[roscas]

"About 11% of YouTube users openly say they use ad blockers. Some communities report 40-60% of viewers use ad blockers. Overall global ad blocker usage is around 42.7% for all internet users."

So, almost half of people online use adblockers. I know some use adblockers that have white lists. Everyone should use uBlock Origin as it does not have white lists to allow "some" ads and it is the best adblocker and protection to be online on every site.

First we have to close every company that depend on ads to survive. All of them.

If your business is ads, you need to close. That simple.

A company that depends on ads, lives by using you. Your data. Your information. Your privacy.

Remember that first thing to do before open any site is to install uBlock Origin and then spend some time learning how to install a Pi-Hole for a network block on network level.

[bitpush]

> First we have to close every company that depend on ads to survive. All of them.

Spoken like someone who has never built anything of value in the world. Even Apple, who famously "hates advertising and adtech companies" makes ads to promote their products. Ads exist for a reason.

Your statement is no better than "if your company emits carbon, you need to close". Sounds nice. Doesn't work

[roscas]

This talk will never end. But let me make something clear.

I bought products and software before. Because I wanted them and the software was good. I used it. I even payed for apps that we 99% free and the pro version almost had anything more than the free version but I still payed, to thank the programmer. And not even use anything from the pro version.

My statements were radical. It has to be, to wake up people, because everyone seems to think ads are normal.

And ads on the web are not normal. It's a cancer. They are abusive. You can see that when companies like Facebook and Google make money.

Marketing is the cancer. If your business is to trick people and make them stay on your anti-social-plataform because they know how to mess with your mind and you don't even have a clue of what is going on... oh Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, others...

There will always be someone who says oh I don't mind ads, there might be something I need...

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

Just curious: how do you feel about print ads in, e.g., a magazine or newspaper (that one receives via subscription rather than snail mail spam)?

[prinny_]

“Depends on ads to survive” is wildly different from “uses ads to promote the product it depends on to survive”. Apple doesn’t generate revenue from running ads. Google does because you can pay google to promote your ads and google makes money even when your product doesn’t sell.

[bitpush]

> Apple doesn’t generate revenue from running ads.

Oh, how mistaken you are. Apple runs a profitable ads business. Not as cute as meta or Google, but still meaningful.

Earn revenue with advertising on Apple News - Apple Support https://support.apple.com/guide/news-publisher/earn-revenue-...

Apple doesn't report Ad business numbers in quarterly earnings report, so we have to rely on third party analyst reports.

> Last year, Apple’s U.S. ad business totaled $6.47 billion, but only accounted for 2.1% of total digital ad spending, according to eMarketer’s March 2025 forecast

https://digiday.com/marketing/when-it-comes-to-ads-apple-isn...

[sanswork]

Why should you have the right to dictate that no one is allowed to pay for their services by watching ads? You're suggesting cutting off services for the majority of the planet because you are in a financial position to pay for what you want.

[estimator7292]

Why should private corporations have unlimitied license to propagandize and intentionally psychologically manipulate the entire populace?

Why should private corporations with no oversight or meaningful consequences have the unlimited and unchallenged right to market drugs to kids? Why should they be allowed to post enormous flashing billboards on our roads? Why do these corporations have more right to common public spaces than the people do?

[sanswork]

I haven't arguing they have a right to any of those things. When you resort to straw manning it's generally a good time to step back and reconsider your stance.

[soraminazuki]

Calling out your euphemisms is not straw manning. It's the logical conclusion. When you're bending over backwards to defend surveillance capitalism, it's a good time to reconsider your moral principles.

Sorry, "but the public wants to get screwed" is a complete joke of an argument.

[bjourne]

Google has exploited network effects and the essentially free labor of millions of content creators to create a video platform no one can compete with. I don't find it the least immoral for me to block ads, while I watch someone play a game I like on a channel with less than 2k views/video.

It's like running a farm at a huge deficit until everyone else goes out of business and then jacking up prices.

[sanswork]

Google has offered free hosting for millions of content creators and once they are profitable offers them a revenue source. It further helps those creators by trying to stop freeloaders. You talk about Google exploiting creators while at the same time talking about removing their income. Google offers an easy way to support creators and avoid as. If you were really concerned with creator well being you could go that route or Subscribe to the patron or similar of every creator you enjoy and bypass YouTube entirely.

[estimator7292]

Google has made untold thousands of dollars by spying on me and stealing my personal and private information to sell to other ad companies.

Why don't I have a right to that money? Why should I then have to pay google even more either directly with cash or indirectly through more advertising and spying?

Google has made FAR more than enough money by spying on me than it actually costs them for me to use adblock. Bonus, I don't have to watch AI generated ads for boner pills with a celebrity's fake face on it

[bjourne]

Most content creators have no ad revenue at all and didn't create their videos with the intent to profit from them. Yet they help build YouTube's back catalogue and get nothing in return for it. They have no Patreon accounts or donation links. I am a "content creator" too. Not like I give a shit if people watch videos of me playing guitar with their ad blockers on.

[sanswork]

They get free hosting and streaming software for it on top of free discoverability.

[bjourne]

Prostitutes get free sex.

[inferiorhuman]

  You talk about Google exploiting creators while at the same time talking
  about removing their income.

You talk about Google as if that's their primary source of income. Most of the folks I watch on Youtube hype up the other platforms e.g. Patreon they use for income. Judging by the outro credits it looks like there are plenty of people happy to throw money at these folks via other platform as well.

Clear your cookies and check out youtube sometime. Perhaps once they stop pushing vile right wing nonsense, anti-vax conspiracy theories, and assorted brain rot I'd consider tossing money at Google.

[sanswork]

It's a lot of creators only income from creating. Once you get some scale there are certainly better ways depending on your niche.

Again justification for why your free loading is actually a moral act.

[inferiorhuman]

"a lot"

If you're small time Google won't pay out enough to make it your sole source of income so you'll probably seek out other ways of monetizing your videos (e.g. Patreon, merch). If you're large enough you're gonna seek out more stable source of income that won't threaten to demonetize you at the drop of a hat (e.g. Patreon, merch).

Me? I think it's immoral to run 30 minute ads hyping up hate churches and 15 minute ads hawking missile launchers.

e.g.

https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/17lcv5e/...

[dontlaugh]

That many using ad blockers would suggest there is something like a democratic mandate for disallowing ads as a business model.

[sanswork]

Those are just people who expect things for free. Free loaders will always exist and they will always try to come up with justifications for why their free loading is actually noble and not just selfish.

[inferiorhuman]

Free loaders? You're talking about Google's reCAPTCHA using my browser to train its AI, right?

[sanswork]

They are providing a service to the people protecting their services with recaptcha and you're solving those issues because you value what's on the other side so no I wouldn't consider that free loading.

[inferiorhuman]

A service that's easily defeated by automation and thus mostly devoid of value outside of training Google's AI products. I think the technical term is "false sense of security".

[estimator7292]

Some people just really like to believe and repeat anything a corporation tells them. It's so much easier than forming your own unique thoughts. Buy coke!

[ndriscoll]

If the "price" to load a webpage were that you run a crypto miner or give a site access to upload whatever files it feels from your computer, would you do it? Or would blocking such malware make you a free loader?

[sanswork]

I wouldn't use the site but yes using the site and not doing that would make you a free loader.

[ndriscoll]

So I presume you browse with a vulnerable webp library or something in case sites you do browse would like to use that functionality? You can't know whether they wanted to use it if your browser silently blocks their attempts.

[scotty79]

Same reason they shouldn't be able to pay with gambling, scamming, prostitution or their organs. Advertisement industry is all a scam. It's a privately levied tax that lets sellers win competition with themselves and ultimately the customer pays, both in price of products and in their attention as well.

[sanswork]

Without advertising how does anyone get visibility into new products? You are proposing winner take all markets when you propose banning advertising.

[scotty79]

Single, public, online product and service database provided by the market regulator. Since the country gets income from taxing commerce it's only fair that they also provide discovery service. If you want to sell something on the market you have to enter it into this database, with the up to date price and relevant documentation.

Consumers can access the database through provided UI or through 3rd party tools using this database API.

[sanswork]

That sounds incredibly dystopian to me. If you want to see anything to the public you must register with the appropriate government officials and hope that someone notices you in the giant list of your competitors. Of course giving too much information about why you're different would be an ad so how do consumers decide?

You're also just going to end up with the phone book model. "AAAAAASearch, AAAAAACars"

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> If you want to see anything to the public you must register with the appropriate government officials and hope that someone notices you in the giant list of your competitors.

That sounds wonderful! How do you see dystopian?

> Of course giving too much information about why you're different would be an ad so how do consumers decide?

God forbid I listen to my neighbors and their experiences! Come on, there's even a term for it: "word of mouth".

[scotty79]

Oh, no. I can't get exploited by multitude of corporations. How dystopian. That's why we can't have nice things. Because every time an idea encroaches on some billionaire's profit it's suddenly too much power in hands other than those privately holding billions. Any government so far has been more transparent in what they do, than something like Amazon.

> you want to see anything to the public you must register with the appropriate government officials

You already have to do that for commerce. It's called incorporating.

> giant list of your competitors

Isn't that what market is? Giant amount of competitors is what's best for consumers. And what's best for them is the only thing that matters because they together have the money to foot all the bills.

> Of course giving too much information about why you're different would be an ad so how do consumers decide?

It's fine, you can provide as much documentation as you want for your product or service. You are even encouraged to provide it. Like user and service manuals for your products. Maybe you even should be required to post them if you significant amount of your product.

Consumers can decide using the provided UI, or using 3rd party tools, which can't take money to promote specific items, because that, unlike verbose entry in the database, would be an ad.

> You're also just going to end up with the phone book model. "AAAAAASearch, AAAAAACars"

Do you read all of the databases alphabetically? No, I end up with search engine, for products and services, with open data and any kind of filtering and sorting that anyone can dream of. No more enshittificarion of the result to sell clicks of confused customers.

[ndriscoll]

Retailers could always highlight high value products they are offering within their storefront (without being compensated by manufacturers to do so; that would be a scam ad).

[sanswork]

How do retailers find new products? Why would they bother highlighting new products if there is no pull demand from community awareness. You'd just pick one vendor and agree to only sell their products for better rates

[ndriscoll]

They publish contact information for vendors? They reach out to vendors through their published sales channels? Go to industry trade events or follow industry periodicals where that's the purpose?

They'd highlight new products because they believe they're good.

The solution to your last problem is to make exclusive dealing contracts always illegal and actually enforce antitrust law.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Sounds didactic

What about uMatrix; some might argue it is even better than uBlock Origin, at least one can use both at the same time; if "security issues" are a concern, the so-called "modern" browser is a gigantic target that sources and runs Javascript from the internet automatically; there is also the choice of not using one (hence no need for uBlock or other extensions); Javascript isn't required for downloading or watching YouTube videos but YouTube of course wants everyone to use their "Javascript player" so they can monitor people's behaviour at the computer with telemetry and other unsolicited connections

"A company that depends on ads, lives by using you."

Ad services. The company acts as an intermediary (middleman), sitting between two parties, e.g., a video producer and a video consumer, conducting surveillance, collecting data, serving ads, relying on other people to produce and upload video, for free, then targeting the people consuming it with ads; parasitic

Mozilla is the company's business partner, sending data about www users to the company

As such, their software seems compromised; they continually promote an "internet advertising ecocsystem"

There are other ways to avoid ads that do not require a so-called "modern" browser that runs Javascript; usually the so-called "modern" browser are distributed by the company and its partners or competitors; optimised for serving ads

In fact, usually internet ads rely on Javascript, so the "ad blocker" solution is using Javascript to counter Javascript

Some users might prefer to just not choose the so-called "modern" browser as their client, and not run Javascript

Also, not sure whether it is still true but Pi-Hole used to suggest the company's DNS service as "upstream", provide it as a choice, maybe even set it as a default

Nothing hands the company more control than using its public DNS service; the company's DNS cache is filled with IP addresses of tracking and ad servers; users will actually pay third parties like NextDNS to filter these addresses out while the company's hardware products hardcode their public DNS service into the products to allow phoning home to the mothership and free flow of telemetry, tracking and advertising

[pabs3]

BTW uMatrix isn't maintained and has had security issues before, so it might not be the best choice.

[roscas]

Correct, I used it and love it, but ok, uBlock Origin does almost everything uMatrix did, I understand why the creator had to choose a path.

uBlock Origin is still the best. It does not have "white lists".

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

uBlock Origin does not have anything like the uMatrix logger

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

9 years ago:

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/14/adblock-plus-defends-new-whi...

Estimated 198 million people using ad blockers

The sluggishness of the www without an ad blocker, not to mention the extent of the surveillance, has only gotten worse in the last 9 years

What is the number of ad blocker users today

But there are many ways to avoid ads; "ad blockers" are only way

Users have choices

Ad blockers are tied to the so-called "modern" browser coupled with "browser extensions"; some "modern" browser users might be running in guest mode where extensions are not allowed

These browsers and extensions come with inherent trust and "security" issues

The so-called "modern" browser is so large and complex that users generally do not edit or compile it themselves

If there is something about the software they do not like, then they do not remove it and recompile; instead they may complain via online comments, or in the case of a small few, write "browser extensions"

As it happens, the source code and compilation of these "modern" browsers is generally controlled by corporations, their business partners or competitors, that each have a financial interest in internet advertising services

Whomever controls the source code for the browser can disable browser extensions; this was recently illustrated when Google disabled uBlock Origin (cf. "uBlock Origin Lite") in Chrome

uBlock and other ad blockers rely on "blacklists" or "blocklists"

These lists try to predict every possible domainname or IP address that is an ad server, tracker, telemetry endpoint, etc.

The number of domainnames and IP addresses associated with ads, tracking and telemetry is not fixed, it is very large and constantly changing

Generally it is unlikely any single www/mobile user will encounter all of the servers listed during their lifetime

Nevertheless the ad blocker will "auto-update" and download these lists

The user is unlikely to review these lists; for those that do, some might find there are some shocking domains in these lists

Every user is different

Another method of avoiding ads is via "DNS blocklists"

It has the advantage of not requiring a so-called "modern" browser or extensions

It can also use wildcards

But it suffers from the same problems as the blocklists used by ad blockers mentioned above

In addition, it is susceptible to "CNAME cloaking", which required changes to ad blockers and other methods using blocklists

https://petsymposium.org/popets/2021/popets-2021-0053.pdf

There are other methods to avoid ads that are neither "ad blockers" nor "DNS blocklists"

For example, it is possible to avoid ads using DNS without using "blocklists"

The user simply determines what domainname and IP addresses they want to visit and places them in a root.zone file^1

The user serves this zone to all their computers

There is no recursion, no need for a forwarder like dnsmasq/pi-hole, no need for a cache like unbound, etc. and certainly no need for third party DNS service like NextDNS

There is no "CNAME cloaking" problem

This is a "root" authoritative nameserver run by the user

(I have been using a custom root.zone for over 16 years)

By analogy it is common for personal computer users to adopt configurations for network firewalls (e.g., ipf, ipfs, netfilter, pf, npf, etc.) with default "deny all" rules that block all traffic by default; the computer user then specifically adds further rules to create exceptions to allow only the traffic that the user wants

The list of exceptions is arguably comparable to a "whitelist" or "allowlist"

Perhaps the important difference from the "whitelist" mentioned in the CNBC article is that this one is controlled by the computer owner, not the software developer or the advertiser

Personal computer owners using a default deny rule in a firewall config are not attempting to predict all possible src or dst addresses to which they do not want to connect, like ad blocker blocklist do

1. Over the years, the method of determining what names and addresses are needed to enjoy a set of