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The way people talk about people who don’t block ads is so funny.
I understand and respect the reasons people choose to use blockers, but ads honestly just aren’t that problematic for me in practice and are easy to avoid and ignore.
Ads have been known to contain drive-by malware. Even if you don’t mind seeing ads (which personally I don’t mind unless they’re very intrusive), an adblocker is important for online safety.
There’s no mention of anything like zero-days in that article. They only mention that it can target all major OSes, with no mention of cutting edge versions also being vulnerable.
Hilariously, the article directly supports my position as well:
The good news for some, at least: it likely poses a minimal threat to most people, considering the multi-million-dollar price tag and other requirements for developing a surveillance campaign using Sherlock
That’s a big part of my whole point. People who don’t do even a modicum of actual thought about a practical threat model for themselves love pretending that ad blocking isn’t primarily just about not wanting to see ads.
If Israel or some other highly capable attacker is coming after you, then fine, you really do need ad blocking. In that case malware in ads is going to be the least of your concerns.
Attacks that cast such a wide net as to be the concern of all web users are necessarily less dangerous because exploits need to be kept secret to avoid being patched.
There’s nothing wrong with taking extra precautions; I’m certainly not saying blocking ads is a bad idea. It’s the apparent confusion that an informed, tech-savvy person might choose not to block ads that makes me laugh.
I also don’t understand it. But now I am wondering if we would not have had those “careless” (indifferent ? ignorant ?) millions of people not blocking ads then Google and others may have started pushing anti-adblock measures years earlier, no ?
My kid discovered that he can hit the "report" button on the YouTube app on the TV to skip the ads immediately. So now every ad gets reported as "inappropriate".
Tip: if you have an Android TV, you can install SmartTube as an alternative, privacy-friendly YouTube client. It has no ads and sponsorblock integration
This is why I refuse to buy a “smart” TV. My old flat screen TV works perfectly fine with a Chromecast with Google TV. I can even use the Chromecast in my projector or any other device with HDMI input to make it smarter than most TV interfaces I have tried.
I do the same, I use kodi on a CoreElec box on my 10 year old dumb TV. It works great, but my issue is it’s going to be extremely difficult to replace my TV when it gets time to upgrade. (Eg, if I want to move to an OLED, or QD panel). Every new TV on the market is a smart TV. It’s getting to the point that you need to buy a very large monitor, rather than a TV, to achieve the same setup.
My cheapo dumb tv died a couple of years back, was a great bit of kit for $400au that gave me 10 years. I’ve got a “smart” tv at the moment which isn’t connected to the internet, and just serves as the display for my Shield TV.
I’d probably consider an LG commercial / signage display as my next device, some old work connections can get me one as a special purchase through their distribution channels it’s just waiting out the current panel dying.
I found out this trick when I eating dinner once at my local library. Oddly, it was a kid came up and saw I was watching YT videos. Showed me the tactic, and now I rely on it lol
On one hand: Ads are gross noise pollution, and people are increasingly unaware of all the noise around them (or the noise they’re generating) largely because they’ve been passively trained to “tune out” ads. Also consumerism.
On the other hand: As long as there are a significant amount of people oblivious to the possibility of adblock, corporate ad mobsters and the other worst people in the world out there will largely leave those of us blocking their ads alone. If everyone ran adblockers, we’d definitely live in a world of WEI… and probably worse. So, maybe all those people are watching ads so that I don’t have to, as the YouTube thumbnails say.
If sites wanted to run ads and host them locally without tracking that would be fine. But since they’re tracking users it’s essential to block them for privacy and security, and if someone isn’t then maybe they don’t understand the level of tracking involved. We need a better name than adblocking.
The VLC guy turned down what a quick search is telling me was “several tens of millions” to show ads. I can’t even imagine what getting people to drop ublock would be worth.
Though you may be right, I have a feeling that he is facing formidable opposition. That may include anything from social engineering to full on psyops.
Bet he’s had people “happen” to bump into him IRL, and gets pull requests from bad actors that are very subtly trying to take the project in the wrong direction.
What’s “Mordor Intelligence” – is that a real thing, or a parody of the surveillance/‘defense’ industry companies that are coming up with names nicked from LotR? (‘Anduril’, ‘Palantir’)
Your second point is especially interesting, considering the recent xz backdoor. The bad actors manipulated a poor burnt out maintainer for it. In comparison, I’m impressed with gorhill for his perseverance and mental strength. I would like to know how he avoids burn out with such negative influences.
Insightful point. And it does remind me of the corporate purchase of the Don’t care about cookies extension for Firefox (And the Simple Mobile Tools for Android). Luckily it was forked. github.com/…/I-Still-Dont-Care-About-Cookies Open source FTW!
🙂 🐧
There is and isn’t one. For the add-on itself, you just need forks and more forks. For the lists it pulls from, those are already decentralized, but you’re constantly going to deal with the issue of only the best are used and only the used are maintained and only the maintained are the best.
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