[RankingMember]

I think it's sort of a vicious cycle too- because the number of impressions goes down from all the adblocking, the users not running adblock get even more ads to the point of absurdity (see: local news sites) as tech companies try to make up the difference.

[the_af]

Browsing the web without an adblocker is... illuminating. A vision into a corporate hellscape of garbage constantly screaming for your attention.

I'm sure they don't allow adblockers in Hell.

[paulryanrogers]

IME you learn which sites and services can balance ads vs user needs. So it's only hell if insist on consuming from those who don't care enough about you.

Of course if ad blocking gets too be too mainstream all that will be left are 'native' ads and directly paid content.

[the_af]

I don't use "sites", I use the internet. I don't know, beforehand, which page I'll land on.

Some sites I do use out of necessity, because I follow the "content"/"community", and it happens to be there: YouTube, Facebook. It saddens me to no end a lot of groups of niche interests are only on Facebook, but if I don't want to end up talking to myself, I'm forced to use it.

[rtsil]

I have this distinct impression whenever I watch Youtube from my TV's app and Youtube serves me 6 different unskippable ads on a 10-minute video.

[2devnull]

I used to watch YouTube daily. I’m now done to once a week and more often than not it’s a terrible experience. If there are others like me, that seems like a death spiral. The more leave, the more ads must be shown, the worse the platform gets, the more people leave…

[xp84]

Years ago as YouTube’s ads really started ramping up, I realized paying the measly $12 a month or whatever for Red, now Premium, was an obvious good decision for me. I get no ads besides actual sponsorships that are part of the video, which are the kind of ads people who hate modern advertising say they want — not “targeted at me” but rather “alongside content that is related to the ad.”

If you just aren’t into “short form” video (or what used to pass for short until TikTok came around, lol) I can see how it would be unappealing to pay for a site you don’t use much, but YouTube premium is my ideal way for media to work.

[rtsil]

I had Red/Premium as part of my Google Music subscription, but they decided to kill that.

[xp84]

I assume YTM is far inferior to what you had? That's bundled with my premium, but I don't use it much on account of Apple Music's integration with my own longtime music library (which, ironically, I remember GM being also strong with letting you upload your own collection)

[dingledork69]

It used to be that you wouldn't get youtube ads on a chromecast. That changed and I never use the thing anymore since it can't block ads. A shame.

[RankingMember]

Some are real bad, you have those unskippable ads PLUS the in-video sponsored segments.

[miah_]

You can get a addon called 'SponsorBlock' that fixes in-video sponsored segments. It allows anybody to submit timestamps for sponsored segments, and tag them in various ways. Its on Chrome too I think.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/

[RankingMember]

Yeah, the bummer is if I'm trying to watch YouTube on my Roku TV I'm stuck getting the full Monty of YouTube's ad experience.