5 ms·

What if there were no ad blockers?

32 points by rlv-dan 5y ago

hkt 5y ago
Personally, I'd subscribe to paper publications, newsletters, and probably visit my library more. I do a lot of avoiding ads and paywalls for the same reason as the author: they're just unbearable (or, additionally, unaffordable if you have a varied diet)
- twiddling 5y ago
  Adblockers are what make browsing even tenable at this point. I am very shocked when I am using a relative's machine at the amount of visual pollution there is on the screen.
  - recursive 5y ago
    If "browsing" == "using a web browser", then I have done it most days for decades now. I've never used an ad blocker. I find it quite tenable.
  - xtracto 5y ago
    I remember at some point going into a webpage to read some article or something else, it told me to please disable my ad-blocker. I disabled it and reloaded the page... the fuckton of crap that it displayed after that made me exit immediately without any further consideration to the content. I cannot imagine how can people withstand those type of ads.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
He touches on TV. I haven't watched TV at all (outside of NFL games) in the past decade, but when I have, is it me or have ads become incredibly obnoxious, condescending, and just flat out unbearable in said past decade? I can't say exactly what, but they've just amped up the annoying-ness from ads I remember in yester-decades.
- dfxm12 5y ago
  TV ads have certainly gotten louder, from what I remember, but are otherwise the same to me.
  - LightG 5y ago
    Yes, that sounds right. Louder than the damned show you've just been watching. TV stations should not allow that, or we should be able to counter it with technology. Having said that, less of an issue now with streaming.
  - martinmunk 5y ago
    It seems that there is such regulation in place, in the US at least. But regulation regards average loudness throughout the ad, so you can blast away if you compensate with silence. I don't normally really like the YouTube channel Cheddar, but they recently had a video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmydvmxWUsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmydvmxWUsE Apparently its FCC regulation (I'm not in the US), and the FCC cannot create legislation for streaming services so they are currently free to do as they wish.
- bondarchuk 5y ago
  Technology marches on. They're doing stuff like testing ads on people in MRI-scanners nowadays.
  - avgDev 5y ago
    LMAO, this is some black mirror episode material.
- peakaboo 5y ago
  They have gradually turned up the awfulness, just like they are gradually turning up the awfulness of all the Internet sites as well. I don't care if ads would be banned on the internet. Companies (sites) that get their revenue only from visitors would not be cost effective and disappear. Huge improvement if you ask me. And companies where you order books or buy other things would remain because they would get money from the visitors. I remember the Internet from the 90s and 00s and it was a great place.
LinuxBender 5y ago
I can't speak for anyone else but if there were no ad blockers then I would just refuse to visit any site with ads. I've already moved most of my transactions to local businesses and only utilize amazon when I can't find something locally.
krono 5y ago
For us people blessed with ADHD, ad blockers have become just as essential as ramps are for wheelchair users. I'm dead serious, getting anything done on the web with ads is a complete disaster. Their continued existence and unhindered operation should be legally protected. Edit: For people who might not be aware, ADHD could be seen as an executive function disorder. It's impossible on a biochemical or neurological level for me to ignore irrelevancies such as ads. Best case I get distracted (that thing I was doing... yeah not gonna happen today), worst case even make a purchase (also known as the ADHD tax, life's not cheap for us invalids). The medication is alright, but requires supplementation by things such as strict time schedules, alarms and reminders for all the things, and... ad blockers.
- daniel-cussen 5y ago
  Definitely. The Attention Economy is unjust to people who have less attention to pay.
- Lev1a 5y ago
  A Jimquisition video from today about how microtransactions in video games etc. can also be understood as specifically preying on those with ADHD and other conditions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH2SjNeYq8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH2SjNeYq8k
- LadyCailin 5y ago
  I have specifically gone out of my way to maintain a grease monkey script that hides all sorts of things from Facebook. Ads, yes, but also all the other “people you may know”, “suggested for you” and other garbage. It has substantially reduced the time I spend on Facebook, because it’s a lot harder for me to get sucked in, while still allowing me to see the things my actual friends are posting, rather than a post from a company that my friend liked.
  - timbit42 5y ago
    Have you looked at FBPurity? It does all that and more.
- 5y ago
Justsignedup 5y ago
Ads aren't what cause me to avoid distractions. However there are many sites which would be on my no-visit list due to ads, honestly, google probably being one of them. I rarely see google results without ads, and when I do I am shocked by how hard they are to avoid. Even that small dark patern of having an icon, and replacing it with "ad" is so fucking evil. Long story short, ads are a plague. I hope everyone installs adblockers and the entire ad industry collapses in favor of something hopefully a lot better. I heard in a city in south america ALL advertisements outside were banned. You were permitted a name + logo for your business, but that's it. Turns out advertising got much more interesting and opt-in rather than forced upon you.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- stevesearer 5y ago
  Outdoor billboard advertising is not allowed here in Santa Barbara, California. There are also fairly strict guidelines for the size of the name + logo for your business throughout the city, as well as even stricter guidelines within the a historic district in the downtown area.
- drcongo 5y ago
  Could be São Paulo you're thinking of.
kps 5y ago
We may not be far from the point where ab blocking loses the arms race to obfuscated wasm rendering co-served ads to canvas. I'd return to more niche enthusiast sites, where the top handful of uses chip in a few dollars a year to keep the VPS on.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  If and when that happens, I will have to find another hobby, but I don’t think it will, if only because we could have had obfuscated js with canvas support for a while now and we still don’t.
avgDev 5y ago
I use ad-blockers and PiHole. I sometimes cannot access sites due to PiHole and I don't care. I had to cancel a digital subscription because of PiHole I could not stream videos. I would get a message that "Ad blocking was detected on my network", I could whitelist it but nope. I hate ad tracking and if I cannot access a service then too bad.
- nathanaldensr 5y ago
  Don't give even an inch. You know what they'll take if you do...
  - ASalazarMX 5y ago
    Another inch? Joke apart, advertisers lost the benefit of the doubt long ago. They have shown unethical behavior, and they're bad stewards of the information they collect surreptitiously. The internet would be a better place without the overbearing influence of the modern advertising industry.
- kgwxd 5y ago
  AMC recently added that with their new streaming service. They deprecated "AMC Premium" and forced everyone to "AMC+". I was prepared to pay the much higher price for AMC+ which, presumable wouldn't have ads, but it refuses to work with uBlock Origin enabled anyway. So I cancelled and went back to torrenting. Smart move AMC.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  The "ad blocker detected" is annoying, mostly because I don't have an ad blocker installed. I do have a tracking blocker, which just happens to blocks some ads, due to them tracking me. Just stop the tracking and you won't get blocked.
widea 5y ago
Unbearable!
bena 5y ago
Modern web ads are a result of the technological arms race with ad-blockers. If there were no ad-blockers, ads would be less devious about being intrusive. But then they'd be easier to block. So we would. And then they'd have to become more devious to circumvent blocking. We'd be right back here.
- nathanaldensr 5y ago
  This sounds like a "the beatings will continue until morale improves" argument.
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  Except the obnoxious and intrusive ads came first. Help they were long a vector for malware. The failure to police made them a liability.
  - bena 5y ago
    I wasn't condoning ads, I was simply acknowledging the perverse ecosystem. Also, I don't know what policing them would look like. They operate by abusing legitimate techniques. It's a baby and bathwater situation.
intrasight 5y ago
I am afraid that the arms race will continue, and that the ad companies will prevail. A lot of ad blocking is based on the assumption that ad networks work via HTTPS.
- csydas 5y ago
  Native advertising has been a thing for awhile, and while this is perhaps a specious assumption, I'm guessing there's a reason that it's not more prevalent than it is. This isn't meant to just be some empty counter, as I totally agree with what you're saying, and I think uBlock's existence is only because the situation kept escalating to the point that we were gifted with complete control over the browser (until Apple and Google took it away...least we still have Firefox for now). My point here is that we've already been through a few arms races with advertisers, and it will continue to be adjusted moving forward. A lot of research has gone into effectiveness of advertising and the best returns on investment for different advertising methods with the current modern web, and despite native advertising being a thing, we still see a huge industry dedicated to the spam-ad model. Youtubers seem to most have moved to Patreon/sponsored videos, but Youtube has metrics for advertisers to note if someone watched the seconds with the advertisement or not as I understand it†, so even this form of native advertising seems to not be so popular with advertisers. In your face pop-ups, attention grabbing videos/banners, and polluted search results seem to be the ones that businesses flock to and that ad agencies sell the best; I seem to recall some article on Facebook ads that the return on investment was pretty bad in most cases. But for all the above, I'm not sure it matters for the end user as there's still only one route to the end user, and it's the browser or apps, and at least on the desktop, there are still browsers you can use to control your online browsing, and if they stop serving their purpose, they can be forked. edit: forgot my footnote. † I'm not an expert on this but the youtuber's I do watch usually half-joke about whether or not people skip the ad sections of the vid, so I'm making a guess there's some ability to track this.
steve_avery 5y ago
I've been considering using the same sort of reverse-psychology approach on myself. I use YouTube to distract myself all the time and I'm a premium subscriber, so I don't have the friction of viewing ads. If I stop paying and start seeing ads again, would that be enough of a deterrent to keep me away? I'm not sure I even want to try. Change can be so distasteful.
_hilro 5y ago
Well, with WASM making progress, it's only a matter of time. Thanks SF browser companies! Mozilla happily killing the web with their friends at Chrome but at least the CEO gets to promote social justice on the browser's dime
karaterobot 5y ago
I know plenty of people who don't use ad blockers (indeed, most of the people I know do not), and I would not say they are more productive. You might ask: is it that someone who doesn't block ads just doesn't care about them, and so they don't affect his productivity one way or the other, while someone who does care about ads might be more inclined to work more rather than idly browse? I have witnessed many people start using ad blockers and not become less productive. I have witnessed people move to work environments where they could not install ad blockers, and they did not become more productive or browse the web at work less. So, my conclusion is "no"!
jansommer 5y ago
Making procrastination unpleasant seems like a good idea. Ideally the result would be more time spent on being social with coworkers, or even get out of the office and participate in local events. Doesn't necessarily increase productivity, heck, it could even decrease, but one might just end up being happier either way.
eigengrau5150 5y ago
I won't fuck without a condom, and I won't browse without an ad blocker. If there were no ad blockers I'd stop using the internet for the same reason I stopped watching broadcast and cable television: too many ads.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Koshkin 5y ago
Is there an ad blocker that cannot be detected?
- xtracto 5y ago
  Not strictly and "ad blocker", but AdNaeuseam ( https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/ ) hides ads while clicking on all of them.
pope_meat 5y ago
I can't use the internet without an ad blocker. Literally an overwhelming experience that makes it impossible to focus.
shmde 5y ago
The one piece of software/extension I have used since I had the internet was Ublock by gorhill. I wanted to donate to him but he doesn't accept donations. If you are reading this gorhill I love you mate.
anotherevan 5y ago
They are not ad blockers, they are HTML firewalls.

32 points by rlv-dan 5y ago

hkt 5y ago

Personally, I'd subscribe to paper publications, newsletters, and probably visit my library more. I do a lot of avoiding ads and paywalls for the same reason as the author: they're just unbearable (or, additionally, unaffordable if you have a varied diet)

twiddling 5y ago
Adblockers are what make browsing even tenable at this point. I am very shocked when I am using a relative's machine at the amount of visual pollution there is on the screen.
- recursive 5y ago
  If "browsing" == "using a web browser", then I have done it most days for decades now. I've never used an ad blocker. I find it quite tenable.
- xtracto 5y ago
  I remember at some point going into a webpage to read some article or something else, it told me to please disable my ad-blocker. I disabled it and reloaded the page... the fuckton of crap that it displayed after that made me exit immediately without any further consideration to the content. I cannot imagine how can people withstand those type of ads.

JohnWhigham 5y ago

He touches on TV. I haven't watched TV at all (outside of NFL games) in the past decade, but when I have, is it me or have ads become incredibly obnoxious, condescending, and just flat out unbearable in said past decade? I can't say exactly what, but they've just amped up the annoying-ness from ads I remember in yester-decades.

dfxm12 5y ago
TV ads have certainly gotten louder, from what I remember, but are otherwise the same to me.
- LightG 5y ago
  Yes, that sounds right. Louder than the damned show you've just been watching. TV stations should not allow that, or we should be able to counter it with technology. Having said that, less of an issue now with streaming.
- martinmunk 5y ago
  It seems that there is such regulation in place, in the US at least. But regulation regards average loudness throughout the ad, so you can blast away if you compensate with silence. I don't normally really like the YouTube channel Cheddar, but they recently had a video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmydvmxWUsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmydvmxWUsE Apparently its FCC regulation (I'm not in the US), and the FCC cannot create legislation for streaming services so they are currently free to do as they wish.
bondarchuk 5y ago
Technology marches on. They're doing stuff like testing ads on people in MRI-scanners nowadays.
- avgDev 5y ago
  LMAO, this is some black mirror episode material.
peakaboo 5y ago
They have gradually turned up the awfulness, just like they are gradually turning up the awfulness of all the Internet sites as well. I don't care if ads would be banned on the internet. Companies (sites) that get their revenue only from visitors would not be cost effective and disappear. Huge improvement if you ask me. And companies where you order books or buy other things would remain because they would get money from the visitors. I remember the Internet from the 90s and 00s and it was a great place.

LinuxBender 5y ago

I can't speak for anyone else but if there were no ad blockers then I would just refuse to visit any site with ads. I've already moved most of my transactions to local businesses and only utilize amazon when I can't find something locally.

krono 5y ago

For us people blessed with ADHD, ad blockers have become just as essential as ramps are for wheelchair users. I'm dead serious, getting anything done on the web with ads is a complete disaster. Their continued existence and unhindered operation should be legally protected. Edit: For people who might not be aware, ADHD could be seen as an executive function disorder. It's impossible on a biochemical or neurological level for me to ignore irrelevancies such as ads. Best case I get distracted (that thing I was doing... yeah not gonna happen today), worst case even make a purchase (also known as the ADHD tax, life's not cheap for us invalids). The medication is alright, but requires supplementation by things such as strict time schedules, alarms and reminders for all the things, and... ad blockers.

daniel-cussen 5y ago
Definitely. The Attention Economy is unjust to people who have less attention to pay.
Lev1a 5y ago
A Jimquisition video from today about how microtransactions in video games etc. can also be understood as specifically preying on those with ADHD and other conditions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH2SjNeYq8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH2SjNeYq8k
LadyCailin 5y ago
I have specifically gone out of my way to maintain a grease monkey script that hides all sorts of things from Facebook. Ads, yes, but also all the other “people you may know”, “suggested for you” and other garbage. It has substantially reduced the time I spend on Facebook, because it’s a lot harder for me to get sucked in, while still allowing me to see the things my actual friends are posting, rather than a post from a company that my friend liked.
- timbit42 5y ago
  Have you looked at FBPurity? It does all that and more.
5y ago

Justsignedup 5y ago

Ads aren't what cause me to avoid distractions. However there are many sites which would be on my no-visit list due to ads, honestly, google probably being one of them. I rarely see google results without ads, and when I do I am shocked by how hard they are to avoid. Even that small dark patern of having an icon, and replacing it with "ad" is so fucking evil. Long story short, ads are a plague. I hope everyone installs adblockers and the entire ad industry collapses in favor of something hopefully a lot better. I heard in a city in south america ALL advertisements outside were banned. You were permitted a name + logo for your business, but that's it. Turns out advertising got much more interesting and opt-in rather than forced upon you.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
stevesearer 5y ago
Outdoor billboard advertising is not allowed here in Santa Barbara, California. There are also fairly strict guidelines for the size of the name + logo for your business throughout the city, as well as even stricter guidelines within the a historic district in the downtown area.
drcongo 5y ago
Could be São Paulo you're thinking of.

kps 5y ago

We may not be far from the point where ab blocking loses the arms race to obfuscated wasm rendering co-served ads to canvas. I'd return to more niche enthusiast sites, where the top handful of uses chip in a few dollars a year to keep the VPS on.

tomjen3 5y ago
If and when that happens, I will have to find another hobby, but I don’t think it will, if only because we could have had obfuscated js with canvas support for a while now and we still don’t.

avgDev 5y ago

I use ad-blockers and PiHole. I sometimes cannot access sites due to PiHole and I don't care. I had to cancel a digital subscription because of PiHole I could not stream videos. I would get a message that "Ad blocking was detected on my network", I could whitelist it but nope. I hate ad tracking and if I cannot access a service then too bad.

nathanaldensr 5y ago
Don't give even an inch. You know what they'll take if you do...
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  Another inch? Joke apart, advertisers lost the benefit of the doubt long ago. They have shown unethical behavior, and they're bad stewards of the information they collect surreptitiously. The internet would be a better place without the overbearing influence of the modern advertising industry.
kgwxd 5y ago
AMC recently added that with their new streaming service. They deprecated "AMC Premium" and forced everyone to "AMC+". I was prepared to pay the much higher price for AMC+ which, presumable wouldn't have ads, but it refuses to work with uBlock Origin enabled anyway. So I cancelled and went back to torrenting. Smart move AMC.
mrweasel 5y ago
The "ad blocker detected" is annoying, mostly because I don't have an ad blocker installed. I do have a tracking blocker, which just happens to blocks some ads, due to them tracking me. Just stop the tracking and you won't get blocked.

widea 5y ago

Unbearable!

bena 5y ago

Modern web ads are a result of the technological arms race with ad-blockers. If there were no ad-blockers, ads would be less devious about being intrusive. But then they'd be easier to block. So we would. And then they'd have to become more devious to circumvent blocking. We'd be right back here.

nathanaldensr 5y ago
This sounds like a "the beatings will continue until morale improves" argument.
Nasrudith 5y ago
Except the obnoxious and intrusive ads came first. Help they were long a vector for malware. The failure to police made them a liability.
- bena 5y ago
  I wasn't condoning ads, I was simply acknowledging the perverse ecosystem. Also, I don't know what policing them would look like. They operate by abusing legitimate techniques. It's a baby and bathwater situation.

intrasight 5y ago

I am afraid that the arms race will continue, and that the ad companies will prevail. A lot of ad blocking is based on the assumption that ad networks work via HTTPS.

csydas 5y ago
Native advertising has been a thing for awhile, and while this is perhaps a specious assumption, I'm guessing there's a reason that it's not more prevalent than it is. This isn't meant to just be some empty counter, as I totally agree with what you're saying, and I think uBlock's existence is only because the situation kept escalating to the point that we were gifted with complete control over the browser (until Apple and Google took it away...least we still have Firefox for now). My point here is that we've already been through a few arms races with advertisers, and it will continue to be adjusted moving forward. A lot of research has gone into effectiveness of advertising and the best returns on investment for different advertising methods with the current modern web, and despite native advertising being a thing, we still see a huge industry dedicated to the spam-ad model. Youtubers seem to most have moved to Patreon/sponsored videos, but Youtube has metrics for advertisers to note if someone watched the seconds with the advertisement or not as I understand it†, so even this form of native advertising seems to not be so popular with advertisers. In your face pop-ups, attention grabbing videos/banners, and polluted search results seem to be the ones that businesses flock to and that ad agencies sell the best; I seem to recall some article on Facebook ads that the return on investment was pretty bad in most cases. But for all the above, I'm not sure it matters for the end user as there's still only one route to the end user, and it's the browser or apps, and at least on the desktop, there are still browsers you can use to control your online browsing, and if they stop serving their purpose, they can be forked. edit: forgot my footnote. † I'm not an expert on this but the youtuber's I do watch usually half-joke about whether or not people skip the ad sections of the vid, so I'm making a guess there's some ability to track this.

steve_avery 5y ago

I've been considering using the same sort of reverse-psychology approach on myself. I use YouTube to distract myself all the time and I'm a premium subscriber, so I don't have the friction of viewing ads. If I stop paying and start seeing ads again, would that be enough of a deterrent to keep me away? I'm not sure I even want to try. Change can be so distasteful.

_hilro 5y ago

Well, with WASM making progress, it's only a matter of time. Thanks SF browser companies! Mozilla happily killing the web with their friends at Chrome but at least the CEO gets to promote social justice on the browser's dime

karaterobot 5y ago

I know plenty of people who don't use ad blockers (indeed, most of the people I know do not), and I would not say they are more productive. You might ask: is it that someone who doesn't block ads just doesn't care about them, and so they don't affect his productivity one way or the other, while someone who does care about ads might be more inclined to work more rather than idly browse? I have witnessed many people start using ad blockers and not become less productive. I have witnessed people move to work environments where they could not install ad blockers, and they did not become more productive or browse the web at work less. So, my conclusion is "no"!

jansommer 5y ago

Making procrastination unpleasant seems like a good idea. Ideally the result would be more time spent on being social with coworkers, or even get out of the office and participate in local events. Doesn't necessarily increase productivity, heck, it could even decrease, but one might just end up being happier either way.

eigengrau5150 5y ago

I won't fuck without a condom, and I won't browse without an ad blocker. If there were no ad blockers I'd stop using the internet for the same reason I stopped watching broadcast and cable television: too many ads.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Koshkin 5y ago

Is there an ad blocker that cannot be detected?

xtracto 5y ago
Not strictly and "ad blocker", but AdNaeuseam ( https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/ ) hides ads while clicking on all of them.

pope_meat 5y ago

I can't use the internet without an ad blocker. Literally an overwhelming experience that makes it impossible to focus.

shmde 5y ago

The one piece of software/extension I have used since I had the internet was Ublock by gorhill. I wanted to donate to him but he doesn't accept donations. If you are reading this gorhill I love you mate.

anotherevan 5y ago

They are not ad blockers, they are HTML firewalls.