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I’m often amazed at how people I know, full internet “power users”, don’t use it and complain about ads. I have never seen an ad in years, not on YouTube or whe

I’m often amazed at how people I know, full internet “power users”, don’t use it and complain about ads. I have never seen an ad in years, not on YouTube or wherever. How do people who build web stuff daily not know about adblocks? It’s so weird to me.

RankingMember 3y ago
I think it's sort of a vicious cycle too- because the number of impressions goes down from all the adblocking, the users not running adblock get even more ads to the point of absurdity (see: local news sites) as tech companies try to make up the difference.
- rtsil 3y ago
  I have this distinct impression whenever I watch Youtube from my TV's app and Youtube serves me 6 different unskippable ads on a 10-minute video.
  - xp84 3y ago
    Years ago as YouTube’s ads really started ramping up, I realized paying the measly $12 a month or whatever for Red, now Premium, was an obvious good decision for me. I get no ads besides actual sponsorships that are part of the video, which are the kind of ads people who hate modern advertising say they want — not “targeted at me” but rather “alongside content that is related to the ad.” If you just aren’t into “short form” video (or what used to pass for short until TikTok came around, lol) I can see how it would be unappealing to pay for a site you don’t use much, but YouTube premium is my ideal way for media to work.
    - rtsil 3y ago
      I had Red/Premium as part of my Google Music subscription, but they decided to kill that.
      - xp84 3y ago
        I assume YTM is far inferior to what you had? That's bundled with my premium, but I don't use it much on account of Apple Music's integration with my own longtime music library (which, ironically, I remember GM being also strong with letting you upload your own collection)
  - 2devnull 3y ago
    I used to watch YouTube daily. I’m now done to once a week and more often than not it’s a terrible experience. If there are others like me, that seems like a death spiral. The more leave, the more ads must be shown, the worse the platform gets, the more people leave…
  - RankingMember 3y ago
    Some are real bad, you have those unskippable ads PLUS the in-video sponsored segments.
    - miah_ 3y ago
      You can get a addon called 'SponsorBlock' that fixes in-video sponsored segments. It allows anybody to submit timestamps for sponsored segments, and tag them in various ways. Its on Chrome too I think. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/
      - RankingMember 3y ago
        Yeah, the bummer is if I'm trying to watch YouTube on my Roku TV I'm stuck getting the full Monty of YouTube's ad experience.
  - dingledork69 3y ago
    It used to be that you wouldn't get youtube ads on a chromecast. That changed and I never use the thing anymore since it can't block ads. A shame.
- the_af 3y ago
  Browsing the web without an adblocker is... illuminating. A vision into a corporate hellscape of garbage constantly screaming for your attention. I'm sure they don't allow adblockers in Hell.
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    IME you learn which sites and services can balance ads vs user needs. So it's only hell if insist on consuming from those who don't care enough about you. Of course if ad blocking gets too be too mainstream all that will be left are 'native' ads and directly paid content.
    - the_af 3y ago
      I don't use "sites", I use the internet. I don't know, beforehand, which page I'll land on. Some sites I do use out of necessity, because I follow the "content"/"community", and it happens to be there: YouTube, Facebook. It saddens me to no end a lot of groups of niche interests are only on Facebook, but if I don't want to end up talking to myself, I'm forced to use it.
belter 3y ago
I am even more amazed, about companies paying for ads, while seeming to ignore most users will not see them as they use adblocks plugins.
- psychphysic 3y ago
  They won't be paying for content that wasn't loaded.
  - belter 3y ago
    Is that true in all cases? It seems for example for Cost-per-mille (CPM) advertising if a user has an ad-blocker, they will not see the ad, but it would still count towards the number of impressions if the ad request is made?
    - psychphysic 3y ago
      > in all cases No idea of course. I couldn't tell you any anything in ALL cases. But the ad space is dominated by a few companies and all do that as far as I know. The other dominating ad space is spliced into videos and they certainly know you will skip around if you can on YouTube. > If a request is made It won't be made that's what adblockers do. Or it won't land in the case of pihole/DNS level blockers. Otherwise it wouldn't speed up browsing and tracking would continue unhindered.
      - ElectricalUnion 3y ago
        There's some adblockers focused on disrupting tracking and those will both intentionally load ads and automatically click on every one of them for you. https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/
        psychphysic 3y ago
        Neat idea, I'd worry that the tracking is worse than the benefit. That said I routinely let long YouTube ads play while I go off to do something else. Personal best was circa 1.5hour ad! Someone told me that costs them big bucks so long as it's not skipped.
jacurtis 3y ago
> how do people who build web stuff daily not know.. I'll stop it right there. You'd be surprised how many people who build web stuff daily know surprisingly little about how the web actually works or any details aside from that. A surprisingly massive portion of people in tech have learned just enough through bootcamps and youtube videos to accomplish just enough for the specific job they are doing without realizing how it works or anything deeper than simple what to type to fix a problem. For example: I'm shocked at the number of even senior web developers that I work with who don't know the difference between an A record and a CNAME record in DNS or even the basics of how DNS works. It is surprising how many people don't understand basic port mapping or even how a compiler works at a high level. There is a whole generation of tech workers that only understand how to swing a hammer, and rely strictly on these tools without knowing anything larger in scope than the hammer and nails in front of them. The world of tech has turned into white collar factory workers for the vast majority of its' participants.
- abustamam 3y ago
  I've been in the field for seven years, primarily working for startups, and though I'm primarily FE I've dabbled in some backend stuff, and I've deployed many apps. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what the difference between CNAME or A record is. All I know is when it comes time for deployment, I go to Google cloud DNS or AWS's equivalent and follow the instructions on how to deploy. If things don't work, I Google it. I understand your higher level point (these boot camp guys don't understand even the basics) but where do you draw the line between basics and not basics? Many people couldn't employé Dijkstra's algorithm, or A*, or an efficient sorting algorithm. Many people couldn't tell you how memory works outside of "don't try to load 1million things from a database." But if they're hired as a FE/BE engineer, and can perform the tasks provided to them 99% of the time (and googling / enriching themselves that 1%) what's the concern here?
- dlisboa 3y ago
  It’s not even those professionals, I’m talking people who are highly skilled and trained (CS/Engineering degrees). Like they could tell you off the top of their head HOW to build an adblocker, but they don’t use one themselves. That type of disconnect that is weird to me. People who don’t know any better I can understand.
all2 3y ago
It doesn't work for Prime videos with ads, which is irritating (I pay for Prime so I don't have to see ads, among other benefits).
- eipi10_hn 3y ago
  You mean Amazon Prime? With this release, it's already addressed: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/14512#issuecomment-1565946605 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/14512#issueco... However, until the stable release is out for all supported browsers, you'll need dev (pre-release) build (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases) to test it. What we need are users' reports and feedbacks. For example, I don't know if the domain is `amazon.com` or `primevideo.com`.
kapitanjakc 3y ago
I train people in web, and here's my observation. Younger generation is comfortable with ads, paying for extra items in their games, purchasing stuff from those ads, installing apps from the ads etc. They also are comfortable in knowing only their scope of work and they get only that much done. Older generation people, they very rarely will pay for items in games online, will curse when ads are targeted. They also tend to work better if they understand overall scenario.
- pmontra 3y ago
  Think how wide the web is now and what it was 30 years ago. The scope of work of those young people will get wider, maybe only a fraction of what happened to the web, and they'll know the overall picture because they grew with it. Younger people will know only a very specific subject and will be frowned upon.
- mldbk 3y ago
  > They also tend to work better if they understand overall scenario. THIS!
aequitas 3y ago
I encountered it kinda the other way around. In a previous job I had developed a deployment system for developers. Some users on one specific team only where complaining their deployment would not show up in the tool. Though they where properly deployed after the pressed the button. Many debug sessions later I sat down with one developer and found the issue. Their team “advertising” had the team name in the deployments. So the request to get deploy status would be blocked because all of them ran adblockers themselves.

RankingMember 3y ago

I think it's sort of a vicious cycle too- because the number of impressions goes down from all the adblocking, the users not running adblock get even more ads to the point of absurdity (see: local news sites) as tech companies try to make up the difference.

rtsil 3y ago
I have this distinct impression whenever I watch Youtube from my TV's app and Youtube serves me 6 different unskippable ads on a 10-minute video.
- xp84 3y ago
  Years ago as YouTube’s ads really started ramping up, I realized paying the measly $12 a month or whatever for Red, now Premium, was an obvious good decision for me. I get no ads besides actual sponsorships that are part of the video, which are the kind of ads people who hate modern advertising say they want — not “targeted at me” but rather “alongside content that is related to the ad.” If you just aren’t into “short form” video (or what used to pass for short until TikTok came around, lol) I can see how it would be unappealing to pay for a site you don’t use much, but YouTube premium is my ideal way for media to work.
  - rtsil 3y ago
    I had Red/Premium as part of my Google Music subscription, but they decided to kill that.
    - xp84 3y ago
      I assume YTM is far inferior to what you had? That's bundled with my premium, but I don't use it much on account of Apple Music's integration with my own longtime music library (which, ironically, I remember GM being also strong with letting you upload your own collection)
- 2devnull 3y ago
  I used to watch YouTube daily. I’m now done to once a week and more often than not it’s a terrible experience. If there are others like me, that seems like a death spiral. The more leave, the more ads must be shown, the worse the platform gets, the more people leave…
- RankingMember 3y ago
  Some are real bad, you have those unskippable ads PLUS the in-video sponsored segments.
  - miah_ 3y ago
    You can get a addon called 'SponsorBlock' that fixes in-video sponsored segments. It allows anybody to submit timestamps for sponsored segments, and tag them in various ways. Its on Chrome too I think. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/
    - RankingMember 3y ago
      Yeah, the bummer is if I'm trying to watch YouTube on my Roku TV I'm stuck getting the full Monty of YouTube's ad experience.
- dingledork69 3y ago
  It used to be that you wouldn't get youtube ads on a chromecast. That changed and I never use the thing anymore since it can't block ads. A shame.
the_af 3y ago
Browsing the web without an adblocker is... illuminating. A vision into a corporate hellscape of garbage constantly screaming for your attention. I'm sure they don't allow adblockers in Hell.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  IME you learn which sites and services can balance ads vs user needs. So it's only hell if insist on consuming from those who don't care enough about you. Of course if ad blocking gets too be too mainstream all that will be left are 'native' ads and directly paid content.
  - the_af 3y ago
    I don't use "sites", I use the internet. I don't know, beforehand, which page I'll land on. Some sites I do use out of necessity, because I follow the "content"/"community", and it happens to be there: YouTube, Facebook. It saddens me to no end a lot of groups of niche interests are only on Facebook, but if I don't want to end up talking to myself, I'm forced to use it.

belter 3y ago

I am even more amazed, about companies paying for ads, while seeming to ignore most users will not see them as they use adblocks plugins.

psychphysic 3y ago
They won't be paying for content that wasn't loaded.
- belter 3y ago
  Is that true in all cases? It seems for example for Cost-per-mille (CPM) advertising if a user has an ad-blocker, they will not see the ad, but it would still count towards the number of impressions if the ad request is made?
  - psychphysic 3y ago
    > in all cases No idea of course. I couldn't tell you any anything in ALL cases. But the ad space is dominated by a few companies and all do that as far as I know. The other dominating ad space is spliced into videos and they certainly know you will skip around if you can on YouTube. > If a request is made It won't be made that's what adblockers do. Or it won't land in the case of pihole/DNS level blockers. Otherwise it wouldn't speed up browsing and tracking would continue unhindered.
    - ElectricalUnion 3y ago
      There's some adblockers focused on disrupting tracking and those will both intentionally load ads and automatically click on every one of them for you. https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/
      - psychphysic 3y ago
        Neat idea, I'd worry that the tracking is worse than the benefit. That said I routinely let long YouTube ads play while I go off to do something else. Personal best was circa 1.5hour ad! Someone told me that costs them big bucks so long as it's not skipped.

jacurtis 3y ago

> how do people who build web stuff daily not know.. I'll stop it right there. You'd be surprised how many people who build web stuff daily know surprisingly little about how the web actually works or any details aside from that. A surprisingly massive portion of people in tech have learned just enough through bootcamps and youtube videos to accomplish just enough for the specific job they are doing without realizing how it works or anything deeper than simple what to type to fix a problem. For example: I'm shocked at the number of even senior web developers that I work with who don't know the difference between an A record and a CNAME record in DNS or even the basics of how DNS works. It is surprising how many people don't understand basic port mapping or even how a compiler works at a high level. There is a whole generation of tech workers that only understand how to swing a hammer, and rely strictly on these tools without knowing anything larger in scope than the hammer and nails in front of them. The world of tech has turned into white collar factory workers for the vast majority of its' participants.

abustamam 3y ago
I've been in the field for seven years, primarily working for startups, and though I'm primarily FE I've dabbled in some backend stuff, and I've deployed many apps. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what the difference between CNAME or A record is. All I know is when it comes time for deployment, I go to Google cloud DNS or AWS's equivalent and follow the instructions on how to deploy. If things don't work, I Google it. I understand your higher level point (these boot camp guys don't understand even the basics) but where do you draw the line between basics and not basics? Many people couldn't employé Dijkstra's algorithm, or A*, or an efficient sorting algorithm. Many people couldn't tell you how memory works outside of "don't try to load 1million things from a database." But if they're hired as a FE/BE engineer, and can perform the tasks provided to them 99% of the time (and googling / enriching themselves that 1%) what's the concern here?
dlisboa 3y ago
It’s not even those professionals, I’m talking people who are highly skilled and trained (CS/Engineering degrees). Like they could tell you off the top of their head HOW to build an adblocker, but they don’t use one themselves. That type of disconnect that is weird to me. People who don’t know any better I can understand.

all2 3y ago

It doesn't work for Prime videos with ads, which is irritating (I pay for Prime so I don't have to see ads, among other benefits).

eipi10_hn 3y ago
You mean Amazon Prime? With this release, it's already addressed: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/14512#issuecomment-1565946605 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/14512#issueco... However, until the stable release is out for all supported browsers, you'll need dev (pre-release) build (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases) to test it. What we need are users' reports and feedbacks. For example, I don't know if the domain is `amazon.com` or `primevideo.com`.

kapitanjakc 3y ago

I train people in web, and here's my observation. Younger generation is comfortable with ads, paying for extra items in their games, purchasing stuff from those ads, installing apps from the ads etc. They also are comfortable in knowing only their scope of work and they get only that much done. Older generation people, they very rarely will pay for items in games online, will curse when ads are targeted. They also tend to work better if they understand overall scenario.

pmontra 3y ago
Think how wide the web is now and what it was 30 years ago. The scope of work of those young people will get wider, maybe only a fraction of what happened to the web, and they'll know the overall picture because they grew with it. Younger people will know only a very specific subject and will be frowned upon.
mldbk 3y ago
> They also tend to work better if they understand overall scenario. THIS!

aequitas 3y ago

I encountered it kinda the other way around. In a previous job I had developed a deployment system for developers. Some users on one specific team only where complaining their deployment would not show up in the tool. Though they where properly deployed after the pressed the button. Many debug sessions later I sat down with one developer and found the issue. Their team “advertising” had the team name in the deployments. So the request to get deploy status would be blocked because all of them ran adblockers themselves.