[Gentleman]

I realize web site owners need funds to support their pages, but lately, the amount of ads on some pages make page loading a monumental task. Some news sites take several minutes to load with all the ads and the auto play videos and it's frustrating trying to read an article while the page jumps around from all the adverts.

I run ADBlock on Chrome, but some pages give me a nag to turn off my ad blocker. So I downloaded and run tamper monkey and the associated ad blocker. It helps a little but I'm wondering what else one can do to speed up cluttered web pages loading?

The other option would be to disable java script. That might be the only viable option. Or maybe a different browser?

Any ideas?

 

[frisbeepilot]

I've used Adblock Plus pretty religiously for the past decade or so, and surfing the web is unbearable without it. However, on some pages like media sites I respect and nonprofits and such, when they ask to turn off the ad blockers, I'll do it; they work hard and they deserve the ad revenue. It's a bit annoying, but if they're giving me content for free, it's the least I can do.

 

[57]

I was running without an adblocker up until very recently. I don't mind static ads but there were simply too many animated/flashing ads that made it impossible to read the article on some websites. (They moved down the screen to always be visible and flashing/animating while reading)

I've since downloaded Adblock Plus and it's blocked 25,000 ads in a little more than a week. I also run one browser without JavaScript enabled and switch to another browser if required.

If it's a website that I visit often and provides useful information, I'll whitelist that site in Adblock Plus. Of course Adblock Plus allows some ads, but I haven't found them to be the annoying kind.

Since I have a relatively fast connection, it only takes a second or two for most websites to load.

 

[NeilN]

It's seriously disingenuous for content creators to say "they work hard and they deserve the ad revenue" as a reason to turn off ad blockers without mentioning the other purpose of ad-blockers. I have no problems with sites showing ads and they can generally get around blockers by hosting the ads themselves. But then we get into the thing they want to gloss over - they not only want to show you ads, they also want to track your activity across the net via huge ad networks, beacons, and whatnot. My response: get lost. Act like a (paper) newspaper, magazine, or TV show. Display ads without all the creepy profile building guff you're trying to use on us.

 

[ExDilbert]

Ghostery seems to be better than AdBlock Plus. (Be sure to use the plus version.) Ghostery has very good site by site and feature configuration options.

For blocking scripts I use NoScript. Wouldn't surf the web without it since many malicious sites use scripts.

Bitdefender Total Security is very good at blocking various browser based threats as well. It get what appears to be a few false positives on web pages but it's possible they were hacked.

All of those will slow down web pages. I believe they are best in class and have low impact on web pages compared to many other products.

My load times using Firefox are about 1/4 sec for Amazon. Most other sites are about 1-2 sec.

 

[mab]

Advertisers don't seem to realize that they keep shooting themselves in the foot. First we had banner ads. Fine. I have no problem with advertising. But that was not annoying enough for them, so they moved on to animated GIFs. Okay, now I have to turn off animations. So they moved on to Flash to annoy consumers (and track them). Time to install a Flash blocker. Then they moved to auto-playing videos. So now those have to be disabled as well. Finally, there was an explosion of javascript enabled ads from advertising networks along with countless bugs, beacons, and trackers. I want to scream.

I have a slow internet connection, so trying to load 5MB of trackers for every page is unbearable. I use noscript and ghostery to keep the bandwidth leaches at bay. I wish I didn't have to do that. I would still be reluctant to whitelist any site, because if they have third-party ads, they probably have 14 trackers as well.

BTW, don't forget the amount of malware that gets spread through advertising networks (sometimes because they have poor security and they are hacked).

 

[ALSto]

So I am pretty anal about privacy, security, advert annoyances, scripting and placement of unwanted cookies for tracking. I have loaded the following plugins on Firefox for ages now:

• ublock Origin (ditched Ad Block because of their policy change to support paid and "good ads")
• NoScript - Pain sometimes but frankly it eliminates almost all tracking and follies on web pages. Unreal how many scripts run on news and TV news sites!
• Privacy Badger - Anti-Tracker and RBL based from Free Software Foundation
• HTTPS Everywhere - No so prevalent anymore now that most browsers enforce mandatory encrypted webpages.
• Blur - Blocks trackers and added bonus to support hundreds of masked email addressed to protect from spammers.
• Disable HTML5 Autoplay - Most browsers support advanced configurations to disable auto-play but still useful to strip a bunch of advert crap in YouTube and other players on news sites.

 

[NeilN]

BTW, don't forget the amount of malware that gets spread through advertising networks (sometimes because they have poor security and they are hacked).

Hmmm... might sound familiar to some of us here that sometimes use a certain mobile browser. :grin:grin:grin

 

[OlStatic]

For simplicity I just use Brave.... that takes care of all of that.... except the auto playing videos.... who thought that was a good idea???

 

[jayoldschool]

Remember the good old days when the previous owner of this site would ban people for talking about this?

 

[pinto]

I use Nordvpn, it has a built in ad blocker, works really well for the most part.

 

[ExDilbert]

I use that on my phone and tablet and occasionally on the PC. I find that it slows down the internet connection significantly. Some web sites check for VPN now and refuse to work. That includes the Google Play Store which refuses to download or update apps. If you don't want to run separate ad blocker software, Opera browser has a built in ad blocker.

 

[ticky]

I use uBlock Origin and have it turned on for every site. My understanding is a website makes revenue from a user clicking on the ad and seeing as I would never do that, they aren't losing any revenue by me blocking them. Also, there's been too many instances where malicious code has been inserted into ads that the website has minimal or no control over.

 

[gzink]

......nevermind