I definitely consume too much dystopian content to be a fair dystopian barometer, but the sheer amount of ads being pushed my way is starting to make me feel legitimately anxious. It feels like a techno-dystopia where all of the neat and artistic elements have been extracted and then ground into dust for our corporate overlords. Even the ‘regular’ people are just trying to sell themselves. The streamers, the funny videos, the pet videos, the porn, the reposts of all of those, so much of it is just monetizing my attention.
Do ads even influence people that much? Does anyone even eat Church’s Chicken?! Do people consider switching their car insurance? I though the postmoderns were jumping the gun a little with the pictures they painted of a future with corporate logos and other advertisements spread across every visible surface, but now I have to see 5 ads and a cookie consent pop up to look up a quick definition. Watching a friend’s youtube video? 30 seconds of rapidfire ads from 15 brands. It’s starting to feel absurd. Are we going to be okay?
I believe most of us here block as many ads as possible by any means possible. I so rarely see ads that every once in while when I do (on other peoples devices) I’m shocked and disgusted.
https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole
https://ublockorigin.com/
https://brave.com/
Is enough for me. If I watch YouTube on mobile it’s in Brave browser as that block the ads on iOS.
If I watch YouTube on my TV it’s in https://smarttubeapp.github.io/ which also blocks ads.
You don’t have to live like that and I feel sorry for all the people that do.
All that being said I know what you mean, even the content itself is now saturated with ads, i.e. a word about our sponsor for five minutes at the start of any video…
For the in-video sponsors try sponsorblock.
Or FreeTube, an open source desktop YouTube client with sponsorblock built in.
❤️
I’m sure you know about Brave being called out here lately so I just want to give you some iOS alternatives so you can stop using Brave (if you care enough, of course)
AdGuard (I paid for the lifetime, $12 I think) and it works great. Just like having uBlock on Firefox, but in safari so I still get all the integration that safari offers on your iOS device.
Dark reader is on the App Store.
When it comes to YouTube, I sideload a YouTube app with all the essentials installed using Sideloadly.
The rest is up to you.
I appreciate the well thought out and articulated response.
The thing is it’s not like I’m blindly using Brave; I’ve tried to dig into these things with Brave which users have brought up, the biggest complaints usually being “forced” cryptostuff (I had mine on first, and now off…), affiliate links and Brendan Eich being an anti lgbt asshole, etc. Then I went down the same hole with Mozilla; their asshole execs laying off people and then giving themselves bonuses, making deals with Google, etc.
Richard Stallmans an asshole too, should I stop using GNU? The world is a fucked up place and people are the most fucked up of all and pitting my morals against pragmatism sometimes only gets me so and so far.
I’d love to get behind some sort of new open-source alternative; I’m hoping we get a viable new thing ASAP, waiting for someone to pull a Linus and create something that truly enables me to consume the web in a manner that I can be personally satisfied with.
If you are looking for a good YouTube client on iOS, you don’t even have to get into sideloading. Check out Yattee with this guide.
Wipr is also quite good for Safari!
Unfortunately, AdGuard for iOS does not block ads in Safari as promised, at least not with the free tier (I double checked the instructions and toggled on all AdGuard related features in Settings).
Comparing it to uBlock in Firefox is laughable.For example, I searched for lasagna recipes, still saw ads in search results on DDG. Clicked a link to allrecipes.com, and bam—multiple banner ads embedded in the page before I can even read the actual recipe, plus another one docked to the bottom of my screen. Fail.
EDIT: Clarified that I’m referring to the free tier of Ad Guard, which I think is fair to say represents most users’ experience with it.
Big budget movies nowadays tend to be riddled with Product Placement so not even all that you’re doing will save you from Ads. Product Placement Ads are just generally more subtle than those in dedicated Ad Spaces (though the latest Aquaman was not at all subtle in their in-movie add for a certain beer brand: it kind left you with a bitter taste in your mouth and not in a good way).
How do you actually load the smart tube app on your TV? I have a chromecast btw.
EDIT: Just figured it out. Involves installing the Downloader app on my chromecast from the Google Play Store, then within the Downloader app I downloaded and installed the Smart Tube apk file from GitHub (after enabling Developer Mode in chromecast settings first).
Tested it on a gamer content creator channel and it skipped the sponsor segment at the very beginning. I’m in!
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