Technology

I'm at the point where there's going to have to be a collective bargaining procedure between Google and the Youtube audience before I turn my adblocker off.

I was served the same ad for the same movie every five minutes for hours on end, such that I'm never watching another Mission Impossible movie, or another movie starring Tom Cruise, ever again. For similar reasons I wouldn't wash with Dr. Squatch soap if it was the last left in the world. Because they bothered me too much about it.

Tell you about the last internet ad I actually responded to: I saw an ad on Reddit of all places for caffeinated chocolates. I didn't see this ad constantly, only occasionally. It wasn't every other line, it wasn't even every other page. It was marked as an ad, and boiled down to a business trying to communicate to potential customers that they have a product on offer. Not to psychologically damage everyone everywhere into submission. I don't remember the company name but they had an owl logo. The fact they didn't beat their name into my head wins them points. Give me ads where I go "Hey what was that thing I saw again?" hours later.

I was once served an hour-long lecture on computer networking as an ad. It felt like the algorithm decided "Hey this nerd that occasionally looks up Python-MQTT tutorials, let's serve him a networking video next" but it was served as an ad, it had a Skip Ad button in the corner. I'm not sure why that happened.

Something else that bugs me is the way they treat creators. "We're demonitizing this video, we're not telling you why, we don't care if it's fair use, we're big and you're small, eat a dick." If Google doesn't operate in good faith, then I also shall not. Which I think is the last word on the subject.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some tables to build.