Show IH: Webtest.app - Speed Test With And Without Ad Blocker
I want to make the internet a better place by motivating consumers to start blocking ads for their own sake:
- You are being spied on by hundreds of ad networks
- Political ads and fake news are scary.
- If you see ads, you end up buying stuff you don't need.
- Ad networks use energy (not sure how much).
If we all block ads on a larger scale we will see less scary ads, we will buy less stuff, and we make the internet a bit lighter, saving energy!
I built a website test service as a first step, to proof the impact of ad networks: https://webtest.app/
Let me know what you think!
I'm a user of Brave (a browser based on Chromium, which blocks all ads and cross-site trackers by default and run it's own ads, decentralized, privacy first and reward users from seeing ads). I agree 100% that some websites are crippled, I've had websites loading in 3 seconds instead of 14 seconds because I'm using Brave (and using 50% less data and not turning on my computer fan to cool down)
Great project! Thank you for making webtest, it's very useful for seeing the impact of this broken model.
Thanks, some positivity is welcome every now and then :-D
Always!
Hmm, I think it's a bit selfish to say that internet would be a better play without ads.
-----I love ads. -------
Thank to ads, many website owners can earn money, and then, publish interesting stuff and I can read them for free
Thanks to ads on youtube, I can watch many interesting videos (how to xxxx) for free. (how to tie a bow tie, how to fiw something in the car, how to improve my internet skills....)
Thanks to ads, I can play many games for free
People is doing hard work (write article, make video, make games,....), and they are paid with ads, so everyone is happy.
So if you don't want ads, don't play game with ads, don't use youtube, don't use google to search something.
Well, I don't think naive, I just think that you are not aware how internet is built
Don't tell me that building your website, you didn't use a free guide, or stackoverflow, or an other free tool. So with ads, you are saying THANK YOU to the people that have invest time doing that
If you don't like ads, just use an adblocker or don't use internet
Have you ever looked at what happened in the network tab on a random website filled with ads? Sometimes there are 200 requests needed to just load one image. It's ridiculous and breaking the internet. Also, because of ads people feeling they miss something: "Oh apparently I need this care to become happy". You buy the car, are happy for one hour, and then you need to buy something else again.
Let's make a better internet by eliminating what support 90%+ of websites around the world. You are not the first one that I see who tries to make blocking ads a noble and revolutionary act.
You should be truthful with yourself and just say that you don't want to be annoyed.
Honestly, I don't want too. Nobody does. But I respect people putting in the work, something you obviously don't.
No, patreon is not a viable alternative for most websites.
The only real alternative is to stop visiting websites that you don't like how they manage ads.
Getting the value without pay the price is not noble. It's bad behavior. You are not making the internet a better place.
Do you have an example of a product, service or youtube channel, that has great content but can only run with ads and not something else?
Also: if 90% of the websites go down, people earn less money, so we buy less shit we don't need.
Who decided that a website should make just the money it need to survive? You?
A website should make all the money it deserves to make. If you don't want to make money to a website, you stop using it. You don't take the benefit and avoid the annoiance.
Or you can do it but you don't try to make it a act of courage, because it is just pure self-centeredness.
People that buy "a lot of shit they don't need" think exactly like you. They want others to pay the price for them.
If 90% of websites close, there will be a massive unemployment problem. Massive unemployment is followed by cery bad things.
Instead of making the internet a better place, start with your mindset, because there is a lot to do there.
I made the title of my project to be less ad negative, but more about testing your ad implementation.
Wow I'm really making you angry! Sorry about that
It's not a very controversial opinion to not like ads but we also need to consider the outcome and come up with alternatives.
There's a big difference between targeted advertising, tracking users around the web or static ads that are displayed to everyone without any targeting. If you look at sites like Daring Fireball that have static ads that change every few weeks and a sponsored post once a week I think that's a fair for the content I get in return for free.
If you look at some newspaper website where you see the page doing hundreds of requests, showing ads (sometimes even with sound) and "embedded" sponsored articles that's something I can do without, but then I have to pay for it because someone has to keep the lights on.
I think just blocking ads and then thinking that the internet will be a better place and everyone will be happy is a bit of naive view of the world.
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I think even if you have good, professionally produced content it's sometimes not that easy to get people to pay for it.
Either for justification reasons where there's content that's "nice to have" but if you have to pay for it you'd be thinking twice about it. I'm supporting some of the podcasts I listen to via Patreon but then there's also sites that I really like but don't want to spend 5 Euros / month on.
Or for financial reasons where it also depends where your target market is. If you are targeting middle class people from the US it'll be a higher percentage of people thinking about signing up than if you are running a site that's useful for people in poorer countries where 1 Dollar / month for access to, let's say a forum would be prohibitively expensive.
It's not an easy problem, that's why there's so many experiments in this area with various kinds of paywalls, support networks like Patreon / Github Sponsors, Ad Block Plus's ( a bit sketchy) "acceptable ads" program etc.
I'm curious how it will play out but I'm not convinced that blocking all ads everywhere is the solution. Regardless of that, I really liked your tool to compare the loading times, loading less JS based ad crap on each page load is definitely something we should strive for.
Thanks! What you say makes sense. I know my view might seem naive and extreme, but sometimes you need that to reach a goal.