> We and our 909 partners store and access personal data, like browsing data or unique identifiers, on your device
1. Regardless which type of adblocker (dns, browser, modified apps, ...) it always is with users consent, since its not the default.
2. If ads hadn't got this annoying, privacy abusing and dangerous(fake hotlines, malware, scam, ...) this wouldn't be something that is even required for an good security baseline. My employer requires that we use adblockers.
From the article:
> The study discovered that the majority of users did not choose to block ads, with ad-blocking technology often activated by a third-party like their employer at a network level, their educational institution, security software they installed, or public Wi-Fi networks.
So, it's mostly not done by user opt-in. I'm further puzzled to find that you self-identified as a user with an adblocker not by your own choosing:
> My employer requires that we use adblockers.
If so, then I would think the previous statement about adblocking being opt-in would still hold. It is just that advertisers are trying to indivually track and monetize employees on company devices and time. On my work machines I am generally not allowed to run software that my employer does not approve, why should ads be treated differently?
I wonder if this is why smartphone apps are taking over? Much easier to inject ads that cannot be easily blocked.
I don't think that's true at all. Clients can not prevent measurement through server side logs. Publishers have just decided to put all their eggs in one basket by deploying a bunch of trivially bypassed JavaScript adtech trackers, and now it has come back to bite them.
It logically follows that the same measurements could have been made by tracking events on the server, possibly without involving additional client side scripts at all. No, it wouldn't be as easy or allow tracking everything the user does down to the pixel, but that's not the adblock enlightened user's problem...
It is my understanding the industry is moving towards server side "tagging" to improve performance and probably also to try and obfuscate it from ad blockers. But I haven't paid much attention to that.
Was a user's choice to mute or skip ads on live TV "dark viewership?"
Just straight up call it what it is in the title; traffic with adblockers enabled or adblocked-traffic. Otherwise this article just comes off feeling like it was intentionally written as a click/rage-bait.
They have access to everything you are doing. If you have installed a random adblocker it might have your very private information and could probably be selling it.
I think there is a opportunity out there where in adblocker also acts like a subscription management platform similar to spotify that allows users to monetize their content and subscription revenue is shared with thr content providers.
If I visit a site about some type of game and there is a generic ad banner for some such game, as on one or two sites I frequent, that can even be useful to me. It's all the sites that try to show personalized ads tracking me between sites I do not want to ever see. Luckily almost all those sites rely on client-side ad scripts served from some third-party server, which means they are blocked by default by NoScript, so rarely a need for more advanced blockers.
Today we are in a positive feedback loop. Advertisers are getting more aggressive, more sneaky and when they can show you an ad they want to milk that attention so more people are using adblockers. Advertisers are running towards extinction thanks to their stupidly aggressive tactics.
I use a pretty regular Firefox albeit in PortableApps form for... at least 7 years? The only thing is what I select the strict option for the 3rd-party access.
The amount of times of times the sites guilt-trip me into "you are using the adblocker you scum" is quite amusing.
I like the idea of 'pay with money or views' so I'm totes fine with seeing the ads... but apparently the site owners don't want to burden themselves with serving the ads from their own systems which is the reason I don't see half the ads in the first place.
No, I don't have a solution for the current situation but I certanly can say - I'm glaf to see the ads what supports you if you are okay to serve them yourself.
The main driver causing users to adopt ad blockers is, unsurprisingly, ever more aggressive and obnoxious adtech which turns web browsing into a miserable experience.
Add in tracking and security risks, and it's unsurprising that organizations would want to adopt ad blocking as well.
chris_wot•5h ago