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Comment by f1refly | Hacker News Reader

> on either my phone or my tablet (where I don't have access to AdBlock) I think it's amazing you're putting up with devices that work against you. If my phone would force me to watch ads I would get a new phone tomorrow.

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I wish I could say the same thing. In my younger years, I was pretty hardcore about hacking devices and having complete control of them. But SO MUCH TIME was spent debugging issues and staying ahead of the "bad guys." And I couldn't count the literally years of time I've spent fixing broken devices.

Nowadays I just don't have that time. And the bad guys have evolved from mischievous to felonious (and I have a lot more to lose. I still harp on privacy and security, but now I do it behind a couple of walled gardens. I love that my devices "just work."

I know it's a trade off, and I'm certainly fighting for more regulations of FAANG. And I am supporting the FOSS/open device movement, and look forward to the next phase where those "just work".

I will never harp on privacy and security behind a couple of walled gardens. It is a wasted effort.

Your phone doesn't force you to watch ads. Youtube (which has nothing to do with your phone) forces you to watch ads (if you don't have an adblocker)

Youtube doesn't force you to watch ads. Pay for Youtube Premium and you will see no ads.

Thats sounds a lot like extorsion.

Restaurants extort me to pay for food if I want to eat there. It's shameful.

I would not say that if youtube straight up asked for payment for their product and there were no ads.

Instead, Youtube is pestering you with ads and asking for payment to stop doing so.

A big difference I see is how much money does Google make me "watching"/skipping ads in a month? I find it hard to believe it's around $10/month. What are rates now a days?

Paying for something not to happen is different than paying for something in return. Obviously.

Ah no you pay the content creators by watching the ads with your time or the subscription.

> Restaurants extort me to pay for food if I want to eat there.

> Paying for something not to happen is different than paying for something in return.

The rough metaphor about restaurants, is not an equivalent situation.

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> you pay the content creators by watching the ads with your time or the subscription

To clarify, you believe that there is an ephemeral currency of attention.

Your attention (which was to be directed at the content creator) can be redirected forcefully, unless you pay in money. I'd be remiss to call it outright extortion, but the parallel is there.

Let them eat ads.

You know what they say. If you're not paying for the product, then you probably are the product.

In the cases of both youtube and reddit, how would one suggest they pay for the developers, and their massive hosting costs? If not ad revenue, then what? Subscriptions? That's a hard veto from a high percentage of users.

Your phone doesn't allow you to run a browser that would let you use an adblocker.

Android has Firefox which has uBlock, as well as Firefox Focus. iOS has VPN based ad blocking compatible with Safari, I use AdGuard.

Or Musi for watching YT videos. Ad-free!

I don’t see any ads in Safari with Wipr.

How do you handle driving on roads with billboards? Or walking through a city? In most of the US, the number of outdoor places you can go without advertising attacking you is dwindling. Europe seems better regarding roads (fewer billboards and more highways with none) but similar in cities.

The rise of blindingly bright LED billboards in the US feels like all the downsides of a sci-fi dystopian world without any of the upside like self-driving hover cars.

Actually, most billboards around the roads in Czech Republic are being dismantled due to being too startling to drivers - the advertisers fought it quite hard, even placed big Czech flags instead of adds to the billboards due to some provision in the law saying you can't just remove a flag of the country. But the ultimately list and billboards around roads are going away.

Also more thought is now being given to "visual pollution" where unsightly advertising is bastardising valuable architecture in cities.

Hopefully both initiatives will proliferate alse to other countries. :)

Good to hear :). I think in the US some places must be much worse than others. Here in Portland, Oregon, on a 7 mile round trip (without much overlap) through the urban core that I make regularly by bike I only see maybe four billboards, and all but one (a not too large sign of a stadium that mostly advertises events there) are the traditional paper type (or whatever it is that they use). Most are near highways or highway access so I assume anyone who uses highways regularly will see more of them. There are also some small advertisements (also not LCD) on bus shelters, although there aren't many bus shelters. I rarely notice any of them unless I am stopped at a traffic light near one. It took me a while to even remember most of them. I'd still prefer fewer of them, but it isn't at all comparable to using the web without an adblocker. Additionally, there is no chance that the billboards will install malware on my computer.

There's a fundamental difference between a billboard that is just sort of in your field of view as you walk down a street, and a billboard which blocks your path, not letting you continue on your way until you finish reading it from top to bottom.

newpipe has the nicest youtube interface and doesn't show ads.

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