Barely watching TV or listening to radio and block ads online. I stop watching TV or switch radio off after the second ad segment and start an audiobook or use an ad free subscriber platform.
I’ve done that plenty of times. I’d encourage you to do so too. You’ll be shocked with how many people you thought you knew say something to the effect of, “but I like the things that get advertised to me and I’ve clicked on a bunch of them and bought things from them! Why would I want to block them?”
I’ve even explained the whole thing about companies building flawed profiles on people and how governments and bad actors can use them as a reason to investigate you. This works with people I know and get along with well, but doesn’t seem to make any difference with others.
I recently tried. Sadly some YouTube ads came through. Could be a configuration thing, but to be fair, if the defaults don't work as good as ublock it's not worth switching for me.
That's a good point, I've turned on the annoyances and other filters! It seems to be an overlay on ublock - uBlocks configuration is still accessible in the adnauseum settings
I've not had issues with YouTube personally but it's quite possibly the cat and mouse game they have on their hands
Sponsorblock, too. It comes included in ReVanced these days, and even comes with SmartTube, an excellent ad-blocking YT app for android TVs. I am convinced that if I see another ad on YT, I will wither and die. Not today...
I turn NextDNS off on my phone when I need a particular site/feature to work. Then sometimes I forgot to enable it again. Always gives me a jumpscare when the in-app banner ads pop up...
Henry Kuttner's story ‘Year Day’ from 1953 is a nice dystopian portrayal of how bad it can get even compared to the present day. (It was published in the collection ‘Ahead of Time’, idk where one can get it currently.)
You owe the companies nothing. You especially don't owe them any courtesy. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.
Exactly, it's capitalist propaganda. Advertising is indoctrination into a system that requires conspicuous consumption to continue to make rich people richer. Get a pihole, please.
I live in a great city with lots of (standard) graffiti, and now wonder what regular graffiti is, as compared to advertising. The crying out of some member of the working class that they exist, I suppose?
i want to go back to the time when "advertising" meant a sign outside a store that didn't even have text on it, to ensure accessibility for the illiterate
I started to get mine set up, and was almost done. Then we moved and it got put in a box and i haven't found it yet. You bet your bottom dollar im reconfiguring that thing as soon as i find it
The only ads I still have to skip are podcast sponsor segments. And sometimes YouTube sponsor segments; I have SponsorBlock but that only works on very popular videos.
Isn't there an argument that it's better to get them to waste money sending the ads? Does blocking prevent the adverters paying? I'm not sure how that works.
I got almost everything blocked, but one thing I can't totally is podcasts, so there I skip em.
Sadly with adverts literally everywhere, there's no single solution!
Except blocking them is trivial, and they must be requested by the browser/client, so it's much more like vampires than serial killers.
Just because a website gives your computer instructions to initiate requests to an ad server doesn't mean your computer has to execute those instructions. It's your computer, your electricity, your network.
Significantly more difficult to block ads that woven into the observed content.
Like, there are definitely ads that are easy to block. And ads that are more intrusive by design. And software that's better at getting the more embedded ads. And ads that are better at evading the software.
But it's a game of cat and mouse. There's no panacea, just moments when the anti-ads guys have an edge.
Just because a website gives your computer instructions to initiate requests to an ad server doesn’t mean your computer has to execute those instructions.
If you're watching ET and you get to the scene where he's eating a line of Reese's Pieces to get lured into the kid's room, you're watching an ad.
There's no way to not watch the ad other than to stop watching the movie.
And this high tech advancement in advertising was pioneered over 40 years ago.
Yeah, no. Ad servers are not initiating incoming network requests to your devices. Your devices are openly asking for the ads, and it's not an obfuscated secret, it's a standard network request. This evasion is imagined fiction. It isn't an arms race, there's never been a time when ad blockers stopped working and had to change how they function to beat the ads again.
There's no way to not watch the ad other than to stop watching the movie.
other than to stop watching the movie.
stop watching the movie.
Your terms are acceptable.
high tech advancement in advertising was pioneered over 40 years ago
Huh? What exactly is the "high tech advancement" you're referring to? Filming a product in a movie? Seems kinda low tech...
Ad servers are not initiating incoming network requests to your devices.
They're piggybacking in on intended content. Or they're gating content behind ad walls. Or they're initiating requests on channels not yet flagged as ad servers. Or just permeating your electronics through the OS vendor, the SMS protocol, email, you name it.
What exactly is the “high tech advancement” you’re referring to?
Sarcasm, mate. You simply include the commercial as part of the main body of media.
Pihole is open source software, so it is free and can run on basically any hardware. You could use an old laptop, a raspberry pi or other cheap SoC, and I think it might even be possible to run on something like an old Android phone.
Aye but I don't have any old hardware lying around to use, so I'd need a Raspberry Pi for it. Again, money just feels like it's getting tighter everyday that such a rather trivial purchase makes me think twice now.
I've been playing WarThunder mobile while waiting for my Factor to finish in my Kohler microwave. Can't wait to bundle up in my limited edition Snuggie and watch some movies on Disney+ until I'm old enough to use that One Secret Trick the Federal government has been hiding from thousands of people like YOU when signing up for benefits....(Link in Description)
I mean, that's something of an empty threat in an era of slop ads. Like, I already don't drink coke, own a PlayStation, or plan to buy a Ford Superduty Truck. And I sure as fuck don't plan to support Ken Paxton for Senate.
Doesn't seem to save me from being blizzarded in solicitations.
I have very few ads in my life, because I hate them with a passion. As an autistic person, ads don't even work on me to the same extent, and I hate having to sit through them.
I have opted into a government program, that means I don't recieve ads or "free newspapers" in my letterbox. I use special webapps with integrated adblock and curator extensions on my browsers, and even custom scripts using scriptmonkey to get it away. On my TV I run SmartTube, which not only removes ads, but also automatically skips sponsor and other filler from videos, as well as removes clickbait titles where possible using DeArrow.
I run Linux, I have set up all my devices to use adblocking DNS, and I have run a PiHole for years. The only thing in my home that shows ads at this point, is my google TV that will suggest a show on viaplay or prime or whatever, and it is the only thing I cannot get rid of.
The reason I dislike ads, is that these corporations are fucking scum. They collude to ruin people's self-esteem, and to overflood the market with needless materialist bullshit that we don't need, by exploiting our deepest insecurities. As AI becomes more normalized, it will get even more insidious. People talk to their chatbots like they are their friends, and soon those chatbots will subtly manipulate them into buying hair products that don't work, because they see a picture in your photos gallery of you slightly balding, and see you talked to it about feeling insecure about your appearence lately.
Ending my rant with a quote by banksy:
“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”
I have run a PiHole for years. The only thing in my home that shows ads at this point, is my google TV
You should add those two domain in your deny list
androidtvwatsonfe-pa.googleapis.com
androidtvchannels-pa.googleapis.com
After that, you clear the data of the Android TV Launcher app. The app won't be able to grab any ads and it will be stuck will default youtube and play store ads.
Be sure to note how your icon were positionned as it will be cleared also
Very similar situation, pihole and adblockers on everything. I pirate what I want, I refuse even paid services that put ads in like Hulu and netflix, fuck both of those. I refuse to use tiktok since its literally everyone and their brother trying to sell you shit.
I'm pretty actively hostile to ads: I have an adblocker built into my router, I won't subscribe to any streaming thing that will show me ads (and I get a lot of shows and movies from... other ad-free sources), don't have cable etc. The only place I really see them is outside on billboards and stuff.
But anyway, I'm so used to not seeing ads now that going to family member's places over Christmas was kind of jarring with the amount of ads. What's wrong with your TV!
Then add the ones that lead to malicious sites all over social media or steal your focus that you can no longer scroll that page. They're insidious and negative, they're all about manipulating your emotions to then go buy something.
If you block ads from loading, you are using less processing power and thus less energy. Everyone should make the green choice of adding adblock to every browser. Save the planet.
NextDNS at the front in the router. Adblockerwon all browsers. SmartTube on the TV. Sponsor Block add-ons. What ads? The ads I ever manage to get are very non-intrusive and don't interfere with my browsing experience.
I'm not sure I agree with that approach though.
I get that the goal is to cost the advertisers money without benefit, but I kinda feel like contributing to that system at all is just encouraging them to do it more.
It provides junk data as well, which a lot of sites and advertisers use to sell to others. If enough people do it, then it becomes less profitable to do so since it because apparent there's a deliberate attempt to obsfucate.
Worst case scenario, you give them junk data that they cannot reliably market to you specifically. Best case scenario, they realize it's all junk and throw it out. I doubt they'll change their entire model until it's five 9s worth but every little thorn in their foot just for spite's sake.
It is theft of my time and attention, the neurons that have to fire for my brain to process the message and then mentally bin the thought. I value the messages of people trying to sell me things so little, I would request they pay me to sit through their drivil. I have only so many hours on the moist spinning mud ball we call earth that I wish 0% of it being told to buy things.
Back in the day, when the internet was wild and free, advertisment online was a means of allowing hosts and websites to keep the lights on becore e-commerce had its sea legs, and that was the social agreement. Your site hosts ads, I get access to the site, captialism still happened, but it was simple. Then ads loaded by third party sources were not vetted by the trusted site you were visiting and became a vector for malware.
Now, you had ad and ad-free tiers of paid services, you pay your cable bill to watch 22 min. of content every block, 26% of the content on cable is not the content your paying for. Its sick, and now its infested the digital social spaces where people just make the infomericals at home in exchange for free stuff further poisioning the well of trust for interacting online.
[/Gets down from soapbox]
Sorry, I hate ads, moreso that most, but on the level amongst this crowd. To quote the great Miracle Max from the Princess Bride (RIP Rob Reiner) "Life is pain highness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something"
Are you yourself a thief for using things like YouTube videos for free?
Back in the day, when the internet was wild and free, advertisment online was a means of allowing hosts and websites to keep the lights on becore e-commerce had its sea legs, and that was the social agreement. Your site hosts ads, I get access to the site, captialism still happened, but it was simple
What do you think it is now...?
I mean, obviously, corporate greed turns all of this up to 11, because if it doesn't the shareholders are sad and the CEO gets sacked, but ultimately, it's the exact same social agreement - you get to watch or read content without paying for it, and in exchange, you get to watch ads.
NOTE: I don't do cable TV, so don't know anything about that. I'm talking specifically about the Internet.
To the previous poster's point, internet ads have evolved away from 'paying the bills' and more towards 'harvesting and selling your data'. It's made to be as invasive as possible now because they want your data, whereas before it was much easier to ignore or filter out. And it's everywhere, from websites to mobile apps.
To your example, the amount of money youtube(well, google) has spent on trying to beat adblockers could make the service free for everyone and keep the lights on...but it makes more money to sell your data instead, so they try to shove more ads in. That's also not counting the amount of paid research that goes into 'what advertising is effective', or 'how many ads is too many', stuff like that. Not nearly as much thought was put into them in the early days.
It’s made to be as invasive as possible now because they want your data, whereas before it was much easier to ignore or filter out
Is it, though? You don't remember the dozens of pop-up ads, or ads that would literally open new browser windows for you? All of that is gone, except on some shifty pirate/porn websites, isn't it?
has spent on trying to beat adblockers could make the service free for everyone and keep the lights on
Yeah, I'm gonna need a source on that one, chief.
but it makes more money to sell your data instead, so they try to shove more ads in.
They're not getting your data via ads. They're serving ads "tailored" for you after they've already harvested the data via cookies, browsing history in Chrome, your Gmail, your viewing habits on YT, your Google Search history, etc., etc.
Those ads are STILL there, especially on social media. The amount of times I've had a customer call into support for getting malicious advertisement off Facebook is goddamn staggering. They're made to purposely confuse and confound, especially the older, less savvy folks. Stop simping for data harvessting and invasive advertising by the way. It makes you look bad.
Information is harvested from ads displayed as well, whether they're clicked or not, how long it takes for a person to skip them on a youtube video or how much of it is watched. All useful user data to try and personalize more ads for you. Are YOU okay? One shouldn't be trying to defend a horrible practice that tries to psychologically manipulate people.
The information harvested from ads is "did they have them displayed? For how long? Did they click", and that's it. It's benign. The malicious stuff that we don't want harvested is alllll the other shit that leads Google Ads to display ads for sneakers right after you looked at some sneakers on Amazon.
I still don't know where you're getting the notion that I'm defending anything here from. It's weird. Stop being weird.
It’s not “advertising.” That’s a euphemism. It’s #CapitalistPropaganda. Fucking straight up social manipulation and we’re fire-hosed with it from the day we’re born. It’s the prime reason we can no longer organize collective responses to capitalism.
i love smoking but hate advertisements. am I that bad? I put an ad blocker on everything and anything that blocks ad blockers or requires me to pay to not see ads doesnt get used
They likely aren’t concerned, since probably their data shows that while a few people might be annoyed and choose not to purchase, overall sales would still increase compared to not running ads
This is why I stopped using Twitch(among other things). Kept making it harder and harder to block ads, content experience got worse because of it, so I just stopped using the platform entirely.
I used to watch twitch a good bit while i was doing other things. It was great to have on while doing dishes or cleaning up.
I remember trying again in the not too distant past. I got hit with like 5 ads to start the stream. Thought that was going to be is as long as i stayed there.... NOPE. Got 5 more ads like 5-10 minutes later. Shut it down and never looked back.
Same, had it on during daily chores, listened to it while mowing the lawn, and if work was slow I'd have it on a tablet off to the side with my headphones(boss didn't care).
Amazon, one of the richest corpos in the fucking world. And they put an ad break every 30 minutes or whatever to promote their paid subscription... That gets rid of ads for you...
Had a gas pump that I couldn't mute the ads at and they played so loud that I'm sure the people inside could hear. Despite having some of the cheaper gas in town I will never go back
Most things advertised by podcasters or youtubers turns out to be hostile, or a scam or just plain shit. But people still buy from influencers, so there is no end in sight.
Adnauseum for firefox (both pc and android), and PiHole for network-level. When my dad comes over, hes always surprised that his tablet’s crossword game doesnt have ads inbetween levels!
I'm arring my ways over the seas because it's impossible to watch videos normally without ads, even when paying. Even Netflix every now and then manages to annoy the fuck out of me even while paying.
I do not want to watch what you want me to watch
I do not want to know about your bullshit products
I invest actual money and time into actively avoiding any and all ads, and happily do so
I remember going on a date with a girl that was majoring in marketing. She was really sold to the idea that marketing is "essential for everything! It's everywhere!" - I understood her point that even factually correct information needs to be "properly marketed", especially nowadays, but come the fuck on, the entire industry built itself around shady manipulation and dirty psychological tricks
People can take any vague concept and find it "everywhere".
I'm most immediately reminded of the "markets in everything" ideology from econ. It's the same role as god in religion. Ubiquitous, inherently moral, etc. It's the same level of wacky ideology, but TBH worshiping god seems more rational to me than worshiping some deity from an econ/marketing class.
You've linked to a letter which asks people to donate without explaining what ad nauseum actually is. (I think maybe you should link to the home page instead.)
Instead of just blocking ads like uBlock, it follows every single ad link that it comes across. This quickly makes trying to track you worthless to advertisers, and in fact may cost them a substantial amount of money due to referral fees.
It's not quite as performant as uBlock since it's doing a lot of work in the background, and over a month of use I did see a few ads slip through, but it works very well overall. Oh and it has an ad wall where you can see a huge collage of every ad it ever clicked on for you, with estimated ad revenue damages.
Thanks for the reply. After reading the home page, I was wondering if it would have a performance impact. It's a fascinating idea. I already use ublock origin myself. I may give this a try.
In addition to all of those strategies, I also make a mental note to never buy whatever product is being hawked, or any other product from that company. It's automatic; I have an almost Pavlovian vomit response when I see/hear certain brand names thanks to their advertising. I'm also weary of competitor's products, because I wouldn't put it past those slimy bastards to own both companies and present them as alternatives to each other.
São Paulo in Brazil made advertisement on public streets illegal, and banned most types of banners, restricted the amount of logos etc to greatly improve the visual experience of the city. It's definitely much better now than it ever was.
Now they just gotta take care of the pollution, increasingly vulnerable homeless population and neglected poor areas and then it would be paradise.
Advertising is a mental hazard that must be constantly managed. It's draining to defend against as it is almost everyone at all times. I keep advertising to a minimum in my home and I can feel the invasiveness of it when I'm not there, I've definitely lost tolerance for advertising over the years and will discard something every quickly if it shows up. Adblock at all times on the net.
Phone settings > Connections > More Connection Settings > Private DNS > dns.adguard-dns.com
Now mobile games can't serve you ads, and wont interrupt your play. This breaks reward-based ad watching incentives, though, so you might have to occasionally disable it.
Use Ublock Origin in your browser and PiHole on your network. Ads are a serious malware risk (never mind the scams) and should be treated as the security threat that they are.
See also: people trying to convince me to give websites money to avoid the ads after I tell them how to block the ads entirely.
My brother keeps trying to get me to get a youtube subscription. I just told you I don’t get ads! Why would you give google money? It is your moral obligation to bleed as much money from that company as possible!
I genuinely haven't seen any ads for 20 years now except in the odd waiting room or someone else's house. It's surprising how creepy and strange they are once you're a few years removed from them. You start to notice parallels between cult members and people who don't avert their eyes from ads.
I was talking to my girlfriend about this recently too. I forget where I first heard it, but someone said, “You have a right to your private mind. Persuasive ads are junk,” and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Persuasive advertising is absolute junk!
Let me add to your rant with an additional pet peeve of mine: Usually when people rant about the advertising some smug assholes in the comment sections say "You think you are immune but it works on you, otherwise they wouldn't spend millions on it".
When did money become the sole metric with which we judge the merit of ideas? Did the billionaire who died in the titan submersible incident not shut up the crowd making such an argument?
I don't understand what your argument is. As far as advertisers are concerned, money is indeed the end goal and ultimate metric of success. So if advertising leads to more money, that is success as far as they are concerned. The philosophical outlook of the consumer does not pertain to this argument. But I think I'm misunderstanding your point so perhaps you could clarify?
Near as I can tell, they are not so much advancing an argument as using this opportunity to complain about a tangentially related phenomenon. The point seems muddled since the efficacy of advertising wasn't ever in question, but, basically, they're just saying it grinds their gears when someone points out that advertising works as a justification for its existence. They believe that there are metrics to consider which aren't "did the ad generate a sale".
Could be I got that wrong, but I think that's the gist of what they were saying. I, too, am a little confused, since no one seemed to be doubting ads work, despite consumer hostility, but, in their defense, they did declare up-front that they wanted to piggyback on this topic to address a pet peeve of theirs, so it's not like we weren't informed of their intent.
Most billionaires have certain skills but for the rest are unfettered idiots. The titan guy got exactly what he asked for.
The entire concept of a billionaire should be prohibited. Nobody should be able to have more than, say, 10 million dollars. Put a hard cap on that, any income above that goes to taxes. Fuck the rich
Well it also doesn't need to work on everybody. Does a net need to catch ever fish in the sea for a fisherman to make a living? Obviously some people can be and are immune to it.
Advertising doesn't work on me because I hate shopping, so I have my wife spend the discretionary income. I am sure it works on her though.
TBH I'm less likely to buy something that advertises to me. Every time I see a car commercial, it steels my resolve to never buy another car.
On the other hand I agree that most people are brainwashed into the car cult and commercials play a large role. Likewise for other capitalist bullshit.
I fucking hate ads! Nothing makes me want to buy something less than seeing an ad for something I never asked for in the first place. If I need something I will look it up myself!
The worst is the unmutable advertisements at the gas pump.
Some you can mute, if you press the correct hidden button. But more and more I'm finding them without the mute button. So I start pressing random buttons and combinations of buttons, until something works.
The pump by my house goes into a maintenance mode when you press a certain button combination, and then it tells you to go inside to pay (as if I hadn't already swiped my card). But the ads are muted, and the charge still shows up on my account, the correct amount and everything, so it's paid for. I don't go in. The pump automatically leaves maintenance mode when I finish pumping. No harm no foul.
I try to avoid stations I know have ads, but I travel a lot for work, so it's hard.
You'd think, with all the fucking data they collect on me, they'd know that I don't have any money and I don't buy anything unless I absolutely have to.
They probably do know you don’t have money. They’re not trying to sell to you right now so much as categorize you. A lot of this data collection is about predicting who might spend later, not who is spending today. There are entire demographic buckets for people who are broke, cautious, or only spend out of necessity. Being targeted doesn’t mean they think you have money it just means you fit a profile they’re tracking. You’re data first, customer maybe later.
What’s unsettling is how specific some of these categories are. This is just a small sample of the kinds of labels people get sorted into:
HENRY: High Earners, Not Rich Yet
HIFI: High Income, Financially Insecure (often overspending)
MUPPIE: Middle-aged Upcoming Prosperous Professional
LIBRA: Low Income, But Rich Already (low wages, high net worth)
DINK / DINKWAD: Dual Income, No Kids / With a Dog
SINK: Single Income, No Kids
SITCOM: Single Income, Two (or more) Children, Outrageous Mortgage
KIPPERS: Kids In Parents’ Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings
FIRE: Financially Independent, Retired Early (or aggressively trying)
ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed
new pipe is great for watching youtube on andoid without ads (tubular is a fork with sponsorblock), and kodi is a great home entertainment system with plugins that allow streaming youtube without ads :3
This assumes that I would select a product based on brand recognition. I do not. I generally select food products based on ingredients and price per unit. And I use similar metrics like materials and build quality for non-food items. Advertising only works if you don't put any active thought into your purchasing.
But if you have to choose from two clothing brands that have similar quality you will be more likely to choose the one you have seen in an ad. Even if you are only 10% more likely to do that (arbitrary number) multiply it by thousands of people and it’s worth it for the company.
That’s why ad companies are trying to get as much data as possible on everyone. They know that showing you random products won’t work.
I'm not talking about never buying the product again. Just about consciously not buying it for a certain period of time. Avoiding advertising is also pretty much impossible even with blockers
Have you guys noticed a recent trend where a site will continually reload, presenting a dialog box about "being unable to load, click here to try again"? It winds up at a message about adblockers being bad and how to disable it. Otherwise you can't read the recipe/review/discussion.
Only trick I've found so far is to outright disable javascript on that site using noscript. Any other ideas?
I clicked your link and it loaded fine for me. However, there was a blocked box for a few seconds but it went away and the page looks and functions normally now. Running firefox with ublock.
Just like hkspowers the site works fine for me and I didn't notice any blocked box. I'm on desktop using Firefox + Ublock Origin + CanvasBlocker + Consent-O-Matic and I also have a Pihole.
I feel like I've trained my brain to have a mental adblocker. I see ads in public, but it's like my brain intentionally refuses to process the information they're imposing upon me as soon as it can identify that it's an ad.
It's not like a literal black box in my vision or something obviously. But it's just a reflex to.... not think about it, at all.
If someone is annoyed by ads and wants to block them I strongly recommend Pihole. It got its name because it is often used on a Raspberry pi but it can be used on other units as well.
Blocklist for Pihole Pro is the recommended but already the light version will reduce ads a lot if you don't do anything to block ads today.
The alternative is to get a browser based on Firefox with the add-on Ublock Origin. Even if you use Pihole at home it is good to get Firefox + Ublock Origin or DuckduckGo on your phone since the Pihole will not block anything for you when you are outside of your Wifi.
I cannot even describe how I feel about advertisers. Truly the lowliest, most sycophantic and pathetic scum on the earth. The MICROSECOND that an ad starts to play, I begin repeating under my breath "fuck you fuck you fuck you. I hope you fucking die." If I see your ad, know for certain, that should I ever meet you in real life, I will most assuredly remove your windpipe from your neck with a rusty fucking nail, so no one must ever listen to another mindless thing you have to say. Your existence is a net loss for all living things. It is an affront to basic decency and it my deepest desire that everyone involved catches fire and fucking dies.
Tbh I don't mind ad reads from youtubers or anything. I'll usually skip them, but they don't feel super corporate or targeted (and sometimes they're funny)
It’s just more corporate shilling, and I don’t want their ads in my head. Remember when almost every YouTuber had sponsored ads for Honey? Then Honey was shown to be screwing over the very people who were promoting it? Yeah, I’m not listening to a sponsor spiel no matter how funny it is. It’s just another person selling their soul.
I feel like if a YouTuber or podcaster is bringing value to my life, I want them to get money in return.
Everyone (okay not EVERYONE) expects artists to create for free and either work full time in top of that or not eat.
I'd rather a creator choose their paid sponsors and get paid directly, than have to rely on YT or whomever to place religious or political or other bullshit ads and give them a small cut and no say.
I can't afford to join everyone's Patreon and I refuse to give YT my money at all. I don't mind an ad for Factor meals or the 'stress relief' massager. I can just fast forward if I'm not in the mood.
Counterpoint, there was just new information put out on one of the most prolific content sponsors (honey) and the literal fraud they've been perpetrating over the years. With more to come.
In general, the higher the payout the scummier the sponsor.
I don't give a fuck. I won't watch your ads. I would sooner donate directly to content creators that I like (and I have!). I would rather see them beg their audience for money than take a corporate handout.
I’m OK to donate my time though I will 2x speed through :)
The best sponsor thing I’ve seen was probably the Pyro guy on YouTube who got a hooligan-resistant standing desk: I think he covered it in alcohol and lit it on fire. pretty sure that is the desk he’s using now. If you make a really good standing desk I think it’s fine to try to promote it via a really good science YouTuber and I really love that that YouTuber is not tracking me and is just assuming I care because I’m watching a science channel. It’s the same ad whether I use YTDLP or login to my spyware account and watch. That’s how ads should be even though it means some small folks won’t have budget to adequately advertise & survive.
Had a thought while driving past a few of those electric distraction boards, maybe this is the place where AI/smart glass could be of use. A database of known boards plus some object recognition, have it draw a black box over the offending board that could shift as you go by...
Sincere question since I am unsure myself: At what point does advertising cross the line from a way to fairly support creators and platforms, to malignant advertising practices meant to take advantage of their audience?
When it starts taking away from the experience. For the longest time I wouldn't use an ad-blocker on YouTube because I wanted to give creators their revenue. That was back when you had a single 15 second ad and you could see where all the ad breaks in a video where. If a creator got greedy and put them every minute or so, I would just stop watching them. Then YouTube took a lot of that control away from them, make dual non-skippable ads, 60 second ad, etc. At that point I blocked all ads. I'm fine with creators having ad reads as long as it is just an ad read and not a hidden ad.
It was the same with news sites. Place a few ads and banners here or there and that's fine. But now they have auto-play videos, every paragraph requires you to scroll past 17 ads, you get less than an actual inch of reading space on a mobile device. I put ad blockers on everything.
It's all greed. The same reason I stopped watching anything on Prime. I've had Prime Video since it launched. Then they come and tell me I have to pay extra to stay ad free. I tried to watch one episode of Clarkson Farm and got the same American Express ad a dozen times. I haven't watched a single thing on Prime since. You can't take something that has been ad free, throw ads on it, and say fuck you pay me more.
For platforms: When it interferes, to any degree, with what you're actually using the platform to accomplish. I didn't really mind the on-the-side ads of the mid 2000's to early 2010's. But newspaper ads which block half the screen, Fandom ads that autoplay videos and lag the page, Youtube ads that block the video, Reddit and Instagram ads that present as if they're actual posts - all bullshit.
For creators, I give them a lot more leeway. They're just a person trying to make some money, so I can skip their ad read, it's fine. It's annoying lol, but it's fine.
Its very disappointing that the outcome of capitalism and widespread enshitification is the need to have an adversarial relationship with nearly every company.
Ive always had a neutral attitude to gambling, Im not into it but its fine if people do it responsibly. But with all these ads from phone gambling apps, it's seems like an aggressively predatory relationship between the casinos and gamblers and offer only lip service response to gambling addiction. I now am very firmly against further legalization of gambling and think that advertising should be illegal.
Can count on one hand the number of TV ads that influenced me to buy a product. Those have gone the way of the dodo these past few years, so if I can't surf away from them, I just mute them or fire up a console
a lot of people want to be told what to think (because they can't think for themselves) and advertisement tells them what to think. that's why a lot of people don't bother with advertisement.
This is (kind of) an argument in favor of tracking though.
Nobody wants to be bombarded with ads for the same product, but advertisers want to advertise to as many people as possible. If you can't track who you've shown the ad to in the past few days and who you haven't, you're almost certainly going to annoy people by spamming them with the same ad, but if you can track who's seen it then you can limit the number, which is pretty objectively better for everyone.
I'm not saying this means the other negative parts of tracking are suddenly ok, just that it's an interesting side-effect.
If you can convince people to pay for the media they consume in other ways, sure, but until then sites need to pay journalists, actors and writers somehow, otherwise we'd be buried in AI, user-generated and low-effort slop with far fewer alternatives. I think that's worse than having ads personally, but that's a pragmatic rather than idealistic view.
People in general must be really stupid (including myself) to still fall for the old $2.99 and think "Hey, that's only two dollars!". The advertisers are getting better every year but what they are selling is getting worse every year. I recently saw a drug advert on tv and it stated that we have a pill. Call your doctor to see if this pill is good for you. There was no mention in the advert of what the pill may or may not do. This is the old "monkeys flinging crap against the wall to see what sticks".
I dont know if this is the community to have the discussion but im really battling with my stance on advertising logically. I hate it, I block all ads, I hate seeing them and I dont want them to exist. Ok but why shouldnt it exist? Its harmful, invasive an unsolicited just like this thread mentions. But its also such a baseline human thing that I cant see a way to get rid of, if I tell my friend about something i brought im advertising to them etc. If we ban paid advertising will companies invade discussion to "organically" mention prodcuts.
I really want a good argument for why it shouldn't exist and how a world without is a better place.
At the bare minimum there needs to be restrictions on how invasive ads can be and maybe that would solve things?
I fully agree with the feeling and the anger but I dont want to live in a world where people randomly attack things in public spaces using the justification "I had no choice whether to see it or not". Like for example what if I put up a flyer for a local craft fair on a lamp post or a notice board. No one is consenting to seeing that adn I need to do it so people know its going on. Its just hard for me to know where to draw the line which is why im for doing bans of stuff we can all agree sucks and then dialing it in more and more until we feel ads are in a good spot. Like restrictions on what information you can use to target ads, how much screen space they can take up relative to time Eg no full screen 5min ads, restrictions on what can be advertised to what groups of people, making it illegal to not disclose advertising. Things like that until ads are less cancerous.
But i'd like to hear arguments for complete removal.
and yet... Marketing is super important. If you've got a good idea, people need to know that it's there, or else that idea won't exist for much longer.
There's a product that I knew about, and it was essentially a sprinkler system you fitted to your home radiator. The idea being that if the room got to a certain temperature (like, say, when the room is on fire), the water inside the radiator would get too hot and burst out of this little plastic thing on the end of the radiator as steam, dousing the fire. It wasn't there to save lives of people in the room, because the room would have to be so hot that everyone inside would be dead, but it would stop the fire spreading to the next room.
They had lots of tests done, video evidence of it working, but nobody would buy it because they insisted on doing all the marketing themselves, and they were shit at it. The guy who invented it spent more time arguing in comment sections than actually advertising the product. If they'd hired a marketing firm to actually sell the product, they might have been able to sell it to more than a single council's social housing stock. A lot of investor money went down the drain because of that project and because the ego of the inventor couldn't be kept in check.
I understand that there is a need to demo new products, but have you lived under a rock?
What you say I wouldn't mind. I wouldn't mind there being a website showcasing new products, or where I can type a problem and I get a list of products that will solve said problem. That, however, is not how marketing works.
Ads can roughly be cut into two types.
Scams / bullshit new revolutionaey products that won't do as advertised
Companies blaring on about how their 5 decades old product somehow still is revolutionary and the best
Pretty much ALL marketing campaigns lie, either directly or by multiple omissions. They ALWAYS need to be intrusive, and it's always about money.
Fuck the environment, fuck your health, fuck your safety, I have a fucking monster pickup truck to sell! LOOK HOW COOL IT IS!
I HATE ads, with a passion and all marketers on the bottom of the ocean would be a good start on making the world a better place
One exception is I like some ads while watching TV shows/movies in a group. They're a built-in break for me to run off an go to the bathroom, get snacks, etc. They're still generally too frequent, but too many is better than none.
Lol wut. Just ask your friends to pause or wait till the episode is over. A 45 minute episode without ads flys by because the tension / flow of the show is never lost artificially by some cringey #ad for whatever.
I'm suggesting injecting fewer ads, not more. Just not none in the specific case of group binge-watching. Simply because I need to break frequency of like 3 people combined and don't want to be blamed for the seemingly excess pausing.
I feel that. Sometimes I get lost in the sauce streaming on Revanced and then an entire day is gone. The old style of media had me at least question several times an hour about getting up and doing other things, now it's easier than ever to just end up in a depression binge
Firefox + uBlock origin, nextDNS + a shit ton of blocking lists, revanced, metrolist and now i forgot that ads even exist.
con:
I always get traumatised when I use a device that isn't mine.
very traumatic, like how do you guys live like this?
Barely watching TV or listening to radio and block ads online. I stop watching TV or switch radio off after the second ad segment and start an audiobook or use an ad free subscriber platform.
Honestly I'm going to have to start asking them out aloud; "how do you live like this, and how can I help?"
I’ve done that plenty of times. I’d encourage you to do so too. You’ll be shocked with how many people you thought you knew say something to the effect of, “but I like the things that get advertised to me and I’ve clicked on a bunch of them and bought things from them! Why would I want to block them?”
I’ve even explained the whole thing about companies building flawed profiles on people and how governments and bad actors can use them as a reason to investigate you. This works with people I know and get along with well, but doesn’t seem to make any difference with others.
Whenever i go to my folks or in-laws, im always blasted by live TV which is absolutely rotten with ads
Same thing when I visit my parents. They effectively have a billboard installed in their home.
Watching normal TV is jarring, just because I so rarely view non-pirated content.
Once you're outside that bubble, the invasiveness is so much worse
Fuck unlock - try adnauseum and actively poison their data
I recently tried. Sadly some YouTube ads came through. Could be a configuration thing, but to be fair, if the defaults don't work as good as ublock it's not worth switching for me.
That's a good point, I've turned on the annoyances and other filters! It seems to be an overlay on ublock - uBlocks configuration is still accessible in the adnauseum settings
I've not had issues with YouTube personally but it's quite possibly the cat and mouse game they have on their hands
I'il try!
I use adnauseum too, but ublock has its place since it performs better.
Sponsorblock, too. It comes included in ReVanced these days, and even comes with SmartTube, an excellent ad-blocking YT app for android TVs. I am convinced that if I see another ad on YT, I will wither and die. Not today...
SponsorBlock for youtube as well to skip ad reads, with unhooked to de-enshittify youtube as well.
And for that last little bit https://sponsor.ajay.app/
Never used nextDNS. Idk, do they care about piracy? How do they make money?
They make money with paid plans, but there is a limited free one too, in my expirience it's enough and they don't care about piracy i think
Have a tutorial? I use unlock and sponsor block.
I turn NextDNS off on my phone when I need a particular site/feature to work. Then sometimes I forgot to enable it again. Always gives me a jumpscare when the in-app banner ads pop up...
And Privacy Badger
Teach 👏 your 👏 kids 👏 to 👏 hate 👏 ads 👏
On the occasion that we have to watch something that's not self-hosted, my toddler will point and go "oh ads!" LOL
Peak childhood if you ask me
In Belgium, we had a pretty based children TV show called "Blabla". In the opening song there is
Hell yeah
Henry Kuttner's story ‘Year Day’ from 1953 is a nice dystopian portrayal of how bad it can get even compared to the present day. (It was published in the collection ‘Ahead of Time’, idk where one can get it currently.)
Remember kids, advertising is just the graffiti of the rich.
Banksy, Wall and Piece
Exactly, it's capitalist propaganda. Advertising is indoctrination into a system that requires conspicuous consumption to continue to make rich people richer. Get a pihole, please.
Thanks for that viewpoint.
I live in a great city with lots of (standard) graffiti, and now wonder what regular graffiti is, as compared to advertising. The crying out of some member of the working class that they exist, I suppose?
i want to go back to the time when "advertising" meant a sign outside a store that didn't even have text on it, to ensure accessibility for the illiterate
Don't claim your relationship with ads is "actively hostile" if your actions can be described as "skipping" and "muting".
You should be blocking. I don't skip or mute anything, ever, because I don't allow ads into my life.
PiHole is a thing of beauty =)
I started to get mine set up, and was almost done. Then we moved and it got put in a box and i haven't found it yet. You bet your bottom dollar im reconfiguring that thing as soon as i find it
The only ads I still have to skip are podcast sponsor segments. And sometimes YouTube sponsor segments; I have SponsorBlock but that only works on very popular videos.
be the change you want to see in the world, and mark sponsor segments yourself
Isn't there an argument that it's better to get them to waste money sending the ads? Does blocking prevent the adverters paying? I'm not sure how that works.
I got almost everything blocked, but one thing I can't totally is podcasts, so there I skip em.
Sadly with adverts literally everywhere, there's no single solution!
https://adnauseam.io/
There was a browser extension which both blocked ads and simulated clicks iirc. That comes with a processing power cost though.
But that only benefits the advertisement agency (eg. google ads) and doesn't do much harm to the advertiser imo
I don't allow serial killers into my life, but they keep trying to smash through my windows and tackle me on running trails.
Feels like a guy in a horror movie snidely insisting "Just don't dream about Freddie Krueger and you'll be fine".
Except blocking them is trivial, and they must be requested by the browser/client, so it's much more like vampires than serial killers.
Just because a website gives your computer instructions to initiate requests to an ad server doesn't mean your computer has to execute those instructions. It's your computer, your electricity, your network.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising
Significantly more difficult to block ads that woven into the observed content.
Like, there are definitely ads that are easy to block. And ads that are more intrusive by design. And software that's better at getting the more embedded ads. And ads that are better at evading the software.
But it's a game of cat and mouse. There's no panacea, just moments when the anti-ads guys have an edge.
If you're watching ET and you get to the scene where he's eating a line of Reese's Pieces to get lured into the kid's room, you're watching an ad.
There's no way to not watch the ad other than to stop watching the movie.
And this high tech advancement in advertising was pioneered over 40 years ago.
Yeah, no. Ad servers are not initiating incoming network requests to your devices. Your devices are openly asking for the ads, and it's not an obfuscated secret, it's a standard network request. This evasion is imagined fiction. It isn't an arms race, there's never been a time when ad blockers stopped working and had to change how they function to beat the ads again.
Your terms are acceptable.
Huh? What exactly is the "high tech advancement" you're referring to? Filming a product in a movie? Seems kinda low tech...
They're piggybacking in on intended content. Or they're gating content behind ad walls. Or they're initiating requests on channels not yet flagged as ad servers. Or just permeating your electronics through the OS vendor, the SMS protocol, email, you name it.
Sarcasm, mate. You simply include the commercial as part of the main body of media.
You're misinformed. Reality is they aren't initiating requests at all.
I guess ads just show up on your system by magic, then? They've overcome the need for IP protocols?
Give them bad data. Click on ads you're totally disinterested in, ignore ones you're interested in. Flip that sometimes. That's actively hostile.
In that case use this: https://adnauseam.io/
muting is the correct action on tv, or even change channel temporarily
I should really invest in a PiHole. I'm just inherently lazy at times and always feel like I'm short on funds.
Pihole is open source software, so it is free and can run on basically any hardware. You could use an old laptop, a raspberry pi or other cheap SoC, and I think it might even be possible to run on something like an old Android phone.
Aye but I don't have any old hardware lying around to use, so I'd need a Raspberry Pi for it. Again, money just feels like it's getting tighter everyday that such a rather trivial purchase makes me think twice now.
If your router is OpenWRT it might be possible to run right on the router itself, but I'm not 100% sure
The router actually has DNS options for working to block ads built in it, I might give that try after work today.
You can use something like NextDNS at the router level and it works well.
Any ads that manage to reach me are added to The List. Any products on The List are to be avoided like the plague.
HelloFresh would like to know your location.
NordVPN can mask that while you enjoy your meal by Factor.
We've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty
Fun fact, hello fresh owns factor.
I've been playing WarThunder mobile while waiting for my Factor to finish in my Kohler microwave. Can't wait to bundle up in my limited edition Snuggie and watch some movies on Disney+ until I'm old enough to use that One Secret Trick the Federal government has been hiding from thousands of people like YOU when signing up for benefits....(Link in Description)
Nice double whammy there stealth marketer.
Caught in 4k On your Sony Cybershot
I mean, that's something of an empty threat in an era of slop ads. Like, I already don't drink coke, own a PlayStation, or plan to buy a Ford Superduty Truck. And I sure as fuck don't plan to support Ken Paxton for Senate.
Doesn't seem to save me from being blizzarded in solicitations.
I have very few ads in my life, because I hate them with a passion. As an autistic person, ads don't even work on me to the same extent, and I hate having to sit through them.
I have opted into a government program, that means I don't recieve ads or "free newspapers" in my letterbox. I use special webapps with integrated adblock and curator extensions on my browsers, and even custom scripts using scriptmonkey to get it away. On my TV I run SmartTube, which not only removes ads, but also automatically skips sponsor and other filler from videos, as well as removes clickbait titles where possible using DeArrow.
I run Linux, I have set up all my devices to use adblocking DNS, and I have run a PiHole for years. The only thing in my home that shows ads at this point, is my google TV that will suggest a show on viaplay or prime or whatever, and it is the only thing I cannot get rid of.
The reason I dislike ads, is that these corporations are fucking scum. They collude to ruin people's self-esteem, and to overflood the market with needless materialist bullshit that we don't need, by exploiting our deepest insecurities. As AI becomes more normalized, it will get even more insidious. People talk to their chatbots like they are their friends, and soon those chatbots will subtly manipulate them into buying hair products that don't work, because they see a picture in your photos gallery of you slightly balding, and see you talked to it about feeling insecure about your appearence lately.
Ending my rant with a quote by banksy:
You should add those two domain in your deny list
After that, you clear the data of the Android TV Launcher app. The app won't be able to grab any ads and it will be stuck will default youtube and play store ads.
Be sure to note how your icon were positionned as it will be cleared also
Very similar situation, pihole and adblockers on everything. I pirate what I want, I refuse even paid services that put ads in like Hulu and netflix, fuck both of those. I refuse to use tiktok since its literally everyone and their brother trying to sell you shit.
GoogleTV as in Smart TV running Android TV, yeah? Get Projectivity Launcher!
I installed it. Works great! Can even make it default launcher without needing to root. Great recommendation, thanks!
Agree. Honestly, websites just feel so much cleaner without ads. Like, ads are literal visual pollution and I hate it.
I'm pretty actively hostile to ads: I have an adblocker built into my router, I won't subscribe to any streaming thing that will show me ads (and I get a lot of shows and movies from... other ad-free sources), don't have cable etc. The only place I really see them is outside on billboards and stuff.
But anyway, I'm so used to not seeing ads now that going to family member's places over Christmas was kind of jarring with the amount of ads. What's wrong with your TV!
Ads are not just visual pollution, they're more importantly also mental pollution.
Right! They're trying to get a reaction out of you to then buy their crap.
Then add the ones that lead to malicious sites all over social media or steal your focus that you can no longer scroll that page. They're insidious and negative, they're all about manipulating your emotions to then go buy something.
If you block ads from loading, you are using less processing power and thus less energy. Everyone should make the green choice of adding adblock to every browser. Save the planet.
NextDNS at the front in the router. Adblockerwon all browsers. SmartTube on the TV. Sponsor Block add-ons. What ads? The ads I ever manage to get are very non-intrusive and don't interfere with my browsing experience.
That isn't hostile enough, AdNauseam clicks them in the background.
I'm not sure I agree with that approach though. I get that the goal is to cost the advertisers money without benefit, but I kinda feel like contributing to that system at all is just encouraging them to do it more.
It provides junk data as well, which a lot of sites and advertisers use to sell to others. If enough people do it, then it becomes less profitable to do so since it because apparent there's a deliberate attempt to obsfucate.
What if not enough people do it though? If you don't reach that threshold, aren't you just inflating the amount of data they have to sell?
Worst case scenario, you give them junk data that they cannot reliably market to you specifically. Best case scenario, they realize it's all junk and throw it out. I doubt they'll change their entire model until it's five 9s worth but every little thorn in their foot just for spite's sake.
[stands on soap box]
Advertisment is theft.
It is theft of my time and attention, the neurons that have to fire for my brain to process the message and then mentally bin the thought. I value the messages of people trying to sell me things so little, I would request they pay me to sit through their drivil. I have only so many hours on the moist spinning mud ball we call earth that I wish 0% of it being told to buy things.
Back in the day, when the internet was wild and free, advertisment online was a means of allowing hosts and websites to keep the lights on becore e-commerce had its sea legs, and that was the social agreement. Your site hosts ads, I get access to the site, captialism still happened, but it was simple. Then ads loaded by third party sources were not vetted by the trusted site you were visiting and became a vector for malware.
Now, you had ad and ad-free tiers of paid services, you pay your cable bill to watch 22 min. of content every block, 26% of the content on cable is not the content your paying for. Its sick, and now its infested the digital social spaces where people just make the infomericals at home in exchange for free stuff further poisioning the well of trust for interacting online.
[/Gets down from soapbox]
Sorry, I hate ads, moreso that most, but on the level amongst this crowd. To quote the great Miracle Max from the Princess Bride (RIP Rob Reiner) "Life is pain highness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something"
Are you yourself a thief for using things like YouTube videos for free?
What do you think it is now...?
I mean, obviously, corporate greed turns all of this up to 11, because if it doesn't the shareholders are sad and the CEO gets sacked, but ultimately, it's the exact same social agreement - you get to watch or read content without paying for it, and in exchange, you get to watch ads.
NOTE: I don't do cable TV, so don't know anything about that. I'm talking specifically about the Internet.
To the previous poster's point, internet ads have evolved away from 'paying the bills' and more towards 'harvesting and selling your data'. It's made to be as invasive as possible now because they want your data, whereas before it was much easier to ignore or filter out. And it's everywhere, from websites to mobile apps.
To your example, the amount of money youtube(well, google) has spent on trying to beat adblockers could make the service free for everyone and keep the lights on...but it makes more money to sell your data instead, so they try to shove more ads in. That's also not counting the amount of paid research that goes into 'what advertising is effective', or 'how many ads is too many', stuff like that. Not nearly as much thought was put into them in the early days.
Is it, though? You don't remember the dozens of pop-up ads, or ads that would literally open new browser windows for you? All of that is gone, except on some shifty pirate/porn websites, isn't it?
Yeah, I'm gonna need a source on that one, chief.
They're not getting your data via ads. They're serving ads "tailored" for you after they've already harvested the data via cookies, browsing history in Chrome, your Gmail, your viewing habits on YT, your Google Search history, etc., etc.
Those ads are STILL there, especially on social media. The amount of times I've had a customer call into support for getting malicious advertisement off Facebook is goddamn staggering. They're made to purposely confuse and confound, especially the older, less savvy folks. Stop simping for data harvessting and invasive advertising by the way. It makes you look bad.
Again: displaying ads happens AFTER the data has been harvested. How is stating this simple fact "simping for data harvesting"? Buddy, are you OK?
Information is harvested from ads displayed as well, whether they're clicked or not, how long it takes for a person to skip them on a youtube video or how much of it is watched. All useful user data to try and personalize more ads for you. Are YOU okay? One shouldn't be trying to defend a horrible practice that tries to psychologically manipulate people.
The information harvested from ads is "did they have them displayed? For how long? Did they click", and that's it. It's benign. The malicious stuff that we don't want harvested is alllll the other shit that leads Google Ads to display ads for sneakers right after you looked at some sneakers on Amazon.
I still don't know where you're getting the notion that I'm defending anything here from. It's weird. Stop being weird.
Advertising is one of the most prolific environmental pollutants of economic activity, and needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking.
It’s not “advertising.” That’s a euphemism. It’s #CapitalistPropaganda. Fucking straight up social manipulation and we’re fire-hosed with it from the day we’re born. It’s the prime reason we can no longer organize collective responses to capitalism.
Nah, as noxious as it is, too many people still consider smoking socially acceptable.
Advertising should be as socially acceptable as ripping random people's eyes off with a rusty spoon, shitting in the socket, and charging them for it.
i love smoking but hate advertisements. am I that bad? I put an ad blocker on everything and anything that blocks ad blockers or requires me to pay to not see ads doesnt get used
Smoking is pretty bad, yes, but advertising is orders of magnitude worse. On a whole other league. Even worse than speaking in the theatre.
I actively avoid products I see to many ads for
Same. If I see an ad for your new thing, im most likely never going to get it and will discourage others when the subject comes up to skip it as well.
They likely aren’t concerned, since probably their data shows that while a few people might be annoyed and choose not to purchase, overall sales would still increase compared to not running ads
This is why I stopped using Twitch(among other things). Kept making it harder and harder to block ads, content experience got worse because of it, so I just stopped using the platform entirely.
I used to watch twitch a good bit while i was doing other things. It was great to have on while doing dishes or cleaning up.
I remember trying again in the not too distant past. I got hit with like 5 ads to start the stream. Thought that was going to be is as long as i stayed there.... NOPE. Got 5 more ads like 5-10 minutes later. Shut it down and never looked back.
Same, had it on during daily chores, listened to it while mowing the lawn, and if work was slow I'd have it on a tablet off to the side with my headphones(boss didn't care).
That was back in 2019, haven't used it since.
Amazon, one of the richest corpos in the fucking world. And they put an ad break every 30 minutes or whatever to promote their paid subscription... That gets rid of ads for you...
Not to mention paywalling basic player features
Fucking hate their guts
Had a gas pump that I couldn't mute the ads at and they played so loud that I'm sure the people inside could hear. Despite having some of the cheaper gas in town I will never go back
right second button didin’t work?
cause if not, that’s evil
Might as well have been punching my finger through it. Said out loud, "well fuck this"
Carry an awl and gently shred the speaker through the grille.
i’be given serious thought to how illegal taping the speaker hole over would be
If the product/service needs this much invasive convincing for you to use it - it's mostly likely not worth your money.
Most things advertised by podcasters or youtubers turns out to be hostile, or a scam or just plain shit. But people still buy from influencers, so there is no end in sight.
The products in the ads are as enshittified as the platform showing the ads.
Adnauseum for firefox (both pc and android), and PiHole for network-level. When my dad comes over, hes always surprised that his tablet’s crossword game doesnt have ads inbetween levels!
advertising is for knowing what not to buy
Yup, right this here
I'm extremely hostile to ads, always have been
I'm arring my ways over the seas because it's impossible to watch videos normally without ads, even when paying. Even Netflix every now and then manages to annoy the fuck out of me even while paying.
I do not want to watch what you want me to watch
I do not want to know about your bullshit products
I invest actual money and time into actively avoiding any and all ads, and happily do so
Fuck marketing, it should be prohibited
I remember going on a date with a girl that was majoring in marketing. She was really sold to the idea that marketing is "essential for everything! It's everywhere!" - I understood her point that even factually correct information needs to be "properly marketed", especially nowadays, but come the fuck on, the entire industry built itself around shady manipulation and dirty psychological tricks
This cunt?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
Damn.. She sounds both hot and repulsive at the same time.
People can take any vague concept and find it "everywhere".
I'm most immediately reminded of the "markets in everything" ideology from econ. It's the same role as god in religion. Ubiquitous, inherently moral, etc. It's the same level of wacky ideology, but TBH worshiping god seems more rational to me than worshiping some deity from an econ/marketing class.
I just block them
AdNauseam
Its a fork of uBlock:Origin with a fun twist.
You've linked to a letter which asks people to donate without explaining what ad nauseum actually is. (I think maybe you should link to the home page instead.)
Instead of just blocking ads like uBlock, it follows every single ad link that it comes across. This quickly makes trying to track you worthless to advertisers, and in fact may cost them a substantial amount of money due to referral fees.
It's not quite as performant as uBlock since it's doing a lot of work in the background, and over a month of use I did see a few ads slip through, but it works very well overall. Oh and it has an ad wall where you can see a huge collage of every ad it ever clicked on for you, with estimated ad revenue damages.
Thanks for the reply. After reading the home page, I was wondering if it would have a performance impact. It's a fascinating idea. I already use ublock origin myself. I may give this a try.
It didn't do anything when I tried it. Also it's just unlock origin with additional features
In addition to all of those strategies, I also make a mental note to never buy whatever product is being hawked, or any other product from that company. It's automatic; I have an almost Pavlovian vomit response when I see/hear certain brand names thanks to their advertising. I'm also weary of competitor's products, because I wouldn't put it past those slimy bastards to own both companies and present them as alternatives to each other.
I tried that but then I couldn't buy anything and almost starved. Ads are everywhere but I especially dislike the intrusive ones.
No ads in my life except when i go into town. Difficult to block IRL ads... Yet
São Paulo in Brazil made advertisement on public streets illegal, and banned most types of banners, restricted the amount of logos etc to greatly improve the visual experience of the city. It's definitely much better now than it ever was.
Now they just gotta take care of the pollution, increasingly vulnerable homeless population and neglected poor areas and then it would be paradise.
I block ads almost always, but when I do see ads, on billboards and whatnot, I purposefully don't buy their products.
Advertising is a mental hazard that must be constantly managed. It's draining to defend against as it is almost everyone at all times. I keep advertising to a minimum in my home and I can feel the invasiveness of it when I'm not there, I've definitely lost tolerance for advertising over the years and will discard something every quickly if it shows up. Adblock at all times on the net.
It reminds me of that scene in Diaspora where a couple of robots found an old coke can in the woods. They freaked out, fearing memetic contagion.
Sounds like a riff on the plot of The Gods Must Be Crazy, where a tribesman goes to return a coke bottle dropped from a passing airplane.
Is this a film or book? The term 'memetic contagion' makes me curious.
A book by greg egan. He's a really good science fiction author. His early stuff anyway.
I've been meaning to read his books for ages! Probably will start with Diaspora.
Diaspora is good. My fave is Permutation City. He also has a nice collection of short stories : Axiomatic.
When playing free app games and ad rolls cannot be skipped, i put the phone down and use the time to give my eyes a break and focus on the horizon.
Phone settings > Connections > More Connection Settings > Private DNS > dns.adguard-dns.com
Now mobile games can't serve you ads, and wont interrupt your play. This breaks reward-based ad watching incentives, though, so you might have to occasionally disable it.
Stick it to the man.😤✊️
It's not piracy to shut your ears and plug your eyes whenever an ad is playing ... at least not yet. Give the lobbyists a few weeks.
I met someone who didn’t want to use an internet adblocker because it made the screen feel too empty /:
🤢
w h a t ?
Use Ublock Origin in your browser and PiHole on your network. Ads are a serious malware risk (never mind the scams) and should be treated as the security threat that they are.
See also: people trying to convince me to give websites money to avoid the ads after I tell them how to block the ads entirely.
My brother keeps trying to get me to get a youtube subscription. I just told you I don’t get ads! Why would you give google money? It is your moral obligation to bleed as much money from that company as possible!
I genuinely haven't seen any ads for 20 years now except in the odd waiting room or someone else's house. It's surprising how creepy and strange they are once you're a few years removed from them. You start to notice parallels between cult members and people who don't avert their eyes from ads.
I was talking about this with my wife the other day. I just can't understand how people are as OK with ads as they are.
I was talking to my girlfriend about this recently too. I forget where I first heard it, but someone said, “You have a right to your private mind. Persuasive ads are junk,” and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Persuasive advertising is absolute junk!
Let me add to your rant with an additional pet peeve of mine: Usually when people rant about the advertising some smug assholes in the comment sections say "You think you are immune but it works on you, otherwise they wouldn't spend millions on it".
When did money become the sole metric with which we judge the merit of ideas? Did the billionaire who died in the titan submersible incident not shut up the crowd making such an argument?
I don't understand what your argument is. As far as advertisers are concerned, money is indeed the end goal and ultimate metric of success. So if advertising leads to more money, that is success as far as they are concerned. The philosophical outlook of the consumer does not pertain to this argument. But I think I'm misunderstanding your point so perhaps you could clarify?
Near as I can tell, they are not so much advancing an argument as using this opportunity to complain about a tangentially related phenomenon. The point seems muddled since the efficacy of advertising wasn't ever in question, but, basically, they're just saying it grinds their gears when someone points out that advertising works as a justification for its existence. They believe that there are metrics to consider which aren't "did the ad generate a sale".
Could be I got that wrong, but I think that's the gist of what they were saying. I, too, am a little confused, since no one seemed to be doubting ads work, despite consumer hostility, but, in their defense, they did declare up-front that they wanted to piggyback on this topic to address a pet peeve of theirs, so it's not like we weren't informed of their intent.
Most billionaires have certain skills but for the rest are unfettered idiots. The titan guy got exactly what he asked for.
The entire concept of a billionaire should be prohibited. Nobody should be able to have more than, say, 10 million dollars. Put a hard cap on that, any income above that goes to taxes. Fuck the rich
Also something being ineffective doesn't mean people stop doing it, like homeopathy.
Well it also doesn't need to work on everybody. Does a net need to catch ever fish in the sea for a fisherman to make a living? Obviously some people can be and are immune to it.
Advertising doesn't work on me because I hate shopping, so I have my wife spend the discretionary income. I am sure it works on her though.
TBH I'm less likely to buy something that advertises to me. Every time I see a car commercial, it steels my resolve to never buy another car.
On the other hand I agree that most people are brainwashed into the car cult and commercials play a large role. Likewise for other capitalist bullshit.
I fucking hate ads! Nothing makes me want to buy something less than seeing an ad for something I never asked for in the first place. If I need something I will look it up myself!
The worst is the unmutable advertisements at the gas pump.
Some you can mute, if you press the correct hidden button. But more and more I'm finding them without the mute button. So I start pressing random buttons and combinations of buttons, until something works.
The pump by my house goes into a maintenance mode when you press a certain button combination, and then it tells you to go inside to pay (as if I hadn't already swiped my card). But the ads are muted, and the charge still shows up on my account, the correct amount and everything, so it's paid for. I don't go in. The pump automatically leaves maintenance mode when I finish pumping. No harm no foul.
I try to avoid stations I know have ads, but I travel a lot for work, so it's hard.
You'd think, with all the fucking data they collect on me, they'd know that I don't have any money and I don't buy anything unless I absolutely have to.
They probably do know you don’t have money. They’re not trying to sell to you right now so much as categorize you. A lot of this data collection is about predicting who might spend later, not who is spending today. There are entire demographic buckets for people who are broke, cautious, or only spend out of necessity. Being targeted doesn’t mean they think you have money it just means you fit a profile they’re tracking. You’re data first, customer maybe later.
What’s unsettling is how specific some of these categories are. This is just a small sample of the kinds of labels people get sorted into:
I got banned from twitter for a week back before it went nazi by shit talking every ad it put in front of me.
That's an excellent tactic : if you advertise at me then you become the target of my shit talk.
What amusing justification did they offer for the ban?
That because they rely on capitalist propaganda to keep twitter "free" it was against the rules.
Happened to me on Reddit right before the api shenanigans
I do exactly same.
advertisers can gargle my ballsack
Every day brings us closer to All-Despising Baby Skull.
There should be a 100% tax on every company's advertising budget. For every dollar they spend on advertising they should have to pay just as much.
I only ever witness an ad on my computer when there's something new that isn't in my list of black listed domains on my pihole server.
In that case, a few clicks later they are on the "lol, no" list and I never see them again.
No smart tvs are allowed on my Wi-Fi. Instead they have tiny Linux PCs that let me watch whatever I please, ad free.
My mobile phone is graphene OS. My mobile browser has an ad blocker and works perfectly on things like YouTube.
News articles blocked by ads AREN'T when viewed via archive.is.
None of these things are hard enough that a beginner can't do the same.
I DARE you to do the same.
new pipe is great for watching youtube on andoid without ads (tubular is a fork with sponsorblock), and kodi is a great home entertainment system with plugins that allow streaming youtube without ads :3
I've had so many problems getting new pipe to work :( I just have ublock on my Firefox on my phone now. Works just as well 🤷
I hope that YouTube, Instagram, and Pandora notice that I close their app every time I see a gambling ad
And I am actively avoiding products and companies based on their advertising.
For a while I enacted a weeklong boycott of anything for which I saw an ad, resetting each time I saw one.
It helped cut down on my soda and fast food intake. Otherwise (American) ads are mostly for insurance, medications, vehicles, and phones/plans.
When I see an advertisement, I intentionally do not purchase the product
This assumes that I would select a product based on brand recognition. I do not. I generally select food products based on ingredients and price per unit. And I use similar metrics like materials and build quality for non-food items. Advertising only works if you don't put any active thought into your purchasing.
But if you have to choose from two clothing brands that have similar quality you will be more likely to choose the one you have seen in an ad. Even if you are only 10% more likely to do that (arbitrary number) multiply it by thousands of people and it’s worth it for the company.
That’s why ad companies are trying to get as much data as possible on everyone. They know that showing you random products won’t work.
I'm not talking about never buying the product again. Just about consciously not buying it for a certain period of time. Avoiding advertising is also pretty much impossible even with blockers
That’s exactly what I do, and I wield adblockers with the fury of merging supermassive black holes.
Dude claims he is more anti ad than most yet does not mention using an adblocker. Curious.
And advertise for the adblock service? Why I never!
Have you guys noticed a recent trend where a site will continually reload, presenting a dialog box about "being unable to load, click here to try again"? It winds up at a message about adblockers being bad and how to disable it. Otherwise you can't read the recipe/review/discussion.
Only trick I've found so far is to outright disable javascript on that site using noscript. Any other ideas?
Use reader mode, it only shows text. So no ads and no pop-ups.
Unfortunately no, it appears to have a refresh in progress faster than I can press the reader button, which pulls you out of reader mode.
Here's an example: https://realgreekrecipes.com/baked-eggplant-with-tomatoes/#recipe
It's not a big deal, I just block JavaScript completely, but I wanted to bring awareness to this.
I clicked your link and it loaded fine for me. However, there was a blocked box for a few seconds but it went away and the page looks and functions normally now. Running firefox with ublock.
Strange, so am I. I'll refresh the ublock lists again.
It works on mobile Firefox but since there is no reader available on desktop can't really test something that isn't there.
Just like hkspowers the site works fine for me and I didn't notice any blocked box. I'm on desktop using Firefox + Ublock Origin + CanvasBlocker + Consent-O-Matic and I also have a Pihole.
I've been using this HOSTS file for over two decades to prevent ads.
HOSTS + Ublock Origin + Privacy Badger 🤌
Pi-hole basically does that for me (or mullvad vpn)
They still show ads on stuff? Hmm...
Let me check the scrape file on the PiHole...
Wowzers! That's a lot!
Good thing I've got the PiHole.
No what do you mean I love being inundated with consumerist propaganda designed to defile my mind and soul!
I feel like I've trained my brain to have a mental adblocker. I see ads in public, but it's like my brain intentionally refuses to process the information they're imposing upon me as soon as it can identify that it's an ad.
It's not like a literal black box in my vision or something obviously. But it's just a reflex to.... not think about it, at all.
If someone is annoyed by ads and wants to block them I strongly recommend Pihole. It got its name because it is often used on a Raspberry pi but it can be used on other units as well.
Setting up Pihole
Blocklist for Pihole Pro is the recommended but already the light version will reduce ads a lot if you don't do anything to block ads today.
The alternative is to get a browser based on Firefox with the add-on Ublock Origin. Even if you use Pihole at home it is good to get Firefox + Ublock Origin or DuckduckGo on your phone since the Pihole will not block anything for you when you are outside of your Wifi.
I cannot even describe how I feel about advertisers. Truly the lowliest, most sycophantic and pathetic scum on the earth. The MICROSECOND that an ad starts to play, I begin repeating under my breath "fuck you fuck you fuck you. I hope you fucking die." If I see your ad, know for certain, that should I ever meet you in real life, I will most assuredly remove your windpipe from your neck with a rusty fucking nail, so no one must ever listen to another mindless thing you have to say. Your existence is a net loss for all living things. It is an affront to basic decency and it my deepest desire that everyone involved catches fire and fucking dies.
Fuck advertising.
Advertisements are the devil. Time theft, propaganda, etc. They'll take as much of your life as possible and waste it on watching car commercials.
I will never willingly watch any advertisement. Do my best to block in all situations.
I broke my friends tv last week trying to avoid ads
You friend did not have a TV, just an ad platform.
You saved them, really
Really?!
No, not really lol
Tbh I don't mind ad reads from youtubers or anything. I'll usually skip them, but they don't feel super corporate or targeted (and sometimes they're funny)
It’s just more corporate shilling, and I don’t want their ads in my head. Remember when almost every YouTuber had sponsored ads for Honey? Then Honey was shown to be screwing over the very people who were promoting it? Yeah, I’m not listening to a sponsor spiel no matter how funny it is. It’s just another person selling their soul.
I feel like if a YouTuber or podcaster is bringing value to my life, I want them to get money in return.
Everyone (okay not EVERYONE) expects artists to create for free and either work full time in top of that or not eat.
I'd rather a creator choose their paid sponsors and get paid directly, than have to rely on YT or whomever to place religious or political or other bullshit ads and give them a small cut and no say.
I can't afford to join everyone's Patreon and I refuse to give YT my money at all. I don't mind an ad for Factor meals or the 'stress relief' massager. I can just fast forward if I'm not in the mood.
Eeww what the fuck?
And they’re a BIG DEAL. e.g. this tech journalist who left a big publication and hung out her shingle. No sponsorships? No Becca.
Sponsorblock means the big (75%) blue section goes away. Becca’s vid
Let’s be real, we want them to eat? To entertain us? At some point not enough normies are left to subsidize if sponsorblocking becomes too popular.
Counterpoint, there was just new information put out on one of the most prolific content sponsors (honey) and the literal fraud they've been perpetrating over the years. With more to come.
In general, the higher the payout the scummier the sponsor.
Man that Honey fraud was so dirty—glad they were exposed so virally. Now is that a baby/bathwater situation?
Fraud bad, Becca-like people good
There were more scams than just honey. That was just the latest one.
When YouTube sponsorships continue to be scams over and over it makes it very difficult to trust ANY YouTube sponsorship.
Also fuck ads. I wouldn’t wanna see them even if they weren’t a scam.
I don't give a fuck. I won't watch your ads. I would sooner donate directly to content creators that I like (and I have!). I would rather see them beg their audience for money than take a corporate handout.
Begging is also acceptable!
I’m OK to donate my time though I will 2x speed through :)
The best sponsor thing I’ve seen was probably the Pyro guy on YouTube who got a hooligan-resistant standing desk: I think he covered it in alcohol and lit it on fire. pretty sure that is the desk he’s using now. If you make a really good standing desk I think it’s fine to try to promote it via a really good science YouTuber and I really love that that YouTuber is not tracking me and is just assuming I care because I’m watching a science channel. It’s the same ad whether I use YTDLP or login to my spyware account and watch. That’s how ads should be even though it means some small folks won’t have budget to adequately advertise & survive.
Had a thought while driving past a few of those electric distraction boards, maybe this is the place where AI/smart glass could be of use. A database of known boards plus some object recognition, have it draw a black box over the offending board that could shift as you go by...
AFK ad blocker?
Or like they have for pictures, erase to background, just replace the billboard with sky or whatever is behind it
kinda like SCRAMBLE
Dystopian af, but I want one
Sincere question since I am unsure myself: At what point does advertising cross the line from a way to fairly support creators and platforms, to malignant advertising practices meant to take advantage of their audience?
When it starts taking away from the experience. For the longest time I wouldn't use an ad-blocker on YouTube because I wanted to give creators their revenue. That was back when you had a single 15 second ad and you could see where all the ad breaks in a video where. If a creator got greedy and put them every minute or so, I would just stop watching them. Then YouTube took a lot of that control away from them, make dual non-skippable ads, 60 second ad, etc. At that point I blocked all ads. I'm fine with creators having ad reads as long as it is just an ad read and not a hidden ad.
It was the same with news sites. Place a few ads and banners here or there and that's fine. But now they have auto-play videos, every paragraph requires you to scroll past 17 ads, you get less than an actual inch of reading space on a mobile device. I put ad blockers on everything.
It's all greed. The same reason I stopped watching anything on Prime. I've had Prime Video since it launched. Then they come and tell me I have to pay extra to stay ad free. I tried to watch one episode of Clarkson Farm and got the same American Express ad a dozen times. I haven't watched a single thing on Prime since. You can't take something that has been ad free, throw ads on it, and say fuck you pay me more.
For platforms: When it interferes, to any degree, with what you're actually using the platform to accomplish. I didn't really mind the on-the-side ads of the mid 2000's to early 2010's. But newspaper ads which block half the screen, Fandom ads that autoplay videos and lag the page, Youtube ads that block the video, Reddit and Instagram ads that present as if they're actual posts - all bullshit.
For creators, I give them a lot more leeway. They're just a person trying to make some money, so I can skip their ad read, it's fine. It's annoying lol, but it's fine.
Advertising will be met with outright hostility.
Its very disappointing that the outcome of capitalism and widespread enshitification is the need to have an adversarial relationship with nearly every company.
Ive always had a neutral attitude to gambling, Im not into it but its fine if people do it responsibly. But with all these ads from phone gambling apps, it's seems like an aggressively predatory relationship between the casinos and gamblers and offer only lip service response to gambling addiction. I now am very firmly against further legalization of gambling and think that advertising should be illegal.
I think advertising for gambling, alcohol, and weed should be banned in its entirety.
Can count on one hand the number of TV ads that influenced me to buy a product. Those have gone the way of the dodo these past few years, so if I can't surf away from them, I just mute them or fire up a console
I'm still waiting for a startup to sell a bed that advertises to you in your sleep.
I swear when I mute the ads on YouTube, the skip button shows up faster. But probably just my brain playing tricks on me.
You need unlock origin on Firefox on PC and android, also newpipe app on android, no ads there
a lot of people want to be told what to think (because they can't think for themselves) and advertisement tells them what to think. that's why a lot of people don't bother with advertisement.
I actively avoid products that advertise excessively.
This is (kind of) an argument in favor of tracking though.
Nobody wants to be bombarded with ads for the same product, but advertisers want to advertise to as many people as possible. If you can't track who you've shown the ad to in the past few days and who you haven't, you're almost certainly going to annoy people by spamming them with the same ad, but if you can track who's seen it then you can limit the number, which is pretty objectively better for everyone.
I'm not saying this means the other negative parts of tracking are suddenly ok, just that it's an interesting side-effect.
Proposal: No tracking and also no ads. Then nobody has to worry about who has or hasn’t seen it.
If you can convince people to pay for the media they consume in other ways, sure, but until then sites need to pay journalists, actors and writers somehow, otherwise we'd be buried in AI, user-generated and low-effort slop with far fewer alternatives. I think that's worse than having ads personally, but that's a pragmatic rather than idealistic view.
Ads are basically someone rubbing diarrhea directly on your eyeballs
Everyone should install Pihole on their router.
Blatant AstroTurf ad campaign to sell cheap electronics. Blocked.
/s
People in general must be really stupid (including myself) to still fall for the old $2.99 and think "Hey, that's only two dollars!". The advertisers are getting better every year but what they are selling is getting worse every year. I recently saw a drug advert on tv and it stated that we have a pill. Call your doctor to see if this pill is good for you. There was no mention in the advert of what the pill may or may not do. This is the old "monkeys flinging crap against the wall to see what sticks".
In Canada drug ads are not allowed to tell you what a drug treats as part of the ad. You can only advertise the price, quantity and name. Its a big reason there are so many fewer drug ads compared to the us. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-health-products/marketing-drugs-devices/illegal-marketing/prescription-drugs.html#a6
https://youtu.be/d_3h5n9mPdI
i havent had to deal with ads in like ages cos of adblocks n stuff, life is good
SponsorBlock. You have to turn on all the segments to skip.
I dont know if this is the community to have the discussion but im really battling with my stance on advertising logically. I hate it, I block all ads, I hate seeing them and I dont want them to exist. Ok but why shouldnt it exist? Its harmful, invasive an unsolicited just like this thread mentions. But its also such a baseline human thing that I cant see a way to get rid of, if I tell my friend about something i brought im advertising to them etc. If we ban paid advertising will companies invade discussion to "organically" mention prodcuts.
I really want a good argument for why it shouldn't exist and how a world without is a better place.
At the bare minimum there needs to be restrictions on how invasive ads can be and maybe that would solve things?
This maybe doesn't count as a logical argument but it always gets me pumped up against advertisement.
I fully agree with the feeling and the anger but I dont want to live in a world where people randomly attack things in public spaces using the justification "I had no choice whether to see it or not". Like for example what if I put up a flyer for a local craft fair on a lamp post or a notice board. No one is consenting to seeing that adn I need to do it so people know its going on. Its just hard for me to know where to draw the line which is why im for doing bans of stuff we can all agree sucks and then dialing it in more and more until we feel ads are in a good spot. Like restrictions on what information you can use to target ads, how much screen space they can take up relative to time Eg no full screen 5min ads, restrictions on what can be advertised to what groups of people, making it illegal to not disclose advertising. Things like that until ads are less cancerous.
But i'd like to hear arguments for complete removal.
and yet... Marketing is super important. If you've got a good idea, people need to know that it's there, or else that idea won't exist for much longer.
There's a product that I knew about, and it was essentially a sprinkler system you fitted to your home radiator. The idea being that if the room got to a certain temperature (like, say, when the room is on fire), the water inside the radiator would get too hot and burst out of this little plastic thing on the end of the radiator as steam, dousing the fire. It wasn't there to save lives of people in the room, because the room would have to be so hot that everyone inside would be dead, but it would stop the fire spreading to the next room.
They had lots of tests done, video evidence of it working, but nobody would buy it because they insisted on doing all the marketing themselves, and they were shit at it. The guy who invented it spent more time arguing in comment sections than actually advertising the product. If they'd hired a marketing firm to actually sell the product, they might have been able to sell it to more than a single council's social housing stock. A lot of investor money went down the drain because of that project and because the ego of the inventor couldn't be kept in check.
No
Bad dog!
I understand that there is a need to demo new products, but have you lived under a rock?
What you say I wouldn't mind. I wouldn't mind there being a website showcasing new products, or where I can type a problem and I get a list of products that will solve said problem. That, however, is not how marketing works.
Ads can roughly be cut into two types.
Scams / bullshit new revolutionaey products that won't do as advertised
Companies blaring on about how their 5 decades old product somehow still is revolutionary and the best
Pretty much ALL marketing campaigns lie, either directly or by multiple omissions. They ALWAYS need to be intrusive, and it's always about money.
Fuck the environment, fuck your health, fuck your safety, I have a fucking monster pickup truck to sell! LOOK HOW COOL IT IS!
I HATE ads, with a passion and all marketers on the bottom of the ocean would be a good start on making the world a better place
One exception is I like some ads while watching TV shows/movies in a group. They're a built-in break for me to run off an go to the bathroom, get snacks, etc. They're still generally too frequent, but too many is better than none.
you really can't just hit pause yourself in the middle of a critical sequence?
Well, you can't pause normal TV, tbf
It's not been normal for a while now
Now streaming is normal, but about to be replaced by piracy
Social implications no?
Like in the 2000s, the person who was the antsy-est and/or had the smallest bladder had an inarguable reason to take frequent little breaks.
(I’m not deciding for anyone that inviting marketers into the home is better than any other option, just saying!)
Yeah, but it's annoying when there is a group and it paused it for everyone. There's the social pressure not to.
that's a fair point
‘Too many ads is better than none.’
Damn bitch, you live like this?
Lol wut. Just ask your friends to pause or wait till the episode is over. A 45 minute episode without ads flys by because the tension / flow of the show is never lost artificially by some cringey #ad for whatever.
I do. Ads are better though than having to pause repeatedly to go pee or refill water or to talk about the show.
Then the next immediately starts (long outro+intros solve that though). Also, no guarantee I can wait that long.
You can turn off autoplay.
For real. Every issue this person raises is easily solved without needing inject yet another Dove body wash or wingstop commercial.
I'm suggesting injecting fewer ads, not more. Just not none in the specific case of group binge-watching. Simply because I need to break frequency of like 3 people combined and don't want to be blamed for the seemingly excess pausing.
But that's the same problem with pausing.
I feel that. Sometimes I get lost in the sauce streaming on Revanced and then an entire day is gone. The old style of media had me at least question several times an hour about getting up and doing other things, now it's easier than ever to just end up in a depression binge