Wondering how much of the Lemmy user base wouldn’t use an adblocker. If you do use one what other blocking do you use to circumvent data collection, YouTube and reddit front ends and things alike?
I don’t use one because I feel that the more people use ad blockers, the more intrusive and annoying the ads will be for people that aren’t using one, and less overall content will be available for free. The only ads that I can’t stand are video ads, and that’s why I have YouTube premium.
The more intrusive and annoying the ads become, the more people will retaliate. This is war. eventually we will smash out those annoying ads. somehow. There must be some other more civilized pleasant method for companies to make profit. This is getting out of hand.
well I remember in the late 1970s when cable TV became a thing, the concept was you pay for it so there are no ads.
Then guess what happened?
few years later we were still paying for cable TV and then they started including ads. We were outraged at first but then it became normal and we got used to it.
Now YouTube is doing it, including ads even though we’re paying for it
Amazon prime is doing it, including ads even though we’re paying for it
and other streaming services, I can’t name everything but pretty much every company is doing it. Even though people are paying for the service, there are still ads.
YouTube is not doing it, I use YT premium and I never get a single ad. Ever.
And I know that ad supported cheaper versions of a lot of streaming services are becoming more common, but, to my knowledge, all of them have an ad free option. It may be more expensive than their cheapest tier, but they do have an ad free option.
If you want to see the internet less dependent on ads, the only way to do that is to be willing to pay for it yourself. Because streaming video content online is actually extremely expensive to do. And someone has to pay for it. If you as the consumer aren’t paying for it then someone has to pay for it on your behalf. They’re only going to do that if they can get something out of the deal.
YouTube subscription does have traction… And like I said, every streaming service has an ad free option. Some of them have an ad supported cheaper option, but they all have some option that allows you to consume the content without ads. It seems like you’re kind of just talking out of your ass.
There’s an economics of everything at play here, broadcast television had ads, cable TV at first didn’t but it was also significantly more expensive. Cable TV wanted to lower prices to attract more customers, and in order to do that they started receiving more money from advertisers to make up the difference. Not all of the cable TV channels did this. However, even to this very day there are plenty of cable TV channels that don’t have ads. They are considered the premium channels that you have to pay extra for.
The same thing is going to continue to be true on the internet as well, You will always have options to avoid ads by paying for the content that you want.
If you do use one what other blocking do you productively use to circumvent data collection, YouTube and reddit front ends and things alike?
I use an ad blocker, and in addition also use Pi-hole for network-wide domain based tracker blocking. I use tailscale to use this on my phone, but also have Tracker Control (the real version installed from F-Droid) to do something similar if for some reason I need to disable Tailscale (only one can be used at once, as they both use the VPN method).
Ads are what have been keeping the internet largely free. They don’t really bother me anyways. Both the creator/site/company and the consumer benefit from this transaction. If the ads make the experience unbearable though, easy enough to simply disengage from it.
Internet is not free, and there was plenty of cool stuff online well before everyone decided to make money out of every single thing. So no, bad argument.
Edit: Let me correct myself: there was much more cool stuff before.
I only recently started using uBlock but it’s not really because of ads (which I don’t mind too much as long as they don’t prevent me seeing the page content). I use it mainly to automate the rejection of cookie popups, which have become absolutely absurd.
I don’t use an adblocker. 90% of the sites I visit don’t abuse ads. When I was younger I used to go to sketchy sites to watch content for free, but now I’m in a position where I can pay for the content so I do. The last time I pirated something was an anime because no streaming service offered it, I had to buy blu rays.
Also, I like targeted ads. Most of the time you can ignore them, but every once in a while they show you something interesting that you do actually want. I’ve picked up a few board games that way. I didn’t buy it through the ad, but it did cause me to start researching it.
Lazy for what exactly? I pressed “install” years ago, and haven’t touched it since. It does its thing in the background when I browse. Never any intervention from me.
You then have to play a bit of a cat and mouse game with certain sites that put a lot of effort into detecting ad blockers, and that can be a bit actively annoying.
Not unaffected, I’m on Firefox with ublock on windows and it was pretty bad for a bit there, and now the videos are… Weird. Like they’ll suddenly stop playing and pretend they’re loading, but the buffer bar is far ahead, or the buffer bar will start stuttering and losing buffer multiple times a second, or the video will skip ahead by 5 seconds randomly, or the video will keep playing but in a frozen frame with audio continuing in the background.
It’s been super frustrating, and piped is slow and the UI is super clunky so I haven’t migrated to it, but the current YouTube experience is just something I’ll have to put up with alongside re-downloading filter lists every now and then. I have been working on a few UI tweaks for piped that hopefully get merged in, but it’s been a rough few weeks IRL and I haven’t gotten around to finishing.
Re: Your YouTube issues: are you based in America? I’m in the EU, might be something regarding that.
I hadn’t considered that, considering your regulations are light years ahead… I’m from Honduras.
Downloading filter lists? This is something people do? I’ve never done that.
Yep, I had never done it before YouTube started its war on adblockers. It’s a 5 second matter, but I do occasionally get blocked entirely for having an adblocker. On some occasions, filter lists hadn’t yet been updated to counter the new blocker, I had to go out and touch grass for a few.
Yeah gatekeeping. You all with your adblockers and your cookie biscuits. Always shaming those without. Just keep it to yourself.
Some of us like ads. I like guessing what the hell Wish is trying to sell me. I don’t watch much YouTubes. Ads really aren’t a thing that I think about a whole lot, so I don’t use adblockers.
I didn’t until recently. I wanted to give companies I valued credit, in some way. But, ads are completely out of control and it broke me so I started using ublock a few months ago. It’s so much better and I’m not looking back.
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