Adblockers

[Tsutarja]

This one should be self-explanatory.

What are your thoughts on adblockers? Are they effective in any way? What are the main reasons you use them if you do? Do you despise usage of adblockers?

 

[Alfieri]

I love Adblock. I hate having to wait for ads to go by when I want to watch a youtube video. I also hate when I click away from the screen and I ended up clicking on an ad disguised as a background image. x.x

 

[obZen]

I've used adblockers for the past 4 or 5 years
I have Adblock+ in Chromium and in Firefox
I also have it in Firefox mobile for Android
In conjunction, I use HTTPS-Everywhere, Disconnect, Ghostery, Lightbeam

I hated ads, and found an effetive way to circumvent
Then, I found out about ad trackers and looked more into it
Now, I have fun tinkering with things like Disconnect

Playing with Javascript trackers is actually kinda fun for me

 

[Starry Windy]

I have been using Adblockers for long as well, usually I used it to avoid several ads, and some of them are scams, so I think Adblockers are very effective at handling that.

And lately I'm using it to prevent the pesky blank borders at the bottom of the page (this time it's because of the internet provider that I'm using, I think) to even come out in every website that I visited.

 

[Frequency]

I just use ADP. I haven't bothered to try anything else, and even then, I don't know if other ad blockers exist.

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

Ad-Block.
Can't imagine browsing without it now.

 

[# MissingNo.]

Adblock is very usefull, cause now in internet, there is so much publicity...
Everywhere : pop-up, sound pub, videos of 30 seconds etc... i'ts very boring.

 

[starseed galaxy auticorn]

I use adblocker because on some sites, ads can be very flashy and distracting for me. I have ADHD, so it can be a hurtful on my eyes as well. There are times when it's just a moving ad that can distract me from what I'm doing and forget what I went there to do. I also use an ad block browser on my phone because I'll accidentally put my finger on the ad, or I used to before using an adblock browser before.

 

[Poki]

ABP is love.
ABP is life.

 

[Synerjee]

I like adblockers. Getting rid of pesky and annoying ads is always good. The adblocker I'm currently using is proving to be doing its job since I have not seen any ads on PC for a long, long time. Good adblocker.

 

[Dreg]

I ended up starting to use Ad-Block because of drive-by ads, some of them saying to update my Mozilla, which I knew was not legit. Also, the fact of watching a 1 minute ad for a 30 sec video.

 

[Dustmop]

I love Adblock Plus. So much. It's great for youtube and all, but it's especially nice for hiding the barrage of gifs on nearly every forum and blog I've ever come across, lol.

I just wish it worked on my TV. Cable was supposed to eliminate ads, why am I still paying for ads. I'd rather pay to put ABP on Directv. :c

 

[SaniOKh]

I don't use Adblock. If I know that a website needs ad revenue to stay afloat, I don't. I think it would be irresponsible from me. I see this as simply doing my part in keeping alive the websites I like.

I only have it installed on one browser that I use when I go to websites I want to see crash and burn, like most gaming websites these days.

I'll just transcribe parts of two videos by a youtuber known as The Archfiend who, IMHO, put it best (he was mostly talking about Youtube, but it applies to pretty much every website that doesn't charge its users) . I'll just put in bold the part that I would really like to stress upon.

This is a free website. They have to store all of our videos on servers. These servers are not free. These servers cost Youtube millions and millions of dollars to maintain every single year. Youtube has to make money somehow on this website. How do they do that? They put advertisements on videos, they put pre-roll ads, they put little clickable ads in the bottom of the video, or to the right of the video. Youtube has to make money here. If Youtube doesn't make money, Youtube go bye-bye.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpbtYUcfST8​

Folks, my stance against Adblock is simple: it's basically a message to the people that proverbially want their cake and eat it too. The people that love Youtube, love using this website, but they're gonna sit there and say "Oh, I don't wanna see ads, I'm not here to see advertisements..." I thought I explained it clear enough. My stance is one of rationality, in that a website like Youtube, like Blip.TV, what have you, that has advertisements on it, that doesn't charge users (I know Youtube partially has a charge program here, where you pay a certain fee per month for certain channels) ... the fact of the matter is: without advertisements, a site like Youtube will not exist. And that is a fact. Unless they figure out a different way to get money, which I put out there and say "Hey, they're probably creating these pay-to-subscribe channels party because of people using Adblock!" That makes perfect sense if that is the case. And I put it out there and I made a stance against people using Adblock to say "Hey, if you want to enjoy a website like this, you need to think of the ramifications of you using Adblock, the next person using Adblock, and then everyone else eventually using Adblock". You need to think about what that would do, and that's what I wanted to put out there: the thinking process, to get people thinking here.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix7N5iMHP78​

 

[Incinermyn]

My Internet's prepaid, so I downloaded AdBlock Plus earlier this year to ensure I wouldn't be wasting any bandwidth on stupid ads I was tired of seeing to begin with. It's worked SUPERBLY! I love it to death. Well, I occasionally run into this small issue where there are ads it can't stop or it occasionally stops working because ads conflict with it, but both cases are very rare and, when they occur, exiting out of the browser and reopening it usually fixes the issue (again, that's not something that happens often, so it's rarely a concern).

 

[Emboar]

I would get 5 banners every time I went to a new webpage, so I felt getting Adblock was well deserved.

 

[MySummerJob]

I've gotten viruses that wrecked my computers from ads before.

You better believe I'm running with it.

 

[Hiatus]

Some advertisements have never exactly bothered me, to be honest. They do turn out a bit distracting every once in a while, but I'm always able to keep moving and continue with whatever that I happen to be doing. Though, when it comes to online ads, there are a variety of types, and while some don't exactly annoy me as I've said, other actually do.

Personally, I'm not too fond of those that pop up randomly when you're visiting a site. This could be especially bothersome when you go to some website, and are supposed to click a link within certain amount of time-frame in order to download something and whatnot. Have been to a couple of them before, and was stalled heavy with pop-ups.

Eventually, I wound up installing AdBlock Plus and loved each and every little thing that it had provided. It definitely was nice to see websites in full, without any ads anywhere at all. Haven't looked back ever since. Maybe the plugin doesn't necessarily stop every, single advertisement from loading, but it does cancel most, which I like to believe is far better than nothing.

 

[Candy]

I feel bad to the site hosting the ads (cause maintaining a server ain't cheap and y'all know that), so I don't use ad-blockers.

But if there's a way to block pop-up ads, then I'll gladly install it 'cause mother****ing pop up ads and new window ads are everywhere.

 

[Venia Silente]

And I put it out there and I made a stance against people using Adblock to say "Hey, if you want to enjoy a website like this, you need to think of the ramifications of you using Adblock, the next person using Adblock, and then everyone else eventually using Adblock". You need to think about what that would do, and that's what I wanted to put out there: the thinking process, to get people thinking here.

Funny he mentions that, it's thinking in both the individual and the aggregate that has convinced me that Adblocking is a necessity. This started kinda in the 2000's. One person visiting a site without ads probably means a little bit less of money (I don't know of any ad providers that pay for merely *displaying* ads, they all require provable clicks, or even worse, click-to-buys) and a lot of people adblocking probably means more of less of money. But a person adblocking provably means a bit less congestion in the network and one machine safer from a virus infection or a total bork, and a lot of people adblocking provably means far less network congestion and far more people protected against opportunistic virus infections or machines rendered unusable.

In the end, Adblock is not for the sites to not earn money (you *can* disable adblocking at the domain level for the sites you fav, always have had), but because one doesn't want to be shoved who knows what kind of content, most likely dangerous, when I browse a specific site with a specific intention. I can't (shouldn't) have to risk my system's integrity just because say Pokécommunity were to throw third-party ads from Mr. Enlarge Your Penis, Prince of Nigeria.

I could use the famous restaurant food analogy, but that's kinda way past its prime.

If a site wants to show me ads, they need to be responsible and prove that those ads are and not dangerous. They should be served and serviced by the site itself, and not from a third party that can not be made responsible, not even after the damage is done.

Or -much easier and better in aggregate- they can prove that to the Adblock devs and enter the list of ad providers that Adblock allows through by default. Thats a net gain for all participants (safer browsing, less congestion, better ads), and even for the non-participants.

 

[Legendary Silke]

I do run Adblock Plus on every single browser that I can get my hands own, but of course, with non-intrusive ads allowed anyway. I don't really care much about most things, so long as your ads aren't annoying (playing videos? NOPE!)