I know this is probably a very naive question, but what is the end goal putting so much effort into getting past ad blockers? Surely, someone with an ad blocker installed is not going to click on their ads and buy the advertised products anyway. I don't really know what I am talking about, but I guess it's all about ad impressions that generate money, but doesn't this strategy end up making less money, because the money that's put into circumventing ad blockers isn't really generating more sales.
It's like a door to door sales person thinking that if only they could find a way to unlock my door I would buy their stuff.
Online advertising is less and less about forcing a pitch to conversion in the moment its viewed. Even if someone with an ad blocker would never click on the ad anyway, repeat "impressions" build implicit trust just through exposure. Six months or even a year from then, when that user is looking for a specific SaaS tool, for example, the brand they saw 40 times already is the one that feels established and safe, and it's more likely to lead to a conversion without ever clicking the original ad.
The second part of putting so much effort into getting past ad blockers is tracking & fingerprinting, especially across devices.
In general, ads work by anchoring a brand name in your memory for when you eventually are looking for said product or service, the goal isn't always to force a conversion on the spot.
Do we no longer habitually install an ad block for friends and family? There's gotta be some naive users with an ad blocker that way, or default within brave or whatever
I believe tracking and privacy invasions cannot be solved through technological means, it needs to be solved through laws and regulations.
We need to prod our representatives to ban the selling of our private information. Websites themselves can use the information but they're prohibited from selling it to anyone else. Why? Because the data changes hands and borders several times after which we lose all control over it.
Yes, but if a user doesn’t convert the advertiser will see worse performance metrics as cost per click/conversion/install is higher. That isn’t a good long term outcome for the platform, since advertisers can switch their budgets elsewhere (to Google/Youtube)
There’s a delicate balance, more impressions isn’t always a good outcome. Id assume here given the battle against ad blockers that the platforms do believe the aggregate impression mix leads to good performance for advertisers though
Partially, yes. Ads are also psychological, and tracked cross-platform. If you see a BMW ad on Facebook, drive by a BMW billboard on the highway, search BMW on Google, and then go buy a BMW, they have ways of fractionally allocating the conversion to the different impressions. It's pretty crazy.
I go a bit further - if something penetrates firefox + ublock origin combo, I'll go out of my way to make sure I'll never, ever buy such product or service if I can avoid that (not always possible but reasonably frequent).
Its quichotesque effort but the only thing that can move the needle a bit since everybody involved cares only about money here - waiting for some toothless legislation is useless when harm is happening now.
I wrote and shared uBlock Origin filters for Facebook, shared on Reddit and up to a week later they changed the DOM structure bypassed the filters. After some attempts I no longer publish the filters.
The only thing I'm proposing is to do the filtering on graphical data (what the user actually sees) rather than on the DOM (which can be obfuscated; and which may change every week).
Those childish comments are so funny. 3 billion people use Facebook regularly, and there are folks that deem themselves superior to all others who claim "I know nobody who uses Facebook". XD
I love how Facebook has one reputation, an Instagram has another and they often don’t match at all even though we all know it’s the exact fucking service with a different skin and theme.
What's with this current trend of grouping GenX with Boomers? I am GenX and the difference between us and Boomers is wild. My GenX friends are on here. Boomers I know are afraid of self-checkout machines.
It is an interesting experiment. Ads on my network are mostly blocked, but wife did notice a spike on her FB stuff. Now that she knows how nice ( edit: well, not automatically awful ) net is without ads, lets see if accepts the trade off.
Other adblock tools have gone the route of allowing "good" ads through and only blocking "bad" ads. Of course the definition of good vs bad might depend on who sponsors the dev.
AFAIK creators these days earn via additional channels like merch, tiktok etc. Direct views of some videos aren't prime for quite some time.
People dont have issue with creators getting paid, they have issue with absolutely evil platforms that host that and scoop up most of the value between creators and consumers. Platforms that willingly promote ie racist content because it simply drives more views/clicks.
I misread the domain as "digital cesspools" and that is indeed what Facebook is. If you're still on there you're going to get subjected to their abusive practices.
Apropos of nothing, I noted @markoff said they liked John Markoff in the 80s. As a complete aside, may I recommend to readers Markoff's book "What the Dormouse Said." From 2005, it's a deep-dive into the relationship between 60s counter-culture and 70s / 80s era microcomputer movers and shakers. Want to read about Doug Engelbart tripping balls in the Santa Cruz Mountains? It's in there. Or maybe I just made that up in a LSD fueled trip to the center of my mind. But that KIND of thing is in there. Abbie Hoffman somehow influenced Steve Jobs fascination with PARC derived WIMP systems. An image of Richard Nixon getting his face punched was burned into the original PC BIOS ROMs. Tim O'Leary developed software in the 80s. One of these is not true, but you have to read the book to find out which.
It's like a door to door sales person thinking that if only they could find a way to unlock my door I would buy their stuff.
The second part of putting so much effort into getting past ad blockers is tracking & fingerprinting, especially across devices.
In general, ads work by anchoring a brand name in your memory for when you eventually are looking for said product or service, the goal isn't always to force a conversion on the spot.
We need to prod our representatives to ban the selling of our private information. Websites themselves can use the information but they're prohibited from selling it to anyone else. Why? Because the data changes hands and borders several times after which we lose all control over it.
There’s a delicate balance, more impressions isn’t always a good outcome. Id assume here given the battle against ad blockers that the platforms do believe the aggregate impression mix leads to good performance for advertisers though
Its quichotesque effort but the only thing that can move the needle a bit since everybody involved cares only about money here - waiting for some toothless legislation is useless when harm is happening now.
More discussion here
https://reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1vgcjg5
https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1vgcjg5/
Archived comments / VPN: https://photon-reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1vgcjg5/
The only thing I'm proposing is to do the filtering on graphical data (what the user actually sees) rather than on the DOM (which can be obfuscated; and which may change every week).
Elroy: “I got a job through LinkedIn.”
Annie: “What? That’s crazy! People use LinkedIn?”
Elroy: “No, LinkedIn hired me to help figure out why people don’t use it.”
I think it’s purely to massage their Active Monthly User numbers to show growth.
I don't think so. They want you to use the App because through the they have way more ways to track you.
not shitter, google but fb. some local business don't even have their own sites but maintain an insta / fb page.
"I find ways to defeat adblockers"
(this is a joke obviously, but boy that would be fun and against the T&C)
but for modern social media to function, they need showing ads to pay creator
many people livelihood depends on it, creator make content in turn of revenue sharing that user get for free
People dont have issue with creators getting paid, they have issue with absolutely evil platforms that host that and scoop up most of the value between creators and consumers. Platforms that willingly promote ie racist content because it simply drives more views/clicks.
https://search.worldcat.org/title/57068812