Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by troupe 894 days ago
> 42.7% of internet users worldwide use ad blockers.

Given how many people I know that still type google into the google search bar, I find this number to be extraordinarily high.

6 comments

This was the money shot here. If that many people are trying to get away from what you do, maybe you shouldn't be doing it.
I'm one of those extremely against ads people who use an adblocker all the time, or pay for services that allow me to in order to remove ads. That said, I still click on accept for those cookie dialogs.

I think it's entirely fair that someone track me on their own web property, or within their own application. Cross-site tracking is not wonderful, unless it's between a collection of related products from the same product suite. But overall I think it's a huge misstatement to say that people who are against ads are also rabid anti-track-anything people.

Within product tracking is both useful and important for helping companies improve their products. And often it's crucial for security, to detect attacks and the like.

I couldn't find a source for this figure. It links to https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users which is more specific

> 42.7% of internet users worldwide (16-64 years old) use ad blocking tools at least once a month

> 27% of American internet users block ads

...I still couldn't find the source for that. I believe it's a "Digital Trends Report" by Hootsuite but couldn't find it.

It's trackers. I don't block ads, I block trackers. I block large swathes of rentable name / address space (being vague, don't know you, protecting my TTPs) that trackers like to rent by default; anything that lives in there that I decide I want I whitelist. So my actions affect those who utilize the network(s) I administer.
Yeah I would actually believe that for sentry.io visitors, but for the internet at large, that seems high.
I also find this hard to believe. You'd think Google and other scamvertisers would be screaming in pain right now with profits plummeting.
42.7% of statistics are made up on the spot.