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Advertising is getting stupid...er
- Thread starter Crystal
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That's why I have an ad blocker. I know some people think it's wrong because sites can't make money, but if sites didn't look like your screenshot and ads didn't frequently have malware, then maybe I wouldn't need an ad blocker to make their site usable.
Who are all these people clicking on that garbage to make it worth advertisers and site owners doing that in the first place? Does TikTok really need to place banner ads?!
Who are all these people clicking on that garbage to make it worth advertisers and site owners doing that in the first place? Does TikTok really need to place banner ads?!
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I sure don't, I'm pro ad blocker. It's also why I'm anti-ads on GWF
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Yep, they're out there. And I guess they do have a point that if everybody used ad blockers, the entire model of how the Internet is run would collapse. But I'm not completely convinced that'd be a bad thing.
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Oh interesting. I have it running on my phone, and I'm very glad to have it, but it gives me problems often enough that I wouldn't want to filter all of my Internet traffic through it without a quick way to turn it off or restart it. Do you ever have problems with things that aren't ads loading? It's completely possible it's my phone that's the problem, since it generally struggles with changing networks, so maybe the VPN is functioning fine but just confusing it.
i miss using a browser which has a proper ad blocker and would also let me block whatever elements I wanted. I'd turn off all those busy side panels on stuff like Facebook, animated nonsense, etc.
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But people aren't going to buy stuff from an inadvertent click, which is what advertisers ultimately care about. I mean, it obviously does make them money somehow or they wouldn't do it, but I don't see how.
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But people aren't going to buy stuff from an inadvertent click, which is what advertisers ultimately care about. I mean, it obviously does make them money somehow or they wouldn't do it, but I don't see how.
I dunno… for all we know, it could just be a scheme where they make their money off of the ads for the game or app and not necessarily the game or app itself. Like those shitty charities that collect money and keep the lion’s share of the fund collected for themselves while the “house” you’re sponsoring as a donor that you get a picture of is actually made of cardboard… it kinda makes sense when you consider the build quality of the typical app or game you see depicted in those kind of pervasive ads. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen a reel for some cooking game or tower defense game, I’d be pumping some serious capital into this place and a lot more grass in my bong. The girls are into those cooking time management games, and the build quality is horrendous with the progression paywalled or passable through ads, and Jesus Christ on a crucifix of popsicle sticks do they bombard you with ads to get anywhere in-game. Run out of eggs? Go fuck yourself, watch a 15 second ad or pay $2.99 for a chicken manager to make ‘em shit out unlimited eggs. Gonna take 28 hours to cook toast? Welp, you better eat shit and cough up $4.99 for the 4-slice turbo toaster. Don’t worry, if the economical impact is a concern for you… you could always purchase the $99.99 bundle where you get all the managers, all the appliances, a sign for your diner that says “I ate shit for this billboard” that ONLY VIP’s can get, and they’ll throw in 20 gems so you don’t feel like you’re spending real money when you purchase the fucking seasoned cast iron skillet.
I’m bringing back stoned rants for 2024. If I gotta think it, y’all are gonna read it.
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Yeah I've seen the apps you're talking about. They're like that because a small percentage of people will spend nearly unlimited amounts of money on mobile games. If you make every little upgrade and item a few bucks, a handful of people will buy all of them. If you don't put many resources into your app, then that can be enough to turn a profit.
I don't understand who is watching loads and loads of ads in a game, though. You can spend more time watching ads than playing the game! If it's kids because they're broke and have lots of free time... well one that seems unethical, and two they probably don't have any money to buy the stuff in the ads anyway.
I don't understand who is watching loads and loads of ads in a game, though. You can spend more time watching ads than playing the game! If it's kids because they're broke and have lots of free time... well one that seems unethical, and two they probably don't have any money to buy the stuff in the ads anyway.
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The wild thing is, they present the advertisements as the alternative to spending cash, so it’s something typically targeted to children being advertised. The whole process seems geared towards children as an alternative to the shit the developers found themselves in years ago with the App Store and Play Store forcing refunds to accounts that exploited kids into unknowingly or unintentionally making purchases. I’m not entirely sure of the specifics of how they executed it, but certain developers basically sprinkled purchase points throughout the gameplay and didn’t force purchase confirmation from what I understood. Parents flipped out when they saw the charges on their statement, while some of the more savvy ones were able to deduce what was going on enough to lawyer-up and get a class action rolling. Of course, the class action went after the markets, and in turn the changes we’ve seen in recent years are a result of that. I guess those ads are the evolution of that same tactic since devices babysit kids now like televisions used to for our generation.
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I've heard of them, but only in regards to supporting content creators on YouTube and the like. But at this point I hear so much complaining about copyright strikes and demonetization that it's hard to believe anyone is surviving off such sites alone anymore. And I hate ads too much to care either way.
With that said I actually have no idea what adblockers are good/safe on mobile so I've been rawdogging the internet ever since I've had smartphones.
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This sounds like a teenage male's search history
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I recommend ad guard. I've found it to be safe and effective, and it's the same thing Crystal mentioned up thread. I did say I sometimes have problems with it, but at worst I have to toggle it off then back on once every few weeks.
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It’ll work for most ads, every once in a while one will slip through.
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To avoid YouTube ads, you have to do a bit of work which involves copying the link to watch it in something else. I'm not sure the exact steps or about Twitch because I'm not into watching videos.
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I’ll need to learn how to do that with my router
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It's very, very simple to setup. You just need a docker container running adguard and you're good, one quick change to the router's DNS settings and that's it. I run mine off of a synology NAS so you can literally run it on anything at all. Here's a good walkthrough from one of my favourite YouTubers, NetworkChuck. Shows you how to do everything.
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Likely story
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This is why I use adblockers. Any site that wants me to not use my ad blockers makes me not want to be on there lol.
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Agreed, I love adblockers, but I got a bit complacent with AdVuard installed on my network I forgot to have one for when I'm on the go. Big mistake lol
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Some forums I'll make an exception for just because most don't have toxic ads anyway whether ad block is on or not.
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Same, most forums are benign, here we don't and will never have ads, so this is a safe place
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Same, most forums are benign, here we don't and will never have ads, so this is a safe place
I'll be honest. I went on a well known fourm and they had porn ads everywhere, I enjoyed them. Too bad the owner took them down lmao.
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Fair enough, lol, guess that owner was pretty open about his advertising! I just find ads to be insidious and annoying, so I don't want them on my sites or forums lolI'll be honest. I went on a well known fourm and they had porn ads everywhere, I enjoyed them. Too bad the owner took them down lmao.
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I don't like ads at all. Commercials on public television and streaming tend to annoy the piss out of me in general. It's why I prefer everything on disc.
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Same here, and the fact every damn streaming service does it now, too. Absolutely awful! Glad I got rid of more or less all of mine
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People pay a lot of money for Cable or DISH only to be subjected to 15 minutes worth of commercials during every show. Now it's slowly made it's way to streaming services and has steadily gotten worse. That's not something I like being subjected to. With those commercials there's never anything I want.
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The whole point of streaming services was to get away from all of this crap, now they're more and more prevalent and there are more and more streaming services getting a tighter and tighter lock on their content so you can't just have one catch-all like Netflix used to be, so people are paying insane amounts for various services just to watch a handful of shows on them and now be bombarded with ads for their trouble. It's absolutely ludicrous.
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It's getting out of control. I don't see how most people are just fine and dandy with how these platforms are shoving this shit down our throats. I'm not okay with it. I hate it. Which is why for years I built a library on dvd and bd to stay away from all of spam ads that come with television.
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We gotta' get you setup with a media server ASAP. Same movies, but without the need to swap disks.
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VUDU is pretty good if you're scanning in the digital copies. We have that for some of our shows on the smart tv.
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Yeah, VUDU is good, but limited to just those that have digital copies. I have 700+ movies and I've got them all transferred into my Plex server so I can watch them on demand, anywhere anytime.
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Unless your internet connection goes to complete shit when you're in the middle of watching something lol
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True, lol, but Plex does let you download content to your device if you're going to be traveling or something, so you could always have a few things downloaded for "just in case"
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I was watching a movie with my girlfriend and an ad started playing, and I must've given her a look because she said "we don't pay for that level of Hulu". Luckily there were only two ads breaks, because if it'd been a lot I probably would've told her to turn it off.
I feel like you live a bit of a different life if you don't ever see ads.
I feel like you live a bit of a different life if you don't ever see ads.
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Yep, 'cause a lot of news sites make most of whatever money they make off the ad revenue and if you have an ad-blocker, there goes their money.