Adblock or Similar to brouse PH

[Howard-]

I use ABP across the entire internet, nevermind PH.

I'm not interested in adverts. I fast-forward them when I watch TV (I don't tend to watch most things live on commercial channels) and no-one moans at me for doing that.

[Pints]

This morning I downloaded the Ghostery browser app for Android. Having tweaked a few settings, I'm no longer frustrated when browsing PH on my phone.

[Paul O]

Funk said:

They lost my goodwill when the adverts took up more screen space than the content, they popped over full-screen and the final straw was when they made noise.

Exactly the same as this. I'm all for support of websites through adverts, but Pistonheads took it to the extreme, and was the sole (and still the only) reason I have an ad-blocker in place.

[arch stant0n]

Interestingly, it's become a big enough problem that the mobile networks are starting to look at network-wide adblocking:
http://arstechnica.co.uk/business/2015/11/o2-is-al...

This will cause a major shift towards more tolerable advertising if it happens. Big, annoying ads take up the most bandwidth and will hopefully get killed first.

[Goaty Bill 2]

arch stant0n said:

Interestingly, it's become a big enough problem that the mobile networks are starting to look at network-wide adblocking:
http://arstechnica.co.uk/business/2015/11/o2-is-al...

This will cause a major shift towards more tolerable advertising if it happens. Big, annoying ads take up the most bandwidth and will hopefully get killed first.

One would hope, however it is in the nature of big business to find ways to make these things pay.
The motivation could well be to lower bandwidth 'theft' and reduce the near future capital investment requirements. But ISPs haven't followed that reasoning have they?
It could just as easily be a form of jealousy as in "they are gaining revenue from use of our bandwidth. How can we restrict this to cash in ourselves?"

If true, it would be a good thing for customers. But I will wait and see before I believe a word of it.

[KaraK]

TooMany2cvs said:

KaraK said:

...but generally I don't object to ads on sites - if it keeps the sites I love going and free then I'm ok with that.

There's two different scenarios here.

- Enthusiast owned-and-run site which has ads to keep the lights on.
- Commercial site which only exists as a way to drive ad revenue.

I guess I don't really think about where the money is going - if they can run a site and make a profit but still provide a decent user experience without me feeling like I'm drowning in ads then fair play to them in my book!

[Funk]

Goaty Bill 2 said:

arch stant0n said:

Interestingly, it's become a big enough problem that the mobile networks are starting to look at network-wide adblocking:
http://arstechnica.co.uk/business/2015/11/o2-is-al...

This will cause a major shift towards more tolerable advertising if it happens. Big, annoying ads take up the most bandwidth and will hopefully get killed first.

One would hope, however it is in the nature of big business to find ways to make these things pay.
The motivation could well be to lower bandwidth 'theft' and reduce the near future capital investment requirements. But ISPs haven't followed that reasoning have they?
It could just as easily be a form of jealousy as in "they are gaining revenue from use of our bandwidth. How can we restrict this to cash in ourselves?"

If true, it would be a good thing for customers. But I will wait and see before I believe a word of it.

Using up a person's 3/4G data with video & audio ads is not on whilst restrictions/limits are in place.

They're right though, mobile ads do cause horrendous issues on mobile browsers and as mentioned earlier, I had to root my Samsung tablet to install an adblocker just to make it usable. It was horrendous without and a stty experience to use before that.

[CoolHands]

I use ad blockers on every site. I don't feel guilty. If the site can't exist without advertising revenue as everyone uses blockers, so be it. There'll be another site along in a minute that can.

[Inertiatic]

The purple front page ads on here recently we're stupidly bad. Made the site look like something GeoCities would have laughed at.

Use adblockers on everything. No excuse for annoying ads, plus seems to be a route for malware etc...

[B'stard Child]

B'stard Child said:

Well this thread was in general gassing - I asked for it not to get moved to website feedback but it got moved to the lounge instead

I've long held a view that if a poll gets started on PH then pretty much best number of responses you can get is around 500 if the thread stays in GG

so 350 (ish) I reckon that's probably reflective of

a) the 1% rule in effect here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_...

b) the fact it got it's ass kicked out of General Gassing and into the long grass here

Good job it didn't get put in Website Feedback as that's where threads go to die

Bollicks it's now in website feedback - thanks everyone for your comments so far and it's reached over 400 who have responded to the poll but it'll not get many more now - this is where threads come to die!!!!



Background (for those that find this thread for the first time - you either found it on a search or you need to get out more)

So it started in General Gassing - got moved to the lounge - FFS really chaps - really?

Thanks to a friendly Moderator for moving it from the Lounge back to General gassing where at least it had a chance of getting a reasonable level of response but now it's gonna quietly sink into the background

[Funk]

Some of the moderation is very bizarre.

I'd say website feedback section is for letting the PH team know something. This isn't about that, it's a query of fellow users. If the site mentioned was not PH but another site, your post would've probably stayed where it was.

Instead, because it mentions PH it gets moved here. Very odd. Perhaps mention everything possible such as whether you use adblocking when on the phone in your supercar or at home, what the legal implications are, whether your dog should use adblock and if we should meet up to discuss it.

Sit back and watch the ensuing confusion set in as to whether it should be moved to SP&L, pets, homes, supercars, or travel and meets...

[crmcatee]

What a stupid place for this thread to be - it should be in the Lounge.


Adblocker and Ghostery running here.

I see ads as a pain in the arse and it makes things look very unprofessional. I've realised that since Haymarket took over, this place has gone downhill - their reliance on ad revenue a major driver behind that.

Realistically it can't cost much in the grand scheme of things to run forum software on a server. It's not as if the PH forum software allows you to embed images / footers etc which can really rack up the space required. (I would be interested to know the running costs (excluding any development)- I've got a figure in my head and it's not very much; they've got no moderator costs, no development on the forum that I've noticed over the past couple of years and they don't seem keen to change it so we could get normal items that people have been asking for year, such as URL links automatically generated, Youtube video links with image and a proper formatting bar.

I realise I've strayed off somewhat but it comes down to money - Haymarket want it in and don't want to spend it out.

Haymarket I'm convinced are using PH to bolster their other losses on the magazine front so you'll always see ad's (if you're not using adblocker).

[eybic]

Surely this is a feedback thread though? Users don't like ads and are finding ways to avoid seeing them. It may fall on deaf ears (seemingly nothing has changed since I left HM 9 months ago, I wonder if people in the office still have ad blockers installed , now that does speak volumes) but it's feedback so this probably is the most appropriate place for it.

[B'stard Child]

eybic said:

Surely this is a feedback thread though? Users don't like ads and are finding ways to avoid seeing them. It may fall on deaf ears (seemingly nothing has changed since I left HM 9 months ago, I wonder if people in the office still have ad blockers installed , now that does speak volumes) but it's feedback so this probably is the most appropriate place for it.

It's also one of the lowest activity areas (apart from some of the specific marque areas)

And whilst it might be the appropriate place for it - it's never going to get a representative response from the forum users if I'd started it in her in the first place.....

[eybic]

B'stard Child said:

It's also one of the lowest activity areas (apart from some of the specific marque areas)

And whilst it might be the appropriate place for it - it's never going to get a representative response from the forum users if I'd started it in her in the first place.....

As I said though no matter where it is, despite promises being made (that I was made and relayed to users when I worked at HM) nothing will be done, the forums are a commodity that is sold without too much concern for the users. All that matters is there are xyz number of members, whether they are active or not doesn't matter.

[Reardy Mister]

rich888 said:

On your iPad try switching off Javascript which will stop the adverts from loading and will speed up webpage load times quite substantially, if the website requires Javascript then it's easy enough to switch Javascript back on again and reloading the page.

iPad2 > Settings > Safari > Advanced > Javascript ON/OFF.

You absolute legend. Thank you for this tip.

[AlexRS2782]

I tend to vary between two machines on here depending on time of day, etc, but one has an adblocker, the other doesn't. With an adblocker turned on the pages load straight away, there's no slow down in load times, you can have numerous pages open at once, etc

Without an adblocker on PH, there's a banner ad at the top, another banner at the bottom, and another boxed advert half way down the page on the right hand side. Depending on their size / load content, they jam the page up while they load - especially if you open more than one page on here at a time and the same ad tries loading on every page you have open - and that's when you get a "page not responding" error message for up to 30 seconds or longer

Edit - if it's anything like mine currently is, without Adblocker in place, there's:

- A PH banner advert at the bottom telling you to sell your car for £11.99.
- There's a rotation of varying banner adverts at the top (every time you open a different page / refresh page) trying to sell everything from investment schemes / portfolios to Vauxhall flogging finance deals, EE, Asda, etc.
- But the most annoying, and biggest clog / loading advert, is currently the one at the right hand side that's advertising various VW cars including the Polo. Oh, it's now been replaced with a similar advert advertising the new Mini and finance deals and it takes just as long to load as the VW one

I wouldn't normally begrudge the adverts in their current positions (if they pay towards site running costs) as it's not as if you can accidently click on them if you don't want to. However the size / content / load times of some of the adverts, that lead to slow load times, page crashing, etc, is what's most frustrating

Edited by AlexRS2782 on Saturday 19th December 21:24

[4x4Tyke]

arch stant0n said:

Instead of an ad-blocker, or pi-hole - I run a hosts file locally on my Windows machine that kills requests to most ad servers before they leave my PC:
http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

Doesn't require 3rd party browser plugins, doesn't require you setting up your own DNS server.
DOES provide you the option of buggering up your internet connection if you do it wrong so PLEASE BE CAREFUL if you're not experienced with this kind of thing.

I'd honestly be a bit wary of setting up my own DNS server (pi-hole) in case it gets hijacked. Not a security expert but I know keeping that kind of thing up-to-date and secure is more work than I can be bothered with.

Using a blacklist hosts file is the most effective approach for most people, I would recommend this one which merges all the top lists.

https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Edited by 4x4Tyke on Tuesday 24th May 18:28

[Number 7]

I'm attempting to install Ublock Origin, which I've found on a Google Chrome webstore. However, I'm being told that it can change all of you data and privacy settings. Is this a good thing or not? I also don't understand the "add extension " thing. Shouldn't I be installing some software or something? Confused non-techy.

[Funk]

Number 7 said:

I'm attempting to install Ublock Origin, which I've found on a Google Chrome webstore. However, I'm being told that it can change all of you data and privacy settings. Is this a good thing or not? I also don't understand the "add extension " thing. Shouldn't I be installing some software or something? Confused non-techy.

Part of the way it works is that it has to be able to change data on all websites (ie. blocking the ads). It's why you should stick to the well-known/reviewed extensions; if something was fky with it, it would be pretty widely-reported very quickly.

Kudos for not just installing any old crap on your machine without thinking/checking first though!