afuna: Cat under a blanket. Text: "Cats are just little people with Fur and Fangs" (Default)
afuna ([personal profile] afuna) wrote2010-12-10 06:55 pm
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Quick thought about ads

I don't mind seeing ads, and I don't mind ads that blend into my current context, but I do mind all the tracking that ad networks think is necessary in order to serve up ads to me.

This is why, for example, I don't mind the ads on Ravelry, but I do mind a lot of the third-party ad networks, and I do feel uncomfortable whenever I am on a webpage with a Facebook "like" button.

In that respect, adblock is actually the other way around, because it blocks the ads that you see, but it may not block the tracking mechanisms explicitly. Chrome adblock, especially, just hides the ads using CSS; it doesn't prevent the image from loading, so whatever web bugs get pinged anyway. Meh.

(Entry spurred by someone random's comment about how adblock is depriving websites of their livelihood, and my realizing that I use adblock mostly for blocking garish images and annoying site sections, but don't depend on it to protect me in any way)
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jumpuphigh: Pigeon with text "jumpuphigh" (Default)

[personal profile] jumpuphigh 2010-12-10 11:39 am (UTC)(link)
That's why I use Ghostery and 2 different cookie cleaning add-ons.

[personal profile] ex_pippin880 2010-12-10 12:38 pm (UTC)(link)
I was SO HAPPY when I realised I could adblock 404 Frank on LJ. SO. HAPPY.
pne: A picture of a plush toy, halfway between a duck and a platypus, with a green body and a yellow bill and feet. (Default)

[personal profile] pne 2010-12-10 01:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, Chrome adblock isn't really adblock.

And not only do web bugs get pinged, but if you're adblocking because you care about page loading times or bandwidth use, you're not that much better off, either.
syntheid: [Elementary] Watson drinking tea looking contemplative (Default)

[personal profile] syntheid 2010-12-10 04:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Hm... I don't really mind much about the usual web bugs getting pinged, but I do use ABP + NoScript on Firefox ... mostly to stop ads from actively bothering me (like blocking those really obnoxious LJ "popups"), though part of it is that I hope it keeps out most/some of the malicious attacks people have been spreading through advertisement code these days.

I'd probably bother less if ads were only text-based, though it is really kind of disturbing when it's targeted to who they think I am as a person instead of, like you said, matching the site content.
james: (Default)

[personal profile] james 2010-12-10 08:18 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't mind ads that are stationary and fixed. The ads which wait for you to start loading the webpage, then they appear at the rop and shove everything down, then shrink again and pull the webpage back up so you have to scroll up and down just to freaking read the webpage.

Also, popunders. Hate them. I don't mind ads, but I hate having ads that try to "trick" me into viewing them. Make your ad interesting, and I'll look! Or I won't! But I've stopped going to CNN.com and latimes.com primarily because of the movable ads at the top.
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