[DanielHB]

My partner got upset when I added a pihole to our network because she wouldn't see ads in google search. She said most of the time she doesn't mind the pihole but when she is actively looking for things to buy she wants the ads.

What I ended up doing is setting up two separate wifi networks, one with the pihole DNS server and one without it. So she can opt to turn it on.

But yeah overall I agree with you, the ads skew the research by whoever is paying the most for marketing BUT they also work as a filter so you only see stuff that people actually spend money to market on. For _some_ types of products the "barrier to entry" in the ad space can guarantee a certain level of quality (or at least reduce the change for scams).

[al_borland]

> For _some_ types of products the "barrier to entry" in the ad space can guarantee a certain level of quality (or at least reduce the change for scams).

I have always associated online ads with people who are trying to scam me. Like the giant “download” button ads on sites hosting actual software downloads. Decades of dealing with this kind of thing has led to a deep distrust of all online advertising, to the point where I pay for Kagi to not only not have ads in my search engine, but not even support the business model of using ads to fund a website.

I see people get scammed all the time from ads. It’s an easy way for the scammers to funnel users to their site. Most people I know have tried buying something based on a Facebook ad, from some random Shopify site, and never got their purchase.

[lrvick]

You are more accommodating than me.

Profit driven targeted content of any kind, especially ads, are poison. I could never knowingly enable anyone in my household to harm themselves with something so toxic to brain health and quality of life.

In terms of things I want far away from my home and family, surveillance capitalism driven technology ranks up there with meth.

[DanielHB]

She does hate it everywhere else though and I find google search ads are not nearly as bad when you are actively looking for a specific product.

But yeah I tend to agree with you, the companies/products paying for the ads are not necessarily the best ones to buy from.