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I went to Amazon without an ad blocker for the first time yesterday (wanted to try the fakespot service, but it requires an extension and "access all" so I crea

I went to Amazon without an ad blocker for the first time yesterday (wanted to try the fakespot service, but it requires an extension and "access all" so I created a clean profile for it). I was surprised how many ads there were on Amazon, I thought the situation was already bad with an ad blocker, considering they show a lot of hard-coded ads, but wow.

mym1990 4y ago
I am generally getting overwhelmed with ads coming from every nook and cranny of life to the point that I don't even want to buy stuff anymore, for a lot of it its like: whats the point?
- Semaphor 4y ago
  Luckily, I mostly don’t see any ads. Only for work, and on Amazon pretty much. Some more as product placement and in the physical world, but not a ton.
  - Moru 4y ago
    I love the new ad displays in the local shopping mall. They use LCD screens rotated 90 degrees and my sunglases are just the wrong filter angle so they become nice black displays for me. Physical adblocker :-)
    - Ensorceled 4y ago
      My wife commented on how shitty some ambulance chaser ad was and all I could see was a black display. Now I want a law that requires all billboards and other such ads to be properly polarized so they can be blocked :-)
- Anon4Now 4y ago
  If you use Chrome, then switch to another browser that allows full adblocker functionality. I use Firefox with UBlock Origin and hardly see any ads.
  - input_sh 4y ago
    Sponsored segments on YouTube. Billboards. Sponsored texts in newspapers. "YC XXX is hiring" on HN. I use Firefox + uBlock Origin + Sponsorblock and a few others. Ads are still everywhere. Not as everywhere as they'd be without it, but it's not like adblocks get rid of them all together.
    - Semaphor 4y ago
      Not parent, but I don’t have most of those. > Sponsored segments on YouTube I only watch music videos and very rarely a how to repair video. > Billboards I guess I sometimes see those in US TV shows ;) > newspapers I think I remember those things ;) > is hiring I guess, never saw those as ads. Though now that I think about it, I have started to want to figure out what BuildZoom does with custom homes, why YC funded them, and why I should care. Maybe one day I’ll see enough hiring posts to google them ;)
      - jefftk 4y ago
        > never saw those as ads YC companies pay money to put a message in front of us, in the hope that some of us will respond by taking an action that is highly profitable for them. Seems pretty clearly ads to me!
      - weberer 4y ago
        >>Billboards >I guess I sometimes see those in US TV shows ;) Lucky. In Helsinki they're in every metro station, every bus stop, and sometimes just in random spots along busy streets. Oh, and every metro car has screens playing video ads.
        Semaphor 4y ago
        It probably helps that I don’t travel much…
        cronix 4y ago
        In the states, we now have them built into gas station pumps. So any time you get gas you have video ads blasting at you with some crappy loudspeaker.
- di456 4y ago
  Physical retail had grown on me lately. It's usually faster to go in, get what I need, and make it home. Especially for commodity household items.
- worik 4y ago
  I stopped buying stuff when COVID hit I do buy things, but each purchase is carefully considered. Happier, wealthier, all good
beachy 4y ago
The most satisfying experience for me at the moment is the suggestions I get on a new tab in chrome on Android. Not because the suggestions are amazingly good - sometimes they're ok - but because when they lead to some crap-infested site I can click to not see that site any more. That ability to cull keeps the suggestions workable for me. I genuinely think the Google would benefit hugely by making this a possibility with their search engine. With the coming flood of chatgpt-generated shit sites, they have so much to gain by enabling human curation, even if page impressions take a hit. Ffs Google, provide your users with a way to blacklist the more abominable parts of the internet and you'll engender serious customer loyalty and stickiness.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  They used to have that feature, but then you could block the spammiest sites that make them money, can’t have that. Luckily, I neither use Chrome nor Google.
  - danuker 4y ago
    Here's to churn among the Big Tech oligopoly. Cheers!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- college_physics 4y ago
  > That ability to cull keeps the suggestions workable for me. Don't you have better use for your time? Normalizing the disaster that has become the internet (and absolving the key actors in that development) is robbing us all from experiencing a more sane online life.
  - xmodem 4y ago
    Once google makes it possible, the next step will be a browser extension to synchronise with a crowdsourced list. These lists will of course be at risk of the same pressures as ad blockers, with incentives for list maintainers to accept bribes to remove entries. But over time, the quality of the lists will improve and so too will the quality of the UX for users of the aforementioned extensions. That is, assuming the goose isn't cooked already.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

mym1990 4y ago

I am generally getting overwhelmed with ads coming from every nook and cranny of life to the point that I don't even want to buy stuff anymore, for a lot of it its like: whats the point?

Semaphor 4y ago
Luckily, I mostly don’t see any ads. Only for work, and on Amazon pretty much. Some more as product placement and in the physical world, but not a ton.
- Moru 4y ago
  I love the new ad displays in the local shopping mall. They use LCD screens rotated 90 degrees and my sunglases are just the wrong filter angle so they become nice black displays for me. Physical adblocker :-)
  - Ensorceled 4y ago
    My wife commented on how shitty some ambulance chaser ad was and all I could see was a black display. Now I want a law that requires all billboards and other such ads to be properly polarized so they can be blocked :-)
Anon4Now 4y ago
If you use Chrome, then switch to another browser that allows full adblocker functionality. I use Firefox with UBlock Origin and hardly see any ads.
- input_sh 4y ago
  Sponsored segments on YouTube. Billboards. Sponsored texts in newspapers. "YC XXX is hiring" on HN. I use Firefox + uBlock Origin + Sponsorblock and a few others. Ads are still everywhere. Not as everywhere as they'd be without it, but it's not like adblocks get rid of them all together.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    Not parent, but I don’t have most of those. > Sponsored segments on YouTube I only watch music videos and very rarely a how to repair video. > Billboards I guess I sometimes see those in US TV shows ;) > newspapers I think I remember those things ;) > is hiring I guess, never saw those as ads. Though now that I think about it, I have started to want to figure out what BuildZoom does with custom homes, why YC funded them, and why I should care. Maybe one day I’ll see enough hiring posts to google them ;)
    - jefftk 4y ago
      > never saw those as ads YC companies pay money to put a message in front of us, in the hope that some of us will respond by taking an action that is highly profitable for them. Seems pretty clearly ads to me!
    - weberer 4y ago
      >>Billboards >I guess I sometimes see those in US TV shows ;) Lucky. In Helsinki they're in every metro station, every bus stop, and sometimes just in random spots along busy streets. Oh, and every metro car has screens playing video ads.
      - Semaphor 4y ago
        It probably helps that I don’t travel much…
      - cronix 4y ago
        In the states, we now have them built into gas station pumps. So any time you get gas you have video ads blasting at you with some crappy loudspeaker.
di456 4y ago
Physical retail had grown on me lately. It's usually faster to go in, get what I need, and make it home. Especially for commodity household items.
worik 4y ago
I stopped buying stuff when COVID hit I do buy things, but each purchase is carefully considered. Happier, wealthier, all good

beachy 4y ago

The most satisfying experience for me at the moment is the suggestions I get on a new tab in chrome on Android. Not because the suggestions are amazingly good - sometimes they're ok - but because when they lead to some crap-infested site I can click to not see that site any more. That ability to cull keeps the suggestions workable for me. I genuinely think the Google would benefit hugely by making this a possibility with their search engine. With the coming flood of chatgpt-generated shit sites, they have so much to gain by enabling human curation, even if page impressions take a hit. Ffs Google, provide your users with a way to blacklist the more abominable parts of the internet and you'll engender serious customer loyalty and stickiness.

Semaphor 4y ago
They used to have that feature, but then you could block the spammiest sites that make them money, can’t have that. Luckily, I neither use Chrome nor Google.
- danuker 4y ago
  Here's to churn among the Big Tech oligopoly. Cheers!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
college_physics 4y ago
> That ability to cull keeps the suggestions workable for me. Don't you have better use for your time? Normalizing the disaster that has become the internet (and absolving the key actors in that development) is robbing us all from experiencing a more sane online life.
- xmodem 4y ago
  Once google makes it possible, the next step will be a browser extension to synchronise with a crowdsourced list. These lists will of course be at risk of the same pressures as ad blockers, with incentives for list maintainers to accept bribes to remove entries. But over time, the quality of the lists will improve and so too will the quality of the UX for users of the aforementioned extensions. That is, assuming the goose isn't cooked already.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]