I think we don't give gradual acclimatisation enough credit here. Most of my students have never heard of Firefox and tools like ublock origin because they're acclimatised to the mobile ecosystem
"How do I install something? I use the app store."
"Oh, but I already have the internet on my phone, why would I want a 3rd party app to use the internet" (think old people who mix up AOL with the internet in reverse!)
As soon as I show them, they convert in seconds - they've forgotten web pages without adverts can exist.
No idea what adguard is, I used adblock plus before thought I'm not using it now as for why I'm not using it I have no idea but I think some ads were getting through otherwise I would not have switched form it. For a few years now I use Ublock and never had a problem with it, in fact it's the first thing I install on any machine after I finish install an os on it.
I used to use it all the time, but after a few years I got tired of constantly playing a game of "which blocked script is breaking everything this time" every time I visit a new website.
I wish I could remember the discussion (ADHD), but I remember someone pointing out to me a few years back that Ublock Origin makes NoScript redundant. It does have the ability to block scripts, it just enables them by default instead of blocking them. Don't quote me on this but I believe the reason was because it only blocks malicious Javascript.
To be fair targeted ads based on what I like I don't find as a problem as long as they are not intrusive and very in your face! But due to how bad most ads are I don't see even those as I always have adblock on!
I enjoy manipulating the advertising targeting algorithm to give me advertisements for industrial machinery, cloud computing, surveys, targeted advertisements, and other things I am not remotely in the market for.
We should be more grateful for these people. Our adblockers function because they don't bother using them.
The moment that most of society starts using adblockers is the moment they become defunct when the big corporations begin actively fighting them. I've already witnessed this with YouTube Vanced/Revanced.
I've been using it for years. About six months ago or somewhere around that, YouTube started a small campaign against adblockers though. In that campaign, they actually forced Vanced to rebrand to Revanced due to a lawsuit. It was in this time that through the campaign more people became aware of adblockers.
This actually sucked for users like me. The amount of times I'd have to repatch Revanced due to the constant updates was awful. It's more stable now, but if this ever happens again it will be annoying.
If people bring attention back to adblockers, then it will be like this again. Sites will be threatening legal action and restructuring themselves to break adblockers, while adblockers will have to constantly update in order to stay functional.
Because they're not the "default". Most folks stick with whatever comes on their device by default; Edge on Windows, Safari on MacOS/iOS, Chrome on Android, etc. Anything beyond just picking it up and turning it on requires forethought and effort, which most users don't care about.
"The door is there, for anyone with a sincere, passionate desire to learn. Which sounds really nice, 'anyone with a sincere and passionate desire to learn.' I just eliminated 90% of the world. 90% of the world wants to sit at home and watch Honey Boo Boo." --Chris Boden.
Sophisticated, powerful technology able to revolutionize the world becomes not only available but cheap, half the world's population carries around a supercomputer in their pocket with an always-on connection to the sumtotal of all human knowledge, and that device's user interface is designed to express little more than "Dat wun daddy watch me dat video dat wun now!" Because that's the level at which nearly everyone is willing to approach computers.
Back in the day, a man wasn't really a man unless he changed his own oil and tuned up the car himself. That mentality has reemerged in the 21st century.
There's a clear concerted corporate effort to push this idea that everything one uses every day is
some kind of black box appliance devised by sacred holy wizards, you couldn't possibly hope to understand.
You ought to just trust them. They want what's best for you.
And don't worry if anything goes wrong! There's some service, product, or replacement ready to be sold to you by "qualified professionals." Convenient!
Remember, you're too stupid to understand how any of this works. Don't touch it.
Doesn't matter. Light switches to email to cars. Nobody knows how it works even on an ELI5 level.
I can't be an expert in all things but how are people comfortable with this level of ignorant dependence? Even to the point of defending it? "I shouldn't have to know how my car/computer/whatever works." I've literally heard this.
Boggles the mind.
People are capable of a great many skills and holding a lot of knowledge about a great many things...and yet a majority are taught not to learn anything after school, maybe know how to do a job, and otherwise can't handle any task that doesn't involve a credit card payment.
A good portion of the news sites I read. If I divide the total area that goes for text and ads, it's around 35-65. Then there's taboola ads that show at the bottom, before the related articles. uBlock also stops the majority of stupid "WAIT, SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER" modal that shows up as soon as the mouse exits the window
Any shopping sites is chock full of trackers and external ads, too. Lemme browse shit in peace.
Because for many (including me) it's by far the best one. I get a system-wide adblocker and vpn on my phone and computer with really good apps. Nothing else has been both so good and easy so I'm more than happy to pay for it, it's also only $30 per year. I really like their telegram group too, they post news and articles both from them and others about anything related to privacy and so on. They recently wrote about Microsofts addition of ads in Windows and released an update that disabled those.
My man, 95% of people dont even know what a browser is
and you expect those to know what an adblocker does or is?
even now, all people using adblockers, or extensions in general are barely a drop in a desert dry bucket
