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

  • Jajcus@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    As long as we are not paying for the services the service providers will do what they can to show us ads and frankly… rightly so.

    The problem is there is no other established way for paying for services. One that would be widely use and fair. Current state of things is ‘we say it is free, but we will get the money from advertisers or by selling your data’. Yes, some people are often able to avoid some of the ads and privacy loss, but that means the service gets no money from those people, so the service is built and being run for the rest of users – those who cannot install ad-blockers or who don’t care or don’t know how to care about their privacy. This is one of the reasons of enshitification – any ‘free’ service needs to be only as good as required to keep the users who watch ads and give away their data. Catering any more conscious user is just a cost.

    When enough of people will be using ad-block then the ad-block will stop working on many sites or the sites will disappear or become paid service. No one will provide commercial services for free and not everything can be a public service founded by a government or a community. I am not even talking about ‘corporate profits’ – even in the worst corporations there are normal people working and they should be paid for their work. Whether they are paid fairly and whether the corporate profits aren’t too big is another topic…

    • _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      They get their money from advertisers and by selling your data even when they charge for it. Advertising is out of control and paid services are increasingly including them despite charging you. I wouldn’t have a problem with paid services if they had a fair price, offered a good service, and didn’t have ads but the trend has been to increasingly offer worse service for more money, oh and maybe some ads too! Gotta chase those profits.