I don't offer. If I have a minute with a computer alone, adblock is going in there.

Getting my wife and kids on board and trained on this is a feat I’m just not talented to pull off.

The DRM on Netflix and other streaming sites makes the quality noticeably worse on other devices, even locked down ones like the PS5. On Firefox on Linux the quality is locked even lower, to like 720p.

The ads bother me, but my girlfriend says TVs have always had ads since they were originally created. She isn't wrong. I see the distinction between the channel playing the ad and the device playing the ad, but I can kinda understand people not knowing or caring about that difference.

I bought a micro PC and use that to stream Plex and other Internet media directly to my TV. I don't connect the TV itself to the Internet and I don't have cable or public access TV. I can block all ads with my micro PC and home network.

Consumers are lazy and brain rotted, too much effort to build an htpc or do anything that protect yourselfs and your family's data when the TV can just do it all for you, who cares that it's a literal piece of spyware ad riddled garbage.

I guess I shouldn't be blaming the consumer here, since it's obviously the predatory capitalist company at fault. But still, I think most people are fucking dumb.

Bought a Samsung last year. Never connected it to a non existent Samsung account. Network connected to it has adguard. And the TV is only used for streaming apps (jellyfin, Netflix etc.) Never saw an ad.

You can just cast from your phone anyway. Dunno why more people don't do that..

I’ve just put the batteries in a toy a relative bought from TikTok. It’s some drawing pad where you draw on it then press a button and your drawing’s supposed to glow. It’s a total piece of shit, the drawing barely glows and it takes ages to clean. It’ll probably go in the bin tomorrow, I’ve already warned my wife to take the batteries out first.

I'd say we're the ones that know how to use adblockers and know where and how to shop online.

Not odd, just not sheep.

They're all-in on consumerism.

I installed Linux Mint dual boot on my main PC with Win10 over the holidays.  I will not take the ads and ai BS on Win11.

God, the modern Google TV launcher is so fucking ass. Ads every fucking where.
Last week I was setting up my box and the first thing it showed me was a Netflix ad that I think contained spoilers for Squid Game??? (I don't watch that show but it looked like a serious spoiler)

Get your friend Projectivity Launcher.

It's bad on multiple levels. Like 99% of the "for kids" stuff on YouTube is total brain rot with no educational value whatsoever. Then a barrage of totally not targeted ads beamed straight into the kids face.

I go out of my way to get my all of my gas from one specific station that doesn't have advertisements on their pumps.

I only pirate. And play it on raspberry pi, libre elec and dumb tv. I never see commercials.

It amazes me that anybody can stand that filth for even a second.

I can't stand sports bars. Sports is literally 60% as ads and people just watch it.

Every malware infection and online scam I've dealt with in the last 15 years has used advertising as an attack vector. I block everything.

I believe all advertising exists to manipulate people. Behaviour change is a key aspect of marketing, from how things are kept at a store shelf, to putting the right hoarding on the right street, it's all done to guide consumer choice in a profitable way.

Advertising was never about giving you information, it was to make you feel cigarettes are cool or you need an more expensive toothbrush to be more confident. Advertising moved away from giving you information to 'connecting with consumers on an emotional level' decades before the Internet.

While yes information age has made advertising a lot more effective than it was 25 years ago, but brands were still trying to get you get the most money out of you back then, same as today, only their tools of doing so have improved vastly.

Exactly. I'd be much more ok with a standardised block of text and maybe a picture. No music, no animation, basic machine voiceover if any audio.

My favourite advertisements (the ones I'm most ok with) are podcast ad reads, because they never gave music or sound effects or crass images, it's just the voice making the podcast reading some text. And they're personalised based on the context of the podcast, no personal information needed.

It's ultra-processed!

Jon Stewart made a point in some video not too long ago about how modern media presents us with a constant drip of ultra-processed speech and how it manipulates and harms our brains for our short-term gratification but the long-term benefit of others who don't give a shit about us. It is much like engineered ultra-processed food in that way.

Thinking of advertising through that lens, hell that industry has been at the bleeding edge of all kinds of manipulation and shady data gathering for decades! Ultra-processed speech and ultra-processed advertising are basically a package deal!

Brawndo has what plants crave.

It's never sharing information about a great new product unless it's a scam. It's always scams or large companies screaming how their 2026 version really is superior somehow to their 2025 product and how competitors somehow suck

One time I was talking to a guy and noticed he was wearing Nike everything. So as a joke, I said, "Jeez, you wear so much Nike, they should pay you." And he said they do.

And then he told me how he works at Nike. And he gets a lot of free stuff.

They allow their Start Menu to show advertisements.

There have been some times where all my efforts failed and YouTube still showed me an ad. I realised that i'd rather not watch the video than the ad.

I know it's a crazy concept but a web browser is in fact running on your computer

"I haven't seen that one since the 90's! If your computer was a person, I'd shoot it in the face."

It Crowd - Browser

I think adblock software is generally the first step before Wireguard for most people.

Brave is based off chromium. You're going to get ads. Chromium blocked most adblocker from functioning properly. Theirs a reason why chromium browser's only have ublock lite. Not ublock origin. Use librewolf or any of the other non-chromium browsers or firefox forks.

Also brave is trash and ran by an egotistical, homophobic bigot https://vger.to/sh.itjust.works/post/52290131

i just thought about it - and i never met anyone who doesn't use adblockers. and i worked in adtech company that literally does that shit.

i never use adblockers either - that's because i avoid the worst offenders (youtube, some especially obnoxious news sites). i'd rather not visit the site if they're already stating that they don't respect me.