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submitted 1 week ago by 1984@lemmy.today to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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[-] Olhonestjim@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Advertisers do not have the right to demand my attention, or to brainwash me. I have every right to deny them and decide what to allow inside my head. This is war.

"We paid for the right to show you this!"

You paid for the opportunity not the right, but you didn't pay me, motherfucker -- and my price is everything you have or fuck off and die.

Edit: You know what? This is how I really feel about ads.

This is a consent issue, and I will not allow advertisers inside me. They hire psychologists in order to exploit humans' most vulnerable mental blind spots. They don't just brainwash us. They mindfuck the entire human species, and they do not recognize consent. We need to treat advertising as the collective mindr*pe that it is, otherwise they will never stop exploiting us, and we will never be able to build a bright future for humanity and this world. They are manipulating the trajectory of an entire species with zero regard to any future well-being. The butterfly effects are inconceivable. Our minds are sacred. The advertising industry is committing a crime against humanity that we have failed to recognize as such, because money is all that matters today. They must be stopped before Big Tech perfects brain-computer interfaces.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago

What's frustrating to me is the idea that law makers and advertisers believe I don't have a right to alter data that comes onto things I own. And nobody chime in with the brain dead "☝️🤓 actually you don't own it." Because even if you wanna waste time with that stupid distraction, I own my computer. I built it from parts.

Controlling my perception is my right. If I wanna use things that block ads that's my right. PERIOD. I NEED TO BLOCK ADS BECAUSE OF MY DISABILITY.

[-] StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

An adblocker on your devices is equivalent to putting a Britta filter on your water tap.

[-] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago

More necessary than that, really.

Only a billion. Need to quintuple that.

[-] Almacca@aussie.zone 12 points 1 week ago

The trade body called it “illegal circumvention technology”

Lol. Fuck off.

[-] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

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

[-] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

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

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[-] NarrativeBear@lemmy.world 4 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.

[-] 1984@lemmy.today 3 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] U@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago

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

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[-] NutWrench@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 week ago

Website: "You appear to be using an ad blocker." Me: "You appear to be correct."

[-] m3t00@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

'disable ad block to contine'. no

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[-] killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

The use of the term "Dark traffic" here is to paint the use of ad-blockers as something nefarious. Don't use it, fuck these people right in their stupid mouths.

I propose using the terms "clean traffic", for ad-blocked website traffic, and "dogshit traffic" for everything else.

[-] grueling_spool@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago

Maybe we could turn it around: adblockers are tools that block ads and other kinds of dark traffic such as trackers and malicious scripts.

[-] x0x7@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

They are so short sighted to. Ad blocker help advertizers. It allows sites to fill up sites with ads to the point of being unusable while not losing 100% of traffic. That keeps these site relevant enough that old people who don't have ad blockers end up there too when they follow links or google ranks a site high because it has traffic.

If they got rid of all ad block somehow they would have to decrease the ads because I wouldn't use the web. Or online communities would be way more conscious of the ad level of the things they link to.

[-] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

The tech community is pacified into not taking action against the polluters by our adblockers because we don't see the egregious ads and so we don't fight the good fight for the user.

[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Ad blockers are the fight. Those users who can't be bothered to learn a bit about the devices they spend so much time on aren't owed anything.

What does "fighting the good fight" even look like to you in this context, anyways?

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[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 week ago

The trade body called it “illegal circumvention technology”, said 12ft.io has been locked by its web host, and promised to take similar action against other paywall bypassing technologies.

Just because you send bits to my network does not oblige me to render them. That's like saying I broke the law back when I had cable and changed channels during ad breaks. Falls flat on its face.

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[-] logicbomb@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I used the internet for a long time before ad blockers even existed. Everybody simply ignored ads, instead. But that wasn't good enough for the advertisers. They weren't happy unless we were forced to look at the ads. Extraordinarily obtrusive ads. Popup ads. Popunder ads. That's when people started blocking ads. When you realized that your browser always ended up with 20 extra advertising windows.

Nobody really cared about blocking ads until advertisers forced us to. They made the internet annoying to use, and sometimes impossible to use.

Advertisers couldn't just be happy with people ignoring their ads, so they forced our hands and fucked themselves in the process. Now, we block them by default. I don't even know any websites that have unobtrusive ads because I never see their ads in the first place.

Now, they want to go back to the time when we would see their ads but ignore them. Fuck off. We know we can't even give them that much. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile.

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[-] flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If ad networks weren't the number 1 way to get malware installed on your machine, didn't slowly take over the dedicated space for the actual content of a website, or put pressure on the websites in question to only publish things inoffensive to the advertisers maybe adblockers wouldn't be such an issue.

If your site can't exist without being a cesspit of annoying and useless infomercials and a deployment mechanism for malicious code injection then your site should not exist.

Not too many people had an issue with static banner ads back in the day after all except greedy website operators and advertisers.

[-] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.

– Banksy

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[-] Gibibit@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

They got it the wrong way around. Visitors who use adblock are not "dark traffic", the bullshit scripts and tracking they use are dark. The adblock users are actually the only clean traffic. The adblockers aren't "brutal", the people without blockers are being brutalized.

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[-] Binturong@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago

So this confirms that people have a negative reaction to ads, which every actual internet user knows in their bones already. This means they ALSO are not even doing their one job of persuading people to buy shit. Of course this won't lead to companies reducing investment for ad carrying or finding ways to make them more appealing, that costs money, instead they will use AI generators to produce WORSE ads and leverage their capital to have governments capitulate and force users to watch by banning blockers, probably VPNs too. Bill Hicks was the most correct about advertising, and remains undefeated.

[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 week ago

A true visionary, taken too soon.

[-] Randelung@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Millenials are killing the ad industry!

Good.

[-] tempest@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

It would have to be millenials since Gen z exist almost entirely in the walled garden of a phone app.

Most people now a days don't even use a desktop with a browser. I honestly expect that most of what they are "seeing" is just web scrapers for the LLM. Those are likely to "block" ads simply based on efficiency, since it shows down crawling.

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[-] solrize@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago
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[-] Ironfacebuster@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

I personally am not bothered at ALL by the banner video ads overlayed on top of another banner ad that opens a new tab when you try to close the banner video then another one opens covering the original banner then the page scrolls all the way back to the top and shows you an email list sign up, why would I be?

[-] J52@lemmy.nz 4 points 1 week ago

Bottom line: if I'm forced to consume ads on a device belonging to me - I will rather throw it away!

[-] spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Besides the miserable experience unchecked advertisements cause, it is simply not safe to allow those advertisements to load.

A few years ago (before SSDs were common) I noticed unusual hard disk activity when loading a popular link aggregation site. A bit of investigation turned up a Trojan on my system. After removing it and reloading that site, my PC was immediately reinfected. The site owner denied any responsibility and said it was the advertising company's fault.

The way the Internet operates now means no one is responsible for the content their site provides or the damage they cause. Imagine if restaurant owners were able to deny responsibility for the atmosphere in their restaurants or food poisonings they caused? IMO it's the same thing.

Advertisers and websites have created the "dark traffic" mentioned here by repeatedly poisoning the public and they deserve the massive loss of revenue their behavior has caused.

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[-] the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Fuck yeah, advertiers are a cancer.

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 points 1 week ago

Ad BwOcKeRs ArE StEaLiNg FwOm Us!!!!

Meanwhile Google, Amazon, Facebook, and a billion AI web crawlers can hammer the fuck out of of your site and nobody cares.

[-] 1984@lemmy.today 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The larger problem that is not discussed so much is the amount of Ai generated garbage that is put on the web now.

When these Ai web crawlers start to read that Ai garbage as source data, the models will start to become worse and worse, and as a result, our Ai clients will start to get worse and worse.

I dont think there is a way for the crawlers to understand what is Ai generated fluff and crap. The reasons the Ai responses are so good now is because people actually posted these solutions on the web. What happens when Ai crap overflows the web so much that good answers are drowned out?

Also, no ads in chat gpt yet. Thats going to change and it will become impossible to block those.

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[-] DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Maybe if they didn’t use very intrusive ads people would not install ad-blockers so much

Many websites put a video playing in later in top of the text, with another layer of ads and tiny space to read… the website would be unreadable without ad-blocks

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[-] pachrist@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

The web has almost always been unusable without an adblocker. Ads today are less malicious, but more insidious. Clicking the wrong ad in 2003 would brick your computer. Clicking the wrong ad today means you'll have to cancel a credit card after your personal data is compiled and sold on the black market.

Nothing new. Ads don't fuel a free internet. They fuel a business model. The free internet is fueled by the time and donations of kind, dedicated people.

There was a time in the 90's where ads were mostly banners, and that was fine; google's text-only ads were completely acceptable.

But that didn't last long - it went downhill with the proliferation of popups, especially the nefarious kind which created even more popups or tried to stop the user from closing them, and usage of dialog boxes.

And whoever was the first person to add sound to an ad, i wish you and your entire family tree that your genitalia translocate to your forehead.

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[-] AeonFelis@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

“The growth of dark traffic undermines the ability of publishers to fund the production of quality content, or even operate as a business. We must recognise users are not the main driver causing this.”

And Scott Messer, founder of publishing adtech consultancy Messer Media, added: “Dark traffic is unlike anything we have seen before. It’s demonetising publisher content at scale without user consent.

Are they trying to present it as if poor innocent users need to be protected from the vile ad blockers?

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[-] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

I used to maintain a website for a bicycling club in my county that was great for getting people into biking, getting people out the house, making friends, and staying fit.

We had a banner ad along the top of the site for a local bicycle/bicycle repair shop that aided the club a lot and was very reasonable.

He got something out of it (publicity and a seal of approval towards the value/quality of his work), and we got something out of it (money to run the site, and a bit left over for things like puncture repair kits and the occasional celebratory drink after an arduous ride).

Nobody bats an eyelid to those ads. They are reasonable.

What we have now isn't that. What we have now is an insecure, malware-infested privacy nightmare that ruins webpages and stresses everybody out.

Use Firefox + uBlock origin for your own sanity. Don't let big tech make you feel guilty for not going along with their game.

[-] ramjambamalam@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Use Firefox + uBlock origin for your own sanity. Don’t let big tech make you feel guilty for not going along with their game.

100% this and also, consider allow-listing specific sites which deserve your support, or better yet, contribute directly if you can – e.g. your local bike club forum, your local newspaper, a blogger whose work you enjoy, etc., assuming of course, the ads are reasonable.

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[-] mle86@feddit.org 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I feel like one thing doesn't get talked about enough is that websites feel the need to implement ad services that want to track the user in order to serve ads. Which I just find weird, the expectation to give up ones privacy, just to get served an ad.

Instead, the ads should just be relevant to the content of the page where an ad is embedded, which would automatically make it relevant to the reader, without tracking them.

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[-] b3an@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Maybe the problem is the advertisers and not the consumers. Jeeeesus.

[-] Gibibit@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Seeing static banner ads on 2000s websites without popups or tracking: 🤷‍♂️

Blocking ads on Firefox after popups and other crap started: 😀

Browsing the internet on Android before I realised the browser supports addons: 🤮

Blocking ads and tracking on Android via uBlock origin and Privacy Badger: 😀👍

My feeling of guilt when scummy megacorporations miss out on ad revenue:

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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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