I wonder how much more they need to do before more people start using tools like uBlock and such. The internet is practically unusable without it, and I'm not using hyperbole--most websites have so much garbage on them that you literally can't read them without an ad blocker and/or reading mode.
Since Google removed support for ad blockers, I convinced my wife to switch to Firefox. She noticed a huge improvement immediately, especially on mobile.
I went as far as installing network level ad blocking on both my home network as well as devices.
Recently, I've had a few friends over whom are... not as technologically adept. They were incredibly surprised that after joining my guest WiFi, suddenly they were able to browse most websites almost completely unobstructed. No ads, no popups, no BS. Aside from the usual cookie agreements, of course.
If you can, help your friends, install ad blockers for them, make their internet experience better. Even DNS level adblocking is relatively easy to set up, and the only thing this hurts is the unscrupulous megacorporations that want to milk you for every single bit of personal information to sell.
The reason I haven't installed DNS level blocks is I'm always worried they will break random content and it'll be harder to debug. Have you experienced that?
A few, mostly for my mother who wanted those email ads where she got points or whatever for clicking on them.
On the pihole, I just disable it for 5 minutes (there's a button) and then see if it works. If it does. Then I look at the logs for what it blocks on a load. If not, it wasn't the DNA blocker.
Look at piHole to get started. It runs on a raspberry pi and acts as your dns server. It blocks so much garbage. You add and remove sites on whitelist and blacklist, use 3rd party block lists. If you think dns is causing an issue, switch to a public dns temporarily is easy. And its free.
It's not terribly difficult if you're the one who set up the pihole or equivalent. But I typically use adblockers on end devices because they're easier for other people to use (toggling a browser extension is accessible to most people, especially if I pin it to the menu bar).
I've only had network level ad blocking break online retail sites. Not every one but especially the ones that load separate frames for the CC processor on the check out screen. Blocking trackers breaks clicking on ads in email and search results though which a surprising number of guests have complained about.
Also be aware, DNS is pretty vital for using the Internet, if the thing hosting your DNS goes down, your Internet and any internal name based routing goes down too unless you know how to circumvent it.
Make sure the pihole doesn't get unplugged basically.
My friend hates it, because it breaks some sites and services. Everytime he's here he says "oh, right.. you got that blocker thing on the network", because he hit a snag once again.
I'm not sure what he does or how he uses the internet, but I don't even notice that it's there.
Pihole is great, except my wife can't turn it off if it breaks something (at least not without Extra work to set it up on my end). And when she leaves our wifi, she's stuck with ads again.
That's why I typically recommend end-device adblockers. Easier for most users to use and configure.
I get it. I had complaints from someone in my house too because they wanted the ads. I tried to explain that it was more than just ads but they didn't care. I whitelisted their devices and let it go. There are also some connected devices that need to phone home in order to operate. These get reluctantly whitelisted too.
I think the point is that you have to do all of that in order to use the internet at all. And even then, it's still a lot worse than it was even 5 years ago.
The picture I am trying to paint is one of terror and abuse. The average person’s experience of using a computer starts with aggressive interference delivered in a shoddy, sludge-like frame, and as the wider internet opens up to said user, already battered by a horrible user experience, they’re immediately thrown into heavily-algorithmic feeds each built to con them, feeding whatever holds their attention and chucking ads in as best they can. As they browse the web, websites like NBCnews.com feature stories from companies like “WorldTrending.com” with advertisements for bizarre toys written in the style of a blog, so intentional in their deceit that the page in question has a huge disclaimer at the bottom saying it’s an ad.
Using the computer in the modern age is so inherently hostile that it pushes us towards corporate authoritarians like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Meta — and now that every single website is so desperate for our email and to show us as many ads as possible, it’s either harmful or difficult for the average person to exist online.
While far from concise, this article is one of the best summaries of the state of modern technology I've read in a long time. I've followed some of his analysis of the AI market and generally he's got a good understanding of what's at play. It's amusing (and somewhat depressing) to consider how much I've internalized the current state of affairs as "normal" and have developed my own methods for compensating or navigating around the toxicity of commercial tech. Read this and then his "Rot Economy" article. I hadn't read this before, thanks to @Chamomile for posting.
It's this extreme enshittification that made me sail the high seas again
It's not that I want to
It's not that I don't want to pay
It's not that the seas are cheap
It's not that the seas are easy
It's hard, it's expensive (storage is cheap until you need to store boat loads of 20-40GB files, it takes huge amounts of time and has become a hobby because that's what it takes.
I would gladly pay a single provider 100/month for all my series, movies, music, etc and always have access to everything everywhere without ads but the providers literally fucked us over on each and every one of those items so I'm done.
No chance @ 100/month. At that money, I want my dick sucked as well. Netflix used to be just 5.99 a month. I let it run for months even when I wasnt watching it because, fuck it. Its only 5 bucks. Not its what, 20? Fuck that. And thats before you get to all the other shit.
I spent 300 on a 22gb HDD and havent looked back. Sonarr downloads whatever tv shows Im watching, and I play it through plex or infuse. Both of which I paid the 100 for the lifetime sub. Other than that, I pay for internet and power. I also pay 45 a year for an iptv sub. Im in the UK, so thats 45 for the year to watch football that would cost me 50 per month to watch legally, and I still wouldnt get to see every game.
All of these greedy cunts have created this world of the high seas. But in order to get people away from it, it would have to nowhere near 100 a month. Theres no way Im chipping in for some fat CEOs fucking boat, just to watch tv. They can charge a fair rate, or they can fuck off.
Even in 2002 that would be a massive ripoff. In 2002 youd probably pay about 20/25 quid for a 20gb hdd. And even then, that would be high as I remember grabbing a 40 for not much more.
I have some 100TB available right now and built a bit of a personal collection as a hobby, finding obscure.movies and shows nobody has heard of world wide, American, Canadian, Mexican, Danish, German, Japanese, etc.
It gets costly quickly, and takes huge swaths of time but it's awesome having such a broad cluster of media available, this is what a Netflix type provider should have.
The 100/month is just to say that money never was an issue, I just want to have access to any media that I want instead of the bullshit we have now where providers must fuck around with their users to get the maximum amount of revenue
it's not "tech", it's capitalism. tech works fine. you can see this with linux and fediverse and such. it's companies making everything into a subscription service that sucks.
i maintain that a phone with lineageOS on it is by far the best smartphone experience you can have, it's basically just all the best parts of smartphones and dumb phones in one.
Listened to it on a long drive. I knew all of the big players were sketchy, but did not expect the degree to which they are. Google "brand-matching" searches (adding invisible brand names to search queries) to direct people to brands' sites and then charging those same brands for "more traffic" is just cartoon villain level shit.
Many of the reasons OSS and OSH are so critical to a post-information world.
Our governments' failure to protect our rights from corporations is monumental. And when politicians are captured by money and not the people, we have no choice but to do things ourselves.
It's the wild west all over again until they establish law and order in the tech world. No standards, just everyone trying to make their millions (billions nowadays?). I can' help but think the end result of all this is an empty husk of a planet, floating dead through space because people wanted to collect money tokens of various values and denominations.
it's hard to overstate how fortunate we are that the fundamental infrastructure of the internet is decentralized and extensible, it means it's incredibly difficult for corporations to ever truly kill the free internet.
For me and my brain's secret blend of eleven herbs and neurospices, I am most content when my world is small but I am intensely focused on the people/pets/things in it.
So in the physical world, I work a lot on my house and yard to make it my family's happy enriching little oasis. We're involved in the community, especially the local elementary school, which is close enough to walk my kid to. (my middle aged american mind cannot comprehend this walkability witchcraft /s... but seriously I have to drive to every other destination))
On the internet, while I do still exist in the eyes of Meta and Google -- it may NOT surprise you to learn that Facebook is the center of the internet for my corner of white conservative suburbia, including for local official organizations -- I choose to only open Lemmy when I want to just BS and read opinions online.
What the fuck is with that write an email to cancel your account by the way? Seriously what the fuck is that? I ran into that a few months ago and I was so fucking furious.
I'm glad the governor of my state made this shit illegal. Basically: if you can acquire a service through a certain channel/medium, cancellation must be available through that same channel/medium. The law is from 2007; it was originally made to address a few traditional roach motels (newspaper, TV, gyms, credit cards, internet providers), but it works wonders against this sort of e-arsehole too.
If they put enough hurdles in the way, you might not bother deleting your account so they can continue to sell your info, bill you for subscriptions (gym memberships for example), or just pad their user numbers making them look bigger/more popular than they are for investors.
Yeah I know why they did it, I think we all get that, I'm just fucking furious about it. Knowing is not half the battle. Knowing just makes it even worse.
Worst one I had was "call this weird phone number to cancel." What a pain in the ass that was. I ended upon hold for ages before having to tell them I wanted to cancel like 6 times.
A lot of this I'm on board with, and I know Patreon is a shitty company with its own problems, but including "join my Patreon" in this list is silly.
Creative people deserve to be supported by the people enjoying what they've created. If the complaint is strictly about Patreon or about how Patreon has monopolised the "creator support" space then I agree, but the wording makes it seem that there's something wrong with artists who have Patreon memberships.
It would be better of them to encourage direct donations or something ofc but 🤷♂️ I just felt that one item missed the mark!
I would imagine the problem isnt paying creators or artists with membership support as a concept, but more that its still annoying to be bombarded with all of these different costs. I'm paying for this, I'm paying for that, where am I supposed to get the money to pay a monthly subscription for this one creator? You can't enjoy anything without being reminded theres another bill. I am annoyed by patreon subscription requests, I don't have the money. Whether or not the money is going to a better place doesn't necessarilly make being reminded everything costs money and that you are broke ass bitch any more fun
I sympathise with you. I often have to rotate which creators I can monetarily support month to month because money is very tight. However, if I enjoy hours of videos from somebody, or if a painter or hobbyist I really enjoy releases something for sale, I think it's important that I support them materially so that they can afford to keep doing what they do. I want more of their work, I appreciate what they create.
There's nothing morally wrong with not paying for work that's provided free of charge at all! And of course, in this economy, it's important to take care of yourself and your needs first - but for me, if I have a choice between buying some sweets and a cola for myself, or giving a podcaster who I've enjoyed hundreds of hours of scripted and edited shows from a couple of quid, I'm gonna do the latter where I can!
but including “join my Patreon” in this list is silly.
Credit card companies make hundreds of billions a year on taking 3%. Patreon takes 10% and another 3% to cover the credit card. Direct pay to creators needs to be a thing.
I guess my question would be: what creator wouldn't need direct funding from their fans?
That system of fan-to-creator patronage would cut out the parasitic marketer middle-men, starving them of ad placements and taking their ability to control the main creative hubs of the internet (through judgement of whether content is "ad friendly") away, empowering creators to create what they (or their fans, as has always been the case to some degree) want.
I am definitely making assumptions though. My Patreon/Kofi donations go to miniature painters, webcomic creators, video essayists, podcasters, and people discussing the sports I enjoy, rather than any huge companies or anything, so my experience with Patreon is very much biased in that direction.
I can understand that. As far as I usually hear from the bigger creators in their videos, at least on YouTube, they are still subject to "ad friendliness" guidelines in their work to enable them to get ad reads and for ad placements.
To me, that still means their work is being perverted and held hostage by marketers so they'd definitely benefit from direct funding from their fans, at least in terms of freedom of expression and authenticity in their work.
If we're talking about escaping the "enshittification" of the internet, we're talking at least in part about escaping advertising and tracking.
With that in mind, there wouldn't be $50,000USD ad read payouts; direct fan-to-creator patronage is (right now) and would be the best way to support creators you respect and appreciate.
I FUCKING HATE HAVING TO DELETE MY ACCOUNT BY SENDING EMAILS IN A LENGTHY AND UNNECESSARY SUPPORT TICKET EMAIL CHAIN
give me a button. give. me. a. delete. acount. button. I am asking this not of the corporations, but of the government. Right to be forgotten should mandate making it convenient. When I want to delete my account I click Delete Account and recieve a confirmation email. I click the link in the email. My account gets deleted right then and there.
no extenstions allowed on iphones firefox lol. iphones are useless junk that cannot do 100 things an unrooted android could. I don't even call that filth of a thing a phone.. but all my family own it
I use NewPipe on android and ublock origin on desktop browser(firefox family). I do not know apple at all. You still need to sign in for mature content flagged vids so not a universal solution on mobil.
I just use firefox with extensions on my phone. More clunky and janky than the app, but I can skip ads, sponsors, and age restriction ao its worth the jank to me
On Iphones, all browsers are Apple WebKit wrappers because of Apple's dumb rules. This means that the only Iphone browser with extensions is Safari. Safari is dogshit.
FOSS apps for ad free apps that do exactly what the ad-full and premium apps do but free
And minimize usage of software that sells your data wherever possible
Everyone needs to be doing these things. Corporations gaslight folks into thinking they need ads and your info to upkeep and improve their services, but it isn't true. They pocket the revenue while making their products shittier and shittier.
Strange to read your comment then notice that you are writing that from Cloudflare’s centralised walled garden. Not supporting corporate technofeudal shitholes entails staying outside of Cloudflare.
When Google started its attack on Invidious, I was forced to try direct YT access. The ads were so frequent and intrusive that I had to walk. It’s intolerable.
There are people who are building and participating in alternatives. They deserve support. But people have also become accustomed to getting a lot for free.
Now I'm not defending YouTube, but they have to store billions of hours of videos and serve millions of people at a time, just so you (and me) can stream 10hrs of video a day just to listen to lo fi study music or watch let's plays. that's very expensive. The whole model is ass-backwards, that content creators exist to get paid. YouTube should be charging content creators for storing their videos, and if the creator wants to saturate their shit with ads and e-begging, then it be their choice.
The free/cheap entitlement definitely seeps into FOSS areas. I periodically see things like "this app/platform NEEDS to have all of the functionality of the paid one, be free and easy to set up" or particularly contradictory "a Linux phone NEEDS to have reliable calls, texts, support my banking apps, WhatsApp, have modern hardware, and cost $200"
I like the idea of free software, but users shouldn't expect people to do the work for them for free. If there's software I need that's free, great. If there's no free version, I'm not owed one and I'm not gonna complain until I get one.
Complaining is part of contributing ideas. You can contribute code, or ideas, or both. Have a look at [email protected].
One good principle that’s aligned with what you’re saying is that every FOSS contributor desides for themself what work to do. It’s uncivil to try to task someone in partcular with work. No one should be personally pushed to do work. Avoid that, and there is nothing wrong with reporting bugs and making suggestions generally to the commons.
What if one instance of the browser engine was running all of the apps? Perhaps with a feature to download the apps over the internet when you need them and offload them at other times?
Get the new version of our messenger app, it has no feature parity with the old one, is somehow slower, and three times larger.
Oh and it is intended to work with the new self-hosted setup, which now requires Kubernetes to run 10+ containerized services to chat between a handful of people.
But random buzzwords the development community is spewing out about the hot new hammer the universities are telling all the new grads to use on all their screws.
We do not ask for this capitalist Internet. We were good at year 2.000 where most of the content were made by and for fans because they love what they were doing.
Sure thete was spyware and other viruses, but it wasn't mandatory for anything; it was shit idiots fell for. In the same category as, like, 3doorsdownkryptonite.exe
Nobody had to work around not having browser toolbars.
You know, if ads actually worked, I wouldn't mind them. We have AAAAALL this tech to try to find the exact thing I might want to buy, and they still can't do it. If the ads in my feed were 100% things I would buy, I wouldn't actually mind them because it's things I like and either have bought or would want to buy. Instead, I hate ads because it's all things I don't and never would buy!
When I was growing up watching Cartoon Network, obviously there were ads, and those ads actually were suited to me, because I was a child watching children's programming. When they advertised a toy, I saw it and I thought "Ooh I want that!"; I didn't always get it, but I definitely wanted it. That was in the late 90s, with 1000x less information on me personally than they have now.
The purpose of advertising isn't always to sell you something you need or want. A lot of the time, it's to build a desire for something you don't. This is why it comes off as invasive and uncanny: it's all that unsolicited, undsesired content that gets you.
Advertising exists because there's a demand for it from businesses. There's never going to be a 1:1 match of advertisements to customers. It's its own market, and, often, as a consumer, you will be served ads that don't make sense to you because someone is making money.
Ads do work. When I mention ad blockers people who dont use them say "The ads in my feed are things I would buy". I dont care if the ads are exactly what I want to buy, I dont think they pay the site enough to warrent wasting my time and ruining the experience of what im actually trying to interact with. 50s ad on youtube isnt even paying out a cent. Thats stupid.
Ads do work. We have this whole surveillance dystopia to track how people behave online and the data shows that it is profitable to show them ads. All those eCommerce companies know how many sales they got via ads and yes, that's profitable. It is the reason why there are so many ads.
If you go to lemmyverse.net and click TAGS next to a funnel icon, you can then select to /hide/ Cloudflare tags (in which case it’s not hiding the tags but actually hiding nodes that have the CF tag). That is one way to find a Cloudflare-free Lemmy instance.
I personally fetched the dataset, imported it into a DB, then I had the freedom to specify all the criteria I want in my searches.
The shit that really killed me is when my favorite card game, Magic the Gathering, went all in on making cross-promotional sets. Who knew fucking card games could have ads too? Had to cut that shit out of my life.
More people need to have this mentality. If your favourite thing in the world turns to shit. drop it, cancel it. No matter how weaved into their ecosystem you think they trapped you in. You can always get out. This goes for any form of entertainment, devices, politics, friends and even family.
well the strongest card was always the credit card.
but yes, hearthstone player here. The starcraft crossover set was the worst and most-nerfed set in history, released a year ago and is STILL getting nerfed.
I work with a guy in his 70s who has gotten his credit card or bank card info stolen at least 5 times in the last year. He simply doesn't have the digital education to identify a spam email or a scam call from a real one. It's all just too overwhelming for him.
I got one call from the coast guard asking me if I had a package from Mexico coming in. He tried to sound aggressive and had an Indian accent. Total scam of course.
I just was aggressive right back. Like have you opened the package? If so, what's in it? Money? Cause I'll take that! He keeps pressing me for what's in the package. I said, you tell me. I'm sure you opened it already? Just hangs up. Believe nothing you get from a phone call and always verify multiple ways.
I got someone calling me midnight, trying to convince me she's my daughter, and she needed me to send her money. I regret not making some name on the spot to waste the scammer's time, but at the time I was genuinely worried some clueless girl was actually trying to call her dad. (I don't have children, mind you.)
That will be us, sooner or later no matter how savvy we are now. The tech will keep up with the grift, but at some point we won't be able to keep up with the tech.
That midnight FaceTime from your daughter will look and sound just like her, and she'll be calling from where she said she was going and her best friend will be there with her.
The embedded brain chip will require you to think of your banking password for authentication and there will be popup thoughts from websites making you think of your password.
Yeah, it's not looking great right now. For spotify on pc I use blockify, which makes the ads silent and about one second long. It does just kind of break whenever this one ad tries to play, but you just have to reload the site. For the visual ads on pc, I use ublock origin, which works well. On mobile, I use this app called newpipe instead of youtube. Patreons and memberships are so that the creators get more money. Some of them need the money, some of them obviously don't. Ai features and dogshit updates are everywhere, and I hate it. I don't personally have any workarounds for them. Shows and movies can just be pirated using one of the sites on yarrlist and an adblocker. Only being able to play games with wifi, yeah, that's pretty annoying. The account stuff sucks ass. Things are in fact, shit.
Youtube shorts / short form content has driven me so mad that I've now deleted all social media, with only voyager to access lemmy. I actually couldn't handle how shit it all is, which I kept going back to like a drug
There's browser extensions/addons to block YouTube shorts. Combine it with SponsorBlock, DeArrow and a decent adblocker and YouTube becomes somewhat useable. The only thing you still notice is content creators wasting time and beating around the bush so they can abuse your watch time for ad money and better watch statistics.
Tailscale pointed to nextdns (or just plain nextdns) with blocklists enabled is pretty effective for those wanting to go that route. Its made my online experience so much better. You get similar results to pihole but quicker to set up with less to manage.
I rarely see an ad, one every two months, apart from ads I see on the occasion I do online shopping. If it ever gets to the point that I can't get some add-on or other way to block ads on YouTube I WILL stop watching YouTube. Jellyfin and the way it works takes care of the rest.
There are still many specialty forums run by enthusiasts, for any subject you can think of. You just need to look for them.
There are a lot of people who just let it happen. Watching ads, clicking on ads accidentally and all that shit. If i see an ad on my screen i'd rather spend a day figuring out how i never have to see an ad again, than play their stupid little game.
Has yt just...stopped working for anyone else? I assume it's due in some part to the various addons I have blocking ads and js, but it was just getting jankier and laggier (lagging my whole system) by the day until the latest ui update broke it completely. I've just moved off the site entirely now, so probably for the best, but I struggle to understand how progressively making the user experience worse is supposed to generate higher profits. So dumb.
Yeah I had to turn off "uBlock filters – Quick fixes" in uBlock origin on firefox to get youtube working again. Otherwise I would get just a black frame where the video should be. I haven't noticed any ads getting through with that filter disabled, but I make no assurances.
I've found alternatives already, but yeah, I figured it was an aggressive incompatibility with some adblock or another. Still don't know why it lagged my entire desktop when yt was open in a browser.
It's a good rant, covers plenty of bases, but yeah, i know what you mean. Personally i haven't seen an ad in over 10 years but then i don't use mainstream social media, and i do use a vpn and uBlock Origin, and prefer a high-seas life (ahoy mateys) to the subscriber experience. I kind of like Patreon. As for location blocking, vpn solves that, etc. etc. other solutions etc. But still, a good solid rant.
People need to learn that just because you see an ad for something doesn't mean you need to DO the thing. Take the time to learn who you are and then look at all these external things and ask yourself if you need this shit in your life. 95% of the time, the answer is no. If you're confident in who you are as a human, you can pick and chose and neuter the things you want and avoid the ones you don't.
Besides the solid list from @[email protected], use an Invidious front end. Even just search for a video on DDG and play it there.
You can install adblocks on the android Firefox app too. Also, if you set the youtube site on desktop mode (browser setting) you can keep listen the audio playing with the display turned off. I do that for audiobooks and music all the time.
I've been trying to sell a 3D print thing on eBay but nobody wants it for the price that makes economical sense to me. On top of that fleeBay will take a cut and I'll need to pay for "free shipping". Paycunt wants their cut too for receiving money.
Nah, I rather wait for a decentralized serverless market app to show up. Get everything paid in one big pay check and then move my money and pay one for 1 transaction.
Made me angrier than it should have.
Because it's SO damn true..
If I wasn't in IT and knew how to run my own servers I would probably have given up on technology by now
We're updating our Terms of Service. Read on to discover how our legal department plans to screw you over in the future.
You agree to arbitration.
You agree to data collection.
You agree to letting our partners, and non-partners and 3rd parties to reuse your data.
“This feature only exists for Apple”
my Linux, windows, and Apple-having ass: okay
I wonder how much more they need to do before more people start using tools like uBlock and such. The internet is practically unusable without it, and I'm not using hyperbole--most websites have so much garbage on them that you literally can't read them without an ad blocker and/or reading mode.
Since Google removed support for ad blockers, I convinced my wife to switch to Firefox. She noticed a huge improvement immediately, especially on mobile.
I went as far as installing network level ad blocking on both my home network as well as devices.
Recently, I've had a few friends over whom are... not as technologically adept. They were incredibly surprised that after joining my guest WiFi, suddenly they were able to browse most websites almost completely unobstructed. No ads, no popups, no BS. Aside from the usual cookie agreements, of course.
If you can, help your friends, install ad blockers for them, make their internet experience better. Even DNS level adblocking is relatively easy to set up, and the only thing this hurts is the unscrupulous megacorporations that want to milk you for every single bit of personal information to sell.
The reason I haven't installed DNS level blocks is I'm always worried they will break random content and it'll be harder to debug. Have you experienced that?
A few, mostly for my mother who wanted those email ads where she got points or whatever for clicking on them.
On the pihole, I just disable it for 5 minutes (there's a button) and then see if it works. If it does. Then I look at the logs for what it blocks on a load. If not, it wasn't the DNA blocker.
Look at piHole to get started. It runs on a raspberry pi and acts as your dns server. It blocks so much garbage. You add and remove sites on whitelist and blacklist, use 3rd party block lists. If you think dns is causing an issue, switch to a public dns temporarily is easy. And its free.
I thought piHole blocked Cloudflare, but then I see you are using Cloudflare (lemmy.world). Did you configure it to not block Cloudflare?
It doesnt block cloudflare by default. I use it and havent had to touch pihole to do it.
It's not terribly difficult if you're the one who set up the pihole or equivalent. But I typically use adblockers on end devices because they're easier for other people to use (toggling a browser extension is accessible to most people, especially if I pin it to the menu bar).
I've only had network level ad blocking break online retail sites. Not every one but especially the ones that load separate frames for the CC processor on the check out screen. Blocking trackers breaks clicking on ads in email and search results though which a surprising number of guests have complained about.
Also be aware, DNS is pretty vital for using the Internet, if the thing hosting your DNS goes down, your Internet and any internal name based routing goes down too unless you know how to circumvent it.
Make sure the pihole doesn't get unplugged basically.
Your router software probably accepts multiple DNS entries so you can have backups if your pi goes down.
My friend hates it, because it breaks some sites and services. Everytime he's here he says "oh, right.. you got that blocker thing on the network", because he hit a snag once again.
I'm not sure what he does or how he uses the internet, but I don't even notice that it's there.
Pihole is your friend.
Pihole is great, except my wife can't turn it off if it breaks something (at least not without Extra work to set it up on my end). And when she leaves our wifi, she's stuck with ads again.
That's why I typically recommend end-device adblockers. Easier for most users to use and configure.
I get it. I had complaints from someone in my house too because they wanted the ads. I tried to explain that it was more than just ads but they didn't care. I whitelisted their devices and let it go. There are also some connected devices that need to phone home in order to operate. These get reluctantly whitelisted too.
I don't experience all of what OP is talking about because I use a VPN, ad block, sponsor block and use masked emails for almost all my signups.
Doesn't fix everything but certainly helps make living in today's digital exp system less horrific.
I think the point is that you have to do all of that in order to use the internet at all. And even then, it's still a lot worse than it was even 5 years ago.
For sure, more and more I want to just unplug entirely and say fuck it. Like the digital version of being a hermit in the woods.
Original from xkcd
@CurlyWurlies4All Relevant essay from Ed Zitron. It's well-worth a read, for those who haven't already.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/
While far from concise, this article is one of the best summaries of the state of modern technology I've read in a long time. I've followed some of his analysis of the AI market and generally he's got a good understanding of what's at play. It's amusing (and somewhat depressing) to consider how much I've internalized the current state of affairs as "normal" and have developed my own methods for compensating or navigating around the toxicity of commercial tech. Read this and then his "Rot Economy" article. I hadn't read this before, thanks to @Chamomile for posting.
It's this extreme enshittification that made me sail the high seas again
It's not that I want to
It's not that I don't want to pay
It's not that the seas are cheap
It's not that the seas are easy
It's hard, it's expensive (storage is cheap until you need to store boat loads of 20-40GB files, it takes huge amounts of time and has become a hobby because that's what it takes.
I would gladly pay a single provider 100/month for all my series, movies, music, etc and always have access to everything everywhere without ads but the providers literally fucked us over on each and every one of those items so I'm done.
Aarrrr mateys, all aboard!
No chance @ 100/month. At that money, I want my dick sucked as well. Netflix used to be just 5.99 a month. I let it run for months even when I wasnt watching it because, fuck it. Its only 5 bucks. Not its what, 20? Fuck that. And thats before you get to all the other shit.
I spent 300 on a 22gb HDD and havent looked back. Sonarr downloads whatever tv shows Im watching, and I play it through plex or infuse. Both of which I paid the 100 for the lifetime sub. Other than that, I pay for internet and power. I also pay 45 a year for an iptv sub. Im in the UK, so thats 45 for the year to watch football that would cost me 50 per month to watch legally, and I still wouldnt get to see every game.
All of these greedy cunts have created this world of the high seas. But in order to get people away from it, it would have to nowhere near 100 a month. Theres no way Im chipping in for some fat CEOs fucking boat, just to watch tv. They can charge a fair rate, or they can fuck off.
I hope that was a typo. If not you got ripped off. And depending on what your sonars finds you're going to run out of storage fast.
Maybe they bought it back in 2002?
Even in 2002 that would be a massive ripoff. In 2002 youd probably pay about 20/25 quid for a 20gb hdd. And even then, that would be high as I remember grabbing a 40 for not much more.
Not a typo, a total brain fart lol
As for Sonarr, its hooked up to my private tracker and has strict rules about what it downloads.
I have some 100TB available right now and built a bit of a personal collection as a hobby, finding obscure.movies and shows nobody has heard of world wide, American, Canadian, Mexican, Danish, German, Japanese, etc.
It gets costly quickly, and takes huge swaths of time but it's awesome having such a broad cluster of media available, this is what a Netflix type provider should have.
The 100/month is just to say that money never was an issue, I just want to have access to any media that I want instead of the bullshit we have now where providers must fuck around with their users to get the maximum amount of revenue
"THE ONE PIECE... THE ONE PIECE IS REAL!"
Normally i don't read a wall of text in post images, but damn. Every sentence is true.
Yeah the wall of text is the medium for this art piece and it’s very effective.
It really matches the exhaustion of dealing with tech in 2025.
it's not "tech", it's capitalism. tech works fine. you can see this with linux and fediverse and such. it's companies making everything into a subscription service that sucks.
Preach
i maintain that a phone with lineageOS on it is by far the best smartphone experience you can have, it's basically just all the best parts of smartphones and dumb phones in one.
Same. I am having PTSD flashbacks
I'm reading Cory Doctorow's latest book, Enshittification. As Ed Zitron said, never forgive them for what they did to the internet...
Listened to it on a long drive. I knew all of the big players were sketchy, but did not expect the degree to which they are. Google "brand-matching" searches (adding invisible brand names to search queries) to direct people to brands' sites and then charging those same brands for "more traffic" is just cartoon villain level shit.
Reject consumerism, embrace FOSS.
FLOSSing is very important for your
dentalmental healthMany of the reasons OSS and OSH are so critical to a post-information world.
Our governments' failure to protect our rights from corporations is monumental. And when politicians are captured by money and not the people, we have no choice but to do things ourselves.
Hence dbzer0's mission and vision! Come join!
It's the wild west all over again until they establish law and order in the tech world. No standards, just everyone trying to make their millions (billions nowadays?). I can' help but think the end result of all this is an empty husk of a planet, floating dead through space because people wanted to collect money tokens of various values and denominations.
Yeah capital is basically free to inject unwanted messages as often and as long as they want.
It's time theft, indoctrination, intrusion, invasion, mind control, etc.
I really don't understand people who feel some "moral" obligation to cooperate.
The internet used to be anything we wanted it to be
It still can be
it's hard to overstate how fortunate we are that the fundamental infrastructure of the internet is decentralized and extensible, it means it's incredibly difficult for corporations to ever truly kill the free internet.
Yep, this right here.
For me and my brain's secret blend of eleven herbs and neurospices, I am most content when my world is small but I am intensely focused on the people/pets/things in it.
So in the physical world, I work a lot on my house and yard to make it my family's happy enriching little oasis. We're involved in the community, especially the local elementary school, which is close enough to walk my kid to. (my middle aged american mind cannot comprehend this walkability witchcraft /s... but seriously I have to drive to every other destination))
On the internet, while I do still exist in the eyes of Meta and Google -- it may NOT surprise you to learn that Facebook is the center of the internet for my corner of white conservative suburbia, including for local official organizations -- I choose to only open Lemmy when I want to just BS and read opinions online.
🤗
It was a better place when it was designed & run by wizards instead of corporations
What the fuck is with that write an email to cancel your account by the way? Seriously what the fuck is that? I ran into that a few months ago and I was so fucking furious.
I'm glad the governor of my state made this shit illegal. Basically: if you can acquire a service through a certain channel/medium, cancellation must be available through that same channel/medium. The law is from 2007; it was originally made to address a few traditional roach motels (newspaper, TV, gyms, credit cards, internet providers), but it works wonders against this sort of e-arsehole too.
If they put enough hurdles in the way, you might not bother deleting your account so they can continue to sell your info, bill you for subscriptions (gym memberships for example), or just pad their user numbers making them look bigger/more popular than they are for investors.
Yeah I know why they did it, I think we all get that, I'm just fucking furious about it. Knowing is not half the battle. Knowing just makes it even worse.
Blizzard won't let you delete your Battle.Net account without your photo ID.
I once joined a gym that required a paper written letter to cancel.
Worst one I had was "call this weird phone number to cancel." What a pain in the ass that was. I ended upon hold for ages before having to tell them I wanted to cancel like 6 times.
A lot of this I'm on board with, and I know Patreon is a shitty company with its own problems, but including "join my Patreon" in this list is silly.
Creative people deserve to be supported by the people enjoying what they've created. If the complaint is strictly about Patreon or about how Patreon has monopolised the "creator support" space then I agree, but the wording makes it seem that there's something wrong with artists who have Patreon memberships.
It would be better of them to encourage direct donations or something ofc but 🤷♂️ I just felt that one item missed the mark!
I would imagine the problem isnt paying creators or artists with membership support as a concept, but more that its still annoying to be bombarded with all of these different costs. I'm paying for this, I'm paying for that, where am I supposed to get the money to pay a monthly subscription for this one creator? You can't enjoy anything without being reminded theres another bill. I am annoyed by patreon subscription requests, I don't have the money. Whether or not the money is going to a better place doesn't necessarilly make being reminded everything costs money and that you are broke ass bitch any more fun
I sympathise with you. I often have to rotate which creators I can monetarily support month to month because money is very tight. However, if I enjoy hours of videos from somebody, or if a painter or hobbyist I really enjoy releases something for sale, I think it's important that I support them materially so that they can afford to keep doing what they do. I want more of their work, I appreciate what they create.
There's nothing morally wrong with not paying for work that's provided free of charge at all! And of course, in this economy, it's important to take care of yourself and your needs first - but for me, if I have a choice between buying some sweets and a cola for myself, or giving a podcaster who I've enjoyed hundreds of hours of scripted and edited shows from a couple of quid, I'm gonna do the latter where I can!
Credit card companies make hundreds of billions a year on taking 3%. Patreon takes 10% and another 3% to cover the credit card. Direct pay to creators needs to be a thing.
I totally agree with you.
I guess my question would be: what creator wouldn't need direct funding from their fans?
That system of fan-to-creator patronage would cut out the parasitic marketer middle-men, starving them of ad placements and taking their ability to control the main creative hubs of the internet (through judgement of whether content is "ad friendly") away, empowering creators to create what they (or their fans, as has always been the case to some degree) want.
I am definitely making assumptions though. My Patreon/Kofi donations go to miniature painters, webcomic creators, video essayists, podcasters, and people discussing the sports I enjoy, rather than any huge companies or anything, so my experience with Patreon is very much biased in that direction.
I can understand that. As far as I usually hear from the bigger creators in their videos, at least on YouTube, they are still subject to "ad friendliness" guidelines in their work to enable them to get ad reads and for ad placements.
To me, that still means their work is being perverted and held hostage by marketers so they'd definitely benefit from direct funding from their fans, at least in terms of freedom of expression and authenticity in their work.
If we're talking about escaping the "enshittification" of the internet, we're talking at least in part about escaping advertising and tracking.
With that in mind, there wouldn't be $50,000USD ad read payouts; direct fan-to-creator patronage is (right now) and would be the best way to support creators you respect and appreciate.
I wonder (hope?) if it’s an otherwise inoffensive concept that was included because it’s one of many straws on the camel’s back.
Yea, not gonna lie, that one bummed me out a bit.
Probably a fair comment
I FUCKING HATE HAVING TO DELETE MY ACCOUNT BY SENDING EMAILS IN A LENGTHY AND UNNECESSARY SUPPORT TICKET EMAIL CHAIN
give me a button. give. me. a. delete. acount. button. I am asking this not of the corporations, but of the government. Right to be forgotten should mandate making it convenient. When I want to delete my account I click Delete Account and recieve a confirmation email. I click the link in the email. My account gets deleted right then and there.
Some people raw dog it
I'd rather stick pins in my eyes individually.
how do you disable them on iphones? asking for a friend seriously
same way you drink water with a fork
Firefox and extensions.
no extenstions allowed on iphones firefox lol. iphones are useless junk that cannot do 100 things an unrooted android could. I don't even call that filth of a thing a phone.. but all my family own it
😢
I use NewPipe on android and ublock origin on desktop browser(firefox family). I do not know apple at all. You still need to sign in for mature content flagged vids so not a universal solution on mobil.
I just use firefox with extensions on my phone. More clunky and janky than the app, but I can skip ads, sponsors, and age restriction ao its worth the jank to me
Yeah that might be the solution for age restriction. It would probably be an easier work around than vpn hopping for third party apps
On Iphones, all browsers are Apple WebKit wrappers because of Apple's dumb rules. This means that the only Iphone browser with extensions is Safari. Safari is dogshit.
Unfortunately with Apple you are basically just shit out of luck when it comes to pretty much anything. I wish you luck
Setup a PiHole and then manually setup your phone to use it for DNS.
They kicked me off YouTube premium because "I don't live in Istanbul"
So I've moved to revanced and haven't regretted a second if it.
Side loaded a similar app on my android tv and it's good too, plus I enjoy the spk sponsorblock so it's actually a net positive
Embrace free software and piracy. No account needed. No ads. No spam.
Google has mostly killed off the piracy option. Any Invidious instance that gets traction gets cut off by Google.
The FOSS option is newpipe, but if you use that over Tor (for privacy from Google), Google blocks connections.
yt-dl still works fine. Download, re-host.
Not over Tor. It has the same problem as newpipe over tor.
We need a more advanced tool, like this:
https://libretechni.ca/post/420147
Unlock Origin for browsers (mobile and desktop)
NextDNS or PiHole (for everything)
FOSS apps for ad free apps that do exactly what the ad-full and premium apps do but free
And minimize usage of software that sells your data wherever possible
Everyone needs to be doing these things. Corporations gaslight folks into thinking they need ads and your info to upkeep and improve their services, but it isn't true. They pocket the revenue while making their products shittier and shittier.
Don't support shitty buisinesses
Strange to read your comment then notice that you are writing that from Cloudflare’s centralised walled garden. Not supporting corporate technofeudal shitholes entails staying outside of Cloudflare.
Spot on summary
Youtube is not full of ads.
This comment was brought to you by Invidious gang.
No ads on my side, either.
This comment was brought to you by the uBlock Origin gang.
Team Kodi checking in. Also on team ad blockers.
Team PiHole, unlock and Privacy Badger here. What’s an ad?
Revanced user here, and I don't have the faintest clue either.
no ads on my side either.
edit: deleted the
~/.bin/ytscript starting with#!/usr/bin/bashWhen Google started its attack on Invidious, I was forced to try direct YT access. The ads were so frequent and intrusive that I had to walk. It’s intolerable.
There are people who are building and participating in alternatives. They deserve support. But people have also become accustomed to getting a lot for free.
Now I'm not defending YouTube, but they have to store billions of hours of videos and serve millions of people at a time, just so you (and me) can stream 10hrs of video a day just to listen to lo fi study music or watch let's plays. that's very expensive. The whole model is ass-backwards, that content creators exist to get paid. YouTube should be charging content creators for storing their videos, and if the creator wants to saturate their shit with ads and e-begging, then it be their choice.
The free/cheap entitlement definitely seeps into FOSS areas. I periodically see things like "this app/platform NEEDS to have all of the functionality of the paid one, be free and easy to set up" or particularly contradictory "a Linux phone NEEDS to have reliable calls, texts, support my banking apps, WhatsApp, have modern hardware, and cost $200"
(or variations thereof)
I like the idea of free software, but users shouldn't expect people to do the work for them for free. If there's software I need that's free, great. If there's no free version, I'm not owed one and I'm not gonna complain until I get one.
Complaining is part of contributing ideas. You can contribute code, or ideas, or both. Have a look at [email protected].
One good principle that’s aligned with what you’re saying is that every FOSS contributor desides for themself what work to do. It’s uncivil to try to task someone in partcular with work. No one should be personally pushed to do work. Avoid that, and there is nothing wrong with reporting bugs and making suggestions generally to the commons.
You’re right, but this benefits rich content creators at the cost of new ones creating more income inequality in the content creation business.
It's all so tiring, honestly...
I just stopped, I only use non shit stuff nowadays. It feels amazing.
This is why I'm angry and weirdly into Cybersecurity practices.
uses proprietary crap and wonders why it sucks
You say that, but plenty of FOSS projects are getting worse every day too.
but you don't understand, 500 megabytes of dependencies in a slow language bundled with a web browser is the only way to make modern user interfaces
I can't tell you how happy it makes me that you IMMEDIATELY knew exactly what I was talking about.
Sometimes I think the whole world has gone insane.
And they can't just share those resources. Every fucking program brings it's own.
What if one instance of the browser engine was running all of the apps? Perhaps with a feature to download the apps over the internet when you need them and offload them at other times?
Perhaps one day that tech will be invented.
Get the new version of our messenger app, it has no feature parity with the old one, is somehow slower, and three times larger.
Oh and it is intended to work with the new self-hosted setup, which now requires Kubernetes to run 10+ containerized services to chat between a handful of people.
::: spoiler I am talking about Matrix/Element :::
But random buzzwords the development community is spewing out about the hot new hammer the universities are telling all the new grads to use on all their screws.
We do not ask for this capitalist Internet. We were good at year 2.000 where most of the content were made by and for fans because they love what they were doing.
You sure about that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy
Sure thete was spyware and other viruses, but it wasn't mandatory for anything; it was shit idiots fell for. In the same category as, like, 3doorsdownkryptonite.exe
Nobody had to work around not having browser toolbars.
This being the worst example you thought of disproves your own argument.
You know, if ads actually worked, I wouldn't mind them. We have AAAAALL this tech to try to find the exact thing I might want to buy, and they still can't do it. If the ads in my feed were 100% things I would buy, I wouldn't actually mind them because it's things I like and either have bought or would want to buy. Instead, I hate ads because it's all things I don't and never would buy!
When I was growing up watching Cartoon Network, obviously there were ads, and those ads actually were suited to me, because I was a child watching children's programming. When they advertised a toy, I saw it and I thought "Ooh I want that!"; I didn't always get it, but I definitely wanted it. That was in the late 90s, with 1000x less information on me personally than they have now.
The purpose of advertising isn't always to sell you something you need or want. A lot of the time, it's to build a desire for something you don't. This is why it comes off as invasive and uncanny: it's all that unsolicited, undsesired content that gets you.
Advertising exists because there's a demand for it from businesses. There's never going to be a 1:1 match of advertisements to customers. It's its own market, and, often, as a consumer, you will be served ads that don't make sense to you because someone is making money.
Ads do work. When I mention ad blockers people who dont use them say "The ads in my feed are things I would buy". I dont care if the ads are exactly what I want to buy, I dont think they pay the site enough to warrent wasting my time and ruining the experience of what im actually trying to interact with. 50s ad on youtube isnt even paying out a cent. Thats stupid.
Ads do work. We have this whole surveillance dystopia to track how people behave online and the data shows that it is profitable to show them ads. All those eCommerce companies know how many sales they got via ads and yes, that's profitable. It is the reason why there are so many ads.
Steal what you can, live without the rest. Its shockingly easy to unplug from the majority of platforms.
FYI, you’re using the most abusive privacy abusing platform in silicon valley: Cloudflare. I suggest leaving lemmy.world.
Oh word? Perhaps I will switch then.
If you go to lemmyverse.net and click TAGS next to a funnel icon, you can then select to /hide/ Cloudflare tags (in which case it’s not hiding the tags but actually hiding nodes that have the CF tag). That is one way to find a Cloudflare-free Lemmy instance.
I personally fetched the dataset, imported it into a DB, then I had the freedom to specify all the criteria I want in my searches.
I'm sorry, but this is kinda epic.
I'm not sorry. This is art.
Hey Art,
Sorry I misnamed you.
Hi Art, I'm dad.
I think I encounter at least one of these phrases daily. The internet is so fucking gross.
The shit that really killed me is when my favorite card game, Magic the Gathering, went all in on making cross-promotional sets. Who knew fucking card games could have ads too? Had to cut that shit out of my life.
More people need to have this mentality. If your favourite thing in the world turns to shit. drop it, cancel it. No matter how weaved into their ecosystem you think they trapped you in. You can always get out. This goes for any form of entertainment, devices, politics, friends and even family.
well the strongest card was always the credit card.
but yes, hearthstone player here. The starcraft crossover set was the worst and most-nerfed set in history, released a year ago and is STILL getting nerfed.
Games have an 8 year life span, change my mind.
I work with a guy in his 70s who has gotten his credit card or bank card info stolen at least 5 times in the last year. He simply doesn't have the digital education to identify a spam email or a scam call from a real one. It's all just too overwhelming for him.
I got one call from the coast guard asking me if I had a package from Mexico coming in. He tried to sound aggressive and had an Indian accent. Total scam of course.
I just was aggressive right back. Like have you opened the package? If so, what's in it? Money? Cause I'll take that! He keeps pressing me for what's in the package. I said, you tell me. I'm sure you opened it already? Just hangs up. Believe nothing you get from a phone call and always verify multiple ways.
I got someone calling me midnight, trying to convince me she's my daughter, and she needed me to send her money. I regret not making some name on the spot to waste the scammer's time, but at the time I was genuinely worried some clueless girl was actually trying to call her dad. (I don't have children, mind you.)
Wow, never heard those calls. That's nutts!
I believe they're common here in Brazil. As well as fake kidnapping ones.
...I wish those scammers worked as voice actors when dubbing anime. Seriously they put way more emotion on the calls than most dubbing groups here.
They’re happening here too, just read an article about some grandparents that got scammed out of $2000 CAD! I’m near Nanaimo BC.
That will be us, sooner or later no matter how savvy we are now. The tech will keep up with the grift, but at some point we won't be able to keep up with the tech.
That midnight FaceTime from your daughter will look and sound just like her, and she'll be calling from where she said she was going and her best friend will be there with her.
And she will have recently found a job selling holographic magazine subscriptions...
The embedded brain chip will require you to think of your banking password for authentication and there will be popup thoughts from websites making you think of your password.
Yeah, it's not looking great right now. For spotify on pc I use blockify, which makes the ads silent and about one second long. It does just kind of break whenever this one ad tries to play, but you just have to reload the site. For the visual ads on pc, I use ublock origin, which works well. On mobile, I use this app called newpipe instead of youtube. Patreons and memberships are so that the creators get more money. Some of them need the money, some of them obviously don't. Ai features and dogshit updates are everywhere, and I hate it. I don't personally have any workarounds for them. Shows and movies can just be pirated using one of the sites on yarrlist and an adblocker. Only being able to play games with wifi, yeah, that's pretty annoying. The account stuff sucks ass. Things are in fact, shit.
I use Tubular instead of NewPipe. Integrates SponsorBlock.
What I do, eschew as much shit as possible. Download books and vids for free and read and watch those.
Youtube shorts / short form content has driven me so mad that I've now deleted all social media, with only voyager to access lemmy. I actually couldn't handle how shit it all is, which I kept going back to like a drug
There's browser extensions/addons to block YouTube shorts. Combine it with SponsorBlock, DeArrow and a decent adblocker and YouTube becomes somewhat useable. The only thing you still notice is content creators wasting time and beating around the bush so they can abuse your watch time for ad money and better watch statistics.
I was introduced to this post by the burialgoods video
It's the same channel narrating the video may i have some oats with the two pigs!
Great channel, cannot recommend enough
Tailscale pointed to nextdns (or just plain nextdns) with blocklists enabled is pretty effective for those wanting to go that route. Its made my online experience so much better. You get similar results to pihole but quicker to set up with less to manage.
https://headscale.net/
Headscale is a fine solution too. Choice is good. I do think Wireguard as the common demonator means traffic is encrypted and opaque in both cases.
I rarely see an ad, one every two months, apart from ads I see on the occasion I do online shopping. If it ever gets to the point that I can't get some add-on or other way to block ads on YouTube I WILL stop watching YouTube. Jellyfin and the way it works takes care of the rest.
There are still many specialty forums run by enthusiasts, for any subject you can think of. You just need to look for them.
TS Eliot would be proud.
So would Edgar Alan Poe, for that matter.
Aw hell... Dante, too.
The techbrahs and enshittifiers deserve the 9th circle, they are inch by inch savoring their betrayal of humanity.
The 9th circle was made for them, and sending them home is as good as doing the same for a Nazi.
Not that most of them aren't also Nazis.
Soon enough, you will be shown an ad, before getting the “We’re sorry we can’t show this content in your country”
There are a lot of people who just let it happen. Watching ads, clicking on ads accidentally and all that shit. If i see an ad on my screen i'd rather spend a day figuring out how i never have to see an ad again, than play their stupid little game.
Amen.
I am getting tired with all of this ad nonsense. I just want to watch a video, ffs
The username in this image: ::chef's kiss::
Has yt just...stopped working for anyone else? I assume it's due in some part to the various addons I have blocking ads and js, but it was just getting jankier and laggier (lagging my whole system) by the day until the latest ui update broke it completely. I've just moved off the site entirely now, so probably for the best, but I struggle to understand how progressively making the user experience worse is supposed to generate higher profits. So dumb.
Freetube and Newpipe still work for now.
I've used newpipe on mobile years now, but just ytdl for desktop now. It's the most consistent.
Yeah I had to turn off "uBlock filters – Quick fixes" in uBlock origin on firefox to get youtube working again. Otherwise I would get just a black frame where the video should be. I haven't noticed any ads getting through with that filter disabled, but I make no assurances.
I've found alternatives already, but yeah, I figured it was an aggressive incompatibility with some adblock or another. Still don't know why it lagged my entire desktop when yt was open in a browser.
Shiver me timbers!
I sometimes use the official YouTube app to chromecast stuff to my tv and its hilarious. What an experience :) Im just laughing.
This wall text doesn't list a single one alternative
It's a good rant, covers plenty of bases, but yeah, i know what you mean. Personally i haven't seen an ad in over 10 years but then i don't use mainstream social media, and i do use a vpn and uBlock Origin, and prefer a high-seas life (ahoy mateys) to the subscriber experience. I kind of like Patreon. As for location blocking, vpn solves that, etc. etc. other solutions etc. But still, a good solid rant.
It's not a good rant, list the alternatives
People need to learn that just because you see an ad for something doesn't mean you need to DO the thing. Take the time to learn who you are and then look at all these external things and ask yourself if you need this shit in your life. 95% of the time, the answer is no. If you're confident in who you are as a human, you can pick and chose and neuter the things you want and avoid the ones you don't.
Besides the solid list from @[email protected], use an Invidious front end. Even just search for a video on DDG and play it there.
This is what we built our nations to fund! This. Is. Freedom!
Me, with Xkit/Xkit Rewritten and the anti-capitalism module for 15 years: It is?
You can install adblocks on the android Firefox app too. Also, if you set the youtube site on desktop mode (browser setting) you can keep listen the audio playing with the display turned off. I do that for audiobooks and music all the time.
You can get background play in the actual YouTube app with Revanced if you want a mobile UI.
I read this in the robot voice from Fitter, Happier.
like a pig, in a cage... on antibiotics
I've been trying to sell a 3D print thing on eBay but nobody wants it for the price that makes economical sense to me. On top of that fleeBay will take a cut and I'll need to pay for "free shipping". Paycunt wants their cut too for receiving money.
Nah, I rather wait for a decentralized serverless market app to show up. Get everything paid in one big pay check and then move my money and pay one for 1 transaction.
This makes me think we had similar complaints before the dawn of enshitification:
Yes. Yes, yes. True. Yes; preach!
You must think I'm an idiot. Downvote. Next.
A lot of this is legit but some of it is whining about shit