Two Out of Three Young Millennials Now Use an Ad Blocker
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Lately a couple of them have gotten new computers and mentioned that they think it came with a virus because there ads everywhere on the internet.
After I wrote the above, I double checked myself and, apparently, I am using Mozilla's definition. However, it seems Apple also differentiates among the terms add-on (the super-set), and extensions/ plug-ins (subsets).
If someone makes my life immeasurably better without telling me, I'm thankful.
1. Install the OS (or remove the crap-ware from the manufacturer)
2. Install the OS updates/security packs/etc.
3. Install the anti-virus
4. Install the ad-blocker
(2) is creating an entirely different argument from blue sky. You're putting words in my mouth.
I support installing ad-blockers to reduce attack surface.
Removing Flash and Java is more nuanced. Most non-advanced users expect Flash sites to work and many non-advanced users need Java sites to work (e.g. enterprise internal crap). I think click-to-play is a decent mitigation here that non-advanced users can understand.
Maybe disabling Java is okay, so long as they really do not need it for anything. Disabling Flash is a harder sell.
I didn't put any words into your mouth but was just pointing out better things to do to reduce your attack surface than not installing AV. Java is dead and I can't recall any site needed to use in years that requires it. Flash doesn't need to be installed standalone at all anymore and shouldn't be. When a site requires Flash I fire up Chrome which has Flash built-in and is of course way more secure.
AV does have limited use for advanced users... I have gone back and forth between having a 3rd-party AV solution installed over the years. I have a high end PC and the product I use has little impact resource wise so why thinking is why not?
A normal people get a message "Virus win32.badthingy detected: -delete- -quarantine- -ignore-". He clicks on the little "x" in the corner of the window.
-- true story
I'd love to know a decent one I can put on thats cheap/free that catches these fuckers.
Would save me a ton of time lol.
(Obviously, you can also build this for corporations, where the notifications are emails and managers can approve software installations on workstations and such from their email client. But corporations already get the benefit of "managed app stores" for frontloading software approval; they need this much less than individuals do.)
But I still get Linode ads for weeks if I make the mistake of visiting Linode outside incognito mode (I've been a customer there for 5 years; I don't need another ad prompting me to sign up). I still get ads for things that I've just bought instead of complementary goods for the things I've just bought.
I still see absolutely insulting garbage ads for One Weird Trick that $GROUP hates. It's the offensively stupid Taboola/Outbrain etc. bottom-of-the-barrel ads that repulse and puzzle me the most. My memory says -- and scanned newspaper archives confirm -- that back before online news was a thing, regional newspapers had plenty of advertising but it was advertising for normal goods and services: snow tires, a clothing sale, lawn care, oil changes, etc. Shortly after the turn of the millennium I thought that online advertising was going to be kind of scary due to the profiles advertisers could build up on me but also kind of nice because I'd always see ads that aligned with my interests, instead of e.g. randomly bombarding me with ads for baby diapers in hopes that I am a new parent. Ha, if only.
The most noticeable difference between small news outlet ads now and 30 years ago isn't that the ads I see are now all eerily aligned with my interests; it's that worst of them are aggressively misaligned with my interests and with the interests of anyone who's not a total fucking rube. Who actually believes that they've won the iPhone giveaway contest or that they need a weird trick to clean the dangerous fluoride toxins from their tap water? I've never clicked on this trash but I appear doomed to encounter it forever.
Thanks for the book recommendation - I'll have to read that!
It makes sense that so many are targeted at rubes. Who else do you think are actually clicking ads?
I work for a mid-size telecom that exclusively does B2B. There's no way an ad network would be serving up that many ads for that company unless their ad network knew I'm connected to it. It's also bizarre, because I'm the last person who needs to be advertised to about the company.
Our site actually doesn't work if you are using uBlock. I fixed it at one point but... actually, I forget why it didn't get merged in.
Anyway, basically the response was almost "Who cares?"
Are they different to "Young persons"? And what is an "Old Millenial"?
Why not just describe the group of 18-24 year olds as "Young adults", which is what they are.
As someone born in 1991, I genuinely thought I was really close to the end of the "millennial" generation, but apparently i'm almost a "young millennial"...
Someone currently in their early-to-mid 30s. End of Gen X, beginning of Millennials.
The exact years are nebulously-defined (cusps typically are, since they're unofficial extensions of the theory), but I've seen it defined as wide as people born 1977-1988. Mid-80s are almost universally accepted as part of the cusp, but how early or how late it extends beyond that seems to vary.
Divide et Impera, etc.
Unlike other propaganda attempts this one actually works pretty well.
Millennials have as much or more power than the boomers did when they started working. The difference is that they expect more, because they spent their childhoods getting participation trophies and being waited on hand and foot by adults concerned for their comfort and 'safety.'
In the real world, the reward for doing exactly what is expected of you isn't promotion: it's that you keep your job.
In the real world, sometimes you're expected to sacrifice for your goals.
Bullshit. If millennials expect more, it's because they see the standard of living their parents and grandparents have and have had their entire life. They own homes that have gone up in value 5 fold. They owned homes at an early age. They got high paying jobs easily and costs of living were low.
Youth and young adult unemployment rates are shit if you don't ignore the "discouraged workers". We have expectations for young adults to take on tremendous levels of debt like never before. Housing prices are higher than ever before. Healthcare is more expensive than ever before. Millennials are having to pay into a social security system they see their parents or grandparents benefiting from, knowing (or often not knowing) they'll never get those same benefits despite all the money paid in.
The baby boomers are handing the millennials an entirely fucked up world. The environment is a disaster, politics are a disaster, the perpetual war and crony capitalism of the MIC is a disaster. Things will only get better once the boomers die off and we can rid ourselves of the "fuck you, got mine" generation.
If things go the way of the old white people we'll probably get one last gift of a trump presidency.
HRC wins and we continue to kill civilians by the tens of thousands overseas, destabilizing entire regions in the Middle East. All the problems of our current status quo get worse. People in power continue to cement their position there. I don't think HRC is going to be any different from Obama and I can't imagine she's going to do anything positive he hasn't already done.
Trump wins and we get a likely ineffective commander in chief and congress becomes a useless sack of potatoes, getting upset that their bullshit has been called out and going home with their toys. Definitely hope for withdrawing from our perpetual war, fixing our election and campaigning systems, and making future elections much better at representing what most people want.
Between the two, I go with Trump, if nothing else because it means more hope for a future of better elections and putting an end to blowing up women and children every day with drone strikes. Yeah there are some bad characters in his supporter base and some of what Trump says is equally as stupid as what HRC says. At least I can believe Trump sometimes, which isn't the case with HRC.
In the real world, arrogant people act like condescending jerks for no apparent reason.
No, its not.
> Sometimes I wonder if boomers have _any_ idea of the frantic pace of today's workplace
Probably many of them don't. Then again, its not boomers that are mostly writing about "Millenials" (there's probably more Millenials writing about Millenials than Boomers doing so, and Gen-Xers are probably next. There's certainly more Boomers than Xers, but a lot of them are retired rather than trying to eke out a living in the frantic pace of today's publishing workplace.)
https://demo.adtechmedia.io/atm-core/nytimes/www.nytimes.com...
NOTE: Above article is from NY Times and is ONLY for demo purposes :)
Either way, this type of paywall experience is significantly less annoying than a pop-up, but I personally would still be unlikely to pay for a subscription
The donate 5 cent thing might work for some but I'd never want to tie a payment method to my browser.
And, regarding the payment, would you connect with Apple Pay or Amazon Payments or PayPal instead of providing publishers your card directly?
What I would do is pay for a subscription if it included all the major news outfits and was cheap, say $10 a year unlimited access.
Nevermind all the irrating navigation that suddenly appeared around the edges of the page.
Quora does this and it's why I will never, ever sign up for an account with them.
It's not a bulletproof idea of course, can be gamed. Users could take a screencap, or copy-paste, before the timer is up. But that's probably not worth worrying about until the model becomes widespread.
http://i.imgur.com/YpuvdlX.png
If I ran a blog I would include the same element, some wording like "you know, creating quality content requires more effort than spewing clickbait, mind leaving us a tip to let us know that you appreciate our efforts?" and a flattr button.
Although your idea sounds like a good starting point for a website which caters to a massive audience (basically, every news website).
Thing is though, unless and until we have a standardized web payments API, I'm not sure it can be. If doing this required me to create accounts with every ad tech provider who wanted to offer something like this... no thanks.
If this will evolve into a standardized web payments API, I'm on the same page with you (I don't think so). But quality journalism is struggling and solo micro-payments won't work, we all agree on that, so how can we help the freedom of speech remain free? Think about it ;)
P. S. By the way, like in software engineering, we target to reuse existing e-commerce (or m-commerce) processes for both authentication and payments, so in theory you should not be asked to create a new account. Instead reuse existing ones.
- The headline loads, then flashes off, then reappears when a webfont finishes loading
- A "Support quality journalism" popover jumps in front of the content I opened.
- A fifth of the screen height is taken up with a permanent fixed-position header nav
- When I scroll to the bottom, the page gets jumpy and scrolling lags as it tries to on-demand load a bunch of related / recommended articlesIf you host the ads on the original site and show them without JavaScript you can easily make it almost impossible to block.
Nickel and diming users isn't going to work either, if you want to get paid for the content you'll have to do an all-in deal like Netflix and hope people sign up.
However the reason I installed the Ad Blocker in the first place is the way some local newspaper sites in the UK (run by http://www.localworld.co.uk/) will try and run 50+ scripts and make it almost impossible to read the article.
It was a defence reaction to abusive web sites.
Add that to their removal of experienced staff and replacing them with 18 year olds that think news is what you find when you search Twitter for your home town, or 'is this Gloucestershire's largest chip?' deserving of 4 'stories', it's no wonder local newspapers in the UK are going down hard.
Also, this deserves a mention:
Oddly enough the only times I have really regretted turning off my ad blocker is when I'm watching videos where an unskippable ad longer than 10 seconds comes up or I go to some news site (which seems to 3/4 of the time have some full page popup or autoplaying video).
How do you keep track? What about drive-by exploits that could infect your computer on first visit? Or mobile ads that redirect to the app store?
My son (who never had broadcast TV) learned how to push the "skip ad" button on Youtube years before he could read.
One problem is that most sites seem to think of advertising as adding value for themselves and the advertiser. Advertising can and should actually add value for readers with a good example being the job listings here on HN.
I think some % of publishers will have to try and adopt better advertising practices (plus maybe offer some additional paid features), and those that do will be able to survive.
I'm willing to pay for content, but honestly only up to how much a site would get from me for an ad impression. I am not going to do $N/mo/yr for X sites however.
Once I found out the sum total of what my ad impressions for every site amounts to about $10/yr, I am really annoyed that the ad industry and content publishers aren't coming up with their own google contributor type deal.
Free content isn't worth the cost in Ads. By this I mean the bandwidth, the cpu/energy use, and the cognitive cost. The monetary cost for people is insane. I'd pay $20/year to tell ad companies to go away and let companies replace my ad impression with a micro transaction equivalent.
Until then, screw the whole industry, ad blockers it is. Give me a real choice or accept that reality.
It was actually $6.20/year at that time. I've been generous with the $10/yr. I also consider $20/year a win for consumption companies as that would mean we could outbid ads for our own eyes. It seems stupid to have to say that but you'd be surprised how little money an individual makes on their own.
The fundamental problem is the same as with spam. Let's say it takes $1 for a business to show an ad to a person and that every hundredth person is going to buy the product. If their product brings in $100 or more of profit, they break even and are justified in running the ad.
What this model doesn't consider that for the rest 99 people the ad was an inconvenience and, in fact, provided a negative value. Let's say that was 20¢ worth of attention and annoyance. Is anyone going to give them their 20¢ back?
In essence, businesses are only concerned with their customers while non-customers are in a way subsidizing the business. What kind of system can fix this, I don't know, but I'd be interested in hearing what other people have to say.
Everything changes depending on the price, both from the reader and publisher points of view.
Works fine if you are transparent about it. 30 seconds spent with the host saying "<thing> is sponsored by <product>. <product blurb>" is fine.
> essentially all of the ad supported sites I visit are diversions.
Given that there exist people that hold this opinion, their own view about using an ad blocker is not at all in the same context than in the prisoners dilemma.
Thus the dilemma is biased, to an extent directly proportional to the number of people holding this opinion.
If it is biased, the standard game theory analysis does not apply directly. i.e. the best move might not be to suffer ads for no long term gain.
More prosaically, I do not care in the slightest if people living in selling ads disappeared completely from internet. They are a cancer, ads are a cancer to the utopia that internet was for a short time.
We need come back to this state. We will, actually, by empowering users.
Excellent response, but on this particular point, I'd suggest you are being intellectually dishonest - or at least overly simplifying things. You use an ad blocker precisely because there is content you want to see. To claim that you don't care if the content you are trying to see disappears from the Internet is rather silly.
Continuing on this line of thought:
I might be interested in some amateur production, genuine efforts borne from passion and dedication. I think actually that any effort to become a professional on this segment will make the creator distort their creative process. That's the cancer I'm talking about. It's not simply from the end-user point of view, but about the approaches that are made possible for people to reach out.
I don't want to condone this monetization scheme. I think advertisement is a bubble waiting to collapse (with rigged analytics and big players monopolizing revenues).
Using an ad-blocker prevent me from ever generating revenue streams toward this industry. I already pay for using the pipes on the Internet. My only concern is communities being able to strive, be it on obscure BBS, IRC channels, subreddits or specialized fora. Others, I wish they would disappear.
1: http://jacobsalmela.com/block-millions-ads-network-wide-with...
One can only take so much.
(half is probably an overstatement ;) Nevertheless, I was resolutely trying to be 'moral' and not use and ad blocker until my browser began to regularly crash and I traced the crashes to ads. That issue may be fixed now for all I know, but I can't really go back, though I still try to whitelist sites that I want to have a bit of support, and pay for others somehow, here or there. :) )
It's gotten really aggressive the past few years, especially for local news, mostly because they were ill-prepared for the shift in advertising.
Staff cuts (as ad revenue plummeted) surely included all of the "web people" with that work being outsourced.
Many local news shops are hanging on by a thread; unfortunately that thread is reinforced by their website carpeted in advertising.
Raise your hand if you never got a virus and almost bricked the family computer doing something mostly innocuous...
Ad-blocking may not be as essential to self-defense as it used to be, but old habits die hard.
Possibly even more relevant nowadays than it used to be with more drive-by malware, 0-day exploits, and more and more people using the internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/big-name-sites-hit-b...
Blo-cker! Blo-cker! ... who o o uh-oh!
G - E G - E A C D E-D
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/millennials-to-sna...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/millennials-to-sna...
This is a big reason to support open source add-ons (not sure if add-on is, might be since it was forked? No idea.) You can see if they're doing anything malicious on the side.
But besides that, most the extensions I use have serious bugs. I'd be willing to fix them, but there is no ability to do that. Chrome makes it difficult to view the code and there is no ability to edit it or copy it. Let alone submit pull requests to the author, unless they happen to have put the code on github also.
as in 66% percent of 18-24 year olds now use an ad blocker
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/millennials-t...