Technology

This is 100% the fault of shitty advertisers spamming us with literal scams, malware, and spyware.

Some folks still raw dog the net? Wrap that shit up

The main problem is 3rd party advertising. If the New York Times ran ads on their website like they did with the physical newspaper, we would not have this problem.

Publishers need to take direct responsibility for every ad on their platform.

I am surprised the reason for blocking ads doessn't include making sites somewhat readable. I guess faster loading could be it? But generally it's more of a layout problem than a bandwidth one.

I tend to not use adblockers, or when I do it's on a black list system for worst offenders rather than by default. However, I absolutely refuse tracking, and if it's the only option I go to firefox reader mode immediately.

The usual false dichotomy of "personalised ads or you're killing us!" is not acceptable.

I dislike the fact that "ads" can also include crapware being injected into my computer (viruses, tracking cookies, mysterious scripts, etc).

I don't think I could use the internet if I didn't have an adblocker. Ads genuinely anger me. I think it's just from the early days with pop-overs and unders, blinking, non-collapsible and the like holding content hostage. Intrusive or not, I'll do everything I can to not see an ad.

Many parts of the Internet has become functionally unusable without one. And given online advertising's history as a vector for malware, as blockers are just the sensible choice.

The internet is unusable without an adblocker.. I recommend uBlock Origin and Pihole.

I've been using an ad blocking DNS for years and would not consider using the internet without it. Since it's a DNS it works everywhere on mobile or Wi-Fi. I just figured that an ad blocker of some sort is basically a digital condom and must be used. When I see people who don't use one, I think they are crazy.

I used to not run an ad block. I figured the ads didn't bother me so why bother?

Then I encountered a banner ad that screamed "HELLOOOOOOOOOO" anytime the mouse went over it and I couldn't download an ad blocker fast enough.

Advertising companies will do anything they can to annoy the shit out of you, then act like people running ad blockers are the problem.

I thought the text said "stop AIDS" but practically the same thing.

Does anyone ever actually click on an ad? Like "hey thats cool I wanna check it out/buy it right here right now"?

I have adblockers active everywhere and only disable then somtimes for specific sites that really don't work otherwise, but even if the unlikely case would come up that something is interesting I would just look it up separately? Mostly I just turn a blind eye on them anyway, but just wondering, some people gotta really click/buy from these ads? It just seems so surreal to me..

I've always thought that the ad supported internet is something people will eventually get sick of and the financial foundation would evolve over time to find models that don't rely on infinite spam. Instead efforts are focussed on forcing us to view them. At this point I'm expecting the next version of Chrome to require the Ludovico technique while browsing.

Yeah, can you take a "Veteran cybersecurity expert" who doesn't generally use an adblocker serious?

The surprise is that apparently 28 percent of "experienced programmers" don't have an ad blocker. I'm not sure how they got the data, but I wonder if their methods are up to the task of sorting out any possible inverse correlation between blocking ads and being willing to respond to polls.

Ads are just pure negative. There was even one study that calculated this as a direct financial negative, although unfortunately in narrow circumstances: it was calculated that for mobile users in the US, paying for the data transferred to display the ad was more expensive than what the site owner got paid for including it on his site.

If the ads are unobtrusive and interesting, and not clearly based on harvested personal data, I wouldn't mind.

Unfoorrrtunately...

Back in the day, major news sites like the BBC ran ads that were infected with malware that then infected computers. These weren’t shady sites like people expect you to get viruses from.

Installed an ad blocker the day that news broke and never looked back. Ads are potentially harmful to your devices.

Says a company that makes an ad blocker

It is shockingly irresponsible of the Author to not include security concerns of advertisements in their article.

It's a necessity. The internet really is unusable without it. Pop-up ads, long unskippable video ads, annoying shovelware scam ads, etc etc.

Yea that shit didn’t have the hold on millennials like it did the chain letter sending dummies of the previous generation.

In my day ads were vectors for viruses AND were dumb and annoying as fuck.

Some would agree they still are.

Highly unlikely, but hopefully one day.

Ad blocker is kind of a sad name for a content/spam filter, a vital security tool, but that's what we got. Especially since browsers naively didn't include filtering and block lists by default and they only became common as add-ons.

I never get to be the 1 millionth visitor anymore