Ads is never just ads. It’s primarily a business model that is fundamentally anti-consumer, because when your main remenue starts becoming showing ads to your user instead of selling them something of value, your priorities shift from trying to make a good quality product to trying to max out engagement in order to print as many ads as possible.

Ad Blocking IS Cyber Security

90% of internet has always had ads

And we were content to be back when it was a single banner. But then they started flashing, and crowding the screen, and popups that got so obtrusive they would sometimes spawn forever and crash your PC.

You are almost certainly using a browser with a popup blocker, because advertisers can never just let it be: they need to become more and more obtrusive until they start harming their customers. Protecting yourself from ads is a necessity.

Every modern browser has that built in, and phones actively block most of it. Unless you’re surfing the internet on IE4 or whatever, you are already filtering a good chunk of the dreck, because someone else saw fit to protect you from it.

Yes, the internet has always had ads, and us not being ok with it is why you’re able to browse at all without infinitely spawning popups in front of you.

Also, you realize you’re posting on an ad-free platform?

No the internet has had ads during your lifetime but older people know exactly how it was before. :)

The people who are reacting so negatively to ads are probably the same people who extensively use adblockers. Seeing a ad sneak through is jarring, and offensive, because an ad demands your attention and distracts you from the mission, its personalized propaganda.

My personal take is that people start understanding the negative impact unhinged marketing can have on your well-being. Ironically, while following influencers and having their happiness and worldviews happily influenced by social media.

90% of the internet has always had ads

I very clearly remember a time when only a handful of websites actually had ads on them and having an ad blocker wasn’t a straight up requirement to stem the tide of popups and banners.

It’s the websites with ads that heat up my phone so much it hurts that are the problem.

For most people it isn’t the ads, it’s the way ads are implemented. They harvest insane amounts of data to track and identify you. Then the ads in social media are inserted deceptively, or you get popups that deliberately make it difficult to dismiss them, or you’re trying to read an article but there’s an ad between evwry sentence. Most people would be ok with small, non deceptive ads that didn’t require you to sogn away your entire life to target them to you, but most ads these days are not that.

I get ads may be a necessary evil if you’re using a website or service you aren’t directly paying for, but 9/10 times it’s because of how they’re implemented and behave and advertisers and large publishers are out of touch with users and never learned or they simply just don’t care.

First off, it seems that ads always have to be presented in the most obnoxious ways and this is a problem that’s almost as old as the internet. I remember going online back in the late 90s and early 2000s, you’d get those extremely obnoxious and seizure inducing “YOU’RE OUR 1’000’000 VISITOR” or “YOU WON A FREE IPOD” ads. Today though, ads are still as annoying or even worse to an extent since every website now insists having autoplaying videos with sound or if you’re using a phone and trying to read an article, 3/4 of the page will be taken up by an ad and you have little room to view the actual content.

Secondly, ads have been increasingly becoming a privacy issue. Advertisers want to know every little thing about us and have the ability to track us around the web. I really want advertisers especially to know as little as possible about me because they clearly can’t be trusted with data wether they keep it internally or sell it to data brokers because some of the data they’re able to collect is alarming.

Ads have gotten worse and worse overtime. Some websites are so stuffed with ads the performance of the website suffers. Then there are risks associated with ads when many have become malicious or used to track people. Then what is advertised can also be extremely questionable. Everything from useless products to addictive mobile games to harmful “health” products to crypto scams show up on ads.

I’m fine with some ads on free websites/service if they’re not crazy but too many sites have gone nuts. I’m not ok with ads with paid services. Ads during shows/movies are a no go when I paid for them.

At least they’re personalized now

All that means is that they’re tracking everything about you to figure out what ads would work on you. They share your data between companies to build a profile on you.

I used to think the same as you but after enough time I just got completely fed up with everyone constantly trying to sell me things. Basically every interaction online is someone trying to take money from me. Not only that but they go out of their way to make things shittier because you’re more likely to part with your money. Like how article websites wait just long enough before you start reading before covering the screen with an ad and breaking your concentration. You can’t just scroll past those and mind your business.

If I told you that you could see a movie for free, but every 20 minutes or so we’d pause the movie and slap you with a fish, would that be okay?

Would it be better if we analyzed your website usage to choose the specific kind of fish that you’d prefer to be slapped with, would that be okay?

That’s what ads feel like. I hate them, and I’ve almost entirely eliminated them from my life.

My shows have ads

My videoes have ads

My video games have ads

My language learning app…ads

My podcasts…3 mins of ads

Not just banner ads like the old days but content covering ads, noisy ads, unskippable ads, 1 of 3 ads. It’s totally out of control.

Advertising is a huge waste of societal resources.

Think about it: what’s the actual point of advertising, from the consumer’s point of view? I would argue it’s to get notified of available products, and why you might want that product.

But that’s not what advertising does 99% of the time, now. Advertising now is a collection of products that you already know exist, have probably already looked at, but now you’re getting spammed. Because they aren’t trying to educate you as a consumer - they’re trying to use exposure to trick you into buying their particular product instead of someone else’s identical product.

If you look at the total GDP that goes to advertising, it’s frankly insane. It’s lost 20%. Add finance into that, and most of our GDP is centered around meta-economics rather than stuff people want/need/will use.