You know what the last straw for me was? A few years ago, when people got infected with malware from ads including ads that ran on a Forbes article about malware in ads that you had to disable your adblocker to read.
Yo dawg.
How does an ad give you malware?
Either by linking to malware so you get infected if you click the ad, or by containing malware directly. Ads can contain code, making them almost like small applications that run when loaded.
Ads can contain code, making them almost like small applications that run when loaded.
Which browser in 2023 would dare allow that to run?
The code is JavaScript–an integral part of displaying modern websites. Not since the days before 2001 and very simple browsers like Netscape Navigator 3 and Internet Explorer 3 that didn’t yet have javascript. Today that is what adblock is doing - it stops loading untrustworthy or unwanted bits and pieces of code while still giving the end-user (most of) the javascripts they need. Instead of the default action, “ok, gimme the whole webpage code, as-is”. That last sentence, that’s Chrome. I can explain it some more further. But that’s the jist of it.
Most of the time those articles are bullshit click bait anyway.
There is the legend of the adblock-block-blocker
But then that would be countered by the adblock-block-blocker ², also known as WEI.
They have to watch out for the adblock-block-blocker ²-blocker
“I’m not that interested”
About a year or two ago I’d open up an article blocked by ad blocker and I’d try tweaking my settings a little, thinking if it were easy, I’d use a bit of effort to get to the writing I wanted to read.
I did that for a while with about a 50/50 chance that one setting or just clicking a few things and I could get to the copy.
Now I don’t really care … there’s a million things to read on the internet … if I see a site and it even throws up a challenge, an extra click or ad blocker has affected it … I don’t even bother, just close it, forget it and move on.
Or if you don’t have an ad blocker running and the site expects you to try to read through a little 1 inch peephole in between the ads. I just write the site off entirely.
It also makes you wonder … what monster thought that was a good design.
Also equally disturbing is … that there are actual people out there who put up with all this and read the content through that little peep hole. I know several of my older less tech savvy friends who put up with all that. I also know a few younger tech ignorant friends who just don’t care.
What’s annoying is when I don’t even have an ad blocker. I use ublock origin which blocks privacy invading scripts. Its not my problem that your ads a spyware and sometimes even malware
If you’re using uBlock Origin, bring up the control panel and disable JavaScript for that webpage. Then reload the page. Works on most of these pages for me.
But then I have to look at ads. I think the point OP was trying to make was that they were initially interested enough to click, saw that they would have to view an ad, and are no longer interested because of that.
Disabling JS doesn’t mean disabling uBlock. I run uBlock together with NoScript on Firefox, and that works really well.
“This game you like got a good update” okay cool click
“Disable adblocker” okay thanks for the news; I’ll just search for the official post on the game company’s website.“Said update just resets all of your opt-outs and forces you to sign a new ToS”
Same with articles asking for sub fees. Nah.
Many articles on my country stars with “This/These/Those are…” all of them are a pure click bait. I’ve trained myself to avoid any article where the subject of interest is not in the header. I know they have no good content.
I’ve been using AI summarisation for things like this so I don’t need to read and I can satisfy my curiosity (normally what film they’re talking about). Normally it’s not worth the effort but it’s quicker than reading the article myself.
Happened to me about 4mins ago
So you started using the internet 5 minutes ago?
Yes, that’s exactly what I meant
howtogeek started doing this. Really annoying when you have technical questions you need answered
Serious question… What’s the answer to paying for services like this? If everyone adblocks, how can they be sustainable? Will journalism just die because no one wants to pay or see ads?
They could try not putting so many ads you can’t fucking read and making sure they don’t contain malware. That’d be a start.
A lot of these things are due to the greed of the website owners stuffing as many ads as they possibly can into their sites.
for a while there was a service called Scroll for like $5 a month, you wouldn’t see ads and your monthly payment would get divided between all the articles you viewed that month. they were partnered with Firefox and supposedly privacy friendly. they were bought by twitter and essentially killed.
edit: wikipedia
I’d happily subscribe to that. Even though I hate subscriptions, I hate ads way more.
Google “fuck fuck Adblock” (yes, fuck twice)
Y’all need behindtheoverlay https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/behind-the-overlay/ljipkdpcjbmhkdjjmbbaggebcednbbme
And ya’ll need to stop using chrome.
Duckduckgo is your friend: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/behind_the_overlay/
Don’t they store your data?
In the 90s, I started closing any page that had an ad because I had principles. I still close pages that won’t let me read with an ad-blocker, but holy shit.
Very early nineties: no ads Mid late nineties: many ads Early 2000’s: ad blockers become prevalent 2023: now receive an ad telling us to disable ad blocker so we can view more ads.
We’ve come full circle. I remember when logging onto the internet was a way to escape the ads that plagued cable and satellite… now there are more…
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