥
70% add ons, 30% to fight Chrom(e)ium monopoly.
There are more reasons than that, but it’s definitely near the top of my list.
Definitely, but if I was trying to make a sales pitch to an average person, that's what I'd lead with. Add-ons on FF Mobile make something like YouTube Premium completely redundant
Another reason for the average person: Ads eat up your data cap, they're costing you money if your carrier/isp auto charges you if you go over.
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I also went completely to FF on my phone the moment it had uBlock Origin and some other extensions. Now that I learned how to force other ones, it has been game over for other browsers aside from just seeing how they are every now and then (I work with general public and need to be aware of how they work). The only thing I would really really advise in addition to FF on a non-rooted device is setting the Mullvad ad-blocking/tracking blocking DNS for the device.
It helps even if I need to use a different browser (not as good as also having uBO), and has really good chances of blocking ads in many apps. For example, I kind of treat the Microsoft Solitaire app since it keeps games and stats from my PC. However they have lots of video ads that play after a couple of games. With the DNS it just kind of glitches when an ad should run and just goes on to the next round instead. The only odd thing I see with other apps is that it can cause my bank app to take a little longer to load when signing in (I am guessing due to tracking it is trying to do). But after like ten seconds it goes through like normal.
This is the DNS address to add if you want:
https://base.dns.mullvad.net/dns-query
And here is the main site for all their options and tester to make sure whichever one you pick is working:
Also using mullvad dns everywhere.
Don't forget to add a phone wide adblocking DNS too.
Blokada 5 is great (I think that's what that does I don't actually know these things but it does block ads phone-wide!)
AdGuard (app & DNS) does a decent job on iOS.
Yukhk. I hate how so many of these services spend most of their efforts on marketing instead of making a decent product or experience. Isn't mullvad one of the actual best VPN providers out there? NEVER seen them run an ad, hell, I only found out about them on accident due to mental outlaw, some ordinary gamers or the linux experiment. Can't remember which tho.
What's really baffling to me is how completely irrelevant most ads are to me.
And I'm not saying "ads don't work for me", I get ads for products that I will never buy. I'm a man and YouTube recommends me tampons, lipstick and perfume. I also won't buy a car anytime soon, yet I get tons of ads for cars.
Even in the mindset of an ad person, that can't make sense. Sure, there is the off chance that I'll buy lipstick for my girlfriend, but how likely is that and how much revenue will materialize from bombarding thousands of men with ads? That cannot be economically viable.
The actually infuriating part is, that we're still paying for it. And the vendors as well. Only Google profits. If a company spends more on ads than necessary, their products will get more expensive, and those who buy their products will have to pay for it. So essentially I'm paying money for being advertised to, so Google can rake in billions.
That might be because you limit how well google tracks you
They probably don't have enough data on you to serve you personalised ads
Before I started adblocking, I'd get "relevant" ads in that I can understand how someone of my age/gender might like it, but they're never things I'd purchase myself. I just want a mostly empty home with as little visual stimulation as possible, and buying more stuff doesn't help with that.
So yeah, I'm definitely saying "ads don't work for me", but it's probably only because these companies refuse to make ads targeted to people like me.
Yeah mullvad doesnt do the affiliate link and misleading sponsorship shenanigans that make your boomer relatives think they need a vpn
I don't understand ads. Do people actually use services and buy products because of a shitty advertisement?
You do, and don't fool yourself that you don't.
You probably don't click on ads, but they stick in your brain. You might see a half-dozen ads for Doritos, and then when you go to the store a week later, you're slightly more likely to buy Doritos.
The vast majority of advertising is just getting a brand or an idea into the back of your head so when you're looking for something in that product category, regardless of it's a VPN, a web host, a snack food, a car, or whatever, you're going to have a bias towards what you've seen in the past.
Most of my ad-blocking isn't to stop myself from buying some herbal supplement/spray tanner combo, it's to stop myself from being biased by the capitalist propaganda machine.
I am not immune from advertisements, and neither are you.
And also consider that even if you block out the ad the people around you probably haven't, the most effective ad is the one your friend saw.
First thought was to deny this but its somewhat true. Although i use adblocks to the extreme so i never really had the urges to buy stuff randomly or felt influenced into buying it whereas the occasional times an ad comes through i'd maybe consider getting the stuff when i'm at the shop but usually don't.
I've certainly heard this said before. Lately I've been thinking more about it as ads seem to be infecting more and more aspects of my life and so I've started to question it.
I've started to think that the whole "it makes you subconsciously think about the product when you're in the store" thing might just be made up by marketers. You know, the people whose jobs entirely depend on advertising being a good investment. That does kind of self-prove the point though, because if marketers just made it up and a bunch of people now think it's true, it follows that people will just absorb "information" if it's fed to them from the correct place.
I figured I'd see if I could find some science research on the subject. I managed to read through six studies (at least the abstracts and the methodologies) before my eyes glazed completely over and I needed to stop.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7498694/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8199559/
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311975.2021.2000697#abstract
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02650487.2022.2143098#abstract
- https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0249457
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/21582440221093042
First I will say that none of them are able to draw links from advertising consumed to purchases made. The methodologies tend to focus on the immediate, how the ad makes a person feel in the moment. Generally this is done by asking people. Surveys and the like. The first one measured facial expressions and emotional responses. The PLOS one (fifth link) just asked marketing managers if their marketing was effective or not (and wow do they ever use a lot of words to say that, they turned their thesaurus up to 11). The second one is actually a bit of a side-bar in that it's specifically looking at the effectiveness of gamified advertising, but it does investigate brand memory based on different exposures. Again, just brand memory, not actual purchase behaviour.
And all that makes sense. It would be extremely difficult to build a study that manages to track every motivation for purchasing a given product, especially if some of those motivations aren't known by the purchaser. So what I'll say is that while it's likely that advertising can prod us one way or another, the wisdom that it's an effective subconscious driver of sales is not evidence based.
Do with that what you will.
I actively avoid buying anything I've seen being advertised.
You are not immune.
some of my normie friends refuse to use adblockers and willingly want to watch ads because "ads show them stuff that they didn't know they wanted"
Google is fighting a war that it can’t win, people in general had enough of all these ads.
Whenever I can, I use a DNS or an adblocker or an open source app that it doesn’t track his users.
The vast majority of users did not use or even really know much about adblockers in general until recently, when Google/YT shot themselves in the foot by Barbara Straisand-ing adblockers into the general public's consciousness.
In the bottom right I read: "we spent $8.500.000 on HIS ad campaign"
For a moment I was confused and thought about how desperate these people would be
Why just use browser + addon when you can do system wide adblocking with AdAway on F-Droid.
It has a rootless mode, but I always root so I've forgotten what the downsides of rootless mode is though lol
Or pihole for whole home plus wireguard to VPN to your (ad blocked) home network while away.
I've been using Blokada, and higher in the comments is Mullivad.
I don't use an ad blocker. I like to know what sites I need to avoid.
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