
Two Out of Three Young Millennials Now Use an Ad Blocker - angry-hacker
http://www.scribblrs.com/millennials-ad-blocker/
======
jobu
As the most technical person in my network of friends and family I'm often the
one they go to for computer help. For years one of the first things I do if I
touch their computers is install uBlock.

Lately a couple of them have gotten new computers and mentioned that they
think it came with a virus because there ads everywhere on the internet.

~~~
Redoubts
Do they ever ask what's going on when a page complains about running an ad
blocker?

~~~
devopsproject
No. They do what you do: Leave the site and go somewhere else.

------
mrmondo
Even my grandfather (in his 80s) uses one and when I asked him where he got
the idea for using it he said "I got sick of all the spam and thought I might
get a virus so searched for ' block ads / pop ups and installed the first one
I found, I guess it could be doing bad things itself but websites load so much
faster now!" \- pretty amazing invasive ads are now that they lead the elderly
to a search engine for a fix! (Not an easy thing to do at the best of times!)

~~~
macns
I really wonder in what % of the elder people your grandfather is and what
does that mean evolution-wise e.g from an end user perspective, how much of
that is google accountable for or, if you prefer, any other search engine.

------
philipkglass
I browse most of the time without extensions other than a cookie editor, since
I've encountered a number of weird bugs in my company's own product that
turned out not to be bugs but weird interactions with browser extensions I was
running. I also read a lot of news articles both on big sites like the WSJ and
whatever regional news outlets turn up in my news searches. That is to say
that ad networks should (presumably) have a _great_ profile on me and be able
to show super-relevant ads.

But I still get Linode ads for weeks if I make the mistake of visiting Linode
outside incognito mode (I've been a customer there for 5 years; I don't need
another ad prompting me to sign up). I still get ads for things that I've just
bought instead of complementary goods for the things I've just bought.

I still see absolutely insulting garbage ads for One Weird Trick that $GROUP
hates. It's the offensively stupid Taboola/Outbrain etc. bottom-of-the-barrel
ads that repulse and puzzle me the most. My memory says -- and scanned
newspaper archives confirm -- that back before online news was a thing,
regional newspapers had plenty of advertising but it was advertising for
normal goods and services: snow tires, a clothing sale, lawn care, oil
changes, etc. Shortly after the turn of the millennium I thought that online
advertising was going to be kind of scary due to the profiles advertisers
could build up on me but also kind of nice because I'd always see ads that
aligned with my interests, instead of e.g. randomly bombarding me with ads for
baby diapers in hopes that I am a new parent. Ha, if only.

The most noticeable difference between small news outlet ads now and 30 years
ago isn't that the ads I see are now all eerily aligned with my interests;
it's that worst of them are aggressively misaligned with my interests and with
the interests of anyone who's not a total fucking rube. Who actually believes
that they've won the iPhone giveaway contest or that they need a weird trick
to clean the dangerous fluoride toxins from their tap water? I've never
clicked on this trash but I appear doomed to encounter it forever.

~~~
chadgeidel
I often joke that I'll believe "The machines are taking over" immediately
after I get a relevant ad on Facebook. Of all places - they should know
exactly what I like and what I would buy. They haven't got a clue.

~~~
ojbyrne
I just finished "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon
Valley" and there is a discussion about this in there. Turns out its very hard
to get from "what you like" to "what I want to buy." Google actually has an
advantage here, in that it is easier to identify search phrases that are part
of the pre-buying process.

~~~
chadgeidel
I'm not disagreeing with you, but it's even harder to get to "machines are
taking over" from "here's a bunch of networked processors". :-D

Thanks for the book recommendation - I'll have to read that!

------
throwawayReply
Young Millenials?

Are they different to "Young persons"? And what is an "Old Millenial"?

Why not just describe the group of 18-24 year olds as "Young adults", which is
what they are.

~~~
p0nce
"Millenials" is always used in combination with derogatory terms like
"entitled, lazy, hopeless". Sometimes I wonder if boomers have _any_ idea of
the frantic pace of today's workplace and how little power you can hope for,
regardless of how much you work.

~~~
zeveb
> Sometimes I wonder if boomers have _any_ idea of the frantic pace of today's
> workplace and how little power you can hope for, regardless of how much you
> work.

Millennials have as much or more power than the boomers did when they started
working. The difference is that they _expect_ more, because they spent their
childhoods getting participation trophies and being waited on hand and foot by
adults concerned for their comfort and 'safety.'

In the real world, the reward for doing exactly what is expected of you isn't
promotion: it's that you keep your job.

In the real world, sometimes you're expected to sacrifice for your goals.

~~~
whamlastxmas
> The difference is that they expect more, because they spent their childhoods
> getting participation trophies and being waited on hand and foot by adults
> concerned for their comfort and 'safety.'

Bullshit. If millennials expect more, it's because they see the standard of
living their parents and grandparents have and have had their entire life.
They own homes that have gone up in value 5 fold. They owned homes at an early
age. They got high paying jobs easily and costs of living were low.

Youth and young adult unemployment rates are shit if you don't ignore the
"discouraged workers". We have expectations for young adults to take on
tremendous levels of debt like never before. Housing prices are higher than
ever before. Healthcare is more expensive than ever before. Millennials are
having to pay into a social security system they see their parents or
grandparents benefiting from, knowing (or often not knowing) they'll never get
those same benefits despite all the money paid in.

The baby boomers are handing the millennials an entirely fucked up world. The
environment is a disaster, politics are a disaster, the perpetual war and
crony capitalism of the MIC is a disaster. Things will only get better once
the boomers die off and we can rid ourselves of the "fuck you, got mine"
generation.

~~~
serge2k
> politics are a disaster

If things go the way of the old white people we'll probably get one last gift
of a trump presidency.

~~~
whamlastxmas
It's a disaster either way, just in different ways.

HRC wins and we continue to kill civilians by the tens of thousands overseas,
destabilizing entire regions in the Middle East. All the problems of our
current status quo get worse. People in power continue to cement their
position there. I don't think HRC is going to be any different from Obama and
I can't imagine she's going to do anything positive he hasn't already done.

Trump wins and we get a likely ineffective commander in chief and congress
becomes a useless sack of potatoes, getting upset that their bullshit has been
called out and going home with their toys. Definitely hope for withdrawing
from our perpetual war, fixing our election and campaigning systems, and
making future elections much better at representing what most people want.

Between the two, I go with Trump, if nothing else because it means more hope
for a future of better elections and putting an end to blowing up women and
children every day with drone strikes. Yeah there are some bad characters in
his supporter base and some of what Trump says is equally as stupid as what
HRC says. At least I can believe Trump sometimes, which isn't the case with
HRC.

------
fatlasp
I temporarily disabled ghostery yesterday and ended up visiting the LA Times.
Without an adblocker the loading / performance / experience was horrific! Long
live the ad-free web!

~~~
eistrati
Would you use LA Times if we'd convince them to implement the following user
experience:

[https://demo.adtechmedia.io/atm-
core/nytimes/www.nytimes.com...](https://demo.adtechmedia.io/atm-
core/nytimes/www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/technology/why-tech-support-is-
purposely-unbearable.html)

NOTE: Above article is from NY Times and is ONLY for demo purposes :)

~~~
jzymbaluk
I thought when I first saw that page that it could be defeated with a simple
inspect element, but it looks like when the atm-blurry is removed from the
paragraph id's that the paragraphs themselves were all gibberish! I wonder if
the text is randomly generated or if it's some kind of text-cypher.

Either way, this type of paywall experience is significantly less annoying
than a pop-up, but I personally would still be unlikely to pay for a
subscription

~~~
j4_james
Interestingly the text is garbled after it's loaded. So if you view the page
with JavaScript disabled, the original text is completely readable (no blur
effect either). I assume this is an attempt to make the page accessible to
robots but not to humans.

------
awjr
I use an Ad Blocker, but happily unblock sites that ask if I see they are not
running a large number of scripts.

However the reason I installed the Ad Blocker in the first place is the way
some local newspaper sites in the UK (run by
[http://www.localworld.co.uk/](http://www.localworld.co.uk/)) will try and run
50+ scripts and make it almost impossible to read the article.

It was a defence reaction to abusive web sites.

~~~
sliverstorm
It's baffling how bad news websites can be, it almost seems intentional.
Displaying text is one of the simplest jobs, and yet somehow your typical
local news website is one of the most complicated, infuriating and burdensome
websites out there.

------
saosebastiao
I'm not where my position is relative to the rest of my generation, but for me
it's all about practicality. I have no vendetta against advertising and I
don't think it is inherently evil. I don't think it makes for a good content
publishing model, but that is the content publishers choice. What bothers me
is how intrusive and obnoxious they are. Large ads that pop up or take up 3/4
of the screen, can't click out because the [x] button is too small, making me
wait to watch an ad with no escape hatch, video with loud volume, popunders,
etc. it just got out of hand, so I opted out completely.

~~~
tdb7893
I don't have any moral problem with ads and companies need to make money so I
don't have an adblocker and I just don't visit sites with obnoxious ads. 90%
of the sites I visit (i.e. google, facebook, stackoverflow, reddit,
hackernews, xkcd, netflix, etc...) don't have annoying ads.

Oddly enough the only times I have really regretted turning off my ad blocker
is when I'm watching videos where an unskippable ad longer than 10 seconds
comes up or I go to some news site (which seems to 3/4 of the time have some
full page popup or autoplaying video).

~~~
coldpie
> I don't have any moral problem with ads and companies need to make money so
> I don't have an adblocker and I just don't visit sites with obnoxious ads.

How do you keep track? What about drive-by exploits that could infect your
computer on first visit? Or mobile ads that redirect to the app store?

~~~
tdb7893
I know to just avoid most news site except for maybe 5 or 10 that don't have
terrible ads (5-10 isn't that hard to just remember). Mobile ads that redirect
to the store are annoying and there's no great way to deal with them but I
don't seem to run into those much where I go (maybe happens to me twice a
week). Other than those the only real concern is drive-by exploits from
legitimate ad networks, which doesn't seem to happen very often in the wild.

------
pnathan
An interesting point came through on Twitter yesterday: ads for/on TV are
increasingly seen only by "the olds". This is going to be a _fascinating_ turn
of the worm as cord-based TV implodes further.

~~~
officemonkey
I've cut the cord 10 years ago, and (because I don't watch any sports) I
_seldom_ watch live TV (Oscars, New Year's Eve, Thanksgiving Day Parade are
some notable exceptions.)

My son (who never had broadcast TV) learned how to push the "skip ad" button
on Youtube years before he could read.

~~~
_rpd
Same here. I think the only time my son sees traditional advertising is at a
movie theater. However, I have noticed more "native advertising" in his
favorite youtube channels.

------
mars4rp
I hate Ads as much as next guy, but what will be the future of the internet
without the Ads? where the revenue comes from? do we have to pay for every
site that we use? I prefer a free content internet with reasonable amount of
ads!!

~~~
mitchty
Same as the past probably before Ads.

I'm willing to pay for content, but honestly only up to how much a site would
get from me for an ad impression. I am not going to do $N/mo/yr for X sites
however.

Once I found out the sum total of what my ad impressions for every site
amounts to about $10/yr, I am really annoyed that the ad industry and content
publishers aren't coming up with their own google contributor type deal.

Free content isn't worth the cost in Ads. By this I mean the bandwidth, the
cpu/energy use, and the cognitive cost. The monetary cost for people is
insane. I'd pay $20/year to tell ad companies to go away and let companies
replace my ad impression with a micro transaction equivalent.

Until then, screw the whole industry, ad blockers it is. Give me a real choice
or accept that reality.

~~~
CaptSpify
What is your source for $10/year? That's quite interesting

~~~
mitchty
[https://air.mozilla.org/subscribe2web/](https://air.mozilla.org/subscribe2web/)

It was actually $6.20/year at that time. I've been generous with the $10/yr. I
also consider $20/year a win for consumption companies as that would mean we
could outbid ads for our own eyes. It seems stupid to have to say that but
you'd be surprised how little money an individual makes on their own.

~~~
CaptSpify
Thanks. I definitely hear "nobody would want to actually pay for what their
advertising value is actually worth" all the time. Personally, I'd happily pay
more than $10 for the benefits.

~~~
mitchty
Yep, I'm willing to concede this isn't fully accurate. But if we don't have
numbers at all its not even a point worth arguing. If anyone has other numbers
please post them.

------
ryandvm
Ad blocking is a textbook case of "prisoners' dilemma". And as someone that
uses an ad blocker, I find the increasing popularity of ad blockers unnerving.

~~~
stevesearer
This is why I self-host my advertising and try to make them as high quality
and relevant as possible (no animation, popups, etc). I have no idea if the
concept could be replicated to other content verticals, but it has worked well
for me.

~~~
_rpd
Thank you. I really hope that you set the trend.

------
phhlho
Now if only there was a feature on ad blockers that blocked all the crummy
youtube videos my daughter watches that are effectively 20 minute ads of
people playing with toys.

~~~
coldpie
You are the ad blocker! But really don't worry, it's nothing new. The 80s and
90s were filled with advertisements-as-TV-shows.

------
ryandrake
If you're in my house and got your IP address from my DHCP server, you're ad
blocking without even having to lift a finger, thanks to dnsmasq and several
volunteer-maintained ad blocking hosts files. Similar method to what Pi-hole
[1] does. It doesn't get everything but it's a nice default starting point.

1: [http://jacobsalmela.com/block-millions-ads-network-wide-
with...](http://jacobsalmela.com/block-millions-ads-network-wide-with-a-
raspberry-pi-hole-2-0/)

~~~
post_break
Whats the throughput? Can it handle speedy internet?

~~~
ryandrake
It operates at the DNS level, preventing known ad hosts from even resolving,
so it should have no negative effect on your throughput. It could only speed
things up since requests to those domains are never made.

------
dionidium
They make you do it. I just installed Adblock this morning, actually. I have
been holding out this long. But some horrible -- I mean, truly horrible --
browsing experiences on a couple newspaper websites this morning pushed me
over the line.

One can only take so much.

------
Fordrus
Of COURSE we do, half of the websites you visit these days will _crash the
browser regularly_ if you don't use an ad-blocker!

(half is probably an overstatement ;) Nevertheless, I was resolutely trying to
be 'moral' and not use and ad blocker until my browser began to regularly
crash and I traced the crashes to ads. That issue may be fixed now for all I
know, but I can't really go back, though I still try to whitelist sites that I
want to have a bit of support, and pay for others somehow, here or there. :) )

------
thecosas
There needs to be a balance between wanting things "for free" and viewing ads
(especially for news sites).

It's gotten really aggressive the past few years, especially for local news,
mostly because they were ill-prepared for the shift in advertising.

Staff cuts (as ad revenue plummeted) surely included all of the "web people"
with that work being outsourced.

Many local news shops are hanging on by a thread; unfortunately that thread is
reinforced by their website carpeted in advertising.

------
_RPM
What's the sample size here?

------
douche
Who in that age cohort didn't experience the wild west days of shady Flash and
Java applets, Punch the Monkey games, RealPlayer, Shockwave, Internet Explorer
and all the other insecure crap we used to deal with.

Raise your hand if you never got a virus and almost bricked the family
computer doing something mostly innocuous...

Ad-blocking may not be as essential to self-defense as it used to be, but old
habits die hard.

~~~
Nadya
_> Ad-blocking may not be as essential to self-defense as it used to be, but
old habits die hard._

Possibly even more relevant nowadays than it used to be with more drive-by
malware, 0-day exploits, and more and more people using the internet.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising)

[http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/big-name-sites-
hit-b...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/big-name-sites-hit-by-rash-
of-malicious-ads-spreading-crypto-ransomware/)

------
fbreduc
there is a reason for this, and that reason is ABUSE. you know... one or two
small well placed ads fine.. but what you get are situations where content is
tiny, and really it's just about seeing who can spam you the most ads half of
which serve malware.

------
mkalv
I started using an adblocker in the aughts after a site I frequented served up
a drive-by download from an infected ad network. Because of this, I never
disable it even for sites I like.

------
kazinator
Not so dumb after all!

    
    
        Blo-cker! Blo-cker! ... who o o uh-oh!
        G  - E    G  - E        A   C D E-D
    

(Repeat, _ad nauseum_ ).

------
TheRealPomax
What's a "young" millenial? Isn't the term a derogatory for someone born in a
specific decade already?

------
anotherevan
I keep sayin', they're not ad blockers, they're HTML firewalls.

------
deelowe
It's about to get interesting. A lot of internet services depend on ads.

------
kevindeasis
Question: How do companies that rely on ads plan to make money in the future?

------
TACIXAT
Everyone should install Millennials to Snake People. It's a great addon that
makes the internet way better.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/millennials-to-
sna...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/millennials-to-snake-
peop/jhkibealmjkbkafogihpeidfcgnigmlf?hl=en-US)

~~~
guntars
Is no one else concerned about granting this extension a permission to "Read
and change all your data on the websites you visit"? This is a joke extension
and nothing is stopping the author from selling it to someone who might have
more sinister uses for it.

~~~
Nadya
It needs that permission to read the page and perform the text swap. Text swap
is change data, the DOM needs to be read.

This is a big reason to support open source add-ons (not sure if add-on is,
might be since it was forked? No idea.) You can see if they're doing anything
malicious on the side.

~~~
Houshalter
Extensions are so broken. They can update at any time without your knowledge
or permission. There is a whole market of selling extensions to malware
companies so they can put malicious code in an update.

But besides that, most the extensions I use have serious bugs. I'd be willing
to fix them, but there is no ability to do that. Chrome makes it difficult to
view the code and there is no ability to edit it or copy it. Let alone submit
pull requests to the author, unless they happen to have put the code on github
also.

