Old bit of computer lying around? Adguard DNS baby
Hell yeah. I like it better than PiHole, but that’s basically just personal preference.
Some local news sites in my city show local ads that are simply static images loaded in their pages, mimicking traditional newspaper ads, without any kind of tracking. Although it’s questionable at a philosophical level if ads can be ethical, I can live with it, and that method will pass automated adblockers, so it’s a win-win.
You know, I think I’d be okay with that. As long as it’s not something that’s begging for your attention or trying to get you to click on it.
Or loading at random intervals so you have to scroll around to find where you were before the page jumped around. Very little infuriates me more.
I’ve been with the monk since the days of recording shows to VHS to fast forward past the commercials.
AdNauseum has a built in whitelist for ethical ads which I’m happy to leave enabled. I see them on some blogs I read and on the option search page for Home Manager.
Advertising unethical
I’d say it’s not inherently unethical. How else would you find out about options for a thing you need?
How current the ad industry works however, can die in a fire.
I walk to the store, I check what’s there, I ask an employee for help, then make my own decision. If it’s shit, I don’t get it again and tell who I know to avoid it. I don’t get products that people I trust have had bas experiences with.
Advertisements are lying. Every dollar spent on marketing is a dollar that could have been spent either improving your product or paying your staff. If you advertise to me, I will actively avoid your product.
You walk to what store? How do you know the store exists? How do you know what the store sells? What if you live in a small town that doesn’t have a store that sells the required thing? How do you know where to drive to to? All this basic information about the store itself is coming from advertising. It’s not just about popups annoying you online.
It sounds like you’re considering the sign above a store to be an advertisement.
…yes?
It is. Why do you think store logos aren’t just a plain text sign on the door? That would be far cheaper for the store to do.
You can just search for it, you don’t need ads for that. Ads is a really bad way to find out about options, because it’s never about quality, it’s all about appearance.
How would you know what to search for? Some advertising is fine - a sign for a restaurant or industry mailers or magazines, “related products”, etc etc are all very tame forms of advertising. The problem is hyperintrusive advertising which has now spiraled so far into hell that it drives a model of data harvesting and content slop that’s slowly tainting all access to information we have.
How would you know what to search for?
Because of the needs I have, when I am hungry ill search for recipes or restaurants. When my apartment needs cleaning ill search for cleaning supplies, when I am bored ill look up what movies are playing.
I actually can not come up with a single situation where advertisement would be needed or helpful in anyway. I also do not have a problem with smaller advertisement, but in my dreams they are all banned regardless. Won’t be missing those.
Okay, to break down the point: search for them where?
I guess on the internet or in the store.
So how do people get on the internet or in the store? Heck, how do you know that the store exists in the first place (and if the store doesn’t have what you need, what do you do?)
I’m just after a middle ground - the current insanity of advertising is obviously too much, but the idea of doing away with it entirely isn’t feasible either. Burning all the advertising execs at the stake might be a good place to start in terms of reforming things…
I see what you’re saying, but the obvious distinction here is that if someone is actively searching e.g. Google for a product, they don’t mind being shown products (and by extension being advertised to) - they’re actively seeking it out. What everyone has a problem with is being shown advertisements for products when they aren’t seeking them out and in fact actively want to avoid them.
Thank you! The unending intrusiveness of modern advertising really has killed and buried the useful parts of advertising by becoming the norm, I wholeheartedly agree.
In the ancient days we had a thing called the yellow pages.
Just FYI, any entry in the Yellow Pages other than the plain text, non-bold, name+phone number format entries were also paid for advertisements.
Yeah, exactly!
The search results are ads. If I’m looking to buy a table, those don’t inherently come with a webpage. The website in its entirety is an ad.
Advertising is attention rape
Ads are violence on the mind.
Adblocking is good security.Ad networks are known to be a large distributor of malware and scams.
it’s prudent to block ads.
Adblockers came up in conversation with a (non-techie) friend the other day and they said they don’t have one because they are afraid they’d “get the wrong one” or end up with a virus trying to download “something like that” because they’ve had trouble with those shady download websites that have a ton of fake download buttons… Like, they look at adblocker as if it is the most scandalous form of piracy or something.
Adblock smart is high iq.
This seems flipped, there’s no way a majority of people like ads.
Maybe it should be Low IQ are people who don’t know what an ad blocker is, and High IQ are people who say ad blocking is unethical.
I know several people who only watched the Superbowl for the advertisments / halftime show.
Regardless of how shitty it is, one of the big cultural touchstones is also the advertisements they played on tv when someone was growing up. A lot of people use ads as another way to connect with a new person; meeting a other local to your area means you can mention a particularly overplayed ad from childhood and likely be able to find another person who saw it growing up too.
The majority of people just aren’t bothered by them.
I think you’re just used to the lemmy(/reddit) crowd. Pretty much everyone I casually know has ads when they show me something on youtube. Every time I ask “Why not use an adblocker?” they reply either “The ads don’t bother me” or “I want to support the content creators”.
Doesn’t make sense to me. I’ll buy some swag or donate to creators I like, but I am not voluntarily watching ads.
This seems flipped, there’s no way a majority of people like ads.
Honestly from some of the interactions I’ve had with my peers I didn’t even think of the meme as strange.
Like one time I saw my roommate running Opera GX of all browsers without any adblockers and I asked him “don’t these ads bother you?” and he responded, I shit you not, “no, quite the opposite! they’re really helpful!”. I didn’t say anything because at that moment I was genuinely stunlocked.
I had a similar experience with a work colleague. His response? “They are helpful. They tell me what to buy”. I guess some people are just like that.
How do you guys learn about the newest products and services available?
That’s such a weird thing to say. Ads don’t show you things that are good, if they were better products they wouldn’t need to press you over it. I can’t think of a time where I found something cool I didn’t know about through an ad, short of movie trailers that I actively sought out.
For example, a few years back I found out that safety razors shave closer, give me less razor burn, and cost 100x less than cartridge razors. Which one of the two gets ads?
i do not need that information
i know, crazy, but humans basically just need food and shelter to live
“newest products and services” is not in the hierarchy of needs
If there’s something I want I’ll search for that product category myself, and read reviews and comparisons from entities that aren’t sponsored.
This might surprise you, but if you walk around town you get bombarded with ads actually.
Fun fact: not where I live. Billboards are not allowed within 18 metres of a road, and any business signage has to be both on the property of the business and at least 4 metres away from the road. You can easily walk around down town and see exactly 0 ads and it is bliss.
I said walk though, not drive.
Funny that you have better laws than we do though…
I also said walk through. Doesn’t matter where you are, walking or driving, you will not see ads for things unless you are actively looking at a business advertising itself.
I was confused because you were talking about roads, sorry. That sounds awesome…
Your adblocker doesn’t protect you outside?
No, I didn’t get the monthly subscription :(
Turns out when I need a thing I can look for it without a company trying to prey on my insecurities
I don’t.
I’d say you just need to swap the label for adblock unethical and adblock smart.
galaxy brain: adblock with badblock ethical whitelist and badblock emergency whitelist is ethical
Okay, that’s based too
I think everyone who can uses ublock, no?
