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by cogman10 1354 days ago
I wonder what sort of hit to their userbase they'll experience when it finally happens for real. The internet is unbearable without ad blocking.
3 comments

You overestimate how many people use ad blockers.

Many terrified that these "hackers" will steal their credit cards and take in dump in their dinner plate if they install such extension.

When I showed Bypass Paywall plugin to some friends, they all freaked out and looked at it like some dark magic. They look at ad blockers the same.

"During the third quarter of 2021, the average global adblocking rate was estimated at 37 percent. Vietnam and China were top of the class, with a respective adblocking penetration rates of 44.7 and 43.7 percent. This was followed by 41.7 percent of surveyed Indonesians and 40.4 percent of surveyed South Africans admitting to using software blocking online advertising. In the United States, 34.2 percent of internet users said they used adblockers."

https://www.statista.com/statistics/351862/adblocking-usage/

Well, I guess that 1/3-1/2 of people who like to take internal polls also install adblock.
My assumption is if you are installing chrome, you've got the technical chops to install an ad blocker. Otherwise, you'd be using Edge or Safari.
It's a wrong assumption. Installing chrome requires no brains and google pushing it hard. A tool from my Motherboard maker would install chrome and make it default if you don't go into "advanced" install. You can end up with chrome as a default browser without knowing it. Shit, our work MDM policy installs Chrome on every work laptop.
If your assumption held true, Chrome's market share would not be so large. Technical people are a minority after all.
> I wonder what sort of hit to their userbase they'll experience when it finally happens for real. The internet is unbearable without ad blocking.

close to zero, as there are perfectly fine ad blockers that still work?

case in point: been using safari with an ad blocker for years now. no change in web browsing.

Virtually none, I expect. Especially since "without ad blocking" isn't on the table, there will continue to be ad blocking in Chrome.
But will the remnant adblocking in Chrome still work a few years down the line? Or will websites circumvent it? That’s the question.
Is it the question? No one's really asking it and it's obviously purely speculative.
What’s not speculative is that adblockers have to be constantly maintained to remain effective. As websites find new circumventions, adblockers respond with fixes.

Manifest v3 freezes the capabilities of adblockers in time (it regresses them). Perhaps it’s sufficient for today’s ads but over time websites will take advantage and the effectiveness of adblockers will wither: websites have a financial incentive to circumvent all those chrome users.

been using ad blocker on safari for years now. no issues.