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Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

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Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#491

Post by 58x14 »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #60
reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel zero guilt about ad blocking. There was some period of discussion on the subject back in like 2003 but the ad companies went to war against human civilization and there's been no going back. It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash and an entire generation has now reached adulthood knowing nothing but that hustle touching every bit of media they ever interact with. W…

> It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash This cannot be overstated. Everything today is a battle for eye-balls and ad money. The corruption is insane. You can't even buy appliances designed perform their function well. Instead you can buy cheap junk for less than cogs because they make money selling your data to ad companies instead of making money by making products that…

Unauthorized Bread is an excellent novella about exactly this.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvbusjDOspQ

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#492

Post by xyst »

judge2020 wrote: post #144
xyst wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

instead of paying for premium and all of that money going to a megacorp. I spent some money on a simple browser plugin that forces YT to use the HTML5 video player. Although every now and then an ad happens to pre-load before the video starts but I just refresh the video page and the ad goes away.

Premium views help a lot more than ad-supported views for creators, on the scale of 10-20x the payout per-view[0,1] (and it pays out regardless of the advertiser friendliness rating). This has been a hot topic lately[2,3], but at what point is you watching YouTube for years without ads, without paying for Premium, ethically stealing or "piracy"? YouTube was buying petabytes of Hard Drive storage a day in 2012 to keep…

It's insane to me that people are arguing in favor of the advertisement companies simply because they pay the content creators a sliver of what they accept from the companies that use their ad platform.

Here's my take. It's not "piracy" or "ethical piracy" (what the fuck?). The content creators put it out on YT with the expectation that it will get viewed. The little money they receive now is simply a bonus. It's only piracy if the content creator put it out on a platform for some dollar amount (ie, direct to consumer model) and then it is later re-uploaded for free by another channel or via other means..

In other words, you can't claim piracy when the "price" is $0 up front.

As for YT, I don't really care. They are subsidized by the data that is fed to them (ie, viewing history) and resold to advertisers. They get their nut.

If anything, this should really push the forefront on innovation for a decentralized video streaming platform. One organization or group should not have this much power over who gets the "top views" via a proprietary algorithm.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#493

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #17
blakesterz wrote: post #2

In FireFox I have my ad blockers disabled in Private Mode so nothing is getting in the way if I'm testing or some site is being weird. Sometimes it's SHOCKINGLY different how a page looks with the blockers in place. I really can't believe anyone would user a browser without an ad blocker if they knew how things would look while using one. The web is a much better place with a blocker in place. (Yes, I know, we get a…

I feel zero guilt about ad blocking. There was some period of discussion on the subject back in like 2003 but the ad companies went to war against human civilization and there's been no going back. It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash and an entire generation has now reached adulthood knowing nothing but that hustle touching every bit of media they ever interact with. W…

"It corrupts everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash and an entire generation has now civilzation and there's been no going back."

Nasty side effects: journalism suffers as "tech" prospers, less well-informed, more polarised society, freedom of the press is threatened (now by "tech" intermediaries, in addition to governments), justice system competes with "cancellation", etc. via "tech" intermediary "platforms"

Consider downstream effects of all this on governance

Journalism has declined in quality. But "tech" does not provide a solution or even a viable alternative, it is the cause.

With journalism, advertising once supported far more unbiased reporting. This was too long ago for many younger folks to remember. People born into a world of "tech" companies happily accept today's lower quality "news"; many even try to profit from it. With "tech", advertising tends to support increased digital surveillance. Not a net gain for humanity.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#495

Post by tehjoker »

colordrops wrote: post #253
notriddle wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think there's a reasonable argument for ads, since people don't always know what they could be looking for [1]. Independent magazines can serve a similar purpose, but the difference is between an organization that claims to be unaffiliated with the manufacturer, and needs to be constantly policed to make sure they aren't lying about it, and just being up-front about your affiliation, and only needing to be const…

If they didn't know what they could be looking for, perhaps they didn't really need the thing in the first place. If the product is good enough, then it should grow in usage through word of mouth.

I'm very anti-advertising but I think from a production standpoint this is yes and no. Without advertising, it doesn't make sense to put in the capital expenditure to create new products that require a high upfront cost because there's no demand for it. Advertising is used to create demand. Under a different economic model, this feature of the production environment would not be as necessary.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#496

Post by agilob »

I always had adblocker since I got internet, someone told me to use it to reduce my internet bill when I paid per Mb. I always had AdBlock+ , it was the first thing I installed on my PC, always. I started seeing people complaining on too many ads on random websites and youtube, but I never noticed YT had ads until I saw discussions on it on reddit. Now I'm full time adblocker, Brave, µblock and DNS ad-blocks in OpenWRT.

I think my habits and me installing adblockers for everyone resulted in worse web for everyone else, the more people block ads, the more ads there will be for the rest.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#497

Post by sho_hn »

patrickk wrote: post #126
skummetmaelk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash This cannot be overstated. Everything today is a battle for eye-balls and ad money. The corruption is insane. You can't even buy appliances designed perform their function well. Instead you can buy cheap junk for less than cogs because they make money selling your data to ad companies instead of making money by making products that…

> You can't even buy appliances designed perform their function well You can't research good appliances either online, because the SERPs are stuffed with SEO-ed blogs and sometimes industry magazines, monetized with Amazon affiliates or other networks, with titles like "5 best dishwashers in 2022". Unless you know someone in the industry or offline with knowledge you don't know what to buy. This is noticeable in many…

Speaking of which, anyone know what happened at The Verge? It may not ever have been a bastion of great journalism, but these days 30-50% of the content is (occasionally well-targeted) product advertising or "you can now buy the Xbox here for the best price ever" or "Walmart has this promo right now". It's such a noticeable and abrupt change to the content mix.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#498

Post by freedomben »

rsync wrote: post #489
patrickk wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't even buy appliances designed perform their function well You can't research good appliances either online, because the SERPs are stuffed with SEO-ed blogs and sometimes industry magazines, monetized with Amazon affiliates or other networks, with titles like "5 best dishwashers in 2022". Unless you know someone in the industry or offline with knowledge you don't know what to buy. This is noticeable in many…

"This is noticeable in many other consumer goods verticals, e.g. good luck researching decent home gym equipment that is durable and not overpriced with fat margins." I agree with you but there's a simple shortcut you can employ: purchase commercial/industrial models that you see being used in industry . Gym equipment is a good example: your local, serious weightlifting gym is probably using Hammer Strength plate-loa…

This is great advice. This is what I did when I was looking for a heavy bag and other equipment. I looked at what the dojo had and bought those.

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#499

Post by elkos »

rsync wrote: post #489
patrickk wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't even buy appliances designed perform their function well You can't research good appliances either online, because the SERPs are stuffed with SEO-ed blogs and sometimes industry magazines, monetized with Amazon affiliates or other networks, with titles like "5 best dishwashers in 2022". Unless you know someone in the industry or offline with knowledge you don't know what to buy. This is noticeable in many…

"This is noticeable in many other consumer goods verticals, e.g. good luck researching decent home gym equipment that is durable and not overpriced with fat margins." I agree with you but there's a simple shortcut you can employ: purchase commercial/industrial models that you see being used in industry . Gym equipment is a good example: your local, serious weightlifting gym is probably using Hammer Strength plate-loa…

But how the industry pulls that off? They do open calls for equipment and buy in bulk?

Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web

#500

Post by stjohnswarts »

bluGill wrote: post #425
cgriswald wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone explain why such systems are so seemingly successful? I find it surprising. It seems great to create vendor lock-in, but they also change the form factor frequently enough that you have to replace your entire system in order to benefit from it being a system anyway; at which point you might change vendors. It feels like the first vendor that stops changing form factor wins; but they all still keep changing…

The major brands do not change formats often. The store brands do change formats though. By Milwaukee or Dewalt and you will have tools and parts for many years, or even Ryobi if you want to save a penny. (There are others, just the 3 that come to mind). The thing about their system is the whole only works so long as they keep you locked in. Once you make a choice you are locked into that choice and won't be looking…

Never leave out Makita if mentioning electric tools :)
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