The Verge: The internet is dying a slow death because of ad blockers
- Thread starter Wreav
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Pops Maellard
Member
Yeah, seriously. I can cope with no AdBlock on my laptop because it means moderately obnoxious sidebar stuff, but I frequently just give up on reading something on my phone because the site because entirely unusable because of super intrusive ads.
Maninthemirror
Banned
Security now podcast said 1block is the fastest speed content blocker
You might be being sarcastic, but this is my wet dream
Spyder_Monkey
Banned
This is one of situations where both sides are neither fully right or wrong. Advertising is one of those necessary evils wherever you go. It sucks being constantly slammed in the face with products to buy but people have rent to pay and businesses to keep afloat and people want content for free right? Still ads on the internet is one of the shadiest things on the internet and if I have to see some autoplaying video advertising something that sounds like a scam and it eats up a huge chunk of data too I would turn off adblock too. I don't know what the solution though. I guess less banner ads, more ads integrated into the site's design, text and still pictures just out of the way I guess? But still I hate ads no matter what and I would still use adblock anyway and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone on that.
No thanks. Doing that allows the website a chance to secretly chew through 10MB of data and install two dozen cookies.
Sorry for the double post but I figure maybe this would get more traction here...
Here is the results of the past 8 DAYS of AdGuard running on my brand new Note 4. I installed it the same day I got the phone. Almost a full gigabyte of blocked ad data which if it wasn't for adblocking and WiFi hopping would have eaten 25% of the shared data plan I have with my wife. I don't have a problem with honest to goodness ad revenue, but this is obnoxious and a real issue, especially on mobile. I've used ad blockers since switching to Android in 09 and usually it required a rooted device to do so. This Note 4 on Verizon unfortunately doesn't have any root process so I am glad to see adguard here can be side loaded and is working awesome.
I don't need an overage surprise on my phone bill after seeing this nonsense so until sites such as Verge and Android Central pull back, I simply won't visit their sites. Then again, I am more of a feed reader anyhow. Some sites barely even load on my Chromebook without an adblock...I never had this trouble on the internet 20 years ago.
Here is the results of the past 8 DAYS of AdGuard running on my brand new Note 4. I installed it the same day I got the phone. Almost a full gigabyte of blocked ad data which if it wasn't for adblocking and WiFi hopping would have eaten 25% of the shared data plan I have with my wife. I don't have a problem with honest to goodness ad revenue, but this is obnoxious and a real issue, especially on mobile. I've used ad blockers since switching to Android in 09 and usually it required a rooted device to do so. This Note 4 on Verizon unfortunately doesn't have any root process so I am glad to see adguard here can be side loaded and is working awesome.
I don't need an overage surprise on my phone bill after seeing this nonsense so until sites such as Verge and Android Central pull back, I simply won't visit their sites. Then again, I am more of a feed reader anyhow. Some sites barely even load on my Chromebook without an adblock...I never had this trouble on the internet 20 years ago.
Hmm. I don't think it's as simple as that. I think most adblock users just leave it on by default because they've been conditioned to expect sites to serve up obnoxious ads. The benefit of the doubt simply doesn't exist anymore because so many sites have been so rampant with abusive advertising.
#notallsites
AtomicShroom
Member
Sorry for the double post but I figure maybe this would get more traction here...
Here is the results of the past 8 DAYS of AdGuard running on my brand new Note 4. I installed it the same day I got the phone. Almost a full gigabyte of blocked ad data which if it wasn't for adblocking and WiFi hopping would have eaten 25% of the shared data plan I have with my wife. I don't have a problem with honest to goodness ad revenue, but this is obnoxious and a real issue, especially on mobile. I've used ad blockers since switching to Android in 09 and usually it required a rooted device to do so. This Note 4 on Verizon unfortunately doesn't have any root process so I am glad to see adguard here can be side loaded and is working awesome.
I don't need an overage surprise on my phone bill after seeing this nonsense so until sites such as Verge and Android Central pull back, I simply won't visit their sites. Then again, I am more of a feed reader anyhow. Some sites barely even load on my Chromebook without an adblock...I never had this trouble on the internet 20 years ago.
How does it know how much bandwidth was saved if it never downloaded the ads to begin with? How can it know how big the ads would have been?
Christoff Yurievich
Member
That was my exact thought as well. Kind of like going to one a discount retailer and they tell me "you saved $45!" Great, but how do you know that the price you picked is real? Did you shop Safeway and then price accordingly? Or did you just make the number up so it looks like I'm saving more money than I'm spending?
I said Gotdam.
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
That's what I was wondering. How do we know that's a legitimate calculation? You can't know how big the data would be without downloading it first. In order for it to get the file size it needs to ping the server and ask for the file size. Which it only does when it downloads it. Plus there would be other resources that would be downloaded via the first download that you wouldn't be able to know the size of without downloading the first thing.
I'm skeptical.
Not familiar with Adguard, but it is possible that it has a way to get this information on the server side. Meaning, all the app is doing is relaying the location of the ads on the web, then the server looks up the ad, logs it and sends back down the info of how much data was needed to download it.
NullPointer
Member
Can't the code request the file headers without downloading the files themselves? That would provide them with a resource's content-length in bytes.
AdGuard works by setting up a VPN via your device. I would assume that is how it is achieving that information, by reading their size before filtering them out.
Pyramid head
Banned
There are plenty of websites (image hosting, guitar tablature etc...) which make that decision for me by running retarded full screen/redirect ads which make it flatout impossible to even view their sites from my mobile. Meabing that literally the only way to see their content is to block their shitty pointless ads.
Sorry for the double post but I figure maybe this would get more traction here...
Here is the results of the past 8 DAYS of AdGuard running on my brand new Note 4. I installed it the same day I got the phone. Almost a full gigabyte of blocked ad data which if it wasn't for adblocking and WiFi hopping would have eaten 25% of the shared data plan I have with my wife. I don't have a problem with honest to goodness ad revenue, but this is obnoxious and a real issue, especially on mobile. I've used ad blockers since switching to Android in 09 and usually it required a rooted device to do so. This Note 4 on Verizon unfortunately doesn't have any root process so I am glad to see adguard here can be side loaded and is working awesome.
I don't need an overage surprise on my phone bill after seeing this nonsense so until sites such as Verge and Android Central pull back, I simply won't visit their sites. Then again, I am more of a feed reader anyhow. Some sites barely even load on my Chromebook without an adblock...I never had this trouble on the internet 20 years ago.
I struggle to see how you blocked 800+ MB of just ads in 8 days. Doesn't seem possible.
I'll be honest, it was probably closer to 10 days now that I think about it (I got my days off give or take) but even still, I'm just throwing out there what the app is reporting and simply took a screen shot of it to pass along. Understand though that AdGuard premium not only blocks web based ads but in app ads as well so I am sure some of those are factoring in at this point too.
In any case, all I know is this is I haven't seen jack in terms of ads outside YouTube.
NekoFever
Member
Haha, Freedom is another one using a Verge screenshot to demonstrate the blocking.
I'd struggle to visit 800 MB of actual webpage in 8 days with just surfing. Let alone just the data coming from advertisements. How much time do you spend in the browser on your phone?
Few hours a day. As I said though, in app ads get blocked as well. Trust me, I agree the number seems high but at the same time, I have been watching it gradually increase a little at a time.
The thing is that at first I was thinking that number was ALL traffic but the way it says 'bandwidth saved' is throwing me off. HOWEVER, that number rounds down to roughly 100 megs a day of blocked ads given my daily usage so I don't think it is too out of order if you look at it piecemeal.
The ads blocked number is a totally different number in itself though.
I'm a vampire.
Just a matter of time, friend.
Installed Crystal on my iOS device and it definitely makes a noticeable difference in speed across the board. Doesn't seem to have a whitelist option though so I'll probably check out another one.
This.
It's probably just a random number generator or it slowly increases with no actual consideration for the amount of bandwidth being 'saved' to make you think it's the greatest app ever. There's absolutely no way it's that high, even with in-app ad blocking.
:::shrugs:::
All I know is that it's working...all that matters, so to me it is the 'greatest app ever'.
I've had sites such as Android Central get up to 10 mb of ads absorbed before just on the front page alone though and that was under the mobile version.
Boss Mog
Member
The thing is that these internet businesses ruined it for themselves by being extremely greedy. I think nobody would mind a few ads on a page if they were small static boxes like they used to be or like on this forum; you can hardly notice them.
But companies wanted to make more money so they made the ads bigger, made pop up ads, flash animation ads, ads that automatically install cookies and track you, ads that install malware. So yeah with all that people got fed up with that nonsense and decided to start blocking them.
And now these internet businesses want to cry foul when people are just dealing with the problem the businesses created.
There's plenty of content on the internet made by people who don't try to do it to make money and only do it as a hobby. Those people are usually the most passionate and make some of the best content out there. If The Verge died nobody would care except the people that cash a paycheck from them. The internet certainly isn't dying from that; censorship is what will eventually kill it.
But companies wanted to make more money so they made the ads bigger, made pop up ads, flash animation ads, ads that automatically install cookies and track you, ads that install malware. So yeah with all that people got fed up with that nonsense and decided to start blocking them.
And now these internet businesses want to cry foul when people are just dealing with the problem the businesses created.
There's plenty of content on the internet made by people who don't try to do it to make money and only do it as a hobby. Those people are usually the most passionate and make some of the best content out there. If The Verge died nobody would care except the people that cash a paycheck from them. The internet certainly isn't dying from that; censorship is what will eventually kill it.
Hale-XF11
Member
If you have been following the hubbub, you may have seen the tests that show a single page load can bring 10+ MB of data pulled via ad networks. It isn't the ads themselves that use data, it's the dozens of trackers that are invoked via JavaScript.
https://twitter.com/reckless/status/647427326968483840
How can you be so out of touch? No one is asking to go back to WAP.
How can you be so out of touch? No one is asking to go back to WAP.
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