I don’t know if it’s just me, but browsing virtually any mainstream website without an ad blocker or with alternative frontends is becoming harder and harder to justify. It’s getting to the point where adblocking isn’t an optional luxury - it’s a requirement to effectively get basic information about things.
Yesterday, I was trying to search some information about Ghouls from Fallout. This lead me to this Fandom wiki page which had ads on almost every corner of the website, autoplaying video in the corner, asking for my age as soon as I clicked on the site, injecting polls and random unrelated videos into the communty wiki content and being incredibly slow to browse. A query that in the past that took 5 seconds now takes 50, for what? Money?
I get that online services cost a shitton amount of money to operate, but the sheer level of degrading quality is not OK. This is just one example of how services are completely barreling towards the shitter at 100+ MPH with no brakes or airbags. I feel some guilt for using content blockers, but that guilt is being wittled away every single day because of websites like this.
“We hate ads, too!” — some window asking me to turn off my adblocker
No, you don’t. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be showing me this notice asking me to turn off my adblocker. Either that or I hate ads way more than you do.
Becoming? I think we are past that stage. What grinds my gears is how hostile the net is to adblockers where users are either barred from the site entirely or guilted into turning it off.
Worse yet is if you try to take back your privacy thru a VPN you are instantly deemed a bad actor or a downright threat!
online services cost a shitton amount of money to operate
A 40kb HTML page packaged with 450MB of JavaScript, AJAX, and streaming video costs a shitton for some reason.
Fuck fandom
https://getindie.wiki and the Indie Wiki Buddy browser extension
I tried that, and for some reason it redirects me to an outdated version of the wiki I’m trying to browse.
Logopedia especially is one of my favorites, I just wish it moves out of Fandom. Using Indie Wiki Buddy, it pretends the current date is a few months back, which is kinda odd.
That is odd. Something must be broken for the wiki you tried. It’s most useful when there is a real alternative like for the various minecraft wikis. Here is a full list of alternatives: https://getindie.wiki/listings/
Sometimes you just have to check
wikiafandom because they are the only ones with an up to date page. But I’d rather avoid it.It really sucks that I have to continue relying on Fandom for one of my most visited wikis.
What really pisses me off is when sites tell me to disable it. It’s my computer, I’ll choose what extensions I run. Fuck you.
You’re just now coming to this realization?
Ever since download speeds have been able to support the bandwidth required for ads, ad-blockers have been a part of my daily life. I’m gonna guess that started in 2006?
On top of that, ads pay to load first; so even if you’ve got a poor connection, guess what the first thing you’ll see is?
Discounting temporary tech issues, I haven’t browsed internet without an adblocker for a single day in my entire life. Nobody is entitled to abuse my attention; no guilt, no exceptions.
I feel some guilt for using content blockers
Please don’t. The advertisers “defected” decades ago with popup windows (and probably before that, but popups in the late 90s/early 2000s stand out in my mind). It’s only gotten worse since then.
“Becoming”? How about “became”?
I also worry this is breeding generations of scam victims. We all know people who don’t realize there are ad-blockers or for some reason can’t manage one. Part of that is elderly who aren’t comfortable with technology, but it includes many people of all ages. This knowledge gap means huge portions of the population see an unusable internet that can’t be responsive no matter how fast the connection. It means their data will be tracked and sold in all directions. It means every click will have hundreds of trackers. It means exposure to every ad, every scam. How can they not be victims?
Meanwhile we know enough to complain but also to use the tools to find a useable internet. We’re much less tracked, see faster responsiveness, even our data is less exploited. Most importantly, we never even see most of the pop up scams
Part of that is elderly who aren’t comfortable with technology, but it includes many people of all ages.
I think this figure is beginning to turn on its head. I never would have thought that the generations growing up today totally immersed in digital technology would have been so profoundly technically illiterate.
In fact, I’m beginning to think that baby boomers where, in an odd way, in fact better with computers than gen z and gen a. Even if only marginally.
I get that online services cost a shitton amount of money to operate
They don’t, though! Pages of static HTML are tiny and cost almost nothing to serve; they bring the cost upon themselves by ballooning the page with multiple megabytes of ad-injection and tracking scripts. That claim is like 99% self-serving lie.
It’s been shitty for a long time now. I’ve been using adblockers since they exist. And I can not fathom how people don’t realise how pathologically sick its become. The internet used to be a great place, everyone forgot.
You could write “click here” and people would just do it because that link would reliably go to something cool.
The ads were text on the top of the page, and ironically unblockable. But you could block the autoplay MIDIs.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
“Web search found no results” instead of just showing you a bunch of wrong results.
Let me just step back here, away from the fact that they’re obtrusive, annoying, and waste your time you didn’t sign away.
Malvertising is a serious risk these days. Every week we see new malware kits, phishing and increasing complexity. Now, Google’s search algo source code has been leaked. You can bet your shiny ass that the attacks will get more dangerous and even harder to discern.
Block the fuck out of ads, JavaScript, frames, xhr. Use a secure browser that doesn’t have ad revenue at their forefront and use hardened configs where possible.
This isn’t tin foil hat, and it’s not hard. Plenty of people out here want you safe and for corpos to eat shit.
I can attest to this. I’m a security analyst / incident responder for a large organization. 9 out of 10 times we get a “malware domain” hit on our network sensors, it’s due to malware being pushed in ads. It’s real and it’s dangerous. Our entire organization runs adblockers.
Yo hire me. I can’t get a job because I don’t have experience… I can’t get experience because I can’t get a job.
Hack your way to the goal - start small at a place that’s expanding their tech team and buckle up for a bumpy ride. Get that foot in the door
But like… Life balance holds me back. I make more than an entry level and support my family, thus cannot dedicate the time for a second full time job.
I am destined to remain in role and climb a corporate ladder that I do not enjoy because money
Where there is a will, there is a way.
You might not be able to use the same beaten paths as everyone else, but you can always hack a new path.
At the end of the day, I can’t speak for the entire industry, but when I look for new employees, I care less about resume experience and more about education, drive, and creativity. Once they’re in the role, I can show them the ropes. We also (hopefully many others, if not a majority) invest in serious training and learning platforms to keep people updated.
Infosec is about continuous learning and curiosity. You don’t have the luxury of learning the skill and being done. Security, arguably, changes the most out of all the tech spaces and you need drive and curiosity above all else.
If you’re serious about infosec, you sometimes have to hack it to make it. A -> ? -> B
If you don’t mind me asking, what field are you in rn?
Thank you dude! I appreciate you.
I work retail right now as a manager and although I have a skillset for it, have made great strides, and have changed the company in a few ways for the better, it’s not my desire to stay in this path.
P.s. You say the things I say to others. It’s good to have it thrown back at me lol
Of course man - the world is your oyster. Not everyone is as privileged as me though, so I try to help out where I can to give ‘em a boost. Not everybody knows what they wanna do on the first shot and that can be tough
Becoming?
I’ve been using ad blockers since the early 2000’s. Ads with noise is what did it for me. Pop-ups too were super annoying. There was also malware in some ads back in the day. So yes, ads poisoned the internet a long time ago and I absolutely refuse to browse the internet without one. Or two.
“Our studies have shown we can fill up to 80% of a user’s visual field with ads before it induces seizures.”
What a movie!
What movie?
Isn’t that from Ready Player One?
Yep
