I see people who put zero effort into ad-blocking in a similar light as people who don't leave shitty partners. At some point they manage to convince themselves that it's not a problem.

No seriously though. Was using managers laptop very briefly, and needed to look up some instructions. No adblock, Google Chrome default browser, etc. The websites were almost unreadable. Giant video ads in top and bottom corners, big thick flashing distracting ads on all sides making the readable area a little bigger than a postage stamp. Genuinely how do people browse the Internet like this?

It's genuinely insufferable. I have plenty of ad block on my pc but little on my phone. When I'm doing stuff on my phone it's sometimes impossible to navigate certain news sites or watch videos because of all the fucking ads.

well that's why most people use apps instead. the real internet is so hostile without a guide.

especially now that you can't use the mainstream browsers and do it. the barrier to entry has gotten so high that i don't blame kids for being put off by computers and prefering their phones for everything. tiktok has annoying ass ads, but no apps are as bad as the average news website...

it reminds me of trying to learn about cars growing up. i didn't learn about cars growing up. i tried, but everyone i tried to learn from spent the whole time complaining about all the anticonsumer practices that made cars shitty these days. all the hoops you have to jump through to work on them yourself anymore. how the manufactures went out of their way over the course of years to take what used to be a fun tinkerers hobby for the everyman and made it incredibly difficult and expensive to do yourself.

my take away was "I hate cars". so when i hear teenagers these days say that they hate computers i get it. they fucking suck now and there's this 8 foot fence of knowing how to make them suck less before they can even start wanting to learn about them. but it's going to take them a very very long time to get good enough with the computer that they can accomplish anything on it better than on their phone. so we have trucks full of ladders that can scale that fence, and even if we lose our ladders we know how to scale that fence barehanded if we gotta. but the kids just walk around the fence because they don't value what's inside. why would they?

so I'm just waiting for the old pc based intent to slowly wither away as we age with it... places like this becoming out last bastions in a world that requires validated apps on phones.

I hate it because it’s an unethical practice to manipulate or mislead and all modern advertising uses dark patterns to try to get you to overconsume.

The ADHD distress is just another side effect of all that

I have wasted so much of my life watching adverts. I am absolutely over it and I get agitated if I watch them now. I cancel any streaming service that tries to force them on me and I am relying more and more on Plex/Jellyfin. I am not going to waste any more of my life watching marketing lies.

Combo of ADHD and living through the 2000s with Internet Explorer where ads often installed malware and viruses. If you DIDN'T use an Ad Blocker you were playing a game of Russian Roulette every time you opened a web page.

Popups, pop unders, blaring audio, malware, slow page loads...ads are a scourge.

I genuinely believe most forms of advertising on the web are ableist because they try to make them as distracting as possible. Removing those ads is accessibility.

I don't consider ads at the start and end of videos to be ableist, but they're still annoying. Mid video ads, pause screen ads, and banner ads are all ableist.

The biggest issue is that making a browser from scratch takes a lot of resources. It's not cheap and takes a long time.

We essentially have Chrome and Firefox now. And Firefox is starting to enshitify.

We desperately need a third browser.

I was born in the early 90s, got non-dial up home internet access in 2003, and never ever, in the history of my time being on the internet. I have never ever, never not even once clicked on an ad on purpose. Like the Yahtzee ad thats showing right above your comment, I will never click this shit and follow it all the way up to giving my credit card info over. Why do we even have these nowadays, aside from tracking you?

even in the real world you are bombarded by ads from every angle

I despise the digital billboards that now litter highways and roads that gets congested during rush hours. And especially at night when they just ignore brightness laws and blinding everyone and endangering drivers.

Oh, you know. Just 3.6 billion fucking people (73% of web users). But definitely not you and me. I've been on Firefox since 1.0 (2004) and switched to Librewolf a few years ago when Mozilla lost it.

Watching TV of any kind at other people's homes, and especially my parents' place, can feel like some real black mirror shit.