Lack-of-adblock is a huge mistake. On top of the obvious drain on attention, slower loading times everywhere, and surveillance, ads are also one of the top mechanisms by which computers get malware.
When I look over someone’s shoulder and see ads, I assume they were similarly careless in their choice of which books to read.
As usual, I use Google Surveys to run a weighted population survey. On 2019-03-16, I launched a n = 1000 one-question survey of all Americans with randomly reversed order, with the following results: […]
… I am however shocked by the percentage claiming to not know what an adblocker is: 72%! I had expected to get something more like 10–30%. As one learns reading surveys, a decent fraction of every population struggles with basic questions like whether the Earth goes around the Sun or vice-versa, so I would be shocked if they knew of ad blockers but I expected the remaining 50%, who are driving this puzzle of “why advertising avoidance but not adblock installation?”, to be a little more on the ball, and be aware of ad blockers but have some other reason to not install them (if only myopic laziness).
But that appears to not be the case. There are relatively few people who claim to be aware of ad blockers but not be using them, and those might just be mobile users whose browsers (specifically, Chrome, as Apple’s Safari/iOS permitted adblock extensions in 2015), forbid ad blockers.
(I highly recommend reading that entire section of the linked page, where gwern describes the results of several follow-up surveys he ran, and conclusions drawn from them.)
Lack-of-adblock is a huge mistake. On top of the obvious drain on attention, slower loading times everywhere, and surveillance, ads are also one of the top mechanisms by which computers get malware.
When I look over someone’s shoulder and see ads, I assume they were similarly careless in their choice of which books to read.
Note that many people don’t know about ad blockers:
(I highly recommend reading that entire section of the linked page, where gwern describes the results of several follow-up surveys he ran, and conclusions drawn from them.)
One day we will be able to wear glasses which act as adblock for real life, replacing billboards with scenic vistas.
And they will also be able to do the opposite, placing ads over scenic vistas
They will also send data about “what you looked at, how long” to Google servers, to prepare even better customized ads for you.
But people will be more worried about giant pop-up ads suddenly covering their view while they are trying to cross the street.