That article was full of such blatantly misleading crap. Headline talks about record number of adblocker uninstalls, but the actual data says it was an uptick in both installs and uninstalls. In other words it was people cycling through different adblockers trying to find one that still worked.
yukichigai
joined 1 year ago
Swag. The more we show up in search, the more people will be asking "what the heck is Lemmy?" Some of 'em will join.
Well then. Here. We. Go.
Because this isn't just about "making anything in return" any more than neo-Nazis are booted from platforms "just for having different opinions." More people are using adblockers on YouTube because YouTube isn't simply displaying commercial advertisements, they're pushing "ads" for scams, malware, and all manner of heinous and/or sketchy content. Even separate of that, the frequency of ads and the presence of minutes-long ads you need to manually skip have made watching content difficult and unpleasant, if not unworkable. Adblocker usage is as much about restoring functionality to the site as anything.
All of these issues have been raised with YouTube, but rather than address the complaints by adjusting how ads are selected and served they've decided the only solution is for you to pay them monthly, not just a few bucks but as much as (or more than) the major video streaming services. All of this for content they do not make, at a price point far beyond what they need to be profitable. It's greed for the sake of greed, pure and simple.
TBH I didn't know everyone was eligible for the latest booster. My in-laws got it early but they're both at-risk.
I should go do that.
1st Amendment makes it impossible to criminalize hate speech by itself. Violent hate speech, sure. Calls for racially motivated cleansing, sure. Just saying "\ is evil and worthless" is unambiguously protected. Unfortunately.
That would be easy to challenge under the same reasoning as what's in the article, not to mention various anti-trust laws and ones covering anti-competitive business practices.
Doesn't mean it's guaranteed to stop them, but it's definitely not going to be as easy as them flipping a few switches and saying "watch ads on our browser with no addons or GTFO".
Not even Microsoft in its monolith days was able to spend enough money to stop a legion of angry nerds with a severe case of "fuck you, you can't tell me what to do".
OpenDNS used to do that. Caused a lot of unexpected problems, enough that I stopped using it entirely. I'm still hesitant to even though they've stopped doing it.
As your typical American I can only read English, what do those "news" ads say, roughly? Tinfoil hat nuttery? Increase your Pen-One-Five size?
Either way that's still pretty bad. And there are video popups? Jeez. I'm guessing you either don't have much choice in ISPs or the other options are even worse somehow. My sympathies. Also thanks for sharing.
Holy hell that sounds cursed. How obnoxious are they? Can you share a screenshot?
Next time I'm cursing Spectrum I'll remind myself that they aren't doing that at least.
Sponsors don't pay the creator less if you skip the sponsor segment. That's not tracked, at least not in a way that google will share with the creator or anyone else. If that changes someday, sure, you have a point. For now skipping the sponsor segment is as harmless as skipping through the commercials on TV.