this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 196 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I don’t think the facts match the claim, but I completely agree with the sentiment.

For years, the ‘legit’ consumer has had to deal with ad interruptions and bad UI and service disruptions and having media removed from their library. Something that pirates don’t even have to think about. The music revolution that Jobs and Apple created with iTunes, which allowed people to just buy music and just own it and just use it however they want (no DRM) with an ease that made piracy look difficult and seem too risky to bother, never came for TV or movies or books or any other media category.

And now the streaming revolution has all but undone that progress as well. You don’t own anything, a company decides when you have or lose access to something, and even if you pay money for access you are still advertised to and your data is still sold off.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 1 month ago (5 children)

I remember iTunes only letting you change computer like 2-3 times max before the drm would make mysic not work any more, but maybe it was no-drm in the beginning.

I had a chinese 1GB shuffle though so IDK if that's correct.

The chinese shuffle also doubled up as a usb key (very useful back then) and also didn't need iTunes to function smh.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yeah IIRC you're right, though I remember you could contact apple and reset it.

It was called FairPlay DRM and they only really got rid of it around a decade after iTunes launched. I'm not 100% but I think I had to pay to upgrade my already paid-for library to DRM free too

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago

It may have originally had DRM but it doesn’t now.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Yeah this guy is on some Apple fanboy shit if he thinks iTunes was drm free. Their shitty design for iTunes and decision to force you to use it despite it making the experience of listening to music much worse is the primary reason an ipod is the only Apple device I've ever owned. Freedom of choice and Apple have never mixed. That's such a weird angle to take when describing them.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

That didn't last very long.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

But then later for like $10 I could take all my pirate music, legitimize it, and download a copy from iTunes if theirs was better quality. That was nice.

Edit: iTunes Match

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

Meanwhile, in a dark and forgotten corner of my PC, I STILL have several thousand MP3s I downloaded from Kazaa back in the day.

[–] [email protected] 163 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ads you say?

I'll have to take your word for it...

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I feel like most of the kind of people who go out of their way to pirate also go out of their way to avoid ads.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (5 children)
  1. Download Firefox (or other preferred gecko browser)
  2. Install uBlock Origin add-on

Really going out of the way to avoid them.

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Advertising needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking.

It indiscriminately pollutes whatever environment it’s conducted within, and causes secondary harm to non-participants by incentivising hoarding of PII in the cheapest and least secure manner.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It causes genuine harm, I'm visually impaired and I've wandered into construction zones because advertising billboards are mounted near and "road work ahead" signs and everything is all just bright and bold.

I don't know what's official, everything is competing for my attention but I have very little capacity to dedicate my full attention to a visual sign. The end result is incredibly fatiguing, seeing a bright sign and straining to ensure I read it because it's colours look important, nope, it's an ad, that was a waste of energy, oh look another one with the same blurry colours and type setting it's probably the same ad.... Nope that one actually needed my attention, and now I'm somewhere I shouldn't be and I'm in danger.

I'm also hard of hearing, but fortunately audio adber in the public isn't as bad, but anyone who's hearing impaired knows how fatiguing it is to try and filter through noise. It's the exact same for visual impairment.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Adblock is a cure for migraines.

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

Amen, I just need IRL adblock now please.

[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Depends on the piracy site. If you go to some of the pirate streaming sites or the blogs that host tons of pirated software with 30 rapidgator links that die after a month (instead of just using a torrent like a normal sensible person trying to share a 2-30+gb file that is begging to be taken down) without Adblock it’s absolutely comical how many ads there are. Even with Adblock those are the sites that manage to still have ads because they’re on the cutting edge of sketchy shit. It’s like seeing a late 90s to early 2000s website with how much random bullshit is pasted everywhere

Despite that I’m pretty sure that Amazon, google, etc do far more nefarious shit behind the scenes in terms of tracking/fingerprinting you and collecting data to sell

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 month ago

I’m pretty sure that Amazon, google, etc do far more nefarious shit behind the scenes in terms of tracking/fingerprinting you and collecting data to sell

You even get to pay more and more for this privilege…smh

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

This is all spanish (as in castilian) media. The torrents are sparse and usually really badly encoded, I'm talking stuff like AVI codec in media produced in 2024.

There's a better chance if you try to find it in the open with those sketchy links you mention or you are "lucky enough" to get invited to a Telegram group that has it uploaded to the platform, severed in hundreds of multipart files.

I've seen more Spanish people using the outdated Ed2K protocol through a/eMule rather than torrents even, it's so depressing.

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 month ago (11 children)

Once ads are allowed into a platform they will ultimately be what destroys it eventually.

Might take a week or a decade. But the lust of that easy ad money will ruin the thing they were put there to fund in the end.

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 month ago (2 children)

ublock origin. I don't care if some website dies. Whole internet is turning to shit anyways, just let it all burn

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago

Ublock does such a good job at blocking the old janky torrent sites, especially compared to the increasingly aggressive and intrusive new shit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'd love it if we started the internet from scratch again with no search engines, just webrings and link books and geocities pages everywhere

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Whats a piracy site? Theres zero ads in the search window on qbittorrent…

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Where you find the torrents

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago (1 children)

qittorrent has a search function where you input and save the associated plug-in/address of the torrent site/feed you want and then you can just search within qbittorrent for whatever torrent you are looking for and select whatever you want for download without having to go to an website or another app/protocol.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Yes but does it have Dark Mode?

Gottem

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

It has custom user-made themes that are dark mode, so it probably has dozens of dark modes.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Using the rather fittingly named Dracula theme. Fantastic darkmode theme for qbittorrent

https://draculatheme.com/qbittorrent

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I don't. I let my arr apps do it for me.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 month ago

Much like the twenty minutes of unskippable ads on commercial DVDs, the media companies and social media will enshittify until the general public turns to piracy.

Essentially, the sooner we all come to terms with piracy being ~~acceptable~~ necessary, the sooner they let off on their enshittification efforts.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And yet I see 0 ads in either of those sites.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

There are in the videos as sponsors for a lot of channels on YouTube, and as sponsored results on Amazon

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Of all the ads being pushed on us, this type seems like the least egregious to me.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Tbh I don’t care about the sponsor segments in videos. It’s actually my favorite way of advertising, as I can skip it or watch the funny ones (tomska does really funny - although slightly incorrect - segments).

But boy do I hate sponsored results on Amazon or similar platforms. I feel like I have to search through them to get to the actual products, and then I can’t trust the reviews

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago

Ad revenue is like Crack to corporations. Once they get a taste for it, it's all downhill from there.

Mostly because it's the easiest money they'll ever make and it's more profitable than subscription models. Gotta see those numbers go up at all costs.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago

Corporations like google and amazon damage the market and the industry more than "piracy" does

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I have legit never bought a single thing because I saw and ad for said product. I don’t know who is out here making these campaigns so profitable

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Brand awareness gets you subconsciously

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago

Here's a really horrifying fact about ads, they don't expect you to go right out and buy their product. Ads target your subconscious and manipulate your way of thinking. There was a study done by some university and tested by a few people across different fields of study that proved this to be correct. I wish I could remember off the top of my head where this was published. If you do a little browsing you can probably find it and you should because you can't trust a stranger like me to properly relay the information.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago

Adblock my beloved

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

Not the way I use legit sites!

Jokes aside, I agree and I hate it

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Besides streaming, i.e. the capability to watch the movies and series when you want and how much you want, and lowering the entry to produce videos for more people, they pretty much reinvented cable. Or did I miss something substantial?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

They're already consolidating in streaming services that bundle content packs.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (4 children)

You know I was just thinking this the other day, and they are just as intrusive as the ones that piracy sites have

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

What do you mean as intrusive, none of the piracy sites are trying to work around my adblocker.

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

After Amazon said there'd be more ads recently, yep, more ads tonight. Done with it. My living room is not a marketing platform. It's finally time to go back to the convenience and ease of piracy.

The new model is based around pirating Clarkson's Farm and donating to farmers. That's the point anyway. No need to bring Jeff into it.

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