Reads like an onion article. I've gone to great lengths to avoid ads - but it's a war I am losing. Content is now interleaved with ads at the creative stage in subtle (and not so subtle) ways, this inexorable convolution occurs even on formerly alternative spaces. Let me pay, I want to pay, I'll pay a lot, just stay out of my fucking head.
> I've gone to great lengths to avoid ads - but it's a war I am losing. Content is now interleaved with ads at the creative stage...
In the end you'll win this war, maybe not in the way you envisioned but win it you will by avoiding 'content' altogether. There is more than enough to read, listen to, see and do that you don't need 'content' to keep you satisfied. Drop it like the lukewarm turd it is and you'll be better off while they can hide their ads where the sun don't shine.
Source: living ad- and 'content'-free for decades
I agree. Most of the life-changing content I've consumed has been either freely available (in the public domain or online) or a one-time-purchase, ad-free book.
You didn't "consume" that "content", that's newspeak which we'd all be better off without. You read books, listened to music, saw movies, plays, etc. You didn't "consume" them either, they're still there after all? You're not a "content consumer" but a person, an individual who reads, listens, sees, experiences.
I don't like that phrase either, but do you have a direct replacement? Language usage tends toward efficiency, and sometimes I want to speak generally rather than specifically, and so if my options for conveying the idea 'read books and/or listened to music and/or saw plays and/or watched tv and/or ......' are to write that out or to say 'consumed content', I'm probably going to hold my nose and go with the latter, at least once I've heard it enough times for it to feel relatively normal.
edit: actually, and this is just a tangential point, I don't think 'content' covers plays or other live experiences. It's usually screen-based, and the main possible exceptions are things that are almost interchangeable with their screen-mediated forms, like books or magazines.
must be nice...
On iOS, I see ads for paying for iCloud.
Entering my own apartment, the elevator has ads blasting on the tv.
Wont even start on Windows or web browsers.
> On iOS..
There's your problem, you rented a terminal managed by the fruit factory so they get to decide who the thing serves. Either "jailbreak" the thing or get a Google-free Android device with an AOSP-derived distribution on it. I have the latter and I don't see any ads.
Windows... same thing. Avoid it if you can and yes, you can unless your employer forces it upon you. In that case see if you can use the LTSP version since that isn't as laden with spy- and adware as the regular versions.
Browsers? Firefox or one of its derivatives help to get rid of ads and other nuisances. I don't see any ads on either mobile or X-top, they don't seem to make it through the combination of network, host and application-level filtering. Those filters just work without needing maintenance, you just need to put them in place.
As to that elevator blasting ads you're more or less on the same situation. The only way to avoid that would be to make sure you manage your own environment. Doing so is much more involving than changing from a fruit phone to something under your own control. I live on a farm in the Swedish countryside where ads just don't seem to thrive, I understand this isn't for everyone but if you're serious in wanting to escape there'll be something similar available in whatever country you call your own.
I think back on when I consumed the most "content". It was way back before I worked from home. The peer pressure was a significant part of why.
I agree with you otherwise, though.
I'll add that much of the 'content' is very carefully designed to be the canvas for the advertisements. ie: the content reaferms your demographic/cultural afinity and opens you up to suggestions that are attached even oblicquely, rather than persuing an interest of your own that actualy benifits you. By watching media alone instead of it bieng a group outing you give up even the real cultural reafermation of dragging or bieng drug along by friends where doing the thing together is of more interest than the media, unless on the rare occasion when you get to see something world class that you all take with you. These glowing slabs, aint that. Beware, Beware the glare.
Just in case you don't know the SponsorBlock extension can skip past Youtube interleaved ads, promotional items other time wasters. You can pick and choose what you want to skip and in the Youtube Interface you can also press a button to automatically go past a skipped item you wanted to see. [1]:https://sponsor.ajay.app/
Also hate clickbait title cards? Theres now an extension to remove those as well: https://dearrow.ajay.app/
This SponsorBlock extension also integrates with yt-dlp so downloaded videos can have ads stripped in the final video. That way you don't even have to ever go to youtube itself. The war isn't over yet and people must keep fighting back.
Yeah, I pay for youtube so I don't have to watch ads, but then youtube creators at some point all decided to jump on the bandwagon of interleaving ads into their content. Many are kind enough to make it easy to jump ahead to when the ad is over, but man, I would much prefer they set up a patreon or just let me pay them through youtube's own UI. Incredibly annoying.
I'm surprised YouTube allows it. I'd expect them to want "their" share of the ad money, since creators in a way are side stepping the "normal" ad flow.
The only winning move is not to play.
Only old school media is holding themselves to a standard. No AI, no sponsored content. And thank god we still have a public broadcaster.
The future is unfortunately propaganda and brain rot.
What is keeping you hooked to that type of content?
There’s an easy solution that I’ve taken: just stop watching stuff. Choose not to participate in the bullshit.