511–520 of 575 posts
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YouTube lets you pay about $20 per month for no ads. The money is divided among the creators of the content you watch. These creators noticed you weren't being frustrated by ads, so they added ads back in to their videos. Now for no ads you need SponsorBlock as well.
Yt premium comes with its own sponsor block. Its also $14/mo.
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Unfortunately the "beast" is the Internet content itself. Even HN itself is a massive ad. We are lured here with tech links so YC companies can fish in curated waters for workers. That is explicitly why this board is hosted. The real fix is paying money for everything, but as evidenced by the many attempts at this, no one actually wants to pay. People overwhelmingly want to block ads and backdoor subscriptions. For e…
> Unfortunately the "beast" is the Internet content itself. The idea that the internet couldn't exist without ads is a myth that needs to die. The internet existed, thrived, and was awesome long before it became infested with ads. An ad free internet would be different in some ways, but it'd still be great and filled with endless amounts of content. Your example of youtube kind of proves the point. It was so much mor…
While I pay for software, music, movies, etc, I think the vast majority of people either can't or won't. The internet would be vastly different if there were no ads because the amount of content would be greatly reduced.
I still want no ads. I just don't think it'd be as small of a change as you suggest.
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Unfortunately the "beast" is the Internet content itself. Even HN itself is a massive ad. We are lured here with tech links so YC companies can fish in curated waters for workers. That is explicitly why this board is hosted. The real fix is paying money for everything, but as evidenced by the many attempts at this, no one actually wants to pay. People overwhelmingly want to block ads and backdoor subscriptions. For e…
>> That's why you block ALL ads. Starve the beast. If an app has ads, I do not use it, end of story. > Unfortunately the "beast" is the Internet content itself. So be it. It's like someone realizing that their crack dealer is an untrustworthy scumbag who is destroying everything the care about and they need to totally cut ties with him, and a friend objecting "Unfortunately, the 'scumbag' is your crack supplier himse…
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Things need to be paid for but not everything needs to be paid for by everyone and most things are far cheaper than you'd expect. I played a MUD (and met my partner there!) for several years in college and afterwards. Initially I offered no financial support (since I was a starving college student) but when I had a job I sent in 10 bucks a month. That was a quarter of the cost to run a server, website and forum for a…
News sites don't really have reporters or editors any more. The news is reposted from AP/Reuters and the editor is an LLM. You mentioned the NYT in particular — they're paid a lot to shill political positions.
No. As discussed in (Epstein friend, but the research is still sound) Noam Chomsky's work, the money comes from access. The positions taken are to gain access (they don't take positions that will cause them to lose access).
Paid to report something? You sound like a conspiracist. The real conspiracy is how the system is aligned to generate the outcome. That's capitalism.
Money and power serves money and power.
We should assume that all ads in general are scams. The noise to signal ratio is too large to care. Word of mouth and maybe trusted communities like HN is the only way to reliably discover new things.
The only way out of this is to make ad platforms liable for scam ads. At the moment it's simply too profitable to print lies.
You can just get away with fraud:
Former CEO of Volkswagen AG Charged with Conspiracy and Wire Fraud in Diesel Emissions Scandal
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-ceo-volkswage...
> He remains a fugitive in the United States and is wanted by the Environmental Protection Agency on charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act, and multiple counts of wire fraud.
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At what point did the old Apple cross the threshold to "modern" Apple? I agree with your point I just find the distinction hard to pinpoint. It's like the (incorrect) analogy of the boiled frog, I know it's a cliché but I really feel things started downhill in overall quality and wow factor with the advent of Tim Cook. SJ had failures like Ping and MobileMe, but they seemed to pick up on the criticism back then and e…
> At what point did the old Apple cross the threshold to "modern" Apple? This hardly an original sentiment, but when Steve Jobs died. Jobs was not perfect, but he believed they were there to make great products, had good taste with obsessive attention to detail, and was pretty much omnipotent in the company. I'm sure there are people with many of these traits in Apple, but not all of them together. Their first new ha…
I think you just shot your own argument with that.
I remember when no one thought the Apple Watch would amount to much, and it's literally on everyone's wrist in the US. "Almost one in five US consumers — 17% — say they’ve used an Apple Watch in the past week." -- that's an insane amount of market penetration, when you consider it's all consumers. It's almost rare to see an "analog" watch anymore (I'm one of those). You still have Garmin/Suunto/etc and the luxury analog watches, but they're in a different categories. And Samsung/etc. are far behind.
I've never owned an Apple Watch (I have iPhone/Mac). I prefer the elegance of classical analog watches over having notifications on my wrist (no thanks!). but it's an outstanding product that has driven the sale of iPhones/Macs, etc.
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When I click on links in Apple News, it stays in the Apple News app. That's the same on my phone, iPad and MacBook.
And if you share an article to your favorite messenger?
Tiktok ads, Youtube Ads, Instagram/Meta ads - there's just a huge influx of scams and obviously fake sites on them. AI generated copy, AI generated landing pages... My honest take on it is that it's the payment companies that are complacent here - they're just allowing payment processing for anyone now up to a certain amount before doing proper diligence. The fact these chinese vendors can spin up a website, get paym…
Of all the ways to treat the cancer that is advertising, I think encouraging stricter moderation by the payment providers is the one with the scariest side effects.
Hold the ad companies responsible. They are the most complicit.
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I do not have that filter, but I have been using ad blockers for so long that my tolerance for ads is near zero. Being interrupted by an ad is enough for me to close the tab or turn the device off. I can't imagine what it's like to access modern websites unfiltered.
Visiting friends/family sometimes I have to ask for the TV to be turned off so we can talk and visit. Not to make some sort of statement or signal my dislike for the content, but to stop having my attention grabbed over and over for useless dribble/ads. They do not understand how horribly distracting it is to someone who isn't numbed to its omnipresence.
I can't believe how normalized this stuff is. It's loud. It's incredibly stupid. It treats the viewer as unintelligent. It's really offensive if you aren't used to it.