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Animats

I've blocked Google ads for so long I didn't realize they had been allowing Flash ads.

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I bought a new Windows laptop last year. Of course the first thing I did was open IE and search for "download chrome".

Stupidly, I clicked on the first link, which was a Google ad for Chrome bundled with some malware.

Spent the next few hours getting rid of said malware.

I've used adblock (ublock) for a long time, but there was always a little bit of guilt associated with it; that episode cleared the guilt, completely and for ever.

bambax, its not malware. when you installed free software they created spam add-on in browser.

And how isn't that malware?

"IE the number 1 browser for downloading Chrome"

Same thing with VLC I (as a Mac user) once installed for a Windows friend... The malware/adware version scored nr 1.

The web can be scary without adblocker. Many people have given similar examples here lately. Here's one from me:

I have a certain addiction I cannot control. Tried everything possible without any success at all. It's not as dangerous as drugs, but it's also related to buying a lot of expensive stuff. So, when I disable adblock, every website spams the hell out of me with ads related to my addiction.

This is nasty! And disgusting. I'm sure I'm not alone. Also there's probably a huge number of people that get influenced to smaller extent and don't pay attention to it (because it doesn't ruin their lives, y'know).

Ha. One of the annoying things about the first x86 Android tablets was that Google would serve up a flash ad which wouldn't work, presumably because it was expecting an ARM processor. As a result a whole slew of apps which had video and ads were unusable.

The only Google ads that I still get is on the Youtube app on Android... which is one reason why I don't like to install any Google binaries on my computers...

http://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/modules/app-t2547316

will remove ads in the youtube app if you have a rooted device, just install the xposed framework, then this.

Keep in mind you need to update it when the youtube app updates (youtube app might be showing ads, or behaving weirdly/crashing if you don't)

i've blocked flash for so long, most ads dont display for me.

Good for you that they are moving to HTML5 then ;)

May be in bootstrap ;)

http://www.phpsupport.co/

Which ad blocker do you use on mobile?

Ghostery on Firefox.

I just user the Ghostery browser. Is there any benefit to using Firefox?

Firefox on Android has full extension support, so you can install things like Self-Destructing Cookies and HTTPS Everywhere as well.

uBlock Origin is nice on Firefox for Android

Ghostery like protection is already built in. There is no menu option for normal browsing mode but you can turn it on in about:config. Set privacy.trackingprotection.enabled to true.

uBlock Origin works well on Firefox IIRC. Alternatively, you could block apps system-wide.

For Google ads specifically? https://contributor.google.com/

no thanks

That is...a lot more than I expected for what you're getting.

It's not. Google doesn't control all ads on the web. It's basically "hide 90% of Google ads".

Wow. Their highest tier is $10/month to see 25-50% fewer ads? That seems a bit steep for the minimal reduction you're seeing.

I think they're accounting for the fact that Google doesn't control all ads across the web.

Yea, why don't they account for that fact in the $10/month price?

They do

My understanding is that the system literally works by buying out your own ads, as if you were an advertiser targeting specifically yourself with ads that have no content. The effect is thus that you pay what advertisers would otherwise have paid. But if some advertiser bids $100 for one ad (this actually happens!), then Google is going to show that ad.

As such, the pricing structure, while maybe overcomplicated, is perfectly fair. Theoretically, in an ad-free world, this is the price you would need to pay to consume the same content. If you feel it is too high, then what you're saying is that, for you, ads are worth the annoyance. (Or, alternately, you're saying that you'd rather pay less and get lower-quality content.)

Personally, I think $10/month is an extremely reasonable price to pay for the web content I consume, and I'd certainly rather pay it than see the ads.

EDIT: That said, as a matter of product design, I think this pricing structure sucks. They really ought to offer a flat price that removes all ads. However, I suspect that would require strong-arming all AdSense sites to agree to new terms (since it would affect how much those sites are getting paid), and as we've seen when YouTube did this in order to create YouTube Red, it tends to create a huge PR backlash.

And they still got to track you. And you pay for that. Great deal.

If you're rooted, AdAway is fantastic as it not only blocks browser ads, but in-app ads as well.

We just (last week) launched an Android ad blocker with Samsung that doesn’t require rooting your device or switching to another browser (our app works with Samsung Internet, which is the default browser on most of their devices): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rocketship...

The ad blocker is also open source: https://github.com/rocketshipapps/adblockfast

>Samsung Internet

Ah yes, I'm remembering why I hate non-Nexus Android phones...

Samsung Internet is, surprisingly, faster and smoother than Chrome. They have really optimized it.

Or rather, Google Chrome is extremely slow on Android/ARM: https://meta.discourse.org/t/the-state-of-javascript-on-andr...

Firefox on Android with uBlock Origin.

> Which ad blocker do you use on mobile?

Firefox with uBlock. Just plain old FF extensions. No root required.

Firefox for Android is seriously underrated IMO.

Possibly because it was very poor when it first came out? That's certainly why I switched away.

Me too. Also because the default Chrome was good enough.

But i came back to firefox recently and now it is my default. The "Reading list" feature is so good productivity-wise.

And using firefox again made me realize that features like Reading-list, Tracking-protection, or even offline-mode would never be implemented in Chrome because of the fundamental conflict of interest between its users and Google

I'm using Blockr on iOS. It also blocks those cookie warnings! http://blockr-app.com

I use Crystal for iOS.. Works perfectly.

On iOS, using Weblock and Purify in tandem gives you two distinct methods of ad blocking. Albeit, the more powerful blocker is WiFi only.

you can use adblock as a proxy and connect to your wifi through said proxy

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