Genuine question as I’m having a dilemma.
I’ve seen many of my friends using Chrome without any ad blockers. Most of them don’t even know that there are things called extensions that can be installed. Whenever I use their laptops, I want to throw them away. I want to tell them about extensions and ad blockers.
But as much as we hate ads, they fuel the internet. Without them, the internet wouldn’t be what it is today. If ad blocker users increase, there would be a massive change in the web, and everything may be paywalled.
So should we gatekeep ad blockers and enjoy an ad-free internet as a minority? It’s not like they know what they’re missing.
I advocate for FOSS, though. I will tell my friends to try Linux and dual-boot it, and suggest alternatives.
But as much as we hate ads, they fuel the internet. Without them, the internet wouldn’t be what it is today.
Indeed, because of relying on ad revenue, journalism has given way to sensationalist click bait factories, and interesting or unique content is drowned out by invasive and manipulative commercial interests in search results .
If ad blocker users increase, there would be a massive change in the web,
Sounds pretty good to me.
Yeah no. Ad blockers for everyone. Death to the corpo web. Death to youtube and all other ad driven platforms.
Browsers of the world unite, we have nothing to lose but our ads!
they fuel the internet
no they don’t
they fuel shitty companies
Ad blocker is a terrible misnomer. Go to ublock’s github and read the README. Ublock’s primary purpose is to protect your right to privacy. Blocking ads is a consequence.
That given, your question could be reframed as “I don’t have spyware and my friends do. Should I tell them how to protect themselves at the risk of being spied on again?” An ethical dilemma where only a coward makes the wrong choice.
This exactly. It’s more like a firewall for your browser. Because web browsers are incredibly crap software that’s pretty completely ignored privacy and filtering along their development and it’s being slowly patched on in tiny kludges and extensions instead of being set in policy from the start.
Of course spam and malware is a hard problem in web browsers. It’s been a hard problem everywhere else, too.
I’m old enough to have seen the Internet without ads. It was better.
But as much as we hate ads, they fuel the internet. Without them, the internet wouldn’t be what it is today.
The corporate web wouldn’t be what it is today, the internet would be fine. This is an important distinction to make. The internet is run by a bunch of nerds going to “internet peering conventions” and paying for BGP cross-connects in data centers. They would be fine, because ad-blockers don’t hurt them.
The corporate web, on the other hand, would die. I’m very okay with that. In fact, I see that as a feature, not a bug. I hate the corporate web, and I think the world would be better without facebook and google creating monopolies on communication. But either way, if the only way technology can survive is ads (and it’s not the only way), then let it die.
So should we gatekeep ad blockers and enjoy an ad-free internet as a minority? It’s not like they know what they’re missing.
lolno. We should be doing everything we can to protect ourselves and those around us from malware, surveillance capitalism, and predatory advertising. Even if you don’t care about other people, herd immunity to malware and surveillance capitalism are very real things. It’s a lot harder to get infected by malware on an immunized network, and it’s a lot harder for facebook to surveil you (remember shadow profiles?) when nobody around you is having their every step tracked.
Consider why those people don’t even know about extensions or ad-blocking. The web was built to be extensible, but ad companies (google) have done everything they can to keep people from realizing they can just change websites however they want, including blocking ads. People aren’t ignorant about privacy because they want to be, they’re ignorant because a lot of money and manipulation has gone into keeping them unaware and unempowered.
Solidarity and support are the only real weapons we have in the war against surveillance and malvertising. If not for those around you, then at least do it for the sake of your own privacy.
I am talking about people who make money off ads. Like numerous YouTubers, news sites etc. YouTube is goldmine for content. Many small-medium creators depends on adsense. Think of YouTubers like veritasium, corridor crew etc who produce high quality content to be viewed freely. Websites like anandtech, the verge etc
The corporate internet you are talking is more about sites like Facebook, insta, reddit etc who doesn’t view the content posters are creators and they definitely doesn’t share profits. I am not talking about this type.
Every youtuber I’ve watched recently has opened a patreon and asked people to donate there because youtube ad revenue is worth almost nothing. Every small journalism site I’ve seen asks for donations, and even the big ones admit their ad income doesn’t pay the bills.
Sometimes it sucks knowing that you’re indirectly removing revenue from someone. But personally, I prefer my time, attention-span, privacy, and security over giving one ten thousandth of a USA cent to someone. I started using an ad blocker because flashing advertisements were giving me headaches. I kept using them because autoplaying video ads were sucking up all the bandwidth that I was paying for. I continue to use ad blockers today because every single ad is either a scam, malware, or some weirdo far-right political pundit telling me gays are bad. Sorry to the independent journalists relying on ad revenue, but you gotta diversify and get revenue from a source more stable than the adware industry.
The corporate internet you are talking is more about sites like Facebook, insta, reddit etc who doesn’t view the content posters are creators and they definitely doesn’t share profits. I am not talking about this type.
Youtube is owned by google, and is definitely part of the corporate web. Most news sites are part of the corporate web, being owned by just a handful of companies or politicians. The vast majority of sites you would consider small content creators are most likely part of the corporate web. In fact, I haven’t seen a single non-corporate website that serves ads.
When I say I want the corporate web to die, I’m talking about seeing places like the fediverse, tilde sites, and neocities sites thriving. If facebook and google die and all that’s left is a few sites written by weird mentally ill queers who whost blogs on gemini and gopher, I’d be very okay with that.
You should worry about audience capture / gifting from the patreon model for journalists. And the government control from public funded.
Idk the answer, but ads did give us more less biased news in broadcast news for a few decades.
Idk the answer, but ads did give us more less biased news in broadcast news for a few decades.
Ad companies have lists of banned topics, effectively leading to news organizations being unable to talk about those topics without losing ad revenue. It’s called keyword blocking, so you’re actually getting biased news because of ads. It’s a well-known advertising strategy to just avoid controversial topics entirely.
