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I'm So Tired of Ads

blog.absurdpirate.com

21–30 of 83 posts

Re: I'm So Tired of Ads

#21
Just block them everywhere you can and ignore them when you can't or - when they're too annoying - close whatever medium tried to push the bulshytt [1] on you. They're trying to influence you and the more you show you're annoyed, the more they notice they've succeeded in reaching you.

Block and cover [2], block and cover. For the rest, live on.

[1] https://anathem.fandom.com/wiki/Bulshytt

[2] Yes, I sometimes just cover them with my hand if I happen to use a device without functional content blocking.

Re: I'm So Tired of Ads

#22
We all feel this way, but a wholistic view includes acknowledging what we receive in return for our time spent viewing ads. The author starts off the article by referencing getting up in the morning and wanting to watch a 10 video but having to spend several minutes viewing ads. They fail to mention how the person who spent their time creating that video should be compensated. Will he pay for the video? I doubt it. He wants it at no cost. This has another name: entitlement. He’s upset because no one will give him the things he wants for free, so he’s throwing an obvious tantrum about it.

How about proposing a better model? I don’t have the answer, but I have a feeling we gravitated to the ad-supported freeware model because it’s actually the best and most efficient middle ground. It allows us to exchange our time for creators’ time without the inconvenience of turning it into money first. It removes a step.

Re: I'm So Tired of Ads

#23
I hate ads to the point I either pay or use other means to avoid ads in basically everything I use

- NPR (I pay, happy to support)

- Podcasts (I skip ads, using a client that supports that)

- Movies/TV/Music (I self-host, thank you open source community!)

- Twitch (I pay 1 creator 6$/mo and must watch 40+ hours per month)

I don’t have mainline social media downloaded on my phone, I sometimes visit reddit.com and see the ads that aren’t blocked by ad block but I find myself visiting less often recently anyway.

All of this to say, pay a bit and put in some work and you can avoid 95% of ads

Re: I'm So Tired of Ads

#24

I’ve used Adblock aggressively for the last 10 or 15 years. I don’t have a TV, don’t read magazines or the newspaper, don’t listen to the radio. I essentially don’t see or hear ads in my life.

There are still physical printed ads on billboards you can't really avoid, as well as all the branding from anything else you encounter in the streets: cars, bicycle, shops, drink coasters at the bar/pub, etc which are by essence advertising. Also many cultural things are full of product placements, all movies, many songs, event sponsoring, etc. As much as I do to avoid ads (using adblocker, priorizing gemtext caches…

Billboards are illegal in my state. Can't really avoid? More like they don't really exist (unless I travel).

Re: I'm So Tired of Ads

#25
post #10

I use an adblocker and I have for a while now. Every so often I hear a moral argument about why adblockers are bad (ads support free internet, etc) but to be completely honest, I simply don't care anymore. Advertising is in such a malicious state that yes, I'm going to put my own experience quality over whatever collective good there is in watching ads.

[flagged]

Re: I'm So Tired of Ads

#26

i'm curious what will happen to online ads as more and more internet traffic is done by bots. eventually, advertisers will catch on that humans are driving their impressions and will pull back, right? as soon as people realize the diminishing value of buying ads on random internet platforms... what next? ads have subsidized almost everything online. will we start paying for basic services, or will there be some other…

Won’t bot-aware ad scripts simply inject a prompt with today’s list of fine products and services?

Re: I'm So Tired of Ads

#28
If an ad is targeted, it's unwanted personal surveillance. If it's not targeted, it's meaningless crap.

If it's from DuckDuckGo, like its search results, it's based on either crude geolocation or recent movies of similar names, bizarrely, when I search for specific technical terms. I have to qualify searches with multiple negations to get anything of interest to someone with more than high school education and interests.

A lose-lose proposition.

I block all ads with extreme prejudice and disable javascript very often to get rid of nag screens. I turn off javascript very often. A word to web devs. I hate your crap.

(Repost)

Since the rise of "social media" driven by clicks on ads, quality has almost entirely been replaced by quantity. And now, creativity has been farmed out as well. I still believe in quality. George Monbiot said it years ago.

Advertising is a poison that demeans even love – and we're hooked on it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/24/advert...

Re: I'm So Tired of Ads

#30
post #10

I use an adblocker and I have for a while now. Every so often I hear a moral argument about why adblockers are bad (ads support free internet, etc) but to be completely honest, I simply don't care anymore. Advertising is in such a malicious state that yes, I'm going to put my own experience quality over whatever collective good there is in watching ads.

“[…] moral argument […]”

I mean, that’s pretty rich coming from the folks willfully engaging in human rights violating surveillance to overwhelm you with obscure useless nonsense that is literally an assault on your time, attention and mental health all for the 0.00001% chance of a vague hope you’ll click or tap their lie of an ad for snake oil that doesn’t work and is designed to steal your credit card number anyway, all just to make them rich so they won’t have to get a real job in the first place.

Moral argument. Right.

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