Of course highlighting this fact that the presence of an adblocker is detectable, unfortunately only results in escalating the cat-and-mouse game further.
I have also considered popularising a script that replaces the whole page's content with "JavaScript detected, please disable it to view this content and improve your security".
This is exactly what most dark net markets do.
Find something off the beaten path that works for you and it will rarely need updates.
It's like a leech, and they want you to think it's a symbiotic relationship.
Bug report: There's a typo in the actual popup as shown to me, it says "extention". Consistently enough, the typo is present in the code snippet in the article:
if (!document.cookie.includes("notice-shown")) {
document.getElementById("ad-note-hidden").id = 'ad-note';
document.getElementById("ad-note-content-wrapper").innerHTML = "No adblocker detected. " +
"Consider using an extention like <a href=https://ublockorigin.com/>uBlock Origin</a> to save time and bandwidth." +
" <u onclick=hide()>Click here to close.</u>";
}I wonder if they actually watch the ads on purpose, even in private or if they turn their adblocker off just for the video, as not to give ideas to their viewers and potentially losing ad revenue.
The chance that he was using one the whole damn time? 100%
Instead of adblockers, I remember sites that are user hostile one way or another and just avoid those sites. Those sites that are heavy on ads usually aren't worth my time anyway, so the presence of those auto-playing videos in every corner ends up being a signal for me to go somewhere else.
Some services claim to turn "anonymous" visitors into actual email addresses (and some other basic info), likely via identity graphs (IP/device/hashed IDs).
I've heard of cases where people are getting outreached (via email) after just visiting a product website, even with an ad blocker on, using a private browser (Brave or similar).
Opensend is one example. They're pretty open about it in their FAQ [1].
That’s a pretty crazy statement. How often do you see loading a CSS stylesheet fail to load? Most sites are completely unusable without their stylesheets and I don’t recall the last time I saw a stylesheet fail to load.
I wouldn't say often, but it certianly happens often enough that I make sure my own designs work well enough (the content is visible at least, even if it is hellish ugly) if external resources like that fail to load.
The most frequent cause is a site that is overloaded due to a hug from HN or similar, the main request going through OK but some of the subsequent ones timing out. It is getting less common with servers that support HTTP2/HTTP3 so pipeline better, as the usual failure point in these cases is in opening a connection not while reading the response (or the server generating that response).
It can also happen if static content is served from a different place, and that is down but the host serving the main content is not.
Often. It might have something to do with my adblock settings though...
> Most sites are completely unusable without their stylesheets
Those sites are generally completely trash anyway.
It's also deeply paternalistic: Even if it is meant well - and I assume that's the case here - it implies the site operator knows better than the user what is good for them.
Finally, this will also lower the guards of less technical users for installing random plug-ins on website demand.
From a subjective gut feeling: Please do not do this. Let people decide what they need, and what they don't need.
This already happens with every ad successfully shown to a person. Why don't you criticize the ad business for much more extensive overreach instead of someone doing harmless activism on their own website?
This is far from the same as the overreach of many (most?) ads. From the description: “It’s shown off to the side, and never covers content. It won’t be shown if there isn’t enough space.”. In fact the space issue is overly careful, on my protrait 1080p monitor it doesn't show because 1080 pixels is just a little too thin for its test.
And someone who is used to how things are without a blocker, is unlikely to notice this extra little (non-animated, soundless, out-of-the-way) message in the general melée!
> Finally, this will also lower the guards of less technical users for installing random plug-ins on website demand.
That is a fair point (though those guards seem so low enough already in general that this will make litle real world difference). Instead of pointing to a particular thing to install, when I do this on my output I'll point to a page listing common options and a warning about installing random stuff without at least minimal research.