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 web has almost always been unusable without an adblocker. Ads today are less malicious, but more insidious. Clicking the wrong ad in 2003 would brick your computer. Clicking the wrong ad today means you’ll have to cancel a credit card after your personal data is compiled and sold on the black market.
Nothing new. Ads don’t fuel a free internet. They fuel a business model. The free internet is fueled by the time and donations of kind, dedicated people.
There was a time in the 90’s where ads were mostly banners, and that was fine; google’s text-only ads were completely acceptable.
But that didn’t last long - it went downhill with the proliferation of popups, especially the nefarious kind which created even more popups or tried to stop the user from closing them, and usage of dialog boxes.
And whoever was the first person to add sound to an ad, i wish you and your entire family tree that your genitalia translocate to your forehead.
the shocking sound stunts were fun to spring on people. well, for a couple days. recall ads referred to as ‘death of the internet’. adblock to the rescue.
Congratulations, you won
Ads in the 90’s and 00’s would just layer toolbars onto your browser. Is still have a a nervous twitch when I see a thick toolbars or animated cursors.
The toolbars came from scam software on the '90s. Ads being able to install things came well into the '00s.
yeah, there was quite a long time where useful software was bundled with toolbars or, the worse option, malware that hijacked your browser, which was a pain in the ass to remove. I was the techie in the family, and i got pretty good with tools like hijackthis and knowing by heart what services and background programs should start on a standard win98 or xp installation. (in this time i also was THE guy to ask at my job when issues with 56k modems came up, diagnosing a lot of issues by listening to the dial-up tones)
I believe this to be true.
My view is that if we can’t have the things we want without ads, then we need a new business model. I’m not super into the whole kindness and donations model. If we need it to be state funded, so be it.
You store your credit card in your computer? If browser credit card management isn’t secure enough to avoid that attack you shouldn’t be using it.