• doctortran@lemm.ee
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    25 days ago

    It’s legitimately embarrassing how many people can’t seem to grasp that this isn’t the “fuck you” they think it is.

    They aren’t shocked or upset, they’re not panicking because you left, because it’s all the same to them either way. You either access the site while blocking the ads and they get no income from your views, or you go away and they don’t get income from your views. Exactly nothing has changed for them except now they don’t have you pulling bandwidth.

    The point is not to get YOU to turn your ad blocker off, the point is it will get SOME people to turn it off who aren’t you. If you’re not willing to turn it off, then what you do matters very little because they appreciate there’s no way they’re getting income from you ever.

    It’s got the same energy as “You expect me to pay admission to enter this theme park? Well now I’m not going in, don’t you feel stupid?”

    • Yerbouti@sh.itjust.works
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      25 days ago

      Well first it’s not “fuck you”, its “goodbye”. And second it’s not about “you”, it’s about “me” not visiting your site if I need to turn off adblock. End of the story, our path will not cross again. Ciao, aurevoir, hasta not luego.

      • ADTJ@feddit.uk
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        25 days ago

        I think the comment is about the last panel being a shocked pikachu type face.

        The companies are not shocked that you no longer visit their page, that’s their intention. “Generate revenue for us or leave”

        P.S. genuine lol at hasta not luego, shouldn’t it also be “aurevoir pas” or “aurevoir never” since that also essentially means see you again.

        • Yerbouti@sh.itjust.works
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          25 days ago

          Lol, I’m french canadian and you’re actually not wrong. Aurevoir litteraly means “see you again” but we dont really use it that way. “Adieu” would have been a better choice. It kind of mean “to God”, meaning you dont intent to see someone ever again, or until you die at least.

          • ADTJ@feddit.uk
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            25 days ago

            That’s not what I was saying, I meant instead of the French they did say

            • Agrivar@lemmy.world
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              23 days ago

              You should have used a period then, or at least a semicolon, in between the unrelated phrases.

    • ArchRecord@lemm.ee
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      25 days ago

      I completely get your point, and to an extent I agree, but I do think there’s still an argument to be made.

      For instance, if a theme park was charging an ungodly amount for admission, or maybe, say, charged you on a per-ride basis after you paid admission, slowly adding more and more charges to every activity until half your time was spent just handing over the money to do things, if everyone were to stop going in, the theme park would close down, because they did something that turned users away.

      Websites have continually added more and more ads, to the point that reading a news article feels like reading 50% ads, and 50% content. If they never see any pushback, then they’ll just keep heaping on more and more ads until it’s physically impossible to cram any more in.

      I feel like this is less of a dunk on the site by not using it in that moment, and more a justifiable way to show that you won’t tolerate the rapidly enshittified landscape of digital advertising, and so these sites will never even have a chance of getting your business in the future.

      If something like this happens enough, advertisers might start finding alternative ways to fund their content, (i.e. donation model, subscription, limited free articles then paywall) or ad networks might actually engage with user demands and make their systems less intrusive, or more private. (which can be seen to some degree with, for instance, Mozilla’s acquisition of Anonym)

      Even citing Google’s own research, 63% of users use ad blockers because of too many ads, and 48% use it because of annoying ads. The majority of these sites that instantly hit you with a block are often using highly intrusive ads that keep popping up, getting in the way, and taking up way too much space. The exact thing we know makes users not want to come back. It’s their fault users don’t want to see their deliberately maliciously placed ads.

      A lot of users (myself most definitely included) use ad blockers primarily for privacy reasons. Ad networks bundle massive amounts of surveillance technology with their ads, which isn’t just intrusive, but it also slows down every single site you go to, across the entire internet. Refusing that practice increases the chance that sites more broadly could shift to more privacy-focused advertising methods.

      Google recommends to “Treat your visitors with respect,” but these sites that just instantly slap up an ad blocker removal request before you’ve even seen the content don’t actually respect you, they just hope you’re willing to sacrifice your privacy, and overwhelm yourself with ads, to see content you don’t even know anything about yet. Why should I watch your ads and give up my privacy if you haven’t given me good reason to even care about your content yet?

      This is why sites with soft paywalls, those that say you have “x number of free articles remaining,” or those that say “you’ve read x articles this month, would you consider supporting us?” get a higher rate of users disabling adblockers or paying than those that just slap these popups in your face the moment you open the site.

    • Karjalan@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      Yes and no. Similar with apps, you can say “well if you’re not paying/seeing adds then we lose nothing by you not visiting”, but, depending on their growth stage, it’s very hard to grow and get investors without a sizable audience.

      Say you’re a startup. If you have 10k people and you ignore ad blockers and people who don’t play subscriptions. Then you start preventing people with ad blockers and no subscriptions from your platform and it drops to 1k… You lose investment pulling power.

      The effect is amplified, or much worse, if you actually require user generated content as well

      • Scolding7300@lemmy.world
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        25 days ago

        Traffic could also help other types of advertising that doesn’t include the ads that ublock stops (e.g. sponsorships on yt)

    • x00z@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      You can’t seem to grasp that we’re not just single people. We’re a force that also influences the non-tech people around us.

      When I use, repair or configure the computer of a friend or family member, it’ll definitely get an adblocker.

    • don@lemm.ee
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      25 days ago

      Ignore the last panel and it makes way more sense. When the site demands I see their ads, I leave that site and look for that same content elsewhere. There’s never a time when I think “HA! Gotteem!” I just don’t engage with the site, and don’t care about it or who else does.

    • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      This is Lemmy, though. We’re not the normal crowd, not even the normal tech crowd. We’re the “Hacker News in '07 that laughed at Dropbox because you could just use curlftpfs and source control” crowd. As a general rule, if it’s not about Linux or Star Trek lore this place knows nothing.

      • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        24 days ago

        You’d be surprised, there’s plenty of people with niche interests here, it’s just that if I made an AR builder’s comm, or a reloading comm, or a vape juice mixing comm, there’ll be 5 whole users if I’m lucky because lemmy is still small.