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Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads (www.windowscentral.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

The majority of people already don't use ad blockers though. The Chrome Web Store says that 34 million people use (used?) uBlock Origin, while it's estimated that around 3.3 billion people use Chrome. If those numbers are correct, only around 1% of Chrome users use uBlock Origin.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I feel sorry for that 3.26 billion people, most of whom have to deal with ads, spyware and malware.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

What’s the alternative to ads, though? Not everyone wants to (or can afford to) pay for every site they use.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

its not just ads and malware, and its not only about beeing sorry for them. ads are also manipulating how people think. not only the obvious things like "that product is good", but also that products in general would help (with problems you didn't have). and the format itself of ads (even without considering its contents) already has a changing effects on the minds of those who watch it. i am thinking of some parts of neil postmans thoughts about television back then and i guess there is plenty of possibilities to make a realistic conspiracy theory out of it why exactly the most poisonous parts of television are replicated to the internet with massive force even though everyone ignores ads in the net. i like theories

unfortunately, feeling sorry for them does not help society to stability. 😥

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

What's the alternative to ads, though? Not everyone wants to (or can afford to) pay for every site they use.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

What’s the alternative to ads, though? Not everyone wants to (or can afford to) pay for every site they use.

its not about paying for the site a user uses, its about paying those who run the site (and less to pay for someone only "managing" the site by doing actually nothing)

maybe these could be alternatives:

patreon
~~flattr~~
micropayment in general
donations (somafm runs on donations)
link to shopping platforms (musicians on somafm mostly have links to the songs on amazon that you see while playing the song for free)
communities, like FSF, local groups
some small payed supporter part (like lwn.net) while the important stuff that makes the win-win of the site is free to use
maybe the list from this page can help too: https://kinsta.com/de/blog/patreon-alternativen/ Kickstarter Indiegogo Podia Sellfy Buy Me a Coffee Memberful Hypage Ko-fi Substack Kajabi Gumroad WooCommerce Mighty Networks MemberPress Uscreen

maybe even a combination of multiple of those *whoa!!!! mindblow!!! could be a good choice to allow usersvto choose how to contribute.

so really only choosing to offer exactly one option that also puts all users at a real risk of real attacks where they can get ripped off of all or lots of their real money and data for the sake if earning 0.003 ¢ per each putting them at high risk is not really what should be done, or do you personally profit from their users high risk and are thus completely okay with it? hope not.

if you have to earn money with your project or whatever, why not offer several options to choose from? why only one? and while we're at it, offering an ad-free "membership" for 400 times the price of what they would earn by the same visitor with ads like they try here sometimes, does not make any platform look good, but the opposite.

there are many platforms that i would pay for monthly and i would spend much more money alltogether than now on that if their price would not be artificially pushed into astronomically heights per service...

there is one project where i do donate each month a little bit via recurring bank transfer since years. my transfer says the name of the project and "donation" thats pretty easy to setup for both sides, but too complicated for those who pay designers money so they can place the ad layers on top of the 400 other layers of spypixels and navigation controls.. really ? lol*

if those you are talking about cannot afford to have a bank account for some reason, i guess they also cannot receive the revenue of ads on their webpages ;+)

saying there are no alternatives to ads is rather a candidate for the lamest excuse award ;-)