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We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

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Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#31

I feel like these issues can be countered by a reasoning AI that runs locally and I can configure to operate in my best interest. e.g, Filter out political posts on X. Fact check opinion videos on the fly. I hope future computing devices will have neutal engine at the center, and CPU as secondary. And I should be able to teach it to take actions on my behalf.

Seems like a good use of energy. Waste tons of energy sending ads to everyone, and waste even more energy defeating them with an energy-expensive LLM.

You just described pretty much all life.

Forests are full of animals that hunt animals, and animals that spend tons of energy evading animals hunting them.

Life is a complex patterning phenomenon that dissipates energy, and as far as we understand it has no goal. Why should we expect complex human living systems to behave fundamentally differently? Individual human beings have goals, but huge collective systems like economies have either no consciousness or a kind of vegetable consciousness similar to a slime mold moving toward nutrients.

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#32
post #28

My way to circumvent most of this: I am using Safari with AdBlock Pro and AdBlock and see zero ads when browsing the web. I spend more time on YouTube than I care to admit, so I got a Premium subscription, bought an extension called UnTrap for YouTube to hide most recommendations and turned off all YouTube history etc. I regularly visit BlueSky, Hacker News and YouTube, but not X, TikTok, Instagram or Facebook. The h…

You are using the inferior way to block ads, which will continue to degrade as advertisers take advantage of Google killing synchronous blocking of web requests with Manifest v2.

https://ublockorigin.com/#manifest-v3-section

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#33
Half the comments here are just pointing out that ad blockers exist, which is missing the point.

The damage of an advertising-based internet economy is not limited to just "seeing ads." The entire content and structure of the internet is warped around this economy. Search engines, SEO, content discovery mechanisms, types and variety of content... all could have been different and better.

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#34
post #32
post #28

My way to circumvent most of this: I am using Safari with AdBlock Pro and AdBlock and see zero ads when browsing the web. I spend more time on YouTube than I care to admit, so I got a Premium subscription, bought an extension called UnTrap for YouTube to hide most recommendations and turned off all YouTube history etc. I regularly visit BlueSky, Hacker News and YouTube, but not X, TikTok, Instagram or Facebook. The h…

You are using the inferior way to block ads, which will continue to degrade as advertisers take advantage of Google killing synchronous blocking of web requests with Manifest v2. https://ublockorigin.com/#manifest-v3-section

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is the superior way? Pi-Hole?

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#35
post #33

Half the comments here are just pointing out that ad blockers exist, which is missing the point. The damage of an advertising-based internet economy is not limited to just "seeing ads." The entire content and structure of the internet is warped around this economy. Search engines, SEO, content discovery mechanisms, types and variety of content... all could have been different and better.

But how are you going to change that?

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#36
post #34
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are using the inferior way to block ads, which will continue to degrade as advertisers take advantage of Google killing synchronous blocking of web requests with Manifest v2. https://ublockorigin.com/#manifest-v3-section

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is the superior way? Pi-Hole?

uBlock Origin as linked.

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#37
post #33

Half the comments here are just pointing out that ad blockers exist, which is missing the point. The damage of an advertising-based internet economy is not limited to just "seeing ads." The entire content and structure of the internet is warped around this economy. Search engines, SEO, content discovery mechanisms, types and variety of content... all could have been different and better.

So much this.

I don’t think we fully fathom how much everything on the Internet has degraded. And we and our children have degraded with it. Like frogs boiling alive in a pot, we never noticed it because of how gradually they increased the temperature.

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#38
post #28

My way to circumvent most of this: I am using Safari with AdBlock Pro and AdBlock and see zero ads when browsing the web. I spend more time on YouTube than I care to admit, so I got a Premium subscription, bought an extension called UnTrap for YouTube to hide most recommendations and turned off all YouTube history etc. I regularly visit BlueSky, Hacker News and YouTube, but not X, TikTok, Instagram or Facebook. The h…

Another tip for youtube is to use https://sponsor.ajay.app/ -- helps skip the ads that are increasingly embedded in the video itself.

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#39
post #35
post #33

Half the comments here are just pointing out that ad blockers exist, which is missing the point. The damage of an advertising-based internet economy is not limited to just "seeing ads." The entire content and structure of the internet is warped around this economy. Search engines, SEO, content discovery mechanisms, types and variety of content... all could have been different and better.

But how are you going to change that?

You're right: it's probably fine then. My bad.
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