It's always an insane experience when you hop on someone's laptop/PC who has zero ad blocking installed.
POV:
POV:
If you don’t mind, I’m truly curious why you don’t Adblock? There’s no wrong answer here. ;)
I quite like Ka-block
Apple gobbles personal data too and processes it and sells it etc. They are simply rather better at looking ... friendly. They really are very good at that.
Disclosure: I work at Apple, and have seen zero evidence of anything but trying to make things continuously more secure and private. This in fact makes my job (machine learning) much harder because I don’t have user datasets to leverage.
What data and how do you know? This seems to be a popular talking point, but I’ve yet to see evidence. It doesn’t make that much sense to frame Apple’s privacy stance as similar to Google’s or Facebook’s. Apple isn’t an ad business, and Google and Facebook are, plain and simple.
I don’t work for Apple, and I don’t use an Apple laptop or desktop, but I don’t buy this Apple is as bad as businesses that are primarily built on ad revenue and are actively eroding privacy. I’m sure they’re not perfect, but I feel like Apple is relatively serious about privacy, making real changes that generally protect consumers, and setting a better example than many big tech companies. Are you sure they don't look better because they really are better?
Then why do they push their crappy browser on iOS which doesn't allow ad-blockers?
So? That’s true on Android too. If you want to use a browser with an ad-blocker, you can on iOS, just like on Android. What’s your claim again?
Android partisans will answer questions the way Android partisans answer questions I.e. buy Android.
Even Google (the biggest ad-tech company) isn't that bad: they obviously don't make an ad-blocker themselves, and they've worked against ad-blockers in the Android Chrome browser, but they don't do anything to stop users from installing an alternative browser which supports ad-blocking. You can install Firefox directly from the Google Play store. (Note that the same is not true for ad-blocking alternative YouTube clients like ReVanced or SmartTube, but you can't use those on iOS either of course. And even here, while Google won't allow them in the Play store, you can simply install them directly from the .apk files, something you can't do on iOS.)
By preventing users from exercising choice, Apple has taken on responsibility for them not being able to avoid ads.
Safari does take active steps to prevent tracking that Chrome does not. Apple has not actively worked against ad blockers the way Google has. And Apple also allows you to install a different browser on iOS, Google doesn’t get any gold stars for not preventing third party browsers on Android.
Google has a conflict of interest between your privacy and their primary source of revenue. That’s not true for Apple. Google isn’t that bad?!? Hahahaha BTW you moved the goal posts, the claim you were implicitly defending was that Apple was collecting and selling private data themselves. Nothing in this thread so far backs up that claim.
Does it? Then why do all the iOS users complain about having to watch YouTube ads? Sounds like it doesn't allow good ad-blockers.
>And even if they didn’t, there’s an absolutely massive difference between not being able to block ads and being the company both selling the ads and the browser that is engineering away your privacy.
This is completely wrong. If (for the sake of argument) iOS definitely didn't allow ad-blocking, then that makes them worse than Google, and it does mean they are "actively working against ad-blockers". If they weren't working against them (in this scenario), they wouldn't disallow them.
>And Apple also allows you to install a different browser on iOS
No, it doesn't. It only allows re-skins of Safari.
>Google doesn’t get any gold stars for not preventing third party browsers on Android.
Yes it does. Let me know when I can side-load an open-source ad-blocking YouTube viewer app on iOS, or even just installing the browser of my choice (not a re-skin).
>Google has a conflict of interest between your privacy and their primary source of revenue.
Sure, but they also allow you freedom with Android devices, and that's something you'll never get with Apple.
> the claim you were implicitly defending was that Apple was collecting and selling private data themselves.
I never defended that particular claim. I only made my own tangential claims.
This is irrelevant, you’re confusing the engine and the browser. Chrome on WebKit is not a re-skin of Safari, it’s a Google browser, and it’s Google’s choice to not support ublock Origin on iOS, but nice try. Plus you missed the news that non-WebKit engines are now allowed in the EU and it’s only a matter of time before it spreads.
Google has announced their intention to stop serving YouTube content to anyone using an ad Blocker. Maybe soon you’ll see first hand how misguided and silly your argument against Apple is.
> Does it? Then why do all the iOS users complain…
Weird, it seems like we just had this conversation. That question was asked and answered. Did the fact that Apple does allow ad blockers, and the difference between the YouTube app and the browser not make sense the first time we talked about it?
BTW, the first Google autocomplete response I get for “how to block youtube ads on” is “Android”. That is evidence that more Android users complain about YouTube ads than iOS users.
P.S. who puts the ads on YouTube that you’re complaining about and makes them hard to skip or block? Oh, right, Google.
What I would admit is that Apple is maybe not as motivated to protect your data from unintentional leaking. Without user data, Google would be almost nothing. So they have to be extremely careful to maintain the trust of their users. For Apple (or Microsoft) their business is still sizeable enough with out user data.
I do have other browsers, but I only use them for specific needs. Like I keep some version of a Chrome-based browser around solely for if I need to Chromecast something. Other wise, I do not enjoy using third party browsers like Chrome, Firefox, etc., which I use at work all day.
Safari's web developer tools are not my favorite compared to other browsers, so I try not to develop much with Safari other than testing.
I also have a low threshold for obnoxious sites, and will just bail and not return if I get annoyed.
One store kept popping up that I was not familiar with. So I clicked eventually, and did some online searching about the company to make sure they are legit.
Turns out they are a local independent store. I've made two purchases from them since, and price compared against them for other purchases. Their ads are more likely to catch my eye in the future now.
"naturally"
A) Want me to pay to view a one-off article B) Want me to not see any of their content cause its ad infested.
To be fair, if Firefox's Reader Mode doesn't suffice as a bypass, then I really don't bother coming back.
Or do you not use any blockers at all?
Especially at work most sites I visit aren't ad infested hellscapes, like StackOverflow and its relatives are not ad infested, neither is wikipedia, etc.
Yes, you have to write a pattern. It saves you money while not supporting the erosion of autonomy. What's better than free vegetables? Delivery.
I'm away from my computer right now but I'll copy one of mine later/reply with it. The edit window here is unfortunate.
Eradication/filtering:
##a[href*="eng-leadership.com"]
||eng-leadership.com^$document
HN has a 'hide' button that could be leveraged for nicer integration, removing related widgets.
Solving my problem the "hacker way" would essentially be reimplementing Kagi, or hosting a service to do it. I already host Open WebUI and that is really moving along; maybe it can replace my Kagi needs someday, but for now I am pretty happy with continuing to use Kagi.
Again, my ultimate goal really is autonomy. There is still hacker spirit in your approach, fighting the status quo. It has my general support, even if I'm not a customer
I just wanted to remind people to look more nearby/within, too. This isn't a battle won once
That alone is worth the price of admission
There is a lot more going on beneath the surface of just "annoying ads in my face" which need to be accounted for, since browsers do not ship with effective, granular security controls.
In that situation of using someone else's device, I've had to move windows half off the screen to be able to concentrate on an article when the ads on the side were constantly distracting me.
Not only that, but you're wrong on a technicality too - > and every single one of those ads were programmed by... a software engineer!
Many ads are designed by creatives and placed and run by dedicated non-software engineering people, including deciding how many are run and their placement (i.e. bombardment or not). Sure engineers programmed the platform, but then you're just blaming the post office for the content of the mail, or the ISP for the content of the internet. What do you expect the software engineers to do? Limit 1 ad per page programatically and then every software engineer on earth must agree to enforce that limit and no matter how much pressure their superiors put on them, everybody holds the line?
This is not a rhetorical question, How do you expect all software engineers to be unified on a single solution to ad bombardment, given the internet is international, driven by market dynamics and capitalism and a non-trivial number of programmers are beholden to tyrannical managers because of their life situation (it can still be a minority, and ad bombardment emerges)?
By developing a consensus that it is not ok to do that type of behavior (bombardment of ads, surveillance capitalism, etc) and changing the culture
Changing bad behavior by corporations (esp. adtech/advertisers) is likely to be about as successful: it's not going to be done by "changing" the culture, but only by changing the laws, and then enforcing those laws and punishing offenders. Just like a rapist sees nothing wrong with raping a person, or a serial killer sees nothing wrong with murdering many strangers, or a "porch pirate" sees nothing wrong with stealing your Amazon delivery, an ad-tech corporation sees nothing wrong with feeding you psychologically manipulative advertising and blatant malware in search of profit.
No. They did not. They explicity said "mostly works".
> but this is blatantly false:
Of course it is. You set up a blantantly false strawman. Please don't use obviously piss weak rhetorical tactics, they make you look bad.
> every country has prisons with many criminals
And every country has varying incarceration rates, they are not all equal.
What should be looked at is countries by cultural attitudes towards crime and incarceration rates .. and the harder question of just how innately criminal imprisoned people are in various countries and whether they are just there from systemic features of a culture.
Again, there are no one size fits all answers and people aren't homogenous.
That was my exact point with the previous post blaming "software engineers" for ads.
Who said that police are not part of the culture?
I'm not arguing whether or not we need police, I'm arguing that if we come to a consensus (i.e., we agree that surveillance capitalism, etc, is not ok), then we can stop the problem. That may mean we even criminalize certain behaviors if we believe it is necessary. But the foundation is consensus. So let's do that- I firmly believe that surveillance capitalism and the bombardment of ads is not ok. What about you?
That sounds cool...but such coordinated, idealistic behavior never occurs in human beings.
See? That logic doesn't work so well. "Software engineers" are not a singular entity nor a homogeneous group. To maintain the status quo, it doesn't take more than just a few SWEs willing to implement ads and/or invasive tracking.
The people on this site are a group of humans uniquely equipped to actually speak and interact with the people responsible for this bullshit.
> The people on this site are a group of humans uniquely equipped to actually speak and interact with the people responsible for this bullshit.
There's not any method whatsoever for the people on this site to force all ad software developers to stop developing ad software.
I guess all the cybersecurity engineers should just quit because they're the ones to blame for all the malware...
Similarly, the only reason humans work as police is because humans commit crimes. So humans are really to blame for this problem.
I feel the same way about software for war fighting, which obviously has higher stakes. The profession itself doesn't push back on the ethics of it AND individual practitioners are actively developing death-dealing software.
You're acting like the profession has some kind of central authority. It does not. It's like asking for agreed-upon ethical standards for dog walkers; you're not going to get it, because there's nothing resembling a centralized organization, nor any kind of licensing for this profession.
>I feel the same way about software for war fighting,
If you want to eliminate software for war fighting, this is a fool's errand. Weapons for war are absolutely necessary, unless you want to be a victim to some dictator who doesn't agree with your ethical principles. History is full of examples of peaceful people who couldn't withstand an assault by other people who didn't believe in peace. In fact, I'd go so far as to claim that eliminating warfare (and the military apparatus for it: armies and navies etc.) is impossible as long as separate countries exist. Only if we manage to either conquer everyone or get everyone to agree to join a single planetary government can war really be eliminated. And that assumes that hostile aliens won't ever be a problem.
Even if there was some centralized group that created an ethical standard for conduct, do you really think that that would escape the influence of software companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. that have a vested interest in advertisement? Or that every software engineer would follow such a standard of conduct?
Members of a minority group, such as race or religion or sexual orientation are generally members of that group by birth, not by choice.
Members of the group 'software engineers' are members of that group by (career) choice.
Your key point here is a tautology; it doesn't really lead to any insight.
Usually if I'm on somebody else's computer it's because they need me to fix things for them, or speed things up or 'make it better' which means it's getting adblock. The amount of modals and tricks and things they fall for especially my elderly neighbors or people wanting their business laptops setup especially Windows that have jank ass webpages that have the 'Download' link be some arbitrary .exe for something completely not what they wanted to download put something on their system is crazy.. hell even Youtube is giving people scams.
I just fixed some women's sobriety center's computer for free and their user account had some anti virus secure browser opening 20+ 'browsers' on boot for 'AG' free anti-virus.
Never had an issue with ublock breaking anything important for me. Air travel, hotels, ordering things online, if something says disable my adblocker I close it out and never go to that domain again.
To each their own though. I don't do ads though and will save every soul I can. Ad-tech is cyber terrorism at this point, and I stick to my guns.