10 ms·

I am extremely insulated from ads online and have been for about a decade. Once in a while I have to browse on a device that does not have an ad blocker or most

by ksynwa 1y ago

I am extremely insulated from ads online and have been for about a decade. Once in a while I have to browse on a device that does not have an ad blocker or most of the times does not even let you install one. Seeing a website that is SEoptimised and heavily ad supported feels like walking into a crack den. That this is the normal experience for the vast majority of users is sad.

pea 1y ago
I wonder if you could spend a few million on promoting adblockers to justify a short position on Google or Meta.
- jbstack 1y ago
  You'd have to be very careful not to run afoul of insider trading and/or market manipulation laws. Whether you would or not would depend on all the details and the jurisdiction.
  - loeg 1y ago
    Not in the US. There's no insider trading angle at all, and it's not fraudulent market manipulation to attempt to persuade consumers to cease supporting a business you're shorting as long as you're not lying about it.
    - jbstack 1y ago
      Hence why I qualified that it depends on the details and the jurisdiction. I didn't say it is insider trading, just that you need to be careful to avoid that. > There's no insider trading angle at all Such a blanket statement would definitely be wrong in the UK for example. Insider trading is defined at Section 52(1) of the Criminal Justice act 1993 as: "(1)An individual who has information as an insider is guilty of insider dealing if, in the circumstances mentioned in subsection (3), he deals in securities that are price-affected securities in relation to the information." Whether you trigger the offence depends on a number of factors such as whether the information is "inside" information and whether you were an "insider" (these terms are defined in subsequent sections of the Act). As an example, if you were an employee of a listed company (not such an unlikely scenario given the capital requirements to pull this off) that was about to engage in the proposed scheme (publishing pro-adblock adverts) and it wasn't yet publicly known (which would be necessary if you want the scheme to be fully effective), and you shorted Google shares, you could easily fall foul of insider trading. I'm not particularly familiar with the US legal system so I can't claim you're wrong there.
      - loeg 1y ago
        IMO you don't need to be particularly careful to avoid insider trading if you were never at risk of doing it. It's pretty obvious when you have a duty of confidentiality and when you don't (again, in the US). The hypothetical scenario upthread just doesn't have any of the elements. > As an example, if you were an employee of a listed company (not such an unlikely scenario given the capital requirements to pull this off) that was about to engage in the proposed scheme (publishing pro-adblock adverts) and it wasn't yet publicly known (which would be necessary if you want the scheme to be fully effective), and you shorted Google shares, you could easily fall foul of insider trading. Yeah, that isn't the scenario described earlier at all. Here's what was proposed: > I wonder if you could spend a few million on promoting adblockers to justify a short position on Google or Meta. In this sentence, the entity performing the short and performing the advertising are one and the same.
        jbstack 1y ago
        Realistically, the vast majority of people don't have a "few million" lying around that they can just casually risk on a huge gamble like this. It's likely you have at least several tens of millions but more likely hundreds of millions before the risk/reward would even come close to making sense (because you wouldn't want to commit most of your resources). The most plausible scenario is therefore something like a hedge fund. You're reading "you" to mean the reader (highly implausible), I'm reading it as the generic/impersonal "you" (as in "one could spend..."). So sure, there are a tiny percentage of people who might consider doing this themselves and they don't need to worry about insider trading (although we're still pretty close to market manipulation where the sole purpose of the adverts is to crash the share price and profit from that). A much larger percentage of people who might consider such a thing would need to at least examine whether they might trigger insider trading laws. Blanket statements don't work here.
    - immibis 1y ago
      IIRC insider trading is any trading based on any non-public information. Everyone knows you're running ads because they can see the ads, but not everyone knows how long you're going to run them for, or how much you're paying for them, and that would be enough. Also if you do it before you start the ad campaign, that's non-public knowledge, similar to a pump-and-dump.
      - loeg 1y ago
        Wrong. Insider trading is about breaching your duty of confidentiality to some other party who owns the information (your employer, some other business you have an NDA with, etc). The owner of the non-public information is fully allowed to trade on it. Pump and dumps are fraud because you lie about the target stock in order to achieve the pump. The lying is a crucial element to make it fraudulent.
        immibis 1y ago
        > Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) based on material, nonpublic information about the company.[1] In many countries, some kinds of trading based on insider information are illegal. The rationale for this prohibition of insider trading differs between countries and regions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading
        loeg 1y ago
        The context of this thread[1], which you replied to, is specifically the US law. You are wrong on the US law. Wikipedia's general statements about what some countries do is not authoritative or specific to the US. US law does not generally prohibit insiders from trading. It prohibits doing so only in breach of some obligation to keep that information private[2] ("in breach of a fiduciary duty or other relationship of trust and confidence"). [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45178318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45178318 [2]: https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/glossary/insider-trading https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba...
- kelvinjps10 1y ago
  Brave did this they ran ads on Facebook and YouTube where they would show ads telling you how to install brave to stop receiving them. Also they criticized because brave themselves was showing ads
  - port11 1y ago
    People love a good black-or-white purity attack on companies that try to do better. Yes, they show ads, but at what cost for your personal privacy? We have to be able to handle nuance rather than absolutist positions.
  - sidrag22 1y ago
    eh, thats tough to critique imo, it might be an end, but the end result is considerably less ads in the future. only thing that makes it a little odd of a spot is that its THEIR product, but i think a nice person randomly trying to spread the word of ublock or something through ads is more than justified. i guess its also a bummer they are financially supporting facebook/youtube, but maybe the end result would be break even if they get enough people to utilize adblocking. thats pretty crazy compound interest over time for even just like 3 people
jdprgm 1y ago
I really can't comprehend how aggressive ad blocking isn't the norm and at 90%+ at this point. Whenever someone just doesn't seem to care i'm concerned something is wrong with them. Youtube ad blocking was briefly not working for me recently and the volume of ads just while doing some chores which forced interrupting flow to go manually skip was astounding and enraging. It's like if I was at a quiet library and every 30 seconds someone randomly started screaming yet half the people have a reaction of "meh, doesn't bother me".
- ryandrake 1y ago
  I think people are just hopelessly used to their lives being saturated with ads. On TV, on the Internet, on radio, on billboards, at restaurants, at the airport, at the gas station, in stores, out of stores, almost every surface that could have an ad on it either does now or will one day. This saturation has been so complete and normalized that people are blind to it.
  - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
    Indignant Fry: But not in dreams! No siree. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPGgTy5YJ-g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPGgTy5YJ-g
  - kelvinjps10 1y ago
    I wonder if they're effective at all at this point
  - timw4mail 1y ago
    Ugghh, gas stations. I remember being able to use a pump without ads :(
    - joquarky 1y ago
      The second button down from the top right usually mutes them.
- nananana9 1y ago
ruined 1y ago
funny thought: i would speculate that the demographic intersection of web users and crack users has a higher utilization of adblock than all web users
- teiferer 1y ago
  ... as well as all crack users.
  - ruined 1y ago
    idk those hardcore offline guys do A LOT of billboard vandalism
darkwater 1y ago
With uBlock Origin you can actually click on the first Google results for any search, scroll down a bit the initial yadda yadda and find the actual answer to your search even in those webSEOtes that are usually just ads over ads.
bambax 1y ago
I'm in the same boat. I never see ads anywhere (and not just on the web: I never watch regular TV (I don't even have a TV), never listen to ads-supported radio stations, etc.) How people put up with ads is a complete mystery.
- brador 1y ago
  Flick the bean once a month to see which products and services you’re missing out on. Picked up a nice cleaner and hiking boots that my ad blockers were denying me last month. Life changing.
  - spaqin 1y ago
    Are you sure you needed them? What was stopping you from doing the research without a third party shoving whatever they will make money on?
    - brador 1y ago
      Attention. The ads sent it to the front and kickstarted the research phase which led to purchase. I didn’t need them. But it’s like walking on a cloud and the fit is perfect. Mostly chance, but that ad started the push.
  - cammikebrown 1y ago
    Dropship instagram ad products are famously high quality and not a scam!
  - Y_Y 1y ago
    https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flick%20the%20bean https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flick%20the%... Interesting choice of phrase
    - _9ptr 1y ago
      A real donkey punch of a metaphore
Freak_NL 1y ago
Whenever I open Google's Play Store on Android I get this feeling of walking into some dystopic shopping mall. I hardly ever come there (F-Droid covers all utilities for me, so Google's own app store is really only for official apps from banks, public transport, etc.), so its user hostile design always hits me like a wall of visual noise and clutter. At these moments that feeling that for most people getting bombarded by ads is normal hits hard. I'm always wondering when the ride will end and uBlock Origin can't protect us any longer.
- mahrain 1y ago
  What always surprises me is the sheer amount of fake, scammy, apps trying to appear as if they're something else. Trying to steal clicks from users looking for Adblock, VLC or other legitimate apps... it's a mess!
  - ainiriand 1y ago
    If it serves any purpose just today I've published docscandroid.app just because the document scanners out there are really scary and do not really fit my purpose. My app is not perfect but its mine and that is enough.
    - chaosite 1y ago
      If you built your own app that does exactly what you want for your own use, kudos and more power to you. But otherwise... You're competing with Google. The built-in Drive app does document scanning.
    - hiatus 1y ago
      The parent poster decries fake and scammy apps, and you post a link to an app that contains absolutely zero information on who controls it, how my data is used, where my data is stored, etc.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    Yes, this is exactly why Google's claims of locking down apps on Android for security are such hot bullshit. Its such an obvious lie. I don't need alternative app stores to download malware and scams, that play store is full of that. And it's advertised front and center.
rs186 1y ago
I have DNS based adblocking on home router, plus adblock extension. Every time I use the web using 5G data or public wifi, I regret the experience. Then I immediately turn on an adblocking VPN.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
  Mullvad has a free DoH service, FYI. It can potentially replace your self-hosted service, at least for your phone, so you don't forget to set it up when you leave home. https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls
- driverdan 1y ago
  Firefox Mobile + uBlock solves this.
  - Larrikin 1y ago
    Firefox + Tailscale + setting the DNS server to your AdGuard/PiHole is actually the better solution overall. I use AdNauseum instead of plain uBlock as just an added layer of protection but it's rarely needed.
  - rs186 1y ago
    Can't help with ads in embedded web content, e.g. nytimes app.
jollyllama 1y ago
Yeah. I use brave on all my devices. When somebody shows me a YouTube video on their device and three ads play before the video, or loads a local news page with all the ads, my reaction is "Wow! They sure are bombarding you guys to make up for us free-riders!"
moolcool 1y ago
The quality control of even mainline ad platforms is abysmal as well. Like on YouTube, I used to get deep-fakes of the Canadian prime minister trying to sell some crypto scam. You'd literally click through to a phishing site disguised as a Canada Revenue Agency page.
Jzush 1y ago
Indeed seeing ads almost feels like I’ve been physically assaulted. Using YouTube in our streaming devices reminds me of the old Cable days where you watch 2minutes of something and get slapped in the face with 5 minutes of ads. It really feels like being assaulted. Watching chill content only to have some ad scream at you, does not make me want to buy your product. I actively go out of my way not to buy things advertised to me on YouTube.
Yeul 1y ago
I have visited websites that are literally unusable because of ads. Do companies even care anymore? Is everyone THAT desperate for advertising revenue?
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
"I am extremely insulated from ads online and have been for about a decade." I am insulted by the so-called "modern" browser controlled and distributed by (a) companies that sell internet advertising services or (b) their business partners The ad annoyances would not be possible but for these bloated, sluggish, omnibus programs enabling data collection, ads and tracking by default^1 Every time I have to use one of these programs to access the web it is a terrible experience. Never having visited a crack den, I cannot say whether it is similar. In any event, it's bad Sometimes I use these browsers to access files offline or on own local network, such as MP4s and PDFs; I think maybe that is all they might be good for As "ad blockers" depend 100% on the so-called "modern" browser I would be very surprised if "ad blockers" remain effective for much longer, maybe 5-10 years at most; I dislike making predictions but I believe the end of the "ad blocker" as browser extension is inevitable Already this prediction is starting to come true in Chrome 1. "The message won't be shown in browsers that don't support JavaScript, because those don't need adblockers to begin with." Even just a browser that did not enable Javascript by default would suffice
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
  s/insulted/insulated/ But I'm insulted, too
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
  1. "insulated from" <-- "ad blocker" 2. "exposed by" <-- so-called "modern" browser When #2 is not used, there is no need for #1 That is, #2 creates the need for #1 If stop using #2, then "ads" problem is solved
bearbearbear 1y ago
[dead]

by ksynwa 1y ago

pea 1y ago

I wonder if you could spend a few million on promoting adblockers to justify a short position on Google or Meta.

jbstack 1y ago
You'd have to be very careful not to run afoul of insider trading and/or market manipulation laws. Whether you would or not would depend on all the details and the jurisdiction.
- loeg 1y ago
  Not in the US. There's no insider trading angle at all, and it's not fraudulent market manipulation to attempt to persuade consumers to cease supporting a business you're shorting as long as you're not lying about it.
  - jbstack 1y ago
    Hence why I qualified that it depends on the details and the jurisdiction. I didn't say it is insider trading, just that you need to be careful to avoid that. > There's no insider trading angle at all Such a blanket statement would definitely be wrong in the UK for example. Insider trading is defined at Section 52(1) of the Criminal Justice act 1993 as: "(1)An individual who has information as an insider is guilty of insider dealing if, in the circumstances mentioned in subsection (3), he deals in securities that are price-affected securities in relation to the information." Whether you trigger the offence depends on a number of factors such as whether the information is "inside" information and whether you were an "insider" (these terms are defined in subsequent sections of the Act). As an example, if you were an employee of a listed company (not such an unlikely scenario given the capital requirements to pull this off) that was about to engage in the proposed scheme (publishing pro-adblock adverts) and it wasn't yet publicly known (which would be necessary if you want the scheme to be fully effective), and you shorted Google shares, you could easily fall foul of insider trading. I'm not particularly familiar with the US legal system so I can't claim you're wrong there.
    - loeg 1y ago
      IMO you don't need to be particularly careful to avoid insider trading if you were never at risk of doing it. It's pretty obvious when you have a duty of confidentiality and when you don't (again, in the US). The hypothetical scenario upthread just doesn't have any of the elements. > As an example, if you were an employee of a listed company (not such an unlikely scenario given the capital requirements to pull this off) that was about to engage in the proposed scheme (publishing pro-adblock adverts) and it wasn't yet publicly known (which would be necessary if you want the scheme to be fully effective), and you shorted Google shares, you could easily fall foul of insider trading. Yeah, that isn't the scenario described earlier at all. Here's what was proposed: > I wonder if you could spend a few million on promoting adblockers to justify a short position on Google or Meta. In this sentence, the entity performing the short and performing the advertising are one and the same.
      - jbstack 1y ago
        Realistically, the vast majority of people don't have a "few million" lying around that they can just casually risk on a huge gamble like this. It's likely you have at least several tens of millions but more likely hundreds of millions before the risk/reward would even come close to making sense (because you wouldn't want to commit most of your resources). The most plausible scenario is therefore something like a hedge fund. You're reading "you" to mean the reader (highly implausible), I'm reading it as the generic/impersonal "you" (as in "one could spend..."). So sure, there are a tiny percentage of people who might consider doing this themselves and they don't need to worry about insider trading (although we're still pretty close to market manipulation where the sole purpose of the adverts is to crash the share price and profit from that). A much larger percentage of people who might consider such a thing would need to at least examine whether they might trigger insider trading laws. Blanket statements don't work here.
  - immibis 1y ago
    IIRC insider trading is any trading based on any non-public information. Everyone knows you're running ads because they can see the ads, but not everyone knows how long you're going to run them for, or how much you're paying for them, and that would be enough. Also if you do it before you start the ad campaign, that's non-public knowledge, similar to a pump-and-dump.
    - loeg 1y ago
      Wrong. Insider trading is about breaching your duty of confidentiality to some other party who owns the information (your employer, some other business you have an NDA with, etc). The owner of the non-public information is fully allowed to trade on it. Pump and dumps are fraud because you lie about the target stock in order to achieve the pump. The lying is a crucial element to make it fraudulent.
      - immibis 1y ago
        > Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) based on material, nonpublic information about the company.[1] In many countries, some kinds of trading based on insider information are illegal. The rationale for this prohibition of insider trading differs between countries and regions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading
        loeg 1y ago
        The context of this thread[1], which you replied to, is specifically the US law. You are wrong on the US law. Wikipedia's general statements about what some countries do is not authoritative or specific to the US. US law does not generally prohibit insiders from trading. It prohibits doing so only in breach of some obligation to keep that information private[2] ("in breach of a fiduciary duty or other relationship of trust and confidence"). [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45178318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45178318 [2]: https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/glossary/insider-trading https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba...
kelvinjps10 1y ago
Brave did this they ran ads on Facebook and YouTube where they would show ads telling you how to install brave to stop receiving them. Also they criticized because brave themselves was showing ads
- port11 1y ago
  People love a good black-or-white purity attack on companies that try to do better. Yes, they show ads, but at what cost for your personal privacy? We have to be able to handle nuance rather than absolutist positions.
- sidrag22 1y ago
  eh, thats tough to critique imo, it might be an end, but the end result is considerably less ads in the future. only thing that makes it a little odd of a spot is that its THEIR product, but i think a nice person randomly trying to spread the word of ublock or something through ads is more than justified. i guess its also a bummer they are financially supporting facebook/youtube, but maybe the end result would be break even if they get enough people to utilize adblocking. thats pretty crazy compound interest over time for even just like 3 people

jdprgm 1y ago

I really can't comprehend how aggressive ad blocking isn't the norm and at 90%+ at this point. Whenever someone just doesn't seem to care i'm concerned something is wrong with them. Youtube ad blocking was briefly not working for me recently and the volume of ads just while doing some chores which forced interrupting flow to go manually skip was astounding and enraging. It's like if I was at a quiet library and every 30 seconds someone randomly started screaming yet half the people have a reaction of "meh, doesn't bother me".

ryandrake 1y ago
I think people are just hopelessly used to their lives being saturated with ads. On TV, on the Internet, on radio, on billboards, at restaurants, at the airport, at the gas station, in stores, out of stores, almost every surface that could have an ad on it either does now or will one day. This saturation has been so complete and normalized that people are blind to it.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  Indignant Fry: But not in dreams! No siree. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPGgTy5YJ-g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPGgTy5YJ-g
- kelvinjps10 1y ago
  I wonder if they're effective at all at this point
- timw4mail 1y ago
  Ugghh, gas stations. I remember being able to use a pump without ads :(
  - joquarky 1y ago
    The second button down from the top right usually mutes them.
nananana9 1y ago

ruined 1y ago

funny thought: i would speculate that the demographic intersection of web users and crack users has a higher utilization of adblock than all web users

teiferer 1y ago
... as well as all crack users.
- ruined 1y ago
  idk those hardcore offline guys do A LOT of billboard vandalism

darkwater 1y ago

With uBlock Origin you can actually click on the first Google results for any search, scroll down a bit the initial yadda yadda and find the actual answer to your search even in those webSEOtes that are usually just ads over ads.

bambax 1y ago

I'm in the same boat. I never see ads anywhere (and not just on the web: I never watch regular TV (I don't even have a TV), never listen to ads-supported radio stations, etc.) How people put up with ads is a complete mystery.

brador 1y ago
Flick the bean once a month to see which products and services you’re missing out on. Picked up a nice cleaner and hiking boots that my ad blockers were denying me last month. Life changing.
- spaqin 1y ago
  Are you sure you needed them? What was stopping you from doing the research without a third party shoving whatever they will make money on?
  - brador 1y ago
    Attention. The ads sent it to the front and kickstarted the research phase which led to purchase. I didn’t need them. But it’s like walking on a cloud and the fit is perfect. Mostly chance, but that ad started the push.
- cammikebrown 1y ago
  Dropship instagram ad products are famously high quality and not a scam!
- Y_Y 1y ago
  https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flick%20the%20bean https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flick%20the%... Interesting choice of phrase
  - _9ptr 1y ago
    A real donkey punch of a metaphore

Freak_NL 1y ago

Whenever I open Google's Play Store on Android I get this feeling of walking into some dystopic shopping mall. I hardly ever come there (F-Droid covers all utilities for me, so Google's own app store is really only for official apps from banks, public transport, etc.), so its user hostile design always hits me like a wall of visual noise and clutter. At these moments that feeling that for most people getting bombarded by ads is normal hits hard. I'm always wondering when the ride will end and uBlock Origin can't protect us any longer.

mahrain 1y ago
What always surprises me is the sheer amount of fake, scammy, apps trying to appear as if they're something else. Trying to steal clicks from users looking for Adblock, VLC or other legitimate apps... it's a mess!
- ainiriand 1y ago
  If it serves any purpose just today I've published docscandroid.app just because the document scanners out there are really scary and do not really fit my purpose. My app is not perfect but its mine and that is enough.
  - chaosite 1y ago
    If you built your own app that does exactly what you want for your own use, kudos and more power to you. But otherwise... You're competing with Google. The built-in Drive app does document scanning.
  - hiatus 1y ago
    The parent poster decries fake and scammy apps, and you post a link to an app that contains absolutely zero information on who controls it, how my data is used, where my data is stored, etc.
- const_cast 1y ago
  Yes, this is exactly why Google's claims of locking down apps on Android for security are such hot bullshit. Its such an obvious lie. I don't need alternative app stores to download malware and scams, that play store is full of that. And it's advertised front and center.

rs186 1y ago

I have DNS based adblocking on home router, plus adblock extension. Every time I use the web using 5G data or public wifi, I regret the experience. Then I immediately turn on an adblocking VPN.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
Mullvad has a free DoH service, FYI. It can potentially replace your self-hosted service, at least for your phone, so you don't forget to set it up when you leave home. https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls
driverdan 1y ago
Firefox Mobile + uBlock solves this.
- Larrikin 1y ago
  Firefox + Tailscale + setting the DNS server to your AdGuard/PiHole is actually the better solution overall. I use AdNauseum instead of plain uBlock as just an added layer of protection but it's rarely needed.
- rs186 1y ago
  Can't help with ads in embedded web content, e.g. nytimes app.

jollyllama 1y ago

Yeah. I use brave on all my devices. When somebody shows me a YouTube video on their device and three ads play before the video, or loads a local news page with all the ads, my reaction is "Wow! They sure are bombarding you guys to make up for us free-riders!"

moolcool 1y ago

The quality control of even mainline ad platforms is abysmal as well. Like on YouTube, I used to get deep-fakes of the Canadian prime minister trying to sell some crypto scam. You'd literally click through to a phishing site disguised as a Canada Revenue Agency page.

Jzush 1y ago

Indeed seeing ads almost feels like I’ve been physically assaulted. Using YouTube in our streaming devices reminds me of the old Cable days where you watch 2minutes of something and get slapped in the face with 5 minutes of ads. It really feels like being assaulted. Watching chill content only to have some ad scream at you, does not make me want to buy your product. I actively go out of my way not to buy things advertised to me on YouTube.

Yeul 1y ago

I have visited websites that are literally unusable because of ads. Do companies even care anymore? Is everyone THAT desperate for advertising revenue?

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

"I am extremely insulated from ads online and have been for about a decade." I am insulted by the so-called "modern" browser controlled and distributed by (a) companies that sell internet advertising services or (b) their business partners The ad annoyances would not be possible but for these bloated, sluggish, omnibus programs enabling data collection, ads and tracking by default^1 Every time I have to use one of these programs to access the web it is a terrible experience. Never having visited a crack den, I cannot say whether it is similar. In any event, it's bad Sometimes I use these browsers to access files offline or on own local network, such as MP4s and PDFs; I think maybe that is all they might be good for As "ad blockers" depend 100% on the so-called "modern" browser I would be very surprised if "ad blockers" remain effective for much longer, maybe 5-10 years at most; I dislike making predictions but I believe the end of the "ad blocker" as browser extension is inevitable Already this prediction is starting to come true in Chrome 1. "The message won't be shown in browsers that don't support JavaScript, because those don't need adblockers to begin with." Even just a browser that did not enable Javascript by default would suffice

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
s/insulted/insulated/ But I'm insulted, too
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
1. "insulated from" <-- "ad blocker" 2. "exposed by" <-- so-called "modern" browser When #2 is not used, there is no need for #1 That is, #2 creates the need for #1 If stop using #2, then "ads" problem is solved

bearbearbear 1y ago

[dead]