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Unlock Origin for browsers (mobile and desktop)
NextDNS or PiHole (for everything)
FOSS apps for ad free apps that do exactly what the ad-full and premium apps do but free
And minimize usage of software that sells your data wherever possible
Everyone needs to be doing these things. Corporations gaslight folks into thinking they need ads and your info to upkeep and improve their services, but it isn’t true. They pocket the revenue while making their products shittier and shittier.
Don’t support shitty buisinesses
Strange to read your comment then notice that you are writing that from Cloudflare’s centralised walled garden. Not supporting corporate technofeudal shitholes entails staying outside of Cloudflare.
There are people who are building and participating in alternatives. They deserve support. But people have also become accustomed to getting a lot for free.
Now I’m not defending YouTube, but they have to store billions of hours of videos and serve millions of people at a time, just so you (and me) can stream 10hrs of video a day just to listen to lo fi study music or watch let’s plays. that’s very expensive. The whole model is ass-backwards, that content creators exist to get paid. YouTube should be charging content creators for storing their videos, and if the creator wants to saturate their shit with ads and e-begging, then it be their choice.
The free/cheap entitlement definitely seeps into FOSS areas. I periodically see things like “this app/platform NEEDS to have all of the functionality of the paid one, be free and easy to set up” or particularly contradictory “a Linux phone NEEDS to have reliable calls, texts, support my banking apps, WhatsApp, have modern hardware, and cost $200”
(or variations thereof)
I like the idea of free software, but users shouldn’t expect people to do the work for them for free. If there’s software I need that’s free, great. If there’s no free version, I’m not owed one and I’m not gonna complain until I get one.
Complaining is part of contributing ideas. You can contribute code, or ideas, or both. Have a look at [email protected].
One good principle that’s aligned with what you’re saying is that every FOSS contributor desides for themself what work to do. It’s uncivil to try to task someone in partcular with work. No one should be personally pushed to do work. Avoid that, and there is nothing wrong with reporting bugs and making suggestions generally to the commons.
You’re right, but this benefits rich content creators at the cost of new ones creating more income inequality in the content creation business.
Youtube shorts / short form content has driven me so mad that I’ve now deleted all social media, with only voyager to access lemmy. I actually couldn’t handle how shit it all is, which I kept going back to like a drug
There’s browser extensions/addons to block YouTube shorts. Combine it with SponsorBlock, DeArrow and a decent adblocker and YouTube becomes somewhat useable. The only thing you still notice is content creators wasting time and beating around the bush so they can abuse your watch time for ad money and better watch statistics.
Who the actual fuck has ever clicked on an ad inhibiting you from watching the rest of the video you were enjoying? I will carry a grudge for businesses that hound me like that. Keep your fucking ads off my monitor. If I want to watch ads, I’ll tune into the Superbowl qYearly. This is why TV stations and ad executives were told to fuck off when the VCR was invented and released for consumer purchase and they tried to regulate them and make it so people could not FFW through ads and the SCOTUS had to settle it. This is the same shit different medium. If your advertisers don’ think they are getting a good bang for their buck, tough shit. Stop paying inane shitinfluencers so much money to further expedite the fast track to idiocracy and you wouldn’t need to rely on ad revenue.
There are a lot of people who just let it happen. Watching ads, clicking on ads accidentally and all that shit. If i see an ad on my screen i’d rather spend a day figuring out how i never have to see an ad again, than play their stupid little game.
The username in this image: ::chef’s kiss::
People need to learn that just because you see an ad for something doesn’t mean you need to DO the thing. Take the time to learn who you are and then look at all these external things and ask yourself if you need this shit in your life. 95% of the time, the answer is no. If you’re confident in who you are as a human, you can pick and chose and neuter the things you want and avoid the ones you don’t.
Besides the solid list from @[email protected], use an Invidious front end. Even just search for a video on DDG and play it there.
This wall text doesn’t list a single one alternative
It’s a good rant, covers plenty of bases, but yeah, i know what you mean. Personally i haven’t seen an ad in over 10 years but then i don’t use mainstream social media, and i do use a vpn and uBlock Origin, and prefer a high-seas life (ahoy mateys) to the subscriber experience. I kind of like Patreon. As for location blocking, vpn solves that, etc. etc. other solutions etc. But still, a good solid rant.
It’s not a good rant, list the alternatives
This is what we built our nations to fund! This. Is. Freedom!
You can install adblocks on the android Firefox app too. Also, if you set the youtube site on desktop mode (browser setting) you can keep listen the audio playing with the display turned off. I do that for audiobooks and music all the time.
You can get background play in the actual YouTube app with Revanced if you want a mobile UI.
I read this in the robot voice from Fitter, Happier.
like a pig, in a cage… on antibiotics
Made me angrier than it should have.
“This feature only exists for Apple”
my Linux, windows, and Apple-having ass: okay
Because it’s SO damn true…
If I wasn’t in IT and knew how to run my own servers I would probably have given up on technology by now
you are exactly as angry as you should.
We’re updating our Terms of Service. Read on to discover how our legal department plans to screw you over in the future.
You agree to arbitration.
You agree to data collection.
You agree to letting our partners, and non-partners and 3rd parties to reuse your data.
I wonder how much more they need to do before more people start using tools like uBlock and such. The internet is practically unusable without it, and I’m not using hyperbole–most websites have so much garbage on them that you literally can’t read them without an ad blocker and/or reading mode.
Since Google removed support for ad blockers, I convinced my wife to switch to Firefox. She noticed a huge improvement immediately, especially on mobile.
Pihole is your friend.
Pihole is great, except my wife can’t turn it off if it breaks something (at least not without Extra work to set it up on my end). And when she leaves our wifi, she’s stuck with ads again.
That’s why I typically recommend end-device adblockers. Easier for most users to use and configure.
I get it. I had complaints from someone in my house too because they wanted the ads. I tried to explain that it was more than just ads but they didn’t care. I whitelisted their devices and let it go. There are also some connected devices that need to phone home in order to operate. These get reluctantly whitelisted too.
I went as far as installing network level ad blocking on both my home network as well as devices.
Recently, I’ve had a few friends over whom are… not as technologically adept. They were incredibly surprised that after joining my guest WiFi, suddenly they were able to browse most websites almost completely unobstructed. No ads, no popups, no BS. Aside from the usual cookie agreements, of course.
If you can, help your friends, install ad blockers for them, make their internet experience better. Even DNS level adblocking is relatively easy to set up, and the only thing this hurts is the unscrupulous megacorporations that want to milk you for every single bit of personal information to sell.
The reason I haven’t installed DNS level blocks is I’m always worried they will break random content and it’ll be harder to debug. Have you experienced that?
A few, mostly for my mother who wanted those email ads where she got points or whatever for clicking on them.
On the pihole, I just disable it for 5 minutes (there’s a button) and then see if it works. If it does. Then I look at the logs for what it blocks on a load. If not, it wasn’t the DNA blocker.
Look at piHole to get started. It runs on a raspberry pi and acts as your dns server. It blocks so much garbage. You add and remove sites on whitelist and blacklist, use 3rd party block lists. If you think dns is causing an issue, switch to a public dns temporarily is easy. And its free.
I thought piHole blocked Cloudflare, but then I see you are using Cloudflare (lemmy.world). Did you configure it to not block Cloudflare?
It doesnt block cloudflare by default. I use it and havent had to touch pihole to do it.
It’s not terribly difficult if you’re the one who set up the pihole or equivalent. But I typically use adblockers on end devices because they’re easier for other people to use (toggling a browser extension is accessible to most people, especially if I pin it to the menu bar).
I’ve only had network level ad blocking break online retail sites. Not every one but especially the ones that load separate frames for the CC processor on the check out screen. Blocking trackers breaks clicking on ads in email and search results though which a surprising number of guests have complained about.
Also be aware, DNS is pretty vital for using the Internet, if the thing hosting your DNS goes down, your Internet and any internal name based routing goes down too unless you know how to circumvent it.
Make sure the pihole doesn’t get unplugged basically.
Your router software probably accepts multiple DNS entries so you can have backups if your pi goes down.
My friend hates it, because it breaks some sites and services. Everytime he’s here he says “oh, right… you got that blocker thing on the network”, because he hit a snag once again.
I’m not sure what he does or how he uses the internet, but I don’t even notice that it’s there.
I don’t experience all of what OP is talking about because I use a VPN, ad block, sponsor block and use masked emails for almost all my signups.
Doesn’t fix everything but certainly helps make living in today’s digital exp system less horrific.
I think the point is that you have to do all of that in order to use the internet at all. And even then, it’s still a lot worse than it was even 5 years ago.
For sure, more and more I want to just unplug entirely and say fuck it. Like the digital version of being a hermit in the woods.
Original from xkcd
@CurlyWurlies4All Relevant essay from Ed Zitron. It’s well-worth a read, for those who haven’t already.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/
The picture I am trying to paint is one of terror and abuse. The average person’s experience of using a computer starts with aggressive interference delivered in a shoddy, sludge-like frame, and as the wider internet opens up to said user, already battered by a horrible user experience, they’re immediately thrown into heavily-algorithmic feeds each built to con them, feeding whatever holds their attention and chucking ads in as best they can. As they browse the web, websites like NBCnews.com feature stories from companies like “WorldTrending.com” with advertisements for bizarre toys written in the style of a blog, so intentional in their deceit that the page in question has a huge disclaimer at the bottom saying it’s an ad.
While far from concise, this article is one of the best summaries of the state of modern technology I’ve read in a long time. I’ve followed some of his analysis of the AI market and generally he’s got a good understanding of what’s at play. It’s amusing (and somewhat depressing) to consider how much I’ve internalized the current state of affairs as “normal” and have developed my own methods for compensating or navigating around the toxicity of commercial tech. Read this and then his “Rot Economy” article. I hadn’t read this before, thanks to @Chamomile for posting.
Using the computer in the modern age is so inherently hostile that it pushes us towards corporate authoritarians like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Meta — and now that every single website is so desperate for our email and to show us as many ads as possible, it’s either harmful or difficult for the average person to exist online.
It’s this extreme enshittification that made me sail the high seas again
It’s not that I want to
It’s not that I don’t want to pay
It’s not that the seas are cheap
It’s not that the seas are easy
It’s hard, it’s expensive (storage is cheap until you need to store boat loads of 20-40GB files, it takes huge amounts of time and has become a hobby because that’s what it takes.
I would gladly pay a single provider 100/month for all my series, movies, music, etc and always have access to everything everywhere without ads but the providers literally fucked us over on each and every one of those items so I’m done.
Aarrrr mateys, all aboard!
No chance @ 100/month. At that money, I want my dick sucked as well. Netflix used to be just 5.99 a month. I let it run for months even when I wasnt watching it because, fuck it. Its only 5 bucks. Not its what, 20? Fuck that. And thats before you get to all the other shit.
I spent 300 on a 22gb HDD and havent looked back. Sonarr downloads whatever tv shows Im watching, and I play it through plex or infuse. Both of which I paid the 100 for the lifetime sub. Other than that, I pay for internet and power. I also pay 45 a year for an iptv sub. Im in the UK, so thats 45 for the year to watch football that would cost me 50 per month to watch legally, and I still wouldnt get to see every game.
All of these greedy cunts have created this world of the high seas. But in order to get people away from it, it would have to nowhere near 100 a month. Theres no way Im chipping in for some fat CEOs fucking boat, just to watch tv. They can charge a fair rate, or they can fuck off.
I have some 100TB available right now and built a bit of a personal collection as a hobby, finding obscure.movies and shows nobody has heard of world wide, American, Canadian, Mexican, Danish, German, Japanese, etc.
It gets costly quickly, and takes huge swaths of time but it’s awesome having such a broad cluster of media available, this is what a Netflix type provider should have.
The 100/month is just to say that money never was an issue, I just want to have access to any media that I want instead of the bullshit we have now where providers must fuck around with their users to get the maximum amount of revenue
I spent 300 on a 22gb HDD and havent looked back.
I hope that was a typo. If not you got ripped off. And depending on what your sonars finds you’re going to run out of storage fast.
Maybe they bought it back in 2002?
Even in 2002 that would be a massive ripoff. In 2002 youd probably pay about 20/25 quid for a 20gb hdd. And even then, that would be high as I remember grabbing a 40 for not much more.
Not a typo, a total brain fart lol
As for Sonarr, its hooked up to my private tracker and has strict rules about what it downloads.
“THE ONE PIECE… THE ONE PIECE IS REAL!”
