641–650 of 953 posts
As much as I understand their decision, I hope they didn't stop. I don't use Facebook myself but now I am worried YouTube now knows that if they try a bit harder uBO would just give up.
Youtube offers a fairly reasonable subscription to remove ads. As far as I'm aware FB doesn't offer the same.
(7.99 if subscribed via Appstore/Google Play, Apple/Google is getting €2 of your ad-free subscription there, too)
Eventually, this arms race ends with a computer vision model that looks at the screen, classifies visual elements as ads, and draws a rectangle over anything that looks like an ad. I am significantly less tolerant of ads than average people seem to be. (I think average people are making a horrible mistake about this, and are badly cognitively damaged by ads in ways they don't realize). If my choices are to look at ad…
I don't have a problem with ads entirely, as long as they aren't egregious (things popping up or otherwise moving around while I'm reading, flashy animation, unexpected audio) and the things that are egregious I can just nope out of by leaving a site when they happen and never going back (if I really want the content then archive.today is usually an option).
The reason I block ads is that it indirectly blocks the stalking, at least a bit, that is inherent in modern ad-tech. Adverts based on what I'm currently looking at are fine, much like I might see demonstrations of other TVs while looking at a TV in a TV shop, as are ads targetted at the local area or even more generally (ala billboards). But ads based on where I've been before are not: I don't want someone from Tesco following me into the pub to ask if I've considered any further that Anusol I looked at in their pharmacy isle the other day, or someone from Boots following me in to see if I want to buy some from them because someone saw me in Tesco and told them what I was looking at.
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Where Facebook has gone, I fear other U.S. social media is headed. Reddit recently blocked access to old.reddit.com for users who are not logged in, which suggests they're doubling down on user tracking. On top of that are the increasing privacy, censorship, and disinformation concerns that come with using any U.S.-based social media. There is clearly a need for facebook/reddit alternatives for useful groups like the…
I abandoned my 5k follower Twitter account for Mastodon a few years ago and 1700 people followed me there. I expect out of the 5k Twitter followers most of them are bots, so I probably lost nothing. The secret to making alternative platforms work, is actually engaging with them and pretending the toxic platforms you hate no longer exist. I am a bay area serial founder, with no Twitter, Meta, Google, Apple, or any suc…
They are not always excuses and you really should understand that if you have tech industry experience.
Try having a small business in some niches and doing so without Facebook.
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We should also normalize paying for content at the same time then.
All that achieves is companies introducing ads to boost revenue for next quarter's earnings. For a concrete example: LINE (most widely-used messaging app in Japan) has paid subscriptions, and even the highest tier subscription doesn't reduce ads. Other services (e.g. YouTube Premium) reduce ads, but do not eliminate them, no matter how much you pay.
Ads are an attack, aimed at your brain. They try to inject malware into your thinking, manipulating your worldview and your actions. That's horrible, worse than attacking a machine with malware, damaging persons and societies. Decades of ad propaganda have tricked people into seeing them as something 'normal'. But we shouldn't accept being under constant attack of brain worms. I propose a sane rule for all humans: if…
We should also normalize paying for content at the same time then.
If someday Google puts Youtube behind a hard paywall, no more "free with ads," I'd pay for it. I already pay for Nebula. But if I can get around the ads with uBlock, why wouldn't I? Just on principle? Because it's not fair that their business model doesn't make the revenue they want?
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> Eventually, this arms race ends with a computer vision model that looks at the screen, classifies visual elements as ads, and draws a rectangle over anything that looks like an ad. That would be a killer feature for AR glasses. Imagine no billboards, no political posters, no neon storefront clutter.
And some people appearing like flesh exposed monsters with ping pong balls for eyes
Once LLMs get fast enough at processing real-time images Apple (or anybody really) can just roll out a browser rendering engine that just masks all ads. It will take a few years but the browser ad-business is in it's terminal phase.
Facebook is in terminal decline - I don’t know any young people who use it. Even I don’t use it - and I’m not even young.
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I abandoned my 5k follower Twitter account for Mastodon a few years ago and 1700 people followed me there. I expect out of the 5k Twitter followers most of them are bots, so I probably lost nothing. The secret to making alternative platforms work, is actually engaging with them and pretending the toxic platforms you hate no longer exist. I am a bay area serial founder, with no Twitter, Meta, Google, Apple, or any suc…
> People sure do like to make excuses on why they still -must- use those platforms even though they do not -want- to. They are not always excuses and you really should understand that if you have tech industry experience. Try having a small business in some niches and doing so without Facebook.