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Comment by uberswe | Hacker News Reader

I work with a senior front end dev and noticed he wasn’t using any kind of adblocker on his work computer and it surprised me as he was privacy concerned.

He said he wants to see the web like the average user and doesn’t want anything to change the default look.

I’m sure there are people who have similar reasons for allowing tracking.

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I think as a front end dev it is important to have blockers installed and toggle them during development/testing to make sure you don’t break something unintentionally either way.

Yeah a surprising number of sites tie their checkout navigation to callbacks on trackers, making critical things like the “Complete Checkout” button just straight up not work when the trackers are blocked...or just down for whatever reason.

Sounds like a pretty efficient way to get you to turn off your adblocker

or to not get a purchase, if I don't remember to turn off my adblocker I'll assume they have a bug and move on

> Yeah a surprising number of sites

A surprising number of sites have basic functionality, like showing content, not work if you have cookies turned off.

There are some shopping sites that don't even let you view items with cookies disabled: I understand needing them for purchases, but even Amazon allows for browsing without cookies.

Don't get em started on turning off JavaScript.

Thankfully some paywalls also don't work.

If you watch a lot of YouTube (i try not to these days), might I just shill for the "Sponsor Block" extension [1]? It blocks those sponsored segments in youtube videos. You can also submit segments to save others time so they can consoom more content.

I have saved 2.5 hrs and saved others nearly an hour through my submissions.

[1] https://sponsor.ajay.app/

Also, slightly related:

If you want to watch less YouTube, you can use uBlock element picker to remove everything but the search bar. My YouTube web interface is just that now, no recommendations, no nothing. Bliss.

Could you tell me how exactly to do this? I'd love to this but I'm not sure how to do it.

Sure:

1: Download UBlock origin: https://ublockorigin.com/

2: Open Youtube

3: Right click on any element in the page and click "block element". Do this for anything you don't want to see. If you make a mistake you can unblock it by deleting the line in the "filters" part of Ublock settings.

It can take some trial and error to get it working properly but once you do its so nice. I don't even have a sign in button anymore because I don't have a google account.

Edit: For maximum procrastination prevention you can even block those end card recommendations once a video finishes.

Youtube is also massively better with "enhancer for youtube" [1]. It's not FOSS I don't think but it is too good to not use.

[1] https://www.mrfdev.com/enhancer-for-youtube

Thank you!

But if 94% a of users disable tracking the average user experience would be with tracking disabled.

You're on your own if you change or disable something. Windows (used to) (unintentionally) degrade experience if you reduce telemetry settings.

That doesn't sound like an useful mindset. If you want to do something which works well for your users, but then run with some unusual configuration and tell the users that "they are on their one" when they use the most common config, well, then that just makes no sense.

What "experience"?

That’s very interesting! Taking this to the extreme, he should only browse the web on a small phone sized screen too, as most users are mobile.

I don’t think I’ll ever take this to heart, but I do turn on CPU and network throttling from time to time.

Hi might not, but the QAs should. Our QAs test everything on a bunch of old devices they got from secondhand stores- typically from iPhone 5 up, and whatever ratty 5-6 year old androids they can find, as well as latest stuff of course.

We also assume it’s all real users and not bots managing to opt in.

True, if you’re running a clickfarm a higher CPC means more revenue, and that means no adblocking and opting in to all tracking... although maybe that makes it easier to identify you as a clickfarm?

I too don’t use any ad blockers on my work computer. On my personal computer I have 4 different ad blockers and a VPN and stuff, always use private browsing windows in safari for non dev (debugging) stuff.

I only use my work computer for work and some very light and sparse HN browsing (via safari). I am signed in to chrome with my gsuite account from the company.

I feel that it doesn’t really matter if googling dev stuff or a random article is tracked, it might even be to my benefit in so far as I will be viewed as a dedicated and diligent employee thus raising my social credit score

I don't use ad blockers and I occasionally "interact" with the advertised link as some kind of low level tip jar for wherever the ad was shown. The networks go crazy trying to sell that ad-click again. A click that will never earn the advertiser any money, no matter how often repeated.

What I've learned so far: don't click on ads you'd feel uncomfortable with seeing everywhere. The tracking industry must be such a waste of advertiser's money! If you like pretty pictures of horses in nature you can, with just a few clicks, get them to decorate almost the entire web with equestrianist landscape shots for you, without you ever spending a dime on, I don't know, saddle maintenance gadgets or whatever. I guess there are some advertisers for whom this isn't utterly broken, but they must be a rare reception. If you sell some supercar it's an essential part of the product that millions of small boys and poor men dream of driving one and it kind of makes sense to concave "the web" to show pictures to the dreamers, but that's a rather small market compared to the size of the tracking industry.

I actually did the exact same thing, for the same reason, a long time ago. I wanted to see just how bad things were getting, what sites were doing what kind of terrible ads, and how badly it was tanking both cpu and network usage.

Ultimately I quit doing that and installed an ad blocker because I felt there wasn't really any point to knowing this. It's the same story on every commercial site, and there's nothing I could do about it anyway.

How does he work on a 1440x900 resolution?

That sounds more like a professional reason not to use an adblocker.

I do that on work computers for the same reason. However in this instance if 96% of people have it enabled then that is the baseline experience.

I don't use adblockers because I don't like the idea of something tracking me. I don't trust adblockers to not be backdoors for hacking. That said I also dont' typically visit websites that use a lot of ads or when I do I don't stay on them very often... Also I did once find that personalized ads were a great way of coloring my web browsing experience... If I liked the pictures on one ad just click and then if you see another that you like click... eventually you start to have more pleasant browsing experiencing...

I'm sorry, but I don't understand your comment at all. You say that you don't like being tracked, which is why you don't use an adblocker. But you end your comment by saying that you actually do like being tracked by ads, because it gives a "more pleasant browsing experience".

So you don't use adblockers (which block tracking) because you fear they might track you while you know that without one you are being tracked? I'm not sure you thought this through.

If you fear being "hacked" by an extension then there are lots of other options, like pihole, routers blocking ads, hosts files, etc.

I hope you are aware that billions are used on how to psychologically affect people with ads. Even if you don't click them (and especially if you do click those that make you feel good) you will still be bombarded by things made to affect you subconsciously.

His point might be that no adblocker gives a true sense of insecurity while the adblocker might give a false sense of security, therefore the 1st choice would force the user to be more cautious. If that's the point I can understand it, however it should imply foul play by adblockers, which I believe would hardly happen since the most popular are fully open source and thoroughly audited (for example Ublock Origin, Umatrix and Privacy Badger all are FOSS).

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. This is a unique way of looking at things, if a bit paranoid. As others said, there are ways to block ads without using an adblocker.

That being said, I used to go to Facebook /just for the ads/ because they were always interesting. Now they kinda suck, dunno what happened in the last few years.

Perhaps because it's a bit non-sensical? Clicking on an ad because the picture looks nice in anticipation/hopes of being served more ads with a similar look? That has to be one of the strangest things I've heard regarding ads. This has to be a trolling post, doesn't it?

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