Life is too short so Adblocker all the way for me and I leave sites that want me to disable it. However, I do accept the need for advertising revenue to support GW magazine which funds this website and forum and will never complain about it, as long as I can avoid it.
It's all irrelevant to me in France anyway.
I don't see the need for anyone, especially a new poster who doesn't yet know which way is up, to be rude or offensive to someone who is trying to be helpful and explain some elementary facts of life. That's pretty much what these boards are about isn't it, plus all the friendly chat about plants, gardening and life in the potting shed.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
It's generous of GW to not insist we turn off Adblocker. Many sites do and GW could. Given they rely on ads so heavily for their revenue, I think it is fair to think of GW content as a freebie, if using Adblocker.
No. I'm a bit slow. You posted while I was dithering. @Obelixx I have trained myself not to register them. I barely notice then apart from the odd one that takes up the whole screen but that's easy enough to dismiss. There's the odd as that looks vaguely interesting, but by the time I've registered it ,it's gone. What I have found a bit disturbing is that adverts vaguely relevant to personal messages have appeared. IAlso, I bought something for my mum on what I thought was an unconnected site and I kept getting ads for old lady stuff - depressing.
Data capture from innocent searches is getting more and more sophisticated @B3. Just googling for info about stuff for Possum or paint types or parts to fix OH's lawn mower can generate all sorts of "suggestions" popping up all over the place.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
I have used the free blocker Ghostery for years to stop tracking. It's great. It does prevent access to seeing all of certain websites, so you just have to remember to turn it off on that site if you are having any problems. John Lewis, for example, doesn't like it.
I do use various blockers, against Facebook tracking me all over the place etc, and I do think using four or five at the same time can slow down a computer. I don't use my phone for internet browsing, the same would be true of the phone. I don't think I would use the internet much at all without blockers.
It good, and somewhat remarkable, that sites like the Guardian and Youtube let us view their content with blockers on. Appreciate this now, in case this changes.
Thank you to those who answered me civilly and helpfully.
As for those who didn't even bother to properly read my question and well lets be polite, answered in a not very nice way. I did not in anyway question ads on a forum nor on the free parts of the GW site. But to those sending abusive pm's you are not very clever. I have printed them off and I have been in touch with GW.
Like my friends who suffered similar experiences, I wont ever use this forum again. I am sure most of you are nice but some evidently are not.
Posts
It's all irrelevant to me in France anyway.
I don't see the need for anyone, especially a new poster who doesn't yet know which way is up, to be rude or offensive to someone who is trying to be helpful and explain some elementary facts of life. That's pretty much what these boards are about isn't it, plus all the friendly chat about plants, gardening and life in the potting shed.
I have trained myself not to register them. I barely notice then apart from the odd one that takes up the whole screen but that's easy enough to dismiss.
There's the odd as that looks vaguely interesting, but by the time I've registered it ,it's gone.
What I have found a bit disturbing is that adverts vaguely relevant to personal messages have appeared.
IAlso, I bought something for my mum on what I thought was an unconnected site and I kept getting ads for old lady stuff - depressing.
As for those who didn't even bother to properly read my question and well lets be polite, answered in a not very nice way. I did not in anyway question ads on a forum nor on the free parts of the GW site. But to those sending abusive pm's you are not very clever. I have printed them off and I have been in touch with GW.
Like my friends who suffered similar experiences, I wont ever use this forum again. I am sure most of you are nice but some evidently are not.
Happy gardening to the nice people!