Well I use it (and I assume most people use it) because I don't want to see ads. Advertising on the web is largely just obnoxious, ugly, and crude. Also the relentless tracking is a little creepy, so there is another small benefit to using an ad blocker.

I know there are some small groups trying to do good advertising on the web but it is so insignificant it doesn't even register. Large and important websites don't care enough to curate their advertising (or won't curate it to an acceptable level because of the financial hit they'd take), it is a lost cause.

The worst part is that this shit-show is steadily seeping into the mobile app ecosystem, at least on Android (I'm not on iOS enough to make a judgment). I don't know how many times I've seen beautifully designed apps with a damn ridiculous yellow flashing banner (etc) shoved in the middle of it. And 99% of the time there is no option to pay for a version of the app without advertising. I get why people do this (gotta pay the bills, Android users won't pay for apps, etc) but it sometimes seems like people don't take any pride in software anymore. :(

In contrast, I was quite surprised with how pleasant the advertising is on my Kindle. I suppose that can be a benefit of having a closed ecosystem and a device with limited capabilities.

Glad to see this point of view represented. I have never found the indignant reaction to the use of ad blockers very believable.

Advertising is predicated on lies, by definition, and I am only interested in making consumer decisions as far from the influence of marketing departments as is practicable. Advertising is the very worst that capitalism has to offer.

Moreover, I am not interested in being distracted by ads, ever.

If the the web turns out to be a house of cards that crumbles without billions of dollars of vapid ad revenues, then maybe that's a positive evolution.

I'm not against advertising. I just think most of it is done badly and in poor taste. If you want to sell me something in an entertaining or classy way I am more receptive than I would be from you just shouting at me. I think "shouting" is much more effective however, so companies that advertise generally DGAF.

It's not only the worst part of capitalism, advertising works by exploiting human psychology. Once you see the ad its effects take place and there's no way to avoid it. There's no way to mentally forget stuff like brand recognition. The only way to stop its effectiveness is by having it blocked altogether.

>Advertising is predicated on lies, by definition

Well not really. You can for instance have a genuinely good deal and just let people be aware of that. Though lying does happen of course.

Just enable click-to-play in chrome, on media plugins. Sound only ever really auto-plays from flash ads and such (though these days its possible with HTML5 and this likely won't stop such audio/video). Its an extra click and can make some sites a bit more difficult (e.g. beatport, tries to hide its flash so you cant click it to enable it), but it works for me.

Click-to-play on plugins often breaks sites that use Flash ads as overlays. The ads often have the "close this ad" in the Flash code itself, making it impossible to kill the ad layer without activating the plugin. (In my more cynical moments, I wonder whether this behavior is by design.)

> making it impossible to kill the ad layer

Use the context menu. There is an option to "hide" (delete) the ad there.

Another option is this bookmarklet (only works if the element that should be deleted isn't in an iframe):

    javascript:(function(){var e=document.body.style.cursor;document.body.style.cursor="crosshair";var t=document.createElement("div");var n="border:1px solid #3280FF;background-color:rgba(50,128,255,0.5);position:absolute;z-index:2147483647;display:none;";var r="pointer-events:none;";var i="transition:width 60ms,height 60ms,left 60ms,top 60ms;";n+=r+"-webkit-"+r+"-moz-"+r;n+=i+"-webkit-"+i+"-moz-"+i;t.setAttribute("style",n);document.body.appendChild(t);var s=null;var o=function(e){var n=e.target;if(n!==s&&n.parentNode){var r=n.getBoundingClientRect();var i=document.documentElement;var o=document.body;var u=i.clientTop||o.clientTop||0;var a=i.clientLeft||o.clientLeft||0;var f=window.pageYOffset||i.scrollTop||o.scrollTop;var l=window.pageXOffset||i.scrollLeft||o.scrollLeft;var c=l-a+r.left-1;var h=f-u+r.top-1;t.style.display="block";t.style.left=c+"px";t.style.top=h+"px";t.style.width=r.width+"px";t.style.height=r.height+"px";s=n}};var u=function(n){document.body.style.cursor=e;if(n.target.parentNode)n.target.parentNode.removeChild(n.target);if(t.parentNode)t.parentNode.removeChild(t);window.removeEventListener("click",u,false);window.removeEventListener("mouseover",o,false);n.stopPropagation();n.preventDefault()};window.addEventListener("mouseover",o,false);window.addEventListener("click",u,false)})();void(0)

At least the Chrome implementation has a little X in the upper right corner which you can use to delete the Flash object without ever activating the plugin.

Personally, I just don't have Flash enabled at all – it's a security win and I haven't heard my laptop's fans while browsing in ages.

in which case, i use the inspector and delete the html element containing the ad overlays.

Yep, should be able to disable autoplay via browser setting.

http://www.addictivetips.com/web/stop-auto-play-in-chrome-fi...

Youtube, while not an ad, still autoplays and is pretty annoying. I used to have an extension to auto pause videos but Google forcibly removed it from my browser.

Couldn't you bind most of the offending domains to 0.0.0.0 in your hosts files and skip the browser extension?

Maybe. But, then I'd have to maintain the list. I used to do that, many years ago, for problem domains using a local Squid installation (my first company was based around Squid, so I already ran the local Squid 24/7), but, maintenance of the list was time-consuming. AdBlock Plus is set it and go (I occasionally have to disable it for videos of something, but it's so rare that I sometimes forget I even have it running).

I don't notice the performance or memory problems being discussed, so it's not a big deal for me. My lappy has 8GB of RAM and I've never run into memory problems. But, I guess my tablet (with only 2GB of RAM) or phone probably shouldn't run AdBlock Plus, even if it becomes available for Android. Somehow I never see auto-start audio ads on those devices. Maybe I should just figure out how to make Flash and audio behave the same on my lappy.

The issue with that, in Windows at least, is that host lookups become a lot slower with a larger hosts file; a local caching DNS server with a block list is possibly a better solution, and one I think is already adopted by some.

Another issue with this design is that Adblock extensions hide the blocked elements, using the hosts file leaves loads of 404's all over websites and it looks rather ugly.

Way back when, I wrote a simple web server that ran on localhost that served empty files for any .html, .js, etc. request and 1x1 pixel images for any .gif, .jpg, etc. request.

It worked pretty good. As a poster upthread noted, though, the big issue with this approach is maintaining the list.

The better ad networks ban auto play audio. Unfortunately, what ad networks are being used on a given page can change frequently, as publishers shift between what ads they show based on who is bidding highest.

There are advertising standards boards that recommend against these kinds of ads, but unfortunately, not enough publishers take them seriously.

This is why I usually have my audio muted.

This works very well outside of a browser, too. For example various beeps from Window Manager or terminal emulator or particular programs can be very irritating and disabling them all means going through endless pile of different "settings" dialogs.

It breaks down, however, when you want to listen to some music while working. In the end I have my audio muted most of the time, but over time I had to go through all those settings anyway.

this seems like a much easier (and more foolproof) solution....

I basically agree, in that I disable auto-starting audio at all costs.

Truth be told, I don't bother going back and whitelisting sites that may be OK.