Technology

An adblocker on your devices is equivalent to putting a Britta filter on your water tap.

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.

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

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

I personally am not bothered at ALL by the banner video ads overlayed on top of another banner ad that opens a new tab when you try to close the banner video then another one opens covering the original banner then the page scrolls all the way back to the top and shows you an email list sign up, why would I be?

Bottom line: if I'm forced to consume ads on a device belonging to me - I will rather throw it away!

I still whitelist sites with sensible, unobtrusive ads. Axios for instance, which are mostly 1st party. But that’s increasingly the exception.

I had to rip APNews out when Google Ads tried to serve me malware.

When I was about five years old, my parents were shopping for a car. When the radio said Brand X Dealer was the best place to buy a car, I was so excited to tell them what I'd just learned.

I haven't forgiven advertising since.

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.

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:

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

Oh thats why that stopped working. Bunch of jerks.

“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.”

And Scott Messer, founder of publishing adtech consultancy Messer Media, added: “Dark traffic is unlike anything we have seen before. It’s demonetising publisher content at scale without user consent.

Are they trying to present it as if poor innocent users need to be protected from the vile ad blockers?

Fuck yeah, advertiers are a cancer.

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.

Advertisers do not have the right to demand my attention, or to brainwash me. I have every right to deny them and decide what to allow inside my head. This is war.

"We paid for the right to show you this!"

You paid for the opportunity not the right, but you didn't pay me, motherfucker -- and my price is everything you have or fuck off and die.

Edit: You know what? This is how I really feel about ads.

This is a consent issue, and I will not allow advertisers inside me. They hire psychologists in order to exploit humans' most vulnerable mental blind spots. They don't just brainwash us. They mindfuck the entire human species, and they do not recognize consent. We need to treat advertising as the collective mindr*pe that it is, otherwise they will never stop exploiting us, and we will never be able to build a bright future for humanity and this world. They are manipulating the trajectory of an entire species with zero regard to any future well-being. The butterfly effects are inconceivable. Our minds are sacred. The advertising industry is committing a crime against humanity that we have failed to recognize as such, because money is all that matters today. They must be stopped before Big Tech perfects brain-computer interfaces.

Adblockers the heroes we need.

Also, aren’t most folks using apps these days? I have elders and younger relatives that literally don’t know how to use a web browser.

I wouldn’t want to be a web publisher right now…

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.

So this confirms that people have a negative reaction to ads, which every actual internet user knows in their bones already. This means they ALSO are not even doing their one job of persuading people to buy shit. Of course this won't lead to companies reducing investment for ad carrying or finding ways to make them more appealing, that costs money, instead they will use AI generators to produce WORSE ads and leverage their capital to have governments capitulate and force users to watch by banning blockers, probably VPNs too. Bill Hicks was the most correct about advertising, and remains undefeated.

Psychology has revealed that the ability to direct attention to and process stimulus is limited, and that it's more limited in the most vulnerable members of society, including those with autism and those with too much stress.

Stimulus engineered to capture attention must therefore be treated by the law as a form of violence.

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!