Ask HN: What makes you disable your adblocker?

[SCUSKU]

We're in the stage of the adblocker cat and mouse game where sites will ask you to whitelist their site for their ads.

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.

[andy99]

I don't accept the bargain of an ad supported internet. If I had to choose between ads and not seeing the pages, I'd go with the latter. There is no such thing as a good faith actor with respect to advertising. If someone is making something worth paying for, they should just charge for it, I'm happy to pay for stuff I value. Advertising corrupts everything (the "you're the product" cliche) making it never a good deal as a user.

[jijijijij → andy99]

Same. I just don't see advertisement as respectable income. Entertainment feeds too many mouths, people expect to make a living in an oversaturated market. I consume "media" mostly opportunistically. For the most part, I don't even like myself wasting time like that. If someone wants me out of their audience, that's fine with me, but don't presume my attention grants you commercial rights to my mind and autonomy.

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.

[rekabis]

Nothing. If I can’t view a site with my adblocker on, I will simply move on.

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).

[panqueca]

I don't disable it at all.

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.

[EA-3167]

Nothing, I would rather not use a site than turn it off. Even a good site isn't usually able to guarantee safe ad delivery, but if the site is worth it and offers a subscription or donation, I'll use that.

The ad blocker stays on though, much like a condom.

[Grimeton]

This explains it pretty well: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fa...

I usually stop at #3.

[sandreas → Grimeton]

Haha, exactly this is why I like pure HTML blogs of smaller tech enthusiasts:

- No cookies

- No newsletter

- No notifications

- No ads (affiliate links are kind of ok to me)

[matthewtse]

I have adblocker disabled for boring websites I really need, but which are old/crappy and use outdated popup technology.

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.

[s1k3s]

I've done it to watch a live sports event I really wanted to see.

It's basically a combination of me really wanting access to something + not having an alternative source to find said thing.

[themadturk]

I disable on YouTube, because the site is essentially unusable without it. YouTube ads are generally not horribly intrusive for the fairly small amount of time I spend using the site. There are a few other small sites I disable the ad blocker for, even if the ads are intrusive; the fact that the vast majority of sites I visit have their ads blocked make up for the few I allow in.

[SCUSKU → themadturk]

Very interesting. I am a pretty heavy YouTube user (and arguably should pay for YouTube Premium), but I have found that this Firefox extension always successfully blocks ads: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-for-y...

If you're open to switching to Firefox, it might not be a bad option!

[comprev → themadturk]

I can't remember the last time I saw an ad on YouTube. Firefox + uBlock Origin are a great combination.

[panqueca → themadturk]

Ublock origin works fine on Chrome and Firefox browsers.

For Android you can install this extension on Firefox as well. Brave Browser already blocks youtube ads out of the box.

[key_peace_pulse → themadturk]

I've been recently happily using Chrome with the Clear Skies extension https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/clear-skies/jkiagen...

makes youtube usable.

For every other website, use Firefox and the uBlock Origin addon.

[vrighter]

A gun to my cat's head. which is pretty hard to do over the internet. So, practically, nothing will get me to.

[scblock]

Not a god damned thing.

[vasili111]

I have whitelisted stack overflow. It does not have distracting ads which sometimes I find even useful.

[lifedayx]

I forget the number of ads that are on YouTube until I leave my network bubble.

[datascienced]

Any site that I need to use that seems to be broken because of ad blocking. The site may not have ads but just JS that got blocked that it actually needed. It is quite rare.

[meiraleal]

The only time I try a page without adblock is when it breaks/doesn't work as expected. I hope this doesn't become a growth hack trick.

[sp332]

AT&T's website. It's broken enough without the blocking. Recently I had to toggle Firefox's tracking protection to get the chat widget to work. Pile of junk.

[stop50]

My own domains(no tracking there), openstreetmap, my bank website(next to no tracking and i enter that site so rarely that the cookies expire between visits).

[egberts1]

What makes us post "No Soliciting" signs.

[sircastor]

When a site is literally broken with an ad blocker on. This is more typically tracking and metrics than actual ads though.

[paulcole]

I don’t use any adblocker.

Ads are good! They often show me things I want to buy.

[meiraleal → paulcole]

Nice try, Zuckerberg.

[satya71]

ethicalads.io seems totally fine to me. I think there was another one similar to it. Those are unblocked for me.

[matrix87]

never. ads waste electricity and are consequently bad for the environment :)

[486sx33]

Nothing