This is literally the internet nowadays without an adblock
I cannot understand how some people are living with this. It is unbearable
I cannot understand how some people are living with this. It is unbearable
My retired parents live with me. I went ahead and put a PiHole on our home wifi. A day later my mother was literally complaining that she couldn’t click on ads on facebook. I told her those are ads and they track her and she says “well everyone likes to use the internet how they like to use it.. can you put it back the old way? I want to look at these shoes”. Can’t fucking win.
My wife turns off the WiFi on her phone to avoid the pihole. She does this so she can watch the ads in her games to get an extra life or whatever. You'll never win on that front and I won't either.
I get so pissed off when I try to play sudoku on the bus and it forces me to watch 30 seconds of ads between each game. And then during the game I have to ignore the flashing banner ad at the bottom of the screen.
Just pay for a good offline sudoku app. It probably costs less than a cup of coffee. Then we'll all be happier.
or get an open source, free and privacy friendly one from f-droid in case you haven't tied your hands with an iphone
Simple games don't need internet access. Can't you block network connection for that app?
A better option even is getting something like what BurnedOliveTree@lemmy.world suggested, or this other one https://f-droid.org/packages/org.moire.opensudoku/ or this other one https://f-droid.org/packages/org.secuso.privacyfriendlysudoku/
Then pay 99 fucking cents for the app.
If the ads annoy you enought to post online, but the app is good enough that you keep playing anyway, then pay the developer for their work.
I swear to God some people around here have heard the term FOSS and thought "I don't have to pay for software, hur dur it's free and writes itself!"
I recommend Airplane mode or getting this https://www.f-droid.org/packages/com.kaajjo.libresudoku
The thing is with a small app ads pay f all compared to the ongoing development costs. $100usd a year for Apple developer license, recent Mac and time spent developing it.
I also really don't like ads, but I think what's lately been bothering me more is every short form video that exists has subtitles added to the middle of the video. I can't even look at the videos because I hate getting distracted by the unnecessary text in my face. Like just let me watch your video, I don't need you to spoon feed me the words too.
It's a decent value to play the ad while you actually pay attention to the show you're "watching" for 30 seconds.
Wow. I never would have guessed that people would be upset that they couldn't watch ads.
Oh my god, this statement hits too hard, especially relating to my wife and things like this. She's very resistant to change.
Same. My wife gets mad that her ad emails won't load on her phone. I'm like, hun, just delete them, we don't have money anyway.
@jarredpickles87 @elliot_crane Fortunately, I've trained my partner to only do this when following unsubscribe links via email 😂
People actually CLICK on ads???? Genuinely never had even an iota of desire to do that. I forgot it was even an option.
Boomers that aimlessly surf facebook. They're still trying to figure out what the use-cases are for the internet thingy they pay $60 a month for.
I do when it is advertising something I hate. Publishers get dollars for clicks, pennies for impressions. That way I force someone I dislike to give money to someone I like.
I use adnauseum on my computer so it blocks the ads, but also sends a request simulating a click to the ad network. Based on average CPM, I've cost advertisers like $300 so far.
Yep. The developer recommends to run it in stead of rather than alongside uBlock Origin, though, which is a dealbreaker for me 🤷
That's because it's built on top of uBlock. If you click on the extension it even has the uBlock logo. It's literally just uBlock except it clicks on ads in the background. It even tells you how much projected money you cost them for clicking their shitty ads. And the websites gets paid. Only the advertisers get shafted.
Honestly I'm astonished it's not more popular.
So you're saying that it does literally everything uBlock does AND fucks over advertisers?
If there's an option to shaft specific sites run by people you dislike too, I'm in! 😄
Yes but Google banned them from the extension store so if you're using Chromium you need to sideload it.
Interesting. But wouldn't that still decrease my privacy? Advertisers still won't know which ads I'm interested in, but they will know what sites I visit and can still build a profile from that data.
Some people care more about fucking advertisers than privacy, as long as they don't have to suffer through the ads themselves. But yeah, blocking is more private than fake clicking.
I got a lot of complaints from family, too. Especially because I block Meta. I just let them bitch and I tell them things like "those ads are broken because of malware" which isn't entirely untrue.
but this means that she would see the ads but not being able to click? I don't get it. They should had just disappeared, no? Or was she complaining that she wasn't seeing the ads?
The ads still appear in the facebook feed but clicking them results in a “this site could not be found” or similar error, is how I understood it to work. I know the PiHole basically makes it so the routes from “whateveradwebsite.com” end up not resolving to an IP address. I’m not sure how FB is serving them; so the text/image content might be coming from an FB server and the link is just an ad URL with a bunch of tracking info on it.
yeah you're right actually. I always use it combined with a local browser adblock and didn't think of that
PiHole just blocks the DNS. Facebook serves ads from their own DNS so it's not possible to block them in that way. Same with YouTube, I believe.
But if they click it, it usually ports you through a tracker link so they can track your clicks, and that's easy enough to block.
I know it’s rare, but there have been times I intentionally clicked on an ad - if it genuinely seemed like a unique or useful product I had some interest in.
I imagine the fake-social-post type of ads are worth blocking though since it’s based in dishonesty and deception.
Some shops I only used once still send me their written newsletters and I don't mind checking them if they do them entertaining, or about some niche products, even if I don't consider buying them at all. I miss well-designed full-page print ads in magazines, or just those with a catchy imagery\wording. Now these all feel like a vintage, premium product, akin to vinyl records, if compared to what garbage web serves today. Such a weird thing to be nostalgic about, but I hope oldschool advertisers\smm persons feel it on their end too.
I get Royal Mint and Royal Mail news leaflets. I just like looking at pictures of stamps and coins lmao
"I'll try to fix it. Now that I put it in taking it down brings the Internet down. Sorry, let me think how to fix this"
And literally put up excuses until they get used to it. I'm sorry but they made you do stuff you didn't enjoy for your own good while telling white lies, it's time for payback.
Hi, butting in here, hope you don't mind a question - is there a place to go with basic I instructions on how I can set this up too? Thanks!
Yeah for sure. I’m no expert by any means, but I can talk through what I did.
I used the instructions directly from their code repository: https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/#one-step-automated-install (I used option 1, the automated install). I did this on an old RPi2B that I had laying around.
After I set up the pi, I got its MAC address. I used this to set a static IP address in my router settings. This is important to make sure the pi keeps the same IP at all times. Then, also in my router settings, I set the DNS server to be the pi’s static IP address.
After all that was done, I just plugged the pi into a dedicated power supply and rebooted the router.
You forgot the endless popups in the 2000s, which led to every browser integrating a popup blocker since then (and which often fail to stop actual malicious popups, no less)
Yes, in these years are a lot of pop ups, pop unders among other crap in some pages, but normally in most pages there was, apart of an ocassinal Banner not much else to justify an adblocker. But nowadays, between ads, clickbaits, cookie consent, adblocker detections and ant-adblocker, paywalls and other shit like these, you need a lot of extensions and scripts if you don't want that the page fills your browser and HD with all kind of PUPs and unwanted scripts, apart of an ad/trackerblocker. It's a cats and mouse game between companies which want to track and profile you with all kind of dirty tricks, and the user and devs continuos searching contrameasures to show them the middle finger.
How about those mobile ones where they gradually move in from the sides to form a border around the content until you tell them to fuck off
Almost, but needs a few tweaks:
Content should be border-to-border in the 2000 panel.
Needs to be 3 lines of content in 2010 and only two lines of content in 2018.
2018 needs a slide-over autoplay video on the bottom-left of the content space.
@gohixo9650 I turned off my ad blocker by accident the other day and freaked out as the internet was unbearable.
Me everytime i use a broswer without ublock. Ill open a link here in lemmy without opening it externally to firefox and dear god my eyes.
Ublock makes the internet a better place. Or at least it shoves the bad stuff under the bed lol.
Like "bruh wtf is that, I will install a REALLY good Addon to your browser, is that okay? (yes it is okay saying no is stupid) good."
I always forget about my adblocker until I need to use a browser without one. It's really pretty miserable.
I helped someone I know out with a thing on their computer and got blasted by ads because they didn't use an ad blocker.
Those two minutes on the Internet really had me questioning how anyone manages to use it raw without going insane.
Maybe if we tell them uBlock Origin is a condom for their browser, they'll understand?
What a sentence to type out
I see it that way. You don't dive into some strange without protection, don't let your computer do it with websites.
It's always difficult with digital matters, since there isn't anything tangible and concrete to show.
Like, there's no shady person following them with a notebook and reporting back to their boss all day, but that is kinda what's happening, just invisible to the user.
My pihole is pretty good at showing family how many connections their apps make are completely unnecessary to their actual functions. That's a good illustration to start with.
It's okay, you can just do a re-watch. It's not like it's been deleted by the Elders of the Internet.
As I recall, back in the late 90s there was a story in the Wall Street Journal about a man who loved receiving email spam. After a long day's work he would go home and relax by looking through his email spam and order things.
Some people are just like that.
I don't like spam but I do like a good scam email, especially if they've actually given it some plot.
Tbh, I can relate to some degree. Sometimes I really love watching TV commercials. My favorite is teleshopping
Yeah, when I watch sports events from other countries it's interesting to see the commercials, even if I don't speak the language. It's when I have to watch 20 minutes of the same commercials every hour that it gets bad.
Wait a minute, the "Elders of the Internet"!? The Elders of the Internet know who I am!? You've got to let me have it!
no no. The Elders of the Internet would never stand for that! The Internet needs to get straight back to Big Ben.
The trick with any meme text is the outline stroke. Without it, even impact is illegible on the wrong background.
Motival Posters had a lot of black space outside of the picture so you could actually read the text!
I used this scene in a cybersecurity training session. I knew it got the point across, when our resident ad-clicker asked me for advice to avoid that situation.
E: she asked for advice for her home computer, as she didn't understand that "at home and at work" meant "at home and at work with any device, not just work's"
Literally the Windows Desktops+Applauncher / Mac Desktop+Panel of people making waaay more Money that I am.
Like Mac really, who thought just piling up apps in an always shown panel is a good idea?
I have spent a lot of time around a lot of IT workers and I am literally the only person I've ever seen on a project that has an ad blocker installed in their browser.
remember when youtube ads were those banners that appeared on the video and had a close button
Oh god
But seriously, my favorite are online stores for products, but you can't buy their product because they have pop-up ads for other products that interfere with their websites you can't actually view or buy their fucking product.
It's like, insane. And probably why Amazon still exists.
At this point I just want the internet to go away
i got stuck on the second screen
i'm not sure if what seems to be a poignant interactive demonstration of internet UX enshitification is shallow/incomplete or depends on javascript/trackers that my browser is blocking. it's ironic either way
it might have js, I'm not sure. It isn't the true modern web experience without 12MB of JS on a blog post/article, though :)
I don't have adblock on my work computer. I don't want it interfering with webdev and I've found it to do so in the past. But it's interesting, the dichotomy between sites I use as development resources vs the rest of the web. My phone and home computer are unbearable without adblock, but on my work computer, the ads are hardly noticeable really.
Its ultimately based on the sites you frequent at work vs home. The sites i read stuff at work tend to be less in your face with ads,.so you know its there but theyre less distracting.
A few well placed and tasteful ads are fine. And sites you tend to read at work show it can be done.
I imagine developers are more likely to use ad block than majority population, so the related sites might have to be more tactical
My former co-worker was daily driving his browser without any extensions and didn't see anything wrong with it. I was watching him work one day and he was literally fighting a battle against the unholy pop-ups just tryna download some free fonts. What could've been done in 2 clicks took him minutes to do trying to close all the ads and tabs kept opening, videos kept playing. It was painful just to watch.
I have a friend who has their entire center 5th of their laptops screen just dead. they move windows around it to deal with it. I look at the way they're using their computer and like I can barely reach it at their window size but it's better than paying the $500 MacBook repair to them
Mullvad also has an adguard DNS. In android, if you go to network settings and then "Private DNS", you can add this hostname: adblock.dns.mullvad.net
I use Firefox on my desktop and laptop devices. I've tried using Firefox on Android. It's slow, and breaks on some sites. If you use it, good for you. I'm not gonna use it just for virtue signalling.
I've never had issues with Firefox on Android, and because I use Firefox on desktop I can sync my browsers between devices
Honestly I find it faster on my phone than chrome
If you don't need access to another VPN, Blokada does device-wide ad blocking on iOS and Android.
I remember some video. It was a joke about IT remoting in to fix a computer. The icons on the desktop were shaped like a dick. Then it guy took a screenshot and was like I'm definitely sending this to HR as he sorted them alphabetically. Then the other dude was like "no put it back, infant find anything!" And the line that sticks with me, the IT guy says "there's no sort by dick".
So far. If YouTube wins the adblock fight it's running. It means the end of adblockers.
Because once they do it. Everyone will. We won't be able "just go somewhere else"
In a world where people would spin up new websites just to piss off a billionaire, I have faith in humanity to build taller ladders for any walls the greedy corporations build.
Today? It always has been like that. I remember the nineties popup ad banner days. Not much has changed.
in the 90s there was no technology to have an overlay of an ad following you while you scroll and when you close it a new one appears more aggressively. Or to let you start reading an article and then suddenly appear in your face not allowing you to continue. Yes, there was the worse situation that they would open a whole new window, but browsers started restricting it quite early
Well at least in the early 2000s we certainly had the cascading cavalcade of pop-up windows that you couldn't get rid of, I do remember that. Maybe not in the '90s though because it probably would have caused your computer to meltdown. Heh
Which is fucking hilariously sad to me...Google became Google because it got rid of all those things. It was just a search box and it did search well.
Now that it has a monopoly and no competition, it's bringing back all the ads. Fuck your results, here's a page of sponsored links.
In a couple of decades Firefox will shit the same bed and the cycle of capitalism will continue.
I think it has gotten worse in that now we have higher bandwidth, faster computers, and more advanced web standards so ads can be an even higher level annoying. If we had the same type of ads back in the 90s that we have today, they would never load and if they tried to they would bring your computer to its knees.
