[DaveW]

I know a few of us run into sites that have fits about your ad blockers* or posts that link to paywalls
So I figured a thread on countermeasures would be good.

This thread on Mastodon has a few good tips at the start.

Vi (@vi@mastodon.gamedev.place)

I probably shouldn’t tell you that whenever you encounter a paywalled article on the Internet, or a popup that blocks the article from you unless you sign up or disable your adblocker, you can put the URL in archive.is and read it there comfortably, so I won’t.

mastodon.gamedev.place

*FWIW I don't mind ad's but I run an ad blocker as most adverts now run trackers to follow your browsing.
showing me adverts is one thing, breaching my privacy is totaly another thing, and I won't willingly allow it.

 

[SkaredShtles]

Yep - just recently discovered "https://archive.ph/" and it works for most anything...

 

[rideit]

There is a new Denver Post article about Palisade Peaches. It is behind a paywall. I just pasted the url into that site, and BLAMMO, there it was!
It worked a peach, I tell ya!

https://archive.li/9jpWn

 

[binary visions]

I find the whole advertising ecosystem to be horrible.

I agree that websites need to make money. I agree that advertising is the best way to accomplish this because most users simply won't pay for the service directly.

Unfortunately, ad networks continue to be rife with malware, intrusive ads, and invasive tracking measures. And so, even though I know that Ridemonkey would have collapsed under its own weight 15 years ago without ads, and even though I read content from sites that support themselves through ads, I still run an ad blocker everywhere. I've only turned it off on Ridemonkey because I need to know if you guys are seeing anything bad.

I'd love a useful and easy way to pay small amounts of money for content. I don't want to spend $4-10/month for every site whose authors occasionally produce something I want to look at, but I wouldn't mind regularly paying a buck for an article that I enjoyed.

https://12ft.io also does a lot of useful paywall unblocking.

 

[6thElement]

I have zero ad blockers installed in Edge Chromium, but it seems to block most ads on it's own, so much so that most news sites try to prompt me to disable my adblocker...Not sure how when I don't have one

 

[canadmos]

This is more so on the phone, but sometimes I find that switching to the easy to view mode or simple web view version that pops up, is enough to get around some paywalls and also eliminates ads (or I at least don't see them).

 

[binary visions]

This is more so on the phone, but sometimes I find that switching to the easy to view mode or simple web view version that pops up, is enough to get around some paywalls and also eliminates ads (or I at least don't see them).

Yep, a lot of browsers have a "reader" or "reading" view even on the desktop that can bypass a lot of rudimentary paywals.

 

[Westy]

I find the whole advertising ecosystem to be horrible.

I agree that websites need to make money. I agree that advertising is the best way to accomplish this because most users simply won't pay for the service directly.

Unfortunately, ad networks continue to be rife with malware, intrusive ads, and invasive tracking measures. And so, even though I know that Ridemonkey would have collapsed under its own weight 15 years ago without ads, and even though I read content from sites that support themselves through ads, I still run an ad blocker everywhere. I've only turned it off on Ridemonkey because I need to know if you guys are seeing anything bad.

I'd love a useful and easy way to pay small amounts of money for content. I don't want to spend $4-10/month for every site whose authors occasionally produce something I want to look at, but I wouldn't mind regularly paying a buck for an article that I enjoyed.

https://12ft.io also does a lot of useful paywall unblocking.

I really don't have much problems with ads on websites. I even appreciate some targeted ads. Bookface constantly shows me Amazon ads for crazy contraptions that I actually click on a lot to see what the fuck they are, kind of fun to guess.

Other ads are easy to ignore but I really hate it when I get the Crypto or 2nd ammendment t-shirt ads.

 

[Fool]

YuhToob just blocked me for blocking them

 

[binary visions]

@Fool time to switch to Firefox.

 

[DaveW]

Been hearing nice things about Brave Browser recently as well.

 

[binary visions]

Brave is fine but also Chromium-based. I used it for a bit. I got a little annoyed with the crypto advertising, which can be disabled but popped up in a few places.

I really love Firefox with the Multi-Account Containers and Temporary Containers plugins. It takes a little while to get set up fully, but I have it set up now to basically run most websites where I maintain a login in their own little sandbox, and every other website in its own temporary sandbox. Keeps the tracking to a minimum, since Facebook can only see that I've logged in and browsed Facebook.com, Amazon can only see the stuff I browse on Amazon.com, etc. Any site where I don't need to maintain a login loads in a temporary sandbox which is thrown away after I close it.

Also I would prefer that there are a couple competitors to preventing Chromium from eating the entire web. I don't think Google is necessarily a good steward of web technologies.

 

[johnbryanpeters]

Brave is fine but also Chromium-based. I used it for a bit. I got a little annoyed with the crypto advertising, which can be disabled but popped up in a few places.

I really love Firefox with the Multi-Account Containers and Temporary Containers plugins. It takes a little while to get set up fully, but I have it set up now to basically run most websites where I maintain a login in their own little sandbox, and every other website in its own temporary sandbox. Keeps the tracking to a minimum, since Facebook can only see that I've logged in and browsed Facebook.com, Amazon can only see the stuff I browse on Amazon.com, etc. Any site where I don't need to maintain a login loads in a temporary sandbox which is thrown away after I close it.

Also I would prefer that there are a couple competitors to preventing Chromium from eating the entire web. I don't think Google is necessarily a good steward of web technologies.

Want to provide a procedure or procedures for setting that up?

 

[binary visions]

Want to provide a procedure or procedures for setting that up?

Sure.

You install the Temporary Containers extension, and then the Multi-Account Containers extensions.

The Temporary Containers extension defaults to opening every website in a "throwaway" container. After the browsing session is over, all cookies and other data are deleted. If you don't mind logging into every website during every new browsing session, you can actually just stop there.

I don't have enough patience to log into every site, every time, so that's where the Multi-Account Containers comes in. You open your site that requires a login - say, ridemonkey.bikemag.com - and use the Multi-Account Containers extension to create a new, named container (Manage Containers > New Container). Then you can select Always Open This Site In > choose your named container.

This will cause the site to always open in your Ridemonkey container, which maintains your Ridemonkey login cookie.

Lastly, I go to Manage Containers > select my container, and toggle on the Limit to Designated Sites. This has the effect of forcing non-Ridemonkey sites to open in a new, temporary container when I click on links, thus limiting tracking.

This is all a little tedious, but keep in mind, you only have to do it for sites where you want to maintain a permanent login, and you only have to do it once. Also you can group things together - for example, I have a "Banking" container where all of my financial sites open. I don't maintain permanent logins for my bank sites, but allowing them to keep persistent cookies means that I can skip some of the verification steps when logging in.

The only finicky stuff I've found is big, complex sites like Google are problematic with the Limit to Designated Sites. Because Google maintains a thousand different domains for their products and content, you essentially can't use that option. Consequently, when I launch links out of my Gmail or whatever, by default they open inside the Google container. If I don't want this, I can right click the link and select Open in New Temporary Container Tab.