this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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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.

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[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 421 points 2 days ago (11 children)

The trade body called it “illegal circumvention technology”

Lol. Fuck off.

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 235 points 2 days 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 167 points 2 days 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 2 days ago

That's more to the point!

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 23 points 2 days 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 day ago

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

[–] zerofk@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day 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 day ago

Not to mention my internet fees.

[–] U@piefed.social 100 points 2 days ago

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

[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 59 points 2 days 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.

[–] chellomere@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days 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 2 days 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.

[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day 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 21 points 2 days 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 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] AntEater@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 day 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 day ago

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

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 4 points 2 days 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.

[–] NarrativeBear@lemmy.world 44 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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.

[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 64 points 2 days ago

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

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 18 points 2 days 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 day 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!"

[–] grue@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

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

[–] RickAstleyfounddead@lemy.lol 4 points 2 days ago

Lol they will even say blocking phishing links are unethical

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

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

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

They can still fuck off.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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.

[–] lemmyng@piefed.ca 7 points 2 days 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 2 days ago

You could say the same thing about the webpage itself.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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 2 days ago (1 children)

They ad a random to showing you ads

hhwat

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

Do you have some evidence of this?

[–] burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 days 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.