Quick thought about ads

[afuna]

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)

Comments

[afuna]

Oooh popups and overlays. I forgot about those! (The LJ overlays never affected me though; as far as I can tell it was only triggered on US user).

And ugh yeah, malicious attacks :/ They're pretty much inherent risks in ad networks, because anyone who serves ads on their webpages have to rely on unknown third parties to be honest, and it just takes one dishonest person who only cares about profit...

I think you nailed how I feel with that last paragraph. I don't care if the ad server knows what I'm reading at this very moment. Anything more than that is pretty creepy.

[syntheid]

Yessss, NoScript is kind of my answer to those, because the adblock usually just blocks the message inside it and not the actual script that calls it. The most annoying thing is that the overlays will show on my phone, though, and trying to get them to close is sometimes impossible, so I just have to refresh the page to get it to go away. :| I want something like NoScript for my phone browser.

And yeah, which is unfortunate. It's too bad there isn't a better way to secure that format, really.

Yeah and it's not like it really... helps when it's a product unrelated to the page I was looking at, anyway. Occasionally I just get irritated because they're targeting me for perfume or something just because they somehow figured out I was female and that just makes me facepalm. Figuring I would probably be interested in study aids because I'm on an educational site? Reasonable. Figuring I would probably be interested in lacy lingerie because I have XX chromosomes, even though I'm reading up on tea or something? Not so much.