[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation @lemmy.world

1y ago

The frequency and duration of ad breaks is beginning to make me feel like I’m in that black mirror episode where they had to pay to stop ads from constantly playing.

I definitely consume too much dystopian content to be a fair dystopian barometer, but the sheer amount of ads being pushed my way is starting to make me feel legitimately anxious. It feels like a techno-dystopia where all of the neat and artistic elements have been extracted and then ground into dust for our corporate overlords. Even the ‘regular’ people are just trying to sell themselves. The streamers, the funny videos, the pet videos, the porn, the reposts of all of those, so much of it is just monetizing my attention.

Do ads even influence people that much? Does anyone even eat Church’s Chicken?! Do people consider switching their car insurance? I though the postmoderns were jumping the gun a little with the pictures they painted of a future with corporate logos and other advertisements spread across every visible surface, but now I have to see 5 ads and a cookie consent pop up to look up a quick definition. Watching a friend’s youtube video? 30 seconds of rapidfire ads from 15 brands. It’s starting to feel absurd. Are we going to be okay?

89 comments

https://xkcd.com/624/
- lesbianic Github
  ClitHub
  
  Finally something to commit to
  
  CLIhub
- Gods, I love Randal’s hover texts…
  
  In case you can't easily see it for this strip:
  "Branding: Actually, 'RSS&M is kinda catchy."
  And that one actually piqued my interest

I believe most of us here block as many ads as possible by any means possible. I so rarely see ads that every once in while when I do (on other peoples devices) I'm shocked and disgusted.
https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole
https://ublockorigin.com/
https://brave.com/
Is enough for me. If I watch YouTube on mobile it's in Brave browser as that block the ads on iOS.
If I watch YouTube on my TV it's in https://smarttubeapp.github.io/ which also blocks ads.
You don't have to live like that and I feel sorry for all the people that do.
All that being said I know what you mean, even the content itself is now saturated with ads, i.e. a word about our sponsor for five minutes at the start of any video...
- For the in-video sponsors try sponsorblock.
  Or FreeTube, an open source desktop YouTube client with sponsorblock built in.
  
  ❤️
  
  LibreTube or Tubular on Android. Yattee with this guide on iOS.
- I’m sure you know about Brave being called out here lately so I just want to give you some iOS alternatives so you can stop using Brave (if you care enough, of course)
  AdGuard (I paid for the lifetime, $12 I think) and it works great. Just like having uBlock on Firefox, but in safari so I still get all the integration that safari offers on your iOS device.
  Dark reader is on the App Store.
  When it comes to YouTube, I sideload a YouTube app with all the essentials installed using Sideloadly.
  The rest is up to you.
  
  I appreciate the well thought out and articulated response.
  The thing is it's not like I'm blindly using Brave; I've tried to dig into these things with Brave which users have brought up, the biggest complaints usually being "forced" cryptostuff (I had mine on first, and now off...), affiliate links and Brendan Eich being an anti lgbt asshole, etc. Then I went down the same hole with Mozilla; their asshole execs laying off people and then giving themselves bonuses, making deals with Google, etc.
  Richard Stallmans an asshole too, should I stop using GNU? The world is a fucked up place and people are the most fucked up of all and pitting my morals against pragmatism sometimes only gets me so and so far.
  I'd love to get behind some sort of new open-source alternative; I'm hoping we get a viable new thing ASAP, waiting for someone to pull a Linus and create something that truly enables me to consume the web in a manner that I can be personally satisfied with.
  
  Wipr is also quite good for Safari!
  
  Unfortunately, AdGuard for iOS does not block ads in Safari as promised, at least not with the free tier (I double checked the instructions and toggled on all AdGuard related features in Settings). ~~Comparing it to uBlock in Firefox is laughable.~~
  For example, I searched for lasagna recipes, still saw ads in search results on DDG. Clicked a link to allrecipes.com, and bam—multiple banner ads embedded in the page before I can even read the actual recipe, plus another one docked to the bottom of my screen. Fail.
  EDIT: Clarified that I’m referring to the free tier of Ad Guard, which I think is fair to say represents most users’ experience with it.
  
  If you are looking for a good YouTube client on iOS, you don't even have to get into sideloading. Check out Yattee with this guide.
- Big budget movies nowadays tend to be riddled with Product Placement so not even all that you're doing will save you from Ads. Product Placement Ads are just generally more subtle than those in dedicated Ad Spaces (though the latest Aquaman was not at all subtle in their in-movie add for a certain beer brand: it kind left you with a bitter taste in your mouth and not in a good way).
- How do you actually load the smart tube app on your TV? I have a chromecast btw.
  EDIT: Just figured it out. Involves installing the Downloader app on my chromecast from the Google Play Store, then within the Downloader app I downloaded and installed the Smart Tube apk file from GitHub (after enabling Developer Mode in chromecast settings first).
  Tested it on a gamer content creator channel and it skipped the sponsor segment at the very beginning. I’m in!
  
  I have a FireTV stick so I had to use Downloader to get the APK and install it.

Is this just an ad for Church's Chicken?!?
Reminds me of Bill Hicks.
"I know all the marketing people are going, “He’s doing a joke…” There’s no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend – I don’t care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. Whatever, you know what I mean.
I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too: “Oh, you know what Bill’s doing? He’s going for that anti-marketing dollar. That’s a good market. He’s very smart.”
Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking, evil scumbags!
“Ooh, you know what Bill’s doing now? He’s going for the righteous indignation dollar. That’s a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We’ve done research – huge market. He’s doing a good thing.”
Godammit, I’m not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!"
RIP
- Going for those Bill Hicks nostalgia internet points I see, very smart.
  
  There's a lot of money in nostalgia these days. I agree. He's made the intelligent decision and we should be seeking to uphold the nostalgia momentum he's generated.
  Eddie Murphy's Purple Suit.

Any source of ads I avoid as the plague.
Regular TV? Don't watch it. Only streaming with a good ad blocker.
Radio? Never listen to it, I have my own old-school mp3 music list I update on the regular.
Youtube? Only with uBlock Origin and sponsorblock
Websites? Same as above.
Apps? AdAway removes the ads, and mainly use FOSS ones anyway.
I even avoid game stores as much as possible since those also try to get me to buy stuff.
I don't want to see any ads ever, marketing should be banned.
- Do you ever watch YouTube on your living room TV?
  
  I do, also without ads. SmartTube
  
  Living room tv is a large display for my living room laptop, my remote is a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, youtube is in firefox with UBO and sponsor block. Streaming is emby in the browser.
  I agree that we are living in an Ads-nightmare but there are ways to avoid them.

For anyone with toddlers who watch their cocomelon and the like when you just can't take it anymore - I've used yt-dlp to download some videos and just play it via plex. No ads, no tracking, no drama.
- There's an awesome tool I use to automate this process called TubeArchivist. Automatically downloads new videos from subscribed channels or playlists. Downloads the metadata, thumbnail, and comments too.
  It has a built in viewer that works fine so I haven't tried getting the content into my Plex server, but I've seen people in the discord talking about doing it.
  
  You've got my attention, Mister! Thank you!

I've been ad-free for well over a decade (well, except some unavoidable real-life cases like billboards and such).
Get uBlock Origin.

I don't see ads. I use uBlock Origin for the internet and view all youtube via browsers and pay for streaming services I want. I don't have cable and am absolutely baffled when I'm forced to watch it at other people's homes.
I occasionally use youtube for background music at work (I have headphones on, leave me alone) and can't install ublock there and holy fuck are youtube ads terrible. I'll never watch that crap.
- Started collecting music locally again just because of ads and subscriptions, im done wasting even a single second on attention parasites.
- If you have an android, you could look into installing revanced on your phone so you can listen to YouTube with it without ads instead of on your work computer. That's what I do.
  
  Yep! I like revanced a lot. But sure to NDAs no phones at work. It's a minor thing since I'm mostly WFH.

Shout out for pihole. Never ceases to amaze me when I end up on public data sources (cellular/wifi) and my phone is littered with ads and banners that squeeze the viewable area to a thin strip of screen. It's truly toxic. However, you can set up a personal VPN at home on the Pi and get your ads scrubbed by PiHole while you're away from home.
So yes, if I may offer my list (desktop browser):
PiHole (+ personal VPN to connect to when away)
uBlock Origin
Https Everywhere (for the odd site that isn't https by default)
Facebook Container ( if you use FB)
SocialFixer for Facebook - a godsend. I use FB for work and hobby groups. FB insists on cramming "suggested for you" content in everywhere. SocialFixer will filter and block FB posts based on text, and using "suggested for you" as a filter makes Facebook great again.
Duck Duck Go privacy essentials
EFF's Privacy Badger
uBlacklist - an app that lets you block sites in search results. A little tedious, but if you stick with it eventually you end up getting rid of many those awful boilerplate SEO worthless sites.
SponsorBlock for YouTube
EDIT: Guess I didn't answer the question? I despise ads. I will do most anything I can to avoid them. The aforementioned list of blocking and privacy add-ons is proof enough of that. There's nothing that I need to buy that I don't already know I want or need. I walk away from the TV (I can't remember the last time I watched network TV. Probably the primary election?), I put my phone down, and if it's that much in my face I simply close the site if I don't absolutely have to be there.
- Why not just use an ad blocker directly in your phone’s web browser? Works on any connection, works better than DNS based blockers because it will properly remove the page elements, and no need to connect to a VPN. PiHole is nice for devices you can’t install an ad blocker on like a smart tv or something but on anything with a controlable browser it’s objectively inferior to a native ad blocker…
  
  Because there's a limited number of ad blockers for iOS, they charge for features, and the ones I looked at were designed for safari. I use Firefox on iOS, my VPN/PiHole is free, so there's no reason to change things up or sweat it.
- This requires a ridiculous amount of work and expertise, the average person can't do this. I also question how trustworthy these apps are and that they aren't data harvesting or opening security holes.
  News sites are the worst offenders for "lets cram as much shit on the screen as humanly possible". The last 80% of the screen is click bait trash. Videos chase you constantly and pop ups begging for your email always harass you. I fill in the email with "admin@{their domain}"
  
  The pihole is the only one requiring a level of tech above that of installing the add-ons I mentioned.
  Sure, you could question the trustworthiness of the plugins. So what’s your choice? Suffer through known ads, tracking, and whatever else or judiciously install a few plugins that have tens or hundreds of thousands of users and no history of foul play?

I never see ads and consume a good amount of video content.
Set your stuff up right, don't expect live to be easy

Librewolf will block ads for you in addition to a fair amount of other nifty stuff
I used to pay for Youtube Premium for actually quite a while; out of all the cacophony of "it's only $29.87 a month you can afford that" voices it was actually one that had a pretty significant impact on my happiness. But now I just block the ads and fuck 'em.
- It's only $2.27 if they think you live in a certain country.
  2.27 feels reasonable for my family of 5.
- Any other adblocker will also do. I use uBlock origin for Firefox, but there are many other adblockers just as good (or full browsers like brave)
  
  Librewolf comes bundled with uBlock Origin, which is why it blocks ads so well. I havent seen an ad in years lol.
  I’d also recommend the alternative player extension for twitch, as it’s one of the only websites that uBlock doesn’t block ads on.
  
  Revanced ftw
- We’ve been using Xbox as our main media player for a long time, I want to set up a plex server or similar but haven’t had time to do my homework on safe execution. Anything that would alleviate ads on xbox?
  
  Hey, this is a pretty good question that I think might get overlooked as it's a child comment in this post.
  Try asking that question here:
  https://lemmy.world/c/selfhosted
  I don't know if that link works properly and hopefully a bot will rescue me if it doesn't
  
  You'd probably want to look into blocking traffic on your network using pihole or if its possible to reconfigure your xbox network settings and point it at adblocking DNS servers such as AdGuard:
  https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html
  
  Xbox Press the Xbox button on your controller to open the guide. Select Profile & system → Settings → General → Network Settings. From the Network screen options, go to Advanced Settings → DNS Settings. Select Manual. Change DNS addresses to the addresses of one of the servers below. Default servers AdGuard DNS will block ads and trackers. 94.140.14.14 94.140.15.15 Non-filtering servers AdGuard DNS will not block ads, trackers, or any other DNS requests. 94.140.14.140 94.140.14.141 Family protection servers AdGuard DNS will block ads, trackers, adult content, and enable Safe Search and Safe Mode, where possible. 94.140.14.15 94.140.15.16 If your game console supports IPv6 addresses, add them as well. Default servers AdGuard DNS will block ads and trackers. 2a10:50c0::ad1:ff 2a10:50c0::ad2:ff Non-filtering servers AdGuard DNS will not block ads, trackers, or any other DNS requests. 2a10:50c0::1:ff 2a10:50c0::2:ff Family protection servers AdGuard DNS will block ads, trackers, adult content, and enable Safe Search and Safe Mode, where possible. 2a10:50c0::bad1:ff 2a10:50c0::bad2:ff Press B to confirm changes and exit the menu.
  
  And I'd recommend running jellyfin instead of plex.
  https://www.androidauthority.com/jellyfin-vs-plex-home-server-3360937/
- Does it also keep recommendations?
  
  It does; you can log in to Youtube and all and still operate everything as normal. Some things don't work (Netflix and HBO Max) because of DRM, which is a little bit of a worrying development. Librewolf seems like it cuts actually a pretty good balance of scrubbing stuff, making you log into services again when you restart it, but working pretty normally 90% of the time and not showing ads. It's a much more pleasant experience (to the point that going back to Chrome and dealing with ads is real off-putting now).

I believe advertising is a major mechanism for evil in our world. It's accepted brainwashing by definition. It MUST have wide reaching consequences on psychology of people, and it also has incredible power to steer how information is disseminated.
Best example is how media never says anything negative about advertising.
"Branded" is the only movie or media I know that broaches this topic.
I use ad blockers for everything and I'm bewildered when I see TV nowadays or try to use the web or youtube without it. I very rarely see ads and refuse to be brainwashed. FreeTube is awesome too. Resist!
We need other systems, something like a global patreon subscription that is automatically shared to content creators.
- It isn't advertisement, it is marketing. Ads are just a symptom of that.
  Marketing's only job is to make people buy stuff they do not need. It is the main reason why we live in such a consumer culture. It correlates directly with overconsumption.
  
  Yeah and public relations, the black art of making people vote against their interests.
- We need other systems, something like a global patreon subscription that is automatically shared to content creators.
  That sounds like Universal Basic Income with extra steps. I approve of this.
  
  There are systems for musicians like BIEM and CISAC that do something similar. So systems like that are not unprecedented. I believe we need something like this for journalism too. Of course there are issues with this, but right now conformance is rewarded, while dissent or serious topics are punished on e.g. youtube with demonetization. All because of advertisement. Nothing new of course, mainstream media primary customer are advertisers too.
  
  It's only a stand in for UBI if everyone is a content creator.

And the advertisers seem to not care about context. I'll be watching some awful disaster documentary then an ad for, say, detergent will pop up. Now I associate your product with a terrible event. The bombarding too. Do they think if I didn't switch car insurance the first 100 times I saw the ad the 101st will do the trick? And I don't buy the "some people may be seeing it for the first time" excuse. The ads were every few minutes.
- That's not why it's repeated a 1000 times, it's so when you actually do want to buy something in that category you're more likely to buy theirs because it's familiar.
  
  See I've never understood how that worked because it has the complete opposite effect on me.
  The more I see a certain product advertised the less likely I am to ever willingly purchase that product from that company.

Not just on the internet, either. If you really want to drive yourself crazy, pay attention to each time you see an advertisement in real life, and imagine if instead there was a piece of artwork in that spot. How would that change how you feel in that moment?
- What if people didn’t have to sell themselves:(

I don't see any ads anymore so I'm fine. It's poison to watch that shit.
FreeTube Newpipe Torrents

Are we going to be okay?
Not if we don't abolish capitalism, no.

It is like "vote for" signs. If you vote based on a sign you shouldn't be voting.

I was actually fine with consuming ads maybe like 8 years ago but things have exponentially ramped up. Nowadays, it's pretty much essential to use ublock and dns level adblock filtering. Also a shame that it's physically outside plastered everywhere.

Do people consider switching their car insurance?
Absolutely. I don't switch mid term, but I definitely look at switching at renewal time. Use a comparison site and check what's available.
Pretty much every year the comparison sites give me better prices than my renewal, sometimes by a massive amount.

I remember when I started hating ads.
HEAD-ON: APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD
I genuinely have fond memories of some ads before this time that I'll occasionally reference, https://youtu.be/R7vNn-utP8Q for example, which I didn't remember was a chuck e cheese ad before just rewatching it, and whose pizza was objectively criminally poorly made.
And now I've essentially cut them out of my life entirely, but I'll occasionally hear them during podcasts and such and they come across as so bleak, like who the fuck are you selling this Chumba Casino thing to? Did the directors for these ads tell their VA's to sound as dried up and worn out as possible? Is that the market they're aiming for?
I think advertisement is a part of commerce that isn't going away till we get that luxury gay space communism, but it would be nice if there was some kind of panel of artists who your ad had to pass in order to be displayed in markets of a certain size. But then the creatives who threw their lives away learning the most fundamental aspects of how we leave our mark on reality would have some aspect of control over the people who wisely and sagely learned the intricacies of how line go up.
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://piped.video/R7vNn-utP8Q
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Sydney CBD train stations have in addition to the normal advert billboards, electric TV screen billboards where they'll play nothing but video ads WITH THE SOUND ON FOR THE ENTIRE PLATFORM TO HEAR, so annoying!! It really is everywhere, you just can't escape it.
- That would have been broken in like 30 minutes in NYC.

online ads never do. but if i saw a billboard advertising even just the mere presence of a culver's at an exit 100 miles further down the highway.. and it was getting close to feeding time.. yea, we're stopping.

You can't even avoid this shit if you take all kinds of extra steps and even hoist the good old black flag and stop consuming live TV or streaming: Product Placement is pretty much standard in blockbuster films nowadays (the latest Aquaman really took in-movie advertising for a certain beer brand to a ridiculous level).
- I can't avoid the ads on tv so I just mute it and read something else for a few minutes.

What's an "ad brake"? Haven't had ads for years now and beginning to forget...

89 comments