221–230 of 256 posts
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Ironic you're posting this on Hacker News, which is fundamentally an ad for YCombinator.
Are you not benefiting from this site. I come here to read things and shelter with like minded peoples. I don’t see ads.
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The internet as you know it is the value you get out of ads. You may hate ads, we all do, but at least recognize the hand that feeds you. The alternative is subscriptions for everything, and as far as I can tell that is far less popular than the ad model we have.
The internet as I know it is the value I get out of interacting with other people. I've never had a moment where I've said "Oh, I'm glad that ad was there!" If a service can't be run unless it's through ads? Then perish.
Maybe the ISP should start charging the ad network instead of the user for ad traffic. Then they can start blocking the ads of people who don't pay. The user, who pays for the service, is getting no value out of the ads and the advertiser is freeloading the ISP's technical infrastructure and userbase.
The internet as you know it is the value you get out of ads. You may hate ads, we all do, but at least recognize the hand that feeds you. The alternative is subscriptions for everything, and as far as I can tell that is far less popular than the ad model we have.
Before ads and ad "partners" became as pervasively parasitic as they are today, there was still plenty of fine content available online, much of it free of charge, and even now, many platforms exist that offer the same, or at least keep their ad systems unobtrusive to users.
Also, as another comment below mentions, even when you do pay, many platforms still bombard you with ad garbage, or create frankly abusive bullshit like paid tiers in which you still can't opt out of ads. Looking at you and many others Netflix.
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Reminds me of the days when ads were 5 or so minutes long, not just to convince you to buy it, but inform you why you should buy it. It wasn’t a dopamine laden 30s that tells you nothing about the product.
Fast forward to now where essentially every YT ad is some guy convincing you his trading and market strategy is better than anyone else’s.
Maybe the ISP should start charging the ad network instead of the user for ad traffic. Then they can start blocking the ads of people who don't pay. The user, who pays for the service, is getting no value out of the ads and the advertiser is freeloading the ISP's technical infrastructure and userbase.
The internet as you know it is the value you get out of ads. You may hate ads, we all do, but at least recognize the hand that feeds you. The alternative is subscriptions for everything, and as far as I can tell that is far less popular than the ad model we have.
Perhaps this statement is meant as a figure of speech. If so, please disregard the remainder of this comment.
If not, the statement makes no sense. The truth is Workaccount2 does not even know imoreno's name, let alone how imoreno uses the internet, i.e., "the internet as imoreno knows it".
The alternative is not "subscriptions for everything" because that is what so-called "tech" companies are already trying. Obviously it does not work very well if the subscription seller is only an intermediary with nothing that people want to pay for. As such, these websites must rely on surveillance and/or ads.
There are a number of internet users who generally do not "sign up" or "subscribe" to anything, other than internet service. Apparently this number is large enough to leave so-called "tech" companies no other option than to sell internet users out as surveillance subjects and/or ad targets.
The alternative is that the number of so-called "tech" companies (unnecessary intermediaries) able to continue as a going concern would drop. Naturally anyone invested in such ventures will be very defensive about their entitlement to conduct commercial surveillance and profit from ads. We see this in HN comments along the lines of "internet ads are mandatory" all the time. The "arguments" made in these HN comments are often quite funny, like "We cannot go back to the time before the internet had ads" or "If we do not have unfettered proliferation of internet ads, then the internet will suck."
Honestly, just stop using your phone most of the time. You can try to keep up with the adblocking arms race, but it is ultimately a losing battle. It's not actually difficult (in principle) to avoid mobile ads: don't use your phone in the first place, don't browse to web pages, and don't install apps. For anyone who says "but what if I'm out and I need to?" -- that's a fine exception if you're not actually using your…
> You can try to keep up with the adblocking arms race, but it is ultimately a losing battle I've never felt that way with uBlock in Firefox for Android. Installed it years ago and don't even need to give it a second thought.
The only ads I have to deal with are the ones on my TV YouTube and ones in apps, which I try to use the websites for instead anyway because I consider installing some app usually a sign of defeat. If someone isn't trying to scam you out of at least some attention and some personal data, they'd have a functional website.
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You can try adguard on iOS. It’s an app that you buy as an extension for safari but the block lists are very good and you can enable DoH systemwide as well.
As someone who switched from Iphone to Android, Adguard is very poor compared to uBlock, and it was in fact one major reason (of several) why I switched. But now that Google is killing adblockers, I might just stop browsing the internet entirely.
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Hopefully Firefox will keep support for manifest 2 for the foreseeable future since they also have their own extension "store". In Chromes extension store new downloads of Ublock Origin have already been disabled and existing installations are slowly being disabled as they roll out the changes. I'm still on Vivaldi, but will be switching to Firefox very soon.
What's the last Chrome release that's going to support it? I'm going to pin that version for as long as possible.
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The internet as you know it is the value you get out of ads. You may hate ads, we all do, but at least recognize the hand that feeds you. The alternative is subscriptions for everything, and as far as I can tell that is far less popular than the ad model we have.
Speak for yourself. Some of us were on the internet before the ads.
It really did exist, and was pretty great.