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.
In an ideal world, I would do exactly what you do. I don't WANT to block ads everywhere. I would love to support my favorite websites, and if watching a couple of ads is what it takes for them to stay online, then I don't really mind.
Problem is, the ads I see when I disable my ad-blocker are uniformly terrible. Maybe this is because I'm in India, but I've never once seen an ad that wasn't outright disgusting, let alone useful.
I regularly see ads for: escort services, shady hair loss prevention pills, shady weight loss pills, astrology, TV shows and movies in languages I don't understand, gacha games, gambling apps, educational programs I can't sign up for, apps that are clearly malware. Once Instagram inexplicably showed me ads for expensive lab equipment only available in Germany for a whole week.
I would like to see ads for: local businesses around me, concerts and gigs in my city, new restaurants around me, indie fashion brands, TV shows and movies in languages I can understand. Basically, ads based on my interests and recent search terms.
The ad networks insist on delivering the worst kinds of ads to me, sometimes accompanied by imagery I would prefer not to see (e.g hair loss and dermatology ads). The websites I frequent and want to support don't get to choose what ads I'll see. All they can do is insert the ad-network's JavaScript into their pages and hope for the best.
Unless the networks can guarantee that I won't see something illegal, harmful, or plain disgusting when I enable their ads, I'll keep my ad-blocker on. I'm not going hurt myself for somebody else's business model.
While I think I agree with you in principle, it's worth pointing out that at least some of these targeted/relevant ads you want come with privacy concerns which, at least in my opinion, are just as important if not more so than the content/experience of the ads themselves.
Either way though, GP putting the responsibility on the viewer, at this point - given what we know about how the ad companies operate and use our data - is just absurd. We're not the ones who burned up any good will in this particular social contract.
In theory site owners could be more selective about the ad networks they partner with. They bear a responsibility for a poor user experience, but many don’t care.
I remember hearing about a lawsuit several years ago from several news organizations against an ad blocking company in which they described themselves as “ad companies that serve content” as opposed to “content companies that serve ads”.
To be fair to the news organizations, ads are very probably their primary source of revenue.
The "get a bunch of people looking at something interesting and then show them ads" business model has under-pinned newspapers, television, and now websites like Facebook, Reddit and Instagram.
The content was always kind of a side show, an excuse to serve you ads.
An example of an actual content company would be something like a movie studio, where the product is the actual movie, or a publishing house, where the product is an actual book.
Newspapers, television channels and YouTube, however, are making their money selling your attention to advertisers. So I think calling them "ad companies that serve content" is actually correct.
The situation has been manufactured by the advertising industry such that the individual's rational response, blocking ads for multiple reasons, hurts the web in the long run. At the end, it will be said, "it was the ad blockers' faults", not "there were too many ads + tracking systems and ads could contain malware"
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.
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.
I just live in the world where most things are crap.
People put up pages because they want to express themselves and/or receive views or engagement.
AI kills the first half, and trying to sell my attention kills the second half.
I don't stick around for it. I click into "the secret romantic lives of elephants", hit popup hell, then realise I really didn't care. I often can't even remember what I clicked on as soon as I hit back.
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. :)
