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Comment by hobs | Hacker News Reader

No, and I would say that statement is laughably wrong. Users install ad blockers to prevent annoying stupid things from monopolizing their time and space.

Telling a person "if you install this they'll stop tracking you in some abstract way" is way less effective than "install this and you wont have to wait to watch youtube videos."

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> install this and you wont have to wait to watch youtube videos

Exactly the reason I installed an ad blocker. If YouTube had released their Red subscription in the UK I might never have installed the blocker (actually probably would have eventually, but later than I did)

I don't think so - I think blocking goes for both annoying and dangerous ads, _and_ blocking trackers like facebook/google's invisible pixels. At least I run ublock origin, adguard, scriptsafe and privacy badger for maximum protection.

How many users do you think are like you? Especially in the number of plugins?

Here's #2 running a pretty similar cocktail (ublock origin, umatrix, privacy badger, httpseverywhere, cookie autodelete and decentraleyes).

There's dozens of us! Dozens!

But more seriously, there's actually lots of us. You don't hear about us because we don't narcissistically post about it on facebook. We just block shitty software and move on with our lives.

I have no stats for you though, because stats are usually collected through third party trackers, and I block them all, so I'm never represented on anyones metrics. Based on some rough stats like these[1] and my own experience, I'd guess something like 1-3% of the population in western countries.

[1] https://www.quantable.com/analytics/how-many-users-block-goo...

But the statement wasn't "many people block tracking", it's "the majority of people using ad blockers are doing it for tracking and not for ads". That's a far different statement that is far harder to back up.

So, of that list I just posted:

ad blockers: ublock origin

ad and tracking blockers: umatrix privacy badger

tracking blockers: cookie autodelete decentraleyes

other: httpseverywhere

I'm mostly blocking trackers.

Good job repeatedly misunderstanding what the other commenter was saying.

Yes, I do it too - I have ublock orogin, privacy badger and httpseverywhere. I do it because the web is faster without ads and trackers. Just look at devtools and see how much time is saved by blocking requests.

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