
Use of Ad-Blocking Software Rises by 30% Worldwide - t23
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/technology/ad-blocking-internet.html?mabReward=A3&recp=0&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine&_r=0
======
quantum_magpie
In the present society, the advertisers managed to completely ruin the way
cities look with their endless flashing neon signs (and in the past few years
I've noticed a vast increase in audio-based advertisements outside), they have
ruined the best observation spots, skylines, and in many cases, even parks
with their billboards; the public TV which is funded by tax money is a
complete ad-cancer. The same with radio, or sports games. It got me to the
point where I consciously block every advertisement, but it sometimes gets
really mentally taxing. I've stopped listening to radio, watching TV or
basically going to any larger-scale public outing.

I am _not_ giving them the internet too!

They can take their unwritten pact and starve.

The worst offenders however, are the ones that require a payment to use, and
_still_ completely overwhelm you with the ads (Public transport in my case). I
do subscribe to some services where the subscription removes ads, and I gladly
pay for mobile applications that offer a reasonable (<10$) cost to ad-free
experience. However, I have observed the overwhelming majority of content to
be completely worthless, and I do not lose anything by not coming back.

~~~
satori99
Well said. I have nothing but contempt and loathing for the advertising
industry. I think they ruin everything. I also quit watching and listening to
commercial broadcasters, and even quit working for one.

I have a sister who is a successful advertising creative and executive. Our
wildly differing and strong opinions on the topic makes for interesting family
dinners.

I am longing for the day that AR technology gets to the stage where
lightweight sun-glass frames can have the ability to overlay classical art, or
any other texture, over real-world ads in real-time.

I have also been wondering lately if some sort of Adnix [0] like device could
be developed using the incredible machine learning software that is becoming
widely available. I know very little about such things but I have been meaning
to make time to see if it is within my abilities.

I'd love to scare my sister with it.

[0] Adnix -
[http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=2223](http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=2223)

~~~
humbledrone
What do you think about the fact that the website you linked as a reference is
ad-supported? Assuming that you use an ad-blocker, have you contributed money
directly to the web site in compensation?

It seems that you got some value from the web site. Is this consistent with
"advertising ruins everything"?

Without ads, do you think the web site would exist at all?

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Without ads, do you think the web site would exist at all?_

Quite likely. This kind of content is something people tend to maintain out of
their own interest in the subject and willingness to share. Ads are added more
like as a "why not?" thing.

Anyway, there are many ways to monetize that don't involve asking third
parties to shove shit at your visitors.

------
mikestew
_By using software to block digital advertising, critics say, users are
breaking an unwritten pact with websites and digital publishers, many of which
generate the bulk of their revenue from these ads._

...

 _In those regions, people’s efforts to block malware disguised as online
advertising has been the main motivation for downloading ad blockers._

First, "critics say" a lot of things. And that "unwritten pact"? Yeah, you
wanna know why it's unwritten? Because it doesn't exist. However, the second
part that I quote undoes any kind of morality tale "critics" would like to
spin. Users were apparently willing to tolerate a degree of advertising
(which, BTW, is a loooong way from any kind of a pact), but after a point
they'll turn the tap off if there are tools available to do so.

~~~
dade_
I didn't bother with adblockers until they started auto-playing videos with
audio. Now I must block them. There are many circumstances when it is not
appropriate for my computer to start blaring audio and I have to search where
it is coming from. So if anyone broke the imaginary pact, it was publishers
with auto-play.

~~~
equalarrow
Hmm, honestly, I've been using adblockers since the early 00's. It started in
the form of flash blockers, since there were tons of ads that were flash back
then.

As humanity progressed, this included various ad networks and other human
beneficiary systems. Today, it's all about blocking the anti-ad blockers. :-\

I've been amazed over the years tho how some friends and colleagues let this
crap through. My wife, for instance, using Yahoo mail would stupefy me on how
she could concentrate on writing emails when there are banner and tower ads
animating and annoyingly blinking on the periphery of their ui.

As a software developer/creator, having shit all over the screen going apeshit
with animations and visually assaulting assets, was just to much for me from
the beginning.

~~~
dwaltrip
My sister is similar, she doesn't seem to mind the ads. My Dad knows this guy
at work who likes the ads and wants Google to know more about him so they will
give him better ads... There must be a decent proportion who don't mind for
whatever reason.

I'm much more like you in my desire for no distractions so I can focus. But I
would go a little further and say that I consider ads somewhat of an affront
to my personal autonomy, and avoid them whenever it isn't too difficult.

I much prefer researching all the options myself, after I've decided to buy
something, instead of continually being influenced to believe x, y, or z by
profit hungry companies whose incentives are often not aligned with mine.

~~~
dogweather
I like the very highly specialized ads, like from the Carbon network.

------
legohead
When the user adblock percentage of our website hit 30%, we decided to try out
anti-adblock solutions.

We worked with a company that used various tricks to get around the adblock
protection, and then serve ads. This was a great success, at first. Eventually
our users started notifying adblock[1], and adblock included rules to block
the new ads on our site. Then we contacted our vendor, who gave us a software
update to circumvent the new adblock rules.

This went on, until adblock enabled the nuclear option and blocked all ajax
requests on our site. This effectively broke our site for anyone using
adblock. So we caved in, took out the software, and begged for mercy from
adblock. The rule was taken out, and we are back to losing 30% of our ad
revenue.

I should mention that we've tried the usual stuff -- subscription service to
remove ads. Asking our users nicely to add our site to their whitelist, etc.
Both of these have had minuscule impact.

[1] When I say "adblock did X", I really mean the caretakers of the "rule
lists", which the various adblocking engines use in their browser extensions.

~~~
mikestew
_I should mention that we 've tried the usual stuff -- subscription service to
remove ads. Asking our users nicely to add our site to their whitelist, etc.
Both of these have had minuscule impact._

There was a time that might have worked. It would have worked with me, anyway.
A time when others were using ad blockers, but I had an attitude of "meh, they
gotta pay the bills". I might pay a little money to turn off the ads, and were
I to use an ad blocker I might whitelist a site or two.

But a threshold was crossed. I can't tell you what that threshold looks like,
or name any particular event that set me off. Maybe it's the malware, maybe
it's the jiggling belly fat ads, auto-play videos, I dunno. But at some point
I said "enough", and I quit giving a shit about anything to do with that
industry. The well has been so poisoned that I don't care about finding an
antidote anymore. In general, I don't care if websites go under. The poisoned
well metaphor breaks down in that I can't do without water, but I can sure as
hell do without most of the ad-laden websites out there. I'll miss them, but
not enough to be bothered to expend even the minimal effort to whitelist as
site.

I don't want to be that person. I want to be empathetic to at least the small
content producers just trying to scrape a few bucks. But I've been worn down,
and not in the way the advertising industry wished I had been worn down. No,
I'm worn down such that it's just easier to run an ad blocker and quit caring.
And it's unfortunate that companies like yours get caught in all of it.

~~~
e40
Bing-fucking-go.

Until advertisers understand and embrace this, the people that use adblockers
will never relent. There is one, let me repeat, one website that I disable
adblocking on: reddit.com. I've never been abused by them, and I don't regret
that choice. Every other time I've temporarily relented, I immediately
regretted it and blocked them again.

~~~
blubb-fish
stackoverflow.com is whitelisted - I lilke the ads

~~~
bottled_poe
What a novel idea - making the ads _actually_ relevant to my interests.
Instead of just making guesses based on browsing habits.

------
1propionyl
“Ad blocking is a detriment to the entire advertising ecosystem,” Paul Verna,
an analyst at the research firm eMarketer, said in a statement.

Yes, and the entire advertising ecosystem is a detriment to the internet.
Crafting more "compelling" advertisements won't solve the key problem: online
advertisement has become an abuse of our attention spans.

We need to stop talking about pragmatism and start considering advertising
from an ethical and moral perspective.

~~~
JohannesH
I work at an ad network and I've tried to push morals and ethics for 7 years
now.

The problem is that the entire field is driven by sales people with very few
exceptions. The only objective is to make more money tomorrow, so they only
think about how they can squeeze the market just a bit more... Like "Oh
there's an empty spot on that page, put an ad there now!", or "Hey did you see
those ads that cover the entire page? Advertisers love those... I want you to
implement it on all sites asap!".

Ethics, morality, user experience, security and privacy concerns are simply
not a part of the equation.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
"I work at an ad network"

That's the root of your problem.

~~~
CaptSpify
I'll disagree with you. As someone who _strongly_ hates ads, I think they
could be useful and done well. They just aren't.

------
pillowkusis
I think it's important to note that the 30% increase claim comes from PageFair
([https://pagefair.com/blog/2017/adblockreport/](https://pagefair.com/blog/2017/adblockreport/)),
which is a company that helps other companies bypass adblocker and still have
ads on their site (ostensibly in a much less offensive manner).

They have an active interest in (over)estimating very agressively about the
growth of adblockers -- it's their business model.

------
jonawesomegreen
It makes sense. I install ublock on my parents computers, because without ads
to send them off course when they are browsing, they are much less likely to
get malware. And it works. I've often wondered how they ended up with so much
malware on their computer and I'm now convinced that ads are a big cause.

~~~
jarcoal
I did this for my parents, but mostly to save bandwidth. They live far enough
out of town that they can only use Verizon LTE. It saves them over $100/yr.

~~~
kalleboo
My parents live rurally where the only options are satellite or a rooftop 3G
antenna with flakey and expensive 3G data. Adblocking has been a huge deal for
them. Saves money and speeds up page loading dramatically.

------
sklivvz1971
The elephant in the room here is the assumption that newspapers or other media
that rely only on ads to survive should automatically have a viable business
model just because they had a viable model with printed media.

Clearly, this is not the case. One can't adblock printed media, but can
certainly adblock websites.

The solution? Find a better business model. For example, stack overflow uses
non-intrusive, pertinent ads to entice people to white list the site, and
separate revenue streams like a job board to keep the site running.

I understand that this might sound simplistic. I am perfectly aware of how
hard this problem is to fix -- however the world moves in the direction
dictated by the big economic trends. Websites have almost zero variable cost
-- most cost is fixed and does not scale as pageviews increase -- so economics
tells us that competition will drive the value of a pageview to zero.

~~~
brettz
Maybe sites like Stack Overflow have 0 variable cost but this is more of an
exception.

The viable model is paywalls and that's where quality content will go. I don't
see a big deal with that as I will gladly pay for content that I value.

~~~
sklivvz1971
> Maybe sites like Stack Overflow have 0 variable cost but this is more of an
> exception.

Interesting, how so? I find it difficult to imagine any media site that, once
they produced a piece of content, has to pay any other substantial cost as
they get more views.

In other words: doubling up page views for the Guardian does not mean doubling
up the costs of producing the articles. That's what I mean by "substantially
zero variable cost".

~~~
brettz
Not doubling costs but delivery photo and video does increase costs
significantly. Something Stack Overflow doesn't have to do.

------
mschuster91
> By using software to block digital advertising, critics say, users are
> breaking an unwritten pact with websites and digital publishers, many of
> which generate the bulk of their revenue from these ads.

No. The unwritten pact is "you can show ads, as long as they're not intrusive
(layer ads, popup ads), don't distribute malware and don't unneccessarily
invade the privacy of the users".

Just go back to hosting and managing your own ads - print media most certainly
can do this, given their print ad sales teams, and I believe there's a market
for advertising brokers which allow a 1:1 connection between advertiser and
the content platform.

Edit: And for heavens sake, do not roll out fucking video ads, especially not
on mobile pages. Not everyone has 50GB+ data volume like in Finland...

~~~
Erik816
In theory, yes. This is what they should have done. But now that they have
violated our trust, our ad blockers are going to block even their legitimate
self-hosted and managed ads. Some people will white-list, but not nearly
enough to make up for the expense of managing ads in house.

~~~
5ilv3r
My ublock install doesn't block self hosted ads. They have to come from an ad
server to be blocked.

~~~
gorhill
uBlock Origin can block self-hosted ads. If you see non-blocked ads somewhere,
just report the details to filter list maintainers. The tens of thousands of
filters in those filter lists are the result of users reporting instances of
non-blocked ads, for the benefit of all other users.

------
Animats
Now we need tools which delete those annoying "you are running an ad blocker"
popups. For sites which do that, right click on "Inspect element"in Firefox,
mouse around in the element tree until you find the popup node, and do a
Delete Node on it. That usually brings the content back. An add-on to assist
with this would be popular.

We're going to need browsers which render original pages on a non-visible
page, ads and all, then extract the good stuff from the DOM and put it on a
visible page. Then the site can't tell if you're blocking ads.

~~~
kuschku
> We're going to need browsers which render original pages on a non-visible
> page, ads and all, then extract the good stuff from the DOM and put it on a
> visible page. Then the site can't tell if you're blocking ads.

Firefox does that, it's called the "Reader Mode".

~~~
ams6110
Reader mode will not reveal content on paywalled sites, even if it's there.
E.g. article content in a hidden div. Elinks (or even just "view source")
will.

~~~
kuschku
Considering reader mode is open source, adding that feature is quite easy. I
obviously can't confirm nor deny if I have done so before.

------
mahyarm
Adblock is an autoimmune response. Adoption goes high because ads take too
much in resources.

Thats why as the article said ad block became really popular in indonesia,
because it costed users too much of their data plan compared to the value they
got. And the reason why is because rich media ads became more frequent
compared to a few years ago.

To avoid becoming an autoimmune response victim, you have to do things like
google AMP where 'ad-enhanced' becomes a benefit.

------
Guest98123
Does anyone else here make their living from advertising? Well over 50% of my
users run ad block. I get 1.5 million page views a day on my primary site
(4,000 Alexa), and the advertisements cover my AWS bill, and pay me an average
salary. That's it, and the profits are dropping every year as more people use
ad block.

It's scary. I have a million users, run the business extremely lean with just
myself, and I'm barely scrapping by at the moment. If I can't survive, how is
everyone else going to survive? Don't get me wrong, I use ad block too for
obvious reasons, but we're going to see more and more businesses closing up
shop unless there is a better way to monetize content online in the near
future.

~~~
bazillion
If your site has a lot of image content, I'd love for you to try out PLEENQ
([http://pleenq.com](http://pleenq.com)). It doesn't inconvenience your users,
and in fact helps them buy things directly from your images. You can also use
it on top of any of the advertising you're currently using (or even donations
if you move to that).

Here's a site using it for their lifestyle blog -- hover over the first image
(desktop only): [https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/11/04/bridal-
show...](https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/11/04/bridal-shower-
ponytail-moment/)

Email me at justin@pleenq.com if you have any questions!

~~~
yellow_viper
wow that is some next gen advertising right there, my has a image sharing
startup ([https://itsosticky.com](https://itsosticky.com)). I'll let him know.

Does it need to be mapped to each product or can it do that itself?

~~~
bazillion
They need to mapped individually, but it's a really simple interface to do it.
I've also just added a templating system that allows you to customize all
aspects of the popup, and am about to go live with a split test system that
lets you split test multiple items to the same region.

------
kevin_thibedeau
Stop serving Javascript.

Most of the media industry's problems with malvertising would disappear if
they only served up <img> tags. They could also one-up the ad blockers by
serving images from within their own domain. Why the media industry hasn't
united to clean up their act is baffling. Google certainly isn't going to take
leadership on this issue since any solution cuts into their revenue.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
_Stop serving Javascript._

That would work for me. I don't block ads, I simply block JavaScript from most
sites. The paucity of ads served to me is a happy side effect.

 _Why the media industry hasn 't united to clean up their act is baffling._

The media industry is constantly doubling down, trying to be more and more
obnoxious. The exact opposite of cleaning up their act.

------
0xfaded
I've just switched to firefox mobile and uBlock origin and self destructing
cookies work perfectly. Previously I had used a hosts file which helped but
broke some sites and let some ads through.

It's marginally slower than chrome but otherwise I couldn't be happier.

~~~
hyperdunc
This is my setup too and it works very well.

It's also worth mentioning that Firefox has built-in tracking protection that
can be enabled in all tabs through about:config.

There's also a built-in option to block downloading webfonts.

Overall, Firefox on Android seems to be a lot more privacy focussed than
Chrome.

------
thoughtsimple
I asked politely to not be tracked by using the opt-in switch in my browsers.
Advertisers literally laughed at that and said they wouldn't honor it.

So now ads are blocked on my browser. All of them. The advertising industry
and the people who use it to monetize are at fault. They did nothing to
prevent the awful privacy mess that was made of the web without ad-blocking.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Unfortunately, Microsoft turned it on by default for all installs which killed
it. It was supposed to be a user specifically opting in so it would be treated
like a request directly to the advertiser. Microsoft's end-run around that
gave advertisers the excuse they needed and it died. I think it would have
gained some serious traction if it had been specifically opt in.

------
eistrati
Ad blocking is here to stay. Some people compare it to antivirus revolution,
allowing end users to protect their browsing experience against malware and
malicious use of web.

Check this out:
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160111/05574633295/forbe...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160111/05574633295/forbes-
site-after-begging-you-turn-off-adblocker-serves-up-steaming-pile-malware-
ads.shtml)

~~~
1propionyl
Advertisements are very often intended to incept and promote an idea virally.
They are, for better or worse, memetic mind viruses.

Adblockers are in a very literal sense antivirus.

~~~
stephengillie
Advertising induces desire to generate economic activity. If desire is
suffering, then advertising (in the most extreme sense) can be viewed as a
form of paid torture.

~~~
omarchowdhury
And then you have someone discovering the teachings of the Buddha from an ad
ran by their local Dharma center seeking new patrons.

------
apricot
Marketers: "we get to use computers to track you, and boy do we track you, but
you can't use computers to try to evade us, that would be unfair."

------
crypt1d
Businesses who's revenue is mostly coming from ads are operating in a bubble
that should have burst long ago. The sooner it ends the sooner we can get rid
of all the click-bait blogs and BS websites that make money from uneducated
users. It goes without saying that there are many legitimate websites with
great content that make money from ads - but if you have good content then
users will be willing to pay for it.

------
eppsilon
I am not sure about the premise that the "surge of mobile ad-blockers" in the
developing world will translate to "skyrocketing" usage of ad-blockers in the
US. I think the incentive to limit data usage by blocking ads is stronger in
the developing world than it is elsewhere (less disposable income, lower data
caps, possibly higher data rates).

The article seems to trust PageFair's assessment but only mentions in passing
that they make money helping companies recoup lost ad revenue, and spreading
fear over higher ad-blocker usage probably helps them gain clients.

------
fnovd
>“Ad blocking is a detriment to the entire advertising ecosystem,” Paul Verna,
an analyst at the research firm eMarketer, said in a statement. “The best way
for the industry to tackle this problem is to deliver compelling ad
experiences that consumers won’t want to block.”

Compelling? I'd settle for "non-instrusive" and "won't force my computer to
run potentially malicious code".

------
dgfgfdagasdfgfa
Not only should people use them if they don't like the way advertising drives
the internet, use Ad Nauseam ([https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/))
to actively lower the value of clicks.

------
callmeed
I'm curious why sites/blogs don't start hosting ad assets themselves and
serving them from their own domain. My understanding is most ad blocking is
done at the host level (maybe I'm wrong and the DOM is involved too).

I also think it'd be an interesting startup idea. I get that there would be
some technical hurdles to overcome, especially with all the real-time bidding
that goes on now. But I'm sure a couple smart people could come up with
something. Could start with something as simple as a cron job, a WordPress
plugin, or an nginx proxy.

~~~
drcharris
I suspect that if I had a site, piping assets from some arbitrary external
company through my host would likely expose me to dramatically larger legal
liability than the current set up.

It would also radically increase my bandwidth bills if the ads were anything
but text or a small amount of (hopefully sanitised) HTML.

Both of these could be mitigated by adding an enormous amount of due diligence
in terms of what ads I was willing to serve, but that would add a lot of extra
cost to running the site.

There's no real technical barrier to doing it but I suspect the legal and
operational barriers are more significant.

And yes, the DOM is involved too - ad blockers block URL patterns but also
allow users to block DOM elements based on a selector-type syntax. The hardest
ads to remove are ones where the DOM selectors are dynamic - i.e. server-side
rendering producing divs with random CSS classes.

~~~
ssalazar
> piping assets from some arbitrary external company through my host would
> likely expose me to dramatically larger legal liability than the current set
> up.

> It would also radically increase my bandwidth bills if the ads were anything
> but text or a small amount of (hopefully sanitised) HTML.

To an end user these sounds like features, not problems.

> Both of these could be mitigated by adding an enormous amount of due
> diligence in terms of what ads I was willing to serve

The lack of any vetting whatsoever is a big reason why adblock is so
widespread. If you don't trust it enough to transmit it through your servers,
why should I trust it to run on my computer?

------
twentythree
Most of the comments here talk about how terrible advertising is. Obviously,
malware disguised as ads is a bad thing, and I understand the arguments for
preserving our attention spans as well, but is there a space for good ads,
which benefit both the user and the advertiser? I have bought many products
which add value to my life that I probably wouldn't have found without
advertisements. It seems like ads are still the best way to connect people to
products. How do we preserve that, while stopping the bad actors from abusing
the system?

~~~
pavel_lishin
> Most of the comments here talk about how terrible advertising is.

Most seem to be complaining about malware.

> _is there a space for good ads, which benefit both the user and the
> advertiser?_

Probably, but how are you going to convince me that _your_ special snowflake
ad network is the one that's guaranteed to be malware free?

~~~
acdha
I think the future is self-hosting: if nytimes.com got the search de-ranking
and DNS blacklisting for hosting malware you can bet the advertisements would
get way more scrutiny.

------
mtgx
Not as fast as malvertising, unfortunately:

 _‘Malvertising’ Increased By 132% In 2016 According To New Report_ :

[https://www.scribblrs.com/malvertising-
rises/](https://www.scribblrs.com/malvertising-rises/)

------
thomastjeffery
Ads are pollutants. When people complain about being predominantly supported
by ad revenue, and complaining that people block ads, it is exactly the same
as people who work in the coal industry complaining about pollution
restrictions. They can take their business model, and shove it.

------
belorn
Since this is about annual increase, it would be interesting to see the
adaptation path of spam filters for email vs spam filters for the browser. Are
we just seeing history repeat?

------
nkkollaw
Ad blockers are good.

On one hand, advertising on the internet makes it possibile to have free
services and websites, so that even people who can't afford a subscription can
see the content and IMO is better than data mining as a source of revenue for
content providers.

On the other hand, it's super-annoying.

The rise of ad blockers will make content providers introduce the possibility
of paying to access the service with no ads, so that those who can afford it
or care can pay to get it with no ads, and everyone else can still get it with
ads.

It's not really realistic to pretend that some services don't make any money,
because after a while there would be no good quality content to go to. Ad
blockers are perhaps finally changing the idea that everything on the internet
MUST be free, and getting people used to paying for what they want to use.

------
dtech
I don't understand why so few websites offer alternative methods of payment,
subscriptions or donations and rely solely on ads.

I was positively surprised to see the New York Times and other newspapers have
started offering relatively cheap online subscriptions (still too expensive
[1]). I'm waiting for Youtube Red to become available in my country and have
Netflix and Spotify. Patreon provides to be a great platform for niche content
and I support several creators that cater to my interests.

Subscription and pay-what-you-want seems like much more sustainable business
model than ads, or at least has good synergy.

[1] For ads a CPM (cost per mille) of $1.00 is common, meaning one ad view
from me is worth $0.001. If I pay a site $1.00/month I'm paying them much more
than I'm "paying" them with ads.

~~~
Balgair
This is true, but I think it tends to favor established players. Look at
YouTubers. I follow a few Youtubers and have for years. They all seem to be
moving over to Twitch and the Paetreon model for support, specifically the
Amazon Prime method. This is in part due to the lessening of Youtube's
$$/view. I think this is great for them, and I pay them to continue doing what
I love for them to do. However, I find that there are less and less people
entering the 'market' over time. Is this a bad/good thing? I have no idea,
just an observation.

~~~
aninhumer
I think the fact that people's Patreon income is visible might make it self-
balancing.

If you like popular creator, but see that they're already getting quite a bit
of money on Patreon, you're less likely to support them than another creator
that you only kind of like, but who is currently getting less than you think
they deserve. Unless the popular creator can convince you that they can spend
the extra money to make their content better, and thus be worth it.

So I think with Patreon, creators' revenues will tend to converge on what
people think they're actually worth.

------
grillvogel
the whole reason all these stupid ad supported hot take blogs/ "news" sites
and networks exist is to cash in on shitty clickbait content. it will be no
great loss if they go away.

------
gregpilling
I started using ad blockers for virus protection. I got hit twice through ad
networks on big websites. Extra bonus that website loads faster etc.

It was 90% the viruses for me.

------
Lucadg
Here in Bangkok when I wait for the sky train I find myself trying to avoid
advertisement. I end up looking at people or at the sky (I stopped the data
plan to avoid being dragger to my phone). There is basically advertisement
everywhere, plus sound for the biggest screens. So unless I do a conscious
effort to avoid, I'm 100% of the time looking at some kind of ads. Ads are
fine, but yes, this is too much.

------
lend000
It's quite a surprise that so many prominent companies are getting around the
best ad-blockers. Obviously it's a game of cat and mouse, but it seems like
nothing much has changed with ad blockers since sites started detecting them
and limiting content a couple years ago. Are there any open-source ad blocking
projects? Or does that defeat the purpose? I'm not convinced it does.

------
mkonecny
I agreed with this "unwritten pact" and felt it was unfair to browse with an
ad blocker - however recently the performance impact on my 2016 flagship
(Nexus 6P) was atrocious.

Once I installed an adblocker, I can't believe how much faster/less
frustrating using my phone to find something on the web has been.

~~~
hellogoodbyeeee
What ad blocker are you running? I think you can use some from firefox on
Android, but I prefer chrome. Is there anything out there?

~~~
imandride
I'm not sure how I stubbled upon it, but I'm using Yandex browser on android.
It seems to have all the extensions I need, I think it uses anything
compatible with opera.

------
j3097736
How to NOT "create compelling ad experiences":

    
    
      1) After the content has loaded it's broken into pieces by blank spots which  slowly fill up with ads
      2) Loading the page maxes out a recent CPU
      3) Page with ads does 3x the number of network requests as the adblocked version

------
emptyfile
Since Chrome on Android doesn't allow addons I think it's safe to say websites
have a good decade or so poking us in the eye with pop up ads.

I'm guessing it will take at least a decade before Firefox or some alternative
browser gains any traction on mobile.

~~~
ScroogeMcDoug
The mobile ad market is proof enough that the ad industry as a whole is
terrible. Blocking ads on iOS and Android is harder for the average user than
on Desktop, and it's abused to a ridiculous degree. Popups, redirects, trying
to trick users into installing malicious apps, etc.

The ad industry had a second chance with mobile, and they showed they couldn't
control themselves.

------
anotherevan
They are not ad-blockers, they are HTML firewalls.

------
Kinnard
I wonder what portion of this is driven by the Brave Browser:
[https://brave.com/](https://brave.com/)

I'm guessing it's small but significant and will grow.

I use Brave myself but not exclusively.

~~~
CaptSpify
I'm purely guessing, but I'd imagine that more users are installing addons to
their current browsers.

~~~
cpeterso
It seems like most of Brave's blocking+micropayments functionality could be
implemented in a Chrome or Firefox add-on.

------
makecheck
The problem is not the _ads_ , it is the _implementation_. Nobody would care
if sites simply inserted a line that said “Brought to you by FooBar, Inc.
[Link].”.

------
bnolsen
People claiming the internet is free...well its not. In the US the carriers
like comcast make money hand over fist selling expensive plans for a pittance
of bandwidth. That's where a huge chunk of the money is going.

------
CalRobert
Philosophically, if I issue a GET request and you choose to respond to it,
what the hell business do you have telling me what to do with those bytes? Is
using wget, or cURL, or Lynx wrong? Is blocking images on mobile wrong?

------
touristtam
Seriously, we have to think as a society what license to manipulate we give
the advertisment business, then we can talk about blocking ads.

------
jakeogh
Lots todo, but
[https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate](https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate) makes
my web experience way better.

------
known
Adblock filters explained in [https://adblockplus.org/filter-
cheatsheet](https://adblockplus.org/filter-cheatsheet)

------
sundvor
I don't mind ads. I do mind malware. Sadly, the line between the two is
blurred when former's networks are used as the attack vectors for the latter.

------
surferbayarea
Has anyone applied deep learning to the problem of identifying advertisement
blocks in a web page?

------
Lucadg
Why ad blocker apps require so many permissions as my photos, camera and
microphone?

~~~
izacus
They don't, that's probably malware.

~~~
Lucadg
Could you suggest a good one for Android? Most in Play Store ask these
permissions

~~~
XzetaU8
Adguard [https://adguard.com/en/adguard-
android/overview.html](https://adguard.com/en/adguard-android/overview.html)

AdAway for rooted devices
[https://github.com/AdAway/AdAway](https://github.com/AdAway/AdAway)

------
superquest
Unfortunately, the usefulness of ad-blocking software is falling just as
quickly ...

------
dbg31415
Seems relevant.

[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/h...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts)

