Free news sites step up pleas for consumers to disable adblocking software:
If your web browser has recently updated, or you've loaded some new browser extensions, you may be seeing a message when you visit certain free content sites.If your web browser has recently updated, or you've loaded some new browser extensions, you may be seeing a message when you visit certain free content sites.
"Please support journalism by allowing ads," one of the pop-up messages reads.
In the message, there is a large link that will disable the adblocker extension in your browser. There is a smaller link that will allow you to proceed to the site while continuing to block ads.
Dominic Chorafakis, with the cybersecurity consulting firm Akouto, says adblocking extensions aren't exactly new, but it's possible browsers have strengthened them in recent updates.
"Sites that rely on ad revenue, of course, don't like this at all, and there is quite a bit of effort being put in from their side to detect when a visitor has adblocking in place and either ask them politely to disable adblocking or outright prevent them from viewing their content unless they disable it," Chorafakis told ConsumerAffairs.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Wednesday December 23 2020, @12:48AM (19 children)
I block ads to help keep my computer and my eyes safe. Over the years I have seen plenty of "advertising" that either borders the line or crosses the line of being malicious. Not to mention all the bouncing, bobbing, seizure inducing, annoying shit.
If you idiots had just stayed with simple static advertisements for Tide detergent and such, this never would have gotten to be such a problem. You ruined it for yourselves.
These days, when one comes across a site that begs you to turn off your ad blocker, you can assume the next thing it will do is ask you to turn off your virus scanner. Then ask you to pull down your pants so it can rape you up the ass whenever it wants.
Sorry, fuck you, and I just won't visit your site any more.
I had to do that with a weather site not that long ago. Sucks to be you. So long.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people out there are idiots who don't mind keeping their pants down at all times, and expect you should too.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Username on Wednesday December 23 2020, @12:58AM (10 children)
I think the biggest problem with those annoying ads is that "content creators" just rely on an ad company to run the ads for them. They do not screen and run the ads themselves. If they don't care enough to do that, I have a suspicion that they don't care enough to make decent content.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:00AM (6 children)
Nobody cares enough to make decent content anymore, let alone vet advertisers as appropriate for their site.
My ad blocker is my way of "voting" for what kind of internet I want to be produced. Low effort ads are nothing I want to see flourish.
If you take the time to write your own copy and editorialize in an ad for your carefully selected sponsor, there's no ad blocker in the world (yet) that can stop that, and I'm fine with that.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:06AM (3 children)
There was a time when advertisements were hosted on the the site of the "content creator". Most ad blockers rely on blocking third party ad servers, to a large extent. If $randomsite.com hosted it's own non-intrusive ads, those ads would get past most adblockers. Serve the ad up as plain html, without any hinky javascript, and it would almost certainly get past the filters. And, to be honest, I wouldn't mind a few pixels dedicated to praising Tide laundry detergent. Wouldn't even mind an animated gif. I draw the line at some stupid banner, or a video.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Freeman on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:21PM (2 children)
A trend I've seen is that big YouTube content creators are actually doing the advertisements as part of their show. So, you can't block the advertisement, because it's just part of the video. Whereas the YouTube advertisements you can block, because they're third party ads.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:24PM (1 child)
I'm also a lot less annoyed by the occasional advertisement, if the content creator is the one that's doing the advertisement. One big thing that circumvents is the very real possibility of third-party advertisements serving you malware. I trust YouTube and especially the content creator to not be distributing malware. Whereas third-party advertisements are ripe for the pickings.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday December 23 2020, @11:24PM
I think Veritasium is an excellent example of ads done right.
https://m.youtube.com/user/1veritasium [youtube.com]
I am very impressed with this guy...
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:11AM (1 child)
This is so true. The handful of times I have jumped through someones hoops to see some of their precious "content", I have always been vastly disappointed. Usually just a few paragraphs of useless watered down nothingness.
The very fact that a site insists everyone keep their pants down usually tells me that they already are desperate, and not likely to be paying skilled employees to produce anything worthwhile.
I'd also say they should be forced to show their sites to their mothers. But, they probably already rape their mothers. The scummy content alone is enough reason to block ads. There is a time and place for porn, but a mobile video game ad (probably malware anyway) with some underdressed video game character shaking her oversized boobs doesn't belong on most web sites. All it takes is a push of a button and advertisers would happily serve you a wide spread hairy ass or even CP.
If only they had just stuck to advertising toothpaste.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday December 23 2020, @11:41PM
Remember Dick Stark pushing Remington-Rand computers, shavers, and typewriters on 1950's TV game shows.
The commercials were as good as the program.
To me, he was so authentic... Trustable. Even as a kid, he had me looking forward to when I would be old enough to use Remington Rand business products.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:50AM (1 child)
THIS!
They refuse to take even the slightest bit of responsibility for the ads they present, but want me to open my computer to whatever they throw at me. That includes such shenanigans as presenting a complete fake desktop animation showing a "virus scanner" finding all manner of horrors on "my computer" (quite amusing since it showed a windows desktop on my Linux system), and on weather apps, an ad with "TORNADO WARNING" in flashing red letters.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday December 23 2020, @10:09AM
Yep. If viewing an ad requires running code from some random third-party site it's no safer than if the site were to ask the viewer to download and run an unknown, possibly (likely) malicious binary. Even assuming you trust the site you're visiting enough to do that, that doesn't mean that trust extends to the websites of every advertiser on the planet. Which is what the "please disable adblock" shit is asking you to do: give code execution rights for your PC to anybody willing to toss a few bucks to an advertising platform.
You want me to view your ads? I will if you can provide them in a safe, sane way. Which means images and text, or fuck off. But nobody does that at all, so I just block everything now, fuck 'em all.
The only reasonably sane ad services I can remember ever seeing were those old text-only ones from Google and a now-defunct advertising service called "Project Wonderful". They worked even when I had JS fully disabled and were largely text or static images, no obnoxious shit. So it's no wonder PW died, it wasn't sleazy enough to live; meanwhile Google lived because it evolved to become the sleaziest of them all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2020, @02:37PM
Because if there's really such an ad company I wouldn't mind whitelisting their ad site (while having javascript off for their site). I don't even care if they track me (even better if they are really good at showing ads that are interesting to me). My concern is avoiding malware and other malicious ads.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @01:18AM (1 child)
My ad blocker is an accessibility device. I have ADHD. I can't read websites that have flashing animations and autoplay video -- I use the ad blocker to disable non-advertising autoplay video too. If you require me to disable my ad blocker to access the content, you are effectively denying me access to the content, because I will be equally unable to read the content whether or not my ad blocker is enabled.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 23 2020, @02:09AM
Sounds like a US lawsuit waiting to happen...
(Score: 3, Informative) by inertnet on Wednesday December 23 2020, @10:48AM
That, and security are my main reasons for blocking ads. I just can't read content if anything distracting is on my screen or even around me. Maybe I'm more alert and aware of my surroundings all the time than most people, I even cover up led's that are in my field of view.
I use AutoplayStopper to prevent autoplay, it even halts meme GIF's on twitter.
(Score: 1) by isocelated on Wednesday December 23 2020, @11:54AM (1 child)
I can't agree with this enough. A simple, static ad for innocuous shit is no problem. The rest of it is greed/maliciousness.
Human nature ends up ruining everything.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday December 24 2020, @12:00AM
| CONSUME |
+---------+
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:25PM
Virtually all advertising is malicious on a fundamental level.
The whole point is to take a more-or-less happy person and make them unsatisfied with their life -- you manufacture a feeling of need, or amplify an existing one, then you suggest Product X will fill it.
Willingly subject myself to that kind of abuse? Hell no, shields up and fuck all advertisers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:27PM
right, and what these suited whore pieces of shit are really talking about is spy scripts posing as ads. be glad you're not getting stabbed to death in the streets you fucking shitweasel bitches.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday December 24 2020, @03:36AM
Fear not, we don't do that nonsense here. On the couple of occasions our theme suddenly made you want to claw your eyes out, we did it entirely pro-bono and strictly for the keks.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Username on Wednesday December 23 2020, @12:52AM (2 children)
The paywall. Newspapers were never free. CNN was never free. I am not going to put up with annoying ads just to read an opinion, and if I'm going to pay for an opinion it's going to be one that interests me.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by isocelated on Wednesday December 23 2020, @11:57AM
I've just about given up on reading news at all, save this website. I realized 99% of "news" is sensationalist BS and clickbait and never affects me personally anyway. Journalism is dead.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:35PM
The trouble is that public service broadcasters won't/can't put a paywall up. Commercial news websites then find themselves with free (at the point of use) competition. That leaves them with the choice of aiming high - producing content that's so much better that people will hear about it and pay for it - or aiming low and plastering their pages with ads.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by EEMac on Wednesday December 23 2020, @12:59AM (6 children)
Sorry, no. That part of the social contract doesn't exist any more.
Printed media can be funded by ads because *they preview the ads*. And readers are free to completely ignore print ads if they prefer.
On the modern web, ads are farmed out to third-party sites. There's no oversight, no connection to content, and the third-party sites:
* Track you everywhere you go
* Push malware to your computer
* Harass you with autoplay "clicking close doesn't mean close" videos and obnoxious animations
If printed ads were this intrusive, they'd never sell another newspaper/magazine.
Very few people objected to Google ads when they were plain text, relevant to search terms, and separate from search results . . .
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Spamalope on Wednesday December 23 2020, @01:30AM
Yep!
Wake me when they pay damages for malware consequences including damages via malware stolen credentials.
The current situation of denying responsibility selling malware delivery makes me... unsympathetic.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @02:07AM (1 child)
I write them a nice note. I do not block ads. I block tracking sites. If u up want to send me ad from your site please do. I do not do business with tracking sites. Please also fix your software fails to understand the difference of ad blocking and tracking blocking.
They get really mad and ask software am I using. DNS only.
Also why DoH is brain dead. It just lets trackers back in.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NateMich on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:02AM
I thought that was the entire point of it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:26AM (2 children)
Very few people objected to Google ads when they were plain text, relevant to search terms, and separate from search results . . .
Yep, those were definitely the good ol' days. A lot of people even liked those ads: they weren't in the way at all, and frequently they showed you stuff you actually wanted to buy! (what a concept!) Why on earth did they get rid of them anyway? How can having ads relevant to your search terms possibly be a bad thing business-wise?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @06:21AM (1 child)
They use the concept of wanting to track you across sites to customize ads for you specifically, as a cover to justify the tracking. The intelligence agencies want the tracking down to the individual, and they pay the search companies and the "ad" tracking companies well. The ads are just an excuse. (No, the intelligence agency probably isn't interested in you -- but if in the future they do become interested in you, they want to have that history of you, and everyone else, stored so they can go back and see what you were doing.)
But some websites that aren't in on the con actually try to run themselves based off money from the ads. It's not working very well for them because the money isn't in the ads anymore.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday December 25 2020, @05:49AM
This doesn't make sense. What "con" is there, for non-Google websites? Any non-Google websites involved here would have been using Google to *advertise*; they didn't get money from ads at all, they *paid* for those ads (using Google's "AdWords" service). The ads were a way to drive customer traffic to their sites, where they then sold stuff to them. Your whole post just sounds like a conspiracy theory; ads are a perfectly viable way of gaining customers, and in fact are generally the main way for companies to get new customers when they can't rely on word-of-mouth. Ad companies don't need government money to "spy" on people to make advertising a viable business; it's been viable ever since advertising was invented (which probably goes back to the Roman days).
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @01:22AM
They seem to have no problem advertising that they object to your ad-blocking...
Quit "out-serving" advertising.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday December 23 2020, @01:32AM (17 children)
Some ads get past the adblock. I especially dislike autoplay video. About the only courtesy they observe is not also autoplaying the audio. I've tried the hosts file idea, and while okay, it's a lot of work to set it up over and over and over.
Then there's those anti-social cookies. "You've read 3 free articles this month, now you must subscribe or you can't read any more!" Whenever I see that, I wipe the cookies that website planted on my computer, and that fixes that. Making my own computer turn me over to the nagging, moralizing, starving journalists propagandists! Sleazy. Really could use a good cookie blocker extension.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 23 2020, @01:34AM (3 children)
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autoplaystopper/ejddcgojdblidajhngkogefpkknnebdh?hl=en-US [google.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday December 23 2020, @02:28AM (1 child)
Next in line: the development of this ad blocker is supported for you by ads, please disable it! (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday December 23 2020, @02:32AM
I think that already happened.
AdBlock Plus Reportedly Allowing More Ads by Default [soylentnews.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversies [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:38AM
Is a counterpart to the "AutoplayStopper" extension by yochaim available for Firefox as well? I'd like to see how it stacks up against over a dozen ways to autoplay silent video in a web browser [pineight.com], many of them JS-free.
(Score: 2) by rigrig on Wednesday December 23 2020, @02:03AM
They would, but somehow most browsers by default only allow autoplay for silent videos. (My guess is that background tabs opening with noise was extremely annoying, but playing a video as background or whatever is a "valid use case" and didn't generate enough user complaints to block it)
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday December 23 2020, @02:28AM (2 children)
Ad-blockers? Much easier to just use Firefox and block all images. Even works for blocking videos, and the site can't tell you're blocking "their" ads as well.
And for those sites that try to block all but the first few lines of content if you're not a registered user? Click on the "text" icon in the URL bar that appears after the page is loaded (you may have to scroll down and back up to force the icon to appear).
You'll be amazed by both the bandwagon savings and the page load speeds. You'll also no longer be loading tracking and "share with" icons from anywhere.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday December 23 2020, @07:48PM (1 child)
I haven't used image blocking-- well, it wasn't blocking so much as simply not downloading them, to save bandwidth-- in a very long time, basically since I was last on dial-up, in the days before Firefox existed as Phoenix. Good to know that option is still present.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @10:39PM
If you use ublock origin, you can even specify the size of images. First party Small ones that are usually icons can still go through. Videos or third party or large ones blocked. It's a bit nicer than blocking all images and saves almost the same amount of bandwidth. We've actually had people using less that way when we rolled it out, probably because they stopped toggling the feature on and off in the browser.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:04AM (1 child)
Do it at the router. That's what I do. Three easy steps: Import, Cleanup/Filter/Whitelist, restart DNS.
#### post_mount script
# hosts list to import and filter
wget -qO- "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/alternates/fakenews-gambling-porn-social/hosts" | grep -w ^0.0.0.0 | sed $'s/\r$//' |grep -v -e 'redd.it' -e 'reddit' -e 'linkedin.com' -e 'licdn.com' -e 'pinterest' -e 'pinimg' -e 'reddit' |sort -u > /tmp/mnt/8GB/hosts.clean;
# block facebook hosts if they get removed from imported list again
cat /tmp/mnt/8GB/all_facebook_hosts_to_block|grep 0.0.0.0 |sort -u >> /tmp/mnt/8GB/hosts.clean
# wait because sync is broken on this piece of crap
sleep 6
# make sure your dnsmasq config knows where you stashed the additional hosts.clean
service restart_dnsmasq
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Wednesday December 23 2020, @08:57AM
Just install https://pi-hole.net/ [pi-hole.net]
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:04AM (5 children)
If you find yourself doing something over and over, you should be using a script.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday December 23 2020, @07:43PM (4 children)
Easier said than done. I experiment with a lot of different Linux distros. Can't be sure if systemd or something else is controlling the /etc/hosts files, so that editing them directly is futile, as they will simply be overwritten by some deeper configuration.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:32PM
i use arch and fedora and i've never had my /etc/hosts file overwritten. people use that for local web dev so i'd be surprised if a distro pulled that shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @10:42PM (2 children)
Which OS version and network interface configuration tool do you use?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday December 24 2020, @01:51AM (1 child)
Of late, Lubuntu and Mint. Yeah, I know, systemd. They use NetworkManager. Also trying Void on an old netbook. Have used Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, Red Hat, Puppy, AntiX, Knoppix, Xubuntu, OpenSUSE, and others I don't recall off the top of my head.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 25 2020, @05:49AM
You could be running into two issues with different solutions based on your description. The first is that the actual /etc/hosts file is being rewritten. The second is that NetworkManager is somehow splitting the horizon on its resolver. Do you have DNS sofware like dnsmasq or systemd-resolved installed? Or, did you mean the former problem of the files being overwritten?
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Wednesday December 23 2020, @08:57AM
https://pi-hole.net/ [pi-hole.net]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by progo on Wednesday December 23 2020, @01:50AM (2 children)
Sorry no, the news sites pissed me off first and they keep getting worse, with the ads when they are not blocked.
I'll never forget years ago when Leo LaPorte was demoing something on a TWIT TV show and suddenly said "Why is my anti-virus program telling me this Yahoo ad is trying to install malware?"
At that point I decided one of your Internet security layers is that you MUST block auctioned/networked ads; to allow ads is bad computer hygiene. This is NON-NEGOTIABLE.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @02:11AM
For a long time, I tried to convince a family member to add an ad blocker. Being someone who tries to sell their own content, they repeatedly refused. Until they were hit twice in 6 weeks or so from the New York Times. Two complete wipes and reinstalls. They didn't argue with me again after the second time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:03AM
Well, FWIW I generally allow javascript that it credited to the site I'm visiting. If they don't trust the stuff enough to host it, I don't trust it enough to accept it.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @02:03AM (1 child)
This is a blatant admission that they cater to the advertisers rather than the readers. Otherwise, they would be funded by the readers.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:06AM
The problem is that there's no safe way to do small payments. I suppose I could subscribe, but generally I don't think they have enough of value to read every day. And I hate to read long articles on the internet anyway. I subscribe to paper editions of anything I really intend to read, rather than just look at the headlines. And it's a real pain trying to figure out how reliable most sites are.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RedGreen on Wednesday December 23 2020, @02:18AM (3 children)
noticed this useless trend. The begging for money all the time from them and other sites with the goddamn pop ups. Well as luck would have it I setup the Pi-hole software the other day and it seems to have solved that garbage.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:02AM (2 children)
Its an arms race, and what blocks most ads this month will block less and less as time goes by.
I do hope that the crap content producers and paywalled publications are noticing how they are being de-selected from my content feed, by name.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:10AM (1 child)
I doubt it matters much to them where we go, they will continue their scummy behaviour until some politician thinks he can get some votes by outlawing it. Then the work around will happen along with the exemptions and we get to rinse and repeat forever while the scum try to increase their hold on it and us.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday December 23 2020, @12:51PM
I thought the current crop of scummy politicians were letting spam callers run free so they could jerk their chain and "make a difference" in the months before the election, but thanks to COVID that was an irrelevant sideshow.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:05AM
Good riddance
(Score: 5, Insightful) by srobert on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:05AM (6 children)
"Please support journalism by allowing ads,"
No. It's the ads that are preventing anything like actual journalism from happening. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Just tune in to CNN, FoxNews, etc any night of the week. They break for a commercial and a bunch of pharmaceutical ads come on. Then you wonder why they never have a fact based discussion of the movement for a single-payer health care system.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:17AM (4 children)
A lot of us know that. Speaking for myself, I hadn't looked at it from your angle. I don't see enough advertisements to form much of an opinion, but pharma is well represented in what I do see. +1 informative
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:06AM
MSNBC tends to run 'financial' scam crap. "one of a kind silver coin, only minted for one month" sort of crap.
look no further than the advertisers to see what they really think of you.
(Score: 5, Informative) by MadTinfoilHatter on Wednesday December 23 2020, @06:50AM (1 child)
In the Nordic countries (possibly also other parts of Europe - not sure) they've solved this issue rather nicely. Pharmaceutical advertising is quite restricted. Prescription medication may only be advertised in publications aimed at those who prescribe it (i.e. medical professionals) and not to the general public. This also reduces the problem of morons demanding antibiotics for their virus-caused flu, which causes overconsumption of antibiotics, which causes antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains to pop up...
(Score: 2, Informative) by hemocyanin on Wednesday December 23 2020, @08:40AM
It wasn't ridiculous in the US until 1997 when the FDA made it easier to advertise directly to consumers too. Undoubtedly, the lobbying money or bribe laundering (speaking fees, book deals, conferences in Aruba, etc.) paid off handsomely for bigPharma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-to-consumer_advertising#United_States [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Wednesday December 23 2020, @02:30PM
Keep in mind that the vast majority of all mainstream media is owned by a small conglomeration of companies, all of which are controlled in large part by pharmaceutical companies. It's why you can see many seemingly disparate fake news sources (ABC, CBS, Fox, and others on TV; many more in print), scattered throughout the world, spewing the exact same pro-vaccine propaganda pieces, down to the word. And it's why they NEVER report on the billions of dollars paid out by U.S. taxpayers for the deaths and maimings caused by vaccines.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:54PM
or truth about vaccine damaged kids
(Score: 1) by zion-fueled on Wednesday December 23 2020, @12:57PM
No, I'm not going to turn anything off. Pretty close to blocking THEM. Hope they run out of money and go out of business. You can count on 1 hand the "news" articles that weren't some sort of propaganda effort or misrepresenting the situation. If they fold, nobody will miss them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2020, @04:05AM
Ads? What ads? These requests to servers which are who knows where in half, and in most civilized countries connecting to the second half should result in a bullet to head for cooperation with enemy? These scripts which steal data and execute code? These programs causing large energy losses?
There are NO ADS anymore. There is a surveillance platform and we all pay for it in energy.
There is no advertisement anymore too! Most of these contain no information about the product. There is a psychological (or, why not, memetic) pollution which is no different than fumes in air or waste in water. Sorry, I'm not going to support this crap.
(Score: 2) by Lester on Thursday December 24 2020, @09:10AM
t is their fault.
I don't mind (at least not much) getting some advertising, but that is not what they do. Now, advertising is not show a note or a banner, it is sending everything they know about me to an advertising monster that knows more about me than myself, and that sells that information to other bigger advertising tycoons, And, then, finally display the perfect ad for me.
Display the ad by yourself, but don't insert a script of third parties that store my IP, what I do with the mouse, what other sites I visit and it collects data from where it is able in order to guess who I am, what and where I buy, where I live, how old I am, who are my family, my friends, my coworkers, my interests, my hobbies, my fears etc.
You broke the contract, so I don't accept ads of your site anymore.