In most cases, the internet these days is unusable without an adblocker. But maybe there are some good faith actors out there that deserve to not have their ads blocked?
What sites do you have whitelisted on your adblocker? I personally have none.
People made a living out of providing valuable content before advertisement seeped into every aspect of life. I don't think we would be at a net loss, if all ad financed productions died all together. Why can some creators live off of Patreon donations/subscriptions, while other can't? Fact is, with the internet, the true (non-opportunistic) demand for (redundant) content doesn't increase much with population size. Relatively, fewer people should expect to make a living out of media production.
I think, the real problem is people's increased need to have a side hustle, since the projected security of a stable 40h job is increasingly a thing of the past. People don't have truly "free time" anymore to talk about their interests as a hobby, without the pressure of opportunistic commercialization. There used to be highly informative articles, podcasts, videos... people made solely to share their thoughts and interests with the world. How come these creators didn't seek out commercialization back then?
Creating artificial demand through advertisement enables a whole new parasitic economy of fake products, which fuels the dumpster fire of existential challenges we as a species are facing.
I am happily denying anyone their ad income through sponsor block and ublock. Indeed, I am even more happily watching them not make it this way. Good riddance. If you put out content I can freely access, and if my attention and community isn't enough reward for you, get a real job, or fight those seeking rent in your own life.
Don’t get me wrong, I feel for those legitimate platforms who are trying to fund themselves, but that well was poisoned for me decades ago.
You see, I was there at the beginning, when accidentally clicking on the wrong link (or the right link on the wrong day) spawned pop-ups and pop-unders, and any attempt to close them would auto-spawn more until not only was your browser frozen, but the entire computer had been ground to a halt (single-core processors, FTW), leaving your only option to conduct a hard shutdown and restart; your unsaved work be damned.
From that brutal period around the turn of the century, I acquired a permanent form of PTSD where ads are concerned. It got so bad that I have refused to consume broadcast TV or Radio for the last 20 years in addition to blocking Internet ads the moment the first adblocker became available for Phoenix (now Firefox).
Blocking ads saves bandwidth and battery from phones and laptops.
The time when websites used to have the right balance between ads and user experience has passed many years ago, and it's not going to change any time soon.
Honestly, I think it is going to get even worse because Google already knows that people will be eventually using more LLM than searching on a Browser. For most people, it is a much more convenient experience.
That's why your search results are now getting worse than used to be. These bloated websites are being much more promoted in the search ranking system. Generating income while search engines are still relevant for most people.
The ad blocker stays on though, much like a condom.
I usually stop at #3.
- No cookies
- No newsletter
- No notifications
- No ads (affiliate links are kind of ok to me)
Usually it's dinosaur payroll sites like ADP, company stock option websites, or any other site where I don't have any choice and thus they don't really need to innovate.
Even with adblock disabled, ADP is still buggy, but I find it's totally broken with adblock enabled.
It's basically a combination of me really wanting access to something + not having an alternative source to find said thing.
If you're open to switching to Firefox, it might not be a bad option!
For Android you can install this extension on Firefox as well. Brave Browser already blocks youtube ads out of the box.
makes youtube usable.
For every other website, use Firefox and the uBlock Origin addon.
Ads are good! They often show me things I want to buy.