I have belatedly discovered the AdBlock extension for Chrome, which generates white space where ads should be. Even on Google search pages.
<insert angels singing here.>
Presentation to the Joint Chiefs Operations Directorate
November 11, 2022
12 Responses
If you’re searching for the right ad blocker for your browser you might wanna take a look here http://ads-blocker.com
in FireFox land, TACO trackmenot (sends a random query every x seconds to whatever search engine(s) you use, so they can’t store your searchs and profile you) better privacy…
as to the concerns of people like Julius..for cryin out loud, its a *free market* economy: you have just as much right to block em as they have to send em.
Anyway, you think google is, on the whole, good ? if so, I have a bridge in brooklyn I can sell you, cheap…the history of the internet is initial enthusiasm followed by corporate cooptation
This has been going on in eco stuff longer, so its more advanced: Poland spring telling you that a plastic water bottle is green cause the cap is smaller, ot the bundle of firewood I saw at my local supermarket (boston) marketd as eco friendly: wood from *lithuania, shipped by boat, wrapped in plastic, to be burnt by some yuppie in a poorly controlled combustion chamber, generating huge amounts of smog/btu….
I am in sympathy with people who dislikes ads on internet, especially when the design of the website was so bad that the ads turned out to make navigation or reading difficult. This, however, does not occur to me as a good reason to block ads. Ads is the main financial income for most websites. If you want to run a site with a large customer bases, 1. you provide real economics services and earn income(amazon) 2. you get ads sponsors (facebook)3. you ask donation from your users (wiki). Nonetheless, If a site is not in the category of 1 or 3, it actually discourages the site to continue to serve its customers when all its customers use ads blocks and thus indirectly blocking its main source of income.
Thanks!
I didn’t know about this either. Better late than never.
Hahaha…. welcome to a tolerable internet, Chris!
Since you took a long time discovering AB, I’m going to assume you may not know these:
mouse gestures: I use “Smooth Gestures” and wouldn’t touch a browser that didn’t have an equivalent. It lets you go back, forward, open links in new tabs or pages etc with out using the toolbar.
If you use Google Reader, “Super Full Feeds for Google Readerâ„¢” is a must have because it solves the problem of people like Paul Krugman who only make the first line of their article available through RSS. It access the whole article through reader.
“Hover Zoom” is good for getting a full sized image when you mouse-over thumbnails.
If you use Gmail, “Mail Checker Plus for Google Mailâ„¢” will tell you how many unread mails you have.
Finally, Pin Tab. Its not an extension. If you right-click a tab in chrome and select “Pin Tab” it turns into a very small tab on the left. Its great if you brows with lots of tabs open, and all your pinned tabs will re-open after you quit chrome.
@Jon EP – there is also a strategic calculus to support disseminating resources such as AB. The personal benefit to dissemination comes from good will generated by being helpful. eg. Chris (above commenter) is clearly happy. Knowledge of a good deed done may be reward in itself for Cris B, but he may also get other returns since people are more likely to view him as a helpful guy and be helpful to him in return.
The cost is also fairly negligible. How much does Chris B’s dissemination of awareness impact the chances that AB will be subverted? I’d say not very much, and if it does a new version is likely to quickly replace it. And one of Chris’ now more grateful readers will probably know to point Chris in the direction of useful things like this in the future.
One trouble with analysis based on assumptions of rationality is that they tend to accompany simplifications of people’s perceived reward/risk values.
AdBlock just changed my morning/day/life. Thanks Chris!
Wow, you seriously just discovered ABP? I’ve been blocking ads (and flash) since…. I can’t remember when. I guess 2006 when it came out. I know I’ve been blocking pop ups since they started ages ago. Please don’t tell me you’re still using IE as well…
Ad Block and Flash Block: a must when you travel in slow internet countries. Also try Ghostery to also avoid tracking servers slowing down your page download. Now the only thing missing to have a good surfing experience in Uganda is to have this RSS feed work offline.
You should try Cat-Block, a definite improvement!
http://adblockforchrome.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/inturdusing-catblock.html
How to assess the wisdom of disseminating information about ABP? An approach grounded in game theory or common property economics would suggest that greater dissemination will result in overuse of the resource (ABP ad removal) and will eventually lead to a dilution of its benefits, because the greater the number of users avoiding ads, the greater the incentive for advertisers to find a solution to their ABP problem.
So, the decision of whether or not to disseminate information about a relatively open-access resource has certain game theory implications. It also raises questions that I don’t think are adequately explored in game theory. For instance, what if you were participating in the prisoner’s dilemma, but didn’t fully conceptualize your decision-making as being part of a strategy game? Our behaviors — sharing information about something we find useful — are often not presented to us in our own minds as strategy decisions involving resources. And yet, when social scientists model these behaviors, they set up experiments where the participants are a priori assumed to be (and sometimes instructed to be) rational, semi-rational, or not-so-rational actors. What happens when participants (and their observers) do not assume themselves to be “actors” in a game at all? Can experimental design accommodate this kind of problem? It seems a sort of inside-out framing effect — a sort of “non-framing” effect….
If you haven’t also discovered it try installing FlashBlock. It replaces Flash with a placeholder so that it by default doesn’t start running unless you click it (configurable on a per-site basis). To me Flash is far more annoying than ads.
And it blocks ads on Hulu!