They call it “dark traffic” - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.
Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.
They call it “dark traffic” - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.
Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.
The use of the term “Dark traffic” here is to paint the use of ad-blockers as something nefarious. Don’t use it, fuck these people right in their stupid mouths.
I propose using the terms “clean traffic”, for ad-blocked website traffic, and “dogshit traffic” for everything else.
Something simple that people would ask why you want it. Also needs to be non-aggressive. Like non-content traffic. Why would you want something that is not the content?
Maybe we could turn it around: adblockers are tools that block ads and other kinds of dark traffic such as trackers and malicious scripts.
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They are so short sighted to. Ad blocker help advertizers. It allows sites to fill up sites with ads to the point of being unusable while not losing 100% of traffic. That keeps these site relevant enough that old people who don’t have ad blockers end up there too when they follow links or google ranks a site high because it has traffic.
If they got rid of all ad block somehow they would have to decrease the ads because I wouldn’t use the web. Or online communities would be way more conscious of the ad level of the things they link to.
The tech community is pacified into not taking action against the polluters by our adblockers because we don’t see the egregious ads and so we don’t fight the good fight for the user.
Ad blockers are the fight. Those users who can’t be bothered to learn a bit about the devices they spend so much time on aren’t owed anything.
What does “fighting the good fight” even look like to you in this context, anyways?
When the first banner ad appeared on the web, the condemnation was not loud enough and it was allowed to fester.
At this points these entities have become large enough that the evil practice that could have been snuffed out, is now being accepted.
Now every slimey thing on the internet is due for the mother of all crackdowns. Something like the GDPR times 911.
I’m not in the mood for centrist technocratic measured solution at the moment.
If it makes more than a million a year and it’s using any kind of psychological tactics,
that’s advertising, sponsored search, dark patterns, then BURN IT ALL DOWN
The tech community came up with a technical solution to the ad problem. If the solution you’re looking for isn’t technical, why is your focus on the tech community?
Anyone can learn this shit. Use any search engine, type “how to block internet ads”, and you’ll see results with “firefox” and “ublock origin”, that can then be put into “how to get” follow up searches.
The current state of ads is being accepted by those who don’t block them. Everyone who does block them (or refuses to visit ad cancer sites) has cut off that source of revenue, but those who just choose to accept the default option enable them by not just seeing the ads but even sometimes clicking them and buying shit.
Goodput vs shitstream.