[kelnos]

I'm curious why you aren't anti-ad. Ads are psychological manipulation. Why would you want to subject yourself to that?

I was recently visiting some family, and saw the garbage my 7-year-old nephew sits through to get to the YouTube video he wants to see[0]. I can only assume we're just training a new generation of kids to believe that ads are a normal, inevitable part of every kind of media consumption.

I agree that creators need to be compensated somehow. And I'd be fine throwing a couple tens of cents per view of a video rather than either watch ads or block them and freeload. But micropayments will never take off (for understandable reasons), so that's pretty much never an option. For creators I watch frequently, I contribute to their Patreon if they have one, at least. But if someone links me a one-off video from someone I've never heard of, and will probably never watch a video from again, I'm not going to do that, and I'm certainly not going to let them pollute my brain with whatever advertising they've decided to push.

But I loathe every form of advertising and will block it any chance I get. If I could wear AR glasses that blocked out things like billboards, I would.

[0] (If my stupid grandfathered free GSuite account allowed it, I'd gift them a family YouTube Premium membership, but of course GSuite breaks random features everywhere.)

[TheCapeGreek]

> I can only assume we're just training a new generation of kids to believe that ads are a normal, inevitable part of every kind of media consumption.

Maybe? I distinctly remember doing my utmost best to ignore TV ads between my cartoons as a kid. Especially <10yo I'd be basically chanting "boring boring boring" to myself until it was over, or just stay focused on toys.

Then again, today's children have access to Youtube far earlier and with more control over what they watch, so you may have a point in that they're starting earlier and thus it gets normalised instead of "this is a sucky thing I'm going to try to ignore".

[phone[phone]]

The cartoons when I was a kid were advertisements themselves with breaks for further advertising: He-Man, GI Joe, Jem, My Little Pony (the old series), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, etc.

[dspillett]

> I'm curious why you aren't anti-ad.

Mainly because to an extent they are a necessary evil, or at least we'll never convince enough of the right people that they aren't necessary.

> Ads are psychological manipulation.

They are currently, which is why they get blocked by my anti-stalking-and-other-dickishness kick, but they don't have to be. A simple advert (image and a little text, not directly obscuring what I'm trying to read or bouncing around to break my attention from elsewhere artificially) for a product that might be relevant to what I'm looking at, doesn't seem evil to me. Unfortunately advertises are not satisfied with that and want full-page adverts with forced interaction and full user background tracking.

[midoridensha]

>I was recently visiting some family, and saw the garbage my 7-year-old nephew sits through to get to the YouTube video he wants to see. I can only assume we're just training a new generation of kids to believe that ads are a normal, inevitable part of every kind of media consumption.

Just like parents have a responsibility to teach their kids about safe sex, I think parents have a responsibility to teach their kids about ad-blockers.