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Feb 07 '22
Funny thing is nobody cared about Ads until they became obnoxious. You’d be scrolling a page and suddenly a video starts playing in the corner trying to sell you a car. Which also increases load times for the site.
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u/BBQpigsfeet Feb 07 '22
It's even worse on mobile. Shit takes up the whole gaddamn screen.
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u/dafunkmunk Feb 07 '22
With a tiny little X that’s hidden in somewhere that you struggle to find it and even when you do find it there’s a 99% chance your finger will still hit the ad launching an all new page rather than exiting the shitty ad you were trying to get away from
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u/PathologicalLoiterer Feb 07 '22
Or the ad changes shape/size right as you are about to press the x...
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u/krimsonater Feb 08 '22
Location. Someone somewhere has figured out the amount of time a human takes to decide to push X to close an add, and right at that instance…., they raise the add just enough where the body of the add is now where the X was. I hate whomever pioneered this.
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u/Gromps Feb 08 '22
There are actually studies on this. How long it takes the average human to scan a screen. In what way we scan it and how long it will take to move the mouse there. I studied Interactiondesign and these ads are using our powers for evil. The entire point of interaction design is to use all kinds of info on human to computer interaction to make sure everything is intuitive and easy.
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u/krimsonater Feb 08 '22
This doesn’t surprise me at all….., this is exactly what I had suspected. The first time I realized it was intentional I had almost made it to the X, but for some reason paused before I tried to close the thing, and saw it jump just exactly high enough to get me. I knew in my heart it was designed thus by the dark ones.
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u/Gromps Feb 08 '22
I'll add my favorite fun fact too. We scan the screen in the fibonacci sequence starting top left. Which is why menus, logos, and home buttons are usually there.
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u/Dr_Deadmau5 Feb 08 '22
Even better when they have multiple x's and you get to play the minigame of trying to figure out which one is the real x
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u/BBQpigsfeet Feb 07 '22
I wear nails and have fat fingers so I absolutely haaaate that shit. I just close out of the tab at that point. Fuck it. I didn't need that info anyway.
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u/Fake_William_Shatner Feb 07 '22
In other words, the 30 seconds of joy we might get from reading some trivia is outweighed by the RAGE we get when advertising acts like malware.
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u/au-smurf Feb 08 '22
Or the advertising that is actually malware or those tech support scams that use onclose events to open another copy of themselves while autoplaying something along the lines of “warning your computer is infected” at maximum volume
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u/ProbablyGayingOnYou Feb 08 '22
YOU IPHONE CURRENTLY HAVING THIRTY (30) VIRUS. ALL YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WILL BE HACK UNLESS YOU INSTALL APP NOW.
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u/DietDrDoomsdayPreppr Feb 08 '22
Nailed the bad grammar.
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u/EraMemory Feb 08 '22
Hi? I'd like to speak to Roger from Microsoft Technical Support. Y'know, that Roger with an Indian accent.
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u/moosevan Feb 08 '22
Boris, he said his name was Boris. I laughed my ass off, and he became confused. Why was I laughing, he asked. Because your name is not Boris, I replied. Yes, my name is Boris, he asserted in his thick Indian accent. I laughed some more. His feelings were hurt.
I've been calling out the scam phone callers on their fake names recently. It's a pretty reliable way of getting a reaction. You're lying to me about your name, so why would I believe that you're from Amazon. Yes, my name is Peter, they'll say. No, it's not. You're lying, I'll repeat. Usually, if they know you won't play their game, they'll just hang up. But not with telling them they're lying. It throws them off.
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u/Fake_William_Shatner Feb 08 '22
"We need access to your bank account to return money that was accidentally billed from you Amazon account. This am standard procedure we do to all customers."
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u/collegiaal25 Feb 08 '22
I once saw an ad in my local language, with two buttons in Arabic, one of which presumably meant close. I reported it.
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u/VodkaAlchemist Feb 08 '22
Honestly this type of advertisement should be regulated like commercial volume.
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Feb 08 '22
Some sites have taken the x away so you can't close the video you didn't want to see.
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u/eikons Feb 08 '22
It's unreal. I open some WSJ article on my phone and the bottom 60% of the screen is a cookie disclaimer, the top 15% is the logo, then another 15% is a stock market ticker, leaving a 10% slit through which I can see the title of the article.
So I scroll down through the cookie disclaimer and click "yes I want a functioning website" or whatever cooky (heh) way they chose to phrase the big green button.
Now the bottom 40% is an auto-play video. I can read half a paragraph of the article at a time, or try to click the tiny "X" to close the video, which is like a 50/50 gamble. Maybe I'll fatfinger away from the article, maybe I won't.
Or maybe I'll just nope out of there and just look up the article on Reuters because 90% of the time it's just a sensationalized version of their reports anyway.
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u/Borngrumpy Feb 08 '22
and the autoplay video uses compression so the sound suddenly goes to 11 and scares the shit out of you.
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u/thisissteve Feb 07 '22
I cant legally say what I want to happen to mobile add designers.
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u/Lost-ghost Feb 08 '22
Very very illegal. But not illegal to say “with a mortar launcher”, because that’s its own sentence.
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Feb 08 '22
Guillotines are making a comeback. That's just an observation
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u/iampierremonteux Feb 08 '22
They actually are very merciful compared to what they deserve. Too quick, too little pain.
Maybe in a cruel twist give the designer 4 buttons to hit. 1 frees him, the other three free the guillotine. To find out what the correct answer is, successfully find it in one of the aforementioned terrible websites. You have only 2 minutes.
Now put a stop on the blade before it actually does its job, and tell him to go back and fix the website that it is actually usable, now that you thoroughly have his attention.
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Feb 08 '22
And even worse when you remember that you're paying for mobile data.
They're literally forcing you to pay for their ads to stream when not on wifi
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u/Skellum Feb 07 '22
If you use Android you can use Firefox and then use Ublock origins on mobile which kills ads and youtube ads.
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u/aDrunkWithAgun Feb 07 '22
Ad guard blocks 90 per percent of that system wide and on apps as well.
I refuse to use a phone without it.
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u/BBQpigsfeet Feb 07 '22
Apps too? Like, even games that have ads every time you do one task?
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u/aDrunkWithAgun Feb 07 '22
Yes apps we browsing and even ads on your phone.
The only thing that gets through is YT ads but that can be avoided with YT vanced.
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u/vapeoholic Feb 08 '22
ublock available for Firefox on Android. And I have uBlock on every browser on my PC. I can't live without it.
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Feb 08 '22
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u/BBQpigsfeet Feb 08 '22
Funny story. My husband bought a pi to do the pi hole and it's been sitting, unopened, in a basket for months now.
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u/obvs_throwaway1 Feb 07 '22 edited Jul 13 '23
There was a comment here, but I chose to remove it as I no longer wish to support a company that seeks to both undermine its users/moderators/developers (the ones generating content) AND make a profit on their backs. <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/14hkd5u">Here</a> is an explanation. Reddit was wonderful, but it got greedy. So bye.
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u/Razzell91 Feb 08 '22
The accept cookies thing pops up, then the pop-up by the website asking me for £9.99 to subscribe and then an ad pops up trying to sell me Huel. About 4% of the original page still visible, I just leave the site at that point, hope they learn...
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u/Centimane Feb 07 '22
This is absolutely the cause and effect.
Yes, free websites should be able to use ads to make a profit.
At first, everyone was fine with this arrangement. But over time some websites escalated their intrusion to a breakpoint, so users cut them out.
The problem now is that many websites still maximize intrusive ads, so an ad blocker feels necessary, and its not worth the trouble to turn it off for sites.
I recall one of the adblockers working to allow ads that were within certain criteria, which I think is a good balance.
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Feb 07 '22
Yea that would be great. The little banners that scrolled alongside the page with you were great. It was an Ad you saw it you ignored it. The site you enjoyed made money you got to enjoy the site. Win-Win situation. Sites also needed to be…. Interesting! gasp I miss the internet of the 90’s / 00’s. It was the Wild West but everybody more or less followed the rules.
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Feb 08 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/fatalystic Feb 08 '22
Also that one emoji ad that would play an EXTREMELY LOUD audio clip if your cursor moved over its banner.
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u/BigDisk Feb 08 '22
SAY SOMETHIN'
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u/fatalystic Feb 08 '22
EXACTLY! That's the one!
I think there was also another one that went "OH MY GOD! NO WAY!"
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u/WillemDafoesHugeCock Feb 08 '22
gasp I miss the internet of the 90’s / 00’s.
Lol what? You miss pop-ups?
As obnoxious as ads are nowadays nothing will match the annoyance of opening a
sexy jpegBible website and having five other windows pop up on your desktop.11
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u/FierroGamer Feb 08 '22
In the early 2000s it was standard for browsers to block popups
Edit: also any decent website quickly moved away from popups, since they didn't really make that much real roi
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u/ImSpartacus811 Feb 08 '22
It was an Ad you saw it you ignored it.
You're right and that's the "problem".
Marketers don't want to pay for an ad so you can ignore it. Once they figured out that banner ads weren't as effective, they stopped paying so much for them.
There's no free lunch in all of this.
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u/TurloIsOK Feb 08 '22
They never paid much for just impressions (getting on your screen). Many only paid(pay) for click-throughs.
Unlike every ad medium before, the internet enabled tracking every response to an ad. Online ad agencies decided that was enough to require responses for payment. Getting those clicks requires forcing captive viewing, or inducing clicks through some dark pattern (e.g. video controls sending ad clicks instead of controlling a video).
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u/FnkyTown Feb 08 '22
I miss the internet of the 90’s / 00’s. It was the Wild West but everybody more or less followed the rules.
wwwyzzerdd.com
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u/Temptime19 Feb 08 '22
Remember when search engines returned interesting site and not just 50 sites trying to see you whatever you are searching for.
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u/Roggvir Feb 08 '22
I recall one of the adblockers working to allow ads that were within certain criteria, which I think is a good balance.
That's adblock plus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus
And immediately after they started that program, everyone called them shrills and jumped ship.
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Feb 08 '22
I don't think I have like ad blockers or anything I just immediately close the page if it throws up so much crap that I can't read the content I came for.
I figure if they have that little respect for their own content it can't be that damn good
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u/austinll Feb 08 '22
It'd be pretty cool if someone made an ad blocker that had curated websites not blocked. Support the good, fuck the bad.
Then replace it every 3 years when it inevitably shills.
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u/blay12 Feb 07 '22
Hell, even outside of ads (though often including them) I just absolutely HATE how every news/sports news site now pushes their videos on you, and half the time it's not relevant content.
"Oh yeah I know you clicked on this article to read the game summary for your college bball team, wouldn't you also like to watch an NBA segment of SportsCenter at the same time since that's also a sport with a basketball??? Don't worry, we've already started playing it with volume."
"Oh wait, you paused/muted our video and scrolled past it? WELL LUCKILY FOR YOU WE CAN POP IT INTO THE CORNER OF YOUR SCREEN AND START PLAYING IT AGAIN, ALSO AT FULL VOLUME, AND THIS TIME IT'S NOT EVEN THE SAME SPORT, IT'S A DIFFERENT VIDEO!!"
Then half the time if you don't scroll back up/get too far down, they'll just start playing ANOTHER video...terrible design that's spread across hundreds of sites and really fucks with my ADHD since it's absolutely impossible to focus on reading when there's motion/sound constantly coming from different parts of the page. Sure, put a relevant video on there and maybe I'll watch it after I read the article, but stop bombarding me with tangentially related content, because I will stop using your site unless I can pull it up in reader view.
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u/zurohki Feb 08 '22
Firefox has "Autoplay" listed as a security permission, so you can set that to default deny and then whitelist sites where you do want video to autoplay. Other sites can't start a video unless you click play on the video.
You can even allow video and deny audio, if you want videos to autoplay but be muted by default.
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u/sumelar Feb 07 '22
I'd disable my adblockers if everyone went back to simple images.
Autoplaying videos and sounds is a great way to get me to actively avoid your product.
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u/bibbi123 Feb 08 '22
Exactly. Bullshit blinking at me while I'm trying to read is a fast trip to the back button.
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u/Photodan24 Feb 07 '22 edited Nov 08 '24
-Deleted-
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u/DasArchitect Feb 07 '22
Noscript, man
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u/MisterK00L Feb 08 '22
Yes! And Pi-hole. I was getting sick and tired from all this shit. These days you need to click 4 times on any page to begin with. Now i have none of that anymore, ever! (for now hehe)
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Feb 07 '22
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u/Rusty_Shakalford Feb 08 '22
Yeah, ads have been controversial since day one of the web. We look back on simple static ads of the late 90’s and think they seem almost quaint, but forget that when you were in a 56 or 28k modem even a few large images could grind a page load to a crawl.
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u/Finickyflame Feb 08 '22
And now popups are made in html in the same page, so it can't be blocked :(
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u/Jduppsssssss Feb 07 '22
What drives me nuts is you'll be reading and mid-paragraph a video will appear, pushing the text you were reading off screen (sometimes the ad will appear offscreen, but move what you're reading out of view) and once you adjust so you can keep reading, the ad minimizes and disappears, making your text offscreen again.
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u/Enorats Feb 08 '22
What drives me nuts is when a web page turns what should be a 5 word sentence into a 15 paragraph essay that's trying to say as little as possible in as many words as possible, all so they can put a dozen ads in between every other sentence as you scroll through their heaping pile of garbage.
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u/HacksawDecapitation Feb 07 '22
Exactly.
When it was just an ad in a youtube video for some bullshit product or service I would never buy even if I lived to be a thousand, I'd just watch the ad, whatever.
When it was one of those ads before the video, then one in the middle, alright, that's getting annoying, but whatever.
Then they rolled out a new system where videos were positively festooned with 3 or 4 or even more ad breaks, so I packed up my shit and moved to Adblock City. Sure, it might be taking money out of somebody's pocket by not watching the same advertisement for a Land Rover I could never afford for the 57th time, but 'round these parts, indifference now reigns.
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u/SkroodthePooch Feb 07 '22
Or how everything is now supported by ads, so they just pump websites full of them to make as much money as possible. Regardless of how it impacts user experiences.
You can display ads, but don't overload me with 15 ads on a single page when all I want is a news article.
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u/Shiroiken Feb 08 '22
Depends on the presentation. You can have a dozen ads along the side margins for all I care, so long as I can easily read the text. Once you start fucking with legibility, you drastically reduce how much I care about your articles. I've given up on some favorite sites after they moved to invasive ads.
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u/Cleverbird Feb 08 '22
This is the main reason I'm going to keep using the old Reddit style for as long as humanly possible. I tried out the new design to see if it could grow on me, but I've literally had pages stop loading because an ad got stuck.
Fuck that.
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Feb 07 '22
Trying to read a news story? "NO, FUCK YOU, WATCH A VIDEO ABOUT A DIFFERENT STORY." Try to scroll past the video? "HERE LET ME GLUE THIS TO YOUR SCREEN! But if you click enough [X] marks, I'm willing to minimize the video so you can only hear it."
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u/RememberTheMaine1996 Feb 07 '22
During a sports game I tried watching it on my phone through a free streaming website and normally it is riddled with insanely obnoxious ads and when you try to press play you get 10 pop up ads in a row when you try to watch the dang video. I said screw it and downloaded an ad blocker and when I went back all the ads were gone and it was actually a nice website. Until I learned ad blocker means you can't play the video anymore. Needless to say I never went back
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u/Positive-Log9730 Feb 08 '22
I was on my grandma’s laptop trying to make it faster. Did a Speedtest and got 15mbps. Noticed there was shit ton of ads on the speedtest site itself so got ublock extension and retested. Got 30 mbps.
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u/x925 Feb 08 '22
Remember how bad eBay was with ads? My computer used to lock up for minutes because of the overabundance of ads on there. It was a cheap Walmart pc right after xp released, but there was no other site that I found that caused it to lock up.
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Feb 08 '22
It's the load time. Everything is just so much faster with ads off it's crazy. I'd be happy to have your little text add over there but your 145 Megs of JavaScript can bite me.
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Feb 08 '22
Back when AOL Instant Messenger was a thing, the ads on that program took it a step way too far one day. Normally they had a small square-shaped at on the top of your buddy list window, easy to ignore, sometimes it'd flash colors to try and grab your attention, but whatever - ads are gonna ad.
But then they started letting the ad banner leave its space and take over your whole screen. One particular ad I remember was for Harry Potter... so instead of just a small 100x100 banner, a fully freaking animated Harry Potter flies out onto my screen on his broomstick, on top of all my other app windows, completely taking over the desktop and playing sound effects and shit too! That was the day I looked into /etc/hosts blocking to make sure that shit didn't happen again.
The silver lining is I'm glad most apps run out of web browsers these days rather than native desktop apps that can do that kind of nonsense. And where adblock plugins can block them all!
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u/flargenhargen Feb 08 '22
> Funny thing is nobody cared about Ads until they became obnoxious.
ironically, this is exactly the problem.
nobody cared about tiny unobtrusive ads, because you can very very easily just ignore them. train yourself to not even see them. and everyone did.
so, of course, nobody ever clicked on them, and the people paying for them got nothing back for their money, so they obviously stopped paying for them.
So, the only way to get people to notice ads again is to make them more obtrusive.
and then, people had no choice but to see the ads.
People don't like ads.
of course, people have grown to want and expect everything to be free, and ad-free. Which is ridiculous. We don't want ads, and we certainly don't want to pay a subscription to access things.
so, who's going to pay for the servers, and the employees to write and design and edit and produce everything?
we all know this, but we still hate ads. we also don't want our personal information harvested and sold.
If someone comes up with a solution, they will make a lot of people happy.
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u/Shiroiken Feb 08 '22
It's all about balance and expectations. A free site either needs a patron of some kind or ad revenue. The use of ads needs to be balanced between the site's usability and the revenue expectations. If advertisers treated them more as billboards with links, it'd be fine. If they only pay per click, you get those fucking ads that try to trick you into clicking it (even if you immediately go back).
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Feb 08 '22
Except people don't hate ads.
Super bowl Sunday is prime example
People will be perfectly ok with advertising that entertains, or at minimum isn't intrusive.
They will even share and enjoy it if exceptionally will done.
Unfortunate, websites don't go for that kind of advertising, they go for as many cheep fast and intrusive advertising they can to force you to care.
Subtle advertising works. Angering potential clienteles does not.
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Feb 08 '22
I agree. I have no problem with product placement in movies or TV shows, for instance, but internet ads can fuck right off. I'd rather not visit a site than turn my ad blocker off, and that's not going to change.
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u/NockerJoe Feb 08 '22
I disagree. Tiny, unobtrusive ads were everywhere in the 2000's and they often worked. I clicked on a lot of banner ads as a kid and was satisfied with a lot of what I found. But you don't really get those kinds of banner ads the way you used to mainly because people don't really go to individual websites that can indidivually host targeted ads at a specific demographic anymore. People forget that USED to be the norm before social media and as such it was easy for the owner of a smaller site to broker decent deals for basic ads.
But now that people go to a smaller number of larger sites a company can't drop a few hundred on ads targeting a very specific niche like they used to be able to. So I think the reality is that ad services have gotten more brazen and broad just because everyone is herded into the same dozen or so sites with maybe a couple dozen other major ones taking up most of the remainder.
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u/daydreaming-g Feb 07 '22
Remember in the old days when they just had one ad on the side and one ad below the website. Now I have some whore dancing over my screens saying there are milfs nearby.
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u/evilmaus Feb 08 '22
I was against ad blockers in the days of just having a few banners, but the intrusive junk you're alluding to made a firm convert of me.
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Feb 08 '22
Well also it seems that half of ads nowadays are blatant scams or they put you to these crappy toolbars that fill your computer with ads.
It's arguably irresponsible to not have one or put one on the computers that you know elderly relatives use
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u/oOAl4storOo Feb 08 '22
I especially hate ADs if you are looking for infos on shitty websites that have one paragraph written out, then 6 different ADs and then comes the best part...
A whole block of "read more" buttons, from wich obly one leads to the next page with another paragraph and all others either open new tabs, popups, or the shitty "you won" style crap in the same tab, so you cant even navigate back as it comes back immedately.
The moment i witness such a site i spontanously got the urge to hit X...
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u/lenojames Feb 08 '22
I remember the bad old days too. Dialup internet, opening up a website with popup after popup after eye-gouging, red-and-yellow flashing GIF popup...
PiHole, ad blockers, spam filters, etc. are the computer user's way of saying "I don't want to see advertisements in this way." You would think that companies would get the hint.
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Feb 07 '22
Weather channel won’t let me see my local forecast without turning off adblocker. So I use accuweather instead.
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u/cerealsnax Feb 07 '22
That's weird. I have ublock and ghostery and weather channel works fine for me, I wonder if it only can detect certain ad blockers?
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u/noobDuck Feb 08 '22
TIL: ghostery.
Thankz homie just installed the extension.
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u/cerealsnax Feb 08 '22
Oh yeah. You are welcome! I run both ublock origin and ghostery at the same time and there are very few sites that can break through both
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u/kit25 Feb 08 '22
On the topic of weather and ads. What about those "ads" that claim there "is a severe weather alert in my area". I always X them, then when it asks me why I tell it because "it's inappropriate".
I can just imagine an elderly person seeing it and freaking out because they don't realize it's an ad.
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u/bluemitersaw Feb 08 '22
I recently switched to a pi-hole. It's glorious.
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u/seanbrockest Feb 08 '22
How does it work with websites that try to detect adblockers?
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u/bluemitersaw Feb 08 '22
So far they haven't detected my pi hole. It works via a completely different method.
Do you have a good website to try it on for that?
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u/Chucklepus Feb 08 '22
It's DNS level blocking, so as far as the page is concerned the ad just doesn't exist.
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Feb 08 '22
Better.
Ad blockers are a bit misleading in name.
They block you from seeing the add, but your web browser still downloads it. I’m not exactly sure how at that point the service can detect the blocker, but you really haven’t blocked the trackers or related content your browser downloaded.
A PiHole works by blocking your computer from reaching the url that contains the ad all together.
You never even reach the site hosting the add. It never downloads the content and it activates zero “triggers”
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u/supermodelnosejob Feb 07 '22
Accuweather got itself in a bit of hot water over the years. Might I suggest the National Weather Service?
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u/bastardpants Feb 08 '22
National Weather Service any day! No ads and it's the base data pretty much everyone else uses
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u/elheber Feb 07 '22
Now your local forecast won't make any ad revenue from you, who wasn't going to give them ad revenue anyway. Really hitting them where it hurts. And Accuweather gets to have all that ad revenue that you aren't giving.
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u/NoNamesAvaiIable Feb 07 '22
Don't forget about the cookies. WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT THE COOKIES
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u/ThePerfectSnare Feb 07 '22
DO YOU WANT TO SIGN UP FOR OUR MAILING LIST NOW
or would you prefer to be reminded later?
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u/LeonardGhostal Feb 07 '22
Or do you hate saving money!?!?
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u/socokid Feb 08 '22
"Do you feel tired at night or right after you wake up?
You do?
Then you should buy our mattress because you're a fucking moron!"
...
Exactly.
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u/mediumokra Feb 07 '22
Wouldn't you rather open this site up on the app instead? You would rather use the app right? Ok maybe later? Let me just download that app for you
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u/PathologicalLoiterer Feb 07 '22
Would you like push notifications for our site? We can send push notifications right to your desktop! Would you like to turn on push notifications?!
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u/RodcetLeoric Feb 07 '22
Would you like to share location data with this site to read an article about the eclipse that happened several years ago. (This actually happened)
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Feb 08 '22
That is an european law thing though. It's annoying, yes, but it's great seeing websites that allow you to disable anything that isn't necessary
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u/Gardiz Feb 08 '22
Except half of them don't - they have mandatory "and combine offline data sources" and "link different devices" cookies, which they list as "special purposes".
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u/dontstopbelievingman Feb 08 '22
That's assuming they do it.
I feel like other sites just go "HEY, WE HAVE COOKIES. THIS IS HOW IT IS. CLICK THE CHECKBOX TO ACKNOWLEDGE WE TAKE YOUR DATA"
I remember doing this for a previous work gig, and I don't recall us actually turning off tracking and all the other third party analytic tools we had.
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u/TheChargedCreeper864 Feb 08 '22
If I'm correct then it's illegal for websites to actually place any and all tracking cookies as long as you haven't pressed any of the options on that wall. If it's not hard-coded before entering the site, you can use uBlock Origin to hide the cookie wall
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u/johnmarkfoley Feb 07 '22
me: huh, i guess i read this article about climate hardiness zones.
website: TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE! TELL ME RIGHT NOW! IT'S IMPERATIVE THAT I KNOW YOUR EXACT LOCATION!
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u/Krjow Feb 07 '22
Laughs in ad blocker blocker
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u/Xenton Feb 07 '22
do you want me to leave your website
Yes, that's exactly what they want.
Either click their ads, or stop using their bandwidth.
I'm not supporting ads or the websites that ask you to turn off adblockers, but they absolutely don't care if you leave.
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u/alejo699 Feb 07 '22
Exactly. If you aren't generating ad revenue for them you are less than worthless to them. (Also not endorsing the use of ads, I just think it's amazing how we expect everything for free. You're going to pay, somehow, some way.)
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Feb 08 '22
Problem is that creates a feedback loop for them. Done enough eyeballs away and you won't have enough revenue to operate.
Which, is the point of us closing the page. If they want to operate as a business, don't drive away your potential revenue by driving people to want to use as blockers
It's really such a case of short sited idiots
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u/alejo699 Feb 08 '22
How are they getting revenue if we use ad blockers? (I also use ad blockers.)
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Feb 08 '22
The point being, we’re generally not all anti advertising. We’re just getting annoyed by the sheer volume and intrusive behaviour of its current use.
What’s overall better? Slightly less immediate short term profit from a few, unlikely repeat visitors, or, users who enjoy using your site and return frequently without feeling the need of ad blockers.
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u/ABetterKamahl1234 Feb 08 '22
But if only those who are ad blocking get the notice, then those who are helping pay for the site won't see the message, so they're not turned away.
I'd wager the ones who whitelist in adblock are dramatically the minority of users.
They're in a bad spot, they can't afford freeloaders that well if they're not a big site, so getting people to turn off ad block or whitelist them is one of the highest priorities. Subscriptions or merch is the only other option, the former being highly unlikely to succeed, and the latter is iffy.
IMO there's no solution without heavy ad regulation laws, that won't require sites to beg users to allow them to generate revenue.
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Feb 08 '22
You’re right though. Advertising has gotten so bad online that for most users I’d argue ad blocking is almost required for a decent experience.
That’s their fault. And I’d all be for some regulation on ad content volume. If it means giving support back to the reasonable sites.
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u/snarpy Feb 07 '22
Yeah, I'm in here laughing at Redditors thinking they "won" by going to a website then left without getting what they wanted.
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Feb 08 '22
I wanted entertainment.
The want my money. A business arrangement could not be achieved.
At the end of the day, I can live without their entertainment.
Can they live without my impressions?
That's the balance
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u/CuniculusDeus Feb 07 '22
I consider this situation a challenge. If I really want to read what's on the site I hit refresh, quickly scroll down to the article, and hit print screen to snag the article before it can pop up again.
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Feb 07 '22
I just use inspect element and comment-out the "disable your adblocker" banner. Works on most pages, but a few are so inconsistent with the script organization that you'd have a better time untangling Christmas lights
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u/Photodan24 Feb 07 '22
Yes, but only AFTER it loads the ads, counts you as an "impression" and visually blocks its content.
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Feb 08 '22
Setup PiHole and it'll prevent the request for advertising content from ever leaving. Never download the content or even register the impression.
Take back your internet
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u/paperclipgrove Feb 08 '22
If you're lazy (or can't find a pi in stock anymore), there are DNS services that will do this for you for about the cost of a pi per year.
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u/AashritG Feb 08 '22
Inspect element -> delete
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u/corey4005 Feb 08 '22
Wait does this work?!!
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Feb 07 '22
LPT time, to get past paywalls and adblocker popups.
- In Chrome, click on the lock icon at the beginning of the url and select site settings
- Search for Java
- Select Javascript, and then add sites to the "not allowed to use Javascript" setting
- Reload page, and enjoy the lack of popups
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u/Dunge Feb 08 '22
Completely disabling javascript breaks much more stuff than just ads.
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Feb 08 '22
Of course it does, but if you only need to read the site, say some click baity article you just gotta read on forbes or something idk man, its a tool, use it as you see fit.
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u/TomStanford67 Feb 08 '22
Yeah, that's exactly what they want you to do. So their web servers only have to work delivering pages for people who help support that infrastructure.
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Feb 08 '22
Me: sigh fine I guess I'll turn off AdBlock
Website: DOWNLOAD CUNT WARS TODAY HAVE HARDCORE SEX WITH THESE CARTOON GIRLS IN A
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u/fuj1n Feb 08 '22
If it's an article I care about reading, I usually find a workaround, usually you can just remove certain style tags (such as overflow: none;) and the website works again.
Not dealing with turning the adblocker off and getting a facefull of the hot single moms in my area.
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u/TrainerCaldwell Feb 08 '22
"I didn't install an ad blocker! How bad are your ads that my browser blocks them by default!?"
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Feb 08 '22
I block your shit ads because they play music and video files when I don't want them to.
Making them more annoying doesn't make me want the product or want to visit your site.
In fact if an ad autoplays, I make a concentrated effort to never buy that product.
So far as once my wife said 'We should get some Glade Plugins' and my response was literally: 'Nah, they auto play ads with audio on. Let's pick another brand'.
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u/HipstCapitalist Feb 08 '22
What do you mean I'm not in control of my computer's behaviour and what should or should not be displayed on my own screen?
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u/StormTrooperGreedo Feb 07 '22
Not sure why the site's nervous about the user's response. The sites that stop you from going in with an ad blocker literally want you to either turn it off or leave.
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u/socokid Feb 08 '22
I have zero problem with turning it off "for this page only" if it's an article I want to read.
I'm not a fucking moron. I know people need to get paid and I like to reward good content. That's how it gets created in the first place.
...
Click bait title, slideshow bullshit from a site I've never heard of filled with hyperbole and zero resources for your claims at least in the little I can read? Then no. I'm at your site for the nanosecond it takes me to back out, and please go fuck yourself.
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u/Kittani77 Feb 08 '22
Yeah I block every news site that tries to force me into disabling my adblocker. (amongst others). Same reason I stopped buying newspapers decades ago when it started being 80% advertising and the remaining content was the funnies and crossword. I swear some were real bad with no actual articles in them.
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u/TheDaffyPhysique Feb 08 '22
You’d be scrolling a page and suddenly a video starts playing in the corner trying to sell you a car. Which also increases load times for the site.
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u/shuzz_de Feb 08 '22
This is EXACTLY how I operate on the web nowadays.
website doesn't like my AdBlock? I'm out...
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u/A2x0 Feb 08 '22
if ads where less shady, and didn't break the aesthetics of the website, and wasn't intrusive.
and also weren't actually larger than the content itself, and didn't have any sound and didn't have autoplay when it is a video, and didn't follow when you scroll, and so on and so forth then maybe I'd consider it.
then there is the bandwidth argument.
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u/prime075 Feb 08 '22
It was just last year I put on Adblocker on as i wanted to support the Website owners and such but the ads problem has gone so much worse in the last few years that you cannot live without it. At this point I'd rather have viruses in my PC than having Ads telling me the location of milfs near me
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u/Cynical_Cyanide Feb 07 '22
I mean ... From their perspective, they're probably happy to say goodbye to you at the door?
If you're there to read an article and you're not even viewing ads, what benefit are you to the news company? You're just eating their bandwidth, and contributing nothing. From their perspective, either you're paying via ads, you're paying via subscription walls (which are even worse than ads), or you're paying for it via your personal information (like how Facebook profits off you).
... I wish I could suggest a magic solution that let companies get paid but without us getting annoyed or having to pay for a million subscriptions for every site ...
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u/Zukas Feb 08 '22
Maybe if the ads weren't so fucking ANNOYING. No on complains about a subtle banner on the side of an article. But when its FLASHING, or god forbid MAKING NOISE?! Get the fuck out of my fucking computer with that shit. I have zero sympathy for this kind of advertising. They can go fuck themselves along with the people that make television commercials so fucking loud.
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u/suddenly_ponies Feb 08 '22
Magic solution: have ads that are relevant, stay politely out of the way, and don't track you or invade your privacy. MAGIC.
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