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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   37169 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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If I were going to debut a new advance in ad blocking workarounds I'd probably try and debut it a month or two before the election in order to maximally benefit from the proverbial firehoses of money that are going to be coursing through, personally.

unblockable ads will be a firehose level revenue surge either way, imagine being in sales for google adsense and being able to pitch your product as one of the only unblockable ad spaces on the internet, its gonna print money

I always thought being in sales for Google would be easymode but I’ve since met a number of people who’ve said it’s pretty miserable even relative to the rest of that field.

Unless, of course, your users leave because they are sick of the ads.

I'm not sure there really is a viable alternative currently. Youtube marketshare as a "Media Players And Streaming Platforms category" is at 97.67%. If you look at streaming or short form videos there are competitors, but for long form videos there still isn't any real competition. YouTube rolled out a horrendous UI update but rather than quitting I just found some solutions online via some uBlock filters and Tampermonkey scripts to mostly revert it back to an older UI. I don't know where else I would view videos!

Personally, I would never live without AdBlock, but most people actually don't even bother.

According to one source, 32.8% of people globally use some kind of AdBlock.

Some more stats for US users:

  • "While up to 41% of American internet users report using ad blockers... Ad blocking is detected in 18% of web sessions on computers among American users."
  • 37% of respondents blocked ads while using a desktop computer.
  • 15% of respondents said that they used blockers on mobile devices.
  • 10% of internet users in the US say that they block ads while browsing on a tablet.

One could consider how much time people that use AdBlock spend online relative to those that don't, but I've met plenty of people that spend hours on their phone, and they don't use any form of AdBlock.

Granted he's not quite there yet, but I think this is an overarching goal for Elon with Twitter -- which does seem achievable if YT becomes sufficiently unfriendly. (although it remains to be seen how he would monetize it without resorting to ads himself -- or further strongarming on paid subscriptions I guess)

They won't be shedding many tears if it's the portion of the user base who would be using ad block anyway.

And assuming that it works consistently and can't be countered by an adblock adaptment.

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