4 ms·

> everything about the web is fine tuned to deliver ads to our eyeballs, browsers, operating systems and even protocols are being designed with ad delivery in m

by drnick1 2mo ago

> everything about the web is fine tuned to deliver ads to our eyeballs, browsers, operating systems and even protocols are being designed with ad delivery in mind. I use Firefox with uBlock Origin on Linux, and haven't seen an ad in years. It's not like ads weren't a thing 20 years ago. Pop-up windows were particularly bad. Javascript, in particular, has been constantly abused against the user ever since it was created.

mschild 2mo ago
> Firefox with uBlock Origin on Linux Same setup and same experience. I've recently joined another company which only provided chrome with no extensions by default. I know the web is filled with ads but I'm shocked again and again when I get a glimpse into what it's like without an adblocker.
- cwnyth 2mo ago
  There are dozens of us. Maybe one day people will realize how much better Firefox is now and how nicer the web can be with no ads.
  - anonymousiam 2mo ago
    It's not just a better user experience. It also addresses the security issues. Blocking ads will also prevent malware scripts, unscrupulous information collection, and deceptive virus infection messages. I've got friends who've been infected because they believed the popup that told them their computer had a virus, and they needed to click the link to remove it.
    - endless_smash 2mo ago
      Blocking ads is recommended by CISA. It should really be more mainstream. Some demographics are heavy ad blockers, 90%+.
  - piguin 2mo ago
    [dead]
  - MollyRealized 2mo ago
    Firefox could be doing a great deal more if it had a more imaginative corporate leadership.
    - yencabulator 2mo ago
      Firefox could be doing a great deal better if it had less imaginative corporate leadership. Just pay salaries for Servo developers and watch the browser get better.
paradox460 2mo ago
Funny, I literally just saw an ad for Firefox
GaryBluto 2mo ago
Popup windows could be easily blocked if you knew how, whilst modern in-page popup modals are much more tedious to deal with.
firatsarlar 2mo ago
So we have ad blockers, ad blocker detectors.... But apparently no ad blocker blocker. Should I continue? Block the blockers by blocking the blockage... ouch.
- ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
  > ad blocker blocker Manifest v3; Android
  - HenryMulligan 2mo ago
    Huh? I use Firefox on Android with uBlock Origin and it blocks ads just fine. I concur regarding Chrome though and try to avoid it.
- ajsnigrutin 2mo ago
  There are adblock blockers... some sites detect the ad blocker and prevent you from visiting the site without ads... so yeah, you then don't visit the site.
  - drnick1 2mo ago
    I just go back and ignore the website when that happens.
  - Tanoc 2mo ago
    Funnily enough most of those only work if the Javascript from an external resource is allowed to load. NoScript, no problem. Of course then you have to deal with NoScript, but it has so many other uses you'll be sorting your whitelist anyways.
crabbone 2mo ago
There's a difference. It was a matter of principle for a Web site (not) to use pop-up ads or ads in general. It would be highly inappropriate for a large and successful business to have (especially pop-up) ads in their product (unless ads was their business). Another aspect of ads from the early 2000: they were individually made for particular places, rarely generating any controversy. For example, I used to be a moderator on a forum dedicated to ActionScript, and we had a sponsor, who, basically paid our hosting expenses, and that sponsor had a banner in the header of the forum advertising lessons in Web design / programming. The banner was designed to match the overall forum appearance, it didn't track anyone's browsing history, didn't collect cookies... it was simply a big and fancy button linking to the sponsor's Web site. The problems really started with the "media buying" waterfalls, i.e. the automated ad delivery. Ad agencies automated their job by providing customers with (semi-, but increasingly fully-automatic) ways to design their ad campaigns. In order to make these campaigns at least somewhat effective, they needed to somehow automatically reproduce the situation similar to the one I described having in the ActionScript forum: they needed to find a good match between the audience and the ad, but they had to cut corners because of the automation and resort to the unsavory mechanisms of tracking users' behavior. The decrease in quality had to be compensated for by increase in quantity. And that's how we got here...
inigyou 2mo ago
I switched to a Firefox fork, but recently opened Firefox itself and was horrified to see the browser itself shoving ads in my face. Buy our VPN! Sign up to a Mozilla profile! Did you know about the extension store? Firefox (the product) and Mozilla (the for-profit company) are lost causes. Firefox (the technology) is still there, for now.
- rustcleaner 2mo ago
  I really like Mullvad Browser, which is Tor Browser -Tor +uBlock Origin, for clean & ephemeral browsing.
- abustamam 2mo ago
  The most annoying thing is whenever I encounter a form with an email input I get an ad right there -- "use our email mask relay! First five are free!" I can probably turn it off somehow but I feel like it should be opt-in or at least live elsewhere.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Just abandon Firefox and switch to another Firefox-based browser.
    - abustamam 2mo ago
      Any recs?
      - Gander5739 2mo ago
        If you're privacy-minded, I suggest Librewolf.
      - DarkUranium 2mo ago
        LobreWolf is a good recommendation, though if you want something with more "usual" defaults --- I love WaterFox, myself.
pmdr 2mo ago
> It's not like ads weren't a thing 20 years ago. Pop-up windows were particularly bad. Google pretty much declared war on those back then, providing reasonable-looking ad formats that could be integrated discreetly on the page (and as far as I remember, they had a limit of how many banners you could show). I really wish we could back to that. Now they serve animated/video ads.
jerojero 2mo ago
There's more to ads than banners and unskippable videos. I bet if you open YouTube, even with Adblock and sponsorblock, you'll see ads. "Tech" channels are nothing but ads because all they do is present products for people to buy. Even channels that do legos are ad channels. YouTube itself has become a platform for serving videos that are advertisement at their core. These videos are popular, get good engagement, pay the content creators and come in cheap for brands. This style of "journalism" extends to many other platforms.
- yaksha 2mo ago
  Watching Youtube through Brave browser and I can't remember the last time I saw ads (ads by youtube, not by the content creator within the video). Twitch is different story, platform ads certainly play there. Prior to Brave, ublock origin on Firefox provided a similar ad-free Youtube experience. I don't consider ad content like the tech channels you mention to be a negative. Informing people about new products is a useful service. The ads that are negative are those that impose themselves over other content or mess with normal internet browsing experience.
  - queenkjuul 2mo ago
    I wasn't even seeing twitch ads with Firefox and uBO
  - jerojero 2mo ago
    Personally I do consider them a negative because they are not really realistic and grounded when giving reviews. It's a different story if it's a person that's used a device that they bought for a year. But these tech youtubers, they are extremely dependent on a good relationship with the brands because what brings them money is doing the "reviews" on day 1 (if not before) and they can only do that if they have a good standing with the brands. Meaning they will can only talk the product in a way that they know the brand is going to be okay with, mentioning obvious flaws that are easy to disregard ("it's not the best value for the money" is a classic). This is bad because this type of journalism is constantly moving the window of what's acceptable. Channels that are truly critical (for example gamersnexus) don't get any support from brands. Channels like that are rare, of course, they do exist. So, to reiterate my point, these channels are not informing: they're selling. There's a really good documentary with Noam Chomsky called "manufacturing consent" that really gives a good overview of this topic. Well, it's about politics, but the same applies for marketing.
rustcleaner 2mo ago
I use Mullvad Browser, which is Tor Browser -Tor +uBlock Origin. No you don't need Mullvad VPN to use Mullvad Browser.

by drnick1 2mo ago

mschild 2mo ago

> Firefox with uBlock Origin on Linux Same setup and same experience. I've recently joined another company which only provided chrome with no extensions by default. I know the web is filled with ads but I'm shocked again and again when I get a glimpse into what it's like without an adblocker.

cwnyth 2mo ago
There are dozens of us. Maybe one day people will realize how much better Firefox is now and how nicer the web can be with no ads.
- anonymousiam 2mo ago
  It's not just a better user experience. It also addresses the security issues. Blocking ads will also prevent malware scripts, unscrupulous information collection, and deceptive virus infection messages. I've got friends who've been infected because they believed the popup that told them their computer had a virus, and they needed to click the link to remove it.
  - endless_smash 2mo ago
    Blocking ads is recommended by CISA. It should really be more mainstream. Some demographics are heavy ad blockers, 90%+.
- piguin 2mo ago
  [dead]
- MollyRealized 2mo ago
  Firefox could be doing a great deal more if it had a more imaginative corporate leadership.
  - yencabulator 2mo ago
    Firefox could be doing a great deal better if it had less imaginative corporate leadership. Just pay salaries for Servo developers and watch the browser get better.

paradox460 2mo ago

Funny, I literally just saw an ad for Firefox

GaryBluto 2mo ago

Popup windows could be easily blocked if you knew how, whilst modern in-page popup modals are much more tedious to deal with.

firatsarlar 2mo ago

So we have ad blockers, ad blocker detectors.... But apparently no ad blocker blocker. Should I continue? Block the blockers by blocking the blockage... ouch.

ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
> ad blocker blocker Manifest v3; Android
- HenryMulligan 2mo ago
  Huh? I use Firefox on Android with uBlock Origin and it blocks ads just fine. I concur regarding Chrome though and try to avoid it.
ajsnigrutin 2mo ago
There are adblock blockers... some sites detect the ad blocker and prevent you from visiting the site without ads... so yeah, you then don't visit the site.
- drnick1 2mo ago
  I just go back and ignore the website when that happens.
- Tanoc 2mo ago
  Funnily enough most of those only work if the Javascript from an external resource is allowed to load. NoScript, no problem. Of course then you have to deal with NoScript, but it has so many other uses you'll be sorting your whitelist anyways.

crabbone 2mo ago

There's a difference. It was a matter of principle for a Web site (not) to use pop-up ads or ads in general. It would be highly inappropriate for a large and successful business to have (especially pop-up) ads in their product (unless ads was their business). Another aspect of ads from the early 2000: they were individually made for particular places, rarely generating any controversy. For example, I used to be a moderator on a forum dedicated to ActionScript, and we had a sponsor, who, basically paid our hosting expenses, and that sponsor had a banner in the header of the forum advertising lessons in Web design / programming. The banner was designed to match the overall forum appearance, it didn't track anyone's browsing history, didn't collect cookies... it was simply a big and fancy button linking to the sponsor's Web site. The problems really started with the "media buying" waterfalls, i.e. the automated ad delivery. Ad agencies automated their job by providing customers with (semi-, but increasingly fully-automatic) ways to design their ad campaigns. In order to make these campaigns at least somewhat effective, they needed to somehow automatically reproduce the situation similar to the one I described having in the ActionScript forum: they needed to find a good match between the audience and the ad, but they had to cut corners because of the automation and resort to the unsavory mechanisms of tracking users' behavior. The decrease in quality had to be compensated for by increase in quantity. And that's how we got here...

inigyou 2mo ago

I switched to a Firefox fork, but recently opened Firefox itself and was horrified to see the browser itself shoving ads in my face. Buy our VPN! Sign up to a Mozilla profile! Did you know about the extension store? Firefox (the product) and Mozilla (the for-profit company) are lost causes. Firefox (the technology) is still there, for now.

rustcleaner 2mo ago
I really like Mullvad Browser, which is Tor Browser -Tor +uBlock Origin, for clean & ephemeral browsing.
abustamam 2mo ago
The most annoying thing is whenever I encounter a form with an email input I get an ad right there -- "use our email mask relay! First five are free!" I can probably turn it off somehow but I feel like it should be opt-in or at least live elsewhere.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Just abandon Firefox and switch to another Firefox-based browser.
  - abustamam 2mo ago
    Any recs?
    - Gander5739 2mo ago
      If you're privacy-minded, I suggest Librewolf.
    - DarkUranium 2mo ago
      LobreWolf is a good recommendation, though if you want something with more "usual" defaults --- I love WaterFox, myself.

pmdr 2mo ago

> It's not like ads weren't a thing 20 years ago. Pop-up windows were particularly bad. Google pretty much declared war on those back then, providing reasonable-looking ad formats that could be integrated discreetly on the page (and as far as I remember, they had a limit of how many banners you could show). I really wish we could back to that. Now they serve animated/video ads.

jerojero 2mo ago

There's more to ads than banners and unskippable videos. I bet if you open YouTube, even with Adblock and sponsorblock, you'll see ads. "Tech" channels are nothing but ads because all they do is present products for people to buy. Even channels that do legos are ad channels. YouTube itself has become a platform for serving videos that are advertisement at their core. These videos are popular, get good engagement, pay the content creators and come in cheap for brands. This style of "journalism" extends to many other platforms.

yaksha 2mo ago
Watching Youtube through Brave browser and I can't remember the last time I saw ads (ads by youtube, not by the content creator within the video). Twitch is different story, platform ads certainly play there. Prior to Brave, ublock origin on Firefox provided a similar ad-free Youtube experience. I don't consider ad content like the tech channels you mention to be a negative. Informing people about new products is a useful service. The ads that are negative are those that impose themselves over other content or mess with normal internet browsing experience.
- queenkjuul 2mo ago
  I wasn't even seeing twitch ads with Firefox and uBO
- jerojero 2mo ago
  Personally I do consider them a negative because they are not really realistic and grounded when giving reviews. It's a different story if it's a person that's used a device that they bought for a year. But these tech youtubers, they are extremely dependent on a good relationship with the brands because what brings them money is doing the "reviews" on day 1 (if not before) and they can only do that if they have a good standing with the brands. Meaning they will can only talk the product in a way that they know the brand is going to be okay with, mentioning obvious flaws that are easy to disregard ("it's not the best value for the money" is a classic). This is bad because this type of journalism is constantly moving the window of what's acceptable. Channels that are truly critical (for example gamersnexus) don't get any support from brands. Channels like that are rare, of course, they do exist. So, to reiterate my point, these channels are not informing: they're selling. There's a really good documentary with Noam Chomsky called "manufacturing consent" that really gives a good overview of this topic. Well, it's about politics, but the same applies for marketing.

rustcleaner 2mo ago

I use Mullvad Browser, which is Tor Browser -Tor +uBlock Origin. No you don't need Mullvad VPN to use Mullvad Browser.