How To Combat Harmful Technology: Should Ads Be Banned?

[Paulsian]

I've recently started boycotting all products I see ads for. 

The theory is if people boycott products pushed by ads the corporations will be afraid to create them. 

It's getting to the point where youtube for instance plays the same annoying liberty mutual commercial every 2 minutes to force people to go premium. It's mute skip mute skip skip skip. On sling mute mute mute. For a paid service to get ad after ad and they are usually the same ads. Why are corporations wasting their money, it's only alienating consumers? And then the political ones wait before you scroll away, those noobs, you don't scroll away from youtube ads you click skip.. 

Youtube pushing alcohol ads, political ads... No wonder people are having problems.. Apparently google thinks I should drink a lot more and become politically radicalized. 

Thoughts? 

Edited February 11, 2022 by Paulsian
typo

[bigmoe Whitfield]

I use ublock, I block every ad I come across.  the ones with the "sponsors" in the middle of their videos, I just skip over or stop watching them.     but I see no ad's.  I pay for my internet connection, they can pay for their own too.   i'm not paying it for them.

[Paulsian]

2 minutes ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

I use ublock, I block every ad I come across.

That's smart wonder if it works with sling and hulu. Amazon Prime, Netflix, & Disney+ are great but i'm sure they are gathering data to sell to the mad aders 

[bigmoe Whitfield]

1 minute ago, Paulsian said:

That's smart wonder if it works with sling and hulu. Amazon Prime, Netflix, & Disney+ are great but i'm sure they are gathering data to sell to the mad aders 

I'm not worried about gathering data,  as that's just a part of what has become and it will continue to do so,  was no point in fighting it,  I did for years, they won out,  I have to use software which requires certain aspects for work,  it is what it is, if I want to get paid.    and a pihole or such setup after the connection leaves the modem is what I use,  i've got a pfsense box sitting here that runs a modified version of PF (it's a firewall solution) to block add servers and it updates it's list automatically.   but there are many solutions.

[Rolig Loon]

I don't see or hear many ads. I don't get commercial broadcast channels where I am, and I listen to Public Radio (which doesn't have ads).  I don't do anything on social media, so I miss whatever they may put on facebook or whatever too.  I'm not specifically avoiding ads; they just aren't part of the media environment I use routinely.   If they were, though, I probably would avoid them or at least tune them out.  I'm not a prolific consumer, so companies aren't going to get much by pitching ads to me anyway.    When I want to buy something and really need information to help me make a decision, I go looking for it; I don't wait for it to come to me unannounced.

[Blaise Glendevon]

This is a good way to find everything behind a paywall. Calm down.

[Echelon Alcott]

uBlock Origin is your friend.

[Myntz Mysterious]

Adblock Plus in Chrome and I never see an ad in YouTube.

Neither Netflix or Disney+ runs ads that I am aware of.

Amazon Prime does if it lists so for that movie/show I believe. But these I generally watch on my TV more so then on the computer.

[Solar Legion]

4 minutes ago, Matilda Melune said:

Adblock Plus in Chrome and I never see an ad in YouTube.

Neither Netflix or Disney+ runs ads that I am aware of.

Amazon Prime does if it lists so for that movie/show I believe. But these I generally watch on my TV more so then on the computer.

Hulu does on their "lowest" tier of subscription. I long ago went for the No Ads tier.

[Rowan Amore]

Ads pay the bills.  

[Myntz Mysterious]

3 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Ads pay the bills.  

Well if they paid my bills I would be more then happy to watch them. 😁

[Myntz Mysterious]

18 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Hulu does on their "lowest" tier of subscription. I long ago went for the No Ads tier.

I use to sub to Hulu with the tier that had the Live tv channels/shows. But thought it was meh and not worth the $30 or so a month... 😏I think it was when they first announced that feature.

Edited February 11, 2022 by Matilda Melune

[Persephone Emerald]

4 minutes ago, Matilda Melune said:

I use to sub to Hulu with the tier that had the regular tv channels/shows. But thought it was meh and not worth the $30 or so a month... 😏I think it was when they first announced that feature.

If you want to get Hulu super cheap with ads, sign up for it on Black Friday weekend. Last time it went for $1/ month, but I expect it will be back up to $ 2.50/month next time. The amount of ads you get with any ad-supported level of most streaming services is still less than you'd get on most OTA channels.

Edited February 11, 2022 by Persephone Emerald

[Solar Legion]

4 minutes ago, Matilda Melune said:

I use to sub to Hulu with the tier that had the Live tv channels/shows. But thought it was meh and not worth the $30 or so a month... 😏I think it was when they first announced that feature.

Heck, it's a lot more expensive these days. Worse with the No Ads tier.

[Lindal Kidd]

Once upon a time, we had over the air television, with three networks. They had ads, but we put up with them because the content was free.

Then came cable TV, which promised "NO ADS!" "MORE CONTENT!" but the catch was we had to pay for a subscription. A lot of us did, to escape the 10 minutes of ads per 30 minutes of viewing time.

That didn't last long.  Many cable channels now have at least as many ads as the over the air networks.

Then came streaming media. "LOWER PRICE THAN CABLE!" "CHOOSE WHAT AND WHEN TO WATCH!" Some have ads, some have none. Some are free, some cost $. Content is all over the place, so you need several services.

And we are at war with content/ad providers, installing software and devices to block the ads ads ads ads, and then being told, "we detect you're using an ad blocker. If you want to see our stuff, drop your shields."

I am not sure we have advanced very far in the last half century or so.

But to reply to the OP: No, I don't think boycotting products that advertise is the answer. Sometimes I do find an ad useful in letting me know about something I did not know about, or telling me more about something I want to know more about.  Sometimes something I really really have to buy has ads that are no use to me, but I can't stop buying the thing just because they advertised at me.
 

[bigmoe Whitfield]

1 hour ago, Matilda Melune said:

Adblock Plus in Chrome and I never see an ad in YouTube.

Neither Netflix or Disney+ runs ads that I am aware of.

Amazon Prime does if it lists so for that movie/show I believe. But these I generally watch on my TV more so then on the computer.

You really want to switch to ublock origin,  look up why on google about adblock plus.

[Madelaine McMasters]

2 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

I listen to Public Radio (which doesn't have ads).

The time spent listing NPR sponsorships has increased, and their Podcasts have minutes of "sponsor" breaks. Thankfully, Apple's podcast player has a button for skipping forward 30 seconds. If it weren't a virtual button, I'd wear it out.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

46 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Once upon a time, we had over the air television, with three networks. They had ads, but we put up with them because the content was free.

Then came cable TV, which promised "NO ADS!" "MORE CONTENT!" but the catch was we had to pay for a subscription. A lot of us did, to escape the 10 minutes of ads per 30 minutes of viewing time.

That didn't last long.  Many cable channels now have at least as many ads as the over the air networks.

Then came streaming media. "LOWER PRICE THAN CABLE!" "CHOOSE WHAT AND WHEN TO WATCH!" Some have ads, some have none. Some are free, some cost $. Content is all over the place, so you need several services.

And we are at war with content/ad providers, installing software and devices to block the ads ads ads ads, and then being told, "we detect you're using an ad blocker. If you want to see our stuff, drop your shields."

I am not sure we have advanced very far in the last half century or so.

But to reply to the OP: No, I don't think boycotting products that advertise is the answer. Sometimes I do find an ad useful in letting me know about something I did not know about, or telling me more about something I want to know more about.  Sometimes something I really really have to buy has ads that are no use to me, but I can't stop buying the thing just because they advertised at me.
 

Grew up during the time of  only having over the air TV.  But in those days the commercials didn't run forever like they do now.

[Paulsian]

I figured with big tech starting to be regulated this would be a good time to try to limit ads. Maybe 1 ad per content and ad must contain information like who paid for the ad and ad must be placed at end of content like this content is sponsored by and must say click this to skip with a large button, if consumers are not interested in the ad they should have the option not to see it. The US does not allow tobacco ads and I believe alcohol ads should not be allowed, as well as political ads. 

What concerns me the most is children under 4 mimic their parents / guardians and they want to have technology and they are given technology at an early age, some tech savvy parents know how to enable child mode on youtube and I hope they do not have ads, but for the non tech savvy parents they just give their children a tablet or old phone with youtube on it and let them click and they absorb in some cases 30 minute ads just watching and watching. 

I don't log into youtube and always clear my cache and each time I access youtube I am taken to the default content page which contains videos with firearms and a lot of random content and when I click like a science video I get ads for alcohol and politics. 

Growing up I had the 30 channels basic cable and had my morning child programing with cereal and toy commercials before school. This is getting scary. I could not imagine growing up without that foundation of content. 

Like light pollution we have cyber pollution some places take light pollution seriously because how else would we be able to see a part of our galaxy in the night sky from those places? ads driven by greed are corrupting our most important generation. Clearly something is going the wrong way. People getting paid to create content like this person got bullied in school with millions of views? Wonder what it will look like in 40 years. 

[Orwar]

   I use Brave.

   I use a VPN.

   I use TPB.

   I bark at phone-salespeople.

[Silent Mistwalker]

3 minutes ago, Orwar said:

I bark at phone-salespeople.

Strange, so do I.

[Eggy UwU]

3 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

Ads pay the bills.  

very true! i still am selective of who i give my "ad revenue" to on websites like twitch or youtube.

 

[Istelathis]

Instead of Google, I usually use DuckDuckGo, and for Youtube I use Invidious.  I did have a SearX meta engine in a docker running from another computer, but the search results were horribly slow, and I considered hosting my own invidious instance but have not bothered to set it up yet.  I also use Brave, and have all cookies deleted when I close out of the tab, and I often use VPN.  Sometimes I will use Firefox with a few extensions on it, one which disables javascript for when I want to read a news article without that pesky pop up demanding I disable my ad blocker or demanding I use their cookies.  

There is no real way to avoid ads though, they are what fund most companies and I am fine with that.  What bothers me is algorithms used to suggest new content to me, I also do not like being sold like a two dollar .. nm .. 

Edited February 11, 2022 by Istelathis

[Paul Hexem]

Ads. Psh.

[Setsuki Takeda]

7 hours ago, Paulsian said:

I've recently started boycotting all products I see ads for. 

The theory is if people boycott products pushed by ads the corporations will be afraid to create them. 

It's getting to the point where youtube for instance plays the same annoying liberty mutual commercial every 2 minutes to force people to go premium. It's mute skip mute skip skip skip. On sling mute mute mute. For a paid service to get ad after ad and they are usually the same ads. Why are corporations wasting their money, it's only alienating consumers? And then the political ones wait before you scroll away, those noobs, you don't scroll away from youtube ads you click skip.. 

The more abusive they get the more people push back.

 

I used to have Hulu Premium and a certain network would play ads "before and after the show" as well as take your money for premium that was paid so you weren't subjected to that...

So I never watched a single thing from that network on Hulu.

With six legal streaming services that I paid for monthly I would still hoist the flag for that one show the network tried to force me to watch ads on after I had paid to not see them, and...

I didn't see a single ad on while watching that show, despite not missing an episode, and they didn't get any money from Hulu for my eyes on their content or extra money from the ad revenue they were trying to scam by overriding the "ad-free" service agreement.