• circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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    16 hours ago

    This is what is absolutely crazy about the modern internet. We pay for data – and because net neutrality is dead, we pay more if we go over a cap. And yet, we do not have direct control over what corporations choose to force feed us through that data.*

    Consider the analogy of terrestrial TV (not a perfect one, but good enough for this). Back in the day, you put up an antenna, and you received programming. There was no data limit, because it’s just airwaves. Watch as much as you want. But one downside: advertising, except the case was easily made that it pays for the programming, the broadcasting, etc, so it was somewhat of a different beast. That cost was not passed to you. You “paid” for it by accepting the injection of ads into the programming.

    Fast forward to today. Let’s say you want to stream a show that you would have gotten on terrestrial TV back in the day. Now, you pay to access that content (not going into the deeper issue of lack of ownership here), but you also effectively pay for the broadcasting, in the old sense of the word. While it is true that companies incur costs to run their servers and dish out the data, you, the consumer, must pay to access the network it uses. And again, because neutrality is gone, you pay more if you go over your cap – for the content that you pay to access anyway.

    It starts to look shockingly like a double dip. Consider what you’re doing when on a corporate website: you pay for the hardware. You pay for the data. You (often) pay for the content that uses the data. And yet, these corporations still gave the gall to inject advertising into your data stream.

    It gets crazier the more you think about it.

    *ad blockers and sponsorblock give you some control, but ultimately they are reactive Band-Aids on the modern system

  • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 day ago

    They are not chewing through mine, I use Firefox with uBlock Origin on Android too.

    After reading the article:

    To test this, Enders used a browser that mimicked an iPhone 6 and accessed a total of eight “popular” news sites (though they didn’t confirm what these were).

    Wow yea great methodology, thanks guys. It really captures your motto of “Rigorous Fearless Independent” especially the first term.

    Also good job by Santiago Luque of Nextpit to generalize the result to the maximum possible extent.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 day ago

      Yeah, I can’t imagine raw-dogging the internet like that, even on mobile. If I opened an app or web page, and saw ads, I would just exit the page completely.

      Internet without ad blocking is unbearable.

    • lemonuri
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      1 day ago

      I have a setup of about 250 mb worth of blocklists on the home router (openwrt). The adblocker generates a statistic. Around 20 percent of all connections get blocked, so that’s my personal traffic saved every day. On mobile your can block traffic systemwide too, so not only your browser but also app based adds.

      On android just go to settings – network – private dns and chose one provided by mullvad for example:

      https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls

      On ios:

      https://adityarajsingh.com/dns-over-https-ios/

  • nonentity@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Advertising needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking.

    It’s the most pervasive pollution wrought upon our environments, and amplifies the carcinogenic perpetual growth delusion.

        • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 day ago

          You can’t ban something that basically supports all products that people use for free. You can’t compare it to smoking. Some advertising is pure pollution, like highway billboards

          • far_university190@feddit.org
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            20 hours ago

            If cannot operate service without invade everyone with annoying bullshit, then simply do not. Never start.

            They should not exist in first place.

      • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        I am paying for the content I consume, yet I still get ads. Why is that?

        And don’t say it’s due to rising costs of production, because their profits somehow also grow every year.

          • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            If paying doesn’t prevent ads, how does your suggestion help?

            I’m not sure it makes sense to talk about any specific platform since multiple are starting to introduce this, and more will follow. But if you’d like we could go with Amazon Prime Video. Why are they showing me ads, even though I’m paying for the service?

            • Tja@programming.dev
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              3 hours ago

              They are trying to squeeze every cent possible, in typical Amazon fashion. If you don’t like, speak with your wallet and cancel the subscription.

              • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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                2 hours ago

                Ah, so I should pay for the content, but since that’s not enough I should boycott and not consume media.

                Or we can recognize that individual user action doesn’t help and regulate ads, because as I said, it’s not just Amazon that’s trying to squeeze every cent possible. It’s every company. Netflix has ad-supported plans (and is phasing others out), YouTube still shows some ads with Premium, …

                It’s not just one company, it’s all companies.

      • nonentity@sh.itjust.works
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        19 hours ago

        This is a false dichotomy, and illustrates the pernicious terminal incuriosity and learned helplessness modern society incentivises, rewards, and celebrates.

        There are models other than incendiary extraction and debasement which can be implemented to value and promote creative work. Elevating the legitimacy of advertising in its current role perpetuates its abuse, and suppresses these preferable alternatives.

        • Tja@programming.dev
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          18 hours ago

          Care to share some of those models?

          In the society where I live, journalists, artists, developers and others like to have food and shelter. Ads is 9nr way of paying for it, cash is another. What do you propose, paying in exposure?

  • horse@feddit.org
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    1 day ago

    Internet, especially on mobile devices, is becoming more and more unusable every day. Fucking ads everywhere, taking up more space than the content. Autoplaying videos overlayed on top of the content. Close buttons so small they are all but impossible to hit on a touchscreen. Cookie consent banners on every site (opt out of course). The list just goes on…

    I don’t even care about the bandwidth, it’s just a pain to use. I’ve started using Safari’s reader view and the new “Hide Distracting Items” option to hide most of it, but I shouldn’t have to. Capitalism really does ruin everything.

  • Kissaki@feddit.org
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    2 days ago

    Looks like I’m not reading their article.

    We require your consent for the use of cookies and other technologies by us and our partners (393) to store and process personal data on your device.

    Consent dialog is not conforming law.

    And man, even if you go into the settings of the consent dialog, I hate these kinds of misleading toggles. Which option do you think is active?

    Ironic.

  • Elvith Ma'for@feddit.org
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    2 days ago

    Reminder that e.g. Firefox mobile has full extension support und as such can run uBlock Origin.

    DNS blockers are nice, but they can only do so much against tracking without overblocking.

  • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
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    2 days ago

    If you extrapolate from that and suppose that somewhere around half of all internet traffic is ad transmissions, that means that the internet ad industry has about 20 times the carbon emissions of crypto.

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    It’s true and I saw it first hand at an airbnb with so so WiFi. My pops needed his football fix and managed to stream but the connection kept blurry or disconnect. Asked him why he was still using chrome; he even had firefox with uBlock Origin. Following my advice, closed chrome and sure enough, no video ads and shit fixed his connection problem.

    Internet enshittification is real but we can fight it.

    • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 day ago

      Internet enshittification

      Web enshittification actually. The Internet itself still works mostly fine, apart from a few unfair peering disputes among the giants, and the Chinese and Russian disconnection efforts.

    • Jarix@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Internet enshittification is real…

      Why would you even say that? It just opens the door to an argument that doesnt exist.

      “Help fight internet enshittification” is a better message.

      Just my opinion, and likely neither of us would even see the difference in our life times, but for what its worth, i want to help fight the good fight, even if its something as minor as this mentality.

      To me its like people making really bad arguments for worthwhile causes, it just feeds the trolls and makes the cause harder to achieve

  • Psythik@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I have Firefox with Ublock Origin, YouTube ReVanced, and a DNS-level adblocker to cover everything else; ads ain’t chewing through shit on my device.

  • unexp@feddit.org
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    1 day ago

    Also not mine. If you search twice as long as you usually would you will probably find what you are looking for on a privacy friendly website which also has more and better structured information then the (as of now) popular sites. Then you just bookmark that site and if you want to find something in that topic you just click your bookmark and search the site - not having to worry about ads or you data being sold or comapnys making profiles on you. BTW: Don’t use google you won’t find those sites there.