Even Uber is becoming an ads company...
Yeah, with youtube it kind of makes sense that the ads would be there. Uber (TIL), Windows 11, and non-media experiences/services/goods in general looking for ways to sell ads makes my skin crawl.
Just wait until doorbells play you an ad when you press the button.
If given a single magical wish, I wonder how much havoc I could wreck by wishing that immediately before someone intends to purchase ad time or join an ad network or whatever they mystically gain an understanding of exactly what the ROI is going to be for them. My conceit is that 99% of entities that purchase ad time have a significantly negative ROI because at the end of the day the only thing that an advertiser has to be good at selling to exist is their own services.
Platforms which require network effects to function like YouTube, Twitter, Email (deliverability), etc have a different dynamic. They're very difficult to abandon once you've come to rely on them.
Until the government comes in and mandates you need such and such light switch/thermostat/doorbell because of some regulation and conveniently all of the ones on the market which meet that spec are adware-infested nightmares.
You can get your own doorbell, but if everyone else has a doorbell with ads on it, then you kind of still have to deal with it.
"It's okay, I'll just text them instead of going to their front door." Oh they'll consider that too. The free monthly subscription is only valid when you end up with at least 10 ad plays during that month. You don't even have to push the button, the doorbell sees you and plays the ad. And your friends have an incentive to take just a few extra seconds to get to the front door even though they texted back that the door was unlocked and they're right there.
I saw a brand new machine for measuring blood pressure at the store and sat down because why not. It had unskippable screens demanding my personal info then it says “gathering your data” for a full THIRTY seconds after measuring my blood pressure which was conveniently just the amount of time to show me a commercial. It made me want to throw up.
I’m sure Walmart threw out all the old blood pressure machines that worked for 30 years and put these abominations in. It just makes my skin crawl how dystopian that machine was.
I feel like due to the VC-enabled delayed monetization that tends to happen with startups, we have all (me included) become convinced that it's sustainable to expect a bunch of ad-free, subscription-free content that just creates itself and teleports onto our computer, forever and ever. TANSTAAFL though.