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Comment by mym1990 | Hacker News Reader

mym1990

I am generally getting overwhelmed with ads coming from every nook and cranny of life to the point that I don't even want to buy stuff anymore, for a lot of it its like: whats the point?

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If you use Chrome, then switch to another browser that allows full adblocker functionality. I use Firefox with UBlock Origin and hardly see any ads.

Sponsored segments on YouTube. Billboards. Sponsored texts in newspapers. "YC XXX is hiring" on HN.

I use Firefox + uBlock Origin + Sponsorblock and a few others. Ads are still everywhere. Not as everywhere as they'd be without it, but it's not like adblocks get rid of them all together.

Not parent, but I don’t have most of those.

> Sponsored segments on YouTube

I only watch music videos and very rarely a how to repair video.

> Billboards

I guess I sometimes see those in US TV shows ;)

> newspapers

I think I remember those things ;)

> is hiring

I guess, never saw those as ads. Though now that I think about it, I have started to want to figure out what BuildZoom does with custom homes, why YC funded them, and why I should care. Maybe one day I’ll see enough hiring posts to google them ;)

> never saw those as ads

YC companies pay money to put a message in front of us, in the hope that some of us will respond by taking an action that is highly profitable for them. Seems pretty clearly ads to me!

>>Billboards

>I guess I sometimes see those in US TV shows ;)

Lucky. In Helsinki they're in every metro station, every bus stop, and sometimes just in random spots along busy streets. Oh, and every metro car has screens playing video ads.

It probably helps that I don’t travel much…

In the states, we now have them built into gas station pumps. So any time you get gas you have video ads blasting at you with some crappy loudspeaker.

I don't really consider this a solution since I'm opposed to ads creeping into everything on principle, but try hitting the first or second button from the top on the right side. That mutes them around 80% of the time in my experience.

On iOS I can recommend sideloading uYou app for YouTube which includes sponsor block. AltStore is the side load app provider that I use.

Its trivial to skip ahead of the sponsor reads in youtube vids, or to scroll past the "is hiring" posts.

Frankly, these are minor annoyances. The people who get emotionally overwhelmed by them perhaps should resolve that internally rather than externally. Life is never going to be free from minor annoyances.

The only point I'm trying to make here is that they're still ads that adblocks don't protect you from. Web without an adblock is worse, but web with an adblock doesn't equal ad-free experience.

> The people who get emotionally overwhelmed by them perhaps should resolve that internally rather than externally.

What you're insinuating here is quite frankly insulting, brings nothing of value to what I was trying to say and the only thing I can offer you in return is to tell you to go fuck yourself.

Whenever a politician or volunteer contacts me, I tell them my #1 issue is banning billboards, or at least putting it up as a ballot measure / referendum.

Whenever one contacts me, it's usually by text spamming my private phone number that I didn't give them that's also on the do-not-call list, asking me to vote for them.

Physical retail had grown on me lately. It's usually faster to go in, get what I need, and make it home. Especially for commodity household items.

Luckily, I mostly don’t see any ads. Only for work, and on Amazon pretty much. Some more as product placement and in the physical world, but not a ton.

I love the new ad displays in the local shopping mall. They use LCD screens rotated 90 degrees and my sunglases are just the wrong filter angle so they become nice black displays for me. Physical adblocker :-)

My wife commented on how shitty some ambulance chaser ad was and all I could see was a black display. Now I want a law that requires all billboards and other such ads to be properly polarized so they can be blocked :-)

I stopped buying stuff when COVID hit

I do buy things, but each purchase is carefully considered.

Happier, wealthier, all good

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