Ha! Ads be gone!

On Aug 6, 2020 at 12:34:31 PM MST, ""Commander Kinsey""
wrote:

On Thu, 06 Aug 2020 19:48:59 +0100, Mayayana wrote:

"Jonathan N. Little" wrote

| Yes, but some sites have a counter for that strategy...JavaScript
| injected content. You don't get the adblocker warning but you also don't
| get the content.
|

Yes, it's an arms war. I think blocking ads is much
more easily done with a HOSTS file.

How can that work when the ads are stored on the same server as the content?

Not easily.

Hmmm, I wonder if you can block specific paths at an IP? Not that I know of.

But I also rarely enable javascript. Very rarely.

Almost every site I use needs it for something, I don't want to disable it
all over.

I have some sites set to "Reader Mode" to bypass a bunch of junk. I can do
that on a site by site basis.



Yet what you say is
true. I find some sites are blank without script or
have big blocks over the content. At those sites I
turn off CSS. Other sites try to block links from
working by doing things like putting ptransparent objects
on top of them. With those I also disable CSS. Still
other sites actually put the webpage itself inside JSON
blocks. Those simply won't work at all without script.
Some sites mess up image tags by trying to sniff
screen size to pick the image to show, but then leaving
no default image for people not using script.

Some of it is sneaky. Much of it is simply incompetence
on the part of webmasters who don't realize that some
people are not enabling script.

If I can't get through their blocks quickly, I send them an email with
swearwords in it.


I am sure that is very helpful.

--
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They cannot
use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel somehow
superior by attacking the messenger.

They cling to their attacks and ignore the message time and time again.

On Aug 6, 2020 at 12:28:16 PM MST, "nospam" wrote:

In article , Carlos E.R.
wrote:

Some of it is sneaky. Much of it is simply incompetence
on the part of webmasters who don't realize that some
people are not enabling script.

very few, definitely not enough to justify catering to them.


What about blind people? Graphic content is of no use to them.

they don't disable javascript.

they also use screen readers, which can read not only the article, but
also the alt tags that describe the images. in some cases, the actual
content of the images can be determined and described, even without alt
tags.


Works well on some sites... not so much on others.

--
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They cannot
use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel somehow
superior by attacking the messenger.

They cling to their attacks and ignore the message time and time again.

On Thu, 06 Aug 2020 21:38:50 +0100, Snit wrote:

On Aug 6, 2020 at 12:34:31 PM MST, ""Commander Kinsey""
wrote:

On Thu, 06 Aug 2020 19:48:59 +0100, Mayayana wrote:

"Jonathan N. Little" wrote

| Yes, but some sites have a counter for that strategy...JavaScript
| injected content. You don't get the adblocker warning but you also don't
| get the content.
|

Yes, it's an arms war. I think blocking ads is much
more easily done with a HOSTS file.

How can that work when the ads are stored on the same server as the content?

Not easily.

Hmmm, I wonder if you can block specific paths at an IP? Not that I know of.

But I also rarely enable javascript. Very rarely.

Almost every site I use needs it for something, I don't want to disable it
all over.

I have some sites set to "Reader Mode" to bypass a bunch of junk. I can do
that on a site by site basis.

What is "reader mode"?

Yet what you say is
true. I find some sites are blank without script or
have big blocks over the content. At those sites I
turn off CSS. Other sites try to block links from
working by doing things like putting ptransparent objects
on top of them. With those I also disable CSS. Still
other sites actually put the webpage itself inside JSON
blocks. Those simply won't work at all without script.
Some sites mess up image tags by trying to sniff
screen size to pick the image to show, but then leaving
no default image for people not using script.

Some of it is sneaky. Much of it is simply incompetence
on the part of webmasters who don't realize that some
people are not enabling script.

If I can't get through their blocks quickly, I send them an email with
swearwords in it.

I am sure that is very helpful.

It lets them know they lost a customer.

On 06/08/2020 21.28, nospam wrote:
In article , Carlos E.R.
wrote:

Some of it is sneaky. Much of it is simply incompetence
on the part of webmasters who don't realize that some
people are not enabling script.

very few, definitely not enough to justify catering to them.


What about blind people? Graphic content is of no use to them.

they don't disable javascript.

they also use screen readers, which can read not only the article, but
also the alt tags that describe the images. in some cases, the actual
content of the images can be determined and described, even without alt
tags.

That's one method.
Another is to use a text only web browser which "displays" on a
electromechanical display (braille) which they read with their fingers.


--
Cheers, Carlos.

On Aug 6, 2020 at 1:45:52 PM MST, ""Commander Kinsey""
wrote:

On Thu, 06 Aug 2020 21:38:50 +0100, Snit
wrote:

On Aug 6, 2020 at 12:34:31 PM MST, ""Commander Kinsey""
wrote:

On Thu, 06 Aug 2020 19:48:59 +0100, Mayayana wrote:

"Jonathan N. Little" wrote

| Yes, but some sites have a counter for that strategy...JavaScript
| injected content. You don't get the adblocker warning but you also don't
| get the content.
|

Yes, it's an arms war. I think blocking ads is much
more easily done with a HOSTS file.

How can that work when the ads are stored on the same server as the content?

Not easily.

Hmmm, I wonder if you can block specific paths at an IP? Not that I know of.

But I also rarely enable javascript. Very rarely.

Almost every site I use needs it for something, I don't want to disable it
all over.

I have some sites set to "Reader Mode" to bypass a bunch of junk. I can do
that on a site by site basis.

What is "reader mode"?

A mode in Safari which gets rid of ads and headers and the like and focuses
just on the content. It *mostly* works. You can apparently get something
similar for Chrome:


https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...dlmlhblm?hl=en

And looking now I see Firefox has "Reader View" which I suppose is much the
same.

I have never used those solutions though.

....

If I can't get through their blocks quickly, I send them an email with
swearwords in it.

I am sure that is very helpful.

It lets them know they lost a customer.

One not willing to pay.


--
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They cannot
use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel somehow
superior by attacking the messenger.

They cling to their attacks and ignore the message time and time again.

On Thu, 06 Aug 2020 22:36:08 +0100, Snit wrote:

On Aug 6, 2020 at 1:45:52 PM MST, ""Commander Kinsey""
wrote:

On Thu, 06 Aug 2020 21:38:50 +0100, Snit
wrote:

On Aug 6, 2020 at 12:34:31 PM MST, ""Commander Kinsey""
wrote:

On Thu, 06 Aug 2020 19:48:59 +0100, Mayayana wrote:

"Jonathan N. Little" wrote

| Yes, but some sites have a counter for that strategy...JavaScript
| injected content. You don't get the adblocker warning but you also don't
| get the content.
|

Yes, it's an arms war. I think blocking ads is much
more easily done with a HOSTS file.

How can that work when the ads are stored on the same server as the content?

Not easily.

Hmmm, I wonder if you can block specific paths at an IP? Not that I know of.

But I also rarely enable javascript. Very rarely.

Almost every site I use needs it for something, I don't want to disable it
all over.

I have some sites set to "Reader Mode" to bypass a bunch of junk. I can do
that on a site by site basis.

What is "reader mode"?

A mode in Safari which gets rid of ads and headers and the like and focuses
just on the content. It *mostly* works. You can apparently get something
similar for Chrome:


https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...dlmlhblm?hl=en

And looking now I see Firefox has "Reader View" which I suppose is much the
same.

I have never used those solutions though.

Don't you miss out on the fluffy stuff required for the page, like images and videos and animations and the like?

If I can't get through their blocks quickly, I send them an email with
swearwords in it.

I am sure that is very helpful.

It lets them know they lost a customer.

One not willing to pay.

Seeing an advert is not paying. Only those stupid enough to click the advert earn them any money.

On Aug 6, 2020 at 2:51:47 PM MST, ""Commander Kinsey""
wrote:

On Thu, 06 Aug 2020 22:36:08 +0100, Snit
wrote:

....

I have some sites set to "Reader Mode" to bypass a bunch of junk. I can do
that on a site by site basis.

What is "reader mode"?

A mode in Safari which gets rid of ads and headers and the like and focuses
just on the content. It *mostly* works. You can apparently get something
similar for Chrome:



https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...dlmlhblm?hl=en

And looking now I see Firefox has "Reader View" which I suppose is much the
same.

I have never used those solutions though.

Don't you miss out on the fluffy stuff required for the page, like images and
videos and animations and the like?

Inline images generally show. Here, an example of a NYT page:

https://youtu.be/kPqdOdUsZaE

If I can't get through their blocks quickly, I send them an email with
swearwords in it.

I am sure that is very helpful.

It lets them know they lost a customer.

One not willing to pay.

Seeing an advert is not paying. Only those stupid enough to click the advert
earn them any money.

Ever have any luck getting a site to migrate away from a pay wall?

--
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They cannot
use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel somehow
superior by attacking the messenger.

They cling to their attacks and ignore the message time and time again.

Snit, others,

How can that work when the ads are stored on the same server as the
content?

Not easily.

Hmmm, I wonder if you can block specific paths at an IP? Not that I know
of.

I do not often encounter ads that are stored on the same server as the
content, but when so I GreaseMonkey the heck outof those pages, removing
content based on, among others, what its (partial) path is.

Same with overlays actually. I've got a general "rule" in place which
un-floats them and moves them to the very bottom of the webpage. Still
accessible when needed, but out of sight and not covering anything anymore.
Also works well for those "informational banners" *cough* cookie agreements
*cough* stuck at the top or bottom of my screens realestate

So yes, even though its probably not the way you thought of, its quite
possible to "block content" even when it comes from the same domain as the
content you are after.

.... at least, it still works for me (XP, FF 52). YMMV depending on (the
version of) your browser.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

R.Wieser wrote:
Snit, others,

How can that work when the ads are stored on the same server as the
content?

Not easily.

Hmmm, I wonder if you can block specific paths at an IP? Not that I know
of.

I do not often encounter ads that are stored on the same server as the
content, but when so I GreaseMonkey the heck outof those pages, removing
content based on, among others, what its (partial) path is.

Same with overlays actually. I've got a general "rule" in place which
un-floats them and moves them to the very bottom of the webpage. Still
accessible when needed, but out of sight and not covering anything anymore.
Also works well for those "informational banners" *cough* cookie agreements
*cough* stuck at the top or bottom of my screens realestate

So yes, even though its probably not the way you thought of, its quite
possible to "block content" even when it comes from the same domain as the
content you are after.

... at least, it still works for me (XP, FF 52). YMMV depending on (the
version of) your browser.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser




Would love to see more of this.

--
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They
cannot use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel
somehow superior by attacking the messenger. They cling to their attacks
and ignore the message time and time again.

"R.Wieser" wrote

| I do not often encounter ads that are stored on the same server as the
| content,

I'd go further than that and say they're extremely rare.
In the early days, a site might add a banner image ad and
then argue with the advertiser over how many views it got.
Those days are long gone. If you use the semi-secret setting
in FF and kin to block 3rd-party images, you won't even see
many images, much less ads. CSS and script are also, often,
loaded from other sites. It's a privacy and security nightmare.
In many cases, like the Wix system or Wordpress hosting, none
of the files are coming from the visited domain. Most webmasters
have no idea how to code a webpage in the first place. They
have software accessing backend databases, pulling in crap
from all over.

For many years now, Google/Doubleclick and a handful of
others have been running the ad business. Most commercial
websites also have links to googletagmanager and googleanalytics.
That allows them to spy on the activities of nearly everyone
as they travel online. This is all stuff that was considered on
the level of malware a few years ago. Even Akamai, a backbone
traffic leaser, started selling private data some years ago. No
one ever visits Akamai, but their spyware servers are used in
numerous sites, including Microsoft. They provide load balancing.

Ace Golf Ball Co. goes to Google and says I want to buy an ad
to show to suburban, male golfers. They bid against others. Google
charges them and picks the URLs where such people will likely
visit. Maybe golfdigest.com, or weirdpants.com, or
howtogetoutgrassstains.com.

The website owner does
nothing but to add a snippet of code to their website. That's
why people get attacked by Russian hackers at nytimes and
why websites get into trouble for off-color ads. The website
owners know nothing. The hackers buy ad space and use it for
cross-site scripting. The website owners only know that they
get paid for that snippet of code.

I never block ads. I just block the spyware beacons, iframes,
malware CSScripting coming out of the likes of Google/Doubleclick,
Scorecardresearch, Facebook, flycast,
fastclick, adbot, adbright, statcounter, valueclick, 1e100,
quantserve, etc. My list is about 300. I haven't seen an ad
for years. I've never used an adblocker. If a website actually
puts an ad on their webpage, hosted on their server, then I'll
see it. I don't mind. That would be part of the webpage. What's
going on is not that. It's a vast spying and datamining network,
sending people to websites they've never heard of, without
their permission. Acme.com have no right to make me load
an image from doubleclick.net. Just a few years ago that was
unheard of and iframes with remote pages loaded into them
were considered theft.

I'm surprised that these days in usenet newsgroups there
are people who actually believe what they see on a webpage
is all coming from that website. Those people should try Noscript
and see how many sleazeball sites are trying to just run
javascript on the page they're viewing. We have webmasters
who don't know what a webpage is. And now we have people
visiting with adblockers, who also have no idea what's
going on and just depend on ther adblocker to take care
of it.

In article , Mayayana
wrote:


| I do not often encounter ads that are stored on the same server as the
| content,

I'd go further than that and say they're extremely rare.

youtube does it routinely.

"R.Wieser" wrote

| Same with overlays actually. I've got a general "rule" in place which
| un-floats them and moves them to the very bottom of the webpage. Still
| accessible when needed, but out of sight and not covering anything
anymore.
| Also works well for those "informational banners" *cough* cookie
agreements
| *cough* stuck at the top or bottom of my screens realestate
|

An addendum to that last post: People who know some
CSS/HTML can also use userContent.css to block things
by class or ID. Though it sounds like more trouble than
what you're doing with Grease Monkey. But I've customized
a number of pages I visit regularly, to work better without
script and/or remove unwanted items.

It's really sad that as the technology improves the
functionality and readability actually get worse. But I think
many of the current design problems are due to people
only thinking of cellphones.

Mayayana wrote:
"R.Wieser" wrote

| Same with overlays actually. I've got a general "rule" in place which
| un-floats them and moves them to the very bottom of the webpage. Still
| accessible when needed, but out of sight and not covering anything
anymore.
| Also works well for those "informational banners" *cough* cookie
agreements
| *cough* stuck at the top or bottom of my screens realestate
|

An addendum to that last post: People who know some
CSS/HTML can also use userContent.css to block things
by class or ID. Though it sounds like more trouble than
what you're doing with Grease Monkey. But I've customized
a number of pages I visit regularly, to work better without
script and/or remove unwanted items.

It's really sad that as the technology improves the
functionality and readability actually get worse. But I think
many of the current design problems are due to people
only thinking of cellphones.





How about ads on YouTube?

--
Personal attacks from those who troll show their own insecurity. They
cannot use reason to show the message to be wrong so they try to feel
somehow superior by attacking the messenger. They cling to their attacks
and ignore the message time and time again.

On 8/6/2020 2:36 PM, Snit wrote:
On Aug 6, 2020 at 1:45:52 PM MST, ""Commander Kinsey""
wrote:

On Thu, 06 Aug 2020 21:38:50 +0100, Snit
wrote:

On Aug 6, 2020 at 12:34:31 PM MST, ""Commander Kinsey""
wrote:

On Thu, 06 Aug 2020 19:48:59 +0100, Mayayana wrote:

"Jonathan N. Little" wrote

| Yes, but some sites have a counter for that strategy...JavaScript
| injected content. You don't get the adblocker warning but you also don't
| get the content.
|

Yes, it's an arms war. I think blocking ads is much
more easily done with a HOSTS file.

How can that work when the ads are stored on the same server as the content?

Not easily.

Hmmm, I wonder if you can block specific paths at an IP? Not that I know of.

But I also rarely enable javascript. Very rarely.

Almost every site I use needs it for something, I don't want to disable it
all over.

I have some sites set to "Reader Mode" to bypass a bunch of junk. I can do
that on a site by site basis.

What is "reader mode"?

A mode in Safari which gets rid of ads and headers and the like and focuses
just on the content. It *mostly* works. You can apparently get something
similar for Chrome:


https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...dlmlhblm?hl=en

And looking now I see Firefox has "Reader View" which I suppose is much the
same.



Thank, I use FireFox, and never knew about Reader View. I just tried it
on a couple of sites, and it turned out to be terrible for me. It took
away things I wanted to see. On one site, it took away the only things I
went to the site for.

But I'll try it on some other sites over the next few days before I
decide whether to forget about it or not.




--
Ken

Mayayana,

An addendum to that last post: People who know some
CSS/HTML can also use userContent.css to block things
by class or ID.

The same kind of knowledge is needed to be able to use GreaseMonkey - which
just allows you to run user-defined JS (even when you have disabled
scripting for the browser).

Though it sounds like more trouble than what you're doing
with Grease Monkey. But I've customized a number of pages
I visit regularly, to work better without script and/or remove
unwanted items.

Thats sounds the same as what I do.

The only difference is that, as GM uses JS, you can create more generic
filters. Like the one I use to tackle floating elements (DIVs mostly).
It doesn't matter if the element uses a STYLE or an an (inherited) CLASS.
It just checks the "position" attribute is "fixed" or "sticky", and if
removes it and eventual ID, CLASS and/or STYLE, and uses
document.body.appendChild() to move it to the bottom.

The only thing I've currently used userContent.css for is to limit CSS
animations (to once). I can't stand moving content next to where I'm
trying to read.

It's really sad that as the technology improves the
functionality and readability actually get worse.

:-) The result of chugging ever more cr*p next and over the content you are
after. The text itself is fine, but the puposely added distractions make it
hard to focus on it.

But I think many of the current design problems are due to
people only thinking of cellphones.

Can you blame them ? AFAIK there are now more phones with Internet
access than that there are desktop machines. Don't like it either though.

My pet peeve is websites that stop functioning correctly when JS is disabled
(as I have). At some time I had a GM "rule" replacing those a
onclick="window.location = 'http://.....' " idiocies. Don't see those
anymore. Still have a "rule" fixing those "lazy load" images - otherwise I
often see nothing nowerdays.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser