- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
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Does anyone ever actually click on an ad? Like “hey thats cool I wanna check it out/buy it right here right now”?
I have adblockers active everywhere and only disable then somtimes for specific sites that really don’t work otherwise, but even if the unlikely case would come up that something is interesting I would just look it up separately? Mostly I just turn a blind eye on them anyway, but just wondering, some people gotta really click/buy from these ads? It just seems so surreal to me…
The only obvious ad I’ve ever clicked on was for a “free” IQ test. I figured I’d never done one cause they’re fake, but I had time to kill, so I clicked through. After 20 mins or so answering questions, it ended on a transaction page. The only way to see your “results” was by paying $20. I obviously didn’t pay, and instead tried to report the ad, only to discover that Google Ads has zero mechanism to even report scams to Google. After some research, it turned out that this blatant bait and switch scam had been operating via Google Ads for like 5 or 7 years. Google doesn’t give a fuck if scammers use it’s ad tech to scam your grandma or inject your system with malware, as long as they get paid for the privilege.
I’ve always used an ad blocker, but the whole experience reinforced how anti-consumer and pro-criminal surveillance capitalism is. Permanent absolute ad block — without exceptions — is how everyone should operate, because none of these companies deserve any trust whatsoever.
The EU is currently testing a new payment framework that would make payments faster and easier and also enable very small payments.
This could finally enable micropayments in browsers (well, in Firefox and maybe Safari) which would eliminate intermediaries like Google and all the scummy ad companies and enable websites to work out deals directly with visitors on the spot (pay a very small amount like a cent or a fraction of a cent to read this article).
Obviously, Google will need to be dragged kicking and screaming into this.
I’m still not paying a fraction of a cent for the obviously LLM-generated bullshit that has flooded the internet.
And yet for content I can be reasonably sure is actually human generated (read: niche enough to not have been flooded to the point I no longer can trust the “usual”/“big” sites) I might consider paying for server costs a little.
If you’re walking around somewhere and you see a person or people offering a “free personality test,” do not take them up on their offer. They’re Scientologists. They once refused to let my mother leave back in the 70s until she said she would start screaming “rape.”
The only obvious ad I’ve ever clicked on was for a “free” IQ test. I figured I’d never done one cause they’re fake, but I had time to kill, so I clicked through.
That click should have lead you to a page that says ‘you failed’. 😂
My wife does. But she’s a sucker for “a good deal”
I dont ever click on them myself, but if I start searching for something I need/want, and I see a brand I’m familiar with thru advertising, I’m more likely to explore their product, at least. Simply just because, “of I’ve heard of this before”
But these are never real deals are they? At least I saw maaaaaaany bullshit fake deals, cant remember anything legit ever…
I also found my mum buying crap of instagram a while ago, but i kinda got to her to be a bit more mindful what she clicks on.
Brand recognition is one of the key goals for running ads, it works.
I have ad blockers everywhere, except native mobile apps. I’ve clicked on an Instagram ad for shirts. I bought the shirts. People keep complimenting me on the shirts. No regrets there
People definitely do. CTR (click through rate) is generally pretty low, even before the majority of Americans were using ad blocks. But it’s not 0
I’ve personally clicked on Instagram ads and made purchases from them. This has pretty much always been for various events, and I don’t really have any regrets there. I’ve seen some cool plays and gone to parties that I’d never have known about otherwise.
I can’t imagine what would ever drive someone to click on a random banner ad though.
I know ad rates and metrics are heavily based around click through, but does it even actually matter? I mean, TV ads are big money expensive, and nobody has ever clicked on those. I guess if you’re advertising a shitty mobile game or something then it matters, but does McDonalds or whatever even want you to buy a hamburger before you watch a YouTube video? That doesn’t really make a lot of sense.
As you’ve noticed, there are different types of ads. Not all have clicks as their goal. Some are just there to make you think about their brand, for example.
Not only did my late father-in-law click on ads, he also clicked on spam emails. Yes, his computer was super slow and I regularly had to clean off the malware.
ads are the worst. block them all! Would be great if an advertising company did not have the most popular browser.
That’s why I use firefox, never going to downgrade to manifest v3 ever
FWIW, the manifest v3 implementation in firefox is not user-hostile. They made it compatible, but the limitations on filtering are not there.
Many parts of the Internet has become functionally unusable without one. And given online advertising’s history as a vector for malware, as blockers are just the sensible choice.
Not entirely surprised.
The numbers were already up there, but I imagine YouTube’s recent campaign only drove them higher. More people than before are now aware that adblockers exist and they love using them.
It’s a necessity. The internet really is unusable without it. Pop-up ads, long unskippable video ads, annoying shovelware scam ads, etc etc.
overlooking the biggest issue, the malware/virus ads.
True!
Just trying to read the news on my phone kills its battery because of all the ads and crap. I’m just reading, why is my phone’s battery draining like water? Hence Ad blocker is mandatory.
Honestly, personally I do not mind ads. But the amount of garbage that is loaded in the browser on popular sites make uBlock necessary for me.
People themselves have turned into ads since ads themselves don’t do their job.
Look at influencers.
Instagram used to be fun for someone to share their journey, now it’s ad…influencer…double ad…Triple influencer…Another ad…a real person sharing their journey…55 more influencer ads mixed with 29 actual ads.
Oh and the occasional OF girl who managed to flash some puss without it getting taken down.
I love when i bought something…(i assume) google thinks it’s a great idea to advertise that exact combination of products from the exact webshop on the next website i visit.
How much did tiktok ruin google’s brain to make them think that is going to be effective marketing?
Mankind truly is on the way down.
I doubt these numbers. Almost nobody I know uses one mobile
Then there’s those of us who uninstalled the YouTube app and installed Kiwi so we can install the uBlock Origin chrome plug-in 😅
Firefox has plug-ins available out of the box on Android, including uBlock Origin.
Kiwi is a browser with plug-in support out of the box but it’s always good to have options, thanks :)
Oh, I seem to have misinterpreted your message then. That’s pretty neat
Asked how likely big companies would be to abuse their data, Americans were most wary of TikTok (59 percent), followed by: Meta (56 percent), X/Twitter (49 percent), OpenAI (48 percent), Google (44 percent), Apple (41 percent), Amazon (40 percent), Microsoft (38 percent), Comscore (32 percent), and Adobe (31 percent).
I’m surprised people trust Microsoft and Amazon more than Apple; Amazon needs all the data they can get on you to build “better” profiles on what to sell you, ties your Alexa requests to feed advertising (you can opt out) and Microsoft, especially with Edge (post advertising and services team takeover) has been trying to send everything to Microsoft to feed both ads and their AI. FFS, even Outlook warns you now that they’ll share your data with >800 “partners”.
Apple is no saint, far from it, but people trust a conglomerate over it?
with Microsoft though its less of a problem for users because that would require you to daily use those applications. not many people that I know of personally use outlook, so they would be unavfevted ny outlook ads when compared to the other platforms, which they physically spend more time in.
Apple is just less used
Apple
- doesn’t have advertising as a core part of their business
- is using privacy as a selling point.
- pretty much every release has privacy features.
Yes I trust them more than most.
They don’t need adv, users are locked inside their platform - so they protect their users from the outside while they use them from the inside (in the end not much different from the others)
Even if nobody used ads, ads just don’t work anymore. Kids can’t even percieve them anymore, old people who click on everything are a shrinking market segment, and most people in the middle seek to learn about market offerings from influencers they’ve chosen to trust.
Ublock Origin, privacy badger, pihole for home DNS… Can’t live without them
What does pihole do that Ublock does not?
Every non-PC, non-web browser on your network also reaps the benefit.
A DNS blocking system like Pihole can block ads on platforms you don’t control, like smart TVs or mobile apps.
I was told YouTube is excluded from said benefit.
Yes the way YT loads ads it won’t work to simply block them with a simple DNS pattern match, you need a proper adblocker or third party app. But you can block all the other nuisance clutter on the smart TV, at least.
My TV is hooked to my PC now as a monitor, so I just watch YT on it right in Firefox.
For smart tv there is smarttuve, its complete replacement of youtube and acts like youtube revsnced or youtube with ublocknon pc.teybit out
Majority of Americans now use ad blockers
Most of them don’t even know what phone they have. This article is completely false lol
Don’t a majority of them also use Chrome? Because they’re going to find that their adblockers are less and less effective.
That’s yet another reason to use a DNS as blocker, and not let your browser use DNS over https.
I haven’t done it myself yet, but I figure that sooner or later I’ll need to update my router to block all outbound DNS that doesn’t go through my DNS ad blocker. Some devices try to use their own hardcoded DNS to get around them…
Why shouldn’t you let your browser use DNS over HTTPS?
Because then it can bypass your ad-blocking DNS
DNS over HTTPS was a great idea for privacy if left in your hands, but immediately ran into the reality of intrusive advertising
Because dns ad blocking is typically done with something like dnsmasq which doesn’t support DNS over HTTPS, though it’s easy enough to setup a resolver/forwarder that does
DNS-based ad blocking is unfortunately much less effective. It’s still better than nothing though, that’s for sure.
A multi-layered approach is the best approach. My pi-hole blocks advertising domains, malware domains, etc. That helps tremendously with all the “smart” devices that include DVRs, streaming devices, etc. where you can’t install something like ublock. I also make sure something like ublock is installed wherever possible.
Yup. I’ve got DNS, IP lists, zenarmor, and browser extensions
I mean… you could just use Firefox and uBlock Origin. Works great.
DNS blocking is about the only way to block ads & tracking on things like streaming devices. You can’t install Firefox or uBlock on an Apple TV for example. You can block ads on many of the apps on the Apple TV as well as all the telemetry they try to collect with a well configured pi-hole and selected DNS blocklists.
True, but using a computer with an adblocker and a second gen Chromecast (which you don’t need Chrome for) also eliminates that.
No, it’s another reason to use Firefox. A Brower that is not owned and managed by an advertisement company.
I’ve been blocking ads since 1998, thanks to WebWasher. That acted as a local proxy that blocked all known ad urls. No heuristics, no algorithms, no nothing. Back in the good old days that was plenty.
The internet is unusable without an adblocker… I recommend uBlock Origin and Pihole.
Is there a big advantage to a pihole in addition to ublock?
Pihole will also block non-browser traffic (e.g. your OS phoning home). Adblocking extensions are typically restricted to just blocking traffic of the browser it’s installed on.
It also operates on your entire home network, so it can block junk traffic on devices that can’t run adblockers.
Got any simple guides for simpletons like me?
uBlock Origin at a minimum. But I would suggest a privacy focused browser. Librewolf, Mulvad or even Brave. Browsers leak so much information about you it is easy for sites to fingerprint and track you even with an ad blocker.
I know Librewolf is working on their DNS leakage (last section on privacytests.org), but they also allow you to select a privacy focused DNS server which is nice when you’re not on a network you own, so you can’t run PiHole.
