from Hacker News

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

by bernardlunn on 11/7/23, 3:59 PM with 12 comments

• by bediger4000 on 11/7/23, 4:20 PM

  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".

• by alwayslikethis on 11/7/23, 4:30 PM

  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.

• by lbhdc on 11/7/23, 11:20 PM

  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?

• by t-3 on 11/7/23, 5:43 PM

  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.

• by marssaxman on 11/7/23, 6:33 PM

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

• by coolThingsFirst on 11/7/23, 5:36 PM

  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.