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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[–] StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.world 12 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

An adblocker on your devices is equivalent to putting a Britta filter on your water tap.

[–] reshuffle6655@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Tangentially related but britta filters actually suck as far as I know; they're like the worst water filter for removing materials. Did a test myself with a fresh filter - 105 ppm tap to around 72 ppm vs 0 ppm for zero water pitchers and around 30ish for epic, it's been a bit so the numbers are rough for the britta and epic but I test my tap and ZW pitcher routinely.

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

More necessary than that, really.

[–] StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.world 6 points 3 hours ago

That entirely depends on the quality of your water.

[–] J52@lemmy.nz 20 points 8 hours ago

Bottom line: if I'm forced to consume ads on a device belonging to me - I will rather throw it away!

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 42 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

The trade body called it “illegal circumvention technology”, said 12ft.io has been locked by its web host, and promised to take similar action against other paywall bypassing technologies.

Just because you send bits to my network does not oblige me to render them. That's like saying I broke the law back when I had cable and changed channels during ad breaks. Falls flat on its face.

Beautifully worded 🙏

[–] Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 12 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

When piholes go mainstream they are fully cooked. Even tech illiterate in your family won't get the ads

[–] teuto@lemmy.teuto.icu 17 points 10 hours ago

I tried to give my mom a pihole, she made me get rid of it because it broke the NY times and some rando mobile game she plays. Some people can't be helped.

[–] the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 13 points 14 hours ago

Fuck yeah, advertiers are a cancer.

[–] NutWrench@lemmy.ml 62 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

Website: "You appear to be using an ad blocker." Me: "You appear to be correct."

[–] normalexit@lemmy.world 6 points 10 hours ago

Then I just sigh and go to archive.is and solve their captcha, so I can read the article.

[–] m3t00@lemmy.world 23 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

'disable ad block to contine'. no

[–] Jolteon@lemmy.zip 2 points 9 hours ago

There's almost always another website that has the same thing.

[–] Binturong@lemmy.ca 13 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

So this confirms that people have a negative reaction to ads, which every actual internet user knows in their bones already. This means they ALSO are not even doing their one job of persuading people to buy shit. Of course this won't lead to companies reducing investment for ad carrying or finding ways to make them more appealing, that costs money, instead they will use AI generators to produce WORSE ads and leverage their capital to have governments capitulate and force users to watch by banning blockers, probably VPNs too. Bill Hicks was the most correct about advertising, and remains undefeated.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 11 hours ago

A true visionary, taken too soon.

[–] flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 38 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

If ad networks weren't the number 1 way to get malware installed on your machine, didn't slowly take over the dedicated space for the actual content of a website, or put pressure on the websites in question to only publish things inoffensive to the advertisers maybe adblockers wouldn't be such an issue.

If your site can't exist without being a cesspit of annoying and useless infomercials and a deployment mechanism for malicious code injection then your site should not exist.

Not too many people had an issue with static banner ads back in the day after all except greedy website operators and advertisers.

[–] killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 148 points 1 day ago (8 children)

The use of the term "Dark traffic" here is to paint the use of ad-blockers as something nefarious. Don't use it, fuck these people right in their stupid mouths.

I propose using the terms "clean traffic", for ad-blocked website traffic, and "dogshit traffic" for everything else.

[–] grueling_spool@sh.itjust.works 60 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Maybe we could turn it around: adblockers are tools that block ads and other kinds of dark traffic such as trackers and malicious scripts.

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[–] Ironfacebuster@lemmy.world 24 points 20 hours ago

I personally am not bothered at ALL by the banner video ads overlayed on top of another banner ad that opens a new tab when you try to close the banner video then another one opens covering the original banner then the page scrolls all the way back to the top and shows you an email list sign up, why would I be?

[–] DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 40 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

Maybe if they didn’t use very intrusive ads people would not install ad-blockers so much

Many websites put a video playing in later in top of the text, with another layer of ads and tiny space to read… the website would be unreadable without ad-blocks

[–] StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

And the button to close it is usually tiny and mapped poorly. Which is in and of itself shitty.

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[–] pachrist@lemmy.world 41 points 1 day ago (11 children)

The web has almost always been unusable without an adblocker. Ads today are less malicious, but more insidious. Clicking the wrong ad in 2003 would brick your computer. Clicking the wrong ad today means you'll have to cancel a credit card after your personal data is compiled and sold on the black market.

Nothing new. Ads don't fuel a free internet. They fuel a business model. The free internet is fueled by the time and donations of kind, dedicated people.

[–] bargu@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago

Ads today are less malicious

I disagree, ads today are way more malicious than they used to be, ads are the biggest vector for malware today, they are used to stalk users to an insane level and most ads are porn, gambling, drugs or fascist propaganda.

At least back in the day you would only get sketchy ads on sketchy websites.

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[–] Randelung@lemmy.world 58 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Millenials are killing the ad industry!

Good.

[–] StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Shrinkage does not mean industry death but I think we all know that.

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[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 78 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I used to maintain a website for a bicycling club in my county that was great for getting people into biking, getting people out the house, making friends, and staying fit.

We had a banner ad along the top of the site for a local bicycle/bicycle repair shop that aided the club a lot and was very reasonable.

He got something out of it (publicity and a seal of approval towards the value/quality of his work), and we got something out of it (money to run the site, and a bit left over for things like puncture repair kits and the occasional celebratory drink after an arduous ride).

Nobody bats an eyelid to those ads. They are reasonable.

What we have now isn't that. What we have now is an insecure, malware-infested privacy nightmare that ruins webpages and stresses everybody out.

Use Firefox + uBlock origin for your own sanity. Don't let big tech make you feel guilty for not going along with their game.

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[–] canajac@lemmy.ca 15 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

25 years of adblockers and that is the single most important thing that keeps me from cutting myself off the web. I've donated money to adblockers and will continue to do so until I die! I send emails to the web sites that ask me to remove the blocker to tell them I will not and that there are many other sites that welcome my adblocking ass!

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[–] AeonFelis@lemmy.world 21 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours 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.”

And Scott Messer, founder of publishing adtech consultancy Messer Media, added: “Dark traffic is unlike anything we have seen before. It’s demonetising publisher content at scale without user consent.

Are they trying to present it as if poor innocent users need to be protected from the vile ad blockers?

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[–] m3t00@lemmy.world 7 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

what is with p.i.p video everywhere. hate it. can't figure out how to block it. firefox

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[–] pyre@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)

i know this may go against the general attitude here but i gotta say this does make me a little sad when i think about it. and i use adblockers as well, but i never knew what the numbers were. when it's put into context like this it's hard not to be discouraged by the fact that this is still probably a minority of users. i mean what the hell, how are people still using the internet with ads turned on.

[–] Decq@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

I'm starting to notice that a lot of people don't even notice what are ads or not. When i installed pihole and enabled it for all devices at home. My gf was complaining why suddenly a loy of pages wouldn't work anymore. Yeah, so she always clicked the ad/sponsored link everywhere and didn't have the slightest clue. And let's not start about social media and how basically 75% of it is (hidden) ads.

Personally I'm of the mentality if some company force feeds me their ads while i was not actively searching out their product type, I'll think 3 times before ever considering their products. Thankfully, i see basically no ads (online) anymore these days.

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