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by furyg3 4364 days ago
This this this. There are some huge players in the online advertising world who are supposed pillars of innovation and sustainability, but they have really failed at keeping sketchy, scammy, or downright malicious advertisers away. Inaction here will kill their industry.

Google ads look like results and link to sites with malicious software downloads. iOS apps are full of "you have one unread message!" misinformation banners. These are the 'reputable' players, of course grandma also plays bridge online while little Johnny searches for boobs on the family laptop. What do their ads link to?

In this world the solution is just block freaking everything.
2 comments
zarex 4364 days ago
> iOS apps are full of "you have one unread message!"

Android isn't any better.

I have used adblock for years now, practically since I started using the internet. About 2 sites are whitelisted: hackaday and reddit. They show reasonable ads. I absolutely hate flamboyant flashing ads. Especially those that go full-screen on mouse-over.

If all ads where like the ads on reddit and HaD I wouldn't complain, I proably wouldn't even have an adblocker. But that malicious bulk? No thank you.

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thaumaturgy 4364 days ago
> Inaction here will kill their industry.

That's the part I'm less certain about. I would've expected it to happen already; they're hurting themselves, but so far not fatally.

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coldpie 4364 days ago
We need to get web browsers to ship with Adblock from the start. You'd be insane to set up an email server without some form of spam filtering, why not do the same with browsers?

Yes, it would collapse the current web business model. I fully support this.

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userbinator 4363 days ago
As much as I loathe ads myself, I don't think it's a good idea to default to blocking ads, not the least because the definition of an ad is a little hard to capture completely without either false negatives or positives. Different people also have different ideas on what they consider acceptable ads, so it could be a form of unwanted censorship to some.

Default to showing all the content, but let people make their own choice on what to filter out.

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