Kinda an interesting point here. There are a boatload of people out there who claim to block ads, pretty tough for not technologists to know which one works.
I kind of like this idea, Iām only adamantly against obtrusive annoying ads, like auto-playing videos, animated images, and/or pop-ups. The ads that google used to run, from what I can remember, were simple text or static images. I have no issue with that. That being said, if other people want to block all ads, they should definitely be allowed to do that. The problem being that if you look at the āBetter Ad Coalitionā guidelines, they still allow all of those bad things.
Just like with warez back in the day, there used to be honor among thieves. The original adblocks were literally just instructions on how to use host files and large text files of known ad hosts. They morphed into active ad blocking software, but primarily from an anti-ad ideology and not from any profit desires.
Warez is dead, and pirated software has been nothing but malware-infested garbage for a decade now. Muggles hate ads just as much as we do, and now they google āad blockingā and find results that are just a few clicks. Most of those are themselves malwareā¦
Correct.
On the top of people are OK with unobtrusive advertisements.
Ad blockers also block tracking and all sorts of other things you canāt see and wonāt annoy you immediately. Google Analytics canāt even measure you if you have real ad blocking.
When you visit a web site you are sending a request. That web servers sends you HTML. It doesnāt have to. The person running that server chose to have it send you that HTML for free. It is now on your computer. Just because that HTML may contain JavaScript or other instructions to download ads, you are under no obligation to have your computer follow those instructions. Your computer. You choose what it does. Given the choice, why choose to have it waste cycles downloading and rendering even a text advertisement?
Even a non-intrusive ad still takes bandwidth. If you do not have infinite free bandwidth, you should try very hard not to waste even one bit on downloading ads. If you do, you are paying to watch someoneās ad! We pay to get rid of ads, not pay to see them!
Even the most trustworthy sites serve up their advertisements via ad networks and donāt control their ads in-house and by hand. This means that if you visit even only the safest web sites, and block annoying ads, you are still vulnerable to malware and other security threats. For maximum safety you should block every ad possible. I would even argue you should err on the side of blocking real content because the security threat of failing to block an actual ad.
In all areas of life you should work to block all advertisements you possibly can in all their forms. If people want your time, your eyeballs, or your information, they should be compensating you, and you should be explicitly giving them permission.
If I encounter a site that does this I will take my business elsewhere. That includes Youtube.
1 Like
Same, unless the content on the site is good enough that it is worth paying for. For example, YouTube. I already pay for YouTube Red.
1 Like
Yeahā¦ in the end youāre right at least for Youtube. I just donāt want to have to choose between paying for a billion different subscriptions or seeing obnoxious ads.
If paying is problematic (too expensive, hard to do, annoying, etcā¦) and/or ads are unavoidable, I just drop whatever media it was and never consume it. Or, I pirate it.
1 Like
Over the past year, Google has triedāand failedāto sell Boston Dynamics to Toyota.
Today, they finally sold itā¦to SoftBank.
This is actually nice. The limitation will filter out all the bad streamers out
Google is waging biological warfare on mosquitoes.
ā¦and they just got caught up in controversy.
UPDATE: Heās been fired.
āI consider myself a classical liberalā
i.e. Iām basically a conservative.
I personally like this take on the situation:
You talked about a need for discussion about ideas; you need to learn the difference between āI think we should adopt Go as our primary languageā and āI think one-third of my colleagues are either biologically unsuited to do their jobs, or if not are exceptions and should be suspected of such until they can prove otherwise to each and every personās satisfaction.ā Not all ideas are the same, and not all conversations about ideas even have basic legitimacy. If you feel isolated by this, that your views are basically unwelcome in tech and canāt be spoken aboutā¦ well, thatās a fair point. These views are fundamentally corrosive to any organization they show up in, drive people out, and I canāt think of any organization not specifically dedicated to those views that they would be welcome in. Iām afraid thatās likely to remain a serious problem for you for a long time to come. But our company is committed to maintaining a good environment for all of its people, and if one person is determined to thwart that, the solution is pretty clear.Ā²
The entire article is worth reading but its a good rebuke to the āwhereās my freedom to dissentā arguments. Your freedom to dissent ends when its actively hurting the companyās workplace environment.
6 Likes
Just came into this thread to post the medium link you had there. Excellent rebuke.
1 Like
I really loved that article, as well as one of the articles he cites about how tolerance and why you shouldnāt tolerate intolerance. It gives voices to something that Iāve been thinking about in my head about free speech and not challenging people who believe things that are corrosive and hurtful.
1 Like