I’ve been informed that adblock plus sort of sucks now. If you’re looking for one, go for UBlock Origin.
Imagine shilling a closed source, sold out alternative to UBlock Origin
I’m not an expert on these and didn’t realize there was a difference. Did this one sell out?
Yes, they allow certain “non-obtrusive” ads by default. Some people might be fine with this, but it should absolutely be opt-in, and their deal with an ad company is the only reason it’s the default.
I miss non obtrusive adds, remember when add blockers weren’t a thing and we were all fine with the adds in the sidebar trying to sell us virus laden glittery custom mouse cursors? Instead we have an arms race where the net is essentially unuseable without an add blocker.
I’m guessing you missed the time period where opening the wrong page would give you an infinite loop of un-closeable pop-up windows with background music.
Ads were never really non-obtrusive. If advertisers could force you to listen to their slogan at max volume every time you opened your browser, they would do so without hesitation. If you ever saw an easily avoidable ad in the late 90s-early 00s, it wasn’t for lack of trying. They simply hadn’t personally figured out more annoying methods yet.
I’m guessing you missed the time period where opening the wrong page would give you an infinite loop of un-closeable pop-up windows with background music.
Now we’re graced with its spiritual successor - the full-screen browser tab that looks like an “antivirus” warning designed to freak people out and get them to call the 800 number to grant remote access to “fix” the virus.
Or those flash-based “shoot the mosquito” ads that played a buzzing noise, at a time where your browser didn’t highlight tabs playing media.
Agreed. Flash. 🤦♂️. Keep that one in the annals of history please.
What magical era is this? Because the before-adblocker time I remember was a hellscape of pop-over popups, sometimes many of them from opening a single web page.
… ah, those were the days, of flash player ads that would grind your system to a halt with anti-aliased particle spam, minigames, and perhaps a virus too.
Or the sneaky, stealthy, cpu grinding carpet bomb of the pop-under ads, only visible after you close the browsing window.
It’s become even worse since mobile became dominant.
Now the ads are no longer a bit of text or a gif, but full page shit covering the top half of what you want to see and stubbornly staying in place even as you scroll. The bottom half of the screen is a sea of cookie and data consent forms who’s only interest is in making you agree out of sheer frustration.
And this is fuelled by bullshit, clickbait driven sites that use 10 paragraphs of useless AI generated padding with ads in between, to resist telling you what you went there to find out.
Google has destroyed the usability of the internet, and if it wasn’t them it would have been some other greedy fuckers.
Some of the first ads on the Internet were pop-ups. Ads always sucked.
The worst part is, I still want those crazy cursors
No, I remember hating those banner ads.
Carbon Ads does non-intrusive ads very well
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Well that blows. Thanks for the heads up. This is why we can’t have nice things.
uBlock Origin, Little Snitch (Mini for mac folk), proton VPN. Live free!!
Unless I heard wrong, I was under the impression that to be considered “non-intrusive” all the ad company had to do was pay adblock Plus.
Ublock Origin is king
No, they need to obey to a specific standard. I think money may be involved but you need also to make sure that ads are non intrusive
Not only did Adblock Plus sell out, the maker of the real program everybody should be using, uBlock Origin, doesn’t even accept donations.
A tale of 3 adblockers
ABP allows “acceptable” ads that are acceptable insofar as they meet certain standards one of which is paying them money effectively renting your eyeballs to advertisers.
Ublock Origin: A powerful and performant ad blocker by its creator
Ublock. After the above dev tried to pass the torch to the loser who now controls this he instantly edited information removing all information about the person who actually created it and fund raise off it to the point where the original dev renamed his fork of his own work Ublock origin after it was taken down on behalf of the scumbag who now runs ublock.
In short there is no reason to use anything but Ublock origin
sold out like 12 friggin years ago too. it’s not like it’s recent news.
(btw abp is in fact open source and licensed under GPLv3, but that doesn’t make it any less sketchy sith their “Acceptable Ads” program)
ABP is definitely not closed source.
You can disagree with the whole “acceptable ads” debacle (I did and switched to unlock origin) but ABP is far from a risk to anyone using it. There’s just better blockers out there.
I thought that was the joke, but I guess not. The joke being that Billy is about to give money to a horrible company.
Adblock plus has sucked for at least half a decade at this point.
It’s been a full decade since I chose ublock over abp, it used less ram and let me block specific html elements. It’s still the best.
abp: ❌ ublock: ✅
Specifically, ublock origin. The “origin” part is important.
uBlock non-Origin sold out and died.
Billy, yes! (But use uBlock Origin instead)
This reminds me to donate to uBlock Origin. The dev does not accept donations though. I can’t imagine a fay without uBlock Origin.
Yeah I wish the dev accepted donations. Ublock makes my life so much better and I have a hard time being online without it. That’s something I’d gladly donate to. You can donate to the maintainers of the block-lists though
Explanation by uBlock Origin’s dev: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don’t-you-accept-donations%3F.
Fair play to the dev. At least they are totally upfront so you know you can actually trust the work as being unbiased.
And his reputation is solid. He passed on the original uBlock and its maintainer sold out so he went back and made uBlock Origin.
Nice of him to mention uBlock Origin is nothing without the maintainers of the block lists it depends on and somewhere else mentions people should donate to those instead. Nice to see some parts of the Internet are resisting the enshitification, or, in this case, actively fighting it.
Honestly I never understood why ads try so hard to be annoying like I just don’t see how that is more profitable than making a ad that simply makes your product look good somehow they must be working as they are so prominent but I still just don’t get it
The bane of marketing.
Somewhere, some metric told them that they don’t need to make good ads that explain the product. They only need to be as annoying as possible to garner attention, and put their branding on the end to be remembered.
Marketing is about hacking your brain in order to sell you products you do not need. It is horrible and should be banned entirely.
“Marketing” is just a euphemism for “propaganda” and is just as unethical (if not even more so).
Yes, it is propaganda, and to build on the comment you’re replying to, one of the tactics they use instead of explaining their product is simply repetitiveness.
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. -Joseph Goebbels
Simply repeat your ad often enough in front of enough people, and an amount of those people will stop questioning the ad and take it as gospel.
A diamond store in Canada has horrible ads with a man screaming in them. (all Canadians know who I am talking about already) I turn their ads off or switch radio stations when I hear them. If I was going to buy diamond jewellery I would go out of my way to buy from the store that is the furthest away from any of there stores even if it cost more. I would buy any mineral other than diamonds though.
I’m sad to say that those advertisements worked on me. When a young man needs to buy an engagement ring, name recognition, albeit in a negative light, got me to spend money with them. I just went to the first place that popped in my head.
I haven’t listened to local radio in years but you have just unlocked that yell from my memory.
I guess it’s good in the sense as they have been able to cut through the mass volume of media we are flooded with daily.
There’s a fundamental problem within the marketing industry, that almost nothing that’s being sold is something you even remotely need. Economics says that consumers are rational. If that’s the case we would almost never buy anything. Marketing exists at odds with that principle.
If you won’t buy it unless you need it, then they have to create need with their marketing.
If they’re selling you a pen, any pen will write, but this pen will change the way you write! It’s life changing! You need this pen, it’ll be the last pen you ever buy!
If they can’t convince you to need it, you won’t buy it.
There’s another problem, and that’s that we, collectively, are losing our attention spans. The constant access to new media means we never have to spend long on anything, something new is always at our fingertips, and we, collectively, aren’t really that patient anymore.
Before you comment on this with some anecdote about how you’ve only gotten more focused, actually. That’s missing the point, in general we’re getting worse, not better.
So now ads can’t take the time to tell you how great this pen is, really, even if it will change your life, they only have about 5 seconds before you’ve forgotten about it forever. So they have to be louder, more aggressive, and more pervasive. In whatever breed of tiktok style content you choose, you’ll stumble across videos that are blatant ads for a product that make no mention of it. Ads disguised as content, in the modern format. “Hi guys so I just got this pen and it’s l1t3rally life changing” over the top of a cool looking pen writing smoothly.
Will it work on you? Probably not, advertising gains take place in tenths of percentage points. You’re a smart consumer and never fall for such blatant ads, and for you they have a tactic too. Every single piece of content you consume is just full of ads, subtly conditioning you towards every product on the planet. Because if they don’t, you’ll keep your old shit that still works and never buy anything.
I now want to buy this pen about which you speak.
You also missed a golden meta opportunity to shill out your post to BIC®
My ad blocker seems to be having issues, I can see this comment which is an ad /s
I’m a big fan of Pilot G2s, though I find the finer ones don’t last through an entire cartridge.
I specifically used pens because how pointless a good pen is, when the 5 dollar box of 60 Bic Round Stick Ms is perfectly acceptable and it’s literally the only pen most people will use every day if they use one that frequently.
A great pen is only a little better than a good one, and bad pens are available at every price.
Because, in the golden days of ads, your metrics were bullshit. You had a print ad and someone said that they sold this many issues and, because of the papers totally not biased market research the told you that for every paper sold, x more people saw your ad. Same with TV and Radio, most numbers around viewers or listeners are basically made up with some fancy statistics.
With the Internet, suddenly you had hard data - your ad has been requested x times. But, that data was always below the fancy print/tv/radio numbers, so the companies had to either push more or reduce prices. That’s how they designed more and more intrusive ads like the ones with the shitty hidden close icon. The longer you need to close it, the longer is the “ad viewed” metric. The more you click on fake X buttons, the higher is the click rate or click through rate. Ad metrics have always been a scam and no one wants to change it.
Of course it is also possible to get click through rare and even track add-to-carts and purchases… So you would think that would drive more compelling ads. But then the ad companies charge per click so naturally they want to encourage clicking in any way possible.
That being said, you now know that diamond store. How many other diamond stores do you remember off the top of your head?
Thing is, chances are that now you’ll check them out before selling or buying diamonds, and if they are worth it enough, you’ll go there. And if not you, most other people.
It’s sad really, but it does work to some extent.
It’s going to depend on age as well
Zoomers for instance will see an ad to download something and they’d download it. Millennials won’t click ads at all but if they see a software ad then they will assume it’s a scam and avoid that software
So if you are making an ad you want to focus on the Zoomer demographic
As far as annoying, look at the type of YouTubers that Zoomers like. They like annoying things
Seriously? Those kids download software from ads? What happened to the school of “don’t click the wrong button on this warez site”?
Uhhh. I’m gen z and everyone I know knows not to download software from ads.
They work enough, and enough is a surprisingly small amount. I imagine most click through rates are sub 1%, but with the right ratio to impressions, that can be a huge uplift to your sign ups / purchases / whatever
it’s happy to see this alternative memes community growing
Having multiple of things is a strength of the fediverse!
Google only had a net profit of 15 billion USD in Q3 :(
70 million USD to stock buybacks
Infinite growth! To the moon!
I’m eagerly awaiting our world’s economy to collapse. Can’t be very long.
I’d be really curious how much my internet use “costs” to advertisers and if I could/would pay that amount instead.
Like, the advertiser paid $0.0005 to serve that ad to me so I’ll just pay that amount directly to the site and not be served the ad. Just incorporate it into my internet bill and I’d pay just like I do for power or gas. And would my willingness to not see ads make me more or less valuable to advertisers and affect the math?
I don’t like the subscription model as it seems like the price point isn’t based on actual cost at all and like they’re double-dipping by still selling my info. Charge me the actual cost plus a reasonable profit margin of 10%-20%. How much would that be? Is advertising really so valuable that I wouldn’t be willing to pay that amount? If so, are advertisers overselling the efficacy of their product?
Or we could just block the ads and tell them to fuck off.
Or they could just block you and tell you to fuck off
Go the other way and create anti advertising. Every time an ad invades your time, create your own ad like how you think it tastes like cancer or that you think this podcast broke up your marriage.
I’ll be honest and say I don’t really understand what you are trying to convey.
I’m opposed to ads. I think they have taken over far too much of our lives. If advertising works by invading all our spaces and free time unchecked then wouldn’t leaving comments on those ads saying how annoyed you are with these products not counter act the encroaching mass advertisements. I think it would.
I think if people fought back against ads we could get some cool spaces back. Or at least stem this insane concept that every free space with a single eyeball gazing at it must be sold to someone hawking crap.
Reddit went to shit chasing ads. Twitter, YouTube, all of them turn to shit and manipulative doom scrolling ways so they can sell advertise space to us. Fuck them.
You might be interested in subvertising which actively works to reclaim the spaces invaded by advertising.
One could, in theory, download the posters and put them up over the relentlessly shite, unasked for adverts that permeate every part of your city. One could even buy a key which opens certain advert spaces - such as bus stops - and replace them with any image of your choosing. Obviously this is illegal and no one would ever do this, however, I assume wearing a hi-vis vest and beanie hat would work surprisingly well when not doing this illicit activity. Also, complain about the hourly rates if questioned and you’ll absolutely be left alone.
These are brilliant. Thanks for the link :)
No worries man! Yeah, they’re fantastic
Haha love it. That’s shit I like to see. Is it not weird to anybody else that it hasn’t? Like we all respect ads like they don’t exist even though we’re living like roddy Popper in “they live”
You get an ad for diet pills, and then instead of moving on with your life, create an ad saying those diet pills cause cancer and get those ads served in a vain hope to kill the initial ad.
There were some microtransaction services that sort of worked like this. I think one was called Flattr? I don’t know how well they actually worked or what happened to them.
I keep thinking that it might be a great way to do a website. As long as you have the content to make it worth it
But just super micro transactions, it charges fractions of cents for the things you do on it and doesn’t even charge until you hit a threshold. People could still use the site for free but once you have done enough in it, boom it shows you that you have enjoyed the site and asks for like $4. It would also help you recognize how much you use the site and get people to somewhat curb their time if they want.
Subscription works for like video platforms that makes curated content but otherwise I’d love to do a pay as I go to know I’m supporting them.
TBH I’d give money to a charity that brings fridges to the North Pole before giving them to Google, so well done billy
You can pry my adblocker from my cold, dead hands
Ad-blocking is internet security.
See I use yt premium but that’s because about 5 ish years ago me and 5 friends did a family deal that meant it was $4 per month each, I did rise to $6 per month a while ago but I still think that it’s a good deal. It’s been grandfathered in so it’s not a deal you can get anymore but if I was to loose that deal for any reason I wouldn’t pay for premium
They got rid of all the grandfathered prices this year. That’s probably why your share went from 4 to 6.
They pulled the plug on my grandfathered price, I cut the cord.
Huh so it is lol. 6 a month is definitely better than 18 soooo I’m still happy
Why does no one talk about adnauseam anymore? Is there drama I am not aware of?
Adnauseam is based, people just don’t really talk about adblockers.
The one creator from reddit I miss. Loved when they would respond to comments with more drawings.
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It’s just anime-style, there’s nothing that really makes them “little”. They are usually a bit “too naked” for my tastes though, yeah.
Plus I didn’t find him that funny most of the time, meme template potential aside (which was HUGE) his comics were mostly average imo.
It’s just anime-style, there’s nothing that really makes them “little”
Except what you call anime-style is often just pedophilia with plausible deniability.
Yeah yeah, anime watchers are all pedophiles and fps players are all psychopaths, sure.
That’s not what I said, and you know damn well what I mean.
You can rationalize it all you want, but highly sexualized drawings of underage looking girls are icky as fuck.
They’re drawings in a very unrealistic artstyle, the argument that “they look underage” is pointless when under a realistic lens they barely look human.
If you think they’re icky that’s fine, I’ve seen plenty of anime artwork that made me kinda uncomfortable, but equating them to a serious crime like pedophilia is an argument I’ll never get behind.
They’re drawings in a very unrealistic artstyle, the argument that “they look underage” is pointless when under a realistic lens they barely look human.
And there you have the plausible deniability… “It’s ok because it’s just a drawing” “Maybe it’s an adult woman who just looks petite” “Sure she looks 12 but in the anime she is ackshually 2000 years old”.
Also, in some animes the girls are canonically underage.
a serious crime like pedophilia
Pedophilia itself is not a crime. It’s a paraphilia, aka a mental disorder. The crime is when you act on it with actual children.
So sexualized drawings of 12 year old girls are not a crime in most jurisdictions, but they’re still pedophilia and problematic.
Uh…what?
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