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 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.