
Should I Block Ads? - notriddle
https://shouldiblockads.com/
======
gfody
I was on a fresh setup recently and caught a glimpse of the raw internet on my
way to install uBlock Origin and uMatrix. There are still fake download
buttons everywhere. I can't understand how the non-ad-blocking world tolerates
that stuff - no choice and no voice I guess? The amount of autoplaying videos
was disturbing as well.

~~~
divbzero
This includes plenty of “good” sites.

I kept forwarding Worldometers’ COVID-19 data site [1] to friends and
families, then later realized it’s full of banner ads if viewed without ad
blocking.

[1]:
[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)

~~~
ccmcarey
Oh wow, I also forward that site around, and sometimes comment on the great
minimal design and information density.

Just had a look at it with uBlock Origin disabled, and wow, how do people
browse the internet like this?

~~~
dillutedfixer
It really is jarring when you see your regularly visited websites without ad
blocking. A news site that I look at has infinite scrolling ads of those
"Dentists everywhere are furious about this trick" with a picture of an
avocado boiling in water or something equally ridiculous. I realize that ad
blocking does take money away from site operators, and I do pay for many of
the news sites that I frequent. But honestly a site that is willing to blast
me with ads about how I can cheat my insurance company with ONE SIMPLE TRICK
doesn't deserve money from my clicks. And I do get that they often can't
choose what ads are shown. Perhaps that's the bigger issue.

Edit: elaborated on my final point.

------
hpoe
So the reason I block ads, or at least started is a book I read called Pre-
suasion by Robert Caldini. In it he points out that internet ads are dismissed
and ignored by our conscious mind but because of that often will produce an
effect on our unconscious mind. Think like the subliminal messaging type
thing. People who were shown Kodiak ads on a webpage in an experiment couldn't
recall seeing any Kodiak ads simply because we are so used to internet ads we
ignore them; however later for the subjects favored purchasing a Kodiak camera
over competitors products.

The books final chapter concluded by explaining an experiment they did where
simply by showing a particular image in the background, combined with a spaced
follow up and increased incentive, they were able to sucessfully manipulate
people's political and voting preferences in a manner that lasted over a year.

I decided at that point no one gets to screw with my subconscious but my
immense amount of childhood trauma. In my mind every other reason pales in
comparison to this one for why I adblock and put it on my wife's computer, and
every computer a family member owns.

~~~
EForEndeavour
Your imperfect recall of the brand name "Kodak" makes your cautionary message
about the insidious effects of ads deliciously ironic. Or is that repeated
misspelling actually part of an astroturf campaign to ensure that the
notoriously detail-oriented minds of Hacker News readers latch onto the
apparent typo, firmly embedding it in the forefront of awareness?

------
Hamuko
How many people actually disable their adblockers when sites don't allow you
to access them if you have one enabled? It's just much easier to close the
tab.

~~~
inetknght
> _How many people actually disable their adblockers when sites don 't allow
> you to access them if you have one enabled? It's just much easier to close
> the tab._

Some sites intentionally break if you're using an adblocker. It's really easy
to argue to not use those sites.

But...

What about government sites? Government sites don't work with strong ad
blockers.

What about bank sites? Bank sites don't work with strong ad blockers.

What about your work related sites? My employer's HR site doesn't work with
strong ad blockers. Many of my employer's internal sites don't work with
strong ad blockers.

Yeah it's much easier to just close the tab. Unless the site is literally
required for your continued living.

~~~
Kim_Bruning
Hmm, all the bank and government websites I've used work fine (so far) . I've
also worked at many companies now, and I haven't had trouble with ad blockers
there either.

I'm actually surprised how they could cause problems? Do you have specific
examples?

~~~
inetknght
> _I 'm actually surprised how they could cause problems? Do you have specific
> examples?_

1) use uMatrix and block all scripts and all third party sites

2) go to your favorite bank

3) if you're lucky, you'll get a warm welcome to enable javascript. i don't
think that's reasonable, but just enable it to get moving.

4) after enabling javascript, see a few third party sites. some of them are
"content delivery networks" (which IMO shouldn't be a thing, and absolutely
shouldn't be a different gTLD), some of them are telemetry (hope you trust
your bank to vacuum up only what they want), and some are services your bank
tries to upsell you on (please sign up for our (third party) rewards to
further monetize your purchase habits).

5) good luck trying to figure out which sites to trust

------
bit_logic
Ad blocking is a security issue now. When the ad networks started serving
malware, what were the websites response? Basically nothing, they just said
it's not their problem and pointed the finger at the ad networks. Ad blocking
is now vital to having a safe web experience. This is not some trivial issue.
Computers and the web are critical for modern life now. The same computer that
people use for browsing news sites is also used to do online banking, pay
bills, apply for unemployment, do work with sensitive data (for example a work
laptop), and so many other things.

And computers are also used by minors. Some of these ads are really disturbing
and not something minors should see. Again, when this started happening, how
did the websites respond? They did nothing.

~~~
dillutedfixer
This x10000.

------
laurentdc
I just disable them via /etc/hosts because I can't tolerate any more useless
javascript putting load on my CPU.

My workstation (E5-2640) has seen multiple generations of operating systems,
video editing software, DAWs.

Browsers and web browsing in general is the only thing that I can tell it's
getting consistently worse year after year.

I know it's an odd metric but 10-15 seconds to fully render a newspaper
homepage is more than it takes for my full DAW setup (Cubase + FL Studio as
VST plugin) to fully come up with tracks loaded and play button ready. I don't
even recall dialup being this bad.

~~~
qppo
Funny because I feel this way about Cubase, it consistently gets worse. My
projects take much longer to load than any webpage, fwiw.

------
stblack
With ad blocking, some sites present you with an overlay, preventing you from
accessing content.

A really nice Chrome and FF extension to scrub overlays is named Behind The
Overlay:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/behindtheoverlay/l...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/behindtheoverlay/ljipkdpcjbmhkdjjmbbaggebcednbbme)

~~~
encom
For people who do not use a browser made by an advertising company:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/behind_the_ov...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/behind_the_overlay/)

90% of the time I just close the tab, if the content I want isn't immediately
visible without jumping through hoops. If the content is hidden by a
newsletter popup, the percentage is 100.

------
js2
I've had better luck with AdGuard for Safari than 1Blocker. I use AdGuard on
both macOS and iOS, and I just use their content-blocking Safari extensions,
not any of their other products. I had paid for 1Blocker but found it
increasingly let ads through. I wanted a product based off of EasyList instead
(which AdGuard filters are).

~~~
saagarjha
I used to use AdGuard until they switched to an Electron app that needs to
constantly run in the background…now I just have a homegrown content blocker I
whipped up once and should polish and release someday but am just too lazy to
finish.

------
dooglius
This is missing what in my opinion is the biggest reason: advertisers create
perverse incentives where pages are rewarded based on visits and ad-clicks
rather than quality of content. This results in extreme forms of clickbait,
misleading extreme headlines, and shallow low-information-density content.

------
renewiltord
The answer is obviously yes. You externalize the pain (lost revenue isn't a
thing felt by you) and internalize the gain (no ads to view, etc.). It's just
like the answer to:

* Should you pirate your school textbooks? Yes, obviously. I did it all through uni and I'm a good software engineer. Oh sorry, that's not right. I meant "It's a travesty that a university I pay money to would force me to spend money on books I could just get from the previous year. The writer barely makes any money on the book anyway".

* Should you pirate games? Yes, obviously. A game that's free is better than a game you pay for. If it's sufficiently cheap then the advantage of discovery and your library makes Steam or Epic worth it. "Store-bought games include intrusive DRM that messes with your system files and is a security nightmare"

* Should you pirate software? Yes, obviously. That's why most paid software is SaaS now. You can't pirate SaaS. "Same DRM argument as above".

Ultimately, the answer to "Should I get something for free which I would
otherwise pay for" is always yes.

I mean we still have DRM and shit and once upon a time people grumbled that
they pirate games because they don't like always on DRM. Well, Steam is always
on DRM and folks love that. To paraphrase big Bill C, "It's about the money,
stupid".

I could probably invent a plausible smoke screen for everything from riding on
trains for free (why are cars so subsidized?) to not paying for parking (I
already pay so much in road tax and income tax) to taking all the Halloween
candy someone left outside in a bowl (I never had this stuff as a child, all
these kids already have way more than they need).

------
kgraves
YES.

I think you should block ALL ads entirely, internet and everywhere. They are
time sinking distraction and you definitely don't need them in your life.

A specific adblocker somebody needs to develop is podcast ad blocker, just
auto-skip or have no sponsored message please.

~~~
duck
You do realize that most podcasts will go away if they can't make money via
advertising, right?

~~~
toupeira
None of the podcasts I listen to have ads, many use things like Patreon or
have a "first hour free, second hour only for members" model.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
This and, either way, you shouldn't care.

Heuristically, save yourself time and energy and snap to the game theoretical
conclusion. You'll go out of your way and incur personal cost to be a good
citizen and prop up this poorly-conceived system that relies on such good
samaritanship, but will most people? LOL no. So it's futile anyway. Get the
best deal you can and let come what may. :D If all podcasts go belly up and
there'll be a post-ad-economy afterscape where all pocasts are somehow
paywalled, so be it -- that would have happened anyway, regardless of what you
choose to do, and it's hopefully a more resiliently-designed system which
doesn't shoulder users with cumbersome ethical dilemmas.

------
galfarragem
Niche blogger here.

For some time I tried to fight the tide by continuing to publish ads and not
using an adblock myself. By being an amateur blogger, I understand that even
beer money helps to keep the moral high. However a couple of years ago I gave
up and just embraced reality: deactivated adsense and started to use an
adblock. I finally acknowledged that nobody likes ads - myself included -
specially the ones not related with the content. Did my blogging suffered with
it? Certainly it did.

------
nishnik
Firefox running add-ons on Android made me switch to it on the mobile phone.
It makes the mobile experience way better than Chrome and Brave.

~~~
TechniKris
If you'd like to run decent ad blocking extensions (or any extensions) on the
Chromium side of things, give Kiwi a shot. Afaik the current Play Store/XDA
Labs release is out of date on the security patches' side of things, but the
developer is currently working on catching up. Also, the project went open-
source not too long ago and apparently the dev's been working together with
some devs of a different browser, so you can expect more Chromium browsers to
implement support for extensions in the near future.
[https://kiwibrowser.com](https://kiwibrowser.com)

And, well... There's also Yandex with their extension support, they deserve at
least a mention. iirc uBO is broken there, but Nano works fine

------
kevin_thibedeau
Should I invite wasted junkies into my home to use the computer as they
please?

~~~
fxtentacle
Most junkies will give you more privacy than what you can expect from the
average ad network O_O

------
MattGaiser
I have actually turned off my Adblocker for LinkedIn and Facebook ad they ads
can actually be quite relevant.

I would be willing to on the news sites as well if they didn’t spam them so
heavily into the page and they didn’t shift content to load them. The news
sites also allow a surprising number of low quality ads. I’m willing to see
ads for Tide or a bank, but no fake download buttons please.

------
jsingleton
If anyone is interested in how to set up a network-wide tracker blocker then
I've written some guides on how to configure Pi-hole as a router and Wi-Fi
range extender. This means you can force all traffic through your custom DNS,
even devices from Google and Amazon that don't respect DHCP.

[https://unop.uk/pi-hole-extended-part-1/](https://unop.uk/pi-hole-extended-
part-1/)

[https://unop.uk/pi-hole-extended-part-2/](https://unop.uk/pi-hole-extended-
part-2/)

It's still worth installing privacy add-ons to Firefox but this helps with
some profiling intrusions in mobile apps and Chromecasts etc. It also helps
protect your less technical family members a little, although it obviously
can't keep them completely safe from surveillance. Education is an important
aspect too.

------
causality0
It's a pretty simple equation for me. If you're too lazy to curate ads and
rely on a third party service to show any random ad to your users and run any
random javascript in their browsers, your ad is probably on an adblock list
and will therefore be blocked on my devices. If, however, you give half a shit
about your users and therefore choose what ads they see, it probably won't be
on a blocklist and won't be blocked on my devices. It's simple, either both of
us care or neither of us do and it's up to the content provider which path
they take with me.

------
simonblack
Should you ever find yourself travelling in a foreign country with a _monthly_
quota of just 2 gigs of data, you realise extremely quickly that _every_ ad is
an ad too many.

------
kgwxd
I don't block ads, I block third-party scripts and trackers, the ads just
happen to not be visible without those, which is not my problem.

------
duck
I wish instead of calling them "ad blockers", we had used something like
"tracking blockers". The tracking/automation of ad networks is what the issue
is, not the ads, yet we've made it more confusing for those that don't
understand how these things work.

~~~
effingwewt
Not at all. I hate ads with a visceral passion. They are a theft of my
time/attention for which I am not compensated.

No website has a right to exist, same with businesses. Nor do they have a
right to my attention. People all cry 'the world will die without ads!'... no.
Some of us have been around since the Internet started. All sites were free
and no ads (banner ads came later, and were mostly static)-the sites full of
passion, hours poured in for no financial gain. The difference is that now we
have a generation of young people who feel entitled to make money off
everything.

Now, the tracking is most definitely an issue, but first and foremost for
myself and many others is the hatred of any and all ads. Life really is
different without them. If someone comes up with an ear/eye implant to block
all ads (tv, radio, billboards all of it) I'd pay whatever it cost.

------
thewebcount
This is a really well put-together site with very reasonable arguments
describing the problem with web ads. I'm glad they put this together. It's
refreshing to see something in this space that just has the facts without
being preachy or screechy.

------
app4soft
> _Should I Block Ads?_

Yes. Permanently.

------
hckr_news
To add to that HTTPSEverywhere and Privacy Badger are quite useful too

~~~
notriddle
Both of those add-ons are quickly becoming irrelevant. Privacy Badger, because
Firefox and Safari have tracker blocking built-in, and HTTPS Everywhere,
because HSTS preloading is standard in all of the major browsers.

------
genmon
Any views on Magic Lasso for iOS/Mac? Seen it mentioned recently. I’m on
1Blocker Legacy, it’s fine, but I’m aware it must be getting out of date.

------
butz
Aren't we at the point where displaying rich media ads, especially ones with
video, costs more energy than they actually earn?

------
pelliphant
How could this even be a question?

Either you block ads or you don't know that you can block ads.

------
paulcole
> Do ad blockers stop sites from making money?

The honest answer to this is “Yes!”, not a 7-paragraph non-answer.

~~~
quadrangle
Adblockers stop sites from making money __from those third-party ads __.

They obviously don't stop a shopping site from selling products or from
GitLab.com registering users for GitLab services etc.

If the way a site makes money is by __abusing __the visitors, adblockers stop
the abuse and the money from _that_ * side of things, which may be all the
income they get, but not necessarily.

So, this is not a simple yes/no situation.

~~~
mharroun
So they need a set bushiness and tech teams to build an internal ad stack, and
try to get advertisers... many who wont buy in without 3rd party tracking to
mitigate fraud.

~~~
quadrangle
There's better and worse in advertising, sure. But third-party ads are a
compromised business model even at their best. I'm not saying businesses don't
involve compromise, but the goal should be to figure out how to have the most
net benefit to the world (I don't think profit as an end in itself is a
respectable goal). Thus, choose the compromises that are least detracting
within the scope of real-world options.

------
sergiotapia
Sometimes a website will break with an ad-blocker. How do you allow ads in
such a site when using pi-hole?

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Blocking JS across the board with selective whitelisting will defeat a lot of
anti-blocking. Element zapper to dispose of divs that cover content by
default.

------
paulcole
Can I possibly be the only person here who doesn’t use an adblocker?

I like buying things. I like seeing ads that interest me. I don’t care who
tracks me or monetizes data about me that is 100% worthless to me. I like not
paying money out of my own wallet to read websites and watch videos.

~~~
notriddle
You'll notice that the essay doesn't build its argument around "ads bad" or
"privacy good" or any of the typical shibboleths.

It builds its argument around crap like fake download buttons, fake FBI
warnings, coin miners, and ads that break the website. These are the reason
why University of California and Edward Snowden recommend ad blockers, and
they're the reason why I recommend them too.

~~~
quadrangle
Yes, but the "ads bad" arguments hold up to scrutiny as well, even though it's
not what this site focused on.

~~~
saagarjha
It's an easier argument to reply to with "you're stealing the website's
livelihood", which is why it's usually worth bringing up after you explain the
many other problems ads have.

~~~
quadrangle
Yes, I'm not denying the significance of tact. But just because it may be
tactfully or politically harder in some cases to focus on "ads bad", that
doesn't make it wrong.

And how to fund creative work is indeed a complex question. However, "I won't
support business model that is itself _harmful_ " is a perfectly fair
position. I can both want a website to get funded and also refuse to play
along with funding it through third-party ads which are harmful even without
the worst problems of deception and tacking etc.

In short, I think it's really important that we not forget that ads-bad is
basically true and has been since at least the old penny-papers and yellow-
journalism.

See for one good source Tim Wu's The Attention Merchants. A good intro is
episode 16 at
[https://humanetech.com/podcast/](https://humanetech.com/podcast/)

------
lalaland1125
I think this article downplays the downsides of ad blockers too much. If ad
blockers become the norm, much of the current web will no longer be viable.
Facebook, YouTube, Google, Reddit, StackOverflow, and countless other sites
are fundamentally based on advertising and can't survive without it.

The article tries to address this a little bit with the "Ad blockers do not
block all advertising" section, but I don't think it fully acknowledges that
if everyone installs uBlock Origin as the article suggests the web as we know
it will collapse.

~~~
centimeter
There are better, more efficient ways to monetize than ads. Ads are one of the
most destructive and socially wasteful ways to monetize content; it's just
technically easy. If we make ads nonviable, you can expect things like
micropayments to become more common (and I'm happy to make that trade).

~~~
cameronbrown
(Disclosure: I work for Google, but not in Ads)

Micropayments are generally considered to be unviable for the general
population (edit: business model wise, not tech). People are unwilling to pay
even pennies for an article[0], because now users are facing the burden of
choice, constantly thinking about how their browsing is racking up pennies.
Not to mention, it boxes you into the pay-per-article model. Sites like
Twitter or Facebook don't make sense in this world.

I also think it adds significant barriers to entry, since micropayments aren't
accessible, at all, to younger people, or the poor. Information should be as
free as possible imo.

If the market decides all ads should be blocked, then sure, things will
change, but please don't pretend this won't have huge ramifications - things
will not be remotely like they are today. For the news at least, it'll likely
just be the expensive megacorp publications that survive.

[0][https://www.cjr.org/analysis/reuters_digital_news_report.php](https://www.cjr.org/analysis/reuters_digital_news_report.php)

~~~
centimeter
> micropayments aren't accessible, at all, to younger people, or the poor.

This is a purely technological problem, not some sort of fundamental problem
with the concept of micropayments.

If advertising were really the only way young or poor people could generate
value (this is not actually true, but for the sake of argument I'll go along
with it), there could be dedicated websites where people intentionally look at
ads in exchange for credit in their micropayment accounts (whatever that looks
like, be it Bitcoin Lightning or some service from Square). Of course, once
you phrase it this way, it becomes more clear that using ads as an indirect
monetization strategy kind of doesn't make sense. It's better to have people
perform mechanical turk style tasks (the monetization strategy of Captcha
clones).

As a parent, I'd be happy to put a few cents in my child's micropayment
account so they don't have to get their brain flooded with garbage whenever
they use the internet.

~~~
cameronbrown
> People intentionally look at ads in exchange for credit in their
> micropayment accounts.

> It's better to have people perform mechanical turk style tasks.

I do like the idea, but I still think the barriers to entry are way too high.
I'm worried that what will really happen is people will just download content
via other means, which will start publishers off the deep end putting DRM into
their webpages. Just look at Steam as an example - it very much reduced piracy
rates because it lowered the barrier to entry.

> As a parent, I'd be happy to put a few cents in my child's micropayment
> account so they don't have to get their brain flooded with garbage whenever
> they use the internet.

Easy enough for someone living in a 1st world country. A child in Bangladesh
who just wants to read about maths or video games however... Not to mention,
your child is now directly linked to your bank account, whereas before you had
pseudo-anonymity.

