2 ms·

The internet didn't used to have ads or spam either.

• tracker1 8y ago
  Relatively speaking, most of the time the internet has been around, spam and ads have been around. Spam on nntp predates the web, iirc. Bots in the messenger apps were unforgivingly ruthless, and email has had spam at least since the early 90's. Also, even shows that did have ads, it wasn't nearly as much. If you look at say Buck Rogers, iirc it's about 48 minutes per episode with credits, and back then they didn't share space for credits with ads. Today a lot of shows are as little as 34-38 minutes to an hour of programming. That's 30-40% of your viewing time being advertising. Not to mention product placement and other ad channels in the content. Not to mention the crap that's happened to youtube that's made it hard to follow/watch channels with content you want to follow in favor of engagement algorithms. It starts to suck pretty badly all around. The last update to my Nvidia Shield TV brought ads into youtube there too, where there weren't any until a few weeks ago. My GF uses Hulu's "live tv" services, which aren't bad, but still have all the ads, are painful. I'd still rather use torrents, even if I am paying for content.