[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation

Pihole was the best thing I ever set up for home Internet consumption

I gave up trying to get my wife to use anything that blocks ads, and she won't switch away chrome. When she bakes, she leaves her tablet or phone open, with multiple video ads destroying her battery. Seeing this thing just turns my brain to mush as I don't see any ads. I don't know how she puts up with having ten video ads on one page.

so of course I have ublock origin on my computer, AdAway on my phone and pihole on my network, but the school computers actually prevent you from installing any adblocking extensions

anyway at school I see a lot of "download Wave Browser/OneLaunch/PC app store/other random crapware" ads and videos in the corner and I can barely read anything on the site

I will go to many lengths to avoid ads. I never use the YT app for example unless I’m on my desktop which has multiple ad blocking extensions and containers. Been using Yattee for iOS that plays nice with nvidious or piped

Get fucked advertisers

I got onto the YouTube vanced train back in 2018 and every now and then I hop on desktop YouTube and it's soo jaring.

I set up a pihole and installed revanced on my mom's phone. She was surprised when I mentioned that YouTube has ads once haha.

I signed up to Vessel [1] when they were giving out the 1 year free trial, and it was only 9 months or so in that I realised that it had ads. It was kinda jarring, especially for a paid (not that I did) service.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vessel_(website)

When I'm not using computers behind my three layers of filters I have here at home.. I feel very sad for the internet.

Spent last weekend visiting family out of state, and it was the first time I've watched YouTube with ads in years. I pay to get no ads on YouTube at home, and the ads at family's home was so irritating. Made me realize that I would either pay YouTube for no ads, OR I would just stop watching YouTube. No compromise on that one.

That being said, I don't mind a few ads on webpages here and there. I run uBlock Origin and NoScript with only site-needed scripts allowed. Occasionally there's an ad that manages to not get blocked by either of those, and I don't go out of my way to also make sure those are blocked. It's because they aren't obnoxious. Usually just a box on the side of the page. Not a problem.

I often forget they even exist

My colleague uses chrome like Google intended and every time she shares her screen I question her sanity. Terminal instead of iTerm, ok. Not using oh my zsh, well, if you insist. But that? You can barely identify the information you're looking for between all that screaming nonsense.

"When I'm watchin' my TV
And a man comes on and tells me
How white my shirts can be
But, he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarettes as me"
The Rolling Stones

Idk I just pay for stuff if I like it so no ads. Like including DVDs or streaming services. Or I use FOSS and everything's good.

I think the worst ads are the text to speech ones that say "Download this app today".

Dear god, they read themselves to you now?!? Kill it with fire!!

I want the creator drawn and quartered.

I’ve been doing it for so many years across all devices and platforms that I actually get…confused for a second when one slips through. It is normally YouTube that slips through (they seem to be trying new things almost daily to get around any possible ad blocks), but sometimes it is from a major news web site or something. I actually have to look around for a second and then realize what has just happened.