<story><title>LA Times and ads</title><url>https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2017/03/25/la-times-and-ads/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SwellJoe</author><text>I resisted using an ad blocker for many years; I kinda felt like if I wanted to use a site, I should be willing to trade for seeing their ads. I&amp;#x27;ve changed my tune a couple of years ago, and this is a (small) part of the reason (but a bigger part of it now that I know how crazy usage for ads has gotten).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m on mobile data nearly 100% of the time most months. 14GB costs me $50-$70 (depending on which network I&amp;#x27;m on, I have two) to download (&amp;quot;unlimited&amp;quot; plans actually aren&amp;#x27;t, when used as a hotspot, though T-Mobile now seems to actually have a mostly unlimited hotspot option, I haven&amp;#x27;t tried it yet). So, not only are ads intrusive, disrespectful of privacy, and generally of negative utility for me as a user...they&amp;#x27;re also ridiculously costly.&lt;p&gt;So, yeah, I use an ad blocker. Oddly, I tried disabling it earlier today for an LA Times article (because of their blocker blocker), but it didn&amp;#x27;t correctly detect that I&amp;#x27;d disabled it, so I closed it and went elsewhere. Now I know I should never disable ad block for LA Times, no matter how interesting the story seems.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>panarky</author><text>The LAT ads are so fat and intrusive, and their blocker blocker is so infuriating, that I recently just turned off JavaScript completely for their site.&lt;p&gt;It means I don&amp;#x27;t get images or videos, but I can read the occasional article without going through unnecessary gyrations.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not that I&amp;#x27;m unwilling to pay for good journalism. I subscribe to the New York Times, Washington Post and The Atlantic. But the LA Times has chopped back their newsroom so savagely that they have very little investigative journalism or foreign corespondents anymore.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s just not worth enduring their abusive ads and nagware to read what little content is worthwhile.</text></comment>
<story><title>LA Times and ads</title><url>https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2017/03/25/la-times-and-ads/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SwellJoe</author><text>I resisted using an ad blocker for many years; I kinda felt like if I wanted to use a site, I should be willing to trade for seeing their ads. I&amp;#x27;ve changed my tune a couple of years ago, and this is a (small) part of the reason (but a bigger part of it now that I know how crazy usage for ads has gotten).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m on mobile data nearly 100% of the time most months. 14GB costs me $50-$70 (depending on which network I&amp;#x27;m on, I have two) to download (&amp;quot;unlimited&amp;quot; plans actually aren&amp;#x27;t, when used as a hotspot, though T-Mobile now seems to actually have a mostly unlimited hotspot option, I haven&amp;#x27;t tried it yet). So, not only are ads intrusive, disrespectful of privacy, and generally of negative utility for me as a user...they&amp;#x27;re also ridiculously costly.&lt;p&gt;So, yeah, I use an ad blocker. Oddly, I tried disabling it earlier today for an LA Times article (because of their blocker blocker), but it didn&amp;#x27;t correctly detect that I&amp;#x27;d disabled it, so I closed it and went elsewhere. Now I know I should never disable ad block for LA Times, no matter how interesting the story seems.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>excalibur</author><text>I recently (past year) bit the bullet and began ad blocking myself. My primary concern is the recent proliferation of malicious content through the common ad networks. Supporting websites is great, but not at the expense of your own security.</text></comment>