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by Forgeties79 35 days ago
The average user appears to care enough to go out of their way to use browsers and extensions and such that block ads, to the point that Google has spent enormous amount of time and money breaking those tools. I think that’s definitely something to consider.

Anecdotally, the number of people who have asked me about VPNs over the last 12 to 18 months has skyrocketed. I probably get a message a month from people of all backgrounds.
2 comments
thewebguyd 35 days ago
> The average user appears to care enough to go out of their way to use browsers and extensions and such that block ads

The average user isn't going out of their way to use ad block, at least globally. Last estimates I remember are still around only 30% of internet users using an ad blocker unfortunately. Ad blocker adoption is heavily skewed toward techies.

It's an even lower amount of people on mobile, where the 'average user' spends the majority of their time.

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Forgeties79 35 days ago
30% of the general population is a staggering number for basically anything voluntary. I don’t know how you can possibly trivialize that number.

If you can get 30% of the population to boycott anything it’s not only significant but forces a response out of the group on the other side. You’re talking almost 1 in 3 people. Those are literally historic numbers.

Do you have any idea how much companies spend to increase their conversions by single digits?

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MattRix 33 days ago
Ok but using adblock isn’t switching platforms. It doesn’t inconvenience the user at all, and there are no negative network effects.
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lmm 35 days ago
> Anecdotally, the number of people who have asked me about VPNs over the last 12 to 18 months has skyrocketed. I probably get a message a month from people of all backgrounds.

That's probably more to do with the increasing popularity of China-style national firewalls/tracking (sorry, "age verification") than ads.

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Forgeties79 35 days ago
Negative. They all want to block ads and protect their identity insofar as they can. Most of them don’t even realize the age verification stuff is going on. My friends that do know about that already have enough technical literacy that they don’t need to be asking me these questions
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