That’s absolutely unbelievable to me. I block ads on everything. I just can’t handle it. For the few ad-based services that I pay for, I mute it for every commercial. Seriously, I just can’t handle it.
But… clearly tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of people do watch them… which makes a massively lucrative business. I’ll just never understand it.
When I need something, I look it up and get it. If i don’t need something, I don’t want to hear about it in any way, shape, or form.
Ugh.
10 billion. 😖
Most people using a smartphone use the default YouTube app. And that app does not have any ability to block ads. Most people don’t know they can block ads or even if they did, they don’t know how.
I’ve heard of enough people wanting ads too. And people complaining that they want them back after they were blocked.
It gets harder and harder to have any faith in humanity these days.
I use YouTube in Firefox for Android because it has ublock. That’s by far the easiest way. All the other apps wouldn’t work for me or don’t show my recommendations.
My pet peeve about ads everywhere now is on Android.
Your Android phone doesn’t come with a voice recorder? Download one, with ads every time you record.
You want a different calculator? Ads!
Flashlight app? Ads!
Notepad? Ads!
And people just apparently accept ads in nearly every app, even the most basic ones.
I don’t remember the Sound Recorder, or Notepad having ads. But because people are now used to ads everywhere, it’s certainly coming as MS is trying to jam ads in everywhere possible in Windows too, now.
I’m so grateful for Linux. The apps I get through apt-get don’t make me watch ads. Unfortunately even if based on Linux, the Android world is so infuriatingly crammed with ads.
I wish I could find a “phone” or portable device in that format, with an OS that works like “true” Linux.
Use f-droid. The apps may not always be as polished (hell, some play store apps look like they came out of 2005), but you can filter apps by anti-features such as ads, tracking, permissions, etc.
As for what you’ve mentioned:
The fossify repo of apps is privacy friendly, no ads, etc.
Fossify Voice Recorder (Record anything with this Open-source and Ad-free recorder) https://f-droid.org/packages/org.fossify.voicerecorder/
Fortunately, you can block all those ads on Android. Check out Tracker Control: https://f-droid.org/packages/net.kollnig.missioncontrol.fdroid
If you want something that’s simple, fire and forget. You can try PersonalDNSFilter.
Nice tool, thank you ! However I’m bit confused
If you’re interested in blocking tracking, then best download TrackerControl from here, from F-Droid, or from the IzzyOnDroid F-Droid Repository. If you’re interested in analysing tracking and generating factual evidence of it (e.g. for research), then choose the version from Google Play. The analysis results from this version will usually be more accurate.
That’s strange… Why have different versions doing different things?
The short answer is that the Google Play version won’t actually block anything because it breaks their terms of service. So that version just tells you how many trackers and what the trackers are. I still use some of those apps and even respect them (e.g. AP News, AccuWeather), but it completely boggles my mind how they’ve loaded so many trackers into their applications… 🫤
Longer answer: To actually block trackers and ads, you need to use a third party source to download the app so that it’s fully functional. By providing the app that way, they don’t have to abide by Google Plays rules.
The link above is for the F-Droid “app store” version, which is one of the more well-known “stores.” I highly recommend F-Droid. They host free and open source (FOSS) applications. For most everything you use, there is a FOSS alternative which will be ad and tracker free.
Want a simple ad-free calculator, go there. Want to watch YouTube ad free, go there. Want to download an ad free Lemmy client, go there. Etc etc.
Hurrah for high quality FOSS software!
You can also just set your private DNS to something like
dns.adguard.comand block almost all ads in every app, no installs requiredI’m personally using
p2.freedns.controld.comfor anyone looking for an alternative.I actually use adblock.dns.mullvad.net, I just recommend adguard for beginners as it seems more stable (though I’ve not had a stability issue with mullvad for years)
Uh, may I introduce you to F-droid, the FOSS “appstore”.
Edit: adding a link and also the community:
uBlock Origin + Firefox
FreeTube + integrated SponsorBlock
It blocks normal ads, plus Sponsored segments and some other segments if you wish to. Its configurable. This addon is also available for Firefox. I do not use Firefox to watch YouTube anymore.
Lately, Firefox + uBlock Origin and YouTube on Linux is sometimes horribly slow for me. It uses all the CPU and chokes my computers. Sometimes it’s even difficult to just seek in the video, as it’s so sluggish.
It seems to vary depending on the type of ads. It’s not “random” because a video that has this behavior will always do it, even if I restart FF, while others will be fine.
I thought it was my old computer at first, or that I was out of memory, but the same thing happens on my modern Ryzen.
Although I notice it less and less, so maybe it was a bug with YT + uBlock.
And it’s only on my Linux computers. On Android, FF + uBlock works super well.
Just a shot in the dark here, but do you have ambient mode enabled? (that annoying glow light around the video). I’ve read from various people that it can use an insane amount of cpu on some devices. Disabling it fixed the performance issues they faced.
And companies belief, that this spending was worth it an people spend much more than that on their products.
This is from Q4 when ad spending doubles in the run up to Christmas. Q1 would probably earn half as much.
Plus it was an election year so loads of money from campaign ads, too.
It’s a scam:
- Add ads
- People ignore the ads
- Companies still pay for the ads
- Profit! 🤑
- Let people pay for no ads
- Profit!! 🤑🤑
- Content adds product placement
- Companies pay for product placement
- Profit!!! 🤑🤑🤑
- Make ads more obnoxious
- People use more advanced ad blockers
- Companies still pay extra for new ads
- Profit!!! 🤑🤑🤑🤑
…etc
In what sense is this a scam?
At every step they get someone to pay for less than what they promise: advertisers pay for more than their effective reach, consumers get more ads than what they pay to remove, content creators get paid a fraction of less than what they generate.
