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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

For many many years I resisted installing an ad-blocker. As someone who worked at a website that made the bulk of it's revenue from ads, it felt hypocritical, and also, I wanted to make sure that the experience of our website was bearable without ad blocking, by forcing myself to experience it every day.

I gave up about two years ago. The web just go so bad I had to install ad-block. My computer would spin like a jet plane at least once an hour due to insane advertising on a website consuming all the CPU.

I literally installed ad-block to save my computer hardware.

The ads don't even bother me that much. I used to always say, "my brain is my ad-block". It was the slow loading, CPU heavy ads that got me to turn.

If advertisers want to advertise to me, that's fine. I understand they need to make money. But how about not melting my computer in the process?

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> If advertisers want to advertise to me, that's fine. I understand they need to make money.

I feel sad just reading that. Advertisers are paid to deliver targeted psychological manipulation to you, and yet you feel ashamed for making their work less profitable. It's like observing some kind of digital stockholm syndrome.

> targeted psychological manipulation to you

This seems exceedingly hyperbolic. With advertising, we can enjoy many services free of charge.

Using google as an example, google maps, search, android, etc all provide tremendous value to their users while being ostensibly free. Without revenue, they simply wouldn't be able to exist.

Having witnessed what advertising and marketing strategies do to psychologically vulnerable people, I now feel I am financing these services on their back.

I know someone who is in debt (and in denial) because she can't resist buying something that is "on sale". Her house filled with things she does not need but that were a bargain.

No, "targeted psychological manipulation" is not an hyperbole, you just are not the target. You, when you see "YOU HAVE WON A PRIZE!" blinking you think "Yeah, right, who falls for these anyway?" The answer is, a few people whose life is pretty miserable.

I'd rather have the internet financed in a sane way through microtransactions than the thing we have now.

> we can enjoy many services free of charge

It's not free of charge, you're just paying in a different way. These services are able to operate because they deliver content that changes your mind in a way that benefits the corporations who pay for ads. They alter your purchasing habits, sway you politically, and change your emotions. If they were not able to manipulate you then they would be worthless.

I would change “ostensibly free” to “nominally free”. While you pay no up front cost, you are worth a dollar value to these companies.

That money isn’t being spun out of thin air, it’s being extracted from you somehow.

Whether that method of abstraction is getting you to buy something you otherwise wouldn’t have, or by using your data to manipulate others to do the same; they exact their toll on you.

> Without revenue, they simply wouldn't be able to exist.

Nonsense. OSM exists, HN exists, Linux exists. And just because some services need revenue to pay bills, it doesn't mean advertising or users paying is the only way to get it. Google Maps gets revenue from businesses using it on their websites, for example.

I do not see your argument. That some projects are subsidized, because they carry a value, that pays off manyfold somewhere else, no one denies.

> With advertising, we can enjoy many services free of charge. Using google as an example, google maps, search, android, etc

Google gets much much more than just showing you ads. You surrender all your digital life using Google free services, and that info is priceless, because 95% of people did the same. What would you say if in 10 years, government, police and businesses will routinely use google data for background checks? It is just one use case.

Yeah, for many years I figured "Let the website owners make money, I get to use their service for free anyway, and I can always mentally tune the ads out."

And then sometime around 2015 or 2016, I started noticing ads that would lock up my CPU, or get my laptop's fan running, or prevent the page from loading entirely, or increase page loading time by 10x. And then I decided enough was enough, and installed an adblocker.

It's not the general concept of advertising that I object to. It's when the advertising makes the content that I initially came to see unusable. Fix your goddamn Javascript and maybe I won't block you, although at this point I'm kinda enjoying the ad-free experience.

For me the moment was when some websites started putting popup ads in every single link and navigation.

I a specific instance there was no way to use the site, every link would redirect directly without opening the correct page at all.

I literally needed an ad-blocker to be able to use the website.

The uh, seedier parts of the web never stopped using popups it seems.

When referring to popups from such websites, you're not pronouncing it correctly if you're not wiggling your eyebrows.

If this keeps being an issue, maybe browser vendors will eventually limit website CPU usage by default.

For web apps that need it, it could be an explicit permission, like webcam or location access.

Hey I like this idea. This is something that needs to happen. Every website starts with aggressive CPU throttling, and then they can ask for permission to be unthrottled. "Our web page requires lots of CPU to deliver text, for some reason we would prefer you not think about, can you please unthrottle us?". This seems like an action browsers could take to significantly improve the web.

For memory and network usage too. Could solve a lot of issues of modern web.

Effectively, reimposing costs on publishers.

Same boat. I actually don't mind most ads. Then the slow page loading, CPU melting became annoying. And on mobile, even reputable sites were having ads hijack the browser. I'm done, I only use Opera or Brave now. I feel like I was a target demographic to advertise to, and they abused me instead.

This x2 for phones. I use AdGuard on my Android phone. Without it, my phone is so and bogged down by ads that it's essentially useless for internet.

I wonder what percentage of mobile data bandwidth is used to transmit ads vs actual content.

what’s wrong with using your CPU? (seriously)

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