I don’t know if it’s just me, but browsing virtually any mainstream website without an ad blocker or with alternative frontends is becoming harder and harder to justify. It’s getting to the point where adblocking isn’t an optional luxury - it’s a requirement to effectively get basic information about things.

Yesterday, I was trying to search some information about Ghouls from Fallout. This lead me to this Fandom wiki page which had ads on almost every corner of the website, autoplaying video in the corner, asking for my age as soon as I clicked on the site, injecting polls and random unrelated videos into the communty wiki content and being incredibly slow to browse. A query that in the past that took 5 seconds now takes 50, for what? Money?

I get that online services cost a shitton amount of money to operate, but the sheer level of degrading quality is not OK. This is just one example of how services are completely barreling towards the shitter at 100+ MPH with no brakes or airbags. I feel some guilt for using content blockers, but that guilt is being wittled away every single day because of websites like this.

  • @Audalin@lemmy.world
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    1145 months ago

    Discounting temporary tech issues, I haven’t browsed internet without an adblocker for a single day in my entire life. Nobody is entitled to abuse my attention; no guilt, no exceptions.

    • JJROKCZ
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      445 months ago

      I have but only because in the late 90s and 2000s they didn’t really exist, partially because the problem wasn’t present that they were designed for. Been using once consistently since probably around ‘08 tho

      • BubbleMonkey
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        155 months ago

        Did you not use popup and redirect blockers and AV/AM programs, though? Sort of the same problem, just evolved to be embedded.

        All those toolbars and “helpers”, man.

  • @grue@lemmy.world
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    875 months ago

    I get that online services cost a shitton amount of money to operate

    They don’t, though! Pages of static HTML are tiny and cost almost nothing to serve; they bring the cost upon themselves by ballooning the page with multiple megabytes of ad-injection and tracking scripts. That claim is like 99% self-serving lie.

  • @elephantium@lemmy.world
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    815 months ago

    I feel some guilt for using content blockers

    Please don’t. The advertisers “defected” decades ago with popup windows (and probably before that, but popups in the late 90s/early 2000s stand out in my mind). It’s only gotten worse since then.

    • @glimse@lemmy.world
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      95 months ago

      It’s kind of a selfish feeling but I’m always so bummed to find the only wiki for an indie game on fandom. Yeah, I could put the work in to make a different one elsewhere…but I’ll probably beat the game before I’m done copying the info over.

      • @Moneo@lemmy.world
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        45 months ago

        Pretty sure they C&D or whatever, so you have to modify the content before using it on another website.

        • @Zozano@lemy.lol
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          85 months ago

          I’m not sure if they do, but that’s some hypocritical shit since they blatantly rip off content from independent wiki’s (you can see this whenever the Terraria wiki is updated).

          They’ll claim “we didn’t do it, one of our users did it, and we aren’t responsible for them”.

          Fuck Fandom

          • @Moneo@lemmy.world
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            25 months ago

            My bad if they don’t, I’m regurgitating half remembered facts from a video I watched about it.

            Fuck fandom.

      • @Klear@lemmy.world
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        25 months ago

        I’ve recently witnessed people creating a new fandom wiki twice. Both times I warned them, sent them stuff explaining why Fandom is shit, they shrugged their arms and created it. People are dumb.

    • @Klear@lemmy.world
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      25 months ago

      Oh fuck yes. I’ve been looking for an extension exactly this a couple of times in the past. Never found anything. Probably because google is shit nowadays.

  • @Raffster@lemmy.world
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    345 months ago

    It’s been shitty for a long time now. I’ve been using adblockers since they exist. And I can not fathom how people don’t realise how pathologically sick its become. The internet used to be a great place, everyone forgot.

    • @explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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      25 months ago

      You could write “click here” and people would just do it because that link would reliably go to something cool.

      The ads were text on the top of the page, and ironically unblockable. But you could block the autoplay MIDIs.

      UNDER CONSTRUCTION

      “Web search found no results” instead of just showing you a bunch of wrong results.

    • @banazir@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      I’ve been using ad blockers since the early 2000’s. Ads with noise is what did it for me. Pop-ups too were super annoying. There was also malware in some ads back in the day. So yes, ads poisoned the internet a long time ago and I absolutely refuse to browse the internet without one. Or two.

    • @pyre@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      yeah that part confused me at well… never used the internet without ad blockers since popup ads were a thing.

      • @Microplasticbrain@lemm.ee
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        125 months ago

        I don’t even browse on mobile much anymore, “oh wow a paywall guess I’ll have to live without whatever this is” 🤷

  • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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    5 months ago

    The internet has always been unusable without an ad blocker. The difference now is that it’s not really usable at all. Somehow major multi billion dollar companies have decided it’s completely okay to have broken-ass websites that don’t work. This is especially true if they’re trying to push an app. The major websites like Facebook, Reddit, and TikTok actually go out of their way to break the fuck out of their mobile site to try to push people onto their app. The biggest fucking problem is that the strategy works. People are desperate, stupid, little animals, and they’ll do whatever they’re told to do to get their little hit of entertainment and dopamine. The internet is dead. Long live the internet!

    • @crank0271@lemmy.world
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      45 months ago

      I’m old enough (as are, I imagine, a good percentage of lemmings) to remember when you actually could use the web without an ad blocker. It didn’t last long, but it was glorious. Those must be the halcyon days that everyone sits around the old folks’ home reminiscing about.

    • @Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      What’s ironic is that the big players only got the mainstream attention by providing an ad free experience at first.

      Back when Internet was just hitting critical mass, there were paid sites, free sites with ads, and big players. The big players didn’t rely on ads or pay to use their web services. They took money to provide their core service and the website was a “free management tool”.

      Now that they have killed the ad only business model (can’t pay for a website with simple and ignorable ads), and convinced a lot of people you should pay for just digital services, they are finally free to enshitify everything, make people pay for digital only services now that it’s normal, and try to maximize ad revenue. Truly the enshitification model!

      • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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        45 months ago

        It would still be kinda tolerable if they stopped there, but they don’t. They’re tracking literally every single tiny detail that they’re capable of, and then they’re selling our information to companies that we never agreed to do business with. It should be extremely illegal, but our legislators don’t even understand it, and the ones that do are getting kickbacks from it.

        • @Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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          35 months ago

          It would still be kinda tolerable if they stopped there,

          Oh I fully agree. The issue with capitalism is the never ending desire for more, I could easily handle static greed.

          • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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            25 months ago

            It wasn’t always like this during my lifetime. It has become increasingly worse over the last couple of decades.

  • BoofStroke
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    245 months ago

    And now the gas pumps blather at you while filling your car. Marketing ruins everything.

    • @crank0271@lemmy.world
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      35 months ago

      Second or third button down on the right side will sometimes mute it. (I always mute it before I start filling because FU advertisers!)

      Of course now there are new pumps with full screen video that may or may not have a mute button. It would almost be too much to bear if not for the refreshing taste of an ice cold Coca-Cola.

  • @stevedidwhat_infosec@infosec.pub
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    5 months ago

    Let me just step back here, away from the fact that they’re obtrusive, annoying, and waste your time you didn’t sign away.

    Malvertising is a serious risk these days. Every week we see new malware kits, phishing and increasing complexity. Now, Google’s search algo source code has been leaked. You can bet your shiny ass that the attacks will get more dangerous and even harder to discern.

    Block the fuck out of ads, JavaScript, frames, xhr. Use a secure browser that doesn’t have ad revenue at their forefront and use hardened configs where possible.

    This isn’t tin foil hat, and it’s not hard. Plenty of people out here want you safe and for corpos to eat shit.

    • @Tankton@lemm.ee
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      165 months ago

      I can attest to this. I’m a security analyst / incident responder for a large organization. 9 out of 10 times we get a “malware domain” hit on our network sensors, it’s due to malware being pushed in ads. It’s real and it’s dangerous. Our entire organization runs adblockers.

      • It’s gotten worse I feel like, I had a post in infosec somewhere talking about how hovering over google sponsored results don’t even show the first level url - they resolve them

        • @Good_morning@lemmynsfw.com
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          35 months ago

          Using a DNS for blocking some ads I’ve noticed often the first couple links on Google are unusable, literally won’t pass me through lol

          • Yeeeeah, I find dns is hit or miss - so easy to stand up a new one or use an open resolver to skip around

            Ultimately it’s up to preference but I find blocking at the browser level to be most effective

      • @SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
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        15 months ago

        Yo hire me. I can’t get a job because I don’t have experience… I can’t get experience because I can’t get a job.

          • @SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
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            15 months ago

            But like… Life balance holds me back. I make more than an entry level and support my family, thus cannot dedicate the time for a second full time job.

            I am destined to remain in role and climb a corporate ladder that I do not enjoy because money

            • Where there is a will, there is a way.

              You might not be able to use the same beaten paths as everyone else, but you can always hack a new path.

              At the end of the day, I can’t speak for the entire industry, but when I look for new employees, I care less about resume experience and more about education, drive, and creativity. Once they’re in the role, I can show them the ropes. We also (hopefully many others, if not a majority) invest in serious training and learning platforms to keep people updated.

              Infosec is about continuous learning and curiosity. You don’t have the luxury of learning the skill and being done. Security, arguably, changes the most out of all the tech spaces and you need drive and curiosity above all else.

              If you’re serious about infosec, you sometimes have to hack it to make it. A -> ? -> B

              If you don’t mind me asking, what field are you in rn?

              • @SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Thank you dude! I appreciate you.

                I work retail right now as a manager and although I have a skillset for it, have made great strides, and have changed the company in a few ways for the better, it’s not my desire to stay in this path.

                P.s. You say the things I say to others. It’s good to have it thrown back at me lol

                • Of course man - the world is your oyster. Not everyone is as privileged as me though, so I try to help out where I can to give ‘em a boost. Not everybody knows what they wanna do on the first shot and that can be tough

    • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      This isn’t tin foil hat, and it’s not hard.

      It’s an escalating game. 95% of the shit is dealt with by a native browser feature or extension. But that last 5% can get very ugly very quickly.

      And the longer the escalation game goes on, the more likely you are to make a casual mistake - clicking on the wrong part of a screen or getting fooled by a deceptive link or being sucked by an ad or just feeling curious/horny enough to finally see whether there’s really pussy in that bio.

      For folks who pirate, it can be even more dangerous, depending on how malicious some counter-piracy agency wants to get.

  • @nikaaa@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I get that online services cost a shitton amount of money to operate,

    This is verifiably just false.

    How much does food cost you a day? Maybe $25, depending on what you buy.

    How much does operating a 1000-user lemmy-instance cost for a day? Around $0.0003 per person per day.

    Trust me I did the math on this one. Internet services are not expensive. Internet corporations just try to extract a lot of money out of you.

    • HobbitFoot
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      25 months ago

      And how much time?

      How many hours does it take to fill admin roles? How many hours does it take to fill mod roles?

      What if you had to pay them?

      Lemmy is currently at a scale that it can be sustained by volunteers only. That will change as it grows.

    • Joe Cool
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      15 months ago

      I run my servers for free on the always free tier of oracle cloud. (It feels like hell froze over, but for over a year I am using a free service provided by tech satan and my soul is still intact, I think.)

  • Maple Engineer
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    205 months ago

    I use an ad blocker on my notebook, always have. When I browse on my phone I am often shocked by the amount of ads on websites. I clicked on a link from Lemmy yesterday and the website was 95% ads. It was one sentence of the story followed by one or two large ads, then another sentence of the story and another one or two ads. The whole site was like that. I don’t want to read your story that badly. Unfortunately, many of the ads had already impressed by the time I left so the shitty website got their $0.001 of ad revenue from my visit.

    • partial_accumen
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      155 months ago

      When I browse on my phone I am often shocked by the amount of ads on websites.

      This is why iPhones are an immediate nonstarter for me. Can’t run Firefox with ublock origin on iPhone while you can on Android.

      • @solarvector@lemmy.zip
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        185 months ago

        Firefox now supports uBlock Origin on mobile too

        No solution for Apple I’m aware of though, since it’s forced to be a shitty reskin of Safari

          • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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            25 months ago

            Plus you can configure to default to reader mode. Generally no ads, no stupid formatting, just what you want to read!

            Unfortunately that’s why so many sites have their “click to continue” button, so I don’t see the full article unless I click to hide reader mode

        • @cm0002@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Yea, but doing it at the system level is WAY better. I’m always rooted, so I can’t speak for how well it works on non-root phones. But my phone is like 99% ad-free even across apps, the Google news feed and browsers incl Chrome

          Between that on my phone, network level ad blocking, and ad blocker browsing extensions I can go days or even weeks without seeing an ad. And when I do, it’s usually because it was on a TV at a store or something and rarely the odd ad that somehow leaked through

      • Maple Engineer
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        15 months ago

        The last time I looked there wasn’t anything worth running on my Pixel. I haven’t looked since.

    • El Barto
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      15 months ago

      The website didn’t get money from views. They only get money from clicks. The ad company, though, yup.

      I actually had a similar experience with the BBC today, of all sites!

      • Maple Engineer
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        35 months ago

        Oh…I thought they got a fraction of a cent for impressions and more for clicks.

        • El Barto
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          15 months ago

          Well, it’s been a while since the last time I looked into it. Maybe things have changed, but I doubt it.

          Video platforms may operate that way, though.

      • Resol van Lemmy
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        15 months ago

        I tried that, and for some reason it redirects me to an outdated version of the wiki I’m trying to browse.

        Logopedia especially is one of my favorites, I just wish it moves out of Fandom. Using Indie Wiki Buddy, it pretends the current date is a few months back, which is kinda odd.

        • Joe Cool
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          15 months ago

          That is odd. Something must be broken for the wiki you tried. It’s most useful when there is a real alternative like for the various minecraft wikis. Here is a full list of alternatives: https://getindie.wiki/listings/

          Sometimes you just have to check wikia fandom because they are the only ones with an up to date page. But I’d rather avoid it.

          • Resol van Lemmy
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            25 months ago

            It really sucks that I have to continue relying on Fandom for one of my most visited wikis.

    • It blows my mind that it took mainstream users this long to figure out “hey this sucks, what can I do”.

      I haven’t seen an ad in my browser for like… well over a decade.