For me: Cancelling paid subscriptions should be as easy as subscribing. I hate the fact that they actively hide the unsubscribe option or that you sometimes should have to write an e-mail if you want to unsubscribe.
For me: Cancelling paid subscriptions should be as easy as subscribing. I hate the fact that they actively hide the unsubscribe option or that you sometimes should have to write an e-mail if you want to unsubscribe.
Advertising. At what point did we as a society decide that it was perfectly acceptable for companies to manipulate us - especially children - into buying shit we don’t need and didn’t even want until the ad sold us on it? It’s fucking wild.
Adblocking feels to me like it should be illegal, but isn’t. I have adblockers on all my devices and haven’t seen an ad for years; it feels like a secret super power and stopped the web from looking like a trashy back alley.
Nah, I pay for my bandwidth, I get to decide what it does and does not get used for. Even if that’s not nearly as big a concern as it used to be in like the late 90s, it’s the principle of I’m not going to pay for you to shove your garbage down my throat.
And yeah I haven’t seen an ad in years and years on PC. People complain about youtube ads and I’m like ‘What’s that? I watch a lot of youtube and I’ve not seen an ad in like 10 years.’ Sadly on mobile that’s a little more complicated, but adding a private dns of ‘dns.adguard.com’ blocks most things.
I am always shocked when I have to use a browser without an ad blocker. How do people tolerate it?
I mean, I get it. I know many people have no idea about adblocking, etc. But goddam. It’s so awful without it.
Every time i accidentally open chrome instead of waterfox on my tablet jeeesus christ
Use DNS-based blocking. I put Tomato firmware on my router and block for all devices on my network. Rethink can selfhost DNS on Android too.
Interesting, I just use a private DNS on my phone set to dns.adguard.com and it catches most things, but I’d like to hear more about this. I’ve considered setting up a pihole but there are people in the house who work from home and need to do VPN shit so I’m reluctant to mess with that, but if I can just change the firmware on the router…
Look into OpenWRT, FreshTomato, etc. Depends on your model of router (advanced: build your own!) It accomplishes the same thing as a PiHole.
yah I’m putting in a pihole,but I gotta get off my arse and finish configuring my bigtree for the 3d printer to free up the pi first. It’s a process.
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Right! It’s kinda wild when you do see them. I always equate it to the feeling of being in a casino.
What really throws me is tv commercials. When I do see one, like in a waiting room or something, all I can think is, “people fall for this?”
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This right here is why I think advertising is manipulation. Cause even the subtle shit where you’re like ‘That was weird’ and shrug it off is still affecting you days, weeks, even years later. I grew up in the 70s and 80s and there are so many fucking stupid ad jingles and slogans stuck in my head, half of them I don’t even remember who they were for.
Mooommms like you choose Jiiiiffff
I’m in the same boat, but you also have to remember that blocking ads typically involves blocking tracking too. You’re right they the ads are much more bland or misdirected but that’s because there’s little to no targeting data (probably just your IP address).
I’m mostly talking about the stuff I see on a TV when I’m in a waiting room or an airport or something
You should rawdog fox news sometime. Their cookie pop-up is WILD
It’s weird they don’t put more effort into stopping them, TBH. I’ve heard it’s because they’d rather collect extra analytics than do any foolproofing that might interfere with it.
Marketing wasn’t really a thing until sometime around the Industrial Revolution and post-WW1. Before then, we didn’t really have the capacity to produce more than what people needed. Marketing basically just consisted of “here’s my product, here’s why it’s superior to others.” But with the post-war boom and the rise in manufacturing, producers were suddenly able to out-produce the demand. So they invented marketing, to get people to buy things that they didn’t actually need. The idea of “create a problem so you can sell the solution” was born.
Yeah I get the history, I’m more commenting on the fact that nobody really said ‘Huh, is this a good idea?’, it just slowly infiltrated everywhere and like the frog in the pot of slowly-boiling water we don’t realize the shit we’re in because of it.
That’s what I think advertising ought to be. ‘This product/service exists. Here’s what a panel of independent testers (folks like Consumer Reports) has determined about its functionality, capabilities, etc.’ No music, no slogans, no ‘vibe-n-style’ or whatever, just someone describing the basic facts about the product or service. Because I don’t dispute that I have seen ads for something and been like ‘holy shit this will make my life easier’ or whatever, so I don’t want to not be able to discover products… I just also don’t want to be manipulated by the companies that have a financial incentive to push them.
And the fact that a lot of children’s TV shows are nothing but thinly veiled toy commercials. Hilariously parodied in Dinosaurs
Oh yeah, I grew up in the 70s/80s when that shit became rife. I loved Saturday morning cartoons until I got old enough to realize that they only existed to sell me toys (and to sell ads for other toys.)
Worst part is, those are usually the best ones.
You can thank Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays
Specifically his 1928 book Propaganda which basically created PR and modern advertising.
It happened gradually, like frogs in a kettle.
When it was just a guy putting up a sign in front of his smithy it was kind of harmless. Ditto for having a single text-only paper ad for people who are new to town. But, it was a slippery slope.
Yeah that’s kind of my point: society has not stopped to think about the fact that the water is at a full boil and has been for a while. If I had my way ads would just be a basic, boring, ‘This product/service exists, and this is what an independent panel of testers has determined about its functions and capabilities.’ There have definitely been products that were advertised to me that make my life easier and that I use every day, so I don’t want to lose the ability to discover them, I just also don’t want these companies putting their dick in my ass and whispering into my ear that I’m not good enough person as a person if I don’t like it.
Frogs will not stay in the kettle :)
Ordered food at Sonic on their app. After I ordered, it popped up with ads for travel, various credit cards, etc. Completely crazy to me that they’re triple dipping on monetization now (sell me food, sell my data and then sell me other shit while trying to sell me food.)
This is why I use my phone as little as I can get away with, because these companies have built their apps as these little walled gardens where it’s illegal to modify them to block their ads when that’s not the case on a website. Fortunately in my situation there are very few occasions where I have to use my phone or an app for something.
I recently went to Sonic, didn’t use the app, and ended up with norovirus for free.