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this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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me_irl
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Hot take: I don’t want / need more people to use adblock.
Right now it is in a good position where the numbers just are not that high for advertisers to really give a hoot. Yes there is the ocasional shit like with YouTube, but the thing is - they are not really trying, they only put enough effort in to inconvenience, hoping more people will drop blocking.
However, if more people start blocking, I think they will be forced to find more concrete solutions, like the whole DRM fiasco.
I could be wrong but I don't think there even is a way to fully prevent adblocking without something like the proposed web integrity API, since it's all clientside and the browser can easily just choose not to render any ads.
Overall I do agree that less people using adblocks means less attention from corps and less adblock-blocks like youtube's, but I'm conflicted on whether that's a good enough reason to have most people suffer through so many ads.
Even with web integrity, I don’t see anti-Adblock working. We’re almost at the point that client side AI can screen capture the web page and recreate it sans-ads.
And there are probably simpler solutions to bypass anti-adblock
I barely know how any of this works, but couldn't Google just decide to not send video content on YouTube until X number of seconds have elapsed, so having ad blockers would block ad content, but not make it faster to see the video?
They probably could, but I think the risk of directly affecting the normal user experience is too high. That would for example mean that preloading videos will be trickier, and that there is a high chance that there will be a 3 seconds of silence between the ad and the content.
Still won't help, I would gladly wait 60s to avoid having scams and car salesmen shout at me for 10s.
Maybe not prevent entirely, but I am sure they can make it extremely inconvenient to block. Part of the reason I pay for Youtube Premium is that it would be just too much of a hassle to set up PiHole and manage it, to get that ad-free experience across all of my devices.
Wasn't that hard to set up youtube vanced on my phone
When I used android vanced was the biggest frustration ever, every couple of days I had to reinstall it which was a pita, especially because the realisation came just as I began my commute. Back then I was a broke college student, if I had cash back then I would have gladly payed for premium.
Now I have switched to apple, afaik something like PiHole would be the only thing to get ad-blocked youtube on my TV plus it comes bundled with YouTube music
If ads were just ads, then sure. But now that they serve as trackers too, and are oftentimes hijacked by malware... yeah no, screw all ads.
Ads being trackers, and especially being a vector for malware is nothing new, yes screw ads, I block them, but I really don’t give a hoot if my neighbour blocks ads. I’m certainly not gonna go out of my way to preach the gospel of adblocking.
And part of the reason is the above - more people blocking ads will probably cause ad companies to make ad blocking more inconvenient, and you will end up with the same situation - only tech literate people will block ads.
Now don’t get me wrong, that is not the reason, just a reason, mostly I just don’t give a fuck if others block ads.
However when it comes to the idea in the OP, the reason does become more salient, because someone is going out of their way to preach the gospel of adblocking.
Obviously my original point was a bit lighthearted, realistically it doesn’t matter, I doubt any dev who would do this is making products to reach masses that do not already adblock, so this shit is probably just some virtue signaling anyway.
At the end of the day, it's probably just a joke to get some laughs out.
Spreading awareness is always good in my book, but how to do it is a whole other problem, isn't it.