Firefox plus uBlock Origin is what you can do about it. I hardly ever see any ads. SponsorBlock is great if you watch youtube too.
Remember the purpose of ads is to advertise a product that might potentially sell. Quality control isn’t always a priority it’s capitalism after all. At the end of the day, if you just want to block ads, just block ads.
Garbage ads have been a thing almost since the dawn of the Internet and we found a solution to them years ago. They’re called ad blockers. If you are online and not using an ad blocker: Why? That’s like finding a $2/night hooker and not using a condom.
I never see any ads.
Yeah I see seeing ads as a skill issue tbh
All ads are garbage. There’s no such thing as a good ad. They are in place to push an entities will upon you, there is no upside to any ad for the viewer. Firefox and Ublock Origin for safety and sanity.
Here’s what I do about it:
Ads = revenue that keep sites and services running. What can you do about it? Pay.
How about becoming literally disabled and pushed away from the one area i was deemed proficient in?
- autists with visual sensory overload complications.
Seriously, if the internet is going to be like this, might as well pull the plug.
I have been investing in running my own services and programming my own life essential tools anyway. I will always be computer nerd but one of these years i am just going offline, trow my phone away and glue my mailbox shut.
And yeah this is anger talking but i am so fed up with this “someone must make profits to justify our existence” excuse. That is not how passion works.
I’m not talking about “someone must make profits” that’s disingenuous. What I’m saying is that services that you consume for free cost money to run. Someone somewhere has to provide if nothing else the computer/server, and electricity to run it the fediverse runs on donations and ads literally the sync app I’m using runs on ads, paid tier, etc. because it costs time and money to upkeep.
Your personal problems with tech in general and your disability don’t have anything to do with that. People are talking on the tech community about how Google is taking out competing front ends for YouTube and what this means for an ad free experience, and while I agree that Google is obviously the bad guy for being the mutli-trillion dollar company it is, I also recognize that they have always been an ad company and the thing about Google is that before it existed as a free to use service we relied really heavily on an open web that was pretty empty by comparison and very disjoined. Finding things was a problem. Web rings may give people nostalgia for a “better time”, but they weren’t efficient ways to find information.
I can understand being angry but paying for the things you use is the one way to create alternatives to these services that are literally taking advantage of their users for profit as you put it. Lots of web services that are big “gotta make money” companies started out offering us free or inexpensive alternatives to the companies that were overcharging us and gouging us.
The fact that they’ve got too big is an issue with capitalism not the concept that people shouldn’t have to pay for the things they use.
The Internet is full of ads because ads pay bills and keep the lights on.
I run some of those services that people use. 24/7 I have been doing so for years.
That does costs a lot of time and energy, i ask nothing In return. Well except they they wont be upset with me In person when i end up going dark. ( I’ll make sure to opensource provide it all naturally. )
Right now on lemmy, you are using a free service running on someones computer, there are no ads nor subscriptions to support it. If it would then i would be spinning up my own instance quicker then bender can imagine his own themapark.
The alternative isn’t just possible, but the default way people have gotten things done since prehistoric times. Do things because we want to, share resources, providing for others. Lift everyone else up and you too will rise.
What i see when i observe services that complain about not being able to sustain without some form of financing is a lack of motivation and passion. To me they are a red flag that they are disfunctioneel by nature. I lose completely faith in there ability to provide competence or quality.
Of course i do understand that being unwilling to compromise morality under treat of poverty is an exception rather then rule.
But honestly how people do this shit and Not want to kill themselves in shame is actually weird to me.
Lemmy only survives today because people donate, which I did talk about in my subsequent comments which is exactly my point. It’s not ad supported now (most instances aren’t at any rate) but there are absolutely ad supported fediverse services, and if it gets bigger, it likely will run ads because more users means more content, more bandwidth, more electricity etc. The alternative is possible small scale, when you don’t have billions of users per day. There’s a threshold where the number of users far exceed a what even a group of people can put into a project like Lemmy without needing additional funding.
So either the majority of Lemmy users pays to use the service through subs or donations, or this won’t last either.
I have nothing against having the option to donate, which has worked for many projects.
The idea you are sketching, it is a possible reality but that is the bad future to me.
There’s a threshold where the number of users makes it impossible for your service to still have any real sense of identity or intend and it ought to be broken up in smaller parts. Some of the larger instances have already passed that threshold in my opinion.
You did mention the solution, “The alternative is possible small scale” The good future is where every family has their own private instance and every business and service has their own public one, interconnected.
Keep things small, manageable, focused and responsible.
I do agree this (fediverse) likely won’t last, not with so many predators waiting to grab a piece. Web3 is not here yet, as much as meta threads want to believe we are it.
That doesn’t sound reasonable for a lot of reasons. The idea that each family can host their own instance (which still has costs, and as you reasonably pointed out can’t generally be done with a server in the basement because of broadband laws preventing that kind of usage, is kind of ludicrous. That would lead to an internet where only people with money would be able to host a website of any kind. And even then, public services (video hosting, cloud storage, news, any kind of public service or so on) wouldn’t get anything out of the deal so why would they let you connect to them and mirror their content?
Also, if we keep things small scale, social networks die because new people aren’t coming in to replace dead accounts as people leave. So what happens then? Those social networks die. Social network sites like Lemmy and mastodon and so on need people. Without people to post content and people to consume it the site is basically just an empty husk of random 1’s and 0’s.
Keep things responsible? How do we do that? You’ve given me an outline of an idea you have but it’s all broad strokes and no details.
There is a lot to unpack here. I think you misunderstand how the fediverse we’re part of is designed for the dynamic I’m explaining.
First, I never claimed not everyone can afford self-hosting (that does not need to be) in their basement. You might be mixing up someone else’s comment. In many cases its cheaper then joining someone else’s.
Modern modems are already built with similar hardware to what’s needed for self-hosting a small domain. Computers have become so cheap and accessible that it is trivial. For example, a Raspberry Pi can host many things for under $50.
I also discovered yesterday that a public “hackerspace” near me is saving computers from landfills precisely to be given away for free and used for self hosting + sharing the knowledge on how to set it up.
I’m curious where you live that self-hosting is illegal. That’s a law I’d find so repulsive I’d need to break it on principle.
Your ideas about decentralized systems seem contradictory. You say only the rich could host under fediverse, but also believe it’s illegal to self-host?
Dont ask why big centralized services would connect to ours and instead ask what reason we have to connect to centralized systems. I run my own cloud server; it’s cheaper than a subscriptions. People are designing decentralized video hosting systems like PeerTube where everyone hosts their own videos. The proof is all around you here.
The fediverse operates exactly how you say is impossible. The question isn’t why big servers would allow connections, but why I’d connect to centralized domains with so many decentralized alternatives available.
It’s surprising you’re here without knowing this. Maybe it’s a sign decentralization is going mainstream?
You asked a more detailed explanation of how this works.
Here’s how decentralized social media and web 3 actually works, right here and now.
1. Instead of one central server, there are many independent servers (instances) run by different individuals or groups.
2. You create an account on one instance, but can interact with users on any instance.
3. When you post, it’s stored on your home instance. Other instances your followers are on fetch and display your post to them.
4. If you want to follow someone on another instance, your server connects to theirs to get their posts. (The ability to connect = federated)
5. Each instance owner sets their own rules and can choose which other instances to federate with.
6. You can move your account between instances, taking your followers with you. (Wip)
7. Popular fediverse platforms like Mastodon, Lemmy, and PeerTube all work this way, allowing cross-platform interaction.
This system allows for a social media experience similar to centralized platforms, but with more user control and privacy. No single entity owns all the data or controls the entire network.
Here is video from the Free Software Foundation which is a great source if you want to learn more about the hows and why.
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video
