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.
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.
I think I am in love with whoever wrote this site.
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.
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
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.
“Becoming”? How about “became”?
I also worry this is breeding generations of scam victims. We all know people who don’t realize there are ad-blockers or for some reason can’t manage one. Part of that is elderly who aren’t comfortable with technology, but it includes many people of all ages. This knowledge gap means huge portions of the population see an unusable internet that can’t be responsive no matter how fast the connection. It means their data will be tracked and sold in all directions. It means every click will have hundreds of trackers. It means exposure to every ad, every scam. How can they not be victims?
Meanwhile we know enough to complain but also to use the tools to find a useable internet. We’re much less tracked, see faster responsiveness, even our data is less exploited. Most importantly, we never even see most of the pop up scams
Part of that is elderly who aren’t comfortable with technology, but it includes many people of all ages.
I think this figure is beginning to turn on its head. I never would have thought that the generations growing up today totally immersed in digital technology would have been so profoundly technically illiterate.
In fact, I’m beginning to think that baby boomers where, in an odd way, in fact better with computers than gen z and gen a. Even if only marginally.
