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I also went completely to FF on my phone the moment it had uBlock Origin and some other extensions. Now that I learned how to force other ones, it has been game over for other browsers aside from just seeing how they are every now and then (I work with general public and need to be aware of how they work). The only thing I would really really advise in addition to FF on a non-rooted device is setting the Mullvad ad-blocking/tracking blocking DNS for the device.
It helps even if I need to use a different browser (not as good as also having uBO), and has really good chances of blocking ads in many apps. For example, I kind of treat the Microsoft Solitaire app since it keeps games and stats from my PC. However they have lots of video ads that play after a couple of games. With the DNS it just kind of glitches when an ad should run and just goes on to the next round instead. The only odd thing I see with other apps is that it can cause my bank app to take a little longer to load when signing in (I am guessing due to tracking it is trying to do). But after like ten seconds it goes through like normal.
This is the DNS address to add if you want:
https://base.dns.mullvad.net/dns-query
And here is the main site for all their options and tester to make sure whichever one you pick is working:
I don’t understand ads. Do people actually use services and buy products because of a shitty advertisement?
You do, and don’t fool yourself that you don’t.
You probably don’t click on ads, but they stick in your brain. You might see a half-dozen ads for Doritos, and then when you go to the store a week later, you’re slightly more likely to buy Doritos.
The vast majority of advertising is just getting a brand or an idea into the back of your head so when you’re looking for something in that product category, regardless of it’s a VPN, a web host, a snack food, a car, or whatever, you’re going to have a bias towards what you’ve seen in the past.
Most of my ad-blocking isn’t to stop myself from buying some herbal supplement/spray tanner combo, it’s to stop myself from being biased by the capitalist propaganda machine.
I am not immune from advertisements, and neither are you.
I’ve certainly heard this said before. Lately I’ve been thinking more about it as ads seem to be infecting more and more aspects of my life and so I’ve started to question it.
I’ve started to think that the whole “it makes you subconsciously think about the product when you’re in the store” thing might just be made up by marketers. You know, the people whose jobs entirely depend on advertising being a good investment. That does kind of self-prove the point though, because if marketers just made it up and a bunch of people now think it’s true, it follows that people will just absorb “information” if it’s fed to them from the correct place.
I figured I’d see if I could find some science research on the subject. I managed to read through six studies (at least the abstracts and the methodologies) before my eyes glazed completely over and I needed to stop.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7498694/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8199559/
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311975.2021.2000697#abstract
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02650487.2022.2143098#abstract
- https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0249457
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/21582440221093042
First I will say that none of them are able to draw links from advertising consumed to purchases made. The methodologies tend to focus on the immediate, how the ad makes a person feel in the moment. Generally this is done by asking people. Surveys and the like. The first one measured facial expressions and emotional responses. The PLOS one (fifth link) just asked marketing managers if their marketing was effective or not (and wow do they ever use a lot of words to say that, they turned their thesaurus up to 11). The second one is actually a bit of a side-bar in that it’s specifically looking at the effectiveness of gamified advertising, but it does investigate brand memory based on different exposures. Again, just brand memory, not actual purchase behaviour.
And all that makes sense. It would be extremely difficult to build a study that manages to track every motivation for purchasing a given product, especially if some of those motivations aren’t known by the purchaser. So what I’ll say is that while it’s likely that advertising can prod us one way or another, the wisdom that it’s an effective subconscious driver of sales is not evidence based.
Do with that what you will.
I actively avoid buying anything I’ve seen being advertised.
You are not immune.
First thought was to deny this but its somewhat true. Although i use adblocks to the extreme so i never really had the urges to buy stuff randomly or felt influenced into buying it whereas the occasional times an ad comes through i’d maybe consider getting the stuff when i’m at the shop but usually don’t.
Yukhk. I hate how so many of these services spend most of their efforts on marketing instead of making a decent product or experience. Isn’t mullvad one of the actual best VPN providers out there? NEVER seen them run an ad, hell, I only found out about them on accident due to mental outlaw, some ordinary gamers or the linux experiment. Can’t remember which tho.
Yeah mullvad doesnt do the affiliate link and misleading sponsorship shenanigans that make your boomer relatives think they need a vpn
Google is fighting a war that it can’t win, people in general had enough of all these ads.
Whenever I can, I use a DNS or an adblocker or an open source app that it doesn’t track his users.
The vast majority of users did not use or even really know much about adblockers in general until recently, when Google/YT shot themselves in the foot by Barbara Straisand-ing adblockers into the general public’s consciousness.
Why just use browser + addon when you can do system wide adblocking with AdAway on F-Droid.
It has a rootless mode, but I always root so I’ve forgotten what the downsides of rootless mode is though lol
I don’t use an ad blocker. I like to know what sites I need to avoid.
Until you self-host funny cat videos, OP, you’re just a leech. Maybe like a poor kid or something.
Where do you get this attitude that everything should be provided to you for free and you’re entitled to it?
Spoken like someone that is too young to remember what the internet was like before everything got sucked up into google.
I was there. And it stood on the shoulders of volunteers. And we collectively gathered money so our favorite imageboard could pay for hosting. And we discussed how unethical it was to block ads, cuz the imageboard needs to pay for hosting. So either donate or click on the ads, ane make sure the revenue flows. (Remember the tiny text “please click on the ads, it supports the site”?)
We offloaded imagehosting to shady weird websites with virus autodownloaders, where you absolutely had to block JS just so you don’t get pwned. And so some suckers would eventually get pwned, have their screen locked, pay ransom, and finance our collective love for zipgifs.
I was there, Gandalf, I was there 20 years ago. YouTube and Tumblr were the holy saviors.
I’m a system admin who self hosts a bunch of shit off of a 48 Ru rack in his washroom.
The internet used to be run off of the collective will of a bunch of people like me. I was there, back when it was FIDOnet and pirate bbs’s.
P.S. while I disagree with your viewpoint, this was a hilarious read, and I didn’t down vote you.
What’s there to disagree with? you prove my point.
it stood on the shoulders of volunteers
Yeah. A classic story. A sysadmin took the old server from his work after they upgraded and now runs <insert video game guild imageboard/wiki/chat> on it.
With the amount of traffic modern web pipes through Google’s and Cloudflare’s servers, all of you homebrewers wouldn’t be enough to take over even 5% of that.
You can’t go back to the good old days because you’ll break your back trying to, and the collective lemmy anon can’t, because they’re too used to freeload while getting big tech quality service.
Cope and seethe lmao
Don’t come crying back when they’ll force you to either pay 50$/hour for your cat videos, or entirely block off your access to the internet as they control the engine behind 99% of the browser market share.
No, you will not come and host it for free on lemmy. It already struggles with hosting, and already needs monetary support, even though most heavy content is on some 3rd party domain.
But maybe you’ll be happy to donate 10$/months so your only source of fun content doesn’t die.
I won’t lol
they can make the site unusable to people with add blockers any time they want, must be a reason they dont. Also for free? they are still harvesting ur data regardless of ads.
They’re making it unusable. YT is literally starting a massive war on users with AdBlock. And oh boy was lemmy angry.
They arent really trying to make the site unusable with adblocker they are trying to bypass adblockers which is fundamentally different. And they gave up months ago theyll go at it again sure but for now they arent doing much about it. If they trully wanted to just disallow adblockers they could and it would be trivial, there are plenty of websites that do it certainly google could figure it out but they dont because that would push away a subtantial number of users and clearly those users are still worth having even if they are not seeing ads, presumably because of the data they are still harvesting and the numbers number of users and the word of mouth.
anyways maybe u should stop licking the boots of fucking google of all companies and make a real argument against adblockers like that it actually meaningfully hurts smaller websites, because not only would i not give a shit if youtube went under somehow i would be fucking dancing in its grave.
You’re too far up your own ass.
Vanced got nuked, revanced constantly needs to be patched, otherwise it slips to the low quality settings. Free YT days are numbered.
And no, it’s not easy. Unless they want to encode ads into videos, and re-render the whole thing. Which is ludicrously expensive. For as long as they don’t there will be a way to not play the ad chunks.
