Except we are beginning to not own what we own. The computer is yours, the software is just licensed, and they are trying to take everything away from us, from ovens to washing machines, they want to make it all subscription, spying on us, and serving us ads. We don't have the right to repair the products when we break, and it's a federal felony to "break" any sort of digital lock on a device, and I think to change it's programming too.

That said, it's a moot point as of yet, because while websites forced me to whitelist their sites to use them when I had adblock, I was told about ublockorigin, and I see no ads, and the sites can't tell I am using it.

"Hey this thing is here" and "have this problem try this" are useful enough that even without paid ads people make that content.

The lifestyle manipulation, feeding unfounded fears, biases, anxieties, and rage for almost anyone reason is evil to me.

The worse the product is, the more desperate they get to shove it in your face. Good products don't need to pay others to pretend it's good, you just find out via word-of-mouth or free trials

Yep I actively avoid companies that inundate me. I've switched insurance companies because of it (local agent got me much better rates too).

Yep. One must move beyond an "I hate you and I hope you die" relationship with ads, to a "I don't think about you at all" relationship with ads. Regardless of how many fits Google throws about ublock, one can always do VPN/DNS type filtering. I've honestly almost forgotten ads exist.

You're not wrong. But as you said yourself, this only applies to your own hardware. Some of us do engage in this weird thing called "going outside", with some taking it as far as not only going there to touch grass, but also meet other people (gross, I know).

In these situations, even I, an individual who has

• a private e-mail that is exactly that: private (through aliases and strict protocols as to who gets the root address)
• a physical mailbox mostly clean of ads because advertisers either do not get my address in the first place, or they get a friendly letter telling them where to shove their catalogues
• adblocker plugins in every browser
• hosts-based blocking on top of that and
• a network-wide DNS-based adblocker just for good measure,

even I, builder, king and prisoner of this privacy fortress, am exposed to ads when I occasionally leave it.

I see ads when my kid asks me to read out to him the contents of that colourful banner above the parking lot.

I see ads when I watch cable TV with my parents and they just let the ad break wash over them like a jovial stream of diarrhea.

I see ads when I go shopping and I cannot focus on my own thoughts because only a few metres away there's an ad screen loudly announcing the technological marvels of Buddy's Fully-automatic Butt Crack Scratcher to the world.

In these situations, I really feel the contents of that OP. I feel the brazen attempt to steal my attention when all I want is to be present. I feel the insult to my intelligence because some twat in marketing decided I'm unable to or unworthy of making my own decisions. And I feel the need to quell this frivolous invasion of my time and headspace.

And that's why, in these situations, I take the liberty to turn off the shop's TV while I'm there. I take my parent's remote, mute the ad diarrhea and strike up a conversation. And I promise the kiddo to read him something proper once we get home, but not one of those stupid ads.

(We recently pulled up in front of another giant ad banner, and the little guy went: "Dad, that's just another one of those stupid ads, right?" Imagine how proud dad was, seeing that another system-wide adblocker had been installed...)

Thanks for coming to my TED talk!

Not just personal mind poison, but societal poison too.

i came to realize this when when my home built router died a few months ago.

it was based on pfsense and i had setup publicly shared advertisement blocking; so i hadn't see any ad at all for years.

i became annoyed when i started seeing them after the router died and then i actively became angry when i was bombarded by them while watching tv as i was visiting family, yet they didn't think anything was wrong with watching the same mcdonalds advertisement 500x in a single hour.

that shit has an impact on your psyche whether you know right away or not.

I use Firefox with Ublock Origin on Android, and if I watch youtube in the browser, it filters pretty much all ads. Sometimes I get one at the start of a video, but closing the tab and starting again has got rid of them so far 👍

You can try invidious instances like yewtu.be

Invidious is an alternative front end for youtube that allows you to watch videos without ads or other tracking. And it's self hostable. But the public instance works just fine - I actually have issues with YouTube stalling constantly, I assume because of my ad/script blockers. But going to yewtu.be/watch?v=(youtube video code) allows me to watch in HD with zero ads or interruptions.

Youtube does try to fight it, so it occasionally will break, but just like Ublock, Invidious has talented people on the team fighting back.

There's also a firefox extension for auto redirect: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/invidious-redirect-2/

That seems like it opens the door to a lot of security issues. Part of the reason to use uBlock is that ads are a known threat vector.

The cause is to separate you from your money and time. To reinforce and promote capital as the ultimate gatekeepers.

idk about other languages, but in Portuguese it's literally the same word

There's a giant, glowing, animated LED billboard along a main road near my house that had a PSA about distracted driving on it the other day. It made me angry.