this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024

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Majority of Americans now use ad blockers (www.theregister.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago (3 children)

It's a necessity. The internet really is unusable without it. Pop-up ads, long unskippable video ads, annoying shovelware scam ads, etc etc.

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[–] [email protected] 83 points 10 months ago (6 children)

I don't think I could use the internet if I didn't have an adblocker. Ads genuinely anger me. I think it's just from the early days with pop-overs and unders, blinking, non-collapsible and the like holding content hostage. Intrusive or not, I'll do everything I can to not see an ad.

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[+] [email protected] -9 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Getting really sick of the “hurr hurr ads bad only idiots don’t use adblockers” circlejerk on here. I pay $8 for YT Premium which seems super fair for the 10-15 hours of content I get on there a week. I like supporting creators, a lot of which rely on ad revenue to continue making their channels.

For the rest of you that thinks you have the moral high ground from blocking ads, what do you think the solution is? Subscriptions don’t work, paywalls are easily bypassed, and more reasonable ads don’t generate enough revenue to keep sites in business. Content shouldn’t just be free, people deserve to be paid for their work.

Should the free internet just die and become a series of subscription silos? It seems to be going that way, and more ad blocking will just accelerate that more.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

My big issue with paying for an ad free experience is that there are ads on videos of stolen content, and that doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. I have this issue with SoundCloud as well. Random people will upload mixtapes of other artists that were originally released for free, but SoundCloud will run ads over it. It's obvious the creators aren't getting paid. I don't understand how that's even legal. Even if you argue that the service of using the website shouldn't be completely free, they are profiting off of stolen content.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Using adblockers and paying to use YT premium aren't inherently seperate, if you feel that's a fair price and are willing to pay that (like I am) no one should call you stupid for it. But people feel that isn't a fair price (which is also fair considering the amounter of users, $1 per month per user would bring in $2bn per month for YouTube afaik).

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

"tracker blocker or content blocker or adblocker, whatever you call it" ah yes expert

[–] [email protected] 40 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (7 children)

The surprise is that apparently 28 percent of "experienced programmers" don't have an ad blocker. I'm not sure how they got the data, but I wonder if their methods are up to the task of sorting out any possible inverse correlation between blocking ads and being willing to respond to polls.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (3 children)

There's a surprising amount of programmers that don't know basics of various parts of an operating system. I know people that know several languages, but get lost on installing a mod pack for a game or installing an app from within another app like a browser.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Maybe the pol was distributed via ads

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

"experienced programmers" in would have web developers fall under that umbrella, I'd guess web developers are less likely to adopt adblockers if their livelihood depends on them

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 11 months ago (2 children)

If the ads are unobtrusive and interesting, and not clearly based on harvested personal data, I wouldn't mind.

Unfoorrrtunately...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Exactly.

I was excited for Brave when they talked about service privacy-friendly ads and sharing revenue with sites. That obviously didn't happen, but I think it is a good idea in general.

I don't mind privacy-respecting ads like sponsorships and whatnot in videos, but I absolutely cannot stand the data-harvesting ads used almost everywhere, as well as ads in services I've paid for.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Read it as BLOCK AIDS

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

It's the same

[–] [email protected] 55 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I used to not run an ad block. I figured the ads didn't bother me so why bother?

Then I encountered a banner ad that screamed "HELLOOOOOOOOOO" anytime the mouse went over it and I couldn't download an ad blocker fast enough.

Advertising companies will do anything they can to annoy the shit out of you, then act like people running ad blockers are the problem.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

I was fine with unobtrusive ads, I was fine with a minute of ads before a YouTube video. But it got so bad it was constantly interrupting everything. Also want to know what’s extremely unpleasant? Political ads calling for a moral panic against you or taking bigotry against you as a general assumption. I’m not watching that bullshit. My life is better without ads

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I once watched a 60 minute ad because I wondered (what would a 60min ad even be about) and I can't remember

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Wow! Pranks from 2004 are ads in 2024.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

@boem good.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Back in the day, major news sites like the BBC ran ads that were infected with malware that then infected computers. These weren’t shady sites like people expect you to get viruses from.

Installed an ad blocker the day that news broke and never looked back. Ads are potentially harmful to your devices.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The WoW forums around 2012 had a virus infect thousands of computers before blizzard removed it. It was a 3rd party ad that was spreading the virus.