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I use an add blocker to such an extent im horrified every time I’m on an unfamiliar device and have to deal with copious adds.
I can’t even imagine raw-dogging the internet like that…
I’m to the point that if whatever I’m watching/doing pops an ad at me, I reflexively make a snap judgement on whether I want to continue watching/doing whatever it is. Often the answer is ‘no’ and I’ll just bail entirely.
Basically me every time I open a website on my work laptop, where I cannot add browser extensions because of IT policies.
I honestly cannot fathom why large companies don’t include at least simple adblockers in their browser configurations. I don’t even need to block youtube ads, the banners on stackoverflow are bass enough). Would probably save fairly significant amounts of bandwidth, too.
because then things would just shut down… The poor suckers that don’t use adblockers are what pay the bandwidth and hosting costs for those of us that do. If it becomes the default, things would either shutdown or go paywall.
I remember life without adblockers. Back when they were not needed, because web sited did not have ads.
Those were one of the later plagues, too.
did you use the internet in '92 or something? because even in mid to late 90s the ads were so cancerous that pop-up blocking eventually became a standard feature of browsers before ad blockers were even a thing.
My first contact with the web (I had been in the internet for some time already) was when a collegue at university told me about the Arena browser, and this new system, “like Gopher, but with Hypertext and pictures”. And yes, I’ve seen the CERN website, served from Tim Barners-Lee’s NeXT cube, too.
So yes, I knew the web before there were ads, the internet when services were normally open to all sides, and when people on the internet that were actually much smarter than average.
Up to early 00’ most webs didn’t really have many ads. Some may have abusive advertisement but it wasn’t everywhere like now.
<blink>intensifies<\blink>
Seriously. Someone never clicked on the “you are an idiot” popup that auto-played music, moved around the screen, prevented task manager from opening and cloned itself if it was closed.
The installers for every major software company riddled every single computer with adware. And you needed a compsci degree to get rid of it. Weren’t there lawsuits over that shit, that led to regulations? I remember that happening. It’s not like they were going to stop doing that of their own accord.
oh yeah there was all that bs too. oh the toolbars!
I, too, have a sore back when I awake.
Ah yes, the less than three years before banner ads showed up, and exploded, everywhere
At least those were a) just banner ads and b) not as annoying as modern JS/HTML5/popup/popover ads are. You just scrolled down a few pixel, and had 100% information.
Yes we had 3 more years where numerous other variants of things like pop-up/under ads, ads that ran malicious java script, infinitely self-replicating pop-ups, ads that instantly played music at full volume, ads that kept opening themselves again as you closed them, and so on.
Basically, the time when ads were not super intrusive, on the web, was a fleeting time, in its infancy. Didn’t even make it 6 years before ad blockers were required to safely use the web.
I remember when I first noticed YouTube had ads. They’ve had them a while but before they got ads I had installed an ad blocker. So when I was setting up a new laptop and just testing if everything worked I loaded up a YouTube video and suddenly there was a pre roll playing and I wondered “What the fuck is this … Ah yes still need to install an ad blocker”
Edit: Toni? Who the fuck is he? ;)
Man, took me too long to figure out who Toni is.
lol. Autocorrect
pepperidge farm remembers
FDunny, though, that I only know Pepperidge Farm from memes. I assume that is/was an American brand, right?
Thanks! Now I know what that meme is about.
Camara zooms out revealing a third guy looking down into his face youtube requiring a Webcam so they can track your eyes
I’m convinced Mark Zuckerberg had a wet dream about pupil tracking when he bought Oculus.
He saw that Black Mirror episode and found it to be aspirational.
Most of the tech billionare’s ideas comes from watching a dystopian 80s scifi and saying “let’s do this but where I’m the bad guy.”
Show me one thing Elon ever came up with that isn’t in Total Recall.
Show me one thing Elon ever came up with that isn’t in Total Recall.
Musk is trash, but to be fair, Philip K. Dick pretty much invented like 90% of popular, modern sci-fi tropes.
im convinced his business model if AR/VR ever takes off will involve pupil tracking yes
After going nuclear against ad blockers, at some point google is going to introduce a new “feature” where YouTube uses AI with your phone’s camera to automatically pause videos when you look away from your phone.
Then they’ll make it so you have to buy a subscription to turn it off during ads.
writers of black mirror’s 15 million merits laughing crying maniacally in the distance
Me if that happens:
jk, i barely use YT as it is. I’m waiting for the YT ToS update that causes a mass migration to peertube
Please open verification can
Hey, don’t give them ideas.
Tbh I figured they have bots crawling social media to find out what people are using to avoid their annoying, intrusive, abusive practices and use that to get ever more obnoxious.
I remembered a scene of a black mirror episode: if the person looked away the ads will stop until the person watch it again and it’s unavoidable … I wonder if this will be a reality one day
Yes, the technology to do this is here, and they’re just waiting for the consumer to be able to put up with it.
This is why I just set up a media server at home.
It’s mine, you can’t pump it full of ads. All the media is mine and those companies can go fuck themselves.
Sail those seas folks
Oh I have had a plex and then jellyfin server for almost 15 years. Yarr mateys
Don’t worry your TV will just hijack the HDMI signal to inject its own ads
Not if isn’t connected to a network. 😈
Reading your reply made me think … it’s possible that implying such technology might help rising Free & Open Source culture more … given that FOSS apps are usually ad-free and with no tracking
Honestly the best thing about FOSS is that money isn’t driving all the decisions. Most open-source projects are built because the dev just wants to build something cool or useful, or they’re trying to solve specific problems. Most individual devs don’t really care if their user count goes up every quarter.
Personally I’ve been maintaining a chrome extension for about 10 years, and it’s sat happily with about 7000 users that entire time. I built it because I wanted to use it, and I’ve declined several offers to buy the extension and monetize it.What’s the extension? Advertise to me dammit, I’m intrigued
It’s an extension that makes GitHub pages full width: https://github.com/xthexder/wide-github/
Admittedly the usefulness has gone down a little bit in the last couple years now that GitHub themselves have made code diffs and some other things full width by default.
When I first wrote this I had just gotten a giant 4K display at work and was really annoyed I still had to scroll left and right with the page only covering 1/3 of the screen.
Boss
They know if they do that people will just disable their cameras or put tape over it like they already do. If they make it so you can’t disable the camera without losing functionality then people won’t buy the product.
If they try to push it by making a gentleman’s agreement with their competitors to make all tvs or phones use camera eye contact during ads well have to have fight back with more ad blockers and such.
I mean the concept is pretty simple, all they have to do is make whatever the content it is not play without the verification.
Now I do have to say, it does come down to what is the system we do want? We can agree we don’t want intrusive ads. We can say that the paid for services are too expensive. But at the end of the day when we refuse to pay for the content, and then bypass the ads, we do leave content creation in a rough spot. We’ve kind of reached a point where we need a new system. Yet all we seem to do is try and find ways to break the existing one.
The problem is that ad revenue brings in more money than subscription models ever can. So they’re either super expensive because the company is accustomed to the high profits of ads, OR they inevitably end up slipping ads into the paids versions too.
Youtube has become this venus fly trap where content creators get exploited. They exist on the site solely to draw in viewers to show ads to. YouTube doesn’t really care about the content or their creators(they don’t care about paying them either since there’s endless accounts) their primary function is to sell ads. That’s it.
With data harvesting and personalized ads they basically print money for themselves. Now each ad spot will show something different to each person, meaning they are getting paid by multiple(potentially hundreds or thousands) of companies for each available ad location. They don’t care if you buy the product because they got paid the second that ad popped up on your screen.
Ad based revenue is creating a huge fucking mess for everyone.
Honestly I disagree… From what I’ve heard from app developers etc… ads generate far less money than even $1 app sales. Now maybe that’s the brokers etc… But there’s also a reason why Hulu shut down their purely ad supported tier, and none of the big companies are leaning into that. Only “subscribe and get ads” lower dollar tiers.
I’m no super expert, but I think ads are still very inefficiant ways to make money… the profit per customer is very small even with the most privacy invasive blast you away with everything aspect. I don’t claim to be an expert, but it appears to me an ad supported service needs around 100x more users to make the same money as a low cost service. However, in actual userbases it goes closer to 1000x when that offer is on the table.
Please drink a verification can
Put a pi-hole in my rooter filtering all adds of all webs and apps was the best thing I ever did.
put a pi-hole in my rooter
Giggity What would be the definition if it was in the urban dictionary?
Allot of my phrases tend to be like this without noticing… Its like a power I think
It really is, and I hope you never ever lose that power.
That would be a point where I would just never use YouTube again.
I’m doing this now. For Mr/Ms fix it myself, I don’t find much elsewhere. I hope that changes.
aint nobody got time for that
On my Roku TV I can’t block ads, when they play I mute the TV and look away. I am absolutely the level of autistic that I think I’m “winning” by doing this.
if you mute ads on Spotify they pause the ad.
With a pi-hole you can block the adds of all your house. You only need a raspberry pi.
I have a 3b somewhere, how complicated is setting it up? I only have the router/modem from my ISP.
I’ts pretty easy! You can use this guide or any YouTube video really.
I’m so glad I’m not alone.
- mute
So I have a conspiracy theory around that. Android used to put the volume slider at the top of the screen. At some point they moved it to the right side, and now blocks the skip button on YouTube. I won’t doubt this was done on purpose, so if you lower the volume for an ad, you will be forced to watch more of it.
That is one nefarious dark pattern.
That is absolutely intentional!! Wow!
uBlock origin carries my browser ngl
On Linux or Windows? Firefox + uBlock origin (there’s nothing better than that)
On Mac? Firefox + uBlock origin (worse alternative: Safari + AdGuard, since you might synch browser with iPhone)
On Android? Firefox + Privacy Badger + uBlock Origin
On iOS? Safari + AdGuard + Vinegar + Baking Soda
On SmartTV it’s different.
Hardest overall solution: Get yourself a Pi-Hole https://pi-hole.net/
For WebOS TVs use this: https://github.com/webosbrew/youtube-webos
Android TVs should get SmartTube: https://github.com/yuliskov/smarttube#smarttube-old-name-smarttubenext
RokuTVs got either this thing: https://channelstore.roku.com/en-ca/details/840aec36f51bfe6d96cf6db9055a372a/playlet or the open source alternative: https://github.com/iBicha/playlet
Pi-Hole works for YouTube on gaming consoles aswell!
I look forward to the day apple is forced to allow other browser engines to run on iOS.
Unfortunatly, they were smart. To the average lawmaker, Firefox, chrome, edge, etc all run on ios, so there’s no issue.
And for Samsungs tizen os smart TV’s tizentube for YouTube with a pi hole for the ads in the interface.
If I’m watching YouTube on my TV, I mute it when anything longer than a 5 second ad comes on. If what I’m watching is less than 10 minutes, I’ll just back out and start in again, usually it will come up without the ad, then seek to where I left off. Although oftentimes lately, I’ll be watching a 5 minute video, and I’ll get 1 minute in and get hit with an unskippable 2 minute ad, I just quit YouTube for the day.
dude use SmartTube on your smart tv https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube
it has adblock + sponsorblockI think I tried that once & had trouble getting it installed… Don’t remember what kind of trouble though, I suppose I should try it again.
I have adblock on my Mac, but not on the PS5. Whenever I watch YouTube on my TV via PS5, I have to open and close videos sometimes 10 or 15 times before they just play the video I’ve clicked on and not some obnoxious 45 second long advert for some bullshit I don’t want and won’t use. Honestly not sure why YouTube finds it so hard to play the video I clicked on and not random other videos. I also tend to stop watching vids as soon as an ad break happens.
I work with a marketing department full time and they’re exactly as annoying as expected, always pissing about on tiktok or Instagram creating shit that nobody could possibly feasibly care about.
Is there an alternative to YouTube on PS5 that doesn’t have adverts? Or is there some way to get adblocking on there?
Easy fix: HDMI cable from the laptop to your TV to watch youtube.
I believe you would need a pihole, is like a ad block but in the entire network, so you could even use the official youtube app on a tv and not get any ad
I think they serve the ads from the same domain so DNS blocking wont work. And I heard they are testing baking the ads into the actual video.
I was using the pihole from my pc back in the day and it did work, but i totally forget about the ad injection on the videos
Pihole hasn’t made any difference on devices like smart TVs and consoles for years, at least in my experience. It really sucks but they broke me and I bought premium family because we use YouTube a lot on non pc devices and I hate ads so much
Even better, make a list of the ads you see, and activelly avoid buying the products or services that they promote.
The upside to using ad blockers - no ads!
The downside to using ad blockers - not knowing what any of the movies currently in theaters are.
