The ethical ad blocker

I switched for the same reasons and use ublock origin and privacy badger.

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Unless they can work inside the YouTube app Iā€™m not sure thatā€™ll work

A shiny, gold-pressed latinum like for you then, sir. Iā€™m not surprised you do though.

I have a whitelist, honestā€¦ well, it consists of just duckduckgo at the moment (unobtrusive sponsored links) but iā€™m being ethical? Yes? Helloā€¦

Reality says it works in browsers. If youā€™re only talking about a phone app, good luck with that.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/youtube-all-html5/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/youtube-enhancer-plus/

Holy crap! Thank you for that link! My life has changed forever for the better for only 3$ a month.

Replacing ads with cat photos makes life worth living again.

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I suppose they didnā€™t explicitly suggest that consuming ads is a moral obligation, but I do think a positive post promoting the use of the ā€œethical ad blockerā€ is a sort of implicit endorsement.

Iā€™m troubled that they are bothering to give voice to this idea at all. Itā€™s not a legitimate ethical issue, and should not be portrayed as such.

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Ethical schmetical. It was the last drop for me to get me to install Ghostery.

Reminds me of, two decades ago, using the Internet Junkbuster proxy, and then heavily modifying it to allow even tricks like replacing ads with gray images to not break page layout and inserting javascript files into pages, emulating whatā€™s now Greasemonkey. Codenamed the version ā€œInternet Enforcerā€.

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ā€œMy ethics can beat up your ethics.ā€

Thatā€™s kind of a nice startā€¦ but since Google is Google they refuse to actually solve the problem.

ā€˜Fewer adsā€™ is still plenty of malware. It of course just encourages people to use Google adsense. And as far as I can tell it doesnā€™t work if youā€™re running an ad blocker for self defense, because if youā€™re not loading the ads you donā€™t get a chance to bid on them.

I need something thatā€™ll let me see zero ads and still give that money to the sites I visit. But Google has no interest in encouraging that.

Ad blocking is the easiest way to keep old people out of trouble on the internet.

Ad Away for rooted android phones works well, even on many in-app ads. I canā€™t believe the number of ads they try to load on my limited data plan.

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Remotely hosted in-app ads on smartphones are the truly unethical thing here. Fuckem, if they want to send me data without my asking for it, they can pay for that themselves while I still block it.

In fact, Iā€™ve half a mind to start sending threatening-looking legal documents to Scorecard research and quantserve demanding they pay for the data theyā€™ve wasted on all my devices. Itā€™s only half a mind, since Iā€™ve blocked them for years, and now am on unlimited data. But most people are capped.

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Yeah, a whole case of emā€¦

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ā€œBecause of the ad skipsā€¦ Itā€™s theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is youā€™re going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldnā€™t get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button youā€™re actually stealing the programmingā€¦ I guess thereā€™s a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom.ā€

So spake Jamie Kellner of Fox and WB, back in 2002. Theft, you see. Thatā€™s what it is. Theft.

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Uh, how does he account for cable? Ostensibly, it was sold under the banner of ad-free programming once upon a timeā€¦ So now itā€™s necessary for networks to demand money from me, and force me to watch their shitty, loud, repetitive, irritating, often borderline-fraudulent commercials?

What would he want next? Access to a usb port on me so they can pipe hot steaming shit directly into my amygdala?

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Maybe not consciously. Advertising can be a lot subtler than ā€œHEY CLICK HERE! BUY THIS THING RIGHT NOW!ā€

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Like boing boing linking to things on Amazon that theyā€™re discussing. Iā€™m sure the site gets a referral for it if a purchase happens

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Itā€™s been explained to me that clicking on one of those links, whether or not you buy the product at that time, means anything you buy from that site for a certain amount of time (at least a few days, if I recall correctly) is credited to BB. To me, thatā€™s too far.

And letā€™s not forget that the recording industry didnā€™t even survive to complain about electronic downloads because it was killed off by cassette tapes.

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That makes sense though, i generally add things to my cart or wishlist so i can mull on it. I almost never end up buying any of it but the timeframe seems about right.

Iā€™m a bit torn on the practice though. Why shouldnā€™t BB get a referral on purchases from products they discuss? I donā€™t have a problem with it if BB gives me a heads up to something cool that i might like. But the part that i find shady is the fact that this referral process is not made transparent to us readers.

Totally agree with you there. But if I go back to Amazon two days later and buy something completely different, having nothing to do with anything Iā€™ve read on BB? No, thatā€™s not ethical and itā€™s creepy as hell.

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