Do you run an AdBlocker?
- Thread starter Ice Tea
- Start date
Me too.
I also run a vpn on the box and connect to it whilst I'm out and about to get rid of ads. Also useful when out of country.
After reading this thread I setup a Pi Hole on my model B - it works flawlessly and sites like The Telegraph that detect ad blockers seem to be completely unaware.
No-script addon will do that too, it will block any code running in the background including "adblock detectors".
108 items blocked on the telegraph website though lol. They really like people's data...
After reading this thread I setup a Pi Hole on my model B - it works flawlessly and sites like The Telegraph that detect ad blockers seem to be completely unaware.
Which tutorial did you use?
I just downloaded from the main pi hole site and ran this:
curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash
Never seen that one. Will look into that as I get the sites complaining a lot.
I guess as long as you're all happy in the knowledge that eventually you'll have to physically pay for the content you consume, through a subscription model or micro transactions or whatever.
You can't go on consuming content for free - it's no different from using BBC platforms and not paying for a TV license. If you don't like the monetisation methods you should boycott the website rather than steal from them.
When you visit peoples houses do you also demand they take down the pictures on the walls because you consider it an interruption to your experience?
You can't go on consuming content for free - it's no different from using BBC platforms and not paying for a TV license. If you don't like the monetisation methods you should boycott the website rather than steal from them.
When you visit peoples houses do you also demand they take down the pictures on the walls because you consider it an interruption to your experience?
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This.
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Yes, crypto will allow you to pay very small amounts for the content you consume ad free. It’s probably coming irregardless of us running adblockers.
LOL... AdBlocking is no more stealing than piracy is. Less so, in fact. If the advertising industry would self-regulate (or at least grow a set of scruples) and not bombard people with impossible amount of popups, overlays, and plain redirection (fake buttons and banners, etc) - not to mention full blown malware - then people wouldn't have an incentive to ad block. That's before we even touch on the underhanded, slimy evil that is beacons, tracking pixels, supercookies, hardware fingerprinting and all the other means of spying on and tracking/profiling people. If they want to mess with people, they can't complain about countermeasures.
Your arguments are spurious at best and strawmen at worst. "You can't go on consuming content for free". Says who? There's an abundance of quality free content out there already, with no expectation of payment or silly intrusive adverts. Comparing it to a compulsory national tax doesn't work.
As it happens, I do agree with your post in as much as I don't expect everything for free. I contribute to sites I use, I donate to all the projects (free and open source) I benefit from, and I pay towards the content I consume even if it's just a quid in the tip jar or a donation to the site/project. If a site has ads or similar that I can't bypass (which happens incredibly rarely) I simply close their site and get the information elsewhere - usually, ironically, from a higher quality source who doesn't feel the need to bombard people.
I don't have a Facebook or Google account, I pay for my own domain and mail (and use a separate paid encrypted email account for other stuff) and I pay MeWe a small amount to use their ad and tracking free social network. If anyone wants to bitch and whine about losing traffic or money because of the ads they run, they'll get no sympathy from me and likely it wasn't content of any importance anyway. Anything people actually want or need is easily available for free (and ad free), whether it be news, video, media, development/code, mailing lists, whatever. If your content is so great you deserve to be paid for it then make it subscription only, or put a tip jar on your page. Then the free market will decide whether it agrees with you.
Edit: Thinking on, I'm struggling to think of anything that would actually require an advertisement based model to function in the first place. The internet is a shared space for disseminating knowledge, sharing ideas, contributing creative works with your fellow man, and so on. Collaborative development and code? I use mailing lists and Git sites (no ads). Sharing ideas? Forums and similar sites (no ads). Sharing my musings? Self-hosted blog that I either pay for or self host - I don't expect people to pay me to read my own ramblings, and I am always happy to hear back their own thoughts to challenge or build upon my own (no ads). The only exception is 'big media', and I happily pay Netflix a tenner a month for multiple 4k 'screens'. No ads again...
If your content is so dubious as to require ads, because nobody is willing to actually directly pay you for it but you want paying anyway, then perhaps a change of tack (or 'career') is in order.
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