5 ms·

It’s crazy. Even with an adblocker you are subjected to a crazy amount of ads or hostile design. With ads, it’s just a free for all on your attention.

reactordev 3y ago
and for your cpu. Ads are the number one killer of performance.
- squarefoot 3y ago
  And money. Metered connections do exist, and ads consume a lot of bandwidth which is not free.
  - chakintosh 3y ago
    The cognitive load is the worst part of ads for me. The amounts of ads that display an X to close the banner only for that X to be an actual link to another fkn ad or straight up opens a new tab. Not to mention the invisible divs spanning the entire page so wherever you click, it's gonna open a link which is most of time either porn, betting sites or aliexpress. This sh* should be illegal.
    - specialist 3y ago
      Yup. They're pollution. (There's gotta be a phrase for "cognitive load" + "pollution".) I used to love tech ads. I'd inspect every ad in BYTE, Creative Computing, etc. I'd even buy Computer Shopper, a massive catalog interrupted by some articles, just for the ads. Ads can be useful, informative, and engaging. I wouldn't mind that.
      - epgui 3y ago
        I like the term “information pollution”.
    - reactordev 3y ago
      Oh and the list goes on. Click hijacking. Redirect soup. 1024 JavaScript tags that record the same events, only they all await each other. CNAME shenanigans. Unsubscribe really means subscribe to 1000 more. Request interception, email interception, email link rewrites in flight, await request to dead dns adserver with no timeout set making your page a hostage requiring closing the tab/browser and visiting page again.
    - getwiththeprog 3y ago
      I dont press the x, I use uBlocks ZAP feature to close unwanted elements.
      - chakintosh 3y ago
        I used something similar on Firefox to block unwanted divs from Facebook and Reddit but now Safari is my main browser and I haven't come across an extension that does that.
- RachelF 3y ago
  I wonder what the CO2 emissions of all these ads are?
  - iamacyborg 3y ago
    A lot, given the sheer number of network requests a single ad can spawn
    - gruez 3y ago
      "A lot", compared to what? A single household? Probably. As a percentage of overall global electricity consumption? Probably negligible. Some math with conservative estimates: * power consumption of mobile processor: 5W * daily ad use: 1 hour (assume it's 100% cpu for the entire time) * smartphone users: 7.8 billion (world population) Total yearly electricity consumption given the above: 2.8 TWh World electricity consumption: 23,921 TWh in 2019
      - wasmitnetzen 3y ago
        You'd have to include the servers doing the auctions, sentiment analysis, profiling,... into it as well. And then the whole ad industry, every email, every meeting, ... I don't think you can actually put a number on this waste.
        gruez 3y ago
        >You'd have to include the servers doing the auctions, sentiment analysis, profiling,... into it as well. Feel free to put up an estimate then. >I don't think you can actually put a number on this waste. Well that just makes it clear you're only interested in your feelings/vibes as opposed to anything objective.
        ploum 3y ago
        You have to include the fact that the very clear objective of advertising is to make you consume more. Thus producing more pollution than if there were no ads. So, even if advertising was technically neutral (which is clearly not the case), it would still be an ecological cataclysm. One would even argue that the whole climate emergency is created by our advertise/consume culture.
stjohnswarts 3y ago
hostile design, maybe? i use pihole and ublock and it's really rare that I see an ad on any of my devices. What am I doing wrong?

reactordev 3y ago

and for your cpu. Ads are the number one killer of performance.

squarefoot 3y ago
And money. Metered connections do exist, and ads consume a lot of bandwidth which is not free.
- chakintosh 3y ago
  The cognitive load is the worst part of ads for me. The amounts of ads that display an X to close the banner only for that X to be an actual link to another fkn ad or straight up opens a new tab. Not to mention the invisible divs spanning the entire page so wherever you click, it's gonna open a link which is most of time either porn, betting sites or aliexpress. This sh* should be illegal.
  - specialist 3y ago
    Yup. They're pollution. (There's gotta be a phrase for "cognitive load" + "pollution".) I used to love tech ads. I'd inspect every ad in BYTE, Creative Computing, etc. I'd even buy Computer Shopper, a massive catalog interrupted by some articles, just for the ads. Ads can be useful, informative, and engaging. I wouldn't mind that.
    - epgui 3y ago
      I like the term “information pollution”.
  - reactordev 3y ago
    Oh and the list goes on. Click hijacking. Redirect soup. 1024 JavaScript tags that record the same events, only they all await each other. CNAME shenanigans. Unsubscribe really means subscribe to 1000 more. Request interception, email interception, email link rewrites in flight, await request to dead dns adserver with no timeout set making your page a hostage requiring closing the tab/browser and visiting page again.
  - getwiththeprog 3y ago
    I dont press the x, I use uBlocks ZAP feature to close unwanted elements.
    - chakintosh 3y ago
      I used something similar on Firefox to block unwanted divs from Facebook and Reddit but now Safari is my main browser and I haven't come across an extension that does that.
RachelF 3y ago
I wonder what the CO2 emissions of all these ads are?
- iamacyborg 3y ago
  A lot, given the sheer number of network requests a single ad can spawn
  - gruez 3y ago
    "A lot", compared to what? A single household? Probably. As a percentage of overall global electricity consumption? Probably negligible. Some math with conservative estimates: * power consumption of mobile processor: 5W * daily ad use: 1 hour (assume it's 100% cpu for the entire time) * smartphone users: 7.8 billion (world population) Total yearly electricity consumption given the above: 2.8 TWh World electricity consumption: 23,921 TWh in 2019
    - wasmitnetzen 3y ago
      You'd have to include the servers doing the auctions, sentiment analysis, profiling,... into it as well. And then the whole ad industry, every email, every meeting, ... I don't think you can actually put a number on this waste.
      - gruez 3y ago
        >You'd have to include the servers doing the auctions, sentiment analysis, profiling,... into it as well. Feel free to put up an estimate then. >I don't think you can actually put a number on this waste. Well that just makes it clear you're only interested in your feelings/vibes as opposed to anything objective.
        ploum 3y ago
        You have to include the fact that the very clear objective of advertising is to make you consume more. Thus producing more pollution than if there were no ads. So, even if advertising was technically neutral (which is clearly not the case), it would still be an ecological cataclysm. One would even argue that the whole climate emergency is created by our advertise/consume culture.

stjohnswarts 3y ago

hostile design, maybe? i use pihole and ublock and it's really rare that I see an ad on any of my devices. What am I doing wrong?