this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
1186 points (99.4% liked)

Technology

73129 readers
3107 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

They call it "dark traffic" - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.

Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] logicbomb@lemmy.world 327 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (14 children)

I used the internet for a long time before ad blockers even existed. Everybody simply ignored ads, instead. But that wasn't good enough for the advertisers. They weren't happy unless we were forced to look at the ads. Extraordinarily obtrusive ads. Popup ads. Popunder ads. That's when people started blocking ads. When you realized that your browser always ended up with 20 extra advertising windows.

Nobody really cared about blocking ads until advertisers forced us to. They made the internet annoying to use, and sometimes impossible to use.

Advertisers couldn't just be happy with people ignoring their ads, so they forced our hands and fucked themselves in the process. Now, we block them by default. I don't even know any websites that have unobtrusive ads because I never see their ads in the first place.

Now, they want to go back to the time when we would see their ads but ignore them. Fuck off. We know we can't even give them that much. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile.

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 64 points 4 days ago (6 children)

The main clencher that got me running a blocker were the few sites whose payload was 90% ad related and as long as the page was open it kept feeding me more ads until a gigabyte of RAM and 5% of my CPU were dedicated to something I wasn't even looking at.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 58 points 4 days ago (5 children)

Ex was mad that my PiHole was blocking some FB stuff so I turned it off.

"The internet's slow."

Looked over her shoulder and pointed to her (still loading) screen:

"Ad, ad, ad, ad, ad, ad, ad, ad..."

"FINE! Turn it back on!"

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Don’t date stupid people. Incentivize intelligence.

[–] 418_im_a_teapot@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I know surgeons who can’t start a zoom call. Being uneducated in a particular area is not stupidity. If you avoid dating someone over their lack of adtech knowledge, I would assume they are the one that dodged a bullet.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

adtech is nothing new or exotic. We have been dealing with this shit for years. if they still do not have a very basic knowledge of it by now, that's not a great sign.

[–] 418_im_a_teapot@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Unix and lawnmowers are nothing new or exotic either. I’m not stupid for not knowing how to repair a lawnmower, and I wouldn’t presume you’re stupid just because I can run circles around you at the command line.

I would, however, question your intelligence if you lack the ability to perceive the reasons behind different people knowing different things. It’s not that complicated.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Oh I’m fully aware people can specialize their intelligence, focusing so much on some areas they neglect others and fall behind. However, that’s also a choice they made. That unbalanced tech tree was their own doing.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (10 replies)