Adblockers stop publishers serving ads to (or even seeing) 1bn web users - Press Gazette

Comments

• rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I actually like how people are again on the wave of understanding that anarchism is right even if you’ve voluntarily consented to hierarchy. And other similar things.

  Sometimes you need to break rules. Entropy and life are more important.

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  • Tiger666@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    One could only dream my friend. One day we will all help and care for each other.

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• arc99@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Sites are lazy and greedy. They throw dozens and dozens of 3rd party javascripts into their headers, that punish and annoy people for not using an ad blocker - they slow the site down, bloat the memory, consume energy, track the user and festoon the page with garbage. As soon as people hear that an ad blocker is a thing, then of course they leap at the chance of using one.

  It would be straightforward for sites to insert ads into their content - make the ad urls, images and links indistinguishable from actual content. i.e. serve them up from the same domain, from non predictable paths and use html structure where ads and content are intermingled. Even if an adblocker wanted to block the ads, there are no patterns that work and every single site would require different rules. But that requires effort. I suppose we should be glad that sites don’t do it.

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  • Jason2357@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Exactly, adblockers don’t block a static <div> on the page with some text, an image and a link. It’s only the user-tracking, obtrusive ad-networks they block. Every old-school form of advertising didn’t track users and did just fine. Even today, billboards are priced based on the amount of traffic on the highway, not based on checking inside each car and building a profile on each driver (though I wouldn’t put it past them trying to figure out how to do that soonish).

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    • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      God, I can just see the wet dreams of an advertising exec now. If an australian bloke can replicate million dollar systems with $100, the advertising companies can surely wank out the money for license plate readers a quarter mile ahead of their billboard with good identification. The new electronic billboards already switch what ad they’re showing every half minute or so now, and I bet they could do what ze big boiz do with the auctioning of ads.

      I think right now most of the US doesn’t allow random API access to license plate and registration data, but I really have no idea… How much do you think companies would bribe pay for some laws to be changed about that?

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• MITM0@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m wondering if Gopher should make a comeback ? Gemini is a thing so, well you know…

  For those who don’t know, they’re alternative internet protocols similar to HTTP

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  • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Or just a protocol like Web Monetization where you put money into a pot on your browser and it’s handed out to sites you visit based on how much time you spend on a given site, with options to denylist sites from payment as needed

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    • MITM0@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Reminded me of Flattr😢 is it FOSS ?

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  • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Okay I checked out Gemini. I love the vibes, but the amount of dead links just in the quick start guide makes it hard for me to even try to get into it

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    • MITM0@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      How about this link ?

      github.com/kr1sp1n/awesome-gemini

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  • sik0fewl@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Gemini looks cool, but I wonder if Gemtext isn’t a bit too simple. I think the ideal format would be to go back to the idea of “hypertext”, without the CSS and Javascript.

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• thespcicifcocean@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Good. Hopefully the advertisers will realize that it’s not profitable to advertise online anymore, and then we’ll be left the hell alone.

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• salacious_coaster@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Good 🖕🏻

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• lemmie689@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Damn people, enshitifying the internet for the advertisers.

  I switched to GrapheneOS which uses Vanadium browser by default, which doesn’t support any content blocking yet. I use ProtonVPN which seems to block everything.

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  • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The issue with extensions (including adblockers) is you are trusting someone with access to your shit and money buys bad behavior. So I dislike the lack of blocking there but I can understand why that decision was made.

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• hansolo@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Praise be

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• CileTheSane@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is easily solved by not using 3rd parties and tracking data for ads. If the ad was just part of the page (similar to an ad in the newspaper) then ad blockers would not be able to detect them at all. A YouTuber saying “before we get started, this video is sponsored by [relevant related company]” does not get blocked by ad blockers.

  However, in order to do that websites would be responsible for the ads they display. If they don’t do their due diligence they won’t be able to pass it off as “we’re not responsible for it, it’s our ad company that put it there.” They don’t want to be responsible for the ads they show, but they want you to be responsible for the ads you don’t watch.

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  • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    A YouTuber saying “before we get started, this video is sponsored by [relevant related company]” does not get blocked by ad blockers.

    Well, there’s sponsor block which uses crowd sourced timestamps to skip those segments, but yeah you’re right.

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    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I personally feel no need to get sponser block because:

      1. The sponsership is not annoying as fuck.
      2. I can fast forward through it.

      Everything the ads do to force you to pay attention it to (like not being able to fast forward) makes it easier for ad blockers to detect and block.
      Everything the ads do to demand your attention (by being annoying as fuck) drives people to block them.

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• zanyllama52@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Whatever number it is, it ain’t big enough yet.

  More power!

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• m3t00@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  what is with p.i.p video everywhere. hate it. can’t figure out how to block it. firefox

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  • NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Have you tried AdNauseam?

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• Etterra@discuss.online ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If we’re could figure out how to block ads on TV we might actually still bother posting for cable again. I’m the mean time, fuck 'em, they’re too rich as it is.

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  • cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I just got cable again after not having it for… 13 years?

    I don’t even get the point of it. It’s the exact same thing it was 13 years ago. Same shows and everything. Ads. I tried to watch it a few times and I think I’ve watched a total of 2 hours since I got it a month ago. It’s awful.

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• szymon@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  We should bring back paying to read a newspaper, magazine, (pc-magazine :P)

  Get the hell out with AI slop and constant dark marketing

  Let the idiots live on Instagram and don’t depend on their ‘content’

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  • squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We should bring back paying to read a newspaper, magazine, (pc-magazine :P)

    You are probably not wrong, and we should be paying for a lot more things, but the genie is out of the bottle for many things here and it’s difficult to roll that back.

    For example, newspaper reading habits have changed a lot. Before the internet, you’d usually stick with one newspaper and that’s it. Maybe two if you have too much money. You buy your newspaper and you read it front to back, probably even the topics you don’t particularly care about.

    Now it’s often the other way round. Most people read news from quite a few sources (or often just follow links on social media and don’t really even care for the publisher), but they don’t read their news from virtual cover to virtual cover. Instead, they stick to the topics they care for, or maybe even read about the same thing in multiple publications, comparing what they have to say about it.

    For this kind of newspaper reading, current forms of monetarisation don’t really work. Most newspapers only offer subscriptions to the whole newspaper, often in the range of €5-15 per month. So if I were to pay for the ~20 newspapers that I read news from at least semi-frequently, that’s €200-600 per month. No way I can or want to afford that.

    Some allow you to pay per article, but that is usually pretty expensive too (€1-3 per article) and also I need to register to every single newspaper. That’s not great either.

    What I’d really like to see would be a industry-wide subscription. For example, I pay €10 per month and that allows me to read 100 articles per month across all newspapers. That would be really nice.

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  • 1984@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Would love to but a lot of them have shut down now since people didnt buy them.

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• JayGray91@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I confess that I don't have the money to frequently donate and fund the services that I use (if they allow to donate) and recognize long time ago ads would be an okay alternative. but like everyone said, ads just became a lot more cancerous and have to block it. despite the shortcomings of the FBI, even they advise to use adblockers.

  though I guess I just have to suck it up and donate once in a while as well.

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• Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I run uBlock Origin for the browsers, and Pi-Hole for the network. Plus a wireguard VPN server that my phone connects to when I’m not on the home wifi for ad-blocking on the go.

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  • 1984@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I switched to adguard home recently, much nicer user interface and I dont miss any features from pihole. :)

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• WraithGear@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  “And Scott Messer, founder of publishing adtech consultancy Messer Media, added: “Dark traffic is unlike anything we have seen before. It’s demonetising publisher content at scale without user consent. 

  “Publishers already face an existential-level threat in the face of AI reducing referral traffic. This is another slice that publishers cannot afford to lose.””

  youtu.be/ZTt-kfPvRks

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  • kayohtie@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    “Without user consent” is a load of crap.

    Honestly the scale makes me wonder how much is because it’s fucking AI bots.

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    • WraithGear@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      listen, if browsers just block ads as a matter of their existence and the average joe is unaware they are blocking ads, then all the better. this article references a poll that specifically asks if the users know they are hard blocking ads, and just under half say they were not. which is good news, as that is farther reach then what user competency rates would have got. i am just taking that poll at face value.

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  • Tiger666@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Good, I hope they go the way of the telegraph and whale oil salesman.

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  • brot@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The quote is even worse when you take this snippet from above:

    The study discovered that the majority of users did not choose to block ads, with ad-blocking technology often activated by a third-party like their employer at a network level, their educational institution, security software they installed, or public Wi-Fi networks. For example ad-blocking tech can be bundled with VPNs (virtual private networks that hide a web user’s location) and built into browsers like BRave and Duck Duck Go. There are also dedicated apps and cross-platform brands such as AdGuard which describes itself as “the world’s most advanced ad blocker” that can “even” block on Youtube.

    So they are trying to frame corporate security policies as “no consent”. Which totally does not make sense as the contract the worker signed is consent for corporate IT to manage the computer and also to secure it against malware serves via ads. And to even suggest that users who are using a VPN with built in adblock or an alternative browser do not want to use the features the software they installed come with, is crap

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• MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  And the good old guilt tripping at the end.

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• HexesofVexes@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Well now, here’s one that comes up under “other”.

  I started using an adblocker because I was using an elderly netbook for my studies. Ads junked up resource usage so much they used to freeze my laptop, and render most sites unusable.

  Thanks to my adblock, I was able to finish my studies.

  These days I use adblock because I object to virus-like code execution on my hardware. I tell others about adblock and get them set up to get free tea/coffee (and to watch their faces as sites become usable again).

  The quiet mention of the 12ft.io being taken down is disturbing, it was a good tool for students to read article sources. This kind of change forces them to rely on AI (Gemini respects paywalks, Copilot just ignores them), which risks misinformation being spread!

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• bhamlin@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Oh no. 🎻

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• Zotora@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Well no one ever had to sell me on how nice a fire smells.

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• Jason2357@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Largest boycott in human history.

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• captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Only a billion. Need to quintuple that.

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• m3t00@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  mostly desktop, android phone is mostly unusable with ads. use ‘privacy badger’, ‘ublock origin’, ‘umatrix’.

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  • Lifter@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You know you can get those extensions for Firefox (and forks) for Android, right?

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    • m3t00@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      used opera for a while. firefox default. phone too small for my eyes. hard to read, avoid using

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  • swelter_spark@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I love uMatrix.

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• TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I actually don’t mind add but only if it is general ad, not targeted ones.

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• silentdon@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The only site I allow ads on is photopea.net because it’s awesome and I use it regularly. Fuck ads otherwise

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• Reziarfg@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Image

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• DragonOracleIX@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Dark traffic?!?! LMAO. Can we start calling malicious ads dark advertising?

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