Personally I don’t fundamentally despise the concept of advertising. I think it’s acceptable for people and companies to share information about a potentially great product or service that they’re offering, on reasonable terms.
The main problem for me is: advertising went too far and abandoned most safeguards. Advertising in 2025 is essentially manipulation and brain washing. Most ads don’t give you any information about a product or service whatsoever. Just some celebrity saying it’s great. What is this supposed to accomplish if not manipulating people into mindlessly paying for a thing they know nothing about?
I believe all advertising exists to manipulate people. Behaviour change is a key aspect of marketing, from how things are kept at a store shelf, to putting the right hoarding on the right street, it’s all done to guide consumer choice in a profitable way.
Advertising was never about giving you information, it was to make you feel cigarettes are cool or you need an more expensive toothbrush to be more confident. Advertising moved away from giving you information to ‘connecting with consumers on an emotional level’ decades before the Internet.
While yes information age has made advertising a lot more effective than it was 25 years ago, but brands were still trying to get you get the most money out of you back then, same as today, only their tools of doing so have improved vastly.
Every malware infection and online scam I’ve dealt with in the last 15 years has used advertising as an attack vector. I block everything.
Exactly. I’d be much more ok with a standardised block of text and maybe a picture. No music, no animation, basic machine voiceover if any audio.
My favourite advertisements (the ones I’m most ok with) are podcast ad reads, because they never gave music or sound effects or crass images, it’s just the voice making the podcast reading some text. And they’re personalised based on the context of the podcast, no personal information needed.
Brawndo has what plants crave.
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Joke’s on you, I never saw a netflix ad
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It’s never sharing information about a great new product unless it’s a scam. It’s always scams or large companies screaming how their 2026 version really is superior somehow to their 2025 product and how competitors somehow suck
The one weird thing that everyone seems to just accept is smart tvs with ads. I use my smart tv for many things, but disconnected from the internet and hooked into a little entertainment Linux machine that does all the processing. I can’t fathom taking the raw experience.
Getting my wife and kids on board and trained on this is a feat I’m just not talented to pull off.
Buy an Onn / Thomson box, set it to apps only mode, and there you are. They’re Google TV so Netflix is just as easy to use on it as on the TV itself, and as Google TV is Android based you can sideload whatever apps you want, copyright law compliant be damned.
I’m afraid that I have no solution for you, but can I ask how familiar they are with using a regular computer?
Bought a Samsung last year. Never connected it to a non existent Samsung account. Network connected to it has adguard. And the TV is only used for streaming apps (jellyfin, Netflix etc.) Never saw an ad.
Consumers are lazy and brain rotted, too much effort to build an htpc or do anything that protect yourselfs and your family’s data when the TV can just do it all for you, who cares that it’s a literal piece of spyware ad riddled garbage.
I guess I shouldn’t be blaming the consumer here, since it’s obviously the predatory capitalist company at fault. But still, I think most people are fucking dumb.
“…too much effort to build an htpc or do anything that protect yourselfs and your family’s data…”
So you change your own oil and do your own brakes, right? Cook all your meals, mow your lawn yourself, hand wash your dishes, and compost your food scraps?
No?
You’re just lazy and brain rotted; it’s too much effort for you to do those things.
(The point is the normal person has no idea and no interest in building a Home Theater PC (HTPC) nor in maintaining one, and I get that. Most people don’t brew their own beer, if it can/will come out superior to what’s in the store. Please just want to come home, sit down, and turn on something that works.
The only thing you got me on there is making all my own food, which I also try to do when I have time. Everything else, yes, I do myself.
Why would I pay somebody money to do a shittier job than I can do.
But yes, I realized my original comment was a little insensitive and rude because I’m just sort of an asshole. So sorry about that.
As another commenter pointed out, I do have a good amount of privilege that allows me to do this stuff, and I’m thankful for that and should work on being less of a jerk.
Upvoted for self realization.
A HTPC requires a tech savvy person with a lot of free time. A Google TV box is better for most as they are as easy to use as the TVs own OS but don’t have the crapware.
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I bought a micro PC and use that to stream Plex and other Internet media directly to my TV. I don’t connect the TV itself to the Internet and I don’t have cable or public access TV. I can block all ads with my micro PC and home network.
The DRM on Netflix and other streaming sites makes the quality noticeably worse on other devices, even locked down ones like the PS5. On Firefox on Linux the quality is locked even lower, to like 720p.
The ads bother me, but my girlfriend says TVs have always had ads since they were originally created. She isn’t wrong. I see the distinction between the channel playing the ad and the device playing the ad, but I can kinda understand people not knowing or caring about that difference.
Truthfully, I can’t see the difference between 720 and 1080 across a room. I can tell the difference between 720 and 2160+, but nothing before that catches any details I couldn’t already see
I won’t even wear clothing that overtly displays a brand name
If you want to show me a youtube video and a fuckin ad starts playing, we gon have problems
They allow their fridges to show advertisements
I gave my mother one of my old thinkpads I used to use at school, and on setting up her account (fydeOS btw, since it’s perfect for what she uses computers for), I installed an adblocker so she doesn’t see those scam supplement ads she was always convinced were factual, and it’s worked flawlessly.
Ads on a website? Unlock minus
Ads on your computer? That’s not YOUR computer. Install Linux and get your computer back
I know it’s a crazy concept but a web browser is in fact running on your computer
Not just pc’s. More and more electronics are going that way. Two weeks ago I was at a friend and they activated their Google TV for the first time. Bam first thing you see is ads for Amazon prime. They didn’t bat an eye even though they just paid €80 to be shown ads in their living room. It’s only going to get worse. We really need to grow the community to open source firmware for all electronics. (not just because of the ads tho)
Cursed timeline…
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True and obviously a phone, a TV, a console, etc are computers.
Fridge
I view advertisements as attacks on my consciousness. Advertisers are my adversaries, and I do whatever I can to defend myself from them.
Wait until you see the clothing most people wear… and what they dress thier kids in. They even pay for the privilege.
I literally almost never meet someone that use adblockers
(except like 1 person)
i just thought about it - and i never met anyone who doesn’t use adblockers. and i worked in adtech company that literally does that shit.
I put an adblocker on my moms laptop browser and she disabled it for some sketchy coupon website…
fucking hell
i never use adblockers either - that’s because i avoid the worst offenders (youtube, some especially obnoxious news sites). i’d rather not visit the site if they’re already stating that they don’t respect me.
Use wireguard to stay on your home network.
I think adblock software is generally the first step before Wireguard for most people.
The Adblock is at home
For everyone else too?
That’s what the title of the post implies. It’s a problem away from home.
Our man spitting cold hard facts right here.
