Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

BigDigger324 t1_j8e4jzr wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Motherboard Shipments Plummet by Ten Million Units in 2022 by Avieshek

No one wants to admit or talk about it but we’ve caused this. Not passing judgement but we all use the ever living fuck out of ad blockers, which was their only source of income…not even journalists want to work for free….

7

syn4pt1c83 t1_j8e99q9 wrote

Were we really the ones, that caused it to begin with? Not overly greedy ad placements, so you had to click away floaty overlays, try to click on moving close buttons, flashy disturbing ads, animated ads, video ads on autoplay, ads with sound, scripts that would reopen the content in another window while the original window kept loading a ton of (often dubious) ads, opening multiple ad windows (later tabs), ad distributers neglecting due diligence regarding the potential malicious nature of their ads,… should I continue?

Imho the use of ad blockers started because of corporate greed to begin with. They, for the most part, went way to far, so ad blockers were readily accepted as a solution to an existing problem.

17

DeceiverX t1_j8emot8 wrote

This is really what it comes down to.

There's a sweet spot of ads - just an uninvasive sidebar jpeg image that doesn't move or flash or scroll or actually invade the content space - that while sometimes weird, isn't actually invasive enough to justify using adblockers.

Adblock for me became a godsend because of bullshit pop-ups and scrolling menu ads, strobe effects/non-ADA compliance, jarring sounds, and crippling browser speeds with long embedded videos back in the day when computational resources were way more important when doing basic multitasking.

I'll usually turn them off on small community websites if they're not placed grossly, because I want those communities to keep existing. But that's really on the community and site owner to make sure they're not being dicks about them.

7

MyTagforHalo2 t1_j8mpkcl wrote

Honestly I've used ad blockers for so long that I forgot when most of those crazy dumb ads for the most part disappeared from my general browsing experience.

Its kind of ironic now that there are sites that generate a pop up asking fo you to disable your ad blocker. Which don't get my sympathy because they're doing the exact thing I don't like. I actually really find sites amusing that have hidden messages on the background of the website , so they can ask nicely or write a message where an ad would normally cover it up.

Nowadays when I fresh install I forget about my blocker for a small amount of time. Usually right up until I search something on YouTube and get smacked with a couple unskippable ads.

3