this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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No Stupid Questions

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Wherever I go, I often see the sentiment "This website has ads, so it's trash" pop up in conversations. And honestly I don't quite get why. 90% of the internet has always had ads, you just scroll past them and mind your business. At least they're personalized now so you can pick a topic you like instead of diapers and miscellanous spammy trash as there once were.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Many people have become accustomed to life without ads. I have used adblockers in my browsers for probably the past 20 years. So the experience that you are talking about (just scrolling past them), is an experience that I don't really know, unless I am suddenly using some other computer that belongs to a friend or something.

People have also gotten away from ads in their entertainment by subscribing to things like Netflix rather than cable.

Once you don't have advertising shoved in your face 24/7, then suddenly being bombarded with it is incredibly offensive.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Ad Blocking IS Cyber Security

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

90% of the internet has always had ads

I very clearly remember a time when only a handful of websites actually had ads on them and having an ad blocker wasn't a straight up requirement to stem the tide of popups and banners.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Youtube, before Google bought it, was pretty nice. A little ad taking up a square in the upper right corner, just above recommended videos, and I think that was about it. Nowadays it's completely impossible to watch YouTube without ad blockers or premium subscription.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

yeah, i dont know what id do without adblock on youtube.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

For even more blocking there's a plugin called sponsorblock. It automatically skips marked sponsor segments in videos. The segments are user submitted so not all videos have em but it's so great!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And that is really sad. In the early days, I disabled my ad blocker for Youtube, as I tend to do with the websites I enjoy, but evidently I've had to re-enable it since to keep my sanity.

As so many others, I don't have a problem with passive or "docile" ads, but I do have a vendetta against intrusive anti-user experiences, which has led me to block ads and other kinds of annoyances /intrusions per default.

The whole "need for more aggressive ads as result of adblockers" is a self fulfilling prophecy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Just be careful because just because ads aren't intrusive doesn't mean they don't track you. If ads were hosted locally on a website and not part of a big ad network then ad-blockers would be pretty ineffective anyway.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

My personal take is that people start understanding the negative impact unhinged marketing can have on your well-being. Ironically, while following influencers and having their happiness and worldviews happily influenced by social media.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

At least they're personalized now

All that means is that they're tracking everything about you to figure out what ads would work on you. They share your data between companies to build a profile on you.

I used to think the same as you but after enough time I just got completely fed up with everyone constantly trying to sell me things. Basically every interaction online is someone trying to take money from me. Not only that but they go out of their way to make things shittier because you're more likely to part with your money. Like how article websites wait just long enough before you start reading before covering the screen with an ad and breaking your concentration. You can't just scroll past those and mind your business.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'm just sick of ads cluttering every damn thing I lay my eyes on.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

When i load a page on my phone and 60% of the page is ads, then i scroll and there is another ad making 100% of my screen ads, for things i will never be into buying, it makes me not want to use that site.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The people who are reacting so negatively to ads are probably the same people who extensively use adblockers. Seeing a ad sneak through is jarring, and offensive, because an ad demands your attention and distracts you from the mission, its personalized propaganda.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If I told you that you could see a movie for free, but every 20 minutes or so we'd pause the movie and slap you with a fish, would that be okay?

Would it be better if we analyzed your website usage to choose the specific kind of fish that you'd prefer to be slapped with, would that be okay?

That's what ads feel like. I hate them, and I've almost entirely eliminated them from my life.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Ads is never just ads. It's primarily a business model that is fundamentally anti-consumer, because when your main remenue starts becoming showing ads to your user instead of selling them something of value, your priorities shift from trying to make a good quality product to trying to max out engagement in order to print as many ads as possible.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

No the internet has had ads during your lifetime but older people know exactly how it was before. :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My shows have ads

My videoes have ads

My video games have ads

My language learning app...ads

My podcasts...3 mins of ads

Not just banner ads like the old days but content covering ads, noisy ads, unskippable ads, 1 of 3 ads. It's totally out of control.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

An ad here or there I don’t mind. When well over 3/4 of the screen is ads… then I get pissed.

If it’s what Reddit has become and it’s tons of ads… again thanks but no.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

90% of the internet has always had ads, you just scroll past them and mind your business.

Nah, I've always hated ads, and always blocked them as soon as we had the capability.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

theres a good part in Ready Player One (movie) where the ceo guy is showing how many more ads they can cram imto your field of view and you can still see. Was like 60 or 80% of the visual area. Unfortunately that example is how most advertising heads think. Just cram more and more ads on screen makimg the thing you are trying to do impossible or unusable

Hey, found a YT clip, it was 80% of an individuals visual field before inducing seizures! How exciting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpPE85Jogjw

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I get ads may be a necessary evil if you're using a website or service you aren't directly paying for, but 9/10 times it's because of how they're implemented and behave and advertisers and large publishers are out of touch with users and never learned or they simply just don't care.

First off, it seems that ads always have to be presented in the most obnoxious ways and this is a problem that's almost as old as the internet. I remember going online back in the late 90s and early , you'd get those extremely obnoxious and seizure inducing "YOU'RE OUR 1'000'000 VISITOR" or "YOU WON A FREE IPOD" ads. Today though, ads are still as annoying or even worse to an extent since every website now insists having autoplaying videos with sound or if you're using a phone and trying to read an article, 3/4 of the page will be taken up by an ad and you have little room to view the actual content.

Secondly, ads have been increasingly becoming a privacy issue. Advertisers want to know every little thing about us and have the ability to track us around the web. I really want advertisers especially to know as little as possible about me because they clearly can't be trusted with data wether they keep it internally or sell it to data brokers because some of the data they're able to collect is alarming.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Perhaps the reasoning changes from person to person, but for me, it goes along the lines of this image posted, oddly enough, on a memes page:
https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/cbae2e12-4fe0-45c4-8657-f033da6eab20.png

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Its a privacy issue as well as just an awful annoyance. Fuck you I dont want to watch your shitty ad I need to watch this video so I know how to fix my dishwasher.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Because I can't go two minutes without someone trying to sell me something, and it's infuriating. I can't even browse Lemmy without someone spamming my feed with their shitty Lets Play videos, or some random selfhosted project posted by the company who made it.

It's disingenuine, and is to me one of the single largest reasons I've switched over to decentralized platforms.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It’s the websites with ads that heat up my phone so much it hurts that are the problem.