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uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

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Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#801

Post by MSFT_Edging »

elzbardico wrote: post #769
MSFT_Edging wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when you want to pay for things, the companies will find ways to extract more money from you. Plex lifetime pass is now over $700 dollars My dashcam that used to let me use the app to locally pull down videos now requires an account to view the files on my camera that is putting out it's own password protected wifi network, just so the company can harvest more data and track me easier. This device cost several h…

Plex is just a nice UI and a DB wrapping lots of open source libraries and tools, you could replace it with a few days of AI assisted coding.

I run both Plex and Jellyfin. The joy of Plex is I can log in on my work machine to listen to my music without having to install and client-side software, running personal VPNs, worrying about the security merit of the Jellyfin log in screen on a public facing service running on my home server, etc.

On my home network? Jellyfin all day except for random encoding issues.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#802

Post by MSFT_Edging »

mistyvales wrote: post #788
elzbardico wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plex is just a nice UI and a DB wrapping lots of open source libraries and tools, you could replace it with a few days of AI assisted coding.

Or just use Jellyfin

I use both.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#803

Post by RestlessMind »

guhcampos wrote: post #777

I'm with the developer here. At some point the effort is just not worth it anymore. Facebook, as a platform, has long since lost the relevance as a social network, it is basically just an ad platform these days. So why keep wasting resources on trying to block ads from an ad platform? A user who does not want to see ads on Facebook probably should just stop using Facebook altogether. I get the appeal for staying on I…

> it's hard for me to understand why would anyone tolerate using it to this day

Apparently, they have 3B MAUs and 2B DAUs. So you are in some real bubble. While I don't use it, my parents and all their friends use Facebook to share pictures and exchange messages.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#804

Post by consensus1 »

snickerer wrote: post #549

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…

I just can't take this seriously. I grew up with TV being literally 1/3 ads and there was absolutely no way to skip them. People complained idly, but nobody really had a problem with it because we knew that TV isn't free. Nothing on the internet comes close to that level of ad intrusiveness, but I often hear unhinged statements like "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."

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#806

Post by surcap526 »

snickerer wrote: post #549

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…

[dead]

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#807

Post by surcap526 »

el1s7 wrote: post #597
snickerer wrote: post #549

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…

That's quite paranoid, they surely are annoying, but certain ads can be relevant. Actually, from what I've noticed X/Twitter ads are way worse than the ones on Meta platforms. And I completely hate seeing ads on YouTube or when browsing random websites in general.

[dead]

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#808

Post by TheDong »

germandiago wrote: post #765
TheDong wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because some people are more resilient to opium, and some people can have a good time on it, doesn't mean you should get an opium injection when you're going for a regularly scheduled doctor's appointment. Ads are being forced on you when you're trying to do something else, like you go to facebook to see your actual friend's pictures of their kids, you're not looking for ads, and yet you get some micro-brainwash…

Those apps where you share pics or whatever would not exist without ads if people had to pay for them. So I am not sure if all is bad in that sense. Bc it lets the apps for sharing without people having to pay to exist in the first place. I am not doing any assessment regarding to the toxicity of ads. I am just trying to objectively say that this also spreads "horizontally" software for free in some sense.

The only alternative to ads isn't people directly paying cash to evil private companies.

Like, the fact that instagram's average revenue per user is around $25 means that instagram ads are, on average, tricking people into buying 100s of dollars of crap they don't need.

If the ads weren't successfully brainwashing people, eventually people would stop buying ads presumably.

... But yes, I agree people will generally choose a "brainwashed consumer" tax to the tune of $300/year over paying instagram $25/year.

So, what's the solution? Advertisement should be illegal, the government should tax everyone a bit more, and taxpayer dollars should go to making ad-free social networks where people can post pictures of their dog.

Like, having highways and electricity and the internet was seen as beneficial, so the government has subsidized a huge amount of infrastructure for those things, to the benefit of all.

If being able to search the largest collection of knowledge ever created, the internet, has value to the people, the government should create or subsidize an ad-free search engine. If communicating has such value, the government should create or subsidize a messaging app that doesn't brainwash the users.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#809

Post by WarmWash »

EA-3167 wrote: post #343
aanet wrote: post #218

Controversial opinion: This entire thread reads like a game of cat-and-mouse. People trying to block intrusive ads, and FB reaching into the depths of code and making it nearly impossible for anyone to do so en masse. I've been there. Tried to uncheck all the boxes on their ad platform; used all manners of ad blockers, etc; used incognito mode; used Tor; etc. etc. etc. At some point, you realize that the only way to…

I keep waiting for people to understand that algorithmic social media communities that serve ads and harvest info are pure poison. The problem is that everyone thinks they've got it under control, for them it isn't a problem or it's a manageable one. My personal view is that if you take a personal, not a preaching stand early and often people just learn that's who you are. I've never had a Myspace or FB or IG, or any…

>social media communities that serve ads and harvest info are pure poison.

The biggest problem is that we have virtually zero cases of anyone dying from this poison after 25 years of it.

When people step back and look at the lives of people who never spent the time to block everything, they see what 25 years of ingesting this poison looks like and...there is virtually no difference. If anything it's those types who spend less time online - all the better.

I'm not saying there won't be a reckoning in the future, but for right now, the evidence it's "poison" is pretty thin.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#810

Post by inigyou »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #626
inigyou wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember recently they polled workers about AI pressure: "the AI doesn't work very well, but my boss wants to see me using it." They polled the boss: "I didn't say they had to use it, they're choosing to use it and this'll look good to the executive". The executive: "well this costs a bunch but it'll look good to shareholders and we should encourage more use so it'll look even better." The shareholders: "do we look…

Out of all of them, I'd assume the shareholders to be wrong. Look at the state of the world. Yes, you do look like you give a shit. Also there's an effect here where if just 10% of shareholders care about this it still makes sense to go for it if you think you can be faster than your competition.

Can you name any shareholders of Microsoft who pushed for renaming Office to Copilot?
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