#adpocalypse

[crooked-wasteland]

I am begging people to educate yourselves on the Attention Economy

It literally is the source of everything from Red Pilling to Donald Trump to the decline of empathy, the spike in mental illness, false information, AI and propaganda. There are dozens of years old videos that explain what the Attention Economy is, how it has impacted every facet of our lives, how it is the literal death spiral of Capitalism and it started in Art.

It started with social media, YouTube and influences and now it is the heart of AI: to keep your attention under any means necessary. And now we have AI Psychosis. Regardless of what anyone says, those are not able to be separated. That is the literal cause and effect chain with no middle men involved.

[fcyrah]

Classic gamer moment

Ruri's bridge incident (ad-pocalypse)

人魚娘ルリィ

Twitter | Pixiv | TikTok | BlueSky

[nessynoname]

So I saw this bullshit

And we're like not even trying anymore with the scam ads are we?

The state of the enshitification of online ads is so dismaying. To what end. Who is clicking on these ads? How is this still a business model for social media platforms?

What is your reaction to video ads automatically served in between scrolling (tumblr, insta, youtube shorts etc) (not paid sponsorships presented by content creators inside their own videos etc)

I am uninfluencable, if I saw it on an online ad I will not buy it on principle

I've been conditioned by experience that almost every ad is a scam, don't engage

A lot of junky ads now but sometimes I still click on stuff if I think its good

What do you mean, ads nowadays seem fine, I buy stuff from ads frequently

It is my hobby to click on every ad I see and give money to any dubious business

Voting ended onNov 21, 2025

[themissingmusic]

Who's the target for all those ads? Families? Or just any sensitive person who is easily manipulated by marketing? Or is it this new western political agenda that all we should now unwillingly follow?

[flimberjurbles]

muting the minute long unskippable YouTube ads on twenty+ minute videos for inner peace

[ghostjelliess]

Man, I've been following a few marketing and advertising syllabi posted by ivy leagues, reading and doing assignments and stuff, and now I can only see advertising hidden in everything. Like that email newsletter I got? The book they're promoting they probably didn't even read, it's paid. The featured releases by big brands, that's paid, everything on every shelf. We live in a pay to play gambling economy that pretends it's a meritocracy, the most annoying type of privileged existence. I'm just annoyed all the time, I should not have done this. 🥹

[madamepestilence]

Okay, so I just wanna bring something up regarding YouTube (and Google by extension, as they fully own YouTube, and also Google [and Amazon] are currently being sued for being illegal monopolies)

So YouTube's bad updates have officially pushed me to Firefox, but I wanna break down some of their recent updates

The first thing they did was removing people's ability to watch videos if adblockers were present, which is borderline legal

There is no law in the US, where Google is hosted, that requires a user to disable adblockers on certain websites, meaning that YouTube blocking people from using adblockers and paying for their product/watching extensive ads instead isn't technically legal, but also isn't technically illegal

This is also the Adpocalypse 2, with ads being anywhere from 10 seconds to a full minute, and ads also run at the beginning of videos, the end of videos, as midrolls, as the starts of every chapter, and when you move your location in the video -

even on some videos that've disabled ads and use sponsorships - and these also run occasionally on videos marked for sleep-aids such as ASMR videos and on unmonetized videos that shouldn't have ads as the person who put up the video doesn't get paid

The next problematic update they put up was creating an artificial 5-second delay for Firefox users (this can be remedied with www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), 5000, 0.001) in uBO), which is in violation of antitrust law

What pushed me to Firefox is that the new update for Chrome (and all Chrome-based browsers), Manifest v3 will completely disable any extensions not directly authorized by Google, and this includes completely disabling uBlock Origin, which forces people not on Firefox or TorBrowser to be bombarded with ads and data scraping.

After moving to Firefox, I've noticed another thing that I'm 90% sure is another violation of antitrust law: In Chrome, there's 1080p. In Firefox, it's split into 1080p and 1080p Premium, reducing the intended bitrate and making videos visibly lower quality - requiring people to pay for YouTube Premium in order to use YouTube as intended.

What the fuck is happening?

[direbeastrex]

Youtube's new 'three videos and then you will be blocked if you run an adblocker' has got me so fucking anxious. I couldn't pick 3 videos if I tried. What would I watch? Probably one of the rare animated movies you can still watch for free, or something that I can remember fondly- because I'm not subjecting myself to youtube's egregious, usually bigoted ads, and if I can help it, I just won't watch videos on youtube anymore *full stop*. I won't be able to afford to support all the creators I want and get their videos on patreon, but at least I have Nebula now? Not a lot of the folks I followed are on there though.