Everything that makes advertisers happy is to the detriment of humanity as a whole. Everything that makes advertisers’ jobs easier also makes it easier for authoritarian governments. “Innovation” is no longer about creating new things, it’s about taking what already works, breaking it, shoving ads on it and charging a ransom in the form of a premium subscription.

On the other hand, there are endless ad-skipping tools, pages and sites where the main attraction is the lack of ads without a subscription. More and more people are talking about how intrusive and annoying ads are, even those who make their living from them. As the efforts of big tech to please advertisers grow, so do the efforts of ordinary people to screw them.

Very Cyberpunk.

  • CherryLips
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    171 month ago

    If I had a magic internet/media button I know what it would be.

    It would be a brand banish button. If I see an ad, I wanna just have a button to banish them from all my devices…forever. I already have a rule you poss me off with adverts …I defo won’t buy.

    So much tech potential that just does not exist!

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        I agree. Everything being advertised on YouTube is sketch. Same with all the repeated podcast adverts honestly.

        The fact that youtube hits me with an ad for a game that says everyone thinks its fake, with the most bullshit sounding voice over, tells me they are happy to take money for obvious scam products.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 month ago

    One day ads will be unskippable, unless you get a 12 hr AdPass by watching 60 minutes of uninterrupted ads while eyeball tracking software monitors your attention. You will get mini games where you need to sing along or high five a friend. You can get an instant AdPass by purchasing the featured product.

    • @[email protected]
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      51 month ago

      Fine, I will stop consuming whatever it is they are putting the ads in front of then.

      Books in the library don’t come with ads. But let’s be real I will just emulate old video games on my PC until I perish.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 month ago

        Left unchallenged, they’ll start inserting ads at your work, where you don’t control the devices. Mark my words. B2B ad and surveillance tech. The profiles will get dumped into the same data lakes, for thirsty ad ghouls to lap at. Just one big web of corporate iniquity, where they sell each other shit no one needs or wants.

        Left unchallenged, anyway.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        The next logical step is to use chat gpt to retroactively add product placement to existing novels. The enshittification will follow you.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 month ago

        NON ADVERTISER FRIENDLY MEDIA DETECTED WITHIN YOUR HOUSE

        PLEASE GIVE IT UP WILLINGLY TO THE DANGEROUS MEDIA DISPOSAL SPECIALISTS DISPATCHED TO YOUR HOME

    • NONEOP
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      41 month ago

      Some time ago I thought of something: one day they will invent some bullshit that maybe they will call “Proactive Advertising”, which is basically that instead of advertising a product, they will force you to buy it in order to continue enjoying a service. “Buy a Coke for 20 minutes without ads. Buy a Six pack for one hour” and so on.

  • @[email protected]
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    101 month ago

    Ads literally make me disabled. There presence challenges my freedom to interact both online and the real world.

  • @[email protected]
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    81 month ago

    On the one hand, yes. But also, it’s mostly capitalism.

    I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with “I’m starting a frisbee club for fun. We’re going to meet saturdays in the park. I’m going to put up some flyers and tell my friends about it”.

    But at some point that can mutate into “i put a 30 second unskippable ad for FrisbeeFranchise on youtube, and a giant billboard over the subway stop that implies if you don’t play frisbee you’ll never be happy”. That’s bad.

    I think targeted ads should be illegal as a first step. I don’t think anyone except the worst sort of advertisers would go to bat for those. Old fashioned static ads where they put an ad for bike stuff by the bike lane in town is annoying, but somehow we’ve invented things so much worse than that.

  • @[email protected]
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    1331 month ago

    Advertising is pollution

    All advertising is a psyop

    All advertisers are eco terrorists and gaslighters.

    They are enemies of normal people.

    They have forgone their humanity and our planet and our own well being.

    They should not exist.

    • @[email protected]
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      31 month ago

      I’m a walking ad for PostgreSQL, free and open-source RDBMS. It’s so much better than any other database, you should give it a try.

      I am none of the above.

    • @[email protected]
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      601 month ago

      Advertising doesn’t have to exist.

      Like, we could just pass laws restricting or outright banning certain kinds.

      I think people just forget that we can tell corporations they can’t do whatever the fuck they want.

      • @[email protected]
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        401 month ago

        Think about how much waste in bandwidth and electricity happens just to make a webpage unreadable.

        Marketers are the opposite of accomplishment.

        It’s a job that only exists in capitalism

        If you’re a marketer and you read this, fuck you personally.

        • TheTechnician27
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          1 month ago

          It’s a job that only exists in capitalism

          Not true. Government-sponsored propaganda campaigns need advertisers (“ads” are just corporate propaganda), public works projects need to be advertised for awareness, politicians will need people to advertise their candidacy, political movements will advertise their positions, and unless this is a command-control economy where one thing is delegated to exactly one entity, you’ll probably be advertising some service or product you do or make.

          • @[email protected]
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            31 month ago

            lol capitalism AND propaganda.

            I stand corrected.

            Is advertising just capitalist propaganda?

            • @[email protected]
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              101 month ago

              Your name is Punk Rock Sports Fan.

              Suppose a local punk band wants to inform people that they will be playing a show. So they print out some posters and hang them around town.

              That’s advertising.

              • @[email protected]
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                21 month ago

                Valid point.

                But worth saying, while it’s not unheard of for punk shows to post fliers, it’s mostly a word of mouth kind of thing.

                You only advertise because you want people do take some action of some kind.

                Totally possible to put on a show without explicitly advertising it. It just depends on your notifications for doing the show.

      • The Quuuuuill
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        101 month ago

        they forget because the corporations pay for propaganda to tell them it’s impossible

      • @[email protected]
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        31 month ago

        And then those people can go do something useful with their lives!

        The catch: it’s honest work

        • @[email protected]
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          1 month ago

          They could just make media that people actually enjoy with that advertising budget…

          Like, you get that’s an option, right? I don’t think anyone wants their creative visions to be used to sell beer to college kids with burping frogs.

          We don’t all have to like the same 10 movies a year the big studios decide we have to like either.

          Those resources could be spread around to more people making a much higher quantity of media that doesn’t have to try to appeal to everyone.

          Prioritizing profits over everything doesn’t lead to a better life except for a very very small percentage of us, so why do we all go along with it?

          We can literally just stop putting profits over everything and 99.99% of our lives would improve immediately

  • @[email protected]
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    141 month ago

    The advertisers are merely a tool for the investors, the people who own everything. The “haves” as it were. They are always at odds with and trying to squeeze money and labor from the rest of us, you know, the “have nots”.

    Something something you basically just figured out communism on your own

    • sunzu2
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      41 month ago

      Every single communist regime ended up operating in this exact same way…

      I am not following if OP actually figured anything out beyond that this is a class war.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 month ago

    i don’t know what happened to us as a society… we seem to have lost all semblance of media literacy.

    it feels like in the 90’s we were all very ad-aware, and actively opposed the idea of ‘selling out’… then the rolling stones sold the rights to Start Me Up to windows and we’ve been in a race to the bottom ever since. why are we talking about ‘monetizing your hobbies’.

    what happened to shows like Media Television, magazines like AdBusters? does nobody remember reading Naomi Klein’s ‘No Logo’??

    edit: Remember when Adam Curtis made 'A Century of the Self?