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.

  • ekky43@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Youtube, before Google bought it, was pretty nice. A little ad taking up a square in the upper right corner, just above recommended videos, and I think that was about it. Nowadays it’s completely impossible to watch YouTube without ad blockers or premium subscription.

    • Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      … 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

      • ekky43@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        And that is really sad. In the early days, I disabled my ad blocker for Youtube, as I tend to do with the websites I enjoy, but evidently I’ve had to re-enable it since to keep my sanity.

        As so many others, I don’t have a problem with passive or “docile” ads, but I do have a vendetta against intrusive anti-user experiences, which has led me to block ads and other kinds of annoyances /intrusions per default.

        The whole “need for more aggressive ads as result of adblockers” is a self fulfilling prophecy.

        • Mane25
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          1 year ago

          Just be careful because just because ads aren’t intrusive doesn’t mean they don’t track you. If ads were hosted locally on a website and not part of a big ad network then ad-blockers would be pretty ineffective anyway.

      • BilboTBaggin@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        For even more blocking there’s a plugin called sponsorblock. It automatically skips marked sponsor segments in videos. The segments are user submitted so not all videos have em but it’s so great!