As I recall, back in the late 90s there was a story in the Wall Street Journal about a man who loved receiving email spam. After a long day’s work he would go home and relax by looking through his email spam and order things.
Yeah, when I watch sports events from other countries it’s interesting to see the commercials, even if I don’t speak the language. It’s when I have to watch 20 minutes of the same commercials every hour that it gets bad.
I don’t have adblock on my work computer. I don’t want it interfering with webdev and I’ve found it to do so in the past. But it’s interesting, the dichotomy between sites I use as development resources vs the rest of the web. My phone and home computer are unbearable without adblock, but on my work computer, the ads are hardly noticeable really.
Its ultimately based on the sites you frequent at work vs home. The sites i read stuff at work tend to be less in your face with ads,.so you know its there but theyre less distracting.
My retired parents live with me. I went ahead and put a PiHole on our home wifi. A day later my mother was literally complaining that she couldn’t click on ads on facebook. I told her those are ads and they track her and she says “well everyone likes to use the internet how they like to use it… can you put it back the old way? I want to look at these shoes”. Can’t fucking win.
but this means that she would see the ads but not being able to click? I don’t get it. They should had just disappeared, no? Or was she complaining that she wasn’t seeing the ads?
The ads still appear in the facebook feed but clicking them results in a “this site could not be found” or similar error, is how I understood it to work. I know the PiHole basically makes it so the routes from “whateveradwebsite.com” end up not resolving to an IP address. I’m not sure how FB is serving them; so the text/image content might be coming from an FB server and the link is just an ad URL with a bunch of tracking info on it.
No. Google search results still show sponsored links. But if you then click on them it breaks. Same thing for FB. The links are served from Facebook.Com and so they are not flagged as ads.
So she is likely getting exactly what she searched for and then it breaks after clicking on it
The ads on Facebook (and many other sites) are served from the same site as the actual content. So if you try to block ads with pihole it will stop the website from loading any posts.
I know it’s rare, but there have been times I intentionally clicked on an ad - if it genuinely seemed like a unique or useful product I had some interest in.
I imagine the fake-social-post type of ads are worth blocking though since it’s based in dishonesty and deception.
Some shops I only used once still send me their written newsletters and I don’t mind checking them if they do them entertaining, or about some niche products, even if I don’t consider buying them at all. I miss well-designed full-page print ads in magazines, or just those with a catchy imagery\wording. Now these all feel like a vintage, premium product, akin to vinyl records, if compared to what garbage web serves today. Such a weird thing to be nostalgic about, but I hope oldschool advertisers\smm persons feel it on their end too.
I do when it is advertising something I hate. Publishers get dollars for clicks, pennies for impressions. That way I force someone I dislike to give money to someone I like.
I use adnauseum on my computer so it blocks the ads, but also sends a request simulating a click to the ad network. Based on average CPM, I’ve cost advertisers like $300 so far.
That’s because it’s built on top of uBlock. If you click on the extension it even has the uBlock logo. It’s literally just uBlock except it clicks on ads in the background. It even tells you how much projected money you cost them for clicking their shitty ads. And the websites gets paid. Only the advertisers get shafted.
Interesting. But wouldn’t that still decrease my privacy? Advertisers still won’t know which ads I’m interested in, but they will know what sites I visit and can still build a profile from that data.
Some people care more about fucking advertisers than privacy, as long as they don’t have to suffer through the ads themselves. But yeah, blocking is more private than fake clicking.
“I’ll try to fix it. Now that I put it in taking it down brings the Internet down. Sorry, let me think how to fix this”
And literally put up excuses until they get used to it. I’m sorry but they made you do stuff you didn’t enjoy for your own good while telling white lies, it’s time for payback.
I got a lot of complaints from family, too. Especially because I block Meta. I just let them bitch and I tell them things like “those ads are broken because of malware” which isn’t entirely untrue.
Yeah for sure. I’m no expert by any means, but I can talk through what I did.
I used the instructions directly from their code repository: github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/#one-step-automated-in… (I used option 1, the automated install). I did this on an old RPi2B that I had laying around.
After I set up the pi, I got its MAC address. I used this to set a static IP address in my router settings. This is important to make sure the pi keeps the same IP at all times. Then, also in my router settings, I set the DNS server to be the pi’s static IP address.
After all that was done, I just plugged the pi into a dedicated power supply and rebooted the router.
Spot on. I was incredulous when they told me they each sent their cheek swabs in to the “free to be me”, the population tracking group 🌊 👁️a. Now I understand that that same company’s entire database is on the dark 🕸️.
My wife turns off the WiFi on her phone to avoid the pihole. She does this so she can watch the ads in her games to get an extra life or whatever. You’ll never win on that front and I won’t either.
I get so pissed off when I try to play sudoku on the bus and it forces me to watch 30 seconds of ads between each game. And then during the game I have to ignore the flashing banner ad at the bottom of the screen.
The thing is with a small app ads pay f all compared to the ongoing development costs. $100usd a year for Apple developer license, recent Mac and time spent developing it.
I also really don’t like ads, but I think what’s lately been bothering me more is every short form video that exists has subtitles added to the middle of the video. I can’t even look at the videos because I hate getting distracted by the unnecessary text in my face. Like just let me watch your video, I don’t need you to spoon feed me the words too.
Simultaneously the worst and funniest thing I’ve ever seen - got together with my now ex and she opens up her laptop to show me her bank statement. I look over and I see IN REAL TIME all of the English text convert into wingdings.
“No don’t change it, its really funny; I like it!!!” I bet, super funny - but it’s your friggin’ bank account! Who knows what else it’s doing besides being a bit silly?
But seriously, my favorite are online stores for products, but you can’t buy their product because they have pop-up ads for other products that interfere with their websites you can’t actually view or buy their fucking product.
It’s like, insane. And probably why Amazon still exists.
i’m not sure if what seems to be a poignant interactive demonstration of internet UX enshitification is shallow/incomplete or depends on javascript/trackers that my browser is blocking. it’s ironic either way
My former co-worker was daily driving his browser without any extensions and didn’t see anything wrong with it. I was watching him work one day and he was literally fighting a battle against the unholy pop-ups just tryna download some free fonts. What could’ve been done in 2 clicks took him minutes to do trying to close all the ads and tabs kept opening, videos kept playing. It was painful just to watch.
In a world where people would spin up new websites just to piss off a billionaire, I have faith in humanity to build taller ladders for any walls the greedy corporations build.
In Firefox, on Linux, behind a VPN and firewall with ad blocker, I run 5 different privacy/ad blocking extensions. I keep hearing about adds, but not seeing them.
Supposedly Youtube now is getting more agressive on this? I wouldn’t know. Haven’t seen a Youtube notice about it yet.
But really, I dream of the day youtube is replaced by something else. Fracture Youtube into 1,000 pieces and scatter it into the wind.
my partner’s mouse’s scroll wheel has been broken for years. every time i’ve tried to get them a new mouse they stop using it after about 2 days and go back to the busted one. why? “idk it was too heavy/didn’t fit their small hands/plastic felt weird” etc. deadass i’ve gone through about 6 or 7. idk what the point of this rambling post is other than people are adaptable to shitty conditions and most straight up don’t care that their hardware/software is shitty.
Bonzy Buddy… Anyone? I found it so often at customer computers. When they saw me trying to uninstall it, they got quite angry, because they REALLY LIKED that funny monkey.
I remember some video. It was a joke about IT remoting in to fix a computer. The icons on the desktop were shaped like a dick. Then it guy took a screenshot and was like I’m definitely sending this to HR as he sorted them alphabetically. Then the other dude was like “no put it back, infant find anything!” And the line that sticks with me, the IT guy says “there’s no sort by dick”.
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