NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Ars Technica: Why ad blocking is devastating to the sites you love
Brian Clapper:
> If there were an easy way to wipe out all my ad-related cookies, without
> also wiping out the useful authentication cookies for sites where I must
> log in, I'd have less of a problem with the cookies. But given the sheer
> volume of cookies dumped into my browser, identifying just the ad
> demographic-tracking ones is functionally impractical.
Go through your cookies once, deleting all but the "good" cookies that
serve you. Do this for each browser you use regularly. It takes a while but
it's only one time. Go to where your cookies are stored: on my Mac that's
/Users/username/Library/Cookies/
for Safari, and
/Users/username/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/{random}.default/
for Firefox.
For Safari, copy Cookies.plist to good-Cookies.plist. For Firefox, copy
cookies.txt to good-cookies.txt. Then set up a chron job (mine runs nightly
at 4:00 am) to copy the good cookies file over the working cookies file, for
each browser. Then surf and browse the Web with abandon, secure in the
knowledge that any tracking cookies will last at most one day on your system.
(YMWV on Windows and Linux but the same technique can be set up easily in
those environments too.)
I usually revisit my list of good cookies once a month or so, because I may
have joined sites in the interim with which I want to have a relationship.
>- Lately, the trend in online ads has been toward flashy ads: ads the
> flicker, ads that move, ads that work very hard to draw the reader's eye.
> In many ways, they're more like TV ads than print ads. However, most web
> sites are more like print media than TV. Unlike televisions, these
> flashing, distracting ads aren't interleaved with the content; they exist
> alongside the content. Visually distracting ads make reading copy very
> difficult.
Readability to the rescue:
http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
I don't block ads in Safari (I do block Flash), but when I just want to read
the text and the ads are too distracting, Readability instantly provides a
clean and calm page of text. (I host the readability script from my own server,
instead of using it from Arc90's, just because I like to err on the side of
privacy.)
-- KDawson