Do you ever make a purchase due to having seen an ad, ideally by clicking on the ad? If not, then in some sense you're still getting something without paying for it. (You're paying with your time, but that's not valuable to anyone unless it ultimately results in paying with money.) But better to screw the people pushing ads than the content creators!
I would say not very often, but yes, very recently even. I've been researching new backpacking gear this summer, looking on sites that are known to me, so I've been seeing lots of ads for that type of stuff naturally.
One store kept popping up that I was not familiar with. So I clicked eventually, and did some online searching about the company to make sure they are legit.
Turns out they are a local independent store. I've made two purchases from them since, and price compared against them for other purchases. Their ads are more likely to catch my eye in the future now.
> I've been researching new backpacking gear this summer, looking on sites that are known to me, so I've been seeing lots of ads for that type of stuff naturally.
I personally have a long list of products not to buy. If you somehow repeat the same ad and I remember your product, I stop buying said product. If youre wasting your money on spamming ads, your product sure as shit isnt better than competitors', since they waste less on ads, more on product.
I dont use ad blockers, they make it harder for me to find out who has the poorer product.
Wow, that sounds like a ton of work. I think a better idea is to use an ad-blocker, but run a program in the background that downloads the ads (or maybe just samples them, to save bandwidth and resources), processes them to find brand names, and then stores these brand names in a database so you can find their relative frequency and assign a score to each. Then you can just query the db when you want to buy something to find that brand's acceptability score.
Not the GP you are asking, but I do not use an ad blocker because I predominantly use Safari as my browser. I would absolutely love one, but after Apple made all those API changes years back, I gave up trying to find one that works well and is privacy friendly.
AdGuard is pretty good when it comes to Safari, and has a way to convert uBlock-style rules into the Safari blocking framework (well at least as much as it can), so you can use Easylist/etc.
I find the ecosystem integration and cohesion to be the most compelling reason. Everything "just works." Apple keychain is good enough that I stopped using other password managers and works great with Safari, Messages.app and Mail.app integrate well with Safari, AppleScript works well with Safari, etc..
I do have other browsers, but I only use them for specific needs. Like I keep some version of a Chrome-based browser around solely for if I need to Chromecast something. Other wise, I do not enjoy using third party browsers like Chrome, Firefox, etc., which I use at work all day.
Safari's web developer tools are not my favorite compared to other browsers, so I try not to develop much with Safari other than testing.
The changes Apple made were to increase privacy. Content blockers that have access to the page have no network access. A separate process that does can only update the blocking rules.
Apple gobbles personal data too and processes it and sells it etc. They are simply rather better at looking ... friendly. They really are very good at that.
Where is Apple tracking your usage across the web? This data is sold to who? These are big claims.
Disclosure: I work at Apple, and have seen zero evidence of anything but trying to make things continuously more secure and private. This in fact makes my job (machine learning) much harder because I don’t have user datasets to leverage.
What data and how do you know? This seems to be a popular talking point, but I’ve yet to see evidence. It doesn’t make that much sense to frame Apple’s privacy stance as similar to Google’s or Facebook’s. Apple isn’t an ad business, and Google and Facebook are, plain and simple.
I don’t work for Apple, and I don’t use an Apple laptop or desktop, but I don’t buy this Apple is as bad as businesses that are primarily built on ad revenue and are actively eroding privacy. I’m sure they’re not perfect, but I feel like Apple is relatively serious about privacy, making real changes that generally protect consumers, and setting a better example than many big tech companies. Are you sure they don't look better because they really are better?
You’re making assumptions. There’s lots of reasons Apple might want to make their own browser to go with their own OSes, and protecting their users from Google is one of them. Controlling their own software and hardware stack is another, and Apple is famous for this. Another one is providing better user and developer experiences. Better user experience is very debatable, since as an ex web developer, I’m aware of some of the ways Safari sucks and fails to meet standards or behave like other browsers, at least as of five years ago. Standards support is better now. Safari was the first browser to have 60fps scrolling, and developing iOS and web apps with Safari dev tools is the only option, that’s not something Chrome or Firefox do for you.
I don't think Apple (or Google, Microsoft, …) sells your data. Or can you point me to the website where I can buy user data from them?
What I would admit is that Apple is maybe not as motivated to protect your data from unintentional leaking. Without user data, Google would be almost nothing. So they have to be extremely careful to maintain the trust of their users. For Apple (or Microsoft) their business is still sizeable enough with out user data.
After the first scandal about one adblocker being bought out, and letting by Google ads, I tried the next one in the list, then kept hearing about the issues, and then I realized, I am better off just not visiting sites that:
A) Want me to pay to view a one-off article
B) Want me to not see any of their content cause its ad infested.
To be fair, if Firefox's Reader Mode doesn't suffice as a bypass, then I really don't bother coming back.
I also have a low threshold for obnoxious sites, and will just bail and not return if I get annoyed.