Ditching these deeply invasive products remains a good idea, independent on any decision to use ad blockers or not.
The Meta/Yandex incident in particular is straight-up malware and everyone should remove their apps.
It might be correct-and-incomplete but they just have no credibility on the topic.
They're also owned by one of the richest men in the world...
https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/washington-post-lost...
Advertising revenue is less than a 1/3rd of their revenue, and dropping fast. Ad revenue from more than 50 million visitors is less than subscription revenue from 2.5 million subscribers.
If WaPo was dependent on ads, they would have taken steps to increase accessibility to articles, but they didn't and haven't. Instead, they're restricting more and more content to subscribers, because ultimately subscribers are the ones that keep the lights on.
> and dropping fast,
Just like the number of subscribers and subscription revenue?
WaPo is by no means worst here. But their omission of Adblock in this article means they can’t be credible.
But adblockers do not fully solve the problem that the article is focused on. Namely, the use, e.g., by Meta and Yandex, of websockets in closed source mobile apps to listen on a loopback address for requests by mobile browsers, e.g., for tracking pixels.
There are approaches to prevent such tracking that do not necessarily require adblockers running in browsers. If the article mentioned Adblock but omitted other approaches, then does that mean the publisher is not credible.
But the point of the comment was that there are other methods besides ad blockers running in browsers. There are often alternative methods that "tech journalists" rarely if ever mention.
Sometimes, these methods are arguably better. For example, some methods can limit _all_ connections, whether the connections are initiated from (a) browsers, (b) other applications or (c) pre-installed corporate operating systems.
I miss those days.
You can't firewall a journalist's understanding that their job depends on certain things.
They're more tightly bound than that. They're dependent on Google Display Ads. Which really makes their whole diatribe that much more pathetic.
Any media company that decided to traffic the ads themselves, from their own servers, and inline with their own content, would effectively be immune from ad blocking.
> Ditching these deeply invasive products remains a good idea
While still allowing random third party javascript to run unchecked on a parent website.
Lol, why are you commenting as if somehow allowing it to run negates the other good ideas in some way? Obviously some is better than none, and all is better than some, but each step takes more effort.
what I _don't_ want is to be _tracked_. show me ads all day if you want.
I’m not asking what you think makes for a successful ad campaign, I’m asking why you’re letting perfect be the enemy of good
Self-hosting ads is not really a winning game unless your ads are non-animated, non-modal static text and images.
That's a problem for the media outlet to solve. Ad-supported tech "news" can never be trustworthy.