this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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According to both websites, the research was conducted on just 2000 USA citizens. In my opinion, that's a lot of weight being pulled by claiming they represent the entire country. I am unable to download the research papers here, but what does it say about the sample? If they are researching solely on more tech savvy people, then I think the results are very likely to be skewed to one side
Frankly, I'm not sure about the quality of the Censuswide survey.
Market data from YouGov Global Profiles shows that 51-52% of people globally (in "48 markets") use ad blocking on at least 1 device. That percentage is 45-46% for people in the US.
My point is that when a significant proportion of internet users have ad blockers, they're not just niche tools anymore.
I'm not really trying to disprove or disagree with anything, I just think that knowing the sample is important. For instance, earlier in Hungary, we've had a lot of billboards and other media claiming that 99% of Hungarians were against things like sending aid to Ukraine and gender affirming politics. In a purely statistical sense, this was correct and could dissuade the common folk into thinking that's representative of the country. However when you investigate further, their research was done on just a couple thousand citizens that were all either affiliated someway to Fidesz (the rulling party) or historically voted for them, which overwhelmingly skews the results towards one end.
Hey, I think you're totally right to challenge a statistic when it looks questionable. Censuswide didn't release the full data publicly, and the survey was commissioned by the Ghostery ad blocker, so there's reason to suspect that the data is biased.
I trust the YouGov data more, since YouGov is also a credible pollster and the data is being provided as market research data for businesses. However, since I don't subscribe to their data service, I don't have details of the methodology here, either.