When I go to the office instead of being on my home network with a pihole, and I go to show a website in a meeting, I'm just embarrassed by what shows up because the site didn't look anything like that when I was looking at it previously at home. I legitimately don't know how people actually use websites that are 80% ads
I was fortunate enough to have some creative input into our browser policies at work. Needless to say, Adnauseum ublock origin and some password safe extensions got added to the allow list
After my parents quit smoking, they ended up with this, IDK, "born again nonsmoker" attitude where they were completely disgusted by the smell of cigarette smoke and couldn't stand to be around it at all.
My parents quit smoking a few years ago, my mom had tried unsuccessfully to quit a few times, and what finally did it for her was getting a really bad cold during a really bad cold snap so she really didn't want to go outside to smoke. Then since she quit I think my dad just kind of hopped on the bandwagon with her.
But I remember one time, a year or two later, being at a party at their house with some friends sitting outside, and my one friend who is a smoker lights up, and she told him to come sit next to her because she still really liked the smell.
So different strokes for different folks I suppose.
This! I have ZERO ad tolerance, in any form. Most annoying thing is that you can't get rid of them in podcasts, other than hammering the fast-forward button.
Are u referring to podcasts in spotify? You can circumvent ads here as well by downloading the episode, and then listening to it with wifi/cellular turned off. Or just use a third party website that let's you convert and download an episode into an mp3 file.
I love this idea but nowadays I’m actively looking for commercials in many shows—watching Sealab or Family Guy or Space Ghost or super old Pokémon and the like is infinitely better with original commercials from the late 90s or early 2000s, ripped in mediocre quality from an SP VHS.
Nope, I'm just disgusted by ads from every era. It's psychological manipulation to make you buy shit you don't need. Consumerism is disgusting, and I'm sorry that your nostalgia is caught up in it.
This is literally the same thing. Some small technical details regarding the delivery method are wholly immaterial, and any arguments asserting that it is are fully disingenuous.
we’re literally in the comments of an article indicating that this is legally distinct deafening, and I’m pretty obviously joking about the distinction being time alone
The workaround was that since commercials couldn't be louder than the loudest part of the show airing, they made the show theme songs super fucking loud.
We do have common sense laws that lead the nation in a lot of areas, but especially automobile safety and pollution. Manufacturers don't want to make a California specific version of their product, so it becomes the de facto standard for cars in the US.
They are repeating the cable/broadcast ad service network playbook. All this shit has already been regulated on normal TV, and wasn't an issue with streaming because before, streaming didn't have ads like this. Now that they've normalized paying monthly fees AND being lasted with ads, the regulation has to play catch-up again. This should be something the FCC regulates, but good luck in this administration.
Im the same way. I paid to get access to the World Cup games and was jarred by the commercials. Then I went over to my friends house and his kids were singing along to the commercials and repeating the lines lol
Okay, so I have no idea about streaming services, but commercials on broadcast TV never had the volume increased but the compression.
(I love getting lost in details so apologies if any of this comes off condescending.) Compression works by making the quieter parts louder, without distorting the louder parts.
THINK of a SENTENCE where SOME of the WORDS are LOUD and OTHER words are QUIETER.
compression works by squishing down all the loud parts, then bringing everything back up to full volume, so the previous sentence would become:
THINK OF A SENTENCE WHERE SOME OF THE WORDS ARE LOUD AND OTHER WORDS ARE QUIETER.
Now, the loud parts didn’t become louder. What happened is that the quieter parts got louder. You lose the dynamic, but gain volume. If you think it would just be exhausting, you’re correct - even at low volumes, you can get a sense of ear fatigue when audio is heavily compressed.
Now, if you want to know why movies have quiet parts where you can’t hear shit and loud parts that are way louder, this is called dynamics. Artistically, you very much want this for the same reason you want quiet parts and loud parts in classical music. If everything is constantly loud, the dramatic moments won’t feel as impactful.
“But wait, I don’t enjoy that, I like having my TV at a reasonable volume!” Yup, me too. It’s fucking annoying. Mixing is done often on high quality speakers, loud volume, so you can get every detail. Most home setups dont have that nuance, and most people don’t care. Until execs can actually get proven that they’ll make more money by having consistent compression, you’re shit out of luck. You’ll probably have to get your own compression, either through software or hardware.
I thought you were going to get into lossy audio compression codecs. I don’t see ads but when I do my ears are like “what in the 128 Kbps MP3 is going on here?”
They do have parameters for TV ads though where they have to be under or in a range of loudness units, which accounts for that compression. I'm not sure if streaming services are bound by those same standards.
Also cranking up the audio compression because it apparently results in more noise (which occupies additional sound wavelengths, making our brain more alert) to work around laws abound sound levels
The first thing my wife and I did this morning when we woke up was turn on streaming shit and check to see if they actually did this...
We of course live in California and I am happy to report that the first commercial that played was loud as hell. My wife immediately started trying to find the phone numbers so that we could call and complain lol
Not the first time that legislation was in effect.
In the TV days, they implemented a moratorium on commercials getting louder. So they turned it down? Well the decreased the overall volume and fed that through compression so it sounds louder, but isn't actually any louder.
I remember TV had something like this, maybe a couple decades ago. I feel like it wasn't adhered to at that time. I wonder if they'll just ignore it again this time.
They even figured out a way to get around decibel laws.
Human hearing is most sensitive within a certain range where we disproportionately hear those sounds louder than other frequencies. Advertisers would boost that range up and cut frequencies elsewhere to lower the average energy in the audio wave to be compliant with advertisement decibel ratings. The perceived sound could be multiple times louder than the intended limit.
Well yeah it's squashing the dynamic range but it's also more than that since they aren't doing it evenly across the spectrum. They bias up the high gain frequencies for human hearing, and bias down the frequencies that are low perceived gain for human hearing.
What is the billionaire pocket lining scheme here? There's no way the politicians that want magical gun scanning in 3d printers and illegal minecraft servers made a sensible decision
I did bc I thought it was a really annoying bug for years until I realized they kept it as a feature. American media is over processed like American pig slop I mean food
109 replies
Half of lemmy who have either been pirating or freebooting since the mid 90's:
I have managed to cut ads out of my life so completely that I am legitimately offended by ads
When I go to the office instead of being on my home network with a pihole, and I go to show a website in a meeting, I'm just embarrassed by what shows up because the site didn't look anything like that when I was looking at it previously at home. I legitimately don't know how people actually use websites that are 80% ads
I was fortunate enough to have some creative input into our browser policies at work. Needless to say, Adnauseum ublock origin and some password safe extensions got added to the allow list
After my parents quit smoking, they ended up with this, IDK, "born again nonsmoker" attitude where they were completely disgusted by the smell of cigarette smoke and couldn't stand to be around it at all.
I have the same attitude about ads.
My parents quit smoking a few years ago, my mom had tried unsuccessfully to quit a few times, and what finally did it for her was getting a really bad cold during a really bad cold snap so she really didn't want to go outside to smoke. Then since she quit I think my dad just kind of hopped on the bandwagon with her.
But I remember one time, a year or two later, being at a party at their house with some friends sitting outside, and my one friend who is a smoker lights up, and she told him to come sit next to her because she still really liked the smell.
So different strokes for different folks I suppose.
I like the smell of certain brands of cigarettes, up close
when they're further than 3 feet away you lose the enjoyable delicate tobacco scent and can only smell the burnt ass shitty cig smell
Doesn't smoking suppress your sense of smell? I wonder if they couldn't smell how bad it is while they were still smoking.
Yep, but the key is that you become more sensitive to it after doing it and quitting than before you started.
Ya, I get that. I have to stop myself from being weird and overly aggressive about it when watching tv at a friend's house.
Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you!
This! I have ZERO ad tolerance, in any form. Most annoying thing is that you can't get rid of them in podcasts, other than hammering the fast-forward button.
Are u referring to podcasts in spotify? You can circumvent ads here as well by downloading the episode, and then listening to it with wifi/cellular turned off. Or just use a third party website that let's you convert and download an episode into an mp3 file.
On youtube music you can get rid of 'em with just uBlock and SponsorBlock
Yep, they make me irrationally angry. Or rationally angry since fuck ads.
Totally this. When I iwatch live TV I will actively mute commercials. Literal ear cancer.
It really feels like we're in the middle of "They live".
I am mostly offended by those slop ads.
Every time I go to my moms place and see what they put up with on a fire stick, it makes me fucking sick.
I'm doing my part.
I love this idea but nowadays I’m actively looking for commercials in many shows—watching Sealab or Family Guy or Space Ghost or super old Pokémon and the like is infinitely better with original commercials from the late 90s or early 2000s, ripped in mediocre quality from an SP VHS.
BUY KOOLAID, BUY TOYS R US TOYS, BUY VIDEO GAMES.
They're ya go, champ.
Nahhh you don’t get it, I’m guessing you’re pretty young. That’s cool.
Nope, I'm just disgusted by ads from every era. It's psychological manipulation to make you buy shit you don't need. Consumerism is disgusting, and I'm sorry that your nostalgia is caught up in it.
why edit in the word commercial but not change "the" to "a"?
Jeez, this has been going on for so long that parodies of these sorts of malicious practices are nearly a decade old. It’s about time. As usual, California has to be the voice of reason.
Only a decade? I recall legal action surrounding this shit in the '90s.
That was for tv and also maybe radio? Technically, this is different. Also, I don’t know of any parodies of tv broadcasts with malicious audio ads.
That's because no one watches broadcast tv anymore.
This is literally the same thing. Some small technical details regarding the delivery method are wholly immaterial, and any arguments asserting that it is are fully disingenuous.
we’re literally in the comments of an article indicating that this is legally distinct deafening, and I’m pretty obviously joking about the distinction being time alone
I remember them passing such laws and yet commercials on broadcast TV remain loud as fuck
The workaround was that since commercials couldn't be louder than the loudest part of the show airing, they made the show theme songs super fucking loud.
Yeah, sometimes California does some brilliant shit like this, but then newsom does some stupid shit.
As a Californian, fuck Newsom.
We do have common sense laws that lead the nation in a lot of areas, but especially automobile safety and pollution. Manufacturers don't want to make a California specific version of their product, so it becomes the de facto standard for cars in the US.
Think yer link's broken.
It's missing the
https://at the beginning of the URL.And somehow that leads it to an internal link. Noted and fix’d
How did that slavery vote go?
Go cannibalize some oligarchs instead of diving into unproductive pessimism. I’ll provide you an alibi and a palate cleanser
There was a voice of reason in Nazi Germany. They wanted to send them to Madagascar instead of the crematoria.
As someone actively preparing to leave the US, I ask you, how do you engage in productive pessimism?
We plan the dissolution of the United States of America. Do you think we should do it on the internet?
If you want to, sure. But that sounds more than a little overly ambitious.
Aim high, comrade.
They are repeating the cable/broadcast ad service network playbook. All this shit has already been regulated on normal TV, and wasn't an issue with streaming because before, streaming didn't have ads like this. Now that they've normalized paying monthly fees AND being lasted with ads, the regulation has to play catch-up again. This should be something the FCC regulates, but good luck in this administration.
only that you now pay each channel $too-much a month. genius! my seedbox has been back at it for a while now
The FCC does not have jurisdiction over streaming. Good luck should be wished for the legislature.
I fixed that problem ages ago by just canceling all of those services...
Im the same way. I paid to get access to the World Cup games and was jarred by the commercials. Then I went over to my friends house and his kids were singing along to the commercials and repeating the lines lol
Whenever my partner and I stay at a hotel, we always get a kick out of how dystopian commercials have become.
Okay, so I have no idea about streaming services, but commercials on broadcast TV never had the volume increased but the compression.
(I love getting lost in details so apologies if any of this comes off condescending.) Compression works by making the quieter parts louder, without distorting the louder parts.
THINK of a SENTENCE where SOME of the WORDS are LOUD and OTHER words are QUIETER.
compression works by squishing down all the loud parts, then bringing everything back up to full volume, so the previous sentence would become:
THINK OF A SENTENCE WHERE SOME OF THE WORDS ARE LOUD AND OTHER WORDS ARE QUIETER.
Now, the loud parts didn’t become louder. What happened is that the quieter parts got louder. You lose the dynamic, but gain volume. If you think it would just be exhausting, you’re correct - even at low volumes, you can get a sense of ear fatigue when audio is heavily compressed.
Now, if you want to know why movies have quiet parts where you can’t hear shit and loud parts that are way louder, this is called dynamics. Artistically, you very much want this for the same reason you want quiet parts and loud parts in classical music. If everything is constantly loud, the dramatic moments won’t feel as impactful.
“But wait, I don’t enjoy that, I like having my TV at a reasonable volume!” Yup, me too. It’s fucking annoying. Mixing is done often on high quality speakers, loud volume, so you can get every detail. Most home setups dont have that nuance, and most people don’t care. Until execs can actually get proven that they’ll make more money by having consistent compression, you’re shit out of luck. You’ll probably have to get your own compression, either through software or hardware.
Source: used to work in sound engineering.
I notice the sports betting commercials they engineer the sound to project the voices in loud environments like a bar. Its annoying as hell at home.
I thought you were going to get into lossy audio compression codecs. I don’t see ads but when I do my ears are like “what in the 128 Kbps MP3 is going on here?”
Audio compression is very different than file compression.
Maybe if the file compression is lossless but lossy file compression works by removing audio, no?
Completely different type of compression.
Oh okay let me just believe you with zero explanation.
https://www.uaudio.com/blogs/ua/audio-compression-basics
They do have parameters for TV ads though where they have to be under or in a range of loudness units, which accounts for that compression. I'm not sure if streaming services are bound by those same standards.
Thank you for giving the explanation so I didn’t have to (used to work in broadcast TV including sound and station engineer)
People want Christopher Nolan films to sound like compressed commercials. 🤭
And Christopher Nolan wants his movies to sound good in theatres, not on TV's.
This.
Source: i still work in sound engineering. This is all about compression. Commercials are brickwalled to shit.
Commercials? Laughing in Jellyfin, ahrr!
WHAT? adjusts my hearing aid
They've been doing that since the days when TV came from an antenna.
Also cranking up the audio compression because it apparently results in more noise (which occupies additional sound wavelengths, making our brain more alert) to work around laws abound sound levels
The first thing my wife and I did this morning when we woke up was turn on streaming shit and check to see if they actually did this...
We of course live in California and I am happy to report that the first commercial that played was loud as hell. My wife immediately started trying to find the phone numbers so that we could call and complain lol
Your username.. and then this story.. but not doing anything to just not have ads..
When you use so much ad blocking that you didnt even realize these things had commercial breaks
That works for Netflix?
Idk I dont have Netflix anymore but when I did I paid for the non-ad version because I can't handle ads.
Now I just watch Netflix shows on a lovely streaming site that I'm sure would be full of ads if I didn't block em.
Back in ye'old days when you paid for a streaming service and you didn't have a bunch of commercials...
People watch ads? Just block and pirate.
My parents forced us to mute TV commercials as a kid and I'm so thankful they did.
I especially hate this with music streaming services. They tryna blow out my speakers!!
Not the first time that legislation was in effect.
In the TV days, they implemented a moratorium on commercials getting louder. So they turned it down? Well the decreased the overall volume and fed that through compression so it sounds louder, but isn't actually any louder.
give em time, they're reinvent the old ways
Oh I just replied about this to another comment. Glad this is getting more well known
I didn't know any of those services had commercials.
Haha. Exactly.
To compensate, they'll be turning it up by twice as much in all other states starting today.
This isn't even the first time they have been ordered to cut that shit out.
I remember TV had something like this, maybe a couple decades ago. I feel like it wasn't adhered to at that time. I wonder if they'll just ignore it again this time.
If you encounter a streaming service that is still playing excessively loud ads, the right path is to file a complaint here: https://oag.ca.gov/contact/consumer-complaint-against-business-or-company .
mole. mooooooole moley moley moley moley. MOLE
They even figured out a way to get around decibel laws.
Human hearing is most sensitive within a certain range where we disproportionately hear those sounds louder than other frequencies. Advertisers would boost that range up and cut frequencies elsewhere to lower the average energy in the audio wave to be compliant with advertisement decibel ratings. The perceived sound could be multiple times louder than the intended limit.
Compression is the way this happened. Commercials are HEAVILY compressed, and shows aren't. It's not volume...it's compression ratios.
Well yeah it's squashing the dynamic range but it's also more than that since they aren't doing it evenly across the spectrum. They bias up the high gain frequencies for human hearing, and bias down the frequencies that are low perceived gain for human hearing.
Multiband compression is strong stuff, haha.
I wish a federal law would pass, but we all know that’ll never happen! So, argggghhhhh
Hulu used to do it. idk if or when they stopped. But it was the primary motivator for me to buy the no-, commercial package.
(That was till I swore off and went full pirate a few years ago.)
But honesty, I never put two and two together.
They almost certainly were doing it to ramp up the unpleasantness of the commercials to push people to pay more to avoid them.
Fuckers
Welcome to the real world, sweet summer child. Look around. The enshittification is everywhere. Once you see it you will ne'er be happy again.
I sure as hell did. I'm over here trying to watch something while also being a fuckin DJ.
What is the billionaire pocket lining scheme here? There's no way the politicians that want magical gun scanning in 3d printers and illegal minecraft servers made a sensible decision
Maybe they want to watch Netflix without going deaf, too.
You seriously watch the commercials???
Weird. I usually find Netflix quiet compared to other services. I don’t know why.
My jellyfin does this too. I find the commercials are about 2x louder than the content
Your Jellyfin has ads? Why did you put them in your library?
Now that you mention it, I actually see 4x ads now
Just a little bit of history repeating...
Oh I definitely noticed. That's a large part of why I hate ads. They're unbearably obnoxious and obtuse.
I did bc I thought it was a really annoying bug for years until I realized they kept it as a feature. American media is over processed like American pig slop I mean food
"product"
That's because they increased the gain during ads.
Which is a loophole in the California law.
what is this godforsaken screenshot formatting