Have you noticed the frequency of ads increasing on free services? | Hacker News Reader

Have you noticed the frequency of ads increasing on free services?

8 pointsbernardlunn12 comments

Yes! Youtube ads have at least doubled in frequency and intrusiveness.

I returned to twitter after over a year, so I could see some links on a few email newsletters I get. Lots and lots more ads, mostly video, and mostly from what look like ChatGPT-generated company names: Dulale, Tuzely, Lucazoo, Lureza, Beitro, Keybla, Starcess. I see the exact same video posted by multiple "companies". How do I know? I make a habit of blocking all Twitter ads. If I see the same video, it's from a different "company".

I use YouTube a lot (too much) & Youtube no longer allows AdBlockers. Spotify is the worst offender with way too many ads

No, I've declared a personal holy war on ads. I have many filters enabled on uBlock origin, and I don't own iOS devices on which blocking is less effective. If a website doesn't let me view with an Adblocker, I don't use it to the extent I can. I've had enough with ads and I think targeted ads should be wiped off the face of the earth. Answering the question, I see maybe an ad every 3 days.

> I don't own iOS devices on which blocking is less effective

But if you must use iOS, I recommend ADGuard Pro which intercepts ADs/Trackers at the network level using a pseudo VPN Profile. You can even load up your own custom filter lists.

I have noticed this as well. I speculate that it is knock-on effects from the tight monetary climate we are in.

I think there are a lot of companies that have an uncertain future and are trying to be "default alive". Perhaps the services they rely on have trimmed free tiers or raised prices?

Yes, companies are trying to boost revenues & profits to compete with 5% risk free treasury bonds

No. I haven't seen ads other than the occasional spam email that gets through the filter in years and I make every effort to avoid using a web browser (by using RSS, yt-dlp, wallabag, etc) to keep my personal attention economy a command economy.

Sounds like the sort of work that about 0.1% of us are willing to do?

There's no work to it though? My whole setup is automated, I just read my articles and watch my videos in the morning, everything in it's place, with no ads or fuss.

I have not, because I filter everything with uBlock Origin.

Yes, the internet is becoming unusable.

Google search results are horrible and lead to low effort blogs by peacocking beginners who are trying to monetise a paragraph and 2 lines of code.

Paywalls and ads(if using without adblock) on anything interesting of value.

Social media is a information harvesting machine pretending to foster human connections.

Dating apps are designed to keep you single forever and owned by a single corpo.

News are owned by few folks as well and the only interesting discourse happens on X.

> Dating apps are designed to keep you single forever and owned by a single corpo.

Heard good things about Alovoa: https://alovoa.com/

> Free and open-source dating platform that respects your privacy.

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