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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]

#191

Post by philistine »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #77
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…

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.

I can’t let you do that Dave.

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

#192

Post by edoceo »

sumeno wrote: post #175
tastyfreeze wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absurdly false. The serfs can become kings as evidenced by newly minted millionaires every year. However, the reverse is also true as there are plenty of fortunes lost as well.

Being a millionaire is table stakes for a minimal retirement, not being fabulously wealthy. Not something particularly impressive

In USA, it's something like 15% of the population is millionaires, IIRC. Being the special 3 out of 20 - I'd say is impressive.

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

#193

Post by philistine »

tough wrote: post #113
bigyabai wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bought an extension called UnTrap for YouTube I will never understand this. My ex bought tons of extensions to do stuff with Safari that other browsers do for free. He paid for a PiP extention for some websites, password managers, Tomagachi pets... dozens of trinket apps that would be depreciated in 2 or 3 major updates. I'm continually wowed by Mac users that insist on paying for a native solution to a problem tha…

iOS/MacOS users are more predisposed to shell some bucks because of their walled garden upbringing. Devs would usually prioritize iOS releases (early on, when no React Native nor Expo was as common place) only due to this fact that iOS users where much more likely to spend money than Android ones. This might have equalized since the early days but i bet some of it still stands

Try to make a robust ecosystem of discerning customers willing to pay money for good software look bad.

iOS/Android hasn’t equalized. Depending on the segment, something like 80% of revenue is iOS.

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

#194

Post by trod1234 »

dijit wrote: post #97
poetworrier wrote: post #49

I accepted cookies, watched an ad, dismissed a popup for a newsletter to watch a video about ads. That really nails it.

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.

Well, there are really only three things that form the aggregate of the world we see today.

There are accidents of history, money, and ideology.

These things fit squarely in the money category. The advertising industry was subsumed by adtech during that time, which was driven by government grant and fiat debt-based financing. Advertising fraud has never been harder to account for, and the justified use of analytics for that purpose has driven surveillance capitalism with governments being the customer.

Money printing is the role of the state, so technically if you remove all indirections its state apparatus which makes sense that an individual wouldn't be able to fight against it.

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

#195

Post by grumbel »

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?

Money alone wouldn't fix this, as a Web where every page has a paywall wouldn't be much better either. Which in turn would concentrate most of the Web in a few services just as it is today and enshittyfication would bring the ads back sooner or later, even if you pay for the service.

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

#196

Post by delusional »

dijit wrote: post #97
poetworrier wrote: post #49

I accepted cookies, watched an ad, dismissed a popup for a newsletter to watch a video about ads. That really nails it.

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 these popups are restricted to the page. It's one thing for a website to decide to block my use of it for some asinine reason. It's quite another for it to block my use of everything else on my computer.

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

#197

Post by jackjeff »

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…

I did not realize that worked so well. I gave up on Safari a while ago. Will give it another shot with AdBlock Pro then. Is it with the free tier?

I just use ublock Origin with Firefox on Mac/Pc and Orion on iOS.

The annoyance list takes care of the cookie banners.

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

#198

Post by autoexec »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #177
ryandrake wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computing history is rife with examples of APIs that would never have existed, had the API designer stepped back for a few seconds and asked himself "Why am I letting developers do this?" Someone deliberately added the ability to move the browser window around and pop up other browser windows, yet somehow never imagined this use case???

Thinking of all the possible ways some assholes could abuse a new functionality is an acquired skill, and one I believe eventually makes you stop coming up with any ideas. After all, entrepreneurs can and will abuse anything and everything in this world.

It doesn't keep you from coming up with ideas, it just keeps you coming up with ideas to mitigate the harms. The obvious one that's usually neglected is giving users the power to disable/limit/control behaviors that are likely to be abused.

We wouldn't need to bother with installing addons to limit javascript and block ads if those were just part of the browser to start with. Every new feature added should have options that put users in control of if, when, and how it gets used. Right now, even the browsers that give users the most control usually don't go farther than an enable/disable flag in about:config

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

#199

Post by ethbr1 »

sershe wrote: post #187
no_wizard wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have always wondered what the web would be like if we added the scripting language later and only solidified CSS and HTML for the first 15 years or so. I wonder if things would actually be better overall. I’m not going to argue that having a scripting language for the web was a mistake, it definitely isn’t on the whole, but I think having it come at a more mature point for the web might have helped stave off a lot…

I dunno, I think it was a net negative by a large margin. 1) html only Gmail shows that pretty advanced, well made apps are possible without scripting; 2) There are very few web apps that without JavaScript wouldn't just be implemented as native without loss of convenience; 3) OTOH for simple apps and sites JavaScript adds inconvenience (non standard links breaking browser features etc), security risks, compatibility…

You can't think about alternate web evolution without considering (1) the early browser wars (specifically Netscape vs IE) & (2) the need to decouple data transfer and re-rendering that led to AJAX (for network and compute performance reasons).

Folks forget that before js was front-end frameworks and libaries, it was enabling (as in, making impossible possible) async data requests and page updates without requiring a full round-trip and repaint.

It's difficult to conceptualize a present where that need was instead fully served by HTML+CSS, sans executable code sandbox.

What, ~2000 IE instead pushes for some direct linking of HTML with a async update-able data model behind the scenes? How are the two linked together? And how do developers control that?

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

#200

Post by ryandrake »

autoexec wrote: post #198
TeMPOraL wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking of all the possible ways some assholes could abuse a new functionality is an acquired skill, and one I believe eventually makes you stop coming up with any ideas. After all, entrepreneurs can and will abuse anything and everything in this world.

It doesn't keep you from coming up with ideas, it just keeps you coming up with ideas to mitigate the harms. The obvious one that's usually neglected is giving users the power to disable/limit/control behaviors that are likely to be abused. We wouldn't need to bother with installing addons to limit javascript and block ads if those were just part of the browser to start with. Every new feature added should have optio…

This is exactly right. The end user should be in the driver's seat, not the web developer. Often when I use computers today, I feel like a passenger, going wherever the developer is choosing to take me. So much browser development and innovation lately serves to empower the developer and enable them to do things to your computer, but with very little empowerment reserved for the user.
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