They call it “dark traffic” - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.

Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.

  • Gibibit@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    They got it the wrong way around. Visitors who use adblock are not “dark traffic”, the bullshit scripts and tracking they use are dark. The adblock users are actually the only clean traffic. The adblockers aren’t “brutal”, the people without blockers are being brutalized.

    • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      “dark” as in “not visible”. Adblock users can’t be tracked (or at least not as easily), hence they are not visible to the ad companies. “Dark”, in this instance, is not a derogatory term.

      “Brutal” is, though. So I totally agree with you there. Ads are the brutal thing nowadays.

      • Gibibit@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Yeah it makes sense from their point of view. I turned it around on them for the hell of it.

      • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
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        3 days ago

        The way you word things matters. How many polls have shown the difference in opinion on ‘obamacare’ compared to ‘affordable care act?’

          • AntEater@discuss.tchncs.de
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            3 days ago

            You may be right, technically, but based on the context, I’m quite sure the use of the word “dark” here is intended to frame the behavior as negative. It’s just like when various media authors refer to TOR as the “dark web” even though it has countless valid uses that are not enabling illegal/immoral behaviors.