Ask Lemmy

Never. It’s a malware vector.

Nope. I simply refuse to watch ads.

Either the website or their author will have provided the means to support them directly, or I won't. And if they try forcing ads on me, I quit using their website.

I'm fine with spending money to support content or services I appreciate. I refuse to waste a second of my life watching ads. That's the reason why we have not owned a TV since the early 00s: my spouse and I realized we were screwed as, at least here in France, we were supposed to pay for watching TV but still would have to watch ads, more and more of them for that matter. So, gone the TV.

i.e., “Have you rawdogged a random website just because it looked nice?”

Once upon a time, long ago, I did it for reddit but they burnt that good will to the ground. Give a corporation an inch and they'll take as many miles as they can before someone stops them: I block everything now and if it won't load then I don't bother with it. If it's really important I'll still find a way to view it but never again will I allow ads anywhere I can help it. Advertisements are a very serious threat to security and privacy. Malware and scams are routine in ads, even ads from known corporations that are supposedly safe, like Google.

Not for a well made one, but one I made.

I was testing some shitty PHP code and turned off adnausem just incase it was messing with my shitty PHP code. But I should have known my shitty PHP code was broken and it wasn't adnausem.

If ads went back to a static image I would turn off my adblocker.

But, most sites are just too annoying without an adblocker. If a site will not function with an adblocker I leave the site.

Sites are rarely involved in picking what ads get displayed. I know there's controls with your ad provider that let you say it's a tech site or a cooking site and similar ads will be shown but that's not enough control to stop somebody malicious. The FBI recommends ad blockers for safety, not because they find them annoying.

I disable it for very few sites. These sites provide nice and free niche content but don't show any ads. I just disable so that the tracking works for sure, to motivate them continue running the site.

Nope. Never.

Yes. It's cryptii.com, a site containing tools for ciphering/deciphering (Caesar Cipher, ROT-13, Vigènere and so on). That's because their ad, at the top right of the page, is so small that's almost unnoticeable. No popup ads, no flashing ads, no crowded ad sections, just a single, small ad at the header. Sites like that (with static and small, non-intrusive ads) deserve to have ads allowed.

Rules to unblock:

Visit site, non obnoxious pops that says please unblock and allowed me to continue anyway. After I continue without unblocking, it has reasonable, clean ads in the margins, not distributed throughout the content.

I will them permanently unblock them.

I never disable adblock unless the site isn't working properly.

There are a few car specific forums still running vBulletin that I pop the blocker off for. E.g, cb7tuner.com. They use unobtrusive banners on the top and bottom of the page and I do want to support them. Those are the only exceptions though.

Do you ever have sex without protection because the other person looks "clean"?

No. I did my time for the many years I've endured when adblockers weren't really much of a thing. So, that meant that I've put up with ads until 2006 which meant AdBlock Plus first debuted.

Ads are typically trash, they're in your face, they're invasive, they're prone to have malware in them and it's just marketing pollution that adds no value except to figure out ways, mostly in obnoxious fashion, to get you to spend money.

The only times I do so are when they only run in-house adds. RoyalRoad is an example, they run advertisements for creators that use their platform, and its useful to find content you might enjoy.

Other than that though? Nothing. I have so many layers of add filtering that basically nothing gets through.

Nexusmods. Don't want to pay for it so it's the least I can do.

I disabled adblock for a forum I use. Some time after that, the owner independently decided to disable adverts for supporting members, so now it looks pretty much the same.

DuckDuckGo

I'm ok with static ads. Targeted advertising gets a block from me.

I disable on 2 of my local news sites because they need every penny, but not on local news sites owned by major publishers.

I was thinking of disabling it for Ecosia.
They are committed to not exploiting my data and using profits for tree planting.

I always end up disabling it on banking and .gov websites, just because I've run into issues where uBlock has broken those kinds of poorly made websites pretty often.

ArsTechnica

Sadly, the problem with SaaS and online software...: just cause it's great today doesn't mean it won't turn to shit in tomorrow. Blocking ads is just a small part of the kind of nefarious things that may be done.

So to answer your question, no.

Neoseeker. Great game guides.

I do for creators I want to support. But I'll turn it back on right away if they're too annoying or sketchy.

Is there a way to set up patreon for any ad free website I browse?

Could my browser have some sort of cryptographically signed cookie that would let ad-free websites deduct 1-5 cents from my browsing account?

Website could check for the cookie before loading the ads?

Has this been tried?