
Ask HN: Why use adblocker? - andreicon
I&#x27;m having a debate among friends: if websites wouldn&#x27;t display ads and other website owners wouldn&#x27;t buy ads, how would end-users find out about products, content, apps, etc? Wouldn&#x27;t that take us to a &quot;medieval age&quot; of browsing the internet?<p>Why do you block ads?<p>Please don&#x27;t include answers like &quot;saving bandwidth&quot; or &quot;keeping my ram unused&quot;, i&#x27;m looking for ^real^ reasons for which ads are bothering.<p>Disclosure: I&#x27;m launching a product which monetizes through the use of ads.
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forgetsusername
> _how would end-users find out about products, content, apps, etc?_

I've never, in my life on the internet, seen an ad and said, "Hey, I'll check
out _that_ product." I've been conditioned to see them as scams, and I don't
think that will ever change.

The great thing about the web is that it's a "pull" system. When I want
something, I'll go look for it. The days of throwing random things in front of
my face in the hopes that some basal impulse will sucker me into buying your
product are, thankfully, going away.

So, "saving my bandwidth", "keeping my ram free", and "personal sanity".

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andreicon
Reply everyone: thank you for being so supportive, i've never asked anything
on HN before and I wasn't aware of the issues regarding ads before I asked.
Truthfully I think everyone should be aware of what they browse before they
block everything (look at countries that block through DNS, users not speaking
for themselves) and embrace ads as a form of information instead of blocking
sites as scams. This is not over, but thank you all for taking the time to
write this. Much appreciated!

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jlg23
"Saving bandwidth" is a very real and good reason. If you don't believe this,
book a trip to places like Leticia in Colombia (or any other small town deep
in the Amazon). Or just move into an area where all you have is a satellite
uplink. Or do the math on mobile internet options in countries where your
connection is throttled after reaching some ridiculously low bandwidth limit.

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PaulHoule
You don't have to go any further than the US of A for that.

If you accept that there is anything "real" about the $10 a GB that Verizon
and AT&T charge for LTE data, zero rating doesn't make sense at all. That is,
there are very few services that make anywhere near $10 a GB. For instance, it
costs maybe $10 of mobile data to watch one movie on Netflix and that is what
a monthly subscription costs.

In particular, if you add up all the money spent on advertising it is a
fraction of what the customer pays for mobile data (less than 5%) and if the
carriers just rebated 5% of the data charges to the web sites they'd be doing
much better than they do now.

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a3n
For all the usual and related reasons that you list.

Also safety.

Also privacy through reduced tracking.

Also just plain curmudgeonly contrariness. Harumph!

But after doing so, I've seen an unanticipated benefit. It's a much quieter
internet. I really dislike being bombarded with messages to "Buy! Anything!
Just buy it!"

And you know, the internet and web were here long before advertising took
hold. I acknowledge sites' right to publish whatever the hell they want,
including advertising. But I don't have to listen or watch.

I could just ignore the ads, as I used to do with magazines, and I'd be fine
with that, even fine with the subliminal awareness that ads inevitably bring.

But I absolutely reject the intrusiveness of what makes ads really valuable,
tracking. And I will not take the risk of ad-delivered malware. And if it
costs a site money or existence when I view their site but not their ads,
well, good. They're fucking things up, being complicit with the dangerous
nature of current ad practices.

If ads were static, served by the site and not an ad network, I'd be less
resistant. And if there were something like an Underwriters certificate that a
site wasn't passing on viewer data to static ad sellers, then this argument
would be over for me.

Reform or die. The internet will still be here.

Good luck with your monetization.

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PaulHoule
Saving Bandwidth. Seriously.

In my neck of the woods I have a 2Mb/sec DSL line, and ad blocking makes a
visible difference in how fast pages load, what my blood pressure is, etc.

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smp1234
Once in a whole when I have to browse the Internet an a friend's or a public
computer, I realize that websites look so much cleaner with adblock turned on!

Also, I pretty much never click an ad, so no point displaying it.

