Submitted 1 year ago by Zanetaya@sh.itjust.works to [deleted]
Wherever I go, I often see the sentiment “This website has ads, so it’s trash” pop up in conversations. And honestly I don’t quite get why. 90% of the internet has always had ads, you just scroll past them and mind your business. At least they’re personalized now so you can pick a topic you like instead of diapers and miscellanous spammy trash as there once were.
90% of the internet has always had ads
No, it didn’t, kid.
Ad Blocking IS Cyber Security
Indeed and people often say "if an ad is annoying I'll never buy that product, so ads don't work on me, also they've never made me run out and buy something" !
However advertising is accompanied with thorough independent market research and sales numbers and companies can directly see the impact of their ad campaigns. It's indisputable.
In the long term it's also about brand recognition, we see a "stupid ad" today and in a year when we're looking for that kind of thing we are more likely to choose that brand over another and we don't know why but "this jams seems better". The effect is proven, scary and it's something we're relatively helpless against. It doesn't help that our brains sometimes register things running in the background on the TV while we're petting the dog. Product placement in movies works like that too, if we notice it we think it's obvious and stupid, but we still notice it and even when we don't notice it our helpful subconscious is right there helping us remember.
Moving into even worse territory, on social media like Facebook they can profile us enough to know where we're leaning politically and if we're not entirely confident in our political stance they can show us ads that looks like product ads but are designed to nudge our political stance a bit to the side in the desired direction.
The effect of ads on the subconscious is scary. It's not mind control but it's can influence us.
Not on social media ? No problem, they still build up shadow profiles. A Google executive once bragged at a conference that they know everything we've done since the first day we got on the Internet. Hyperbolic maybe but that confidence comes from somewhere.
Many people have become accustomed to life without ads. I have used adblockers in my browsers for probably the past 20 years. So the experience that you are talking about (just scrolling past them), is an experience that I don’t really know, unless I am suddenly using some other computer that belongs to a friend or something.
People have also gotten away from ads in their entertainment by subscribing to things like Netflix rather than cable.
Once you don’t have advertising shoved in your face 24/7, then suddenly being bombarded with it is incredibly offensive.
90% of the internet has always had ads
I very clearly remember a time when only a handful of websites actually had ads on them and having an ad blocker wasn’t a straight up requirement to stem the tide of popups and banners.
Youtube before Google bought it was pretty nice. A little add taking up a square in the upper right corner, just above recommended videos, and I think that was about it. Nowadays it’s completely impossibly to watch YouTube without ad blockers or premium subscription.
… and you can’t even remove ads from your own channel. As a content creator I was happy to find a “disable advertisements” option in the settings menu - my channel isn’t monetized anyway, so getting rid of those super intrusive ads sounded like a win/win situation.
Turns out this only disables “interest based” ads so my viewers still get shoved ads down their throats, just that those are entirely random now instead of custom-tailored towards their interests. Thanks, youtube - very helpful and exactly what I wanted. /s
yeah, i dont know what id do without adblock on youtube.
My personal take is that people start understanding the negative impact unhinged marketing can have on your well-being. Ironically, while following influencers and having their happiness and worldviews happily influenced by social media.
At least they’re personalized now
All that means is that they’re tracking everything about you to figure out what ads would work on you. They share your data between companies to build a profile on you.
I used to think the same as you but after enough time I just got completely fed up with everyone constantly trying to sell me things. Basically every interaction online is someone trying to take money from me. Not only that but they go out of their way to make things shittier because you’re more likely to part with your money. Like how article websites wait just long enough before you start reading before covering the screen with an ad and breaking your concentration. You can’t just scroll past those and mind your business.
90% of the internet has always had ads, you just scroll past them and mind your business.
Nah, I've always hated ads, and always blocked them as soon as we had the capability.
Ads is never just ads. It’s primarily a business model that is fundamentally anti-consumer, because when your main remenue starts becoming showing ads to your user instead of selling them something of value, your priorities shift from trying to make a good quality product to trying to max out engagement in order to print as many ads as possible.
When i load a page on my phone and 60% of the page is ads, then i scroll and there is another ad making 100% of my screen ads, for things i will never be into buying, it makes me not want to use that site.
The people who are reacting so negatively to ads are probably the same people who extensively use adblockers. Seeing a ad sneak through is jarring, and offensive, because an ad demands your attention and distracts you from the mission, its personalized propaganda.
Personally, I don’t mind ads that are not extremely obnoxious. A clickable link on the sidebar advertising something or a random picture here and there - no problemo, as they’re easy to ignore.
What I can’t stand are the extremely intrusive ones - pop-ups that obscure half of the screen with such a tiny little X in the corner that you need to click it in a pixel-perfect manner so you won’t “accidentally” open the ad itself. Ads that play music at full volume without warning. Unskippable ads in videos. Sites that greet you with “we noticed you’re using an adblocker” and just won’t let you view the actual site content. Ads that make the rest of the site lag like hell or freeze entirely. Rapidly flashing ads in neon colors that almost make you have a seizure by looking at them. Those can GTFO and if my adblocker isn’t able to / allowed to hide them, I simply won’t use the site in question anymore and that’s it.
To make an IRL comparison: I don’t mind at all if there are advertisement brochures just lying around on a counter while I’m in a mall, because I can decide on my own whether or not I want to take one of those. But if there is an employee blocking my way, screaming at the top of their lungs and slapping me across the face with said brochure, and I am not allowed to knock them out cold, then I’ll never set foot into that store again, ever.
Fun fact. There’s a dating app, can’t remember which one, where it would display a full sized ad, and if you even tried to swipe back, it would instantly load the playstore.
Sorry. Not swiping to go back. Swiping to close the app. I removed that insanely quick. Whilst still not ideal, Tinder has an ad system that shows like a users profile. But you can just swipe it away without any bullshit. Or if you like the look od it you can click or swipe on it. Take a guess which one has a significantly better user experience.
You can’t scroll some of the ads, that’s one of the problems.
There are video ads that remain on the bottom of the page regardless of what you do. Same for image ads.
I’m trying to read an article and there is distracting ads all over the page.
Ads back in 90s were subtle, I have zero problems with textual google ads in the article but videos and images that is also slowing down my experience with its large downloads?
Sites are like loading 10m of content for a 2kb text article. Come on.
I’m just sick of ads cluttering every damn thing I lay my eyes on.
Its a privacy issue as well as just an awful annoyance. Fuck you I dont want to watch your shitty ad I need to watch this video so I know how to fix my dishwasher.
I get ads may be a necessary evil if you're using a website or service you aren't directly paying for, but 9/10 times it's because of how they're implemented and behave and advertisers and large publishers are out of touch with users and never learned or they simply just don't care.
First off, it seems that ads always have to be presented in the most obnoxious ways and this is a problem that's almost as old as the internet. I remember going online back in the late 90s and early , you'd get those extremely obnoxious and seizure inducing "YOU'RE OUR 1'000'000 VISITOR" or "YOU WON A FREE IPOD" ads. Today though, ads are still as annoying or even worse to an extent since every website now insists having autoplaying videos with sound or if you're using a phone and trying to read an article, 3/4 of the page will be taken up by an ad and you have little room to view the actual content.
Secondly, ads have been increasingly becoming a privacy issue. Advertisers want to know every little thing about us and have the ability to track us around the web. I really want advertisers especially to know as little as possible about me because they clearly can't be trusted with data wether they keep it internally or sell it to data brokers because some of the data they're able to collect is alarming.
Ads as a general concept are ok to me, otherwise a lot of the Internet that is free will either go away or cost money. It’s just how many ads and what type. Pop-up ads are bad, too many ads are bad, ads that are deceptive are bad. They need to be small, curated, non-intrusive, and non-deceptive.
otherwise a lot of the Internet that is free will either go away or cost money.
It’s unfortunate, but this would be a much better internet in the long run. There are other business models besides ads. Like Curiosity Stream and NebulaTV as alternatives to Youtube. People who make video content simply get paid to do it. With ads the type of content you primarily fund is outrage content and whatever gets the most clicks regardless of whether the creator cares about what they are making or not.
There would be some growing pains in an internet that isn’t driven by ads, but it would be way better.
My shows have ads My videoes have ads My video games have ads My language learning app…ads My podcasts…3 mins of ads
Not just banner ads like the old days but content covering ads, noisy ads, unskippable ads, 1 of 3 ads. It’s totally out of control.
The world is made just a tiny bit worse for every ad someone forces another person to see.
Advertising is a huge waste of societal resources.
Think about it: what's the actual point of advertising, from the consumer's point of view? I would argue it's to get notified of available products, and why you might want that product.
But that's not what advertising does 99% of the time, now. Advertising now is a collection of products that you already know exist, have probably already looked at, but now you're getting spammed. Because they aren't trying to educate you as a consumer - they're trying to use exposure to trick you into buying their particular product instead of someone else's identical product.
If you look at the total GDP that goes to advertising, it's frankly insane. It's lost 20%. Add finance into that, and most of our GDP is centered around meta-economics rather than stuff people want/need/will use.
they’re trying to use exposure to trick you into buying their particular product instead of someone else’s identical product.
That’s probably the case for a lot of products, but I don’t agree with your generalization that advertising offers nothing to the consumer and is presumably a drain on the economy.
I run a small business and see noticeable returns on advertising dollars spent vs not advertising. I run a services business and advertising makes it easier for clients to find us and makes me more money that I put back into the economy by buying lavish things like food and rent. I hate advertising and wish I didn’t have to pay Google or use social media to promote our “brand”, but the truth is I do in order to stay competitive.
The advertising I’m buying isn’t tricking or spamming anybody, it’s targeted to people that are looking for that kind of service in my area and it doesn’t misrepresent our work in any way. What it does do is get my foot through the door and increases the likelihood of them reaching out to us over the schmucks down the street that offer a similar service, but are not as good as us in terms of value, customer service and quality of work. There’s value in that for the consumer.
No the internet has had ads during your lifetime but older people know exactly how it was before. :)
If I told you that you could see a movie for free, but every 20 minutes or so we'd pause the movie and slap you with a fish, would that be okay?
Would it be better if we analyzed your website usage to choose the specific kind of fish that you'd prefer to be slapped with, would that be okay?
That's what ads feel like. I hate them, and I've almost entirely eliminated them from my life.
theres a good part in Ready Player One (movie) where the ceo guy is showing how many more ads they can cram imto your field of view and you can still see. Was like 60 or 80% of the visual area. Unfortunately that example is how most advertising heads think. Just cram more and more ads on screen makimg the thing you are trying to do impossible or unusable
The little personal time I have and by attention has to be wasted on looking at something that’s trying to convince me that I need a product or a service or whatever and to spend my hard earned money on it. Money that I received in exchange for my time.
We don’t live forever. The little time we have in this world is wasted on stupid work instead of enjoying life. I don’t want to waste whatever I have left on this shit.
90% of internet has always had ads
And we were content to be back when it was a single banner. But then they started flashing, and crowding the screen, and popups that got so obtrusive they would sometimes spawn forever and crash your PC.
You are almost certainly using a browser with a popup blocker, because advertisers can never just let it be: they need to become more and more obtrusive until they start harming their customers. Protecting yourself from ads is a necessity.
Every modern browser has that built in, and phones actively block most of it. Unless you’re surfing the internet on IE4 or whatever, you are already filtering a good chunk of the dreck, because someone else saw fit to protect you from it.
Yes, the internet has always had ads, and us not being ok with it is why you’re able to browse at all without infinitely spawning popups in front of you.
An ad here or there I don’t mind. When well over 3/4 of the screen is ads… then I get pissed.
If it’s what Reddit has become and it’s tons of ads… again thanks but no.
There’s this idea, that if the companies just knew enough about you, they could send you the perfect ads. Ads you’d appreciate. Ads for things you didn’t even realise you needed until you saw the Ad. This ignores that there are entire industries, and entire product ranges between industries, that - for one reason or another - never advertise.
All the information in the world about how I might want a new microwave is no good when you realise that you never see and ad for a microwave. Likewise, the ‘perfect ad’ for me most of the time would be something for specialised tools (for plumbing or bike repair or whatever) - again, something you never see an Ad for. So the ads I get are just weird, and I spend longer trying to figure why I getting it than I ever would do entertaining the idea that I’d click on it. In fact, the only adverts I’ve ever clicked on have been by accident, so every one is just a waste of time and space.
Maybe you're someone wholly untouchable but advertising is accompanied with thorough independent market research and sales numbers and companies can directly see the impact of their ad campaigns. It's indisputable.
In the long term it's also about brand recognition, you see a "stupid ad" today and in a year when you're looking for that kind of thing you are more likely to choose that brand over another and you don't know why but "this jams seems better". The effect is proven, scary and it's something we're relatively helpless against. It doesn't help that our brains sometimes register things running in the background on the TV while we're petting the dog. Product placement in movies works like that too, if we notice it we think it's obvious and stupid, but we still notice it and even when we don't notice it our helpful subconscious is right there helping us remember.
Moving into even worse territory, on social media like Facebook they can profile you enough to know where you're leaning politically and if you're not entirely confident in your political stance they can show you ads that looks like product ads but are designed to nudge your political stance a bit to the side in the desired direction.
The effect of ads on the subconscious is scary. It's not mind control but it's can influence you.
Because I can’t go two minutes without someone trying to sell me something, and it’s infuriating. I can’t even browse Lemmy without someone spamming my feed with their shitty Lets Play videos, or some random selfhosted project posted by the company who made it.
It’s disingenuine, and is to me one of the single largest reasons I’ve switched over to decentralized platforms.
Ads have gotten worse and worse overtime. Some websites are so stuffed with ads the performance of the website suffers. Then there are risks associated with ads when many have become malicious or used to track people. Then what is advertised can also be extremely questionable. Everything from useless products to addictive mobile games to harmful "health" products to crypto scams show up on ads.
I'm fine with some ads on free websites/service if they're not crazy but too many sites have gone nuts. I'm not ok with ads with paid services. Ads during shows/movies are a no go when I paid for them.
Izzy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Ads are the epitome of the enshitification of the internet. It corrupts the incentives to make anything online.
Izzy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq7NLMwynYg
Semi related, but here is a funny video about ads.