this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
1193 points (99.3% liked)

Technology

73381 readers
4153 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
[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 428 points 1 week ago (11 children)

The trade body called it “illegal circumvention technology”

Lol. Fuck off.

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 241 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Once the data enters my network it's my fucking data and I can do with it what I please.

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 171 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Likewise, I can prevent anything from even entering my network that I don't want on it.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 41 points 1 week ago

That's more to the point!

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 25 points 1 week ago

Unless it’s intellectual property that belongs to the movie industry. Then you better not touch it. Or that’s illegal.

But if it’s advertisements, then you have to watch it, or that’s illegal.

[–] Taldan@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Mildly pedantic, but uBlock blocks the connection before it enters your network

[–] U@piefed.social 101 points 1 week ago

Yeah. As if hacking into someone's mind is their right. Talk about entitlement...

[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 65 points 1 week ago

What should be considered illegal circumvention is allowing articles behind a paywall to be included in search results.

[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 61 points 1 week ago (2 children)

And this is exactly why Google did away with Manifest v2 (what uBlock runs on) and why they wanted to introduce their “web integrity” standard. At that point the pages would be signed with ads and in the signature didn’t match the page wouldn’t even be shown.

They tried to play it off as “ensuring that you truly get the correct copy of the page and no bad hackers have intercepted it” but really it would have 100% forced ads.

[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Then I guess I'm not looking at those pages. No skin off my nose. That said, Firefox with Ublock Origin plus a couple of other ad-blockers seems to be working pretty well for me. Anything with a paywall, I just move on.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Then I guess I'm not looking at those pages. No skin of my nose.

That works until every website starts doing it.

[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] AntEater@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Exactly. I'll go back to browsing the web with Lynx before I accept ads. If it breaks, it breaks...

[–] Arcka@midwest.social 3 points 1 week ago

Gladly go back to every site having an animated 'under construction' gif.

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 4 points 1 week ago

I use Mullvad's VPN and DNS on a router level. Every device on my network is blanketed by it. Some services don't work, but I am willing to sacrifice their profits for my integrity. Thus, to them I say 然らば fuckmothers.

[–] chellomere@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

To think that Google once had ads that I considered OK, just a bunch of text and links. How times have changed...

[–] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

Advertisers will always keep pushing things trying to find the limit where people will just barely tolerate it. Then when they push it too far they cry "no fair!" When people stop putting up with it.

[–] NarrativeBear@lemmy.world 46 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The O.G. add blocker.

1000029610

The concept is close to the same, how could something like this be seen as “illegal circumvention technology”?

It just shows us how disconnected the people in these positions can be that are regulating these things.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Fuckers want to colonize my property (my computer). that's what's illegal!

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 19 points 1 week ago (2 children)

They wont be happy until eye tracking technology makes sure we sit and watch their fucking ads before the actual content appears.

I mean, none of this is getting better. Its only going to become worse. I have ads in the fucking pause screen on my streaming tv app. So if I want to take a toilet break, I get an ad in my face. Its just so ridiculous.

[–] Booboofinget@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

What most of these people don't get is if they didn't get so invasive with those ads, people would not have to resort to ad blockers. Be it tho shut up the ads every few seconds on YouTube or having to play whack-a-mole every time I read an article, eventually you run out of patience and say "enough!"

[–] RickAstleyfounddead@lemy.lol 4 points 1 week ago

Lol they will even say blocking phishing links are unethical

[–] zerofk@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Say here’s a thought: can we sue ad companies for theft of electricity? They’re using my electricity to display their ads, without my consent.

[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 2 points 1 week ago

Not to mention my internet fees.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I actually agree with that but the only other solution is subject yourself to deeply concerning levels of surveillance, not to mention surveillance pricing.

I use AdNauseum and they have a toggle for privacy-conscious ads and I leave that on. That's my best compromise.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Toggles like that are available in other adblockers too and they pose a problem. They ad a ransom to showing you ads. You don’t want the ads but if the advertisers pay the adblocker company they get whitelisted and you see the ads anyway.

Never use those toggles.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They ad a random to showing you ads

hhwat

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Do you have some evidence of this?

[–] burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 week ago

Okay, I'm assuming that you are asking for evidence of the paying of adblockers to allow some ads through, and not for evidence that he fixed the typo he thought you were actually posting about?

Do a quick search for why we all now use ublock origin rather than ublock plus, and then for why we were using ublock plus rather than ublock, and then for why we were using ublock instead of adblock. There might be some adblock plus in the middle of that somewhere as well.

[–] lemmyng@piefed.ca 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

All ad networks, even the less intrusive ones, can be abused to distribute malware. In this day and age not having an ad blocker is like rawdogging internet strangers.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago

You could say the same thing about the webpage itself.

[–] Itsamelemmy@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

That was for 12ft.io Bypassing a pay wall. Not blocking ads.

[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 1 points 1 week ago

They can still fuck off.