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advertising is just propaganda without a cause
idk about other languages, but in Portuguese it’s literally the same word
I’m surprised the corpos haven’t pushed for a new word with less baggage. That’s exactly the sort of thing they do when you don’t reign them in
Maybe because is the same fucking thing.
advertising is forcing you to pay with your time and attention. I started hating all kinds of ads when I first flew with Ryanair. There aren’t headphones big enough to withstand two and a half hours of uninterrupted bullshit
Brain r ape. I do not consent.
The cause is to separate you from your money and time. To reinforce and promote capital as the ultimate gatekeepers.
Ad-blocking is a property right. I have every right to control what my device does or does not display, by definition of ownership. Conversely, advertisers or other parties attempting to colonize my device by forcing it to display something against my (the owner’s) will is a hostile act that violates my rights.
Except we are beginning to not own what we own. The computer is yours, the software is just licensed, and they are trying to take everything away from us, from ovens to washing machines, they want to make it all subscription, spying on us, and serving us ads. We don’t have the right to repair the products when we break, and it’s a federal felony to “break” any sort of digital lock on a device, and I think to change it’s programming too.
That said, it’s a moot point as of yet, because while websites forced me to whitelist their sites to use them when I had adblock, I was told about ublockorigin, and I see no ads, and the sites can’t tell I am using it.
the software is just licensed
That is a GODDAMN LIE perpetrated by copyright cartel shysters to swindle all of us. The entire legal theory that assertion rests on is absolute nonsense: they want to pretend that you “need” to accept an “EULA” to use the software because otherwise copying it from the installation media onto your hard drive and/or into RAM would be a violation, but that is wrong because 17 U.S. Code § 117 (a) (1) carves out an explicit exception that allows it. EULAs are bunk and do not constitute a valid contact, as they not only lack ‘acceptance’ because they attempt to work on adhesion (trying to impose new terms after-the-fact when the transaction to obtain the copy has already occurred and concluded), but fail to provide any meaningful ‘consideration’ to begin with!
They can pry my hardware and software that I own from my cold, dead hands.
Free Software is essential
Sadly, and I am not a lawyer so this is not even close to legal advice(!!), “beginning” is potentially the wrong word when talking about licenses due to copyright. Because even a single flipped bit in RAM on your computer could be constructed as a copyright infringement if pushed in a legal battle and decided in a court. (This all sounds squishy because, again, I am not a lawyer and as far as I know nothing of this sort has had clear ground setting or breaking rulings yet…)
Why am I of this opinion despite also usually loving to take the “my device my rules stance”? Because I got to proof read some final exams for legal professionals-to-be for their technical accuracy and let me tell you: the most likely legal outcome they saw was not good for most of us. (So now I really really hope that some high up court rules on a case like this and sides with “common sense” about what is and is not allowed with our owned hardware!)
I always and will also try to give websites 1 try.
If I like your content on your site you get 1 try to show ads and if they are not offensively placed and not playing audio… you get to live
Thats fair if you also hold the stance that they can block you if you aren’t paying to use the service. But i doubt you do.
What fucking “service?” Software running locally on my own computer isn’t a goddamned “service” to begin with!
Also, fuck off with your bullshit assumption of bad faith.
The web browser and the website are two different piecee of software. Running a web browser doesnt entitle you to access a web server.
You are asking the web server for the page and its giving it to you with ads. If you then decide you dont want the ads the webserver has every right to not serve you the page.
It would be different if it was a local application. Web servers have a material cost for processing a request it costs money to serve you that page. Its completely fair for you to decide that your browser isnt going to display ads but its also just as fair for the website to turn around and reject your request or choose to serve you something else.
Everything belongs to the working class brother
If you want to actively shit on them, there is AdNauseam, which is a fork of uBlock Origin but in addition to blocking the ads, it clicks on absolutely everything, sending fake signals. Polluting their database is costing them money and they have to deal with all the noise.
Not for everyone, but definitely an active hostility towards these fucks.
That seems like it opens the door to a lot of security issues. Part of the reason to use uBlock is that ads are a known threat vector.
All clicks are performed in an isolated sandbox separate from the user area (basically imagine the click register signal going out, but nothing more).
What if you have a multi layered ad blocking setup where you’re using ublock origin and pi.hole and a VPN with blocking?
The multiple layers of redundancy would likely clash with Adnauseum, yeah. Although that probably is just wasted compute - you may only need one or two of those solutions to have effective adblocking (uBlock for supported browsers, pi.hole for devices unable to have uBlock installed) rather than all 3 at once.
Well I’m not gonna bother turning off any of the layers when I’m out and about. Like, my laptop still needs ublock when I’m not at home. And the vpn is just for certain use cases.
If you set up tailscale, you can connect your laptop to your home network and have the pi-hole everywhere.
I have tailscale set up. I’m not gonna have my wife be using tailscale. And I’m also not going to be using tailscale all the time. I even have an exit node on my server.
Except it still rewards the site for hosting ads in the first place
As someone who works in marketing - they will tote these clicks as a great success and continue to do what they are doing, maybe even more so, but will be distraught by the lack of follow through when it comes to sales. I guess if it happened long enough, And on a big enough scale, they might eventually give up but it would take years
All ads are non consensual and designed to get your attention. So we put them in places like on giant boards along highways. Very cool, very safe.
Nice point if view. Ironically we live in times when minding others boundaries is almost common sense. Abusive behavior gets public contempt. But everyone is just accepting manipulative, malicious and intrusive ads.
There’s a giant, glowing, animated LED billboard along a main road near my house that had a PSA about distracted driving on it the other day. It made me angry.
Just use sponsorblock, uBlock, privacyBadger, Dearrow, consentomatic and that one that blocks the JS LAN scans (port authority?)
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
Banksy
Somewhat relevant are the Subvertisers for London (as well as similar groups all over the world):

Advertisement makes me want that product even less.
People say this but, if advertising didn’t work, companies would have stopped paying for ads long time ago. It works for them, we view ads and then we are willing to pay more for a product that is worth less; it’s this simple.
The only solution for us is to avoid ads at all cost.
Yeah - ads do work. The whole point of the surveillance ad system is to track how effective ads are. Companies can measure how many sales they get from their ads and calculate if they are still making a profit. And all those influencers peddling scam products with their special discount codes? People are buying those products.
The worse the product is, the more desperate they get to shove it in your face. Good products don’t need to pay others to pretend it’s good, you just find out via word-of-mouth or free trials
If you have to react to advertising you’re already doing it wrong. If it’s able to reach you on your hardware in any form, you’ve already failed.
You’re not wrong. But as you said yourself, this only applies to your own hardware. Some of us do engage in this weird thing called “going outside”, with some taking it as far as not only going there to touch grass, but also meet other people (gross, I know).
In these situations, even I, an individual who has
- a private e-mail that is exactly that: private (through aliases and strict protocols as to who gets the root address)
- a physical mailbox mostly clean of ads because advertisers either do not get my address in the first place, or they get a friendly letter telling them where to shove their catalogues
- adblocker plugins in every browser
- hosts-based blocking on top of that and
- a network-wide DNS-based adblocker just for good measure,
even I, builder, king and prisoner of this privacy fortress, am exposed to ads when I occasionally leave it.
I see ads when my kid asks me to read out to him the contents of that colourful banner above the parking lot.
I see ads when I watch cable TV with my parents and they just let the ad break wash over them like a jovial stream of diarrhea.
I see ads when I go shopping and I cannot focus on my own thoughts because only a few metres away there’s an ad screen loudly announcing the technological marvels of Buddy’s Fully-automatic Butt Crack Scratcher to the world.
In these situations, I really feel the contents of that OP. I feel the brazen attempt to steal my attention when all I want is to be present. I feel the insult to my intelligence because some twat in marketing decided I’m unable to or unworthy of making my own decisions. And I feel the need to quell this frivolous invasion of my time and headspace.
And that’s why, in these situations, I take the liberty to turn off the shop’s TV while I’m there. I take my parent’s remote, mute the ad diarrhea and strike up a conversation. And I promise the kiddo to read him something proper once we get home, but not one of those stupid ads.
(We recently pulled up in front of another giant ad banner, and the little guy went: “Dad, that’s just another one of those stupid ads, right?” Imagine how proud dad was, seeing that another system-wide adblocker had been installed…)
Thanks for coming to my TED talk!
I grew up with every internet ad being likely hostile, you didn’t click any of them. It kinda stuck with me.
But also they went way overboard. If it’s a site funded by advertising and there was just a simple banner at the top or something then fine, I’d just ignore it still but whatever. But everything is so obnoxious now, so fuck ‘em.
Even if you adblock and sponsorblock. Advertisement is everywhere. It’s on tv series and films as product placements. It’s on every bus stop, metro station, in the form of billboards, every casually on TV even muted still showing ads on the corner of your eye, or just company logos, even every single product you buy comes with a damn logo on it.
Bought a new pair of shoes, new headphones, new pair of fucking glasses? Which you need to wear everyday and can’t see without them? Enjoy being a walking billboard for everyone who looks at you.
This drives me crazy and yes, I do hide most logos I can with a permanent marker, and even then it’s not enough.
I made it a point to never wear or use anything with obvious logos most of my life. Want me to tell people my shirt is nike. pay me!
Actively hostile relationship with advertising
Describes defensive relationship with advertising.
Smh. Actively hostile relationship is like throwing bricks at their offices, or, at the very least, calling their support and bogging them down with stupid questions with no intention to buy their services. Or… spreading information on why you shouldn’t use their services.
I’ll start: Ground News is a site based on the stupidest idea ever and it’s use is actively dangerous for the society. It steals traffic from real news sources doing actual grunt work, and then has the gall to ask you to pay them for it. It teaches you to turn off your critical thinking and to just trust them on rating news sources biases which they pull from… where, exactly? Ah yeah, straight out of their arses. But worst of all, they put left and right outlets on equal pedestals as if both have the same merit, promoting this weird centrist position of half left ideas and half literal fascism. American fascism, to be precise, because those ratings don’t even make sense outside of USA. For example, they’ve rated Al Jazeera, the news agency wholly owned by an authoritarian monarchy state, as “left leaning”. Like, what?
I almost never watch you tube anymore because of this
I moved to Linux, use Freetube, LineageOS on the phone, listen all day to internet radios from the command line, browser with uBlock add on and it’s been years since I saw or listened an ad.
I would like to know more about this Internet radio command line thingy
Try https://radio.garden/ or for TV https://tvgarden.net/watch-live/
Have a look at FMHY
Yikes. I opened the web page and saw an ad. Started the radio, heard an ad.
No ads here , is your adblocker active ?
I had a VPN working, but I think android auto made me turn it off. Might need a better ad blocking system
Until, you know, you went outside.
Another word for “marketing” or “advertisement” is Manipulation. Shady, manipulative, tactics.
Fuck them. I love Lemmy because it seems like the ratio of like-minded people is much larger here. Nothing better than seeing other principled people that would rather give up some comforts than deal with ads and bend the knee to the pieces of shit that try to push them.
Even products in the supermarket (such as bread!!) come with ads in the fucking plastic wrapper. I have changed my bread brand due to this. I will absolutely give up any comfort to avoid your manipulation. I will fucking shower in cold water if it means I don’t bend the knee to pieces of shit.
Another word for “marketing” or “advertisement” is Manipulation.
Don’t worry they’ve solved that, it’s called 🩷 𝐼𝓃𝒻𝓁𝓊𝑒𝓃𝒸𝒾𝓃𝑔 😎. That’s much less ominous! They just influence!
It’s been a minute so I could be misremembering, but you’re not far off. Another word for public relations (the shaping of public opinion) is propaganda.
Edward Bearnays wrote a book titled Propaganda, where he talks about the need to rebrand the work of Propagandist after it became associated with negative influence during WW2. From what I recall he used the term public relations, but seemed to prefer the term propaganda.
He’s also the person infamous for convincing Americans that we should eat bacon and eggs for breakfast. Another interesting story is about how he advertised to make music rooms in homes trendy, so he could help sell more pianos.
He talks about some of the early manipulation tactics advertisers use. Such as trying to sell you an experience instead of a product. Think of how modern car commercials show a lifestyle more than they show you the car.
It’s an enlightening book that shows that before the war, calling an advertiser a propagandist wouldn’t be out of place. Those propagandist manipulated us into calling the PR now.
Oh, and if I recall correctly propaganda comes from Latin and means “to propagate.”


















