I’ve used Adblock aggressively for the last 10 or 15 years. I don’t have a TV, don’t read magazines or the newspaper, don’t listen to the radio.

I essentially don’t see or hear ads in my life.

I see very few ads and my life is SO MUCH better for it. I see how other people love and I can’t understand how they can stand it.

I only watch TV where I can pay the service for an ad-free tier. Every podcast I can I subscribe to to get rid of ads if I listen to it regularly. I had an ad blocker, of course. No ads in my music streaming. YouTube Premium, and I skip embedded ads.

Any ads I see are infuriating. I’m pissed at Apple starting to shove them in my face more and more. App Store is whatever. But MAPS??? I chose Apple because they DIDN’T do stuff like that.

But gotta grub that money to make the stock keep going up for no sane reason.

I’m all for regulating the advertising industry more somehow. I realize there is value to advertising at times, but they have managed to piss me off far enough I don’t care.

I actively avoid products that are advertised to me. It’s an easy shortcut to “Tell me your shit sucks without telling me your shit sucks.” I honestly don’t understand the type of advertising that does not seek to inform, but rather annoy you into buying the product. Has never made any sense to me at all.

I hate ads to the point I either pay or use other means to avoid ads in basically everything I use

- NPR (I pay, happy to support)

- Podcasts (I skip ads, using a client that supports that)

- Movies/TV/Music (I self-host, thank you open source community!)

- Twitch (I pay 1 creator 6$/mo and must watch 40+ hours per month)

I don’t have mainline social media downloaded on my phone, I sometimes visit reddit.com and see the ads that aren’t blocked by ad block but I find myself visiting less often recently anyway.

All of this to say, pay a bit and put in some work and you can avoid 95% of ads

Ads in my opinion are not the problem.

The problem is the expectation that services/apps/radio/tv-channels need to be free when we know that there is nothing really free in this world (except maybe the air we breathe?).

This is the same problem that Firefox is facing. If you listen to the crowd here on HN, Firefox is either evil or dumb or both to take money from Google, yet at the same time, these same people would scream bloody murder if Firefox was a paid only browser that cost 5.99 a month because everything these days is a subscription and this is terrible.

Every product requires maintenance and has ongoing costs. Let me ask you, do you work for free? If not, then why should they?

So instead of spending hours debating over the value of ads in apps and sites, on the radio and so on, what is the solution if: - ads are a no go - subscriptions are bad - donations are unreliable and cannot ensure the proper remuneration of the creators

And let me say, that is is not a comment supporting ads, I am genuinely asking what the solution is because I just don't see it.

We all feel this way, but a wholistic view includes acknowledging what we receive in return for our time spent viewing ads. The author starts off the article by referencing getting up in the morning and wanting to watch a 10 video but having to spend several minutes viewing ads. They fail to mention how the person who spent their time creating that video should be compensated. Will he pay for the video? I doubt it. He wants it at no cost. This has another name: entitlement. He’s upset because no one will give him the things he wants for free, so he’s throwing an obvious tantrum about it.

How about proposing a better model? I don’t have the answer, but I have a feeling we gravitated to the ad-supported freeware model because it’s actually the best and most efficient middle ground. It allows us to exchange our time for creators’ time without the inconvenience of turning it into money first. It removes a step.

Adblock and don't watch Youtuber/Podcaster slop. Presto.

Advertisers end up corrupting ad supported media, too. Before ads, Google keyword search was ok. After ads, it decayed, because catering to advertisers was how they got payed.

It looks like ads will corrupt our only hope, AI.