• @SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works
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    1251 year ago

    The main problem is 3rd party advertising. If the New York Times ran ads on their website like they did with the physical newspaper, we would not have this problem.

    Publishers need to take direct responsibility for every ad on their platform.

    • @derpgon@programming.dev
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      321 year ago

      Plausible deniability. Oh, a mildly sexual ad has shown to you? Someone probably approved it on the third-party site. Oh, you didn’t want to see it? Sorry, we got nothing to do with it.

      Also scams and other grey-area shit.

  • @ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.world
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    871 year ago

    I dislike the fact that “ads” can also include crapware being injected into my computer (viruses, tracking cookies, mysterious scripts, etc).

    • @dan1101@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      And there are so many scam ads that look like UI buttons and such. I can see why people get fooled sometimes. Those sort of ads should automatically be rejected by af networks and the sites that host them. But $$$

    • @lucid@programming.dev
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      11 year ago

      Is this still really a thing? I remember getting some viruses from ads in the very early days of the internet, like late 90s / early 2000s, but can’t remember getting anything in at least the last ten years.

      • @ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.world
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        21 year ago

        It’s currently late and I am on my phone, so I can’t research this too well, but for example this thread and official Microsoft link discusses th Adrozek malware which injects you with unwanted ads and information directly from your browser.

        Sure, it’s not a virus in the older sense of the term where someone either burns your drive or takes over your computer and locks you out asking for a ransom, but it’s still piloting you unsuspectingly and you don’t want it.

  • Schwim Dandy
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    791 year ago

    I don’t think I could use the internet if I didn’t have an adblocker. Ads genuinely anger me. I think it’s just from the early days with pop-overs and unders, blinking, non-collapsible and the like holding content hostage. Intrusive or not, I’ll do everything I can to not see an ad.

      • @slouching_employer@lemmy.one
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        211 year ago

        Pihole will also block non-browser traffic (e.g. your OS phoning home). Adblocking extensions are typically restricted to just blocking traffic of the browser it’s installed on.

        It also operates on your entire home network, so it can block junk traffic on devices that can’t run adblockers.

    • Notorious
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      1 year ago

      uBlock Origin at a minimum. But I would suggest a privacy focused browser. Librewolf, Mulvad or even Brave. Browsers leak so much information about you it is easy for sites to fingerprint and track you even with an ad blocker.

      https://privacytests.org/

      I know Librewolf is working on their DNS leakage (last section on privacytests.org), but they also allow you to select a privacy focused DNS server which is nice when you’re not on a network you own, so you can’t run PiHole.

  • @CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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    511 year ago

    I used to not run an ad block. I figured the ads didn’t bother me so why bother?

    Then I encountered a banner ad that screamed “HELLOOOOOOOOOO” anytime the mouse went over it and I couldn’t download an ad blocker fast enough.

    Advertising companies will do anything they can to annoy the shit out of you, then act like people running ad blockers are the problem.

    • @captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      111 year ago

      I was fine with unobtrusive ads, I was fine with a minute of ads before a YouTube video. But it got so bad it was constantly interrupting everything. Also want to know what’s extremely unpleasant? Political ads calling for a moral panic against you or taking bigotry against you as a general assumption. I’m not watching that bullshit. My life is better without ads

    • @Specal@lemmy.world
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      81 year ago

      I once watched a 60 minute ad because I wondered (what would a 60min ad even be about) and I can’t remember

      • @Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
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        21 year ago

        That shitty Epoch Times used to do that. I was watching a bunch of satire videos and one of their commercials was on, and I legitimately thought it was part of the skit because of how stupid it was.

        Then it hit me it is a real ad. And real people are watching it. And that’s how I got radicalized even more.

  • @ximtor@lemm.ee
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    441 year ago

    Does anyone ever actually click on an ad? Like “hey thats cool I wanna check it out/buy it right here right now”?

    I have adblockers active everywhere and only disable then somtimes for specific sites that really don’t work otherwise, but even if the unlikely case would come up that something is interesting I would just look it up separately? Mostly I just turn a blind eye on them anyway, but just wondering, some people gotta really click/buy from these ads? It just seems so surreal to me…

    • @WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The only obvious ad I’ve ever clicked on was for a “free” IQ test. I figured I’d never done one cause they’re fake, but I had time to kill, so I clicked through. After 20 mins or so answering questions, it ended on a transaction page. The only way to see your “results” was by paying $20. I obviously didn’t pay, and instead tried to report the ad, only to discover that Google Ads has zero mechanism to even report scams to Google. After some research, it turned out that this blatant bait and switch scam had been operating via Google Ads for like 5 or 7 years. Google doesn’t give a fuck if scammers use it’s ad tech to scam your grandma or inject your system with malware, as long as they get paid for the privilege.

      I’ve always used an ad blocker, but the whole experience reinforced how anti-consumer and pro-criminal surveillance capitalism is. Permanent absolute ad block — without exceptions — is how everyone should operate, because none of these companies deserve any trust whatsoever. Even if you trust the site you’re visiting, you can’t trust any ad company they utilize.

      • @nehal3m@sh.itjust.works
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        311 year ago

        The only obvious ad I’ve ever clicked on was for a “free” IQ test. I figured I’d never done one cause they’re fake, but I had time to kill, so I clicked through.

        That click should have lead you to a page that says ‘you failed’. 😂

      • lemmyvore
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        71 year ago

        The EU is currently testing a new payment framework that would make payments faster and easier and also enable very small payments.

        This could finally enable micropayments in browsers (well, in Firefox and maybe Safari) which would eliminate intermediaries like Google and all the scummy ad companies and enable websites to work out deals directly with visitors on the spot (pay a very small amount like a cent or a fraction of a cent to read this article).

        Obviously, Google will need to be dragged kicking and screaming into this.

        • @jkrtn@lemmy.ml
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          91 year ago

          I’m still not paying a fraction of a cent for the obviously LLM-generated bullshit that has flooded the internet.

          • @reinei@lemmy.world
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            41 year ago

            And yet for content I can be reasonably sure is actually human generated (read: niche enough to not have been flooded to the point I no longer can trust the “usual”/“big” sites) I might consider paying for server costs a little.

      • Flying Squid
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        31 year ago

        If you’re walking around somewhere and you see a person or people offering a “free personality test,” do not take them up on their offer. They’re Scientologists. They once refused to let my mother leave back in the 70s until she said she would start screaming “rape.”

    • TragicNotCute
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      161 year ago

      People definitely do. CTR (click through rate) is generally pretty low, even before the majority of Americans were using ad blocks. But it’s not 0

    • @Sc00ter@lemm.ee
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      91 year ago

      My wife does. But she’s a sucker for “a good deal”

      I dont ever click on them myself, but if I start searching for something I need/want, and I see a brand I’m familiar with thru advertising, I’m more likely to explore their product, at least. Simply just because, “of I’ve heard of this before”

      • @ximtor@lemm.ee
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        31 year ago

        But these are never real deals are they? At least I saw maaaaaaany bullshit fake deals, cant remember anything legit ever…

        I also found my mum buying crap of instagram a while ago, but i kinda got to her to be a bit more mindful what she clicks on.

    • @guy@lemmy.world
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      51 year ago

      I have ad blockers everywhere, except native mobile apps. I’ve clicked on an Instagram ad for shirts. I bought the shirts. People keep complimenting me on the shirts. No regrets there

      • @ximtor@lemm.ee
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        11 year ago

        I guess that sounds reasonable. I sometimes miss seeing some of the cool stuff on instagram

    • ZephrC
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      41 year ago

      I know ad rates and metrics are heavily based around click through, but does it even actually matter? I mean, TV ads are big money expensive, and nobody has ever clicked on those. I guess if you’re advertising a shitty mobile game or something then it matters, but does McDonalds or whatever even want you to buy a hamburger before you watch a YouTube video? That doesn’t really make a lot of sense.

    • Flying Squid
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      31 year ago

      Not only did my late father-in-law click on ads, he also clicked on spam emails. Yes, his computer was super slow and I regularly had to clean off the malware.

    • @Brown5500@sh.itjust.works
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      11 year ago

      Sometimes the sponsored links at the top of a Google search are exactly what I was looking for. I just need to quickly disable AdAway so that I can follow the link.

  • @daddy32@lemmy.world
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    371 year ago

    Ads are just pure negative. There was even one study that calculated this as a direct financial negative, although unfortunately in narrow circumstances: it was calculated that for mobile users in the US, paying for the data transferred to display the ad was more expensive than what the site owner got paid for including it on his site.

    • @derpgon@programming.dev
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      221 year ago

      That’s is indeed a pure negative - for the users. The site and the the mobile carrier both got paid.

      Yes yes, capitalism good.

      • Jojo
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        81 year ago

        Don’t forget the company serving the ads, and also the company paying for them

  • LeadersAtWork
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    331 year ago

    If the ads are unobtrusive and interesting, and not clearly based on harvested personal data, I wouldn’t mind.

    Unfoorrrtunately…

    • @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      51 year ago

      Exactly.

      I was excited for Brave when they talked about service privacy-friendly ads and sharing revenue with sites. That obviously didn’t happen, but I think it is a good idea in general.

      I don’t mind privacy-respecting ads like sponsorships and whatnot in videos, but I absolutely cannot stand the data-harvesting ads used almost everywhere, as well as ads in services I’ve paid for.

    • @EddoWagt@feddit.nl
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      21 year ago

      There’s a Dutch tech website called tweakers.net, a while ago they removed all tracking cookies and all ads are now just banners based on the current web page. I have adblocker disabled for that website and I’m happy with that

  • @Kalysta@lemm.ee
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    321 year ago

    Back in the day, major news sites like the BBC ran ads that were infected with malware that then infected computers. These weren’t shady sites like people expect you to get viruses from.

    Installed an ad blocker the day that news broke and never looked back. Ads are potentially harmful to your devices.

    • @Nommer@sh.itjust.works
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      111 year ago

      The WoW forums around 2012 had a virus infect thousands of computers before blizzard removed it. It was a 3rd party ad that was spreading the virus.

      • @Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
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        71 year ago

        I remember that, thousands of people got keyloggers and their accounts compromised. Then Blizzard tried to blame those people for getting infected, from the Blizzard website.

  • @Patches@sh.itjust.works
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    311 year ago

    It is shockingly irresponsible of the Author to not include security concerns of advertisements in their article.

  • @SolidVerse@lemmy.world
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    301 year ago

    It’s a necessity. The internet really is unusable without it. Pop-up ads, long unskippable video ads, annoying shovelware scam ads, etc etc.