I have nothing against ads in principle. Anyone who offers a service such as a useful website should of course be rewarded for it.
What I am against is intrusiveness and tracking. If advertising were just simple locally served banners in the sidebars of the website without any tracking, as it used to be, I would have no problem with it.
Exactly. To let advertisers intrude on your brain for what you get in exchange is usually an unfair bargain. People really undervalue their attention and time.
I have crippling ADHD and I am constantly amazed at how little people value their attention. Just baffled watching folks melt their brains on things like TikTok.
It’s like watching a teenager buying drugs. Just… you don’t know what consequences this could bring you.
If advertising were just simple locally served banners
And didn’t let anybody run scripts on your page, and had any kind of filtering so people won’t get malware by clicking on the ads.
Not to mention ads have been caught being straight up malware and phishing without any real vetting on behalf of the ad companies. Malware has even gotten to the top of Google search results just by buying an ad slot they didn’t vet. It’s become a legitimate and serious security concern.
In the same way that a year ago I watched YouTube with ads. I’m not watching with ads if it’s even close to the same amount of ad as video
I literally subbed to a podcast using the RSS, and they feed ads through like most podcasts do these days. It started with two ads, ok fine that’s not too bad. It plays the podcast for 8:50ish, and then drops, not “another,” but four ads. It very well may have been more than four too, but during the fourth (sixth total) I stopped the podcast and unsubbed. Not only were there all those ads, but part of the actual eight whole minutes the hosts talked was them plugging their patreon.
None of this was hyperbole, and I remember it well as it happened yesterday.
There’s a few youtubers I’ve either stopped watching, or very rarely watch, because of the amount of plugging they do. I get that they have bills to pay, but some of them are ridiculous.
pop over says to disable content blockers
Me: uses content blockers to block pop over
And then there are “disable ad-blockers” + “Ad-free subscription” sites
The fourth panel is a literal gun emerging from the screen & threatening your loved ones.
I find them far too distracting from the content.
I have a hard time focusing when the TV is on in the background, and a lot of ads are like having multiple TVs in the bgr.
So I turn them off.
Well this led me down a rabbit-hole. I thought the character looked familiar, which led me to their origin from an older comic by a different creator. And the discovery that the original creator is anti-trans, yuck.
Glad to see Mimi and Eunice in better company these days. Thanks for posting this comic!
It’s usually other companies wanting you to buy their shit, not the site that the ads are shown on. That site “makes its living” by selling ad-space to these other companies.
I dislike ads just as much as the next person but I feel like this representation is disingenuine.
If the screen had shouted “Buy this shit!” Would it have hit different? I had the same thought. I’ve seen a few sites that advertise their own wares and they are sketchy. I think the issue is that the site is still in charge of how much advertising they show. Usually, they’re showing unrelated ads, but they’re showing a lot of them.
I dislike ads just as much as the next person, and I’m just curious if I understand you properly.
