Just installed an ad blocker blocker blocker on my network

[1984]

You read that correctly.

Ad Blocker

I started with a software based ad blocker in Google Chrome, but apparently Google has decided to stop blocking their own ads. Makes sense.

Ad Blocker Blocker
Many websites are now using anti-ads block software that will yell at you and or deny you access if you are trying to use an ad blocker on their site.

Ad Blocker Blocker Blocker

Since all ad block extensions in Chrome will fail or at least suck and I'm tired having to choose between using certain websites and being pummeled with annoying and untargeted the only rational thing to do was install Pi-Hole-A black hole for internet advertising. I won't say more because I'm starting to feel that THIS is becoming an ad except to tell you that the newer versions also defeat ad blocker blockers. Excellent!

I know that advertising supposedly pays the bill, but what is the point?

A couple of days ago someone was talking about a $150,000 pair of headphones on another forum. Just out of morbid curiosity I went and looked at them. Now I'm seeing ad banners everywhere for those headphones. Really? You people that are tracking me know what I make. You can't really think I'm a potential buyer for some thing like that. 95% of the ads I see are even more tone deaf than that.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

So what is your ad blocker blocker blocker? The only thing Ad Blocker seems to work on is facebook and Youtube ads. All the other ads (including the ones that pop up on this site before I log in) are still there.

If you know of the king of the ad blockers, please, share this information.

 

[1984]

"Pi-Hole-A black hole for internet advertising."

I have mine installed on a Raspberry Pi connected to my router so that I can protect all of the phones and computers in my house from being tracked and spammed by advertisers. There is also a way to install it on just one computer.

 

[Misery]

Huh. I'm wondering just what you're using specifically, when it's all not working.

On my setup here... which uses Chrome because I cant be bothered to switch to something else... I havent seen an ad in AGES. Not here, not on Google, not on Youtube (with Youtube being the main reason I want ads gone). Not anywhere... Though, I'm not using only one blocker.

Regardless, I've never found it all that hard to make sure ads stay away. Every now and then Youtube will briefly break through (which I assume is the people at Youtube trying to find new ways around blockers), generally in a really glitched out way, but it never takes long before the blockers re-assert themselves.


Honestly I dont know how anyone uses the Internet without blockers. On the rare occasion when I find myself having to use a device that isnt mine to access the Net, it's an unusable mess, and I dont understand why anyone puts up with it.

 

[1984]

Right...............

Advertising has gotten so out of control. There is ad feces spewing out of your computer, your phone, your TV, gas pumps, billboards, etc, etc, etc. It has just become white noise. When you see a Coke ad are you going buying more Coke? I think people are already buying exactly as much (insert over advertised product here) as they want to buy and clogging up the scenery with more ads for these products is not likely to produce more sales. Just more annoyance with your brand.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Huh. I'm wondering just what you're using specifically, when it's all not working.

On my setup here... which uses Chrome because I cant be bothered to switch to something else... I havent seen an ad in AGES. Not here, not on Google, not on Youtube (with Youtube being the main reason I want ads gone). Not anywhere... Though, I'm not using only one blocker.

Regardless, I've never found it all that hard to make sure ads stay away. Every now and then Youtube will briefly break through (which I assume is the people at Youtube trying to find new ways around blockers), generally in a really glitched out way, but it never takes long before the blockers re-assert themselves.


Honestly I dont know how anyone uses the Internet without blockers. On the rare occasion when I find myself having to use a device that isnt mine to access the Net, it's an unusable mess, and I dont understand why anyone puts up with it.

Which blockers do you use??

 

[Misery]

Right...............

Advertising has gotten so out of control. There is ad feces spewing out of your computer, your phone, your TV, gas pumps, billboards, etc, etc, etc. It has just become white noise. When you see a Coke ad are you going buying more Coke? I think people are already buying exactly as much (insert over advertised product here) as they want to buy and clogging up the scenery with more ads for these products is not likely to produce more sales. Just more annoyance with your brand.

Yep.

This is why I actually entirely stopped watching TV years ago: It had gotten increasingly irritating, and of course, with TV the only way to "control" ads would be to record the show in question and watch it that way, fast-forwarding through the ads.

Same with my phone, I never use it to get on the Net, it has no ability to stop the ads.

I mean really if this machine wasnt so walled off from that garbage I probably would barely touch the Net at all.

Also, since you've brought up this topic, I have an article that you might find interesting and/or entertaining. Have a look at this:

Accept it, people hate ads - yes, all of them – Marketing Week

I dont read articles much but that one was interesting to me. What truly baffles me is how a lot of advertisers cant seem to grasp that no, people DONT like ads. I'm not sure how that works, mentally... I cant imagine that mental process.

Also, you're right about brand annoyance. I dont know about everyone else here, but when an ad somehow is shoved in my face (as in, somewhere that aint this computer) even if it's something that I normally might have bought, well... chances are I wont do that now, and if I want that type of thing, I'll seek out its direct competitor instead... just to spite the accursed things.

Which blockers do you use??

Looking at my extensions list, I have a bunch of things. There's a couple of things in here I cant entirely remember the purpose of and I'm not sure if they're contributing to this, but I'll list them anyway.

Adblock

Adblock Plus

UBlock Origin

The next ones I'm not sure of:

Click & Clean

Bypass Paywalls

And the final one is very special:

SponsorBlock


Seriously that last one is just MAGICAL. Advertisers have tried to inject unavoidable ads into Youtube videos, by paying creators to drop those irritating sponsored bits into their videos. SponsorBlock skips those... but it also skips other things. If you dont like hearing the whole "LOL DUDES LIKE SUBSCRIBE AND CLICK THESE BUTTONS AND YEAH YOU'LL HELP ME OUT AND NEXT WEEK I'M GONNA LIVESTREAM AND *4 straight minutes of self-advertising*", that sort of thing, this stops that too.

If you're wondering how it does that, anyone using it, who watches a particular video, can mark sections in a video that have these aspects, which are then sent... somewhere. SponsorBlock uses that data to then block (and mark on the progress bar) those sections, simply skipping them outright. Of course, its effectiveness varies. Videos from really small Youtubers will be ignored by it... buuuuuuut, really small Youtubers dont get sponsors, do they?


Anyway those arent the only extensions, and I have at times used things outside of Chrome itself to add to the blocking, though I dont seem to have any of those installed on THIS machine... I think those were on my laptop (which is now dead), though I dont quite remember WHY.


Note also when using adblockers of any sort, if something should break through, you need to actually activate the blocker. They generally have some interface allowing you to say "hey, this got through, I'm gonna show it to you", and you mark the ad, fiddle with this slider thing, and you can get rid of it that way... and the thing now has more data to better guard against whatever type of ad that was. The more you do this, the stronger it gets. This is very important in using these correctly, though I find that I dont have to do it all that often, and if I do, it's pretty quick and easy.

However, this USUALLY wont block paywalls (at least, not easily) and similar "stop you from reading this until you do X" things, which is what "Bypass Paywalls" is for.


Hope that helps.

 

[Crossbreed]

Many websites are now using anti-ads block software that will yell at you and or deny you access if you are trying to use an ad blocker on their site.

I use an ad blocker on my main browser, Firefox, but not on others.
If I really want to see a page with such a warning, I view it in Chrome.

 

[Au Naturel]

I just ignore the advertising. Only privacy extension I use is Ghostery. And Firefox's native tracker blocker. And I often have to turn them off in order to get a lot of the pages I use to work properly.

I also have a VPN to watch video content that isn't available in the US. It is funny that when I'm VPN through, say Japan, suddenly some things start coming up in Japanese despite having English as my default language in the browser. Can't they tell I'm an American tourist?

 

[Progster]

I use Ublock Origin. I find it does a good job, and if any do pop up, I can block them manually and they don't show up again.

I don't underrstand why everyone doesn't use an adblock. The most surprising thing is that most don't. I work with people online, and not one of those people so far uses an adblocker. Even computer savvy people. I don't get this - don't ads bug them?? Passive acceptance and tolerance, just as TV commercials are accepted and tolerated.

When you see a Coke ad are you going buying more Coke? I think people are already buying exactly as much (insert over advertised product here) as they want to buy and clogging up the scenery with more ads for these products is not likely to produce more sales.

It's not about buying more coke, it's about buying their brand, as opposed to a competitor's brand.

Also, I think that many ads and particularly TV commercial aren't really aimed at adults, but at young kids. Kids are more receptive, are less likely to change the channel, haven't yet developed critical thinking. They take in the commercials, and then as adults, come to associate that brand with that product. Aslo, there's the nostalgia factor: people remember commercials they saw as kids and look on them with nostalgia of a bygone age, so to speak. And then the brand becomes a 'household name' - which is just what the company is after.

 

[maycontainthunder]

I use Ublock but also Ghostery and Privacy Badger. One of the must-do things is to disable third party cookies in your browser; these are where ad's sneak in.

 

[Gerontius]

I hate advertisements and tracking so much I'm building my own word processor running on a Pi.

 

[Progster]

Now I installed Ublock Origin. Thus far, the ublock is keeping ads off my screen. Let's all cross our fingers.

Ublock Origin works quite well for me.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

This thread has proven to be very useful. Thank you! I've looked it up several times just to see the names of extensions people have used.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Will someone please post the links to the Sponsor Block and the Paywall Block in the Play Store? I cant seem to find it

 

[Misery]

Will someone please post the links to the Sponsor Block and the Paywall Block in the Play Store? I cant seem to find it

Here you go:

SponsorBlock for YouTube - Skip Sponsorships

and then

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome


Sponsorblock's installation will be handled by Chrome itself, but the paywall one requires a tad more effort... it's explained quite well though.


As far as functionality, there's two things to keep in mind:

1, the paywall one is specific as to what sites it can and cannot break through; on that Github page if you scroll down you will see a list (a very long list). After all, each bloody site that has this irritating habit has a different way of being irritating. Note also that it's not the ONLY paywall blocker. That's just the one I personally use.

2, Sponsorblock aint magic; remember what I said when I explained how it works. If you catch a video from a popular Youtuber REALLY soon after said video has come out and nobody has had a chance to send the timestamp data, it wont do anything, and similarly, it wont do anything for much smaller Youtubers if nobody in their viewerbase is sending that data. Of course, if you find a sponsor/whatever section in a video that Sponsorblock aint catching, you can also very easily mark and send it yourself. Fortunately, Sponsorblock seems well known enough that I find it does work the vast majority of the time for stopping that silly nonsense.


So there we go, lemme know if you have any questions.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Thank you @Misery , that was actually very helpful. I'll check it out.

 

[stevens]

Right...............

Advertising has gotten so out of control. There is ad feces spewing out of your computer, your phone, your TV, gas pumps, billboards, etc, etc, etc. It has just become white noise. When you see a Coke ad are you going buying more Coke? I think people are already buying exactly as much (insert over advertised product here) as they want to buy and clogging up the scenery with more ads for these products is not likely to produce more sales. Just more annoyance with your brand.

Just for the hell of it, go on over to the Arizona Republic (azcentral dot com) and watch the crapload of javascript junk that loads and loads before you see any of their useless content. It's virtually unusable. So ads and trackers are like cyanide, eventually, for the website owner.

 

[1984]

I see lots of empty spots where ads would normally go, but no actual ads and nothing trying to pop up or load.