4 ms·

Its not as sexy a name, but I think ad blockers should be primarily described as tracking blockers. Its sounds as important as "anti-virus" and i think it could

Its not as sexy a name, but I think ad blockers should be primarily described as tracking blockers. Its sounds as important as "anti-virus" and i think it could drive a few more people towards using them.

fredley 9y ago
I'd agree with this. I would be more likely to allow ads, particularly on sites I want to support, if I could have assurances that those ads aren't harvesting every available datapoint they can. Make ads dumb again.
- dhimes 9y ago
  Yep. So much this. I don't mind ads. I mind tracking. Oh, and advertisers: I've never bought anything because I saw it on facebook or in a google ad or anywhere else like that. I'm not sure what you think you are doing with all that data, but it's not working. Ads are not how I learn about new "needs."
  - theorique 9y ago
    I've never bought anything because I saw it on facebook or in a google ad or anywhere else like that. Can you be certain that this is true? Perhaps you didn't click through (I don't either), but what if your unconscious mind saw an ad that you did not register consciously.
    - dhimes 9y ago
      You can never falsify that, obviously, and I think a lot of the web-ad industry like to keep that FOMO in front of the advertisers. But I'm fairly certain. Vacations? Nope: I have my way of deciding and that's how I do it. Car? Nope. Calendar/planner? Nope. Pencils? Pens? Grill? Pants? Nope Nope Nope Nope. I'm hard-pressed to think of the last brand I learned of from an ad. Books? Usually from here (also planners, cars, etc.)
  - davchana 9y ago
    Most of the the the ads I see by Google or Facebook are the ones for purchases I already made. Few weeks ago I already booked a hotel on booking.com, and then searched about that hotel's official website and facebook page, and boy, for two weeks every google ad and facebook ad had that hotel name.
    - dhimes 9y ago
      LOL exactly. It's ridiculous. I accidentally cost my buddy a click when his ad appeared on my feed (his ad has no business being on my feed)- I was on mobile so of course accidentally clicked it. The ad industry is just so damn broken that it's ripe for a huge disruption. The whole hypothesis of Google- that people will want to see ads centered on what they are searching for- seems to be erroneous. But it's been taken as gospel for what- a dozen years?- that everybody has piled on to the idea that we can know what people want to buy based on the type of information they seek. I think that except in explicit cases- searching for 'umbrellas that can withstand high winds' for instance- it's not true. As I've said before here, when I'm ready to buy I'm searching Amazon, not Google.
jdietrich 9y ago
uBlock Origin describes itself as "a wide-spectrum blocker which happens to be able to function as a mere ad blocker". It has the explicitly stated goal of allowing the user to personalise their browsing experience in whatever way they choose. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
- westmeal 9y ago
  For finer grained control of the scripts, XHRs, and media being accepted by your browser I'd recommend installing uBlock Origin && uMatrix. uMatrix allows you to blacklist or whitelist everything on a page with some pretty good defaults.
  - rightos 9y ago
    You can get a lot of uMatrix's functionality just by enabling the "I am an advanced user" checkbox in uBlock Origin. I actually find it a better interface, but that's a personal preference.
  - nothrabannosir 9y ago
    I second the recommendation for uMatrix. Recently switched from noscript due to ff57 and boy, what an improvement. The matrix model works very well. It makes total sense to only allow certain types of resources and/or/from certain domains per level in the dns hierarchy. The defaults are much more usable than noscript and the UI is great once you “get it” (won’t take more than a day or two).
SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
I run one as a malware blocker, because if I don't then my computers get attacked at least once a day, often by reputable sites. It's probably more important than an antivirus for stopping malware.
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
  It's definitely more important than antivirus but I don't think the general population has figured that out.
clouddrover 9y ago
Firefox and Brave have tracking protection built-in. Not sure if any other browsers offer this out of the box.
- saiya-jin 9y ago
  how good is it though? I couldn't care less about "non-intrusive ads" of adblock plus for example, that's not very efficient. microBlock origin on the other hand, that's pretty much required these days, especially on tiny mobile screens.
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
  Firefox doesn't really have tracking protection built-in. There's "Do not track", but that's worse than worthless and off by default, and you can turn on blocking thrid-party cookies but, again, off by default and only covers a small area of concern. I don't even know what to say about Brave other than the business model feels very wrong. Firefox + uBlock Origin is the right level of protection and you can get it on desktop and mobile (Android at least). I've come across a few sites that were still using affiliate links and uO didn't block them. I'm not sure if uO has a policy of not blocking them but, to me, those are the only type of "acceptable ad" and CPU cycles shouldn't be wasted trying to detect and eliminate them.
  - skymt 9y ago
    I believe clouddrover is talking about this tracking protection feature, which uses Disconnect's list of tracking scripts: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection
  - dhimes 9y ago
    I use noscript and am pretty happy with it. I also use Adblock Plus because I'm ok with the idea of allowing certain types of ads through the adblockers. I was kind of thinking that we could get sites to stop doing the tracking bullshit if we put out a list of what is acceptable and blocked the rest. I guess it wasn't well executed?
cptskippy 9y ago
Why don't we just call them malware blockers? What we refer to as tracking or analytics code has evolved well past the point of understanding and has crossed over into manipulation. That's ultimately what advertising is these days, a means to manipulate you into spending your money.
- fhood 9y ago
  Honestly I don't care what is be tracked, but until it is no longer the case that 60% of webpages slow my computer to a crawl for about six seconds I am not turning mine off, no matter how many times the website asks politely.
andrewaylett 9y ago
That's Privacy Badger's USP: https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

fredley 9y ago

I'd agree with this. I would be more likely to allow ads, particularly on sites I want to support, if I could have assurances that those ads aren't harvesting every available datapoint they can. Make ads dumb again.

dhimes 9y ago
Yep. So much this. I don't mind ads. I mind tracking. Oh, and advertisers: I've never bought anything because I saw it on facebook or in a google ad or anywhere else like that. I'm not sure what you think you are doing with all that data, but it's not working. Ads are not how I learn about new "needs."
- theorique 9y ago
  I've never bought anything because I saw it on facebook or in a google ad or anywhere else like that. Can you be certain that this is true? Perhaps you didn't click through (I don't either), but what if your unconscious mind saw an ad that you did not register consciously.
  - dhimes 9y ago
    You can never falsify that, obviously, and I think a lot of the web-ad industry like to keep that FOMO in front of the advertisers. But I'm fairly certain. Vacations? Nope: I have my way of deciding and that's how I do it. Car? Nope. Calendar/planner? Nope. Pencils? Pens? Grill? Pants? Nope Nope Nope Nope. I'm hard-pressed to think of the last brand I learned of from an ad. Books? Usually from here (also planners, cars, etc.)
- davchana 9y ago
  Most of the the the ads I see by Google or Facebook are the ones for purchases I already made. Few weeks ago I already booked a hotel on booking.com, and then searched about that hotel's official website and facebook page, and boy, for two weeks every google ad and facebook ad had that hotel name.
  - dhimes 9y ago
    LOL exactly. It's ridiculous. I accidentally cost my buddy a click when his ad appeared on my feed (his ad has no business being on my feed)- I was on mobile so of course accidentally clicked it. The ad industry is just so damn broken that it's ripe for a huge disruption. The whole hypothesis of Google- that people will want to see ads centered on what they are searching for- seems to be erroneous. But it's been taken as gospel for what- a dozen years?- that everybody has piled on to the idea that we can know what people want to buy based on the type of information they seek. I think that except in explicit cases- searching for 'umbrellas that can withstand high winds' for instance- it's not true. As I've said before here, when I'm ready to buy I'm searching Amazon, not Google.

jdietrich 9y ago

uBlock Origin describes itself as "a wide-spectrum blocker which happens to be able to function as a mere ad blocker". It has the explicitly stated goal of allowing the user to personalise their browsing experience in whatever way they choose. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

westmeal 9y ago
For finer grained control of the scripts, XHRs, and media being accepted by your browser I'd recommend installing uBlock Origin && uMatrix. uMatrix allows you to blacklist or whitelist everything on a page with some pretty good defaults.
- rightos 9y ago
  You can get a lot of uMatrix's functionality just by enabling the "I am an advanced user" checkbox in uBlock Origin. I actually find it a better interface, but that's a personal preference.
- nothrabannosir 9y ago
  I second the recommendation for uMatrix. Recently switched from noscript due to ff57 and boy, what an improvement. The matrix model works very well. It makes total sense to only allow certain types of resources and/or/from certain domains per level in the dns hierarchy. The defaults are much more usable than noscript and the UI is great once you “get it” (won’t take more than a day or two).

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago

I run one as a malware blocker, because if I don't then my computers get attacked at least once a day, often by reputable sites. It's probably more important than an antivirus for stopping malware.

jasonkostempski 9y ago
It's definitely more important than antivirus but I don't think the general population has figured that out.

clouddrover 9y ago

Firefox and Brave have tracking protection built-in. Not sure if any other browsers offer this out of the box.

saiya-jin 9y ago
how good is it though? I couldn't care less about "non-intrusive ads" of adblock plus for example, that's not very efficient. microBlock origin on the other hand, that's pretty much required these days, especially on tiny mobile screens.
jasonkostempski 9y ago
Firefox doesn't really have tracking protection built-in. There's "Do not track", but that's worse than worthless and off by default, and you can turn on blocking thrid-party cookies but, again, off by default and only covers a small area of concern. I don't even know what to say about Brave other than the business model feels very wrong. Firefox + uBlock Origin is the right level of protection and you can get it on desktop and mobile (Android at least). I've come across a few sites that were still using affiliate links and uO didn't block them. I'm not sure if uO has a policy of not blocking them but, to me, those are the only type of "acceptable ad" and CPU cycles shouldn't be wasted trying to detect and eliminate them.
- skymt 9y ago
  I believe clouddrover is talking about this tracking protection feature, which uses Disconnect's list of tracking scripts: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection
- dhimes 9y ago
  I use noscript and am pretty happy with it. I also use Adblock Plus because I'm ok with the idea of allowing certain types of ads through the adblockers. I was kind of thinking that we could get sites to stop doing the tracking bullshit if we put out a list of what is acceptable and blocked the rest. I guess it wasn't well executed?

cptskippy 9y ago

Why don't we just call them malware blockers? What we refer to as tracking or analytics code has evolved well past the point of understanding and has crossed over into manipulation. That's ultimately what advertising is these days, a means to manipulate you into spending your money.

fhood 9y ago
Honestly I don't care what is be tracked, but until it is no longer the case that 60% of webpages slow my computer to a crawl for about six seconds I am not turning mine off, no matter how many times the website asks politely.

andrewaylett 9y ago

That's Privacy Badger's USP: https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger