FBI Recomends Adblock

[Stahlmann]

1 minute ago, SignatureSigner said:

pi hole? 

More trouble than what 99% of users would go through. Adblock extensions are just a few clicks to install.

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, MageTank said:

have never experienced the design of a page breaking because of Adblock. Sure, I've gotten the popup asking me to disable on some sites, and for most, I comply, but I've never seen the page itself completely break. You are reaching here.

I have come across sites where ad blockers have caused issues. Generally I just disable the blocker and do what I need or stop using the site. I will admit it’s a very infrequent issue. I think it has something to deal with blocking scrips. 

[GhostRoadieBL]

There's a lot of nuance when it comes to ad blocking, you can always whitelist sites you want to support through their ads (which causes my skin to crawl since supporting sites with ads is part of the reason scam ads exist and doesn't solve the problem of sites requiring funding from ads instead of sponsorships paying enough to keep sites alive)

 

There's plenty of sites to never whitelist, I refuse to whitelist any site with auto-opt in or 'by continuing to use our site you agree to...'.  They will never receive a single penny of revenue from me and should be illegal since I can't opt out, once the page has loaded I've agreed without input. But ones like the forum are so unintrusive that they are the example of what ads should be (and have been in the golden era of the Internet)

[TetraSky]

And Google is working hard to ensure Adblock no longer works soon.

2 hours ago, kumicota said:

 

How can this become more broken with an adblock?

 

 

 

lmao... That is one extreme case of " I'm never visiting this site again " if I ever saw one.

[Forbidden Wafer]

The only two sites that I visit that have adblocking disabled (on the browser): LTT and Phoronix.

The rest is absolute cancer with ad bombing.

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

But why would the policy also apply to their WAN show laptops and their workstations?

Have you watched a streamer try to pull something from youtube, live?

 

Google is ever so helpful at doxxing yourself from local ads.  But you know what ELSE does that? The twitter site going "IS YOUR PHONE NUMBER STILL (XXX) YYY-ZZZZ?" or "IS YOUR EMAIL STILL iamclearlyanidiot@example.com"

 

Those ad blockers don't fix that.

4 hours ago, MageTank said:

 

You've clearly never worked in a customer facing tech support role.

Stop there. That is pretty much half the work I do. You know how often "virus" comes up? ZERO.

 

4 hours ago, MageTank said:

 

The Google served pages at the top of a search are almost all fakes.

Adblock will not fix that.

 

4 hours ago, MageTank said:

So many people searched for MSI Afterburner, downloaded from the first "ad" link,

Adblock does not fix that. That is a problem with downloading from piracy sites, and if you're seeing that on legitimate sites, they should fire whoever is running the site.

 

4 hours ago, MageTank said:

and ended up with software mining crypto on their PC

Do people ignore the 4 or so prompts by Microsoft saying "this software is likely malware" too? No, because you likely turned all that nag stuff off "for them" right? Don't want them installing garbage. Then don't let them install garbage.

 

4 hours ago, MageTank said:

You can argue that a full screen popup isn't exactly a "virus", but the average consumer does not know this, and assuming they don't call the scammers, they call their PC manufacturer or computer retailer looking for support against what they believe to be a "virus". 

No, the people who get "suckered" into this stuff are people who shouldn't own computers, or the second little timmy is no longer mommy's personal tech support, they don't know how to use the computer. Do you REALLY think timmy's mommy knows they need to update adblockers or antivirus software? No. They do not.  And when they do end up calling Dell or Microsoft they have them reset the OS because all the crap timmy installed on the computer by turning off UAC.

 

 

4 hours ago, MageTank said:

Also, if you doubt that ads can contain viruses, you'll need to study up some more before sharing your expertise

Sorry, I am the expert here. I'm not saying ads are perfect, but people bring up the ad bogeyman like 99% of ads are the problem, when it's like 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%. Trillions of ads are served per day, and unless you're in eastern europe, you're not likely to ever encounter them.

 

If you're seeing bad ads, one of three things are true:

1. You're pirating things like tv shows, anime or software, thus the "bad ads" are because piracy sites do not give a care, zero. No honor among thieves.

2. You don't have enough of a "Value" attached to your tracked presence, which GDPR has absolutely destroyed for EU people. This means you get "default fill", non-paying ads on sites, and garbage tends to sneak in for a few minutes once in a while before it's shut down.

3. The ad servers are hacked. Which is what happens when people use self-hosted solutions and don't actually know jack about running them.

 

4 hours ago, MageTank said:

 

But yeah, everyone seeing ads with fake or infected downloads are automatically pirates. Let's roll with that very objective view on the subject.

Because that is usually what's true. When people send me screenshots of "your website is broken", they're clearly blocking all the paying ads. Why should I "fix" the site for you to break it? If you are hellbent on not viewing the ads, stop visiting the site and pay the creator on through Patreon. Otherwise the cost of using the site, is to not interfere with the ads.

 

Blocking the ads, on content you actually consume, is by any legal definition theft. But is it worth destroying your reputation over the 3% of people who block all ads? No. That 3% are the pirates who will NEVER pay for anything, for any reason. It's not worth making your site suck for the other 97% by cranking up the adblock-countermeasures. If you support the site, you turn the adblock off. No exceptions.

 

 

 

 

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

There's a lot of nuance when it comes to ad blocking, you can always whitelist sites you want to support through their ads (which causes my skin to crawl since supporting sites with ads is part of the reason scam ads exist and doesn't solve the problem of sites requiring funding from ads instead of sponsorships paying enough to keep sites alive)

And yet people don't understand when something is a sponsorship and when something is the "zero fill garbage"

 

On sites I was doing the primary ad maintenance on, I always set the minimum bid at 0.25 CPM and used internal ads to other sites we operate instead of letting PSA's and CPC garbage.

 

 

1 hour ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

There's plenty of sites to never whitelist, I refuse to whitelist any site with auto-opt in or 'by continuing to use our site you agree to...'. 

 

They are legally required to put that there for GDPR compliance. Otherwise EU people can not create an account, and the site can not store state. Most sites work just fine if you block all third party cookies, except ones that have an SSO mechanic (eg "log in with twitter/google/facebook/etc")

 

1 hour ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

They will never receive a single penny of revenue from me and should be illegal since I can't opt out, once the page has loaded I've agreed without input. But ones like the forum are so unintrusive that they are the example of what ads should be (and have been in the golden era of the Internet)

Nah, realistically, they are legally to have that information somewhere. With a forum, you agreed to that when you created the account. You agreed to that at some point on a website if you can login to the website. Even the default TOS for forum software includes this language.

 

It exists entirely because they need to store a session cookie. They can store more, but pretty much the reason you see is is because they need the cookie to maintain state, otherwise the second you close that tab, the page will behave as though you've never been there. Which is fine if you are just reading todays news, but if you wanted to return to where you left off, you can't.

 

Though let's be honest. Any site that ever had Google's Analytics code on it, had that somewhere. Which was likely 100% of top 10,000 sites.

 

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, kumicota said:

How can this become more broken with an adblock?

 

None of that is viral. That is just how "news" sites feel their user experience should suffer and you should use their app instead. Go take a look in your local convience store and pick up the local newspaper. You'll get the exact same experience, except it doesn't animate.

 

Point of Interest. the local papers "The Vancouver Sun" and "The Province" use to have like 100 pages to them. Now they barely have 20, they look like those free newspapers now, except feel cheaper. Back when they used to be thick enough you could hammer a nail with them rolled up, the papers used to have anywhere from 30% to 100% ad coverage. Sometimes they had flyer inserts that were, you guessed it, all ads. What's the difference between a local newspaper and an internet newspaper?

 

Nothing. You know what they say, choose with  your wallet. If you don't like how the site presents it's content. Then the correct course of action is to stop visiting it. Not steal the content.

[Radium_Angel]

3 hours ago, Donut417 said:

I think it has something to deal with blocking scrips. 

Yeah, disable javascript and watch the interwebs grind to a halt as nothing displays. It's irritating

[leadeater]

38 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Blocking the ads, on content you actually consume, is by any legal definition theft.

lol no it isn't, It's illegal in far as I know every country to shove something in front of a persons face without prior consent and then demand payment for having viewed that. A site is completely within their right to prevent viewing and ask for "payment" but they cannot require you to pay for anything that doesn't have a goods and service contact that you accepted before hand, you know like a Netflix subscription etc.

 

It's also 100% legal for me to record broadcast TV, fast-forward or edit out the ads. You are 100% completely wrong here. Ads are opportunistic revenue, always was and always will be.

 

38 minutes ago, Kisai said:

If you're seeing bad ads, one of three things are true:

Um, so ignoring all the real confirmed new stories of Google Ads serving out malicious ads. Not a one time, or a few time problem either. It's happened many many times and will happen again.

[MageTank]

1 minute ago, Kisai said:

Stop there. That is pretty much half the work I do. You know how often "virus" comes up? ZERO.

What exactly do you provide technical support for? I worked in retail tech support for several years before I transitioned into engineering. It was a daily call driver.

2 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Adblock will not fix that.

Absolutely does.

 

3 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Adblock does not fix that. That is a problem with downloading from piracy sites, and if you're seeing that on legitimate sites, they should fire whoever is running the site.

Adblock does fix this. It removes those sites from even being served. You keep calling them "piracy sites" but they are not "piracy". You seem to have a misunderstanding for what that word means. Piracy implies the software being offered is a reproduced copy of the original. These sites aren't providing a reproduced copy of the original, they are providing malware disguised as legitimate software. There is a difference.

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Do people ignore the 4 or so prompts by Microsoft saying "this software is likely malware" too? No, because you likely turned all that nag stuff off "for them" right? Don't want them installing garbage. Then don't let them install garbage.

Are you genuinely assuming the average consumer is disabling UAC? Also, you are only prompted if the malware is recognized as malware or "suspicious". Definitions are updated on a daily basis but even that isn't always enough and something slips through. You can't genuinely blame that on user ignorance or negligence.

 

9 minutes ago, Kisai said:

No, the people who get "suckered" into this stuff are people who shouldn't own computers, or the second little timmy is no longer mommy's personal tech support, they don't know how to use the computer.

Alright, you definitely sound like someone that has been working in tech support for too long and are jaded at the everyday consumer. Imagine if we allowed other trades or career professionals to adopt that same mentality. "You clearly haven't been dieting and exercising, you shouldn't be allowed to live" - Dr. Feelgood.

 

At the end of the day, the world has evolved to require technology to function. Older generations of people didn't have the luxury of growing up around computers like we did. They need help navigating and understanding technology. If you genuinely work in tech support like you are claiming, then recognize their value as job security and get off the elitist high horse.

 

17 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Do you REALLY think timmy's mommy knows they need to update adblockers or antivirus software? No. They do not.

Correct. Because they update themselves periodically.

18 minutes ago, Kisai said:

and when they do end up calling Dell or Microsoft they have them reset the OS because all the crap timmy installed on the computer by turning off UAC.

You and I have very different tech support experiences. The average consumer doesn't know what UAC is, let alone how to disable it. If they learned to do so through Google, their ability to Google already puts them leagues ahead of most customers looking for tech support, lol.

 

20 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Sorry, I am the expert here. I'm not saying ads are perfect, but people bring up the ad bogeyman like 99% of ads are the problem, when it's like 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%. Trillions of ads are served per day, and unless you're in eastern europe, you're not likely to ever encounter them.

You seem to believe yourself to be an expert on every topic discussed on this forum. Unfortunately I've yet to see evidence to support that, time and time again. You've yet to cite any sources to your claims. I've cited sources from actual experts in this field. You disagreeing with something doesn't make you right.

 

Also, be very careful throwing out random statistics like that. Numbers are very easy to find: https://www.comparitech.com/blog/information-security/malvertising-statistics/. https://securitygladiators.com/threat/malware/malvertising/.

 

1 in every 100 still sounds very small mind you, but 1% is much higher than "0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001". Not to mention that scope is important here. 1% of published ads is a lot of ads when you factor in how many are served on a given page. You yourself said trillions of ads are served per day. 1% of 1 trillion is 10 billion. Statistics are fun, lol.

 

28 minutes ago, Kisai said:

If you're seeing bad ads, one of three things are true:

1. You're pirating things like tv shows, anime or software, thus the "bad ads" are because piracy sites do not give a care, zero. No honor among thieves.

2. You don't have enough of a "Value" attached to your tracked presence, which GDPR has absolutely destroyed for EU people. This means you get "default fill", non-paying ads on sites, and garbage tends to sneak in for a few minutes once in a while before it's shut down.

3. The ad servers are hacked. Which is what happens when people use self-hosted solutions and don't actually know jack about running them.

Or, and hear me out on this, there is a magical 4th option. Hundreds of thousands of ads are screened and some get through. Or, you have companies that are trusted ad servers that decide to sell to another company later on that rides their coattails and start serving malicious ads as a quick cashout option. You should really read some of the sources I've cited. Took me literally seconds to Google. 

 

33 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Because that is usually what's true. When people send me screenshots of "your website is broken", they're clearly blocking all the paying ads. Why should I "fix" the site for you to break it? If you are hellbent on not viewing the ads, stop visiting the site and pay the creator on through Patreon. Otherwise the cost of using the site, is to not interfere with the ads.

How is any of this related to the conversation that ads = safety risk? If people are seeing ads with malware in them, that in and of itself implies they are not using an adblocker, lol.

 

36 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Blocking the ads, on content you actually consume, is by any legal definition theft. But is it worth destroying your reputation over the 3% of people who block all ads? No. That 3% are the pirates who will NEVER pay for anything, for any reason. It's not worth making your site suck for the other 97% by cranking up the adblock-countermeasures. If you support the site, you turn the adblock off. No exceptions.

 

Having a very hard time finding a legal definition of theft that matches your interpretation of the word.

 

Also, subscriptions exist. Or did you forget about that exception? Whoopsie.

[Stahlmann]

48 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Have you watched a streamer try to pull something from youtube, live?

 

Google is ever so helpful at doxxing yourself from local ads.  But you know what ELSE does that? The twitter site going "IS YOUR PHONE NUMBER STILL (XXX) YYY-ZZZZ?" or "IS YOUR EMAIL STILL iamclearlyanidiot@example.com"

 

Those ad blockers don't fix that.

Case in point: I cannot remember the last time i saw these ads. Was it around 8 years ago? Must have been some time before i started to use adblockers.

 

You just made an argument on how an adblocker actually protects from doxxing, then added another element of the website doxxing a streamer which has nothing to do with ads and said adblockers cannot protect against something that has nothing to do with ads.

 

You're actually not making any sense. But if you're willing to die on that hill, be my guest.

[kumicota]

23 minutes ago, Kisai said:

None of that is viral.

I never said anything about viruses, I replied about it breaking websites.

35 minutes ago, Kisai said:

On sites I was doing the primary ad maintenance on, I always set the minimum bid at 0.25 CPM and used internal ads to other sites we operate instead of letting PSA's and CPC garbage.

Do you work in ad business? That would explain why you defend it so hard.

 

43 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Blocking the ads, on content you actually consume, is by any legal definition theft.

By any legal definition it isn't. There's no law against modifying a software that you got legal access to it.

 

The same law that lets you not get into trouble for modifying your car, game skin, stove and anything else that you have access too is the same law that makes you legally able to modify(aka remove ads) a website.

 

If as-blocking is forbidden by the TOS, this is a problem for the website and not the legal system. You can go at any court in the world, without bribing and lobbying you would never see anyone saying that it's illegal.

[Dabombinable]

5 hours ago, kumicota said:

How can this become more broken with an adblock?

 

They managed to be worse with ads than Anandtech. Quite an achievement.

[Kisai]

53 minutes ago, leadeater said:

lol no it isn't, It's illegal in far as I know every country to shove something in front of a persons face without prior consent and then demand payment for having viewed that.

Perhaps you haven't been paying attention, because that's exactly what the newspapers achieved.

https://www.wired.com/story/australia-media-code-facebook-google/

https://financialpost.com/telecom/media/u-s-news-publishers-are-taking-big-tech-to-court-but-in-canada-aussie-model-appears-more-likely

 

53 minutes ago, leadeater said:

A site is completely within their right to prevent viewing and ask for "payment" but they cannot require you to pay for anything that doesn't have a goods and service contact that you accepted before hand, you know like a Netflix subscription etc.

What do you think the footer of those sites say hmm?

Every news site has something like that. Google forces them to.

 

53 minutes ago, leadeater said:

It's also 100% legal for me to record broadcast TV, fast-forward or edit out the ads. You are 100% completely wrong here. Ads are opportunistic revenue, always was and always will be.

They designed that content for you to watch live. in a time before VHS and DVR's were a thing.

 

I did not say the companies who own these broadcast assets weren't completely idiots.

 

53 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Um, so ignoring all the real confirmed new stories of Google Ads serving out malicious ads. Not a one time, or a few time problem either. It's happened many many times and will happen again.

Go find one for me, right now. You won't find one. These people crying about needing ad blockers to protect them from the scary warrry ads, in the off chance that one of them might contain a virus or malware... seem to be unaware that Windows comes with said protection too. There is not a bloody malware apocalypse the second you unbox your PC and plug it straight into the cable modem unlike in 2001.

 

I'll rephrase this for the peanut gallery:

 

You can do whatever the hell you want with the content when it arrives on your computer, but you are not within your right to impose that on others. 

 

People routinely pirate things and hand it to their friends. Digital assets to such people defending adblock are viewed as having no value, and the content creator is undeserving of any revenue. That is the message you are sharing when you tell people to block ads.

 

And yes, many of those news sites have subscriber options, that CLEARLY none of you use.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, kumicota said:

I never said anything about viruses, I replied about it breaking websites.

Do you work in ad business? That would explain why you defend it so hard.

Everyone who produces content on the internet is "in the ad business", even if they like it or not. My telling you and other people that they are being thieving idiots by blocking the ads isn't going to change their behavior, and neither would making the site hostile to adblock users.

 

You want to know how to break every single ad blocker? put "ad" in the class attribute of the content. ad blocker tech is so stupid, it does not understand anything on the page, it just blindly runs in there with scissors.

 

1 hour ago, kumicota said:

By any legal definition it isn't. There's no law against modifying a software that you got legal access to it.

Yes there is, that is called copyright law and EULA's fall under contract law.

1 hour ago, kumicota said:

The same law that lets you not get into trouble for modifying your car, game skin, stove and anything else that you have access too is the same law that makes you legally able to modify(aka remove ads) a website.

Again, 

https://fordauthority.com/2021/06/ford-backed-lobby-group-working-to-overturn-right-to-repair-law/

No, they absolutely know they can "make the vehicle absolutely hostile to modders", to require special dealer tools and manuals to fix anything. Also you know what else you can find on eBay? Stolen dealer manuals. But no, in your mind a photocopy of a stolen dealer manual isn't stealing.

 

1 hour ago, kumicota said:

If as-blocking is forbidden by the TOS, this is a problem for the website and not the legal system. You can go at any court in the world, without bribing and lobbying you would never see anyone saying that it's illegal.

You're speaking out of your behind then, because the copyright law is what protects digital content from being modified and redistributed. 

 

And as I said to leadeater above, I didn't say the companies going to war with their customers was a good idea. But it is possible to do, and the more people brag about stealing content by using ad block, the more ballsy they are going to get with preventing you from using adblock.

 

[MageTank]

2 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Go find one for me, right now. You won't find one.

https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/threat-intelligence/2022/07/google-ads-lead-to-major-malvertising-campaign

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-abuse-google-ads-to-spread-malware-in-legit-software/

https://www.deccanherald.com/business/technology/hackers-using-google-ads-to-spread-ransomware-report-1164315.html

https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/22/l/icedid-botnet-distributors-abuse-google-ppc-to-distribute-malware.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/16/scams-search-ads/

 

You're right. I won't find one. I'll find far more than just one...

 

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

You can do whatever the hell you want with the content when it arrives on your computer, but you are not within your right to impose that on others. 

Exactly. Imposing harmful ads on others is terrible and sites are not within their right to do so. Glad you and I finally agree on something.

 

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Digital assets to such people defending adblock are viewed as having no value, and the content creator is undeserving of any revenue. That is the message you are sharing when you tell people to block ads.

No. If you want to profit off your work, charge us for it. If you offer a paid alternative that is superior to the free "with ads" experience, I'll pay for it. I pay for YouTube Premium, lol. If you make my free experience a chore because you run ads every 15 seconds, keep pushing the content down in favor of ads, or outright offer malicious ads, I am gonna block them or outright avoid your content.

 

8 minutes ago, Kisai said:

And yes, many of those news sites have subscriber options, that CLEARLY none of you use.

I do. Must not be as clear as you think.

[wanderingfool2]

49 minutes ago, leadeater said:

lol no it isn't, It's illegal in far as I know every country to shove something in front of a persons face without prior consent and then demand payment for having viewed that. A site is completely within their right to prevent viewing and ask for "payment" but they cannot require you to pay for anything that doesn't have a goods and service contact that you accepted before hand, you know like a Netflix subscription etc.

 

It's also 100% legal for me to record broadcast TV, fast-forward or edit out the ads. You are 100% completely wrong here. Ads are opportunistic revenue, always was and always will be.

Theft I would say is unlikely, copyright infringement or violation of other laws I would say it depends.  Wouldn't be surprised if it all comes down to intent.  Using ad-block to block just annoying ads might not be allowed, but using ad-block to avoid issues with malware probably makes any case against ad-block impossible (a reason why I still sport using no-script as well even though it messes up most sites)

 

If you use YouTube while logged in your Google account then yes you have entered into a contract.  You entered into one when you signed up, which gives them the rights to change the TOS as well.  So if they add in a term that prohibits the use of ad-block on their site then you are sort of bound by that contract.  While it might be a civil matter in that case, there is still the badly written legislation that accessing data that you know you aren't authorized to access is a felony (Aaron Swartz as an example of breaking a TOS).

 

You then also get the argument of whether or not accessing a site and intentionally removing advertising is still breaking the TOS and if it is applicable against you (although no one would realistically pursue it as it would be a civil matter and cost more in filing fees than what you could recover).

 

An analogy that I would say it is close to, if you are walking through a forest and see a really well kept trail with a "no trespassing" sign.  It doesn't matter if you didn't cause any damage or were just using the trail to enjoy the scenery, you still would be trespassing.  Similar if there is "No entry from 10pm - 10am under threat of trespass" sign.  

 

Ultimately my opinion on this is mixed.  The act of using an ad-blocker actively makes the internet worse in my opinion.  In a hypothetical world, an ad-blocker blocking only malicious ads would be perfect, but many ad-blockers have also become the mafia where they demand money from legitimate ad services to display the ads.  I get it, people don't like ads, but for some sites that's where the revenue stream comes from; so by blocking the ads you are pushing more ads to those who don't...or the site eventually goes down or finds other ways to monetize the users.

 

I do feel that Google, Facebook etc do need to curate the ads better to prevent the malware/fake virus ads; but at the same time the more people who block ads the more likely companies are to have to go towards ones like that to bolster their bottom line.  An example of similar kind of things, personalized ads, I completely stopped releasing tools for Android apps when GDPR became a thing.  Not because of lack of ideas, but simply because disabling targeted ads turned from a few extra hundred a year to like $10 a year.  At a certain point it wasn't even worth my time (I did it as a slight hobby out of interest).  Similar things can happen if more people switch to ad-block; either services disappear or people become the commodity.

[Kisai]

1 minute ago, MageTank said:

https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/threat-intelligence/2022/07/google-ads-lead-to-major-malvertising-campaign

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-abuse-google-ads-to-spread-malware-in-legit-software/

https://www.deccanherald.com/business/technology/hackers-using-google-ads-to-spread-ransomware-report-1164315.html

https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/22/l/icedid-botnet-distributors-abuse-google-ppc-to-distribute-malware.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/16/scams-search-ads/

 

You're right. I won't find one. I'll find far more than just one...

I said "right now", because had you even looked at those links you'd know why.

 

1 minute ago, MageTank said:

 

No. If you want to profit off your work, charge us for it. If you offer a paid alternative that is superior to the free "with ads" experience, I'll pay for it

No, few people do that. If you put your content behind patreon, floatplane, curiosity stream, Nebula, Netflix, etc people are going to steal it anyway if you don't provide a "free with ads" option. But if you only provide a "subscriber-only" method then you destroy your discovery.

 

That's the other side of the problem with ads. If you want to operate a subscription-only service, you will literately disappear off the internet, and the site stealing your content will take it's place in google search. Unless you spend every week sending DMCA's to Google to banish sites like 4ch*n to the memory hole.

[Spotty]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

Adblock does not fix that. That is a problem with downloading from piracy sites, and if you're seeing that on legitimate sites, they should fire whoever is running the site.

You need to read the FBI announcement that is being discussed. Nobody is talking about visiting piracy sites and downloading programs and getting viruses. They're talking about searching for popular software such as MSI Afterburner in search engines and the very first link listed being an advertisement the appears similar to a search result being for a website impersonating the legitimate site.

 

 

See this result for searching for blender that was shared 2 days ago 

 

Using adblockers will remove the paid-promoted result from the page and prevent it from showing you what may potentially be a malicious website impersonating the real website. That is what the FBI - and everybody else in this thread - is talking about.

[Kisai]

28 minutes ago, Spotty said:

You need to read the FBI announcement that is being discussed.

I read it on Dec 22, when it was actually news. Thanks.

 

 

28 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Using adblockers will remove the paid-promoted result from the page and prevent it from showing you what may potentially be a malicious website impersonating the real website. That is what the FBI - and everybody else in this thread - is talking about.

No, everyone went off and derailed the thread right away.

 

I wanted the nudge the discussion back to why people use adblock and those samel people then tell other people to use adblock without telling them that it will break the web. Because that is what it is designed to do.

[MageTank]

2 minutes ago, Kisai said:

I said "right now", because had you even looked at those links you'd know why.

What exactly are you implying here? Are you asking for an active malicious ad in order for our point to be valid? You understand that people don't put locks on their homes AFTER they've been broken into, right? It's a preventative measure. Because a track record of malicious ads exist, using ad blockers as an added means of security makes sense. Especially when they existed through "trustworthy" companies such as Google at the very top of the page...

 

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

No, few people do that. If you put your content behind patreon, floatplane, curiosity stream, Nebula, Netflix, etc people are going to steal it anyway if you don't provide a "free with ads" option. But if you only provide a "subscriber-only" method then you destroy your discovery.

You are aware that you can't control the entirety of humanity to operate as you see fit, right? There will always be people that break the law or bend the rules. That has nothing to do with the topic at hand. I am merely pointing out that free (with ads) is not the only profitable means of delivering content and that a market exists for the convenience factor. I have the attention span of a squirrel and hate when my content is interrupted, therefore I pay for a convenient, ad-free experience. The problem is, there exists no "paid browser" experience that filters out all ads, including said malicious ones. Therefore, my only reprieve is to block ads until I trust the website. Plain and simple.

[Kisai]

20 minutes ago, MageTank said:

What exactly are you implying here? Are you asking for an active malicious ad in order for our point to be valid? You understand that people don't put locks on their homes AFTER they've been broken into, right? It's a preventative measure. Because a track record of malicious ads exist, using ad blockers as an added means of security makes sense. Especially when they existed through "trustworthy" companies such as Google at the very top of the page...

An adblocker is not a lock on a page, an ad blocker is the axe you break the door with to loot the home. The only way you do not get exposed to computer viruses, ever, is by not having a computer in the first place. Adblock IS NOT ANTIVIRUS.

 

 

20 minutes ago, MageTank said:

You are aware that you can't control the entirety of humanity to operate as you see fit, right? There will always be people that break the law or bend the rules. That has nothing to do with the topic at hand. I am merely pointing out that free (with ads) is not the only profitable means of delivering content and that a market exists for the convenience factor. I have the attention span of a squirrel and hate when my content is interrupted, therefore I pay for a convenient, ad-free experience. The problem is, there exists no "paid browser" experience that filters out all ads, including said malicious ones. Therefore, my only reprieve is to block ads until I trust the website. Plain and simple.

You're playing the "I run adblock to spite websites" argument. You are not entitled to an ad-free experience. If you go to the site owner and whine to them that adblocker doesn't work on them, you at best will be ignored, or at worst, be shamed for it.

[Brooksie359]

3 hours ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

There's a lot of nuance when it comes to ad blocking, you can always whitelist sites you want to support through their ads (which causes my skin to crawl since supporting sites with ads is part of the reason scam ads exist and doesn't solve the problem of sites requiring funding from ads instead of sponsorships paying enough to keep sites alive)

 

There's plenty of sites to never whitelist, I refuse to whitelist any site with auto-opt in or 'by continuing to use our site you agree to...'.  They will never receive a single penny of revenue from me and should be illegal since I can't opt out, once the page has loaded I've agreed without input. But ones like the forum are so unintrusive that they are the example of what ads should be (and have been in the golden era of the Internet)

Personally I just have ad block on at all times and usually pay for ad free stuff for the website I primarily use like twitch and youtube. So I have twitch turbo and youtube premium while also having twitch subs to streamers I often watch. Having ad block on all the time is just the smart thing to do tbh. 

[wanderingfool2]

26 minutes ago, Kisai said:

An adblocker is not a lock on a page, an ad blocker is the axe you break the door with to loot the home. The only way you do not get exposed to computer viruses, ever, is by not having a computer in the first place. Adblock IS NOT ANTIVIRUS.

Ad-Blocker's can prevent pushing to sites that sometimes use zero-days to attack or simply trick the victim into thinking they are on the correct site.

 

Ad-blockers when utilized do offer additional protection.  It's like trying to argue there is no need to run a firewall because programs are meant to be secure anyways.  The reality is that when browsing the web using an ad-blocker can have a meaningful impact in regards to the threats you face by going to websites.