Advertisements are the devil. Time theft, propaganda, etc. They’ll take as much of your life as possible and waste it on watching car commercials.
I will never willingly watch any advertisement. Do my best to block in all situations.
Yup, right this here
I’m extremely hostile to ads, always have been
I’m arring my ways over the seas because it’s impossible to watch videos normally without ads, even when paying. Even Netflix every now and then manages to annoy the fuck out of me even while paying.
I do not want to watch what you want me to watch
I do not want to know about your bullshit products
I invest actual money and time into actively avoiding any and all ads, and happily do so
Fuck marketing, it should be prohibited
No ads in my life except when i go into town. Difficult to block IRL ads… Yet
São Paulo in Brazil made advertisement on public streets illegal, and banned most types of banners, restricted the amount of logos etc to greatly improve the visual experience of the city. It’s definitely much better now than it ever was.
Now they just gotta take care of the pollution, increasingly vulnerable homeless population and neglected poor areas and then it would be paradise.
I was talking about this with my wife the other day. I just can’t understand how people are as OK with ads as they are.
I was talking to my girlfriend about this recently too. I forget where I first heard it, but someone said, “You have a right to your private mind. Persuasive ads are junk,” and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Persuasive advertising is absolute junk!
I hope that YouTube, Instagram, and Pandora notice that I close their app every time I see a gambling ad
Firefox + uBlock origin, nextDNS + a shit ton of blocking lists, revanced, metrolist and now i forgot that ads even exist.
con:
I always get traumatised when I use a device that isn’t mine.very traumatic, like how do you guys live like this?
Barely watching TV or listening to radio and block ads online. I stop watching TV or switch radio off after the second ad segment and start an audiobook or use an ad free subscriber platform.
Honestly I’m going to have to start asking them out aloud; “how do you live like this, and how can I help?”
I’ve done that plenty of times. I’d encourage you to do so too. You’ll be shocked with how many people you thought you knew say something to the effect of, “but I like the things that get advertised to me and I’ve clicked on a bunch of them and bought things from them! Why would I want to block them?”
I’ve even explained the whole thing about companies building flawed profiles on people and how governments and bad actors can use them as a reason to investigate you. This works with people I know and get along with well, but doesn’t seem to make any difference with others.
Whenever i go to my folks or in-laws, im always blasted by live TV which is absolutely rotten with ads
Same thing when I visit my parents. They effectively have a billboard installed in their home.
Watching normal TV is jarring, just because I so rarely view non-pirated content.
Once you’re outside that bubble, the invasiveness is so much worse
Fuck unlock - try adnauseum and actively poison their data
I recently tried. Sadly some YouTube ads came through. Could be a configuration thing, but to be fair, if the defaults don’t work as good as ublock it’s not worth switching for me.
That’s a good point, I’ve turned on the annoyances and other filters! It seems to be an overlay on ublock - uBlocks configuration is still accessible in the adnauseum settings
I’ve not had issues with YouTube personally but it’s quite possibly the cat and mouse game they have on their hands
I use adnauseum too, but ublock has its place since it performs better.
I’il try!
Sponsorblock, too. It comes included in ReVanced these days, and even comes with SmartTube, an excellent ad-blocking YT app for android TVs. I am convinced that if I see another ad on YT, I will wither and die. Not today…
Never used nextDNS. Idk, do they care about piracy? How do they make money?
They make money with paid plans, but there is a limited free one too, in my expirience it’s enough and they don’t care about piracy i think
SponsorBlock for youtube as well to skip ad reads, with unhooked to de-enshittify youtube as well.
Have a tutorial? I use unlock and sponsor block.
And for that last little bit https://sponsor.ajay.app/
And Privacy Badger
Let me add to your rant with an additional pet peeve of mine: Usually when people rant about the advertising some smug assholes in the comment sections say “You think you are immune but it works on you, otherwise they wouldn’t spend millions on it”.
When did money become the sole metric with which we judge the merit of ideas? Did the billionaire who died in the titan submersible incident not shut up the crowd making such an argument?
TBH I’m less likely to buy something that advertises to me. Every time I see a car commercial, it steels my resolve to never buy another car.
On the other hand I agree that most people are brainwashed into the car cult and commercials play a large role. Likewise for other capitalist bullshit.
I don’t understand what your argument is. As far as advertisers are concerned, money is indeed the end goal and ultimate metric of success. So if advertising leads to more money, that is success as far as they are concerned. The philosophical outlook of the consumer does not pertain to this argument. But I think I’m misunderstanding your point so perhaps you could clarify?
Near as I can tell, they are not so much advancing an argument as using this opportunity to complain about a tangentially related phenomenon. The point seems muddled since the efficacy of advertising wasn’t ever in question, but, basically, they’re just saying it grinds their gears when someone points out that advertising works as a justification for its existence. They believe that there are metrics to consider which aren’t “did the ad generate a sale”.
Could be I got that wrong, but I think that’s the gist of what they were saying. I, too, am a little confused, since no one seemed to be doubting ads work, despite consumer hostility, but, in their defense, they did declare up-front that they wanted to piggyback on this topic to address a pet peeve of theirs, so it’s not like we weren’t informed of their intent.
Most billionaires have certain skills but for the rest are unfettered idiots. The titan guy got exactly what he asked for.
The entire concept of a billionaire should be prohibited. Nobody should be able to have more than, say, 10 million dollars. Put a hard cap on that, any income above that goes to taxes. Fuck the rich
Also something being ineffective doesn’t mean people stop doing it, like homeopathy.
Well it also doesn’t need to work on everybody. Does a net need to catch ever fish in the sea for a fisherman to make a living? Obviously some people can be and are immune to it.
Advertising doesn’t work on me because I hate shopping, so I have my wife spend the discretionary income. I am sure it works on her though.
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I remember going on a date with a girl that was majoring in marketing. She was really sold to the idea that marketing is “essential for everything! It’s everywhere!” - I understood her point that even factually correct information needs to be “properly marketed”, especially nowadays, but come the fuck on, the entire industry built itself around shady manipulation and dirty psychological tricks
People can take any vague concept and find it “everywhere”.
I’m most immediately reminded of the “markets in everything” ideology from econ. It’s the same role as god in religion. Ubiquitous, inherently moral, etc. It’s the same level of wacky ideology, but TBH worshiping god seems more rational to me than worshiping some deity from an econ/marketing class.
Damn… She sounds both hot and repulsive at the same time.
Teach 👏 your 👏 kids 👏 to 👏 hate 👏 ads 👏
On the occasion that we have to watch something that’s not self-hosted, my toddler will point and go “oh ads!” LOL
Peak childhood if you ask me
In Belgium, we had a pretty based children TV show called “Blabla”. In the opening song there is
Je bouche mes oreilles et je cache mes yeux. La pub ? Bêê !
I plug my ears and I cover my eyes. Ads? Blegh!
Hell yeah
Henry Kuttner’s story ‘Year Day’ from 1953 is a nice dystopian portrayal of how bad it can get even compared to the present day. (It was published in the collection ‘Ahead of Time’, idk where one can get it currently.)
Remember kids, advertising is just the graffiti of the rich.
You owe the companies nothing. You especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
Banksy, Wall and Piece
Exactly, it’s capitalist propaganda. Advertising is indoctrination into a system that requires conspicuous consumption to continue to make rich people richer. Get a pihole, please.
Thanks for that viewpoint.
I live in a great city with lots of (standard) graffiti, and now wonder what regular graffiti is, as compared to advertising. The crying out of some member of the working class that they exist, I suppose?
I have very few ads in my life, because I hate them with a passion. As an autistic person, ads don’t even work on me to the same extent, and I hate having to sit through them.
I have opted into a government program, that means I don’t recieve ads or “free newspapers” in my letterbox. I use special webapps with integrated adblock and curator extensions on my browsers, and even custom scripts using scriptmonkey to get it away. On my TV I run SmartTube, which not only removes ads, but also automatically skips sponsor and other filler from videos, as well as removes clickbait titles where possible using DeArrow.
I run Linux, I have set up all my devices to use adblocking DNS, and I have run a PiHole for years. The only thing in my home that shows ads at this point, is my google TV that will suggest a show on viaplay or prime or whatever, and it is the only thing I cannot get rid of.
The reason I dislike ads, is that these corporations are fucking scum. They collude to ruin people’s self-esteem, and to overflood the market with needless materialist bullshit that we don’t need, by exploiting our deepest insecurities. As AI becomes more normalized, it will get even more insidious. People talk to their chatbots like they are their friends, and soon those chatbots will subtly manipulate them into buying hair products that don’t work, because they see a picture in your photos gallery of you slightly balding, and see you talked to it about feeling insecure about your appearence lately.
Ending my rant with a quote by banksy:
“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”
I have run a PiHole for years. The only thing in my home that shows ads at this point, is my google TV
You should add those two domain in your deny list
After that, you clear the data of the Android TV Launcher app. The app won’t be able to grab any ads and it will be stuck will default youtube and play store ads.
Be sure to note how your icon were positionned as it will be cleared also
Very similar situation, pihole and adblockers on everything. I pirate what I want, I refuse even paid services that put ads in like Hulu and netflix, fuck both of those. I refuse to use tiktok since its literally everyone and their brother trying to sell you shit.
google TV that will suggest a show on viaplay or prime or whatever, and it is the only thing I cannot get rid of
GoogleTV as in Smart TV running Android TV, yeah? Get Projectivity Launcher!
I installed it. Works great! Can even make it default launcher without needing to root. Great recommendation, thanks!
I’ve been using this HOSTS file for over two decades to prevent ads.
HOSTS + Ublock Origin + Privacy Badger 🤌
Pi-hole basically does that for me (or mullvad vpn)
Don’t claim your relationship with ads is “actively hostile” if your actions can be described as “skipping” and “muting”.
You should be blocking. I don’t skip or mute anything, ever, because I don’t allow ads into my life.
PiHole is a thing of beauty =)
I started to get mine set up, and was almost done. Then we moved and it got put in a box and i haven’t found it yet. You bet your bottom dollar im reconfiguring that thing as soon as i find it
muting is the correct action on tv, or even change channel temporarily
The only ads I still have to skip are podcast sponsor segments. And sometimes YouTube sponsor segments; I have SponsorBlock but that only works on very popular videos.
be the change you want to see in the world, and mark sponsor segments yourself
I should really invest in a PiHole. I’m just inherently lazy at times and always feel like I’m short on funds.
Pihole is open source software, so it is free and can run on basically any hardware. You could use an old laptop, a raspberry pi or other cheap SoC, and I think it might even be possible to run on something like an old Android phone.
Aye but I don’t have any old hardware lying around to use, so I’d need a Raspberry Pi for it. Again, money just feels like it’s getting tighter everyday that such a rather trivial purchase makes me think twice now.
If your router is OpenWRT it might be possible to run right on the router itself, but I’m not 100% sure
The router actually has DNS options for working to block ads built in it, I might give that try after work today.
Isn’t there an argument that it’s better to get them to waste money sending the ads? Does blocking prevent the adverters paying? I’m not sure how that works.
I got almost everything blocked, but one thing I can’t totally is podcasts, so there I skip em.
Sadly with adverts literally everywhere, there’s no single solution!
There was a browser extension which both blocked ads and simulated clicks iirc. That comes with a processing power cost though.
But that only benefits the advertisement agency (eg. google ads) and doesn’t do much harm to the advertiser imo
Give them bad data. Click on ads you’re totally disinterested in, ignore ones you’re interested in. Flip that sometimes. That’s actively hostile.
In that case use this: https://adnauseam.io/
I don’t allow ads into my life.
I don’t allow serial killers into my life, but they keep trying to smash through my windows and tackle me on running trails.
Feels like a guy in a horror movie snidely insisting “Just don’t dream about Freddie Krueger and you’ll be fine”.
Except blocking them is trivial, and they must be requested by the browser/client, so it’s much more like vampires than serial killers.
Just because a website gives your computer instructions to initiate requests to an ad server doesn’t mean your computer has to execute those instructions. It’s your computer, your electricity, your network.
Except blocking them is trivial
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising
Significantly more difficult to block ads that woven into the observed content.
Like, there are definitely ads that are easy to block. And ads that are more intrusive by design. And software that’s better at getting the more embedded ads. And ads that are better at evading the software.
But it’s a game of cat and mouse. There’s no panacea, just moments when the anti-ads guys have an edge.
Just because a website gives your computer instructions to initiate requests to an ad server doesn’t mean your computer has to execute those instructions.
If you’re watching ET and you get to the scene where he’s eating a line of Reese’s Pieces to get lured into the kid’s room, you’re watching an ad.
There’s no way to not watch the ad other than to stop watching the movie.
And this high tech advancement in advertising was pioneered over 40 years ago.
And ads that are better at evading the software.
Yeah, no. Ad servers are not initiating incoming network requests to your devices. Your devices are openly asking for the ads, and it’s not an obfuscated secret, it’s a standard network request. This evasion is imagined fiction. It isn’t an arms race, there’s never been a time when ad blockers stopped working and had to change how they function to beat the ads again.
There’s no way to not watch the ad other than to stop watching the movie.
other than to stop watching the movie.
stop watching the movie.
Your terms are acceptable.
high tech advancement in advertising was pioneered over 40 years ago
Huh? What exactly is the “high tech advancement” you’re referring to? Filming a product in a movie? Seems kinda low tech…
Ad servers are not initiating incoming network requests to your devices.
They’re piggybacking in on intended content. Or they’re gating content behind ad walls. Or they’re initiating requests on channels not yet flagged as ad servers. Or just permeating your electronics through the OS vendor, the SMS protocol, email, you name it.
What exactly is the “high tech advancement” you’re referring to?
Sarcasm, mate. You simply include the commercial as part of the main body of media.
Or they’re initiating requests on channels not yet flagged as ad servers.
You’re misinformed. Reality is they aren’t initiating requests at all.
I guess ads just show up on your system by magic, then? They’ve overcome the need for IP protocols?
Any ads that manage to reach me are added to The List. Any products on The List are to be avoided like the plague.
HelloFresh would like to know your location.
NordVPN can mask that while you enjoy your meal by Factor.
We’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty
Fun fact, hello fresh owns factor.
I’ve been playing WarThunder mobile while waiting for my Factor to finish in my Kohler microwave. Can’t wait to bundle up in my limited edition Snuggie and watch some movies on Disney+ until I’m old enough to use that One Secret Trick the Federal government has been hiding from thousands of people like YOU when signing up for benefits…(Link in Description)
Nice double whammy there stealth marketer.
I mean, that’s something of an empty threat in an era of slop ads. Like, I already don’t drink coke, own a PlayStation, or plan to buy a Ford Superduty Truck. And I sure as fuck don’t plan to support Ken Paxton for Senate.
Doesn’t seem to save me from being blizzarded in solicitations.
Advertising is one of the most prolific environmental pollutants of economic activity, and needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking.
It’s not “advertising.” That’s a euphemism. It’s #CapitalistPropaganda. Fucking straight up social manipulation and we’re fire-hosed with it from the day we’re born. It’s the prime reason we can no longer organize collective responses to capitalism.
Advertisement is fine on its own, as long as we live in a goods/exchange/services world, you will need to display your wares somehow so people will buy or trade for them.
The problem is lack of limits or regulation on how far a company can go with that advertising. We’re so, so far beyond intrusive commercials or annoying jingles that it’s lethally depressing. We have companies who know and understand how to change your feelings, to implant ideas in your mind, to rob you of your free will.
And even if you’re someone who says “I block every ad and don’t buy from that company” like most people commenting in this post, advertisers already have accounted for you. They’re playing the numbers game and they don’t give a shit how much you scream you hate their slop and propaganda or how many ad-blockers you install, they aren’t targeting you directly, they’re going for the percentage of people who do stare at the screen or people who are more mentally compromised first. If they can get enough of the vulnerable class to build momentum, they have gone from a product to a movement and then even the cynical people like those in this post will start to see Product X more like a normal staple than an annoying intrusion in their lives.
See: the Trump effect.
Nah, as noxious as it is, too many people still consider smoking socially acceptable.
Advertising should be as socially acceptable as ripping random people’s eyes off with a rusty spoon, shitting in the socket, and charging them for it.
i love smoking but hate advertisements. am I that bad? I put an ad blocker on everything and anything that blocks ad blockers or requires me to pay to not see ads doesnt get used
Smoking is pretty bad, yes, but advertising is orders of magnitude worse. On a whole other league. Even worse than speaking in the theatre.
