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I didn't use an ad blocker for a long time, because I just didn't care. But a few malicious ads made me install one, and the downside is that I have to manually

I didn't use an ad blocker for a long time, because I just didn't care. But a few malicious ads made me install one, and the downside is that I have to manually enable everything to get a website (e.g. a business I have a relationship with) to run properly fairly frequently. I wish there was a clean, sharp division between people trying to sell you stuff on the open internet and entities that you are logged in to and already doing business with, such that the latter were guaranteed to be accessible even with maximum blocking. Exploiting customers is something that needs to be regulated more.

luckylion 7y ago
Are these sites from a specific industry that don't work with adblock enabled? I run into that occasionally, but it's rare for me. I'm always amazed when it happens at e.g. large online shops ... they never test with popular browser addons enabled?
- Semaphor 7y ago
  Maybe they use uMatrix? The vast majority of sites don’t work with third-party-content blocked.
  - Nextgrid 7y ago
    [citation needed] I can only count a handful of sites that break with conventional blockers (uMatrix might be a different story) and those sites I can just avoid doing business with (only one I can remember recently is Patreon where the Facebook/Google ad scripts cause the entire page to be unusable).
    - Semaphor 7y ago
      That’s why I mentioned uMatrix specifically. It blocks everything but images and css loaded from other domains by default. Normal ad blockers don’t do that. Funnily enough, Patreon works without a problem after allowing 2 CDNs and their usercontent domain.
    - GrinningFool 7y ago
      uMatrix defaults to blocking nearly everything from third parties. Most sites do not work 100% properly; many 'simple' sites will not even render because of how common it is to outsource content delivery to cloudflare et al. It's painful, but it's (for me) the only sane way to browse. I'm willing to trade a few seconds of determining what 3rd party sources I'm going to allow when visiting a new site in exchange for minimizing tracking and malicious ads.

luckylion 7y ago

Are these sites from a specific industry that don't work with adblock enabled? I run into that occasionally, but it's rare for me. I'm always amazed when it happens at e.g. large online shops ... they never test with popular browser addons enabled?

Semaphor 7y ago
Maybe they use uMatrix? The vast majority of sites don’t work with third-party-content blocked.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  [citation needed] I can only count a handful of sites that break with conventional blockers (uMatrix might be a different story) and those sites I can just avoid doing business with (only one I can remember recently is Patreon where the Facebook/Google ad scripts cause the entire page to be unusable).
  - Semaphor 7y ago
    That’s why I mentioned uMatrix specifically. It blocks everything but images and css loaded from other domains by default. Normal ad blockers don’t do that. Funnily enough, Patreon works without a problem after allowing 2 CDNs and their usercontent domain.
  - GrinningFool 7y ago
    uMatrix defaults to blocking nearly everything from third parties. Most sites do not work 100% properly; many 'simple' sites will not even render because of how common it is to outsource content delivery to cloudflare et al. It's painful, but it's (for me) the only sane way to browse. I'm willing to trade a few seconds of determining what 3rd party sources I'm going to allow when visiting a new site in exchange for minimizing tracking and malicious ads.