this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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They call it "dark traffic" - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.

Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.

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[–] Delusion6903@discuss.online 41 points 2 days ago (2 children)

“The growth of dark traffic undermines the ability of publishers to fund the production of quality content, or even operate as a business. We must recognise users are not the main driver causing this.”

"It’s demonetising publisher content at scale without user consent."

They act like we don't know what we are doing and want the ads. People who block ads in browsers like ddg and brave choose those browsers for that reason.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, but bad ad choices cause people who would otherwise be fine with ads that fund content to block. Some will never go away, in the same way some will always pirate, but the ad landscape has become like the streaming landscape and pushed people towards these choices

[–] Delusion6903@discuss.online 12 points 2 days ago

Absolutely. Too bad that even unobtrusive ads still can't be trusted not to have trackers.

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

Without user consent? That’s exactly the opposite