this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
1458 points (99.6% liked)
Curated Tumblr
5708 readers
580 users here now
For preserving the least toxic and most culturally relevant Tumblr heritage posts.
Here are some OCR tools to assist you in transcribing posts:
-
FOSS Android Recs per u/m_f@discuss.online: 1 , 2
Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
When was that? I've been using the web for as long as it has been publicly available (1993), and I remember ads were always a thing. Hell, it used to be a lot worse.
In the 90s there were endless popup ads that would block the entire page, and used javascript exploits to literally move around the screen to avoid your mouse, so that you couldn't hit the close button. Not even killing the process worked cause they would just come right back the moment you closed them.
And don't forget about those sneaky pop-under ads that you wouldn't even notice until you were about to close your browser for the day. It's the reason why I was an early adopter of the original AdBlock when it first launched back in 2002 (I use Ublock Orgin and NextDNS these days.)
Ads aren't nearly as obnoxiously today as they were back then. At least the close button works. And they don't open in a new window anymore cause pop-up blockers are included in every browser now and have been for about 2 decades. And thankfully browsers have also disabled the ability for javascript to control window position and size.
What were the ad blocking methods available? I didn't really use the Internet until early 2000s and I can't remember when I started using ad blocking extensions.
In the 90s? There weren't any. You just had to put up with it.
Wikipedia says the first Adblocker was released in 1996, but I never heard of it, nor did I know of anyone who was blocking ads back then. I didn't hear people discussing Adblockers until the mid-to-late 2000s, when AdBlock Plus first became popular.
I used ABP for many years until I learned that they sold out to the ad companies, and thus switched to Ublock Origin sometime in the 2010s. Not to mention that I got tired of having to manually update my ad filters. UBO made adblocking simple with its auto updater.
Yeah I meant the 90s Thanks, your timeline makes sense to me. I wonder if that ad blocker from 96 even did anything. I know they sold software that "doubled your ram" and other impossible things.