I’ve been seeing a lot of posts & comments ranting about how long YouTube ads are [Edit: specifically, ON LEMMY], how tiny the little X is to close popups, etc and I don’t get it. It’s less effort to install blockers than it is to keep complaining about ads.
Browser: uBlock Origin on Firefox, works on both Android and Desktop (Windows/Linux)
Most Android apps: RethinkDNS to block third-party ads
YouTube: NewPipe or ReVanced Manager
Reddit: ReVanced Manager
I want to give a special asshole award to bezos for charging for prime video and then loading it down with ads. Fuck’em.
Personally I bitch a lot about ads because they have an immense externality cost - they force dead time when people want to engage and really fucking hurt my segment of the population in particular… people with ADHD. If I want to watch an interesting video on carpentry each ad is a possible chance to break focus and derail me… so personally I use adblockers galore and feel no guilt.
Additionally, I think there is a lot of credence to hypotheses that short form advertising is destroying our ability to focus and causing other chaos in our bodies as dopamine and cortisol are hammered into our system to try and sell marginally more product.
Video and audio advertising commercials should be fucking illegal - they cost society more in externalities than the marginal boost in sales… and it’s not like consumerism is a good thing anyways.