I often forget how browsing the web looks for most people. Can't understand why they put up with it, or do they just think that it's part and parcel of the internet to have every page look like a slot machine from hell?
I often forget how browsing the web looks for most people. Can't understand why they put up with it, or do they just think that it's part and parcel of the internet to have every page look like a slot machine from hell?
I currently don’t use ad blockers. The only time I used ad blockers was when a previous employer specifically asked me to, when using a company machine.
> Can't understand why they put up with it
To see which (rare) sites don’t put up a million ads and actually care about the reading experience.
A lot of the top-listed sites on HN are small blogs without ads (or in the case of danluu.com or lwn.net - without almost any formatting).
daringfireball.net is notable for actually having small, non-intrusive ads that I wouldn’t ever feel the need to block (unless you consider the entire site an ad for Apple but that’s a seperate concern).
> do they just think that it's part and parcel of the internet to have every page look like a slot machine from hell?
It is integral to the business models of the sites putting up those ads. And if those sites don’t make money then they’ll also be unable to pay writers. Much like herd immunity or financial speculation there will always be “somebody else” to watch the ads and essentially subsidize the ad-blocking audience, but I’d rather not be one of those people, I want my usage to be worth the while for the writers.
I am sometimes (rarely) willing to pay for an ad-free experience if I’m a repeat visitor. But more often I’d rather not visit at all if a site is too annoying. Another unfortunate situation is that even if you pay for a subscription, some sites have no ad-free option, such as the New York Times.
The big exception is YouTube, where I visit often, am bombarded with ads but also don’t want to pay Google.
I turned off my adblocker on 404 Media since I wanted to support them, I loaded one new tab in an article and it maxed my CPU at 100% for so long that I paused and had to figure out what was spiking my computer.
Immediately turned it off.
Yes, in the same way constant software malfunctions and errors are normal and tolerated.
Open your browser’s dev tools while loading a website and there’s usually a continuous stream of HTTP and JS errors and warnings. That websites actually work surprises me sometimes, but that’s the pragmatic beauty of the web.
Maybe it’s on purpose to keep people addicted to installing apps
Chome with uBlock Lite looks, uh, pretty similar to Firefox with uBO.
Try visiting YouTube.
You try.
uBO Lite blocks ads on YouTube just as well as uBO did.
Also on YouTube
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> every page
That's a bit hyperbolic. The areas of the internet I frequent do not have egregious ads (for example, this page). Areas where I really would like good ad-blocking (youtube) are often not covered by these ad blockers. Thankfully Youtube Premium isn't too expensive and solves that issue.
Maybe it's better these days but I always found browser extensions (including uBlock) had a pretty big performance hit, so I've always shied away from them (with the exception of a password manager).
> Thankfully Youtube Premium isn't too expensive and solves that issue.
True, but some of us refuse to give that company money on principle. The minute I can't watch YouTube without ads is the minute I stop watching YouTube. (The creators I follow make way more money off me on Patreon than Google would ever pay them, anyway.)
> I always found browser extensions (including uBlock) had a pretty big performance hit
I always found that not using uBO was a pretty big performance hit. :)
uBlock causes a huge performance improvement for most regular people's computers.
adblock works well with regular youtube ads (not the one inside the actual content).
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