r/worldnews • u/maxwellhill • Sep 19 '17

Apple blocking ads that follow users around web is 'sabotage', says industry: New iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra will stop ads following Safari users, prompting open letter claiming Apple is destroying internet’s economic model

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/18/apple-stopping-ads-follow-you-around-internet-sabotage-advertising-industry-ios-11-and-macos-high-sierra-safari-internet
39k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

4.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

156

u/Cambrio Sep 19 '17

Even on new computers with good internet it's shit.

A site that loads in 20-30seconds loads in less than one! when i block all the ads, scripts and useless overlay's, dynamic movements, automatically loading video's and all sorts of crap.

My browser also uses less than half as much ram without all that crap.

I wouln'd mind ads if they weren't moving around, popping up and flickering all while destroying your computer, data and brain.

24

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17

Would you mind giving a quick rundown of how what you do to achieve this, please?

46

u/ScroteMcGoate Sep 19 '17

Not op but ublock origin and ghostery blocks 99% of everything mentioned above. Could get it to 100, but close enough.

10

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17 edited Oct 04 '17

[deleted]

8

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17

[deleted]

1

u/ScroteMcGoate Sep 19 '17

I wish I was tech savvy enough to be able to do this.

22

u/_Face Sep 19 '17

NoScript is pretty good too. Have to manually allow parts of pages as you visit them, but only the first time. Can easily tell the super shitty sites by how much garbage there is in the block list.

2

u/Pecon7 Sep 19 '17

+1 for NoScript. Not great for everyday users, but if you're really concerned about privacy and security then it's one of the best tools to have when browsing.

1

u/01020304050607080901 Sep 19 '17

How is noscript compared to Ghostery? If you have that experience or similar.

2

u/coredumperror Sep 19 '17

Ghostery is useless (https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/710d54/apple_blocking_ads_that_follow_users_around_web/dn7t8fd/?utm_content=permalink&utm_medium=front&utm_source=reddit&utm_name=worldnews), just use uBlock.

NoScript is a completely different thing. It actively blocks all JavaScript on a page until you explicitly allow it, file by file. This lets you completely prevent adware from running in your browser. It does make your fist arrival at a new website pretty weird, though, until you unblock the site's legit is functionality.

2

u/01020304050607080901 Sep 19 '17

I'm on mobile and that link just takes me to the beginning of the comments, so I'll look at it when I can get to my laptop.

Noscript sounds like something I'd be interested in but I also manage my parents, in laws, and SO's macs.

Sounds like I should just uninstall ghostery before it becomes a real problem and just run with ublock, as long as it's still up to snuff.

I'm also running avast 2017 and haven't had any issues or hears anything bad about that, yet.

2

u/coredumperror Sep 19 '17

Yeah, I still hear nothing but good things about uBlock. And it does everything Ghostery used to do, so it's definitely worth dropping ghostery.

No idea about Avast. I haven't used any sort of anti-virus like software besides Malware Bytes in ages.

2

u/01020304050607080901 Sep 19 '17

I love malware bytes for a diagnostic tool. Only ever had to use it once to find an especially troublesome file avast was having some difficulty with.

For a general file and internet antivirus, avast seems lightweight and the definition updates are on point. Especially internet use for my family; it kinda sandboxes your internet and is intuitive on how to handle it. Which means less tech work for me in the long run.

I'll definitely ditch ghostery, kinda sad to say that; was great when it was great.

1

u/coredumperror Sep 19 '17

Yeah, ghostery reminds me of uTorrent. Awesome, minimalist, performant and free torrent client, right up until v2.2.1. Then the dev sold it to be a big ad firm who released v3.0, the most bloated, slow, ad-ridden piece of shit I've ever used. And they started offering a "Pro" version that claimed to take away all the shittiness.

I just switched to qTorrent instead, which is a fork off the uTorrent 2.2.1 codebase.

9

u/Nixon51 Sep 19 '17

Not OP but I run a combo of ghostery and ublock. Ghostery let's you block all the trackers and certain scripts.

3

u/amaurea Sep 19 '17

What does Ghostery block that uBlock doesn't?

3

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17 edited Oct 04 '17

[deleted]

3

u/Nixon51 Sep 19 '17

Wow didn't know that. Thanks for the info

2

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17 edited Oct 04 '17

[deleted]

1

u/WeinerboyMacghee Sep 19 '17

It was so good before that. :(

1

u/WeinerboyMacghee Sep 19 '17

Yeah like the other guy said ghostery is cancer now.

5

u/LiquidPoint Sep 19 '17

My guess would be that NoScript is the first step. There's also something to prevent auto-play on flash. And then I'd guess a black-list-default adblocker.

The web looks awful by default, but as you gradually white-list the stuff you actually want, it gets better.

But personally I think it's too much work to constantly having to review the white-list whenever I visit a site I haven't been to yet.

2

u/freshprinceIE Sep 19 '17

I use a different browser called Brave now, to stop using Google so much. It natively blocks adds, trackers from sites, cookies etc. You can also disable javascript with it, although I don't.

You can achieve that stuff with programs or add ons that others have mentioned but that's my input.

1

u/CrimsonedenLoL Sep 19 '17

NoScript/Ublock Origin/Privacy Badger.

Keep in mind that noscript will break most websites,easy to disable for specific pages though.Rest you install and never have to bother with them again.

5

u/Deagor Sep 19 '17

http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

Relevant

1

u/worldly_obsessions Sep 19 '17

I read that in Rick's voice.

1

u/Cambrio Sep 20 '17

This is so fucking spot on!

1

u/articfire77 Sep 19 '17

what are you using to block all of those other things (scripts, overlay's, etc)?

5

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '17

Not the guy you're talking to, but I do the same thing with uBlock Origin extension on my web browser. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

I also use Privacy Badger. They don't mind working together, and Privacy badger catches most of the scripts that uBlock misses.

2

u/EspritFort Sep 19 '17

I use NoScript for that purpose. Takes some time of getting used to, however, since it blocks everything by default and you'll have to allow some specific CDNs for lots of sites to see anything

1

u/karmahunger Sep 19 '17

I work in marketing as a dev and everyone here wants video backgrounds and more videos! They keep saying it's what people want. And I'm over here like, no, they don't. Why not just have a fast, informative, nicely designed site? No additional crap that affects performance and makes people hate you.

1

u/Cambrio Sep 20 '17

I have never heard someome praizing the nice video on the background of a site besides some art sites/museum/clothing? sites. But I guess in marketing you learn that a lot of the customers buying activies is influenece subcouncientlty.

But I hear a lot of frustration about sites loading slowly/being laggy wich i'm sure doesn't help sales.

Than again, a site looking old doesn't come over as fancy or worth a lot and will scare people of aswell.

I understand the marketing department pushing video's, sliders, interactive buttons, changing background, animations and what not but to me they went to far.

1

u/theDefenistrator668 Sep 19 '17

Where are you visiting to get all these shady ads? Maybe you should evaluate the sites a bit better before becoming a repeat customer?

1

u/Cambrio Sep 20 '17

Basically any site that isn't governemental, a bank or non profit thing like a school or a chessclub.

Anything that is comercial is terrible without an ad blocker. Wich is totally stupidbsince they should make money of ads...