I'm still unable to accept that people accept ads as a part of life. I can't use instagram it's full of ads. I did finally get YT premium convinced by people on here but UBO all the way. Thankfully
I never got sucked into Twitch.
I get it too I'm a bad person for not accepting articles where every other paragraph is an ad.
There was a Firefox extension long ago that did NOT block ads but hid them. Basically it loaded them and for all the site knew, the add was showing, so it was transparent.
But, the ad wasn't rendering in the page. So the user didnt need to suffer them, but the website owners still profited.
The only losers where ad buyers, who IMHO are exactly the ones that should be affected.until they realize that ads are not effective.
Someone should bring something like that for current platforms. Even for video like, a placeholder video with a tip, interesting fact or whatever, playing while the page load the real video.
>The only losers where ad buyers, who IMHO are exactly the ones that should be affected.until they realize that ads are not effective.
Honest question, what do you envision will keep the free-internet free in lou of ads? Do you think a pay-walled internet, $3 for this site, $5 for this....would ever take off?
I too block ads, but feel like i'm slowly contributing to the death spiral of the internet
The people who "accept ads as a part of life" are funding the content you read and watch. You are not in any way "a bad person", but you should be thankful that not everyone blocks ads.
Venture capital funds the content, on the hope that people watch ads in the future. Online ads now are a very different beast compared to what AdWords was from 2002-2007 - not dependent on full-spectrum surveillance through their own browser, their own mobile operating system, video streaming and cloud suite.
Google accumulated untold riches from those primitive ads yet they and Meta have tightened the screw a little bit more in each passing year.
Long ad breaks were real annoying on Twitch, I try to watch the same streamers on YouTube now if possible, since I have a YouTube family subscription (seems like avoiding ads on Twitch requires a subscription to each streamer?).
That YouTube is much better technically (e.g. immediate rewinding) is also a nice bonus.
Edit: I'm seeing now that there's something called Twitch Turbo for $12/month to avoid ads, though YT premium family still seems like a better deal as long as you have 2+ people for it, since you also get a YouTube music sub and, y'know, no ads on the rest of YouTube proper.
In some way it’s a feature, leaves more room for products that are more user friendly. Of course overall it's still bad; this framing gives me some hope at least.
I think it was the MPAA that tried to develop DVD players with cameras so they could count room occupancy and lock the content if you were tying to exceed the terms of their license.
Was it Sony that had the patent on a device that would require the watcher to say the product name out loud to the microphone to continue watching? The product to my knowledge doesn't exist but the patent for it did.
I think fundamental truth is that live streaming live content was never financially great business. Most popular creators could make it out, but platforms have heavy costs.
I am just today experience an issue where the volume is reset 100% for each ad. Ads play, I turn volume down to 8%, I have the tab still on display (though I have focus on a separate window), and when the 1st ad ends, the 2nd ad is as loud as 100% even though the slider remains at 8%. Click to reset it to 8%, then 3rd ad plays at 100%.
This is related but also kinda an aside: has anyone been able to find a solid, reliable ad blocker for Twitch?
Brave use to block it for a while by default (it does great on YouTube ads).
There also use to be a ping pong between Twitch and some chrome extensions which worked temporarily and then Twitch broke a week later.
The best I've been able to find is Alternate Player for Twitch.tv which does hide the ads (essentially freezing the stream while they play), but I have been unable to keep the stream playing ad free for quite some time.
Good fiction writers seem to have a very deep understanding of human behavior, both as individuals and groups/systems. It's probably a combination of art imitating life, imitating art, and part prediction based on this understanding how human behavior and human systems evolve and interact.
Friendly reminder to use a browser you can disable the active tab apis in, IronFox / LibreWolf are both great (Mobile / Desktop), Firefox if you value convenience the most.
Why does the Window Manager have to provide focus and even visibility info to the application? I could foresee an evolution of runtime controls where "Is Focused" is a user-selectable permission for apps, just like how the browser requires user approval to allow web notifications or PeerConnection access to network or webcams.
I think this case was the browser was active, but not the tab, so the browser reports that.
Many, many telemetry metrics have been added in the name of power and efficiency. If a page refreshes every 30 seconds, is it still worthwhile doing it when the tab isn’t active? It would be better to wait until the tab is active again, then refresh immediately.
That being said, all of these capabilities are a privacy nightmare, only increasing the precision of browser fingerprinting and user monitoring. Firefox could have taken a stance on refusing to implement them, but I don’t think it has an easy opt out.
> Avoid minimizing or muting Twitch for a better experience.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that it's not possible for javascript to detect that you've muted the browser tab itself, at least. Doesn't solve the problem of them checking whether you have the tab focused, of course, but it should be mutable.
In addition to what Twitch is doing, a banner popped up in the Android YouTube app stating that you need to upgrade to Premium to be able to "Jump Ahead to parts other users think are valuable". Different from skipping 10 seconds at a time, but there's a non-zero chance that'll be pay-walled too.
It'll only be a matter of time until you can't do anything but watch whatever content Google has curated for you, with no chance to adjust anything at all.
> Premium to be able to "Jump Ahead to parts other users think are valuable".
This is Google's euphemism for building a SponsorBlock equivlient into youtube. It just sounds terrible if they come out and tell you that in addition to removing their ads, they're selling an adblocker. They don't want you adblocking their ads, but they'll gladly charge you to do it to someone else.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 73.2 ms ] thread13 years ago. For those not in the loop:
https://imgur.com/please-drink-verification-can-dgGvgKF
I get it too I'm a bad person for not accepting articles where every other paragraph is an ad.
But, the ad wasn't rendering in the page. So the user didnt need to suffer them, but the website owners still profited.
The only losers where ad buyers, who IMHO are exactly the ones that should be affected.until they realize that ads are not effective.
Someone should bring something like that for current platforms. Even for video like, a placeholder video with a tip, interesting fact or whatever, playing while the page load the real video.
Honest question, what do you envision will keep the free-internet free in lou of ads? Do you think a pay-walled internet, $3 for this site, $5 for this....would ever take off?
I too block ads, but feel like i'm slowly contributing to the death spiral of the internet
Google accumulated untold riches from those primitive ads yet they and Meta have tightened the screw a little bit more in each passing year.
That YouTube is much better technically (e.g. immediate rewinding) is also a nice bonus.
Edit: I'm seeing now that there's something called Twitch Turbo for $12/month to avoid ads, though YT premium family still seems like a better deal as long as you have 2+ people for it, since you also get a YouTube music sub and, y'know, no ads on the rest of YouTube proper.
Brave use to block it for a while by default (it does great on YouTube ads).
There also use to be a ping pong between Twitch and some chrome extensions which worked temporarily and then Twitch broke a week later.
The best I've been able to find is Alternate Player for Twitch.tv which does hide the ads (essentially freezing the stream while they play), but I have been unable to keep the stream playing ad free for quite some time.
Do people writing this type of copy actually believe this?
Yeah, I'm sure this won't drive massive adoption of ad blockers or anything.
Many, many telemetry metrics have been added in the name of power and efficiency. If a page refreshes every 30 seconds, is it still worthwhile doing it when the tab isn’t active? It would be better to wait until the tab is active again, then refresh immediately.
That being said, all of these capabilities are a privacy nightmare, only increasing the precision of browser fingerprinting and user monitoring. Firefox could have taken a stance on refusing to implement them, but I don’t think it has an easy opt out.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that it's not possible for javascript to detect that you've muted the browser tab itself, at least. Doesn't solve the problem of them checking whether you have the tab focused, of course, but it should be mutable.
It'll only be a matter of time until you can't do anything but watch whatever content Google has curated for you, with no chance to adjust anything at all.
This is Google's euphemism for building a SponsorBlock equivlient into youtube. It just sounds terrible if they come out and tell you that in addition to removing their ads, they're selling an adblocker. They don't want you adblocking their ads, but they'll gladly charge you to do it to someone else.