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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]

#101

Post by tough »

dilyevsky wrote: post #98
ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote: post #90

I have been groaning about income inequality a lot but it is amazing how much of this can be explained by it. People do not have the disposable income to spend on services so you make people pay with attention. Give them the carrot for free so they don't notice. On top of that, the product is free so there is no expectation of support for the end user. You're getting it for free so what are you complaining about?

What would be the point of showing an ad to someone without disposable income?

They might not have enough disposable income to pay for software but enough to pay for whatever is on the ad.

More generally, if the service is free, you're the product, and you're being sold to someone else

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

#102

Post by folkrav »

HenryBemis wrote: post #65
pavel_lishin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that like being wowed by people who pay to have their car oil changed, instead of doing it themselves?

Yes, plus I wonder how "responsibly" do people who replace their car oil, dispose the old oil. One of the reasons I don't do it myself, is.. 'what the hell do I do with the old oil?' I know someone that parks/aims right over a grill that is there for the rain water, and all the bad/old oil goes straight there. I ain't no angel, but that person is an absolute cunt. So.. I really hope that the garages that throughout m…

I do some maintenance myself but not oil changes - mostly from a time/cost perspective, I don’t really wish to go down that road and deal with spills in my driveway, etc. However the oil collection part isn’t particularly hard around here. I don’t know if there’s something similar in the US (or wherever you are located) but in Canada we have UOMA (Used Oil Management Association), a nonprofit which partners with garages to coordinate the recycling of used oil and related byproducts. They have a handy map which shows me 5+ garages in a 10min radius from my place which participates, including the shop I already go to - and I’m in a medium sized agricultural town, surrounded by corn fields, an hour from the nearest metropolitan area.

I was curious about what they did with oil when I drove my first car, so I asked my garage. They showed me the tank behind the shop, someone came to empty it once a week or so. I always assumed that was the usual practice, but I legitimately have no idea haha.

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

#103

Post by doctorpangloss »

jorgesborges wrote: post #81

Is it possible to launch an offensive against advertising by spoofing humans that consume ads so numbers increase so dramatically they’re meaningless?

No. If you know how to make prices move a certain direction, go become a billionaire.

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

#104

Post by latency-guy2 »

2099miles wrote: post #11
AvAn12 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s fine for you if you like it. The problem is that ubiquitous ads pollute the attention of those of us who don’t like it. Would have been a much different (and better) world if the early web established micro-payments as a way of funding content and platforms. For example I’m happy to pay for YouTube premium to avoid the bloody ads, though I respect the preferences of those who enjoy the ads…

^ Exactly Ads are 100% fine I just want the option to pay to avoid them. Like black mirror I think had an episode or some movie had it where you watch an ad instead of paying for a bus ticket and that’s totally fine, cuz right now there is no alternative to paying for a bus ticket.

Send a pitch to Meta's board or executive suite describing how much you and your cohort would like to pay in aggregate for an ad-free experience for social media, then the rest of the internet based business as you wish.

There are absolutely alternatives, you won't use them because few others that you care about are on them. Similarly, free is the best price next to being paid.

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

#105

Post by kjkjadksj »

Nursie wrote: post #99
dijit wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is that we fought so hard against pop-ups throughout the 90's and 2000's only to re-implement pop-ups in javascript as soon as we could.

At least, generally, they no longer open hundreds of windows above or below the current window, which may or may not have browser control bars, may ‘warn’ on exit etc etc If a page wants to cover itself in noise and dialogues, sure it’s annoying but it’s not quite on the same level as back then.

Yeah sometimes you’d have to just powercycle the computer if they started cascading too fast and bogging down the system. People would make websites specifically to troll and do this.

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

#106

Post by dfadsadsf »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #72
antfarm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how are you going to change that?

Step 1: remove Section 230 protection for algorithmically-elevated content. If you're going to have attention-mining addiction-creating software funnel people into rabbit holes, then those rabbit holes need to be verified, safe-to-consume stuff. Watching 5 hours of 5 minute crafts is at worst, going to make someone spend too much money at Hobby Lobby. Certainly not good, but a workable issue. Watching 5 hours of whit…

Would you support blocking BLM and black supremacist propaganda too? Essentially you are just proposing traditional government censorship. The good thing about Soviet TV is that it had only wholesome content - not that western capitalist stuff.

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

#107

Post by tough »

breatheoften wrote: post #86
antfarm wrote: 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…

Is there anyway to fully disable youtube shorts/reels/whatever that mess is called ...? I quite like youtube long form content but have found myself occasionally in short form rabbit holes (which are both very addicting and extremely unsatisfying and which motivated me to delete instagram to escape when i realized how much a time and emotion suck they are)

Idk if they work but several extensions on the chrome web store claim to hide/block shorts like https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-shorts/mnakeci...

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

#108

Post by Nursie »

skygazer wrote: post #42
_cenw wrote: 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

I'm like the parent, on Safari – apparently also using an "inferior" way to block ads that, somehow, inexplicably, works 100% of the time and has never let an ad slip through. Is it supposed to be inferior because it's brittle and requires constant work on the side of the developer? Is it blocking too much and I'm just not aware of it? Is there some new ad tech that it's not prepared for, and can't adapt to, and will…

It’s inferior AFAICT because the API is more limited, and it looks an awful lot like the world’s biggest ad company (Google) has arranged that specifically to be less effective for ad and tracker blocking.

It’s a good reason to use Firefox.

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

#109

Post by toomuchtodo »

passwordoops wrote: post #91
toomuchtodo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m hopeful browsers with LLM support are the future of ad blocking for users. This enables robust and sophisticated control by users of their experience.

Perplexity strongly disagrees https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-br...

Don’t use their browser? Browsers existed before Perplexity, they will exist long after they’re gone. I’m advocating for deep LLM support in any browser engine, with the assumption of on device inference (but also supporting off device endpoints, as use case dictates).

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

#110

Post by kjkjadksj »

dilyevsky wrote: post #98
ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote: post #90

I have been groaning about income inequality a lot but it is amazing how much of this can be explained by it. People do not have the disposable income to spend on services so you make people pay with attention. Give them the carrot for free so they don't notice. On top of that, the product is free so there is no expectation of support for the end user. You're getting it for free so what are you complaining about?

What would be the point of showing an ad to someone without disposable income?

Does the client know they lack disposable income? This is just as much an exercise about fleecing a client out of their adspend by giving shoddy metrics on your end.
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