If you see that many ads you still have malware, we just call them apps now.

Now the virus is the operating system.

Conversely, ads are now one of the primary vectors how malware is distributed, so you still have at least 3 viruses on your computer. 👍

Watching TV, ads ran every 15 minutes and lasted 3 minutes when I was a kid but then jumped up to 4-5 minutes. So, 4 minutes of ads and 11 minutes of show, then another 4 minutes of ads. Unskippable, awful ads for deodorant and slap chop

Oh discussion is only about computers. I remember the first popup ads and pop under ads and they put a fake x so when you click it instead of closing it takes you to install malware

Facts.

I mean, I haven't seen that shit on my system in years because I run redundant adblockers but... when viewing someone elses computer.... it's crazy.

Listen, I'll admit I've never experienced a virus download automatically and rarely experienced a virus from a sketchy file.

But nearly all of gen Z remembers the free internet. Even up to 2016 it was still possible to view every major website without an account.

Every time I disable my ad block, or I see Internet Archive fail to save a webpage, or I'm forced to download the app for the privilege of scrolling down a thread; I get mad at what was taken.

We didn't realize how brief the era of mostly reliable and always verifiable universal information access would be. Now we can't trust any video because Sam Alton threw gasoline on the AI fire to make a failed Tiktok clone.

What ads? uBlock, Sponsorblock and an automatic cookie decliner and the Internet experience is only hindered by log ins.

Also change your DNS and if you can use a VPN and a faked user profile like user agent switcher.

Sites these days collect all the data they can, that includes your screen size, system data like sound drivers and operating system or your language and IP Adresss which sites you visit at what times (that is where the DNS comes into play).

But yeah, the Internet has changed a lot and for the worse. So far there are ways to mitigate them.

Still the case. Except now the malware is from the OS/hardware vendor.

"Back in my day" if a platform or service would look at all your messages and sell the data it would be called active spyware and we treated that like the antichrist.

Me being on the family computer running XP and finding porn for the first time around high school age. Learned a lot of things immediately after.

Got caught and lectured.

1. So I learned to wipe history and cookies.
2. I honestly don't remember anymore how adblockers work back then or it exists. Probably does. But fuck all the fake Download buttons and X to close buttons.
3. I learned how and where from to torrent safely eventually.
4. became the tech support cleaning all the stupid toolbars. FML

Advertising is the most prolific form of environmental pollution wrought by commerce.

It needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking, and every instance of it must be exhaustively scrutinised and required to be justified.

I don't think you lot know how old gen Z are, older gen Z are turning 30 next year

Well these days the OS is the virus

I've a friend who uses chrome on Windows and absolutely refuses to switch to Firefox for ublock. His kid is three and already knows what ads are.

I don't get it.

sure kid. for me it would be a long interstate road trip in a car that runs leaded gas, has no A/C and only an AM radio.

Fedi is great because if you saw as many ads as I see every day on fedi, it meant you had at least one virus, not three.

Life was easy back in the day. People asked me to fix their computer. "I installed Firefox 3.5 and ABP. Life should be good for you now."

Come back years later annnnnnd they have been goaded to use Chrome and have trillions of bullshit apps. Was like "sorry, you have to actually pay me real money to fix this, people in this industry are actually very well compensated"

get this man a true

Reminded me of this certified hood classic.

Excel Hell

Or you're a teenager making fat stacks with multiple ad bars. And by fat stacks, I mean fractions of a cent.

There was an ISP that also gave a discount (or was it free?) if you had the ad bar running. NetZero was it?

Now the viruses are in your brain. Never really went away...

The whippersnappers think that as long as the ad is coming from someone hot and it's in their FYP, it must not be an ad.

Eh, as a member of Gen Z I remember AOL dialup before we moved to cable, and using Mac os 9 on some of the iMac g3's the school had for reader rabbit/type to learn.

I fondly remember infecting the family XP machine for cursor mania lmao.

Kind of like the modern "Lincoln telegraphing a samurai".

That's the thing: that's still true, it's just that Windows, Chrome and Facebook/IG are all malware, and people (of all generations) seem to fail to process that undeniable fact.