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I block ads because they're psychological warfare that corporations wage against me. I don't care how unobtrusive the ads are. I don't care if the ads don't

I block ads because they're psychological warfare that corporations wage against me. I don't care how unobtrusive the ads are. I don't care if the ads don't track me. I grew up changing the channel on TV when ads came on, and ripping adverts out of magazines before sitting down to read them. I vote for billboard bans whenever I can. I have zero tolerance for ads of any sort. Advertisers have no morals, they're completely depraved. They'll eagerly exploit a teenager's self-conscious body issues to sell useless beauty products. They sell sugar water to fat people and at every turn promote the rampant consumerist culture that is destroying our planet. They're lower than pond scum and I never want to see a single ad from them ever.

zeekaran 3y ago
I wish this view was mainstream. I also used to change the channel when ads came on, or at least muted and briefly did something else. I will never tolerate ads, and especially never pay to be advertized at.
- berniedurfee 3y ago
  I still do, though I hardly watch much regular TV anymore. Can’t listen to a radio either, not enough music in between stations to get away from ads. I pay for a few subscription services and get my entertainment _mostly_ ad free. Unfortunately there’s no similar subscription I can buy to escape advertising as I walk down the street.
RoyGBivCap 3y ago
>To those men in their oddly similar dark suits, their cold eyes weighing and dismissing everything, the people of this valley were a foe to be defeated. As he thought of it, Dasein realized all customers were "The Enemy" to these men. Davidson and his kind were pitted against each other, yes, competitive, but among themselves they betrayed that they were pitted more against the masses who existed beyond that inner ring of knowledgeable financial operation. >The alignment was apparent in everything they did, in their words as well as their actions. They spoke of "package grab level" and "container flash time" -- of "puff limit" and "acceptance threshold." It was an "in" language of militarylike maneuvering and combat. They knew which height on a shelf was most apt to make a customer grab an item. They knew the "flash time" -- the shelf width needed for certain containers. They knew how much empty air could be "puffed" into a package to make it appear a greater bargain. they knew how much price and package manipulation the customer would accept without jarring him into a "rejection pattern." >And we're their spies, Dasein thought. the psychiatrists and psychologists - all the "social scientists" we're the espionage arm. The Santaroga Barrier, Frank Herbert, 1968
flohofwoe 3y ago
> psychological warfare that corporations wage against me I see them as environmental pollution that affects the mind instead of the body (this also includes offline ads btw, I actually wish there were adblockers for the real world).
- Zak 3y ago
  This seems like one of the best possible applications for consumer AR. I'd love glasses that would replace display cute animals on top of real-world ads.
  - nneonneo 3y ago
    Unfortunately, given current trends, you're going to get glasses that put ads on top of cute animals instead.
    - 20after4 3y ago
      We are quickly headed toward the dystopia exhibited in the movie minority report. Actually we're already there for the most part.
- _aavaa_ 3y ago
  I think you're being far too generous. Pollution is something that occurs because it's too costly to prevent, or the people producing the pollution simply don't care. The effect advertising has one you isn't some externality that the advertisers couldn't be bothered fixing, the effect is the whole point.
pembrook 3y ago
[flagged]
- lolinder 3y ago
  They're making a much broader point about advertising in general, while you're fixated on internet advertising. What benefit do freeway billboards provide to my life? How about the spam mail I get in my mailbox? The bright and flashy signs for businesses along the road? Every time I'm on the freeway I pass a few dozen ads selling liposuction or some other expensive and unhealthy "beauty" treatment. What value are those companies bringing to the world, and why should I have to put up with their ads? Just because someone bought property adjacent to the freeway?
interroboink 3y ago
If you haven't seen it, you might like this Bill Hicks standup routine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY "If anyone here is in advertising or marketing ... kill yourself" (:
- colordrops 3y ago
  classic
e-neko 3y ago
I block ads because they're a security risk. I have encountered browser-based attacks from ads that are supposed to come from reputable ad brokers, including on YouTube once. As long as the brokers don't properly vet the ads, those malware bits are not getting into my computer.
- BLKNSLVR 3y ago
  I really don't understand how Google and Facebook lost control of their own platforms to the extent that they actually serve malicious advertising. Some people use the excuse of 'scale', and "can't monitor everything", but it's not like Google and Facebook don't have the resources to solve it, it's just that they have no motivation to solve it because it's not costing them anything to be a platform for malware and scams.
  - nobody9999 3y ago
    >it's just that they have no motivation to solve it because it's not costing them anything to be a platform for malware and scams. While that's true, it glosses over the fact that not only is it "not costing them money," it's bringing in revenue -- those malware/scams are paid-for ads after all, aren't they?
cm2012 3y ago
In that case, you better either subscribe to Youtube premium or not watch Youtube. It makes me sick when people "exploit" all of these amazing videos people have made on Youtube but refuse to help compensate them for their work by not at least subscribing to premium.
- llbeansandrice 3y ago
  There is so much content on YT where the creators don't even get paid though. Even a popular video that would make money can become demonetized (but still runs ads!!). I much prefer to subscribe via patreon or other forms to support creators more directly. This also ignores the in-video sponsorships and ads that creators will often include.
- kroltan 3y ago
  I pay for Premium. I also run an ad blocker, with extra rules to ban content I don't want to see, such as the terrible "shorts" mind-ebola, as well as a bunch of regexes for clickbait titles and a big ban list of channels that is updated often. SponsorBlock to remove baked-in advertisements and other misfeatures like interaction reminders. Now I am also using the beta DeArrow extension to disarm the thumbnails/titles a little bit by replacing them with random frames from the video. I think the hip way to say it is "I'm between jobs" currently, but when I had a stable income source I would do eventual donations to channels of my interest, which according to some creators even a single USD is way more than the average lifetime return of a single viewer due to ads/YTP. The only reason I haven't subscribed to Nebula / CuriosityStream instead, which seems to be a much healthier platform, is precisely because they advertise it so much. Also because I do appreciate more entertainment-y videos sometimes, not just edutainment.
  - electriclove 3y ago
    How do you block YouTube Shorts?
    - teddyh 3y ago
      <https://lawrencehook.com/rys/ https://lawrencehook.com/rys/> has a ton of options, and you can configure it to only block shorts, if you like.
mrguyorama 3y ago
The ENTIRE POINT of an advertisement is to extract wealth from you by getting you to spend money you wouldn't otherwise spend. If I want to learn about products and decide what to buy or try and solve a problem I have, advertising provides negative value to that, because advertising is inherently inaccurate and dishonest. Advertising is just a disgusting tax on capitalism by a few cartels. Get a billboard ban passed in your state. It's absolutely wonderful.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  Live in Maryland, can confirm. Last time I went out of state I felt visceral disgust.
joeythedolphin 3y ago
Bless you! In my late 30s, I went serious about getting ads out of my life. I noticed they were propaganda and brainwashing usually with seriously dark undertones. I stopped watching sports and TV, stopped reading news articles, stopped looking at billboard highway signs, etc. I had no idea how much the advertisements controlled how I felt and thought. I wish we could have stricter laws against advertisers. I believe people would be much happier if they took an honest look at their tradeoff of "free things" for advertisement glances. If people did this, I believe we could radically transform our society, and live in one where advertisement is small, and people give small amounts of money to the things they want to see.
- convalescindrey 3y ago
  > In my late 30s, I went serious about getting ads out of my life. Have you also cut everything out of your life that's financed through ads? So I'm expecting you to not use any Facebook, Google, Twitter, Youtube or other modern web content. I agree that ads are manipulative. That's their very essence. But they exist for a reason. Not to enrich people, but the uphold one side of a bargin. You can't expect everything to be for free.
  - _aavaa_ 3y ago
    Please spare us this moral preaching. Google is block ads because it hurts their bottom line. They could care less about the people who actually make the things people come to the platform for. All of the examples exist there to enrich those running the platform, and not for the benefit of those producing content. Those companies are worth what they’re worth now because they only pass on a pittance of the advertising money they draw in.
    - convalescindrey 3y ago
      I'm not even talking about those producing content. It's their choice to upload things. But the platform itself needs to be paid for as well. You think Youtube should provide video hosting for free? Facebook should provide their .. social network stuff for free? Twitter should serve tweets for free? No? Then either pay or watch ads.
visarga 3y ago
The fundamental problem of advertising is that they are selling other things than we need.
- colordrops 3y ago
  If you need something you don't need an ad to find that out.
  - RHSeeger 3y ago
    Need? Sure. But there are plenty of things that would make my life better that I learned about through ads. I do run an ad blocker, because the web has spent too long spreading viruses and malware through ads to be safe _not_ running one. But I don't mind ads conceptually; they just need to be safe, not obnoxious, and not take up more of my time than the placement is worth (ie, a 20s ad pre-roll on a 15 second video).
  - wruza 3y ago
    Ads can be useful for marketing moves, e.g. if you sell at discount or just a new product. Otherwise people would never know you have X too (or cheaper) because they remember that you didn’t last time. But every time I turn adblock off accidentally or on purpose, it’s the same generic shit unrelated to my obvious interests. Nasal sprays, supplements, car dealerships, be-a-programmer courses. I have a non-zero, negative interest in these.
Exuma 3y ago
I feel exactly the same as you about ads, and have built/owned my own ad network, as well as run nearly 90% of my business through ads. My business partners don't use ad block but I always use it, and they always tease me about it. Even if 1 second of my precious energy and mental well being is spent on hearing an ad accidentally I feel sick.
- ncr100 3y ago
  +1 about the 'waste my time filling my mind with unwanted trash' vibe. Like someone is killing me, suffocating me, taking my life away, or similar. Relates to "you are what you eat" ... I am what I think, experience, and am influenced to do. There's a difficult problem of maladaptation and misleading that, to me, is coming from the meaning resulting from the repeated and well-known answer to, "who gets the money in the end", these days. I believe society would benefit from discussing value-propositions of adtech and the attention economy. I wish that we would take more seriously the social impact of our businesses, the richness or depravity which our business activity imputes. More musing: I used to work in adtech, not by choice, was transferred to that dept. Worked in in-app purchase tech throughout my 6-years at that co. A trend in technology, now, seems to me to include: the crisis of Generative AI devaluing humans own ability (and effort) to recreate prior art, the dissatisfying Reddit value-exchange of creators feeling disrespected by site-operators, and the dissatisfying politics of left and right pursuits towards winning instead of promoting healthy human interdependence resulting in disaffected populace. So in short, I think pop technology has overshot the goal. Adtech is the simplest way to make money off provided-experiences, I believe. Subscriptions require too much buy-in, by comparison. Adtech is "just there". This view (of the reality of content creation) imposes, I believe, an expectation upon all of us (who want to create or consume content) that there is nothing better - no better approach to celebrating human experiences than +1'ing to share one's individual influence/record-of-attention...and to me it conflates the point of life as being something to do with short-term financial success. When it overlooks more true base human goals / pursuits of having babies, that happiness and comfort in safety, and the joy of growth. I'd like for emoji-reactions, +1's, impression counts to be segregated more formally by businesses, so the boards of managing companies and stockholders could see also see the social impact of businesses.
jawr 3y ago
Storing and streaming is an expensive model, and the subscription price is a premium in the majority of the world. It’s actually impressive that so much content (both incredible and bad) is available, for “free” to so many. I’m an ideal world there would be no ads, but we don’t live in one. If you have such disdain for ads you should probably pay the premium or not use YouTube.
euroderf 3y ago
> I grew up changing the channel on TV when ads came on, and ripping adverts out of magazines before sitting down to read them. Roger that. Always turning over a full-page ad to verify that no content text would be lost. And then there's the magazines that put the ads on right-hand pages and the content on left-hand pages.
convalescindrey 3y ago
> I block ads because they're psychological warfare that corporations wage against me. I don't care how unobtrusive the ads are. I hate ads as much as the next guy. But that's the economic model most of the web is built on. Anybody without a youtube premium subscription who rants about youtube ads is just hypocritical. How should this be financed? Either you give your money or your eyeballs. Nobody is going to work for free so you can watch cat videos. Please don't come with morals here. Expecting things for free is just as morally problematic.
- jkaplowitz 3y ago
  The ads interrupt the videos in really obtrusive ways: not at sensible commercial break points like TV ads or before the movie like in a movie theater, but frequently with timing that totally destroys the mood and experience of the surrounding seconds or minutes of the video. And they're getting longer and longer - I recently experienced half a minute of two back-to-back ads partway through an 8-9 minute video, and I'm not at all sure there wasn't also an ad before the video in addition to that. What an awful ratio of content to ads. It bothers me far less to have ads at the start of a video, between videos, or even at transition points between coherently separate segments within a video than what YouTube is now doing. That's not hypocritical. (Tangent: I do have a YouTube Premium subscription, but for irrelevant reasons we usually watch using my wife's account and she does not have one. So I see the ads anyway. Maybe that's the reverse kind of hypocrisy to the one you mean, where I'm wasting my money instead of being stingy?)
- wruza 3y ago
  This model not only profits from the aforementioned, but also aggressively competes with other activities people could participate in instead of watching ads mixed with highly monetized cat videos. The implied question here is what would happen if it fails? The answer is something else, not the end of the world. If it can’t be financed (or at least behave) otherwise, maybe it simply shouldn’t.
  - convalescindrey 3y ago
    I agree! So, stop using the service then. Apparently most people don't care though. So, whom are you criticizing? Youtube for providing a service that's populare despite their way of financing which you personally don't like, but others don't have a problem with? Or the other viewers for not joining your boycott?
spacemadness 3y ago
This reminds me of a softer version of the famous Bill Hicks standup routine on advertising that hilariously really pisses off people in advertising in Youtube comments. Advertising does a lot of good for the world according to people that majored in marketing. Alas, I have to agree with Bill on this one.
Halan 3y ago
Why not paying YT premium if you care that much about morality.
sourcepluck 3y ago
It was a joy to read this. Very well said! Your comment gave me one of those funny moments where you realise something that should have been obvious but you never saw it being done, or heard about it being done, and simply never thought of it... You can just rip the adverts out of magazines. I shall be indulging in this on the rare occasions that I end up reading something of that sort when I'm out and about. Cheers.
the_af 3y ago
> "I grew up changing the channel on TV when ads came on, and ripping adverts out of magazines before sitting down to read them." Ultimately, this is the thing that matters. Back when I was a kid, I muted the TV or changed the channel during the ads break. Imagine if the technology had existed back then to prevent me from muting the sound or changing channels! Imagine... just imagine if ads were broadcast directly to your brain like in Minority Report. Would people here also defend the advertisers, "you can't have stuff for free!". Ultimately, I don't want to see ads. I'm sorry that so much of the current "freemium" web wants me to see ads, because I don't. I pay for YouTube Premium because of several reasons, but before it I used an adblocker. I adblock the web. When broadcast-ads-to-your-brain tech becomes real, I sure hope I'll be able to block it too.
wernercd 3y ago
I block ads because they are annoying and YAAV (Yet Another Attack Vector) https://www.techdirt.com/2016/01/11/forbes-site-after-begging-you-turn-off-adblocker-serves-up-steaming-pile-malware-ads/ https://www.techdirt.com/2016/01/11/forbes-site-after-beggin...
adrr 3y ago
Do you pay for have an ad free experience? eg: YouTube Premium, Reddit Gold, etc
genocidicbunny 3y ago
> I have zero tolerance for ads of any sort. Amen. I see advertising as a personal affront to my dignity. I try to remove or deface as much advertising as I can in my life without getting into legally black areas.
kossTKR 3y ago
This is the kind of clear headed thought the world needs right now. Thank you! The world is run by scummy, greedy and straight up evil people and they have created a global public consciousness where that fact in itself is almost impossible to spread.
johnwheeler 3y ago
Advertising is how you make people aware of goods and services. It’s not inherently evil. No one is waging warfare with you, and advertisers aren’t completely depraved. How do people get away with saying this shit? This is crazy.
- eimrine 3y ago
  Have you bought anything from Youtube advertisement? Any time I tried to disable adblock in order to get acknowledged about what's up is advertizing I finished with immediate return. There is no category of goods which might be safely consumed from Youtube ads, probably because only idiots use to watch those ads nowadays.
- ncr100 3y ago
  The meaning of having someone show you a banana, and expecting that you are going to buy a banana, is dumb-making for the viewer. The expectation by others that you are as dumb as a gorilla takes you away from what you could become. So in that way it's evil. It divides you from what you could be.
soligern 3y ago
[flagged]
jraby3 3y ago
Money from ads provides a lot of free services. Email, TV, various websites, etc use ad money in part to pay for and provide content. Usually seems like a decent trade off. Not always but most of the time.
the8472 3y ago
In an ideal world a heavily modified form of ads could provide societal value. As a way to spread awareness that a problem has been solved, that there is someone who can provide actual utility. E.g. I recently talked to an acquaintance about cooking and told them there's a kitchen utensil that would solve a problem they were describing. Ads should be performed by 3rd parties (a mix of reviews and match-making?) that get paid by both the customer and the company whenever they facilitate a useful transaction. And pay the customer when they took up their time with useless information (thus incentivizing getting out of there way when they're not doing their job).
- krsdcbl 3y ago
  Better search would serve the same purpose i think
8bitsrule 3y ago
Right-on. EG Often-repeated chirpy jingles with imperative lyrics will hang around in heads for decades. Couple of oldies: "See the USA in your [??] ..." "You'll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with [??] ..." Carpenter's They Live was great pointing out how many 'OBEY's are buried in adverts. 30 years before, Vance Packard The Hidden Persuaders was published. 2010, Eldon Taylor's Mind Programming. Worse yet: TV tearing a great movie up into shreds punctuated with adverts (imagine doing that to famous paintings). I eventually dropped cable as a result. "Lower than pond-scum" = all the disciples of Freud's nephew Ed Bernays.
TX81Z 3y ago
Well, you just think that because you haven’t tried the latest sugar water flavor.
boesboes 3y ago
I've recently come to the realisation that this happens in the streets too. Every shop in my town is shouting at you to come in a buy crap with flashy signs and displays. Then recently I was in Münster (Germany) where they have some old-school facades for most shops that includes standardised lettering and zero advertisements. Its so much nicer.
pcdoodle 3y ago
I feel the same. Anyone else hit the mute button and look away? No impressions for you I say!
- ncr100 3y ago
  My mute button is getting a lot of use lately.
Andrex 3y ago
10 years ago I would have called you an extremist. 5 years ago I would have said ads are a necessary evil, but there's a lot of substance to your argument. Today, I almost completely agree. Fuck ads.
stepupmakeup 3y ago
Everything is psychological warfare designed to make people consume as much as possible, beyond advertising. Even something simlpe such as a sale (FOMO), or pricing (99 cents).
CatDadCode 3y ago
Amen to this. Love this attitude. Ads are the culmination of the worst parts of capitalist society.
judge2020 3y ago
[flagged]
- TechBro8615 3y ago
  Is it stealing if you watch the ad but close your eyes and plug your ears? Why does Google want to charge advertisers to show ads to someone so determined to ignore them? If anything, if they force me to watch their ads and I ignore them, then Google is the one stealing from the advertisers. I'm not going to buy an advertiser's product regardless of whether or not I'm forced to see its advertisement, and any counterargument to that must be built on the premise that advertisements can nonconsensually convince me to take action, in which case we're back to the beginning arguing about psychological warfare, where I certainly have a right to defend myself.
- RoyGBivCap 3y ago
  I realized a truism years ago: Anytime there are 3 or more parties involved in a business deal, at least one of them is getting fucked. And it's usually the least powerful party, which 99% of the time is just the ordinary user/consumer/taxpayer. However, not always. And sometimes it's two parties getting screwed. This happens a lot with government contracts. Where the people paid for it, the government got garbage, and the contractor(s) got rich. Here's is the quintessential example: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5... We paid $400 billion dollars to entrenched ISPs and got absolutely nothing for it. And advertising is almost always a 3 party business deal. The merchant. The advertiser. The unwitting public. Sometimes the merchant gets screwed. Sometimes it's the advertiser. But almost always the target audience. So when it comes to adblocking, I have zero sympathy for the advertiser or the merchant. I want zero advertisements in my life. But I get them anyway.
  - hibikir 3y ago
    Online advertising is even more fun than that: There's the merchant/website, the advertiser, the ad network, and the public. You can even add the advertiser's competitors! The public gets ads they don't want, the merchant can fake some of their traffic, or maybe it's the advertiser's competitors. The ad network is ultimately not all that interested in giving the advertiser that great a deal, or even if they are, they might still lose to those trying to steal ad revenue. You then see a company that was trying to sell ads to sports fans in indiana, that see that all their budget really went to ads placed in front of a bot farm from Philippines. I know of a failed alcohol startup who, after analysis, saw that 40% of their youtube marketing budget ended up attached to channels playing Peppa Pig. So sure, adblock away, but don't think that the consumer is the sole loser in the ads race: It's far worse than that.
behnamoh 3y ago
I’m curious: what’s the alternative to ads then? How do you find new stuff that you might need?
- MiddleEndian 3y ago
  lol
- strongly-typed 3y ago
  If I want to find new stuff then I would like to access a dedicated resource where all the promoted material could be promoted. Like a promotional book or email tab.
- tetraca 3y ago
  Without advertisements, you have to be bothered by things enough to actually want to implement or look up a solution. When it comes to banal consumer goods, if you can't think of a product on your own, you probably don't actually need it.
- jordanpg 3y ago
  The more important question is what can replace the ad-based business model of the internet? Other than paid subscriptions, which is only a partial solution.
  - jaredhallen 3y ago
    That's where my mind went, too. I think part of the answer is that a lot of it can be replaced by nothing. Some of this stuff driving all these ads doesn't even enrich our lives anyway.
  - Gordonjcp 3y ago
    Make it illegal to advertise, make it illegal to ask for paid subscriptions.
  - warble 3y ago
    Micro transactions
OrvalWintermute 3y ago
> Advertisers have no morals, they're completely depraved. They'll eagerly exploit a teenager's self-conscious body issues to sell useless beauty products. They sell sugar water to fat people and at every turn promote the rampant consumerist culture that is destroying our planet. They're lower than pond scum and I never want to see a single ad from them ever. Well said. While I recognize the right of people to put out messaging, advertisers seem to put out some of the most disgusting messaging ever. The recent pushing of incredibly obese people as all healthy and normal is a very dangerous phenom. Many of us could afford to lose a few pounds, but the idea that BMIs > 40 are healthy is going to get people killed for certain.
- gochi 3y ago
  Most people you see on the media are unhealthy. From the largest to the smallest, they're mostly all unhealthy and performing very dangerous things like prolonged dehydration. So it's interesting to see how much focus gets shifted onto obesity specifically while ignoring all else. It's all disgusting messaging, that young model selling you a perfume who hasn't eaten anything but an almond all day, that shredded guy telling you to buy compression shorts, those obese people telling you these pants stretch.
- occz 3y ago
  In all honesty, I think you're hearing the wrong thing when you hear what the fat acceptance-people are saying. Given the context that: - Dieting, on a population level, has proven to be an ineffective means of curbing obesity (the only statistically effective method is bariatric surgery) - The message that has, throughout the obesity epidemic, been pushed is that those that suffer from obesity are to blame for their own condition, and that they are essentially less valuable human beings for it in more than a few ways - Obesity appears to be, according to the best research currently available, a disorder of the brain Most of the fat acceptance people are merely trying to counteract the less valuable-part of how obese people are viewed in society. It's not a single-messaged group, and some of the things that some of them say is probably not a force for the better, but the message that obese people should not be scolded, chastised or in any other way treated negatively for their condition is actually a good message which any empathetic adult should follow.
amykhar 3y ago
I also block ads - BUT I do go pay for services that I use daily and get benefit from. Otherwise, the sites that I love would go away because it's not sustainable to employee people to write code and run servers without some sort of revenue.
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
  I paid for YouTube for a few months, even though I run everything through pihole, but found that I didn't get enough value to justify the cost. They're essentially charging 80% surplus to tack on a poor man's version of Spotify. I also don't get any other improvements to the service. If they'd just give me a feature that gives continuity of play between devices I'd pay the full monthly price without blinking. So many small QoL improvements that would make a huge difference but instead they're too busy removing voting buttons and testing obnoxious autoplay thumbnail ads.
  - asdff 3y ago
    You should be able to get api access with youtube premium
  - s17n 3y ago
    Hm, I have the opposite point of view: I don’t see why anybody uses Spotify when Youtube gives you the same thing for the same price and throws in ad free youtube at no extra charge.
    - asdff 3y ago
      I'm thinking about making the move off spotify. Does youtube premium let you locally download music?
      - gretch 3y ago
        Yes it does. Source: I just tried it on my phone right now. platform - iOS (don't know about others). Also, possibly not possible for all songs or countries in the world.
kibwen 3y ago
> I block ads because they're psychological warfare that corporations wage against me. Preach it. Blocking ads is tantamount to washing your hands or wearing a condom. It's simply good mental hygiene.
naikrovek 3y ago
I watched this happen over the last 2-3 decades. when click rates go down, advertisers always choose to make the ad more noticeable by making it more obnoxious. at first it was a very small movement every few seconds. then two. then more movement more frequently until there were full games in the space of an ad. sounds and video came. interstitial ads came, and full page ads which covered what you were reading as you scrolled. so, ad blockers were developed. at first they blocked simple URL patterns and that was enough to completely block ads from those who serve them. advertisers caught on and changed how they serve ads. rapidly. adblockers had to advance to keep up. where does it end? it can't end, because one side or the other will win and there are enough people who don't want that outcome so they keep fighting for their own side. things that are bad often follow this pattern, it seems. if you are in an arms race of any kind you are either someone or something who wants money or authority more than anything else, or you are fighting against that force. both sides feel 100% justified in their actions. everyone nearby suffers.
lolinder 3y ago
> It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money. A man would be annoyed if he found himself in a mob of millionaires, all holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, “Give me money.” Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. “Budge’s Boots are the Best” simply means “Give me money”; “Use Seraphic Soap” simply means “Give me money.” It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements. Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy gentlemen with coronets and country seats, men who are probably very particular about the artistic adornment of their own homes. They disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses. — G.K. Chesterton, The New Jersusalem http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/GKC_New_Jerusalem.html http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/GKC_New_Jerusalem.html
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- oatmeal1 3y ago
  > It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. Does this guy really not understand the difference between someone asking for money in exchange for nothing as opposed to asking for money in exchange for something of value? If Coca-Cola was advertising a Venmo address to send them money in exchange for nothing it would be much more annoying than what they currently do.
  - amatecha 3y ago
    Materially speaking, there's barely a difference. It's actually funny you mention pop/soda, because it's nearly free to produce. It's water with some flavour and sugar, in a plastic or glass bottle.
    - leetcrew 3y ago
      this is kind of disingenuous. the "bill of materials" for a bottle of soda may be measured in cents, but most of the $1.75 you pay at the store is the cost of getting it there and storing it. it's not a phenomenally profitable business. but besides that, people actually enjoy drinking soda. I certainly do from time to time, and I don't find the price unfair.
myworkthrowaway 3y ago
[flagged]
- immibis 3y ago
  Yes. Companies get paid to use psychological weapons on you. Would you tolerate a cafe in Ukraine having reduced prices because it informs Russia when soldiers are visiting, so Russia can use weapons on the soldiers (i.e. shoot them in the face) and Russia pays it for that?
- 26fingies 3y ago
  [dead]
- jai_ 3y ago
  I don't mean to be rude but your response really sounds like it could be turned into a dril Tweet. "advertising may be immoral, but it also helps pays for the content you watch, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not," https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762 https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  That's the companies choice. How I interact with the company via my user-agent is my choice.
  - convalescindrey 3y ago
    And what they do to circumvent what you are doing to avoid seeing the ads is also their choice.
- starbugs 3y ago
  If that was the case why would YT be tolerating adblockers for so long and initially not even be playing so many ads? Why would they change their tune now? Ah, could it be that they need to first get a market share that's so significant that they can actually enforce these rules, because there are only very limited options to choose from for people? Cry me a river about YT not being able to pay their bills. That's ridiculous.
notyourwork 3y ago
[flagged]
- dogleash 3y ago
  > The world is also out to get you if you classify digital advertisements as warfare. The world is out to get everyone. Just in ways we pretend don't count, so we don't have think too hard about it.
elijaht 3y ago
Do you pay for ad-free experiences when available?
- ants_everywhere 3y ago
  > Do you pay for ad-free experiences when available? Not OP, but I block ads for similar reasons. I do pay for ad-free experiences, but 1) often I'm shown ads anyway, and 2) there's typically no privacy-preserving way to pay. So in practice paying often implies a significant loss of control over managing your privacy So my personal take is that we're not there yet in terms of having robust viable alternatives to the ad-block experience.
  - BGZq7 3y ago
    > 2) there's typically no privacy-preserving way to pay This is exactly my problem. I log into as few services as possible and clear my cookies on browser exit. Of course this is supplemented by ad-blocking and blocking most 3rd-party scripts and cookies to avoid cross-site tracking. I have no way to pay for a service while maintaining that level of privacy.
delfinom 3y ago
>I block ads because they're psychological warfare that corporations wage against me. I don't care how unobtrusive the ads are. Lol, then there are ads like the Liberty Mutual ads. All I know is I will never, ever purchase car insurance from that shithole from having been made to watch their obnoxious ads on loop.
- squirtlebonflow 3y ago
  Even if the all other car insurance cost 10x as much I would not buy from Liberty Mutual, FUCK them
wesapien 3y ago
What's ironic in my case is that I actually liked looking at ads in print. It doesn't matter if it's newspaper, magazine or comics. I agree with the other commenter that ads have become so obtrusive that it's being dealt with in the same vein as malware. It's just malware from the techno oligarchy.
- permo-w 3y ago
  ads in print are one of the few ads I see as somewhat okay. if I want to go and look in the classified section of the newspaper for a car or a specific service or something else, fantastic. I can choose to do that and then look away and do something else. it isn't moving and flashing in my face, it isn't assaulting my ears, it isn't even a smell that's been carefully engineered to be recognisable from 30m down the street. it's still not ideal, especially when it's a full colour spread on the first page of the publication, but it's better. the other ads I see as acceptable are for example in the window of an estate agent or in a brochure for a particular service or set of services. stuff you have to actually consent to see
  - wesapien 3y ago
    When I was growing up in the east, we received boxes of recorded TV from our relatives in the USA. I loved watching all the ads especially the toy ads. All my friends wanted to hangout in our place because we have so much movies, cartoons and tv shows on VHS.
  - wesapien 3y ago
    They also sent us boxes and boxes of magazines. We had a stack of National Geographic magazines that was at least seven feet high. We had Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Popular Science/Mechanics, and others I can't remember now.
- kroltan 3y ago
  There is a name that we used, for a few precious years, that describes most digital advertisement nowadays: spyware! (And uh, yes, adware, but that's usually the programs themselves. A website with intrusive ads is adware, but the ads are spywares)

zeekaran 3y ago

I wish this view was mainstream. I also used to change the channel when ads came on, or at least muted and briefly did something else. I will never tolerate ads, and especially never pay to be advertized at.

berniedurfee 3y ago
I still do, though I hardly watch much regular TV anymore. Can’t listen to a radio either, not enough music in between stations to get away from ads. I pay for a few subscription services and get my entertainment _mostly_ ad free. Unfortunately there’s no similar subscription I can buy to escape advertising as I walk down the street.

RoyGBivCap 3y ago

>To those men in their oddly similar dark suits, their cold eyes weighing and dismissing everything, the people of this valley were a foe to be defeated. As he thought of it, Dasein realized all customers were "The Enemy" to these men. Davidson and his kind were pitted against each other, yes, competitive, but among themselves they betrayed that they were pitted more against the masses who existed beyond that inner ring of knowledgeable financial operation. >The alignment was apparent in everything they did, in their words as well as their actions. They spoke of "package grab level" and "container flash time" -- of "puff limit" and "acceptance threshold." It was an "in" language of militarylike maneuvering and combat. They knew which height on a shelf was most apt to make a customer grab an item. They knew the "flash time" -- the shelf width needed for certain containers. They knew how much empty air could be "puffed" into a package to make it appear a greater bargain. they knew how much price and package manipulation the customer would accept without jarring him into a "rejection pattern." >And we're their spies, Dasein thought. the psychiatrists and psychologists - all the "social scientists" we're the espionage arm. The Santaroga Barrier, Frank Herbert, 1968

flohofwoe 3y ago

> psychological warfare that corporations wage against me I see them as environmental pollution that affects the mind instead of the body (this also includes offline ads btw, I actually wish there were adblockers for the real world).

Zak 3y ago
This seems like one of the best possible applications for consumer AR. I'd love glasses that would replace display cute animals on top of real-world ads.
- nneonneo 3y ago
  Unfortunately, given current trends, you're going to get glasses that put ads on top of cute animals instead.
  - 20after4 3y ago
    We are quickly headed toward the dystopia exhibited in the movie minority report. Actually we're already there for the most part.
_aavaa_ 3y ago
I think you're being far too generous. Pollution is something that occurs because it's too costly to prevent, or the people producing the pollution simply don't care. The effect advertising has one you isn't some externality that the advertisers couldn't be bothered fixing, the effect is the whole point.

pembrook 3y ago

[flagged]

lolinder 3y ago
They're making a much broader point about advertising in general, while you're fixated on internet advertising. What benefit do freeway billboards provide to my life? How about the spam mail I get in my mailbox? The bright and flashy signs for businesses along the road? Every time I'm on the freeway I pass a few dozen ads selling liposuction or some other expensive and unhealthy "beauty" treatment. What value are those companies bringing to the world, and why should I have to put up with their ads? Just because someone bought property adjacent to the freeway?

interroboink 3y ago

If you haven't seen it, you might like this Bill Hicks standup routine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY "If anyone here is in advertising or marketing ... kill yourself" (:

colordrops 3y ago
classic

e-neko 3y ago

I block ads because they're a security risk. I have encountered browser-based attacks from ads that are supposed to come from reputable ad brokers, including on YouTube once. As long as the brokers don't properly vet the ads, those malware bits are not getting into my computer.

BLKNSLVR 3y ago
I really don't understand how Google and Facebook lost control of their own platforms to the extent that they actually serve malicious advertising. Some people use the excuse of 'scale', and "can't monitor everything", but it's not like Google and Facebook don't have the resources to solve it, it's just that they have no motivation to solve it because it's not costing them anything to be a platform for malware and scams.
- nobody9999 3y ago
  >it's just that they have no motivation to solve it because it's not costing them anything to be a platform for malware and scams. While that's true, it glosses over the fact that not only is it "not costing them money," it's bringing in revenue -- those malware/scams are paid-for ads after all, aren't they?

cm2012 3y ago

In that case, you better either subscribe to Youtube premium or not watch Youtube. It makes me sick when people "exploit" all of these amazing videos people have made on Youtube but refuse to help compensate them for their work by not at least subscribing to premium.

llbeansandrice 3y ago
There is so much content on YT where the creators don't even get paid though. Even a popular video that would make money can become demonetized (but still runs ads!!). I much prefer to subscribe via patreon or other forms to support creators more directly. This also ignores the in-video sponsorships and ads that creators will often include.
kroltan 3y ago
I pay for Premium. I also run an ad blocker, with extra rules to ban content I don't want to see, such as the terrible "shorts" mind-ebola, as well as a bunch of regexes for clickbait titles and a big ban list of channels that is updated often. SponsorBlock to remove baked-in advertisements and other misfeatures like interaction reminders. Now I am also using the beta DeArrow extension to disarm the thumbnails/titles a little bit by replacing them with random frames from the video. I think the hip way to say it is "I'm between jobs" currently, but when I had a stable income source I would do eventual donations to channels of my interest, which according to some creators even a single USD is way more than the average lifetime return of a single viewer due to ads/YTP. The only reason I haven't subscribed to Nebula / CuriosityStream instead, which seems to be a much healthier platform, is precisely because they advertise it so much. Also because I do appreciate more entertainment-y videos sometimes, not just edutainment.
- electriclove 3y ago
  How do you block YouTube Shorts?
  - teddyh 3y ago
    <https://lawrencehook.com/rys/ https://lawrencehook.com/rys/> has a ton of options, and you can configure it to only block shorts, if you like.

mrguyorama 3y ago

The ENTIRE POINT of an advertisement is to extract wealth from you by getting you to spend money you wouldn't otherwise spend. If I want to learn about products and decide what to buy or try and solve a problem I have, advertising provides negative value to that, because advertising is inherently inaccurate and dishonest. Advertising is just a disgusting tax on capitalism by a few cartels. Get a billboard ban passed in your state. It's absolutely wonderful.

CatWChainsaw 3y ago
Live in Maryland, can confirm. Last time I went out of state I felt visceral disgust.

joeythedolphin 3y ago

Bless you! In my late 30s, I went serious about getting ads out of my life. I noticed they were propaganda and brainwashing usually with seriously dark undertones. I stopped watching sports and TV, stopped reading news articles, stopped looking at billboard highway signs, etc. I had no idea how much the advertisements controlled how I felt and thought. I wish we could have stricter laws against advertisers. I believe people would be much happier if they took an honest look at their tradeoff of "free things" for advertisement glances. If people did this, I believe we could radically transform our society, and live in one where advertisement is small, and people give small amounts of money to the things they want to see.

convalescindrey 3y ago
> In my late 30s, I went serious about getting ads out of my life. Have you also cut everything out of your life that's financed through ads? So I'm expecting you to not use any Facebook, Google, Twitter, Youtube or other modern web content. I agree that ads are manipulative. That's their very essence. But they exist for a reason. Not to enrich people, but the uphold one side of a bargin. You can't expect everything to be for free.
- _aavaa_ 3y ago
  Please spare us this moral preaching. Google is block ads because it hurts their bottom line. They could care less about the people who actually make the things people come to the platform for. All of the examples exist there to enrich those running the platform, and not for the benefit of those producing content. Those companies are worth what they’re worth now because they only pass on a pittance of the advertising money they draw in.
  - convalescindrey 3y ago
    I'm not even talking about those producing content. It's their choice to upload things. But the platform itself needs to be paid for as well. You think Youtube should provide video hosting for free? Facebook should provide their .. social network stuff for free? Twitter should serve tweets for free? No? Then either pay or watch ads.

visarga 3y ago

The fundamental problem of advertising is that they are selling other things than we need.

colordrops 3y ago
If you need something you don't need an ad to find that out.
- RHSeeger 3y ago
  Need? Sure. But there are plenty of things that would make my life better that I learned about through ads. I do run an ad blocker, because the web has spent too long spreading viruses and malware through ads to be safe _not_ running one. But I don't mind ads conceptually; they just need to be safe, not obnoxious, and not take up more of my time than the placement is worth (ie, a 20s ad pre-roll on a 15 second video).
- wruza 3y ago
  Ads can be useful for marketing moves, e.g. if you sell at discount or just a new product. Otherwise people would never know you have X too (or cheaper) because they remember that you didn’t last time. But every time I turn adblock off accidentally or on purpose, it’s the same generic shit unrelated to my obvious interests. Nasal sprays, supplements, car dealerships, be-a-programmer courses. I have a non-zero, negative interest in these.

Exuma 3y ago

I feel exactly the same as you about ads, and have built/owned my own ad network, as well as run nearly 90% of my business through ads. My business partners don't use ad block but I always use it, and they always tease me about it. Even if 1 second of my precious energy and mental well being is spent on hearing an ad accidentally I feel sick.

ncr100 3y ago
+1 about the 'waste my time filling my mind with unwanted trash' vibe. Like someone is killing me, suffocating me, taking my life away, or similar. Relates to "you are what you eat" ... I am what I think, experience, and am influenced to do. There's a difficult problem of maladaptation and misleading that, to me, is coming from the meaning resulting from the repeated and well-known answer to, "who gets the money in the end", these days. I believe society would benefit from discussing value-propositions of adtech and the attention economy. I wish that we would take more seriously the social impact of our businesses, the richness or depravity which our business activity imputes. More musing: I used to work in adtech, not by choice, was transferred to that dept. Worked in in-app purchase tech throughout my 6-years at that co. A trend in technology, now, seems to me to include: the crisis of Generative AI devaluing humans own ability (and effort) to recreate prior art, the dissatisfying Reddit value-exchange of creators feeling disrespected by site-operators, and the dissatisfying politics of left and right pursuits towards winning instead of promoting healthy human interdependence resulting in disaffected populace. So in short, I think pop technology has overshot the goal. Adtech is the simplest way to make money off provided-experiences, I believe. Subscriptions require too much buy-in, by comparison. Adtech is "just there". This view (of the reality of content creation) imposes, I believe, an expectation upon all of us (who want to create or consume content) that there is nothing better - no better approach to celebrating human experiences than +1'ing to share one's individual influence/record-of-attention...and to me it conflates the point of life as being something to do with short-term financial success. When it overlooks more true base human goals / pursuits of having babies, that happiness and comfort in safety, and the joy of growth. I'd like for emoji-reactions, +1's, impression counts to be segregated more formally by businesses, so the boards of managing companies and stockholders could see also see the social impact of businesses.

jawr 3y ago

Storing and streaming is an expensive model, and the subscription price is a premium in the majority of the world. It’s actually impressive that so much content (both incredible and bad) is available, for “free” to so many. I’m an ideal world there would be no ads, but we don’t live in one. If you have such disdain for ads you should probably pay the premium or not use YouTube.

euroderf 3y ago

> I grew up changing the channel on TV when ads came on, and ripping adverts out of magazines before sitting down to read them. Roger that. Always turning over a full-page ad to verify that no content text would be lost. And then there's the magazines that put the ads on right-hand pages and the content on left-hand pages.

convalescindrey 3y ago

> I block ads because they're psychological warfare that corporations wage against me. I don't care how unobtrusive the ads are. I hate ads as much as the next guy. But that's the economic model most of the web is built on. Anybody without a youtube premium subscription who rants about youtube ads is just hypocritical. How should this be financed? Either you give your money or your eyeballs. Nobody is going to work for free so you can watch cat videos. Please don't come with morals here. Expecting things for free is just as morally problematic.

jkaplowitz 3y ago
The ads interrupt the videos in really obtrusive ways: not at sensible commercial break points like TV ads or before the movie like in a movie theater, but frequently with timing that totally destroys the mood and experience of the surrounding seconds or minutes of the video. And they're getting longer and longer - I recently experienced half a minute of two back-to-back ads partway through an 8-9 minute video, and I'm not at all sure there wasn't also an ad before the video in addition to that. What an awful ratio of content to ads. It bothers me far less to have ads at the start of a video, between videos, or even at transition points between coherently separate segments within a video than what YouTube is now doing. That's not hypocritical. (Tangent: I do have a YouTube Premium subscription, but for irrelevant reasons we usually watch using my wife's account and she does not have one. So I see the ads anyway. Maybe that's the reverse kind of hypocrisy to the one you mean, where I'm wasting my money instead of being stingy?)
wruza 3y ago
This model not only profits from the aforementioned, but also aggressively competes with other activities people could participate in instead of watching ads mixed with highly monetized cat videos. The implied question here is what would happen if it fails? The answer is something else, not the end of the world. If it can’t be financed (or at least behave) otherwise, maybe it simply shouldn’t.
- convalescindrey 3y ago
  I agree! So, stop using the service then. Apparently most people don't care though. So, whom are you criticizing? Youtube for providing a service that's populare despite their way of financing which you personally don't like, but others don't have a problem with? Or the other viewers for not joining your boycott?

spacemadness 3y ago

This reminds me of a softer version of the famous Bill Hicks standup routine on advertising that hilariously really pisses off people in advertising in Youtube comments. Advertising does a lot of good for the world according to people that majored in marketing. Alas, I have to agree with Bill on this one.

Halan 3y ago

Why not paying YT premium if you care that much about morality.

sourcepluck 3y ago

It was a joy to read this. Very well said! Your comment gave me one of those funny moments where you realise something that should have been obvious but you never saw it being done, or heard about it being done, and simply never thought of it... You can just rip the adverts out of magazines. I shall be indulging in this on the rare occasions that I end up reading something of that sort when I'm out and about. Cheers.

the_af 3y ago

> "I grew up changing the channel on TV when ads came on, and ripping adverts out of magazines before sitting down to read them." Ultimately, this is the thing that matters. Back when I was a kid, I muted the TV or changed the channel during the ads break. Imagine if the technology had existed back then to prevent me from muting the sound or changing channels! Imagine... just imagine if ads were broadcast directly to your brain like in Minority Report. Would people here also defend the advertisers, "you can't have stuff for free!". Ultimately, I don't want to see ads. I'm sorry that so much of the current "freemium" web wants me to see ads, because I don't. I pay for YouTube Premium because of several reasons, but before it I used an adblocker. I adblock the web. When broadcast-ads-to-your-brain tech becomes real, I sure hope I'll be able to block it too.

wernercd 3y ago

I block ads because they are annoying and YAAV (Yet Another Attack Vector) https://www.techdirt.com/2016/01/11/forbes-site-after-begging-you-turn-off-adblocker-serves-up-steaming-pile-malware-ads/ https://www.techdirt.com/2016/01/11/forbes-site-after-beggin...

adrr 3y ago

Do you pay for have an ad free experience? eg: YouTube Premium, Reddit Gold, etc

genocidicbunny 3y ago

> I have zero tolerance for ads of any sort. Amen. I see advertising as a personal affront to my dignity. I try to remove or deface as much advertising as I can in my life without getting into legally black areas.

kossTKR 3y ago

This is the kind of clear headed thought the world needs right now. Thank you! The world is run by scummy, greedy and straight up evil people and they have created a global public consciousness where that fact in itself is almost impossible to spread.

johnwheeler 3y ago

Advertising is how you make people aware of goods and services. It’s not inherently evil. No one is waging warfare with you, and advertisers aren’t completely depraved. How do people get away with saying this shit? This is crazy.

eimrine 3y ago
Have you bought anything from Youtube advertisement? Any time I tried to disable adblock in order to get acknowledged about what's up is advertizing I finished with immediate return. There is no category of goods which might be safely consumed from Youtube ads, probably because only idiots use to watch those ads nowadays.
ncr100 3y ago
The meaning of having someone show you a banana, and expecting that you are going to buy a banana, is dumb-making for the viewer. The expectation by others that you are as dumb as a gorilla takes you away from what you could become. So in that way it's evil. It divides you from what you could be.

soligern 3y ago

[flagged]

jraby3 3y ago

Money from ads provides a lot of free services. Email, TV, various websites, etc use ad money in part to pay for and provide content. Usually seems like a decent trade off. Not always but most of the time.

the8472 3y ago

In an ideal world a heavily modified form of ads could provide societal value. As a way to spread awareness that a problem has been solved, that there is someone who can provide actual utility. E.g. I recently talked to an acquaintance about cooking and told them there's a kitchen utensil that would solve a problem they were describing. Ads should be performed by 3rd parties (a mix of reviews and match-making?) that get paid by both the customer and the company whenever they facilitate a useful transaction. And pay the customer when they took up their time with useless information (thus incentivizing getting out of there way when they're not doing their job).

krsdcbl 3y ago
Better search would serve the same purpose i think

8bitsrule 3y ago

Right-on. EG Often-repeated chirpy jingles with imperative lyrics will hang around in heads for decades. Couple of oldies: "See the USA in your [??] ..." "You'll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with [??] ..." Carpenter's They Live was great pointing out how many 'OBEY's are buried in adverts. 30 years before, Vance Packard The Hidden Persuaders was published. 2010, Eldon Taylor's Mind Programming. Worse yet: TV tearing a great movie up into shreds punctuated with adverts (imagine doing that to famous paintings). I eventually dropped cable as a result. "Lower than pond-scum" = all the disciples of Freud's nephew Ed Bernays.

TX81Z 3y ago

Well, you just think that because you haven’t tried the latest sugar water flavor.

boesboes 3y ago

I've recently come to the realisation that this happens in the streets too. Every shop in my town is shouting at you to come in a buy crap with flashy signs and displays. Then recently I was in Münster (Germany) where they have some old-school facades for most shops that includes standardised lettering and zero advertisements. Its so much nicer.

pcdoodle 3y ago

I feel the same. Anyone else hit the mute button and look away? No impressions for you I say!

ncr100 3y ago
My mute button is getting a lot of use lately.

Andrex 3y ago

10 years ago I would have called you an extremist. 5 years ago I would have said ads are a necessary evil, but there's a lot of substance to your argument. Today, I almost completely agree. Fuck ads.

stepupmakeup 3y ago

Everything is psychological warfare designed to make people consume as much as possible, beyond advertising. Even something simlpe such as a sale (FOMO), or pricing (99 cents).

CatDadCode 3y ago

Amen to this. Love this attitude. Ads are the culmination of the worst parts of capitalist society.

judge2020 3y ago

[flagged]

TechBro8615 3y ago
Is it stealing if you watch the ad but close your eyes and plug your ears? Why does Google want to charge advertisers to show ads to someone so determined to ignore them? If anything, if they force me to watch their ads and I ignore them, then Google is the one stealing from the advertisers. I'm not going to buy an advertiser's product regardless of whether or not I'm forced to see its advertisement, and any counterargument to that must be built on the premise that advertisements can nonconsensually convince me to take action, in which case we're back to the beginning arguing about psychological warfare, where I certainly have a right to defend myself.
RoyGBivCap 3y ago
I realized a truism years ago: Anytime there are 3 or more parties involved in a business deal, at least one of them is getting fucked. And it's usually the least powerful party, which 99% of the time is just the ordinary user/consumer/taxpayer. However, not always. And sometimes it's two parties getting screwed. This happens a lot with government contracts. Where the people paid for it, the government got garbage, and the contractor(s) got rich. Here's is the quintessential example: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5... We paid $400 billion dollars to entrenched ISPs and got absolutely nothing for it. And advertising is almost always a 3 party business deal. The merchant. The advertiser. The unwitting public. Sometimes the merchant gets screwed. Sometimes it's the advertiser. But almost always the target audience. So when it comes to adblocking, I have zero sympathy for the advertiser or the merchant. I want zero advertisements in my life. But I get them anyway.
- hibikir 3y ago
  Online advertising is even more fun than that: There's the merchant/website, the advertiser, the ad network, and the public. You can even add the advertiser's competitors! The public gets ads they don't want, the merchant can fake some of their traffic, or maybe it's the advertiser's competitors. The ad network is ultimately not all that interested in giving the advertiser that great a deal, or even if they are, they might still lose to those trying to steal ad revenue. You then see a company that was trying to sell ads to sports fans in indiana, that see that all their budget really went to ads placed in front of a bot farm from Philippines. I know of a failed alcohol startup who, after analysis, saw that 40% of their youtube marketing budget ended up attached to channels playing Peppa Pig. So sure, adblock away, but don't think that the consumer is the sole loser in the ads race: It's far worse than that.

behnamoh 3y ago

I’m curious: what’s the alternative to ads then? How do you find new stuff that you might need?

MiddleEndian 3y ago
lol
strongly-typed 3y ago
If I want to find new stuff then I would like to access a dedicated resource where all the promoted material could be promoted. Like a promotional book or email tab.
tetraca 3y ago
Without advertisements, you have to be bothered by things enough to actually want to implement or look up a solution. When it comes to banal consumer goods, if you can't think of a product on your own, you probably don't actually need it.
jordanpg 3y ago
The more important question is what can replace the ad-based business model of the internet? Other than paid subscriptions, which is only a partial solution.
- jaredhallen 3y ago
  That's where my mind went, too. I think part of the answer is that a lot of it can be replaced by nothing. Some of this stuff driving all these ads doesn't even enrich our lives anyway.
- Gordonjcp 3y ago
  Make it illegal to advertise, make it illegal to ask for paid subscriptions.
- warble 3y ago
  Micro transactions

OrvalWintermute 3y ago

> Advertisers have no morals, they're completely depraved. They'll eagerly exploit a teenager's self-conscious body issues to sell useless beauty products. They sell sugar water to fat people and at every turn promote the rampant consumerist culture that is destroying our planet. They're lower than pond scum and I never want to see a single ad from them ever. Well said. While I recognize the right of people to put out messaging, advertisers seem to put out some of the most disgusting messaging ever. The recent pushing of incredibly obese people as all healthy and normal is a very dangerous phenom. Many of us could afford to lose a few pounds, but the idea that BMIs > 40 are healthy is going to get people killed for certain.

gochi 3y ago
Most people you see on the media are unhealthy. From the largest to the smallest, they're mostly all unhealthy and performing very dangerous things like prolonged dehydration. So it's interesting to see how much focus gets shifted onto obesity specifically while ignoring all else. It's all disgusting messaging, that young model selling you a perfume who hasn't eaten anything but an almond all day, that shredded guy telling you to buy compression shorts, those obese people telling you these pants stretch.
occz 3y ago
In all honesty, I think you're hearing the wrong thing when you hear what the fat acceptance-people are saying. Given the context that: - Dieting, on a population level, has proven to be an ineffective means of curbing obesity (the only statistically effective method is bariatric surgery) - The message that has, throughout the obesity epidemic, been pushed is that those that suffer from obesity are to blame for their own condition, and that they are essentially less valuable human beings for it in more than a few ways - Obesity appears to be, according to the best research currently available, a disorder of the brain Most of the fat acceptance people are merely trying to counteract the less valuable-part of how obese people are viewed in society. It's not a single-messaged group, and some of the things that some of them say is probably not a force for the better, but the message that obese people should not be scolded, chastised or in any other way treated negatively for their condition is actually a good message which any empathetic adult should follow.

amykhar 3y ago

I also block ads - BUT I do go pay for services that I use daily and get benefit from. Otherwise, the sites that I love would go away because it's not sustainable to employee people to write code and run servers without some sort of revenue.

KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
I paid for YouTube for a few months, even though I run everything through pihole, but found that I didn't get enough value to justify the cost. They're essentially charging 80% surplus to tack on a poor man's version of Spotify. I also don't get any other improvements to the service. If they'd just give me a feature that gives continuity of play between devices I'd pay the full monthly price without blinking. So many small QoL improvements that would make a huge difference but instead they're too busy removing voting buttons and testing obnoxious autoplay thumbnail ads.
- asdff 3y ago
  You should be able to get api access with youtube premium
- s17n 3y ago
  Hm, I have the opposite point of view: I don’t see why anybody uses Spotify when Youtube gives you the same thing for the same price and throws in ad free youtube at no extra charge.
  - asdff 3y ago
    I'm thinking about making the move off spotify. Does youtube premium let you locally download music?
    - gretch 3y ago
      Yes it does. Source: I just tried it on my phone right now. platform - iOS (don't know about others). Also, possibly not possible for all songs or countries in the world.

kibwen 3y ago

> I block ads because they're psychological warfare that corporations wage against me. Preach it. Blocking ads is tantamount to washing your hands or wearing a condom. It's simply good mental hygiene.

naikrovek 3y ago

I watched this happen over the last 2-3 decades. when click rates go down, advertisers always choose to make the ad more noticeable by making it more obnoxious. at first it was a very small movement every few seconds. then two. then more movement more frequently until there were full games in the space of an ad. sounds and video came. interstitial ads came, and full page ads which covered what you were reading as you scrolled. so, ad blockers were developed. at first they blocked simple URL patterns and that was enough to completely block ads from those who serve them. advertisers caught on and changed how they serve ads. rapidly. adblockers had to advance to keep up. where does it end? it can't end, because one side or the other will win and there are enough people who don't want that outcome so they keep fighting for their own side. things that are bad often follow this pattern, it seems. if you are in an arms race of any kind you are either someone or something who wants money or authority more than anything else, or you are fighting against that force. both sides feel 100% justified in their actions. everyone nearby suffers.

lolinder 3y ago

> It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money. A man would be annoyed if he found himself in a mob of millionaires, all holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, “Give me money.” Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. “Budge’s Boots are the Best” simply means “Give me money”; “Use Seraphic Soap” simply means “Give me money.” It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements. Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy gentlemen with coronets and country seats, men who are probably very particular about the artistic adornment of their own homes. They disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses. — G.K. Chesterton, The New Jersusalem http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/GKC_New_Jerusalem.html http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/GKC_New_Jerusalem.html

deleted 3y ago
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oatmeal1 3y ago
> It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. Does this guy really not understand the difference between someone asking for money in exchange for nothing as opposed to asking for money in exchange for something of value? If Coca-Cola was advertising a Venmo address to send them money in exchange for nothing it would be much more annoying than what they currently do.
- amatecha 3y ago
  Materially speaking, there's barely a difference. It's actually funny you mention pop/soda, because it's nearly free to produce. It's water with some flavour and sugar, in a plastic or glass bottle.
  - leetcrew 3y ago
    this is kind of disingenuous. the "bill of materials" for a bottle of soda may be measured in cents, but most of the $1.75 you pay at the store is the cost of getting it there and storing it. it's not a phenomenally profitable business. but besides that, people actually enjoy drinking soda. I certainly do from time to time, and I don't find the price unfair.

myworkthrowaway 3y ago

[flagged]

immibis 3y ago
Yes. Companies get paid to use psychological weapons on you. Would you tolerate a cafe in Ukraine having reduced prices because it informs Russia when soldiers are visiting, so Russia can use weapons on the soldiers (i.e. shoot them in the face) and Russia pays it for that?
26fingies 3y ago
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jai_ 3y ago
I don't mean to be rude but your response really sounds like it could be turned into a dril Tweet. "advertising may be immoral, but it also helps pays for the content you watch, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not," https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762 https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762
candiddevmike 3y ago
That's the companies choice. How I interact with the company via my user-agent is my choice.
- convalescindrey 3y ago
  And what they do to circumvent what you are doing to avoid seeing the ads is also their choice.
starbugs 3y ago
If that was the case why would YT be tolerating adblockers for so long and initially not even be playing so many ads? Why would they change their tune now? Ah, could it be that they need to first get a market share that's so significant that they can actually enforce these rules, because there are only very limited options to choose from for people? Cry me a river about YT not being able to pay their bills. That's ridiculous.

notyourwork 3y ago

[flagged]

dogleash 3y ago
> The world is also out to get you if you classify digital advertisements as warfare. The world is out to get everyone. Just in ways we pretend don't count, so we don't have think too hard about it.

elijaht 3y ago

Do you pay for ad-free experiences when available?

ants_everywhere 3y ago
> Do you pay for ad-free experiences when available? Not OP, but I block ads for similar reasons. I do pay for ad-free experiences, but 1) often I'm shown ads anyway, and 2) there's typically no privacy-preserving way to pay. So in practice paying often implies a significant loss of control over managing your privacy So my personal take is that we're not there yet in terms of having robust viable alternatives to the ad-block experience.
- BGZq7 3y ago
  > 2) there's typically no privacy-preserving way to pay This is exactly my problem. I log into as few services as possible and clear my cookies on browser exit. Of course this is supplemented by ad-blocking and blocking most 3rd-party scripts and cookies to avoid cross-site tracking. I have no way to pay for a service while maintaining that level of privacy.

delfinom 3y ago

>I block ads because they're psychological warfare that corporations wage against me. I don't care how unobtrusive the ads are. Lol, then there are ads like the Liberty Mutual ads. All I know is I will never, ever purchase car insurance from that shithole from having been made to watch their obnoxious ads on loop.

squirtlebonflow 3y ago
Even if the all other car insurance cost 10x as much I would not buy from Liberty Mutual, FUCK them

wesapien 3y ago

What's ironic in my case is that I actually liked looking at ads in print. It doesn't matter if it's newspaper, magazine or comics. I agree with the other commenter that ads have become so obtrusive that it's being dealt with in the same vein as malware. It's just malware from the techno oligarchy.

permo-w 3y ago
ads in print are one of the few ads I see as somewhat okay. if I want to go and look in the classified section of the newspaper for a car or a specific service or something else, fantastic. I can choose to do that and then look away and do something else. it isn't moving and flashing in my face, it isn't assaulting my ears, it isn't even a smell that's been carefully engineered to be recognisable from 30m down the street. it's still not ideal, especially when it's a full colour spread on the first page of the publication, but it's better. the other ads I see as acceptable are for example in the window of an estate agent or in a brochure for a particular service or set of services. stuff you have to actually consent to see
- wesapien 3y ago
  When I was growing up in the east, we received boxes of recorded TV from our relatives in the USA. I loved watching all the ads especially the toy ads. All my friends wanted to hangout in our place because we have so much movies, cartoons and tv shows on VHS.
- wesapien 3y ago
  They also sent us boxes and boxes of magazines. We had a stack of National Geographic magazines that was at least seven feet high. We had Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Popular Science/Mechanics, and others I can't remember now.
kroltan 3y ago
There is a name that we used, for a few precious years, that describes most digital advertisement nowadays: spyware! (And uh, yes, adware, but that's usually the programs themselves. A website with intrusive ads is adware, but the ads are spywares)