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The correct amount of ads is zero

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Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#151

Post by DrBazza »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #44

It's why I use Firefox and avoid situations where I might get exposed to annoying ads. I was watching some Amazon Prime recently (the new rings of power season). Pretty OK and completely ad free experience. Except I noticed these weird cuts every few minutes. It took me quite a while to realize that Amazon introduced ads some time ago for Amazon prime and uBlock origin was doing a great job of simply blocking them. H…

I stopped visiting The Verge after their last 'rebrand' which offended my eyes.

As for the article, well, ads are everywhere now aren't they?

"Accept all cookies or pay £3 a month for ad-free" is what we're getting on most media sites in the UK. I'm guessing there's some company I've yet to discover that's selling this platform ("tech") to all the newspaper/magazine sites.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#152

Post by blitzar »

Aerroon wrote: post #139
tossandthrow wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are ads and in many jurisdictions Also treated like ads. Weird that This is not the case in the US?

They aren't all ads, because the situation gets really muddy. If a website talks about an upcoming movie is that an ad? What if they were shown the movie before its release?

Reviews are ads. Thats why these people call themselves "influencers".

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#153

Post by miki123211 »

0xEF wrote: post #118
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But here's the thing: the subscription is not being cancelled. Amazon tries it, gets some people grumbling, but their bottom line is not affected and in fact goes up from this move because in addition to subscribers they also get ad revenue. A vocal minority doesn't outweigh hard numbers in this case. But that's one of the causes of enshittification, everything becoming metrics-driven.

Indeed, the market gives permission to the offense. The funny part is we should have all learned our lesson from the cable television days. Perhaps it's been long enough that everyone forgot, or maybe most of the market is just too young now, but there was a time in the US when cable television was ad-free. Commercials started sneaking into that with some regularity even though part of the draw to paying for cable tv…

From my (admittedly non-US) experience, people actually get pretty annoyed when they have to watch a long movie or TV show without commercial breaks, especially when there's no "pause" feature available.

Not so much of a problem on modern TVs / set top boxes, as they usually offer that feature (though things get complicated if you want to do some channel flipping to e.g. quickly check how a sports game is going), but it was definitely a pretty big deal back in the day.

None of this applies to on-demand, of course.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#154

Post by Mindwipe »

hgomersall wrote: post #48
paxys wrote: post #2

Blame consumers for this. If a company sells a service for $10/mo ad-free and $9/mo completely loaded with ads, most people will pick the latter plan. Why won't they offer it then?

No, what happens is people pick the $10 plan and then sometime later, when all the competition has disappeared, they yank on the enshittification handle, and start adding ads to the service and not reduce the price.

Not increasing the price every year with inflation is reducing the price.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#155

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

refulgentis wrote: post #143
HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #121

Advertising is fundamentally corrosive to society and should be outlawed with few and carefully tailored exceptions. Any business models that consequently fail, fail because their externalities to collective society are now priced in.

> Advertising is fundamentally corrosive to society Interesting, why?

They incentivize collecting sensitive data about people.

They incentivize businesses to maximize for engagement which generally promotes harmful content over informational content. Empty informational calories.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#157

Post by [deleted] »

refulgentis wrote: post #143
HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #121

Advertising is fundamentally corrosive to society and should be outlawed with few and carefully tailored exceptions. Any business models that consequently fail, fail because their externalities to collective society are now priced in.

> Advertising is fundamentally corrosive to society Interesting, why?

[deleted]

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#159

Post by akira2501 »

9o1d wrote: post #116
renegat0x0 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some YouTubers scream in panic that you dare to install ad blocker. Well nobody told them to build their business around such ad-driven solution. There are thousands, and thousand of useful places, each for free. Take a look at awesome lists at github. These provide so much value to the society. It does not require any subscriptions, nor money. There are millions of people who share education, and knowledge for free.…

Did you know that YouTube does not make a profit, but only covers its own expenses? What if it becomes unprofitable because of ad blockers? What will remain? Paid cinemas? Do you want to pay money from your own pocket? And you will remember the times when you could pay by watching ads without money. Think about it! No one will do anything for you for free. Try to take a taxi or a train without money? Try to steal bre…

> Did you know that YouTube does not make a profit, but only covers its own expenses?

Yet they make no decisions to reduce those expenses. You either have to believe they are incompetent or this statement is on the spectrum of half truth to full on lie.

> What will remain? Paid cinemas?

Libraries. They used to be awesome and no corporation owned them.

> This is stealing and it is illegal

Sure, but, now you're forced to declare an actual value for the items taken. What is a fair price for most of this "content?"

> So that an independent site cannot distribute free information.

The irony is watching independent journalists take "super chat" donations on these corporate platforms. How big of a cut does the corporation get again?

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#160

Post by scaryclam »

DrBazza wrote: post #151
jillesvangurp wrote: post #44

It's why I use Firefox and avoid situations where I might get exposed to annoying ads. I was watching some Amazon Prime recently (the new rings of power season). Pretty OK and completely ad free experience. Except I noticed these weird cuts every few minutes. It took me quite a while to realize that Amazon introduced ads some time ago for Amazon prime and uBlock origin was doing a great job of simply blocking them. H…

I stopped visiting The Verge after their last 'rebrand' which offended my eyes. As for the article, well, ads are everywhere now aren't they? "Accept all cookies or pay £3 a month for ad-free" is what we're getting on most media sites in the UK. I'm guessing there's some company I've yet to discover that's selling this platform ("tech") to all the newspaper/magazine sites.

You should report sites that do that. We still enforce the GDPR, and it's illegal to force acceptance of cookies (excepting functional cookies) for any reason, including offering to remove them for money.
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