alt Hacker NewsI don't think it is fair to pin this on Google - I get the worst ads on X. But something about how the X ad network works means that even when I report the ad, block the ad poster, etc. there is this army of alternate ad accounts that all show the same ad.
I was feeling very guilty last night as I was watching YouTube and getting 30s+ unskippable ad blocks every 10 minutes in some video. And the repetition and low quality were grating on me. I thought: being rich is never having to watch another ad. Why am I letting these ads own spaced repetition slots in my brain that could be filled with knowledge? Instead of learning, my mental energy is being taken up by psychological manipulation to purchase? The relentless repetition of the mind-numbing ad interspersed throughout otherwise educational content.
Being rich is owning the real-estate of my own mind. I sometimes feel like a digital serf in my own head.
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I think it is fair to pin this on Google, Meta, X, and any other ad networks that seem to have no control over their own platforms.
They're like Dr. Frankenstein, creating a monster and then just letting it roam the countryside. But worse, because they profit (immensely) from the chaos their monster wreaks.
X has been the most shameless, after all brand name advertisers left. Here is one state-level actor campaign that has been going on for months:
It's not advertising anything, it's just a straight up scam exploit site. It uses exclusively stolen or fake accounts. The links are shown as "amazon.de" or similar but of course do not go there, no doubt just a bug X haven't gotten around to fixing just yet.
This is on the kind of level where if we had actual law enforcement for tech companies, the next time some X executive lands in Europe they would be in cuffs.
Somehow I would never assume that X would act "moral". Google on the other hands even few years back was generally acknowledged as a good actor which was once again corporate charade people would fall for. Including myself.
I was feeling very guilty last night as I was watching YouTube and getting 30s+ unskippable ad blocks every 10 minutes in some video. And the repetition and low quality were grating on me. I thought: being rich is never having to watch another ad
You don't have to be rich to avoid getting those ads. You can make them go away for ~$15 a month. If you can't afford that, you have bigger problems in your life than YouTube ads, and your first step towards fixing them is to spend less time watching YouTube.
Why are you subjecting yourself to that instead of downloading Firefox + uBlock origin?
See the headline of this article for Exhibit (I've actually run out of letters in the alphabet) why adblocking is a moral imperative.