this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
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I am surprised the reason for blocking ads doessn't include making sites somewhat readable. I guess faster loading could be it? But generally it's more of a layout problem than a bandwidth one.
I tend to not use adblockers, or when I do it's on a black list system for worst offenders rather than by default. However, I absolutely refuse tracking, and if it's the only option I go to firefox reader mode immediately.
The usual false dichotomy of "personalised ads or you're killing us!" is not acceptable.
Ad tech IS the tracking, so if you're not blocking ads, you're not actually refusing said tracking. I think you might be conflating cookies with being tracking (they are), but that's only a part of it.
I wonder why ad tech can‘t be „Let‘s show ads that correspond to what‘s being talked about on that website.“ Kinda like what Google suggested with Topics but without following me through the internet.
There is no real technical challenge in displaying ads that are based on the page content. But ads based on tracking users is much more profitable. Plus they can sell the data collected to anyone else that is interested.
Look, you need to understand that advertisers are Hell-bent on forcibly extracting as much money from you as possible. If they could strap you to a chair, hold your eyes open like in A Clockwork Orange, and then charge you for everything you so much as glanced at, they absolutely would.
If that's not how you want to live, then they are your enemy.
You know i think i understand companies sometimes but then i keep being baffeld at how evil a company can be.
Apple for example had me surprised with the reaction to the DMA and i previously thought that they couldn‘t possibly suck harder wirh alö their anti-repair stuff.
I still have a bone to pick with Tim Cook himself for rendering my well working Mac Mini 2012 unusable for my app development job by simply not updating Xcode and introducing a breaking change that prevented me from adding support for new iOS versions to old Xcode.
The saddest part is, companies used to be required to act in the common good, but the courts have gradually jettisoned that concept for mostly bullshit reasons.
Because that’s not as profitable. That’s it. That’s the reason.
Don‘t you just hate it when
When capitalism
They could be. Sites could talk directly to advertisers, and put the ad directly into the page itself instead of asking the ad server for a random ad. Most ad blockers probably wouldn't notice it because it's part of the actual page.
But then they'd lose out on the tracking data and would be responsible to make sure the ad doesn't annoy the shit out of you, so they're not going to do that.
I use them on my personal systems but not my work laptop. I have to use an ad blocker on my phone because so many sites, including "respected" news organizations, are an absolute mess when ads are enabled.
It's bad when you go to one of the top news company's websites in the US and there's a pile of content covered by advertisements. I guess I didn't need to read those sentences anyway.
There was a website which I allowed ads on to help support them. One day, I went to that site in my browser and my laptop fans spun up at that time. Turns out that ads on that site caused my processor usage to spike near 100%. A reload fixed the issue. Once that same thing happened 2 to 3 more times, I just blocked all ads on that site from then on.
There are times that people can't throw the resources of an Intel i5 processor towards rendering the advertisements on one website. I would think that is more common these days with Chromebooks running the modern equivalent of a Celeron processor. Phones also don't have much processing power to give and will warm up and drain batteries all towards the all important goal of "render those advertisements".
I think people tend to allow advertising until it becomes a major problem that needs resolved (such as if the site is bogging down your computer or if the advertising makes the site unable to be read easily). Since those people would then need to fix the issue and hopefully fix it for good, it is easy and efficient to just block out all advertising forever.