I watched a Warframe (game) YouTube video on the Steam integrated browser, without beeing connected to my account and Holly s* it was horrible.
In a 14 minutes video, I got 5 ads. 1 (or more skippable once) at the beginning, 1 during the first half of the video, 2 during the second half, and 1 at the end.
All were skippable after 5 sec.
2 were close together at about 1 min interval during the second half of the video.
But that is not the only issue. 4 of those ads (not the last one at the end), were Israeli hate/war anti-hamas propaganda.
I consider these ads horrible and they should not be allowed in my opinion.
YouTube Ads: “You are a MAN with a GUN and you will MURDER EVERYONE if it means you can PROTECT your FAMILY”
I don’t even know, or care, wtf they are selling but they missed the target audience with that one. That’s the cringiest fetishism I’ve ever seen in my life.
So many ads seems like Powerthrist turned down to 70% but lacking the irony.
Google must be scraping the bottom of the barrel of crazy that’s also stupid enough to pay for ads, I think it’s common knowledge now that Google games analytics to artificially inflate the appearance of ad impact.
Honestly, I don’t really think they could be any more impactful with ads than they actually are, though. Might have to side with them against the advertisers on that front. YouTube Sponsors should know by now exactly how effective Google is. If Google attempts to be even more pushy, like with the banner that disables video player, the only thing they get is massively reduced user engagement as people either log out or leave the site.
A much bigger issue is that Google has either Monopoly or strong Oligopoly on serving online ads, and they set their rates accordingly.
I don’t think they need to be pushy, just the quality of product decisions has been going down as time goes on. Monopoly a bigger issue for sure, If not for the massive decline in value to both users and advertisers, we wouldn’t mind the monopoly so much.
Most people, including myself, seem to agree, that ads were never the problem. When YouTube started, it had ads too and nobody cared. But the ads got worse and websites started to shove them down our throats. I miss the times of a single banner below a video. I don’t think Google and all the others realise just how much determined nerds can achieve. So far the ad blockers seem to win the race, minus some minor setbacks.
Some of those that work ad tech are the same that write filters.
Oooooooo, is this the start of a RATM parody?
BLOCKING IN THE NAME OF
FUCK YOU I WON’T LOOK AT YOUR ADVERTS
Yep. My day job is providing tools to marketing folks and improving lead gen. It pays me well.
But I also contribute to open source projects to unfuck the internet. I know the tricks people like me use.
Real heroes have shitty day jobs. Checks out.
Except Batman and Iron Man. Those guys also have mansions, hot chicks, cars, and sarcasm.
It was October Spooky when Microsoft dropped the GetWinX.exe icon on everyone’s Win7 and Win8 taskbars. The first time, we all followed the directions and dove into the registry to remove it, because it wasn’t enough to just delete it. The icon would self restore.
Then Microsoft reinstalled their adware in a critical security update Big Mic also started using dark patterns making upgrading opt-out, and hiding the onay anksthay toggle.
Thats when an engineer, UltimateOutsider, I think, created the GetWinX Control Panel which not only did the full remove in a wizard but also monitored on boot to see if it came back.
It was a reassuring day. I think no matter how much the companies enshittify, it will only drive pissed off engineers to write hard bypasses. It’s how we got the GCP. It’s how we got Windows Loader for every release since XP’s activation process.
I use an ad blocker but I cringe when I see my wife viewing a short recipe online, on a page with 10+ ads.
Why don’t you help her? Do you not like her??
She’s drowning and you’re just standing there watching :( :(
You’re assuming I haven’t tried?
This. Ads can be somewhat okay as long as they don’t interrupt or otherwise hinder the functionality of the website or application I’m using.
YouTube’s video ads interrupt the main functionality of the website for the full duration of the ads (some are skippable after 5s).
In the early days of the Internet, ads were ok.
Then the popups came.
Then came the popup blockers.
It’s been an arms race since the beginning. The ad-throwers get greedy, not knowing when to stop pushing. That’s how things escalate.
Ads are the reason I stopped listening to regular FM radio. I used to live in a more rural town and it was at least half an hour to get to any city I would have to go to for more than basic groceries. Once when I was coming back somewhere that takes a whole hour drive to get home, I heard nothing but commercials the entire drive. Not one fucking song (aside from ad jingles) for a whole fucking hour. Ridiculous.
I switched to Sirius. And it was great… Until they got bought/merged with XM. Now they have a monopoly on satellite radio, they immediately cut features and jacked up prices. They also started playing ads. So I cancelled that.
I’ve been using Spotify Premium ever since. It started off pretty great; they’ve recently been cutting back features and jacking up the price tho. So I may end up cancelling Spotify, too, if shit keeps trending downhill. Especially if they put ads in the premium service I pay for specifically to not have ads.
Remember the time when people used to have a stack of CDs in the car? Some cars even had a a fancy player that could hold multiple discs.
What features has Spotify cut? I’ve had premium for like 5 years and I think I’ve seen a dollar raise in price.
For me it was TV. I stopped watching TV when I became aware of the amount of ads for cars. There’s at least one ad for a car in every “commercial break”. So I just stopped about 15 years ago.
I filled the entertainment gap with internet and lately I’ve been using YouTube a lot. However it’s also becoming annoying with the sponsors inside the videos as well. I was not using SponsorBlock before but I installed it a few days ago.
If I’m ever forced to watch the awful ads on YouTube, I’ll quit too. My life is just gonna be better for it.
I’ve been adding music to my mp3 collection since Napster got started. It feels old fashioned now but I have yet to see a reason to use an alternative method. I actually have a lifetime subscription to SiriusXM. So I pay nothing, and I still don’t listen to that shit.
Hearing new music is why I like Spotify. Sure, there are ways to find new music without streaming, but it takes actual effort, where Spotify can just make it happen.
I live in the Philippines and get ads for cock fighting.
I live in Canada and gets ads for Philippino cock.
I have a VPN set to Sweden as the default country. I have weird ads, I don’t know what they are selling.
In America we just call that gay porn
I know it’s not, but that totally looks like the domain of a porn site.
Baby, you’re going to get piped so hard.
These ads make it impossible to use YT as a free learning platform anymore.
When I want to dig into a subject, I want to do it focused and without being distracted, and YT makes it impossible. The only content one can tolerate ads on is entertainment, which makes YT just another TikTok.
Then pay for your learning ;)
Where I come from, education is free. So, nope!
YouTube is free as well ;)
haven’t watched an ad in almost a decade lol
Seriously, how are people able to consume YouTube content as well as their ads? Piped + SponsorBlock + DeArrow and that’s a wrap, jack.
Removed by mod
Thanks for being one of us and that you’re paying for the service. If more people were ads blocking, it would be even worse for the others.