Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8330731

by erickhill • 12 years ago

51 98 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

sahanlak• 12 years ago

yes

wonderyak• 12 years ago

Yes, though I will occasionally unblock certain sites.

Primarily I use ad/script blockers as an extra layer of security.

Torgo• 12 years ago

I don't want to be tracked.

slg• 12 years ago

I would vote for a third option along the lines of "I allow ads but block flash or don't have it installed." I used to have an adblocker installed, but switched to blocking Flash as soon as I discovered the ability for Chrome to disable flash components until I click on them. This lets the good sites with unobtrusive ads still get their impressions and hides all of the really bad things like ads with video or sound. It also doesn't hurt the browsing experience as badly as completely uninstalling flash.

erickhill2• 12 years ago

Good idea. Done.

delecti• 12 years ago

This is definitely the best of both worlds. I want to support sites I visit, even obnoxious ones, but sites don't get to play sound/video without my permission. Flash is crap anyway, so it has the added benefit of smoothing out browsing somewhat.

sliverstorm• 12 years ago

I have been doing this, but mostly because my laptop is pretty underpowered and modern adblock software seems to be even more of a heavyweight than the ads. Blocking flash then becomes the best solution for speed, as unlike other ads flash is trivial to block.

titusjohnson• 12 years ago

All of my personal browsers have an adblocker installed. I whitelist sites like Ars or Reddit.

I do not use an adblocker at work (web dev), I need to see the real-deal all the time.

Try using weather.com with and without an ad blocker.

arenaninja2• 12 years ago

I just tried it on the weather.com homepage, and it was actually pretty good (though I have no sound... if they have autoplay sound on then I would block them). Looks like 3 ads on the right-hand side which honestly merge on the background, but you can distinctly tell that it's an ad

clavalle• 12 years ago

I put 'no' but my brain seems to be a pretty good ad-blocker so I haven't found a need for another one.

spats• 12 years ago

no, don't be parasite

crazypyro• 12 years ago

Loading ads and not clicking or accidentally clicking on ads you have no intention of pursuing would also be parasitic behavior by that logic. The hurt party is just the advertisers instead of the webmasters.

e40• 12 years ago

Every time I try and go back to not using one, I last less than a day. The number of really annoying animated ads is astounding.

edgyswingset• 12 years ago

http://www.nber.org/papers/w20171.pdf

Just one example, but there's plenty of stock in the hypothesis that online ads really don't do anything to begin with.

coldpie4• 12 years ago

Marketers broke "the contract" first.

jgrowl• 12 years ago

Who exactly is feeding off of who in this relationship?

mindslight4• 12 years ago

You seem to have it backwards. The ecosystem's parasites are the parties that corrupt useful information with distracting crap. Everyone who cares about the health of the web should run adblockers and install them for friends/family.

dwild6• 12 years ago

It all depends on your definition of health. I would probably not be here if it wasn't because of the free information on the information. If I had to pay for all of it, all of my youth wouldn't have been spend learning programming skills. For me an healthy web is one that is easy to access and cheap. You can't get this if everything is blocked by pay wall.

bluedino• 12 years ago

No - but I do use a HOSTS file

eccp• 12 years ago

In case anyone is looking for a good HOSTS file to use as a template: http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

isxek• 12 years ago

There's also http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

jordsmi• 12 years ago

Yes. Even if I didn't it's pretty easy to spot which things are ads and would never click on them.

People say it's bad to use ad blockers because the site isn't making money off of you, but you could also say now the advertiser isn't losing money on you.

thejdude• 12 years ago

I use different mechanisms for different reasons.

I used to have Flash on click-to-play, but then YouTube feeds me flash videos, so now I've had Flash turned off for a while. I don't really miss it. The reason is that Flash drains my battery and HTML videos can be watched in a resource-saving way with VLC (or just in-browser).

I use ABP because it blocks other animated content that drains my battery. I wouldn't mind text ads. In addition, most news sites I visit regularly are unblocked because I want to support them. Interestingly, without flash there are hardly any ads left.

I block all 3rd-party cookies (have for 15 years), on my Desktop and Android Firefox, because I can, because I've never encountered anything that didn't work, and because where I surf is no 3rd party site's business. If you want statistics on me visiting YOUR SITE, just use your web server, why not?

I use Ghostery because it further blocks attempts to track me.

lmkg• 12 years ago

Voted 'yes,' but much less so than your average ad-blocker. I blacklist rather than whitelist, which is probably the opposite behavior of most people with blockers.

I want to support sites that I consume content from, so by default I only block tracking beacons, not ads. I turn on content-blocking (or disable plug-ins/javascript) for specific sites when their ads make the site unusable. For example, nfl.com text articles used to not load for ages while video content loaded (it got better), and currently having the SF Chronicle open in one tab will make youtube stutter in other tabs.

scjody• 12 years ago

What blocker do you use that has decent blacklisting support? I tried a few some months back and went back to Ad Block Plus with whitelisting.

I'd rather blacklist though. I want to support sites that use unobtrusive advertising, but block ads on sites that use autoplaying videos, distracting animations, disgusting pictures of yellow teeth, etc.

emrikol• 12 years ago

I'd also like to know what you use. I want to only blacklist as well, but I can't find anything with good support for that.

Igglyboo• 12 years ago

I use uBlock mainly for performance reasons and not that I don't like ads, I will usually whitelist sites that are not crazy with ads and that I want to support.

tcfunk• 12 years ago

Yes. I use Ghostery, though, rather than AdBlock.

It seems more configurable and makes it easier to allow stuff like Google Analytics while still removing most of the obnoxious ads that 1) Plague my vision and 2) cause websites to load slow on my sub-par connection.

spingsprong• 12 years ago

Not specifically, but noScript + flashblock ends up blocking many adverts.

theandrewbailey• 12 years ago

I installed NoScript several years ago, due to security concerns. I noticed most ads went away by accident. It makes Firefox much faster than stock Chrome.

coldpie4• 12 years ago

For technical users, NoScript is a godsend. Pages load so quickly, and the pages are uncluttered with garbage "functionality". I wish there was some way to give it to non-technical users, but there really isn't, it's just too complex.

vezzy-fnord2• 12 years ago

Ad blockers are easily fingerprintable, which is why I block ad trackers from my /etc/hosts file, using this wonderful list: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

You can also set up a cron job to periodically fetch and overwrite with an updated copy, such as once a week or so.

buckbova• 12 years ago

It also redirects your standard lemon-goatse-party.org type sites.

mindslight4• 12 years ago

I always see this recommendation and write it off as people who probably don't know any better. But I noticed that you had also commented about Slackware, so I have to ask..

Doesn't using /etc/hosts in this way strike you as a bit "wrong" and terribly hacky with respect to blocking granularity? If I ever wanted to run a service on port 80, it seems like it would be annoying to configure it to avoid the dummy address. And I use /etc/hosts for my actual hosts, and while these uses aren't exclusive, it does set the tone for me.

I personally run Adblock Plus and Ghostery in Iceweasel because it's the easiest way. There are certainly disadvantages to this, but it seems the proper setup would be to run something like privoxy, no?

vezzy-fnord2• 12 years ago

Well, yes, if you're on a server then polluting your hosts like that probably isn't good. I'm just a regular home user and more of a system programmer than a web developer, so for me it's fine.

It's also a rat race of sorts, as is inherent with blacklisting over whitelisting. But I don't exclusively use this approach either, I spoof user agents, referers, X-Forwarded-For headers and have Privacy Badger running on Firefox, as well. I just use hosts as an alternative to ABP in particular, due to the lower baggage.

lotsofcows• 12 years ago

I use hosts for ad blocking and for testing locally. I guess I get a bit of junk in my logs but I've never really seen it as a problem.

I keep meaning to see if I can serve up transparent swfs and html snippets automagically but I've never got around to it.

You list two utilities for a single browser. If you use other browsers do you need other apps?

The interesting thing about my hosts table is that I never bother carrying it across to a new computer and I only add domains to it when they actively irritate me. Even so, even companies like Google who are supposed to do non-intrusive "targeted" ads end up in there.

majidfn• 12 years ago

Some ads are creative and I enjoy them, but majority are very annoying. I use Chrome/Firefox and Safari, each for specific purposes. I use ad-blockers on Chrome. So I still get to see some ads but not all the time.

khoury• 12 years ago

I use adblock on every site which doesn't require me not to, like on the pages where you create google ads and things like that, github also. In those cases I allow ads. Why make life complicated?

js2• 12 years ago

Ghostery, AdBlock and ClickToPlugin. If ads were static and sites didn't have 10-15 social widgets, etc, I wouldn't bother. Animated ads and the slow load times of the many social widgets drive me over the edge.

And this is on desktop. Many sites today are so heavy I avoid them entirely on my first gen iPad mini as they crash Safari about half the time.

Once upon a time, you could just disable javascript as a workaround, but that almost completely cripples the web these days.

Javascript wankers.

hughes• 12 years ago

For Chrome users looking for ClickToPlugin, it's already in the Chrome settings[0] under Plugins

[0] chrome://settings/content

thedrbrian• 12 years ago

Use privoxy as an ad blocking proxy for your iPad

http://www.privoxy.org/

lquist• 12 years ago

I don't because I want to be able to track competitor advertising :)

sp332• 12 years ago

I block as much as possible. I run with Ghostery, RequestPolicy, and Adblock Plus (with "unintrusive ads" disabled). I also don't have Flash installed, and most other plugins are "click to run" in Firefox. It's occasionally annoying but I've really gotten used to it. I see a lot fewer pictures on the web, and enabling a CDN domain is just a right-click away when I really want to see something on a site I haven't white-listed yet.

sheetjs• 12 years ago

Is there any good solution for blocking ads on iOS? Many sites are flat out unusable on my iPhone thanks to the obnoxious ads that take more screen real estate than the content

vitd3• 12 years ago

It's not an ad blocker per se, but the "Reader" feature is awesome. It still downloads the ads, but will display the important content from most sites without them, and in a legible font. It's the icon in the address bar that looks like greeked text. Click it, and it will go into "Reader" mode.

eli• 12 years ago

As an aside, it's just a modified version of the Readability algorithm, which you can also find on many other platforms.

coldpie4• 12 years ago

Obviously won't work all the time, but you can set up a custom DNS server for when you're at home and block ad-serving domains.

arenaninja2• 12 years ago

Absolutely, but I do regularly whitelist sites that I would like to support. I browsed without an ad-blocker because I always figured I would stand ads in exchange for free content, but the obnoxiousness has increased over the years: autoplay audio/video, HUGE flash banners (I remember my PC choking on the Yahoo! homepage on the first day I decided it was time to install an ad-blocker: it was an oversized flash ad for a car). I think I was less annoyed by popups than I was by these.

dwild6• 12 years ago

I don't know what I do right but I never see any annoying ads. The only automatic video I get are the one from Facebook and they are from people on my friends list.

I remember seeing theses oversize flash ads but that was a long time ago.

vitd3• 12 years ago

I use AdBlock. In addition, I use Safari's "Reader" feature which shows the article without ads (but still downloads the ads and thus gives credit to the site creator for eyeballs on ads). This seems reasonable to me since I have literally never in 20 years of browsing the web intentionally clicked on any ad ever.

JasonFruit2• 12 years ago

I used to, but then I thought about some of the sites I use with great regularity that are supported by unobtrusive ads, a few of which are interesting to me. I'd hate to reduce their income and contribute to their eventual disappearance; it's worth a few ads to have them stick around.

Sites with obtrusive, annoying ads? Well, I suppose I still use Facebook, but usually they help me avoid content-weak, ad-heavy trash.

vitd3• 12 years ago

Do sites get money when they show ads but nobody clicks on them? Or are most ads today only paid if a user clicks on them?

Also, do you feel compelled to watch ads on TV when you have the option of fast-forwarding through them? If not, why is the web different? Just curious - I'm seriously not trying to be inflammatory.

dwild6• 12 years ago

I know you can pay for ads through views or clicks. I don't know how most are paid but you can certainly get both.

Does it actually does anything to fast forward an ads on TV? Is there a counter that doesn't increment when that happens? I guess indirectly they will consider that possibility when they pay for TV ads but that's a whole other story and it can't be compared. On a website you directly affect their revenue by not showing the ads.

JasonFruit2• 12 years ago

No, I wouldn't feel a bit compelled to watch them on TV (if I watched TV); as dwild points out, the ad buyers pay no matter whether I do so or not.

alexanderss2• 12 years ago

Yes, because I'm pro users rights. I don't believe people should be forced to look at (or sit through 30+second) ads for things they don't want or need, that are bad for them, or that perpetuate unhealthy stereotypes or behavior. People can choose those messages on their own through whatever media they seek out, but it shouldn't be compulsory. Aside from that, there are too many other ways to monetize in 2014, and this is only growing. I use Ghostery, Disconnect and original AdBlock (getadblock.com) not AdBlock Plus, which has a semi-extortionist ad program that actually showed me ads without realizing it.

If you answered "No" but use Chrome (and probably other modern browsers), you may not realize that it already automatically blocks pop-up ads for you, so to some extent you are already using an AdBlocker. Ads haven't gotten much less annoying than they were in 2008, the browsers just hate them as much as you do.

mbleigh• 12 years ago

No one forces you to look at ads. You choose to visit websites that display ads. I don't personally understand why ads are such a big deal to some people.

That being said, I do sometimes acquire shows with unfriendly streaming situations through...other means, which is pretty much the same thing at the end of the day.

alexanderss2• 12 years ago

No, users have no idea how many or what kind of ads are going to be on a website before they get there, and some content has ads, others don't. Just a few examples are pre-roll ads on YouTube videos (some have them, some don't, it's not a choice), news articles with ads mid-paragraph, or sliced up into slideshows with ads to continue consuming or receive any content. You may not personally understand how insidious ads can be, but 450 Hacker News readers do. I didn't even cover the issues with tracking, privacy and potential malware.

fataliss• 12 years ago

I'm this kind of person full of contradictions. I like free stuff, but I hate ads. I'm still waiting for an other business model to emerge but, easier said than done.

bhaile• 12 years ago

Used ad blockers for so long that I forgot about animated ads or things hindering content. But then I read: https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-plus...

So I have disabled it now and do see a performance improvement. I'll keep researching this to find the optimal solution.

Flash and other plugins are set to click to play though.

peapicker2• 12 years ago

Same. I had noticed performance degradation in Chrome using ABP, and disabling made things fast again. Haven't enabled a blocker since.

D4AHNGM2• 12 years ago

I recommend uBlock (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock). Really lightweight, does the job perfectly.

louiscipher• 12 years ago

I changed to adblock edge and haven't noticed any problems myself, but also run noscript & disconnect so those might be helping.

mbesto• 12 years ago

I used to use Ghostery and AdBlock but it slowed Chrome to a halt.

fps• 12 years ago

Yes, but purely for performance reasons. Ghostery and ABP have drastically improved page load times and reduced resource usage on Chrome. Before I installed ABP, chrome would have a seriously hard time rendering many news sites.

WoodenChair• 12 years ago

I don't use an ad blocker for ethical reasons, but I'm curious what sites everyone visits so often that have such devastating ads? Safari shows my top sites as Hulu, MacRumors, Hacker News, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Gmail, GitHub, Amazon, Stack Overflow, Chess.com, and Wikipedia. Ads don't bother me much on any of these.

coldpie4• 12 years ago

I've used an adblocker on desktop for at least a decade, so I don't know what ads are like on desktop these days. But mobile is a different ballgame. I didn't use an adblocker for a couple years, and just put up with the wasted bandwidth and scrolling annoyance. But then the ads started talking, usually on how-to articles and the like. And the ads on a forum I visit began redirecting to porn sites and app stores.

I put up with that shit for a couple months, hoping it would clean itself up. But it didn't. So I installed Firefox with Adblock and now I never see ads and never will. I will be using an Adblocker on mobile for the rest of my life.

I see nothing unethical about this. The marketers abused their position, and now I'm punishing them for it. If websites can't support themselves without using this abusive business model, then perhaps they should go out of business.

dwild6• 12 years ago

You hurt the one that aren't abusive and give them reason to become abusive to survive... that's sad because we can get so much great content for free that way. Now they will need to change business model and have ads even more intrusive that can't be blocked, paid article and pay wall.

If a website annoy me, I just find another one.

mejarc• 12 years ago

Yes, absolutely. Maybe if ads were less obtrusive (not animated, didn't strobe, didn't take up > 5% of the screen on mobile) I'd keep them enabled.

sprokolopolis• 12 years ago

I do use a variety of adblockers, but I use them more for privacy reasons than ad blocking. I would be ok with a few ads on a site, but I cannot support companies who want to track people all over the internet.

benbristow• 12 years ago

Damn right I do.

I use Hostsman to automatically configure the MVPS hosts list. This blocks the ads at OS level; and works with every browser.

Then for extra backup I run (micro)Block on Opera just for those extra ads that slip by the hosts filter.

socratees• 12 years ago

Adblock - to block all the ads, Abine TACO - To opt our of Advertising Networks, Abine - Do Not Track Me, Ghostery - To check which ad network is doing what.

That's what I have on my Chrome.

jamescun• 12 years ago

I use Adblock and Ghostery. With Adblock I manage a whitelist of website to allow adverts on; typically sites I wish to support with ad-revenue and have a reasonable policy for adverts, Reddit's self-service advertising is a good example. I also use Ghostery to remove those social media buttons; for me they add no value, in addition to tracking my online usage for sale to advertisers and slowing down page loads.

EDIT: "reasonable policy" being no flash, no auto-play videos, no flashing banners and no javascript "pop-overs"

Silhouette• 12 years ago

I use a range of blockers, but primarily for security, privacy and performance reasons rather than because I have anything against use of ads to support a site.

If I could allow reasonable ads but still guaranteeing that I would avoid the more hostile junk then I would, but unfortunately we haven't solved that problem yet.

the-dude• 12 years ago

Yes, but I have switched from ABP to router-based DNS blocking. I buy TPLINK WR841Ns for 18 euros and install DDWRT + dns-based ad-blocking script.

This works for all devices at once. ABP on Android sucks and is it even available on iOS?

I occasionaly sell these routers to family and friends as well.

dankoss• 12 years ago

I use OpenDNS from my router to block ad domains on all my devices, as well as Adblock. You have to add some custom domains to hit the major sources, but it works reasonably well when you're at home.

noodly• 12 years ago

I don't use ad-blocker - instead I have disabled js on all-sites by default, and have enabled click-to-run-plugin setting (I use chromium).

Thanks to this settings, I don't see ads and don't support shit sites with static content hidden behind js-wall - like blogspot or google groups.

erickhill2• 12 years ago

I wonder why this got knocked off the homepage? It was becoming a very interesting discussion with some fascinating poll figures. Sometimes I wish a "flag" had to come with a reason why... Bummer.

WorldWideWayne3• 12 years ago

I didn't even realize that since I use http://hckrnews.com to browse the headlines.

j_s• 12 years ago

In addition to several of the add-ons mentioned elsewhere in this thread (RequestPolicy, Ghostery), I use the helpful-only-for-Facebook FBPurity add-on which has had some issues staying in the various 'blessed' add-on repositories because it accomplishes its intended purpose so well!

http://www.fbpurity.com/

luxpir• 12 years ago

Use NoScript and HTTPS Everywhere only in Firefox. Try to keep extension usage down. In Chrome I use Adblock only, and despite preferring it as a browser, end up sticking with the 'tracklessness' of the FF setup for the most part.

Specifically don't trust:

. Ghostery - openly resell data

. Disconnect - solid team, but one founder former NSA staff - not a watertight reason to distrust, perhaps people can vouch for him, but that's enough reason for me at this point, given it's far from the only choice

Trusting NoScript or Adblock as non-commercial, open source projects is easier, although again not 100%. Still, much better than the alternative.

IbJacked• 12 years ago

I also use Ghostery and Adblock Plus, QuickJS (provides a toolbar button + hot-key for toggling JS support), and enabled "click to activate plugins".

I've tried not blocking, but on my 4 yr old MBP (Core 2 Duo) all the beacons, social buttons, flash ads, etc. simply slow my browser down to the point of frustration, particularly when scrolling.

Much of it is Firefox's fault though, as Safari scrolls smoothly on most of the sites that give me trouble in Firefox. I'm just not willing to give up my tagged bookmarks (even though I would like to, as now the bookmark syncing has become slow enough to make scrolling while syncing nearly unbearable... I might have a bookmark addiction;).

gorhill2• 12 years ago

Ads are just a subset of the larger set of privacy invading techniques used by countless web sites. What is visible is a fraction of what is not visible.

logicjello• 12 years ago

No. When I do traceback, i see header being sent back to there servers. Why? I have a feeling they're collecting data (probably anonymized) and selling off the data. Noticed about the same with Ghostery, and AdBlockerPlus.

gorhill2• 12 years ago

Sorry but I have a hard time believing this. I did write an extension which allow to see these behind the scene requests, and I haven't seen anything so far out of the ordinary (update of filter lists) for the above mentioned extensions.

Without more specific information about what you said you found, it sounds FUD.

gurzo• 12 years ago

yeees, 3 ad blocker and tracker block at the same times

kiliancs• 12 years ago

I use NoScript and can't imagine going back to vanilla Firefox.

carucez• 12 years ago

no ad-block unless in low bandwidth situation. always block plugins by default.

galfarragem• 12 years ago

No. As a blogger I know how important are ads to content producers. Yes, I know ads are ugly, boring ang and annoying, but is it fair to remove them? It's just another form of piracy.

zeriyu• 12 years ago

yes

DanBC• 12 years ago

I allow ads, but do not re-visit sites with terrible ads, and immediately close pages of sites with even worse ads.

Some things are makin me lean toward using adblockers: being unable to opt out of gambling or alcohol ads; being unable to temporarily opt out of ads when my child is using my computer - these make me want a good ad blocker.

D4AHNGM2• 12 years ago

Good lord, Yes. Disconnect, AdBlock, NoScript & a pretty hefty hosts file. I'll happily whitelist any site that:

1) Doesn't try and track the crap out of me. 2) Doesn't shove ads in my face. 3) Doesn't autoplay video/sound ads.

It doesn't seem like a huge amount to ask really, but the tracking is out of control in particular and just an enormous threat to privacy.

Poll: Do you use an ad-blocker?

Related Stories