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Comment by plinkplink | Hacker News Reader

I put enormous effort into blocking as much advertising and marketing from my life as is humanly possible. I have written my own browser plugins and scripts, I have created network-wide blockers, I do not listen to the radio, I do not watch television, I do not look at billboards.

I use Firefox to protect my privacy from advertisers and to block ads. So you may be able to imaging my rage when Firefox updated and automatically loaded this full-page ad from Our Dark Lord Disney:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/98.0/whatsnew/?oldvers...

It's no secret that Mozilla needs cash. But I imagine this move is counter-productive as a lot of people like me, who support them monetarily as much as I can by purchasing their various apps and services, are driven away by loathsome ads.

you_have_become_the_very_thing_you_swore_to_destroy.meme

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I think this kind of mentality can only be properly appreciated when you've attempted it for yourself. It's a lot of work, but I think that reclaiming the ability to better regulate your focus/attention is absolutely worth it.

It's honestly like quitting your drug of choice (e.g. even just coffee or alcohol) and observing the affect it has on you after using it again for a long time. Only in this case, there is no "upside" to these (forced) capitulations.

Advertising has become so entrenched that it acts as if it has absolute right to your hijack your attention, and this landscape respects no boundaries. Apple in particular drives me nuts doing the same thing: pitching their arcade or wifi hot-spot partnerships with absolutely no opt-out mechanism.

Do you mean regulating your own focus in face of ads?

Because it does not get better. As you begin to adapt to them, the ads change.

I find it intolerable that every high-end device comes with less control and more ads than ever before. Therefore I no longer buy such devices.

I am happy on my barebones Linux desktop and my second-hand Android phone that is not logged into anything - because I have control.

> Do you mean regulating your own focus in face of ads?

Quite the opposite. I have really poor ability to tune them out, especially any audio portions. Once in front of me, they get under my skin easily and this isn't something I feel comfortable trying to just accept, despite how much "easier" it'd make things.

> Because it does not get better. As you begin to adapt to them, the ads change.

Agreed 100%, thus why zero tolerance is the only permissible option for me.

Here is a wager I don't wanna win: the "apps are constantly force-updated" world merges with the marketing world so that downtime is filled with ads. It's devilishly perfect: you're eagerly waiting to use the thing, so you're already a captive audience.

I (based in Europe) see a page presenting Mozilla VPN. Are you saying you see an ad for Disney?

[edit] I used a United States VPN now. Indeed a Disney ad for a movie. In Europe it's a static page with some text about Mozilla VPN.

for those of us outside the US and without VPN, archive.org also captured it from the US: https://web.archive.org/web/20220308222503/https://www.mozil...

EDIT: vs screenshot what EU sees: https://i.imgur.com/S1ueBQn.png

Interesting. Yes; it is a slimy bait-and-switch ad for Disney's newest animated series - ultimately an ad for their streaming service. I will not support them by posting links here.

Every day I consider saying 'to hell with it' and going back to Safari.

Vivaldi, by one of the creators (and former CEO of the original Opera, still seems decent, they don't have any bullshit like a "buy now pay later" extension or a rendering engine that inserts ads.

Safari does not seem to have a robust adblocker solution. I could be mistaken but it seems like you can only install extensions through their app store? So convoluted compared to Chrome. It is blazing fast though. :/

I've been using an adblocker on Safari in combination with either NextDNS or PiHole. Works not too bad. Only reason I use Firefox/Chrome is because I'm a frontend dev.

I'm in the US but still see the VPN page. I use VPN though so maybe VPN out-points are excluded for some reason.

Even the page with Mozilla VPN is an ad, although first-party and not third party.

This is disgusting. I mean, if they said "ok, you know what, we can't survive without ads. So here go the ads" - I'd be sad, but I'd understand. But they make it look like "oh no, we still hate ads, and are totally independent, but this new $INSERT_OUR_SPONSOR_PRODUCT_HERE is so good, we can't help but advertising it anyway!". They are capitalizing on their accumulated image of non-commercial independent entity to push Disney products. I hope at least they got some really good money from it, because this is something you can only sell once, after this it's worthless.

Can you open that page, hit F12 and look for the trackers, analytic scripts etc?

I hate this "We forced you to update, also we are the privacy, also we absolutely can fingerprint you because we forced you to see this page you didn't asked to look".

Absolutely infuriating.

Glad to know I'm not the only anti-ad person who was incensed.

To answer my own question: there is a Google Tag Manager at least, along with Mozilla's own telemetry and Sentry.

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