In the last year, I’ve spent about 200,000 words on a kind of personal journey where I’ve tried again and again to work out why everything digital feels so broken, and why it seems to keep getting worse, despite what tech’s “brightest” minds might promise. More
@r343l A personal anecdote from dealing with this issue head-on:
I used to work in consumer facing computer repair. About a third of what we did was malware removal, but around 2/3rds of tickets resulted in malware removal because it's so common. It was mostly malvertising adware that we removed.
Re-opened tickets for malware removal dropped by about 80% after I started showing people how to install an ad blocker on pickup. 80%.
Ad blockers are basically equivalent to antivirus nowadays.
If you use an ad blocker, disable it and then try to browse the web for a few hours. Notice how many ads are just blatant malware or scams. See how many pop-ups, "Enable notifications?" boxes, "Subscribe to our newsletter" popups, auto-playing video ads, and redirects to scareware that you get.
That's what everyone deals with on a daily basis. This is not new, it's been around for a LONG time. Companies put the digital well being of everyone at stake for the purpose of selling more ads.
Rachael L
Red The Dragoness