Let’s be honest: The internet without adblock is unusable. I really do not know how all those people without adblock are doing that.
I see people who put zero effort into ad-blocking in a similar light as people who don’t leave shitty partners. At some point they manage to convince themselves that it’s not a problem.
Or who do so little cleaning at home that their appartment becomes almost unusable or outright dangerous to live in
No seriously though. Was using managers laptop very briefly, and needed to look up some instructions. No adblock, Google Chrome default browser, etc. The websites were almost unreadable. Giant video ads in top and bottom corners, big thick flashing distracting ads on all sides making the readable area a little bigger than a postage stamp. Genuinely how do people browse the Internet like this?
something something when all you know is the farm
Kinda reminds my of my 2010 Toshiba laptop touchpad. The pad was probably 2 inches wide and 1.6 inches tall, and it had special “quick zones” setup in each corner, and then scroll zones on the bottom and right side, and then “back” and “forward” zones at the top, and a window switch zone on the left. When you subtracted all the “reserved” space on the touchpad, the actual useable area was slightly larger than the top of my thumb… And gestures and tap to click was on by default. I don’t know who tested that and was like “yeah, that’s useable” but seriously, WTF dude.
It’s genuinely insufferable. I have plenty of ad block on my pc but little on my phone. When I’m doing stuff on my phone it’s sometimes impossible to navigate certain news sites or watch videos because of all the fucking ads.
If you have Android, you can install Firefox and use uBlock Origin there. It’s awesome :)
AdGuard works well,l on Android, as well as Vivaldi or Brave with their in-built adblockers.
What browser/OS? There are many options on mobile, from extensions to system wide DNS blocking.
well that’s why most people use apps instead. the real internet is so hostile without a guide.
especially now that you can’t use the mainstream browsers and do it. the barrier to entry has gotten so high that i don’t blame kids for being put off by computers and prefering their phones for everything. tiktok has annoying ass ads, but no apps are as bad as the average news website…
it reminds me of trying to learn about cars growing up. i didn’t learn about cars growing up. i tried, but everyone i tried to learn from spent the whole time complaining about all the anticonsumer practices that made cars shitty these days. all the hoops you have to jump through to work on them yourself anymore. how the manufactures went out of their way over the course of years to take what used to be a fun tinkerers hobby for the everyman and made it incredibly difficult and expensive to do yourself.
my take away was “I hate cars”. so when i hear teenagers these days say that they hate computers i get it. they fucking suck now and there’s this 8 foot fence of knowing how to make them suck less before they can even start wanting to learn about them. but it’s going to take them a very very long time to get good enough with the computer that they can accomplish anything on it better than on their phone. so we have trucks full of ladders that can scale that fence, and even if we lose our ladders we know how to scale that fence barehanded if we gotta. but the kids just walk around the fence because they don’t value what’s inside. why would they?
so I’m just waiting for the old pc based intent to slowly wither away as we age with it… places like this becoming out last bastions in a world that requires validated apps on phones.
Do people mostly use apps instead? I don’t really get that perception, but also everyone in my family basically hates tiktok, facebook, instagram, twitter and other social media sites on principle. My apps are basically 2FAs, email, chats, and tools, but the vast majority of my time on my phone is in Firefox.
Yes. As someone in High School my peers have no idea whats happening while using a computer and none of them hate that they need to install a bajillion apps for the dumbest stuff. They just do it and keep the apps, even if they legit use it once a year.
Basically none of them know what a folder is, that there are actual files inside their phone/computer. When I’m doing tech support I can’t say “open the files app/file explorer and go to x folder” I need to hold their hand through it all “take your mouse here on this icon, click on this, drag and drop this here…” and silently facepalm when they can’t drag and drop… Or I make them press keyboard shortcuts that does it for them. Many of them refer to any kind of sideloading/piracy as “installing an apk/installing as an apk” even on iPhones and computers.
I really really believe that mine and the following generations are substantially more tech illiterate than previous ones. Like of course they dont all need to be tech savvy but my dad or my 50 year old teachers know how to open folders or drag and drop and I can just say it as is to them and they will do it fine, maybe after a 2-3 second wait. Can’t do that to my peers. They exclusively know how to “use” phones to scroll the social medias, take photos, text and such.
lol. I’m 50 and I think my age cohort might be the most computer literate because we learned it the hard way from the ground up. What you’re saying is just sad to me.
Yeah. My partner, who notably hates apps (I suggested hermit to turn websites into apps, and they rejected the idea until I reworded it as “Bookmarks”), mostly uses apps. Several people have commented that it’s weird that I use the mobile browser for most social media (Lemmy being the exception).
Yeah it’s apps for everyone now.
yes, the vast majority of web traffic is phones using apps. no person that uses this platform is an average user.
even if your family hates tiktok it’s still massively popular.
especially among the youth who probably only have a really shitty locked down chromebook from their school and the recently developing world. in the global south most people never got a decent computer. they all got phones instead. once you’re on a phone everything pushes you towards apps.
It… Really, really is. I remember using Fandom on mobile being so bad I set up an auto redirect to breezewiki, and that was with adblockers. Now that I have DNS-wide adblocking on, when I accidentally click a Fandom link it’s pleasantly surprising how well that’s working.
Some sites, particularly ones that serve up questionable things like torrents or roms, are horrible without ad blockers.
I think people are using the world wide web less now and much differently. Most people don’t browse websites like going to ESPN.com or newgrounds or something. Problem use apps now and only a select few for that matter.
My wife can’t even find her safari browser in her iPhone which she’s glued to most of the day. For her is 90% email and 10% tiktok.
Can’t believe the world we live in. Everyone knows google and meta are f’ing up the internet yet they posted massive record profits.
Trumps name is in Epstein file. There’s pics video audio of him grabbing women and yet he’s the president.
Companies like Tesla and big banks pay 0 federal tax and yet they are operational.
Social media has literally brainwashed people and people especially 9-5s will destory themselves and their kids future.
Ads need to be banned. They are inherently harmful, inherently deceptive, and only valuable in competition with other advertising. There is a direct line between the advertising model and the malignant politics that are destroying our world. Ban them all.
They would be banned in a world where human happiness was the priority, but we live in a world where profits is the priority. I think in 50 years, there are two scenarios. Either humanity has learned to value happiness over profits, or we live in actual dystopia, with robots patrolling against “rebels”, implants, surveillance, Ai… Entire package from sci-fi.
I mean, given the problems the world currently faces, both are fairly optimistic. 50 years is a long time now. Nuclear treaties are expiring and the people in charge of the nuclear powers don’t seem the kind to decrease their nuclear armament, or make rational decisions regarding their use. A shifting climate could (not necessarily definitely will but certainly could) destroy our ability to feed ourselves at scale, creating a world where people are too concerned about food to worry about building robots or self-actualization. Clean water sources are becoming rarer and harder to access, so people might be too focused on fighting over water to worry too much about anything else. And the fun part is none of these are mutually exclusive. We could have a future where part of the world is a glowing crater, the equator is a sun blasted hell, and the Canadians and Siberians are the only survivors, fighting each other over what’s left of the bioaccumulating-poison-laden arctic fish as they shout their battlecries, words with a meaning no one remembers anymore; ‘SORRY!’ ‘BLYAT!’
I am honestly sad and sick of the sheer volume of ads, well, everywhere and in everything. Internet, tv, even in the real world you are bombarded by ads from every angle. Every time any free app or service gains traction, boom, there are ads now.
It is absolutely unavoidable, even when using adblock and similar services, and what is even worse is that this doesn’t even feel like marketing now, but just a coercion tactic to force you to subscribe to “premium”, because the ads do not really often feel like trying to sell you something but just annoy the hell out of you.
I am just so tired of it…
even in the real world you are bombarded by ads from every angle
I despise the digital billboards that now litter highways and roads that gets congested during rush hours. And especially at night when they just ignore brightness laws and blinding everyone and endangering drivers.
And gas station ads, especially ones on max volume. Obnoxious ads blaring so loud that even if you sit in your car you can still hear them.
Digital billboards suck, but everyone using those obnoxious, bright-ass LED headlights is way worse.
I once slept in an apartment directly across the street from a broadway-sized LED billboard. It was a comparable experience to staring into those LED headlights. You could see it change >>through<< the blackout curtains.
Yeah, that’s pretty fucking bad. You ever watch Seinfeld? I imagine that was like the Kenny Rogers Roasters episode. 😂
I am honestly sad and sick of the sheer volume of ads, well, everywhere and in everything. Internet, tv, even in the real world you are bombarded by ads from every angle. Every time any free app or service gains traction, boom, there are ads now.
Capitalists: BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY
Me: With what money???
If you dont have an adblocker… you’re guaranteed to get that fake “Virus found” notification from a website that has bad ads.
I can’t think of a single reason why I would want or need a website to be able to send me notifications. Whomever invented that is on my time machine list, just after the guy who made webpage elements move around right before you click them.
Probably something tertiary to PWAs.
It doesn’t help their case that most mobile websites are just completely unusable with ads enabled. It’s impressive how shit they are sometimes
My company forced us to use only Chrome on our PC’s and one of the things I was worried about was the ads. I put youtube in the background while I work.
And I was surprised by how… My experience was exactly the same as Firefox and Brave. Ok, actually, one or two ads managed to slip through and appeared in the front page - albeit rarely and randomly - but I never got those ads at the beginning of the video. On other websites, I never got ads.
I was wondering, then, if there was some catch. Maybe the trackers would still get through or something. But according to that link, not even that? lol
Is there a way to block youtube ads on the tv? I have an android tv and using the youtube app is painfull… :-(
This is the solution. I’ve been using it for a couple of years, no ads, and almost no segways either.
this + remapping the remote youtube button seems to be the solution.
Thanks!
pi-hole may be what you’re gunning for.
That’s via DNS, right? If so i don’t think it will work, i’m using https://nextdns.io/ with lots of block lists and it doesn’t work.
Depends on your implementation. It does need some tweaking and using the logs to add more crap to the block list.
I don’t think so, since YouTube runs their ads from the same servers as the videos. You need to use an alternate front end that doesn’t serve ads to begin with. One thing I used to do too was run a VPN on my router in Japan, so I would get Japanese ads instead. There were way fewer ads, I would have no idea what they were advertising, and the few ads I would get were way more entertaining.
“Chrome?” People still using this shit?
My ad blocker won’t let me watch YouTube…OR YouTube won’t let me watch with an ad blocker. I don’t care. No ads for ME.
Didn’t even notice them trying. Pathetic.
It’s a good thing Vivaldi’s ad-and-tracker-blocker is still there (although you can install Chrome extensions in Vivaldi though)
If google really wanted to, they can. But if you’re so against ads, what’s the point in showing them? Leaving a mechanism to block ads with default being with ads is net positive for google. Now, something like AdNauseum is what hurts google
blocking for 35 years. ditched chrome for firefox last year. about to move on. maybe lynks. like the umatrix addon plus a few others
There is a web outside of chrome…
