this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2024
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Have a sneaking suspicion that google is doing the classic spend 100 dollars to save 1 cent type scenario, cause all the money they've dumped into this anti-adblock shit? theres no way its less than what they've not made from adblockers.
Especially when all this money could have been spent on improving their ad service so people don't have to view 2 hour ads, or malware laden bullshit, or just blatant pornographic advertising.
but why spend money moderating their own service, when they can spend 10x the money trying to force their open septic tank of a service on everyone.
It's what happens when you hire MBA grads and they're trying to find relevance.
Maybe... but in the long term advertisers aren't going to be willing to spend as much on a platform if they know that ads are easily blocked.
except ads are blocked everywhere when you have an adblocker.
and people have adblocking because ads are cancer
Because as are everywhere.
and they carry malware.
and they are obnoxious, if not straight pornographic.
Moderating the advertising would do far more for making adblock useless, than starting a petty dickslapping war they wont win.
I remember when I first downloaded an ad blocker. For quite a while I didn't bother, ads didn't bother me and websites need to pay for hosting somehow. Then I encountered an ad that SCREAMED "HELOOOOOO" any time you moused over it and I immediately downloaded an ad blocker and haven't been without since.
Fuck advertising companies, they are the reason ad blockers are so prolific. If ads aren't bothering you then you're not noticing them, meaning they're not doing their job so ad companies will develop new ways to bother you with them until you refuse to take it anymore.
I jumped on the adblocking train after the 3rd time my system got struck with nasty malware (back in the windows XP days) from infected ads.
I finally said fuck it, downloaded adblockers, and never looked back.
and every time i've been without adblockers since (new computer/new format, working on someone elses, etc) I've continually been reinforced about the necessity of adblockers.
Ad moderation won't happen until there's a unified group which can moderate ads and can't gain from being more permissive. Basically, advertisers need to unionize against their own common interest to increase the quantity of ads.
This has kind of happened already in the form of sponsorships, where each ad is vetted and can be rejected on a case-by-case basis. Each presenter is acting alone in this case however, letting bad sponsors slip through. Bad sponsors are often slammed on in feedback though.
Perhapse if advertisers could remove their heads from their posteriors for a moment they might see that neutrally read ads with no music would drive far fewer people to block them, but this could only work if all ads on a platform were limited in this way, and such regulations could be reliable and specific enough to make blocking more hassle than it's worth.
I'm having difficulty imagining a blocker driven agreement though, as any level of leeway for ads would all but require compensation, and that's 99% of the way to corruption already.
However, this all could only work if for-profic companies could be convinced to not seek every possible profit at every point immediately, which is unlikely.
advertisers dont even have to do anything.
Google just has to grow a set of fucking balls and say "No, this ad is to loud/obstructive/annoying/disruptive/downloads malicious code, It will not be run on our service"
but Google'd rather take money from PragerU than moderate its ads to remove the need for adblocking
Google runs AdSense, they're exactly one of the advertising companies I'm talking about. I agree that they're in a great position to enforce regulations on ads and build trust, but why do that when you can just eliminate all the alternatives?
I have a personal rule that anything advertised on YouTube I will never buy.
all I ever see advertised on youtube, during the brief times I have no adblocker (mostly when I'm working on other peoples computers and making sure audio and stuff is working) are either 2 hour long fake documentaries/talk shows/etc pushing some bullshit product
or PragerU pushing racist bullshit.
In fact, the overwhelming majority of it is PragerU pushing racist bullshit.
If you remove all other reasons for adblocking, Not seeing PragerU bullshit and not letting google make money off PragerUs racist bullshit is still an incredibly valid reason for adblocking.