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Ad-blocking is a property right. I have every right to control what my device does or does not display, by definition of ownership. Conversely, advertisers or other parties attempting to colonize my device by forcing it to display something against my (the owner’s) will is a hostile act that violates my rights.
Except we are beginning to not own what we own. The computer is yours, the software is just licensed, and they are trying to take everything away from us, from ovens to washing machines, they want to make it all subscription, spying on us, and serving us ads. We don’t have the right to repair the products when we break, and it’s a federal felony to “break” any sort of digital lock on a device, and I think to change it’s programming too.
That said, it’s a moot point as of yet, because while websites forced me to whitelist their sites to use them when I had adblock, I was told about ublockorigin, and I see no ads, and the sites can’t tell I am using it.
This may be a hot take here but I do not actually hate the concept of “paying money to promote a product or service”. However, in practice I can hardly think of an advertising method that I find tolerable in the slightest due to the manipulation tactics. When you look at vintage photos advertising is usually some hand painted sign on the side of a bus stop that says “Try Zuckerman’s Flour!” I don’t hate that, but we also don’t have that.
“Hey this thing is here” and “have this problem try this” are useful enough that even without paid ads people make that content.
The lifestyle manipulation, feeding unfounded fears, biases, anxieties, and rage for almost anyone reason is evil to me.
100% agree
I don’t do any of those things, because my devices block them before they ever reach me.
Yep. One must move beyond an “I hate you and I hope you die” relationship with ads, to a “I don’t think about you at all” relationship with ads. Regardless of how many fits Google throws about ublock, one can always do VPN/DNS type filtering. I’ve honestly almost forgotten ads exist.
There’s some tech blog/news site (can’t recall the name right now) that tries to shame me into turning off my ad blocker and viewing their ads with an extra pop up
“Hey! We noticed your browser isn’t displaying ads. Can you…”
HAHA NO
What do you mean fits about ublock?
I had to download it off the internet and not the play store on both my phone and computer, but it worked, still works great, I see about zero ads and it blocks a lot of pages entirely.
Advertisement makes me want that product even less.
The worse the product is, the more desperate they get to shove it in your face. Good products don’t need to pay others to pretend it’s good, you just find out via word-of-mouth or free trials
Yep I actively avoid companies that inundate me. I’ve switched insurance companies because of it (local agent got me much better rates too).
So you’re telling me gaico doesn’t save as much on car insurance?
I used to think anti-consumerism was a lot more popular. It’s a significant disconnect from how I thought people are. Apparently I took more media related courses in high school and university than most people do.
One thing that continued to confuse me is how tech cultures are unrepentantly consumer capitalists. The earlier times of the world wide web was very counter-culture. So it’s been an unending source of befuddlement how tech nerds have been deep-throating the adtech boot.
Got a samsung smart TV that had ads in the menu bar. I bought the thing, why ads. Learn pihole and reuse of old galaxy s7. block Samsung. then firestick. then buy server space to download movies and TV shows.
I got so upset at ads native in TV 6 years ago I hoist the flag.
I try to keep my TV clear of as many ads as I can and mute the ones I can’t. When that happens my arcade machine calls me to it
If you have to react to advertising you’re already doing it wrong. If it’s able to reach you on your hardware in any form, you’ve already failed.
You’re not wrong. But as you said yourself, this only applies to your own hardware. Some of us do engage in this weird thing called “going outside”, with some taking it as far as not only going there to touch grass, but also meet other people (gross, I know).
In these situations, even I, an individual who has
- a private e-mail that is exactly that: private (through aliases and strict protocols as to who gets the root address)
- a physical mailbox mostly clean of ads because advertisers either do not get my address in the first place, or they get a friendly letter telling them where to shove their catalogues
- adblocker plugins in every browser
- hosts-based blocking on top of that and
- a network-wide DNS-based adblocker just for good measure,
even I, builder, king and prisoner of this privacy fortress, am exposed to ads when I occasionally leave it.
I see ads when my kid asks me to read out to him the contents of that colourful banner above the parking lot.
I see ads when I watch cable TV with my parents and they just let the ad break wash over them like a jovial stream of diarrhea.
I see ads when I go shopping and I cannot focus on my own thoughts because only a few metres away there’s an ad screen loudly announcing the technological marvels of Buddy’s Fully-automatic Butt Crack Scratcher to the world.
In these situations, I really feel the contents of that OP. I feel the brazen attempt to steal my attention when all I want is to be present. I feel the insult to my intelligence because some twat in marketing decided I’m unable or unworthy to make my own decisions. And I feel the need to quell this frivolous invasion of my time and headspace.
And that’s why, in these situations, I take the liberty to turn off the shop’s TV while I’m there. I take my parent’s remote, mute the ad diarrhea and strike up a conversation. And I promise the kiddo to read him something proper once we get home, but not one of those stupid ads.
(We recently pulled up in front of another giant ad banner, and the little guy went: “Dad, that’s just another one of those stupid ads, right?” Imagine how proud dad was, seeing that another system-wide adblocker had been installed…)
Thanks for coming to my TED talk!
Well said all around. I’ve had almost the exact same thoughts. Good TED talk.
The case with advertisers is that there used to be a covenant between the advertiser and the viewer where the advertiser gave the viewer a jingle or song or funny scenario and the viewer would be entertained to watch the advertisement. This covenant has been broken by the advertiser. They no longer think that they have to offer you anything for your time . A simple pop-up or banner or an obfuscated page is sufficient to divert you from your task in exchange for nothing but inconvenience. Instead of manipulating people with metrics, advertisers might want to get back to that covenant.
Not just personal mind poison, but societal poison too. Most of our media companies are just ad businesses with whatever they portray as their main products as window dressing. Meta, Google, NYT, all TV networks, even NPR is increasingly funded by ads. I was hopeful in the shift to paid streaming services this might change, and it did sort of, for a while, but increasingly they too are turning to ads.
Not just personal mind poison, but societal poison too.
i came to realize this when when my home built router died a few months ago.
it was based on pfsense and i had setup publicly shared advertisement blocking; so i hadn’t see any ad at all for years.
i became annoyed when i started seeing them after the router died and then i actively became angry when i was bombarded by them while watching tv as i was visiting family, yet they didn’t think anything was wrong with watching the same mcdonalds advertisement 500x in a single hour.
that shit has an impact on your psyche whether you know right away or not.
Yup. For me it was when I went on vacation with my family. Tried to enjoy a movie in the evening after a day out and my god. Ads every literal 7 minutes of movie. How the fuck anyone can deal with that is beyond me.
All advertising is abuse.
I also make a mental note to not buy products that have intrusive ads. There are always alternative brands.
Also, I go out of my way to get all my gas from the one station near me that doesn’t show loud ass video ads everytime I get gas.
Advertising is one of the most prolific environmental pollutants of economic activity, and needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking.
I almost never watch you tube anymore because of this
I use Firefox with Ublock Origin on Android, and if I watch youtube in the browser, it filters pretty much all ads. Sometimes I get one at the start of a video, but closing the tab and starting again has got rid of them so far 👍
One day I need to share a screenshot of how youtube looks on Firefox after a few tweeks. I’ve used Ublock Origin to block everything I didn’t like. It’s literally just the player, description, the comments and a link to the settings and my subscriptions.
It’s actually shocking when I see unfiltered youtube on someone’s stream.
You can try invidious instances like yewtu.be
Invidious is an alternative front end for youtube that allows you to watch videos without ads or other tracking. And it’s self hostable. But the public instances work just fine - I actually have issues with YouTube stalling constantly, I assume because of my ad/script blockers. But going to yewtu.be/watch?v=(youtube video code) allows me to watch in HD with zero ads or interruptions.
Youtube does try to fight it, so it occasionally will break, but just like Ublock, Invidious has talented people on the team fighting back.
There’s also a firefox extension for auto redirect: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/invidious-redirect-2/
For some reason invidious never works for me, i just get errors and it doesn’t load, but FreeTube works great.
There have (especially lately) been a lot of times when it goes down.
My understanding is that Youtube has been changing the way they present or stream videos. I’m not familiar with the technical aspects, really, but Invidious is actively working on the issues.
For me, when I try to use it, it’s down maybe 10-20% if the time, but occasionally for longer stretches at once. Not a perfect solution, but another tool you can use to avoid Youtube directly
