Alt text: a screenshot of an article that is over 90% covered by ads.
I'm sorry to inform you that there might be some content leaking through your ads.
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
290 points (98.7% liked)
Privacy
31975 readers
498 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Oh no is that yiff?
Browsing the internet on mobile devices has gotten so bad in the last few years. It's all but guaranteed that at least quarter of the space on any website is going to be taken up by floating ads that don't move as you scroll. Some of them it's over half. I cannot understand how normal folks navigate the web without adblockers.
Yo, after I switched to Firefox, I realized its mobile app offers ad blocking add-ons for mobile. Holy shit was that a dealmaker for me. I actually want to browse the web on my phone again.
uBlock Origin is very powerful thing. It can remove link tracking (I posted links before if you're interested); it can remove parts of site; it can change JavaScript and its response. Basically, everything is possible.
Do I still need the "I still don't care about cookies" extension if I add the filter list?
I was trying to learn c++ there was this really great and free site. I decided to turn ads on for them since everything was high quality and free.
There were a few ads that played, but they changed every few minutes. The ads were not the same width, so they they changed they pushed the text around.
So in the middle of reading all the text would jump around and make you lose your place.
It basically made their site completely unusable.
The intrusiveness of ads is bad, but the fact that code I don't want and didn't explicitly authorize is running on my machine is a massive security hole. Not too long ago hackers infiltrated the ad networks of major newspapers and replaced the ads with propaganda.
We have no idea how many times exploit code has been put on these ad servers. And we're just supposed to trust a bunch of sysadmins to make sure the javascript that lets them track us hasn't been replaced with something nefarious?
This is the main reason why I block ads, and I try to get family members to as well.
For me the tipping point was when ads started becoming malicious. As long as ads are not static and are being served by unaudited and unregulated third parties, they have no home on my browser. I feel bad about it because I understand that some independent sites legitimately need the revenue but unless they provide information about how they vet their ad providers or they only serve static ads, I’m going to block them.
SPONSORED BY: BLADDER CANCER
wtf is even going on in that photo? she's holding a magnifying glass and a clipboard? cutting board? so confused
She's gonna find her bladder cancer and cut it out herself because she can't afford the $2 mil hospital bill
I wish this were not the best explanation, but it certainly seems that way.
a."i". generated cancer* for ad-driven bladder cancer test scam. Thing went awry with the left hand. Had to paste over something bladder-laboratory.
* may cause brain cancer.
I realize you're not asking for help, but this person needs uBlock Origin or something similar to block the entire element, not just the ad content...
Good VPNs have adblockers.
Everyone on the Internet should have one now. Also a password generator.
JavaScript was a mistake
[object Object]
Hear hear!
I wonder how Firefox's new reader toggle would handle this. It basically strips things down to the core textual content of the page.
Works pretty well. Reader Mode is great at unfucking user-hostile site designs like this.
God bless Firefox reader mode.
ads were a terrible monetization strategy from the start. I've never felt bad about adblocking, if you require payment for upkeep offer me a subscription service.
Is that a joke im too desktop PC to understand?
Due to garbage like this I started using NextDNS, though I still feel bad about ad blocking.
I wanted to use HDMI capture card with my phone, and it only worked with one app. An app that displayed ads over the content.
Have you tried AdAway it can block ads in apps
That uses local VPN mode which would not allow me to use Proton VPN.
Ah I see you ain't rooted
If you dont mind me asking - how would root improve this Situation? (I've got little to non knowledge about rooting)
It would give you access to the host file Before anything connects to the internet, it checks the host file to see if the address is already located there. (Why download it again if it's already stored locally?) So one can use the host file to list all the ad networks you done like and POOF all those ads are gone (unless you're actually hosting them from your phone, but you're not so it will return null)
The problem is, the host file is a system file you can't access without root access. Try it on your home pc 🖥 https://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
thx!
Besides it being more effective at blocking ads and trackers it won't require a VPN connection to work
This, you don't have to even run a program. Every phone uses the host file all day all the time anyway, you're just telling it to load nothing instead of usual behavior of "no it's not hosted here, go get it online" you're just saying "no, don't go get it, it's hosted here" except it's not, so it isn't retrieved at all.
Proton VPN does have tracking and ad blocking integrated, not sure how good it workes as i usually use my pihole
What do you mean? I'm just excited to learn more about Fehirliff
I AdBlock per-site, everything white listed by default
This bullshit would be an definite enable-adblock