6 ms·

The day I added an ad blocker (Adblock Plus, Ghostery and uBlock origin) was the day my CPU fans stopped spinning almost constantly, my battery life improved, w

by wlll 8y ago

The day I added an ad blocker (Adblock Plus, Ghostery and uBlock origin) was the day my CPU fans stopped spinning almost constantly, my battery life improved, web pages loaded faster and were more responsive. My experience of the web is about a thousand times better than it used to be. I will remove all these when the ad companies and websites start to behave themselves, which will be never.

NullPrefix 8y ago
>Ghostery You surely aren't using it anymore, are you? They are now owned by an ad company.
- wlll 8y ago
  I haven't signed up for an account or given them any data (and specifically made sure that I don't share usage or diagnostic data with them). They are a German company very much covered by GDPR, so I think it's relatively safe to use the tool this way. I'd be happy to hear otherwise though.
  - seba_dos1 8y ago
    With Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials and Firefox' Tracking Protection available, there's little reason to keep using Ghostery (and Adblock Plus as well, FWIW). I also recommend Decentraleyes, Smart Referer, First Party Isolation and Facebook Container. Plus of course HTTPS Everywhere. It's hard for me to imagine productive browsing without most of those addons now.
    - 1over137 8y ago
      Good lord, what's that, 10 plugins?! Sure, we nerds could do that, but god help normal people! :(
      - seba_dos1 8y ago
        That's what the Web is like these days, unfortunately. Browsing with JS enabled on my Nokia N900 with 256MB RAM is mostly impossible, even though it should be much more than enough to display most of the content. We nerds with our heavily configured browsers often overlook that, but regular folks have to live with it.
  - GordonS 8y ago
    It's a German company with a very 'interesting' history: https://twitter.com/notrevenant/status/1000085227421782017?s=19 https://twitter.com/notrevenant/status/1000085227421782017?s...
  - Guest9812398 8y ago
    Yesterday Ghostery sent out a "Happy GDPR Day" email, which also leaked their users' email addresses in the CC field. I'd say they're off to a rocky start. https://www.reddit.com/r/gdpr/comments/8m3t1s/ghostery_celebrates_gdpr_by_sending_a_newsletter/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gdpr/comments/8m3t1s/ghostery_celeb... https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghostery/comments/8m3nqq/did_ghostery_just_mass_mail_me_about_gdpr_without/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghostery/comments/8m3nqq/did_ghoste...
    - wlll 8y ago
      I've not given them any data, and not signed up for an account, so I wasn't affected by this breach.
- Sylos 8y ago
  They used to be owned by Evidon Inc., later renamed to Ghostery Inc., which was a classic ad company (sold data gathered from the opt-in GhostRank feature to help other ad companies figure out how to not have their ads blocked). Nowadays, the Ghostery extension is owned by Cliqz GmbH, which is still an ad company, but they specialize in privacy-conscious ads (mainly ad personalization based on evaluating browser history locally), have a privacy policy that has no holes as far as I can tell, have all of their client-side code open-sourced and they are even minority-owned by Mozilla, so Mozilla can at least check over what they're doing and would probably give up ownership should Cliqz infringe on privacy (even if you think Mozilla itself is the devil, they would still likely do that for PR reasons). So, I do think it is nowadays fine to use Ghostery. I still don't quite understand why it's so popular, there's tons of other tools for the same purpose (for example Disconnect, Privacy Badger, Firefox's built-in Tracking Protection), but yeah.
dman 8y ago
If you liked the effect of installing an adblocker give disabling Javascript a try. (You can selectively whitelist a small number of websites). Did this a couple of years back and the difference is astounding.
- dmead 8y ago
  Is there a list somewhere of what websites actually work without JavaScript enabled?
  - wlll 8y ago
    I reckon that the number of websites I regularly visit is small enough that whitelisting them over a few days will get most of them. HN, Reddit (for the articles), a few work sites, a couple of news sites. Everything else I'll just see how it pans out. It will be an interesting experiment.
    - madez 8y ago
      I use Reddit and HN without JavaScript. Most sites work just fine or with minor annoyance, which the websites in many cases could fix if they wanted.
  - koolba 8y ago
    Sadly it's a shrinking list and as sites replace static content with things like React it's shrinking even faster. Good: HN works well and handles the downgrade gracefully (ex: upvoting becomes a POST rather than AJAX). Bad: The original Reddit site works ok but the new React based one one fails miserably as it shows a loading screen that never changes.
    - StellarTabi 8y ago
      React is actually capable of sever side rendering, in fact one of the Reddit announcements specified that React's SSR was a key factor in choosing it. I'm curious why they're not using it? The new site is still in beta though.
heyoni 8y ago
I lost weight when I started using adblockers, my skin cleared up and I got a girlfriend!
- throwincel7362 8y ago
  my god did hn just solve the incel crisis?
  - wlll 8y ago
    Only if installing an ad blocker also cured him of being a raging jackass ;)
- ayayecocojambo 8y ago
  NoAds > NoFap
nothrabannosir 8y ago
> I will remove all these when the ad companies and websites start to behave themselves, which will be never. Which will be when access portals (currently search engines, and app stores for apps) heavily correlate resource usage with ranking / commission / etc. Currently, the biggest access portal(s) are invested in ads, so not any time soon. But when every kb drops your pagerank one point, and every cpu cycle costs an extra penny of App Store commission, that is when the entire market will suddenly follow. It’s not soon but it’s not never. It’s possible.
- mygo 8y ago
  I think this is sensible, because sites in the same industry should have the same energy consumption. For example a video streaming site will always use more CPU than craigslist, but that’s okay because a video streaming site is competing with other video streaming sites. But I think the industry’s solution to this has always been to just wait for the inevitable faster and faster computers that come out each year, so that the lag becomes less just by the passage of time. But that becomes a cat and mouse game because as CPU’s and network speeds get faster and storage gets cheaper, developers can get away with larger sites and slower code. case in point, nowadays you can barely browse the web with an iPhone 4, but when it first came out people weren’t waiting 30 seconds for a pageload on it. Even look at the average size of an app in the App Store now. I think facebook was 40MB when it first was released, now it’s 300MB. It’s like you have to keep getting newer and newer hardware just to keep up.
dawnerd 8y ago
Add a pihole into the mix and everything gets even better.
wdr1 8y ago
> I will remove all these when the ad companies and websites start to behave themselves, which will be never. Maybe, maybe not. The problem with straight up blocking of all ads is obviously it cuts of funding for content creators whose work I enjoy. What I really want is blocking of the ridiculous crap you find in ads, but still allow reasonable publishers to show ads & monetize. That's why I'm hopeful for the "Coalition for Better Ads". It's essentially trying to define that standard across multiple parties.

by wlll 8y ago

NullPrefix 8y ago

>Ghostery You surely aren't using it anymore, are you? They are now owned by an ad company.

wlll 8y ago
I haven't signed up for an account or given them any data (and specifically made sure that I don't share usage or diagnostic data with them). They are a German company very much covered by GDPR, so I think it's relatively safe to use the tool this way. I'd be happy to hear otherwise though.
- seba_dos1 8y ago
  With Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials and Firefox' Tracking Protection available, there's little reason to keep using Ghostery (and Adblock Plus as well, FWIW). I also recommend Decentraleyes, Smart Referer, First Party Isolation and Facebook Container. Plus of course HTTPS Everywhere. It's hard for me to imagine productive browsing without most of those addons now.
  - 1over137 8y ago
    Good lord, what's that, 10 plugins?! Sure, we nerds could do that, but god help normal people! :(
    - seba_dos1 8y ago
      That's what the Web is like these days, unfortunately. Browsing with JS enabled on my Nokia N900 with 256MB RAM is mostly impossible, even though it should be much more than enough to display most of the content. We nerds with our heavily configured browsers often overlook that, but regular folks have to live with it.
- GordonS 8y ago
  It's a German company with a very 'interesting' history: https://twitter.com/notrevenant/status/1000085227421782017?s=19 https://twitter.com/notrevenant/status/1000085227421782017?s...
- Guest9812398 8y ago
  Yesterday Ghostery sent out a "Happy GDPR Day" email, which also leaked their users' email addresses in the CC field. I'd say they're off to a rocky start. https://www.reddit.com/r/gdpr/comments/8m3t1s/ghostery_celebrates_gdpr_by_sending_a_newsletter/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gdpr/comments/8m3t1s/ghostery_celeb... https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghostery/comments/8m3nqq/did_ghostery_just_mass_mail_me_about_gdpr_without/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghostery/comments/8m3nqq/did_ghoste...
  - wlll 8y ago
    I've not given them any data, and not signed up for an account, so I wasn't affected by this breach.
Sylos 8y ago
They used to be owned by Evidon Inc., later renamed to Ghostery Inc., which was a classic ad company (sold data gathered from the opt-in GhostRank feature to help other ad companies figure out how to not have their ads blocked). Nowadays, the Ghostery extension is owned by Cliqz GmbH, which is still an ad company, but they specialize in privacy-conscious ads (mainly ad personalization based on evaluating browser history locally), have a privacy policy that has no holes as far as I can tell, have all of their client-side code open-sourced and they are even minority-owned by Mozilla, so Mozilla can at least check over what they're doing and would probably give up ownership should Cliqz infringe on privacy (even if you think Mozilla itself is the devil, they would still likely do that for PR reasons). So, I do think it is nowadays fine to use Ghostery. I still don't quite understand why it's so popular, there's tons of other tools for the same purpose (for example Disconnect, Privacy Badger, Firefox's built-in Tracking Protection), but yeah.

dman 8y ago

If you liked the effect of installing an adblocker give disabling Javascript a try. (You can selectively whitelist a small number of websites). Did this a couple of years back and the difference is astounding.

dmead 8y ago
Is there a list somewhere of what websites actually work without JavaScript enabled?
- wlll 8y ago
  I reckon that the number of websites I regularly visit is small enough that whitelisting them over a few days will get most of them. HN, Reddit (for the articles), a few work sites, a couple of news sites. Everything else I'll just see how it pans out. It will be an interesting experiment.
  - madez 8y ago
    I use Reddit and HN without JavaScript. Most sites work just fine or with minor annoyance, which the websites in many cases could fix if they wanted.
- koolba 8y ago
  Sadly it's a shrinking list and as sites replace static content with things like React it's shrinking even faster. Good: HN works well and handles the downgrade gracefully (ex: upvoting becomes a POST rather than AJAX). Bad: The original Reddit site works ok but the new React based one one fails miserably as it shows a loading screen that never changes.
  - StellarTabi 8y ago
    React is actually capable of sever side rendering, in fact one of the Reddit announcements specified that React's SSR was a key factor in choosing it. I'm curious why they're not using it? The new site is still in beta though.

heyoni 8y ago

I lost weight when I started using adblockers, my skin cleared up and I got a girlfriend!

throwincel7362 8y ago
my god did hn just solve the incel crisis?
- wlll 8y ago
  Only if installing an ad blocker also cured him of being a raging jackass ;)
ayayecocojambo 8y ago
NoAds > NoFap

nothrabannosir 8y ago

> I will remove all these when the ad companies and websites start to behave themselves, which will be never. Which will be when access portals (currently search engines, and app stores for apps) heavily correlate resource usage with ranking / commission / etc. Currently, the biggest access portal(s) are invested in ads, so not any time soon. But when every kb drops your pagerank one point, and every cpu cycle costs an extra penny of App Store commission, that is when the entire market will suddenly follow. It’s not soon but it’s not never. It’s possible.

mygo 8y ago
I think this is sensible, because sites in the same industry should have the same energy consumption. For example a video streaming site will always use more CPU than craigslist, but that’s okay because a video streaming site is competing with other video streaming sites. But I think the industry’s solution to this has always been to just wait for the inevitable faster and faster computers that come out each year, so that the lag becomes less just by the passage of time. But that becomes a cat and mouse game because as CPU’s and network speeds get faster and storage gets cheaper, developers can get away with larger sites and slower code. case in point, nowadays you can barely browse the web with an iPhone 4, but when it first came out people weren’t waiting 30 seconds for a pageload on it. Even look at the average size of an app in the App Store now. I think facebook was 40MB when it first was released, now it’s 300MB. It’s like you have to keep getting newer and newer hardware just to keep up.

dawnerd 8y ago

Add a pihole into the mix and everything gets even better.

wdr1 8y ago

> I will remove all these when the ad companies and websites start to behave themselves, which will be never. Maybe, maybe not. The problem with straight up blocking of all ads is obviously it cuts of funding for content creators whose work I enjoy. What I really want is blocking of the ridiculous crap you find in ads, but still allow reasonable publishers to show ads & monetize. That's why I'm hopeful for the "Coalition for Better Ads". It's essentially trying to define that standard across multiple parties.