Author Topic: RIP Internet: 1991-2019  (Read 4322 times)

Shoe

RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« on: July 22, 2019, 10:43:29 AM »
It's probably just my age (sixties) but is the free Web becoming intolerable? I just noticed USAToday, which I skim now and then when bored, now requires unblocking ads to view. Fine, they need to make money to survive, but after unblocking, half of the content is "sponsored" by Outbrain, Tabola (whatever), Zergnet, or some other crap content peddler pushing even more ads. Look at their homepage and you'll see what I mean. Have you ever seen the "Doctors say don't eat these three foods" and clicked on it? Fifty clicks later you still won't know which foods not to eat. And why is that video playing on the bottom right of my screen? I didn't ask to see it.

On my iPhone, reading most sites is beyond intolerable.

On nearly every website now when loading a page I'm first instructed to "accept cookies", then get hit with an "allow notifications" pop-up followed by a plea to join a newsletter or in some other way offer my email. When that happens, I close the tab.

In the not far off future, the free Web will just be a click-farm.

Which gets me to Social Media. It could die without a  receiving a whimper from me (note other thread on FB). I can't believe there is a generation that actually thrives on that stuff. Overall, we're the worse-off for it. I don't really need to know what my high school girlfriends look like today. I was, in fact, better off not knowing.

Those seeking their glory on Instagram, YouTube, FB, Tik Tok, and Twitter really need to reevaluate their career goals. I say this while having a son who thinks he's going to "kill it" making workout videos, which he peddles on Instagram. He got some free sunglasses from a potential "sponsor", which he told me about with excessive pride. A few minutes later he asked if he could borrow a hundred bucks. Thank God he's returning to college in the Fall.

I still love the internet, and there's plenty that's free for now that offers great value, but its volume is shrinking. I think the easy money days are over for internet entrepreneurs. Google informs me there are 380 new websites created every minute. I wonder how many are dying daily. I couldn't find that number.
Martin Luther King: "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
 
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ingobernable

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #1 on: July 22, 2019, 11:27:40 AM »
I always use ad blockers and some other stuff, so I rarely see any of that. If an anti-adblock warning pops up, I find a way to block it or disable it, and if I can't, I just don't go to that website anymore, but that's very rare. There have always been a bunch of clickbait ads everywhere, or at least there used to be, before I discovered ad blockers. I mostly remember all the "you're the winner!" and "you're infected! scan your computer now!" stuff. I wonder if that still exists.  :hehe  Also, I'm glad that, thanks to Facebook, I know what my elementary school crush looks like today. Bullet dodged.  :icon_rofl:
 
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elleoco

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #2 on: July 22, 2019, 01:15:20 PM »
I'm increasingly having the same problems with blocked sites, Shoe, so right now I'm trying what I hope will be a workable solution for me. I set up a second browser on my MacBook Pro without ad blocking. So when I hit an article I'd really like to read, I switch to that browser, but I use the one with ad blocking for most things. That still means a lot of articles I might otherwise read just get zapped and I never go back, but it at least it leaves me a way to read the ones that evoke more than mild curiosity.

The funny thing is I'd actually be willing to pay if it weren't a matter of paying for dozens of sites individually. If there were some way to pay an aggregator a reasonable fee and get access to most of the respected news sites now demanding ransom, I'd do it, but I'm not subscribing to all of them for an accumulated monthly sum more than it's worth to me.

One interesting thing I found out when I started this is that the ad blocker that I've considered not all that effective really is. The difference between what I see on the blocked browser and the unblocked one is stunning. I'd still like something that would block the blasted auto play videos.
 
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Captain Cranky

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #3 on: July 22, 2019, 03:04:13 PM »
Ugh, don't even get me started! I've just deleted a facebook account I haven't even had for two weeks (I hate FB with a vengeance but I needed to access a private group for a course I'm doing) because it was compromised TWICE (I think there was malware or something in my browser). I've spent the entire day resetting all my passwords because I'm paranoid, and adding all my bookmarks etc to a new browser. I'm still not finished. I find the ad blockers do a decent job but don't always block pages that have been hijacked by those 'you've won a free iphone!' ads you can't click away from, and those little videos you mentioned along with the rabbit warren of so called 'articles' annoy the crap out of me too. I love the access to free info and all, but man the internet is becoming a pretty overwhelming place to visit..  :icon_sad:

Okay, rant over.
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Jeff Tanyard

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #4 on: July 22, 2019, 04:39:29 PM »
For those using Firefox, I recommend the following addons:

Ghostery
AdBlockPlus
uBlock Origin
No Coin
Privacy Badger
Decentraleyes

I run all of these simultaneously, and my browsing experience--other than those lower-right-corner videos that I can't seem to kill--is pretty hassle-free.  You can add filters to a couple of those, too.  If a site is giving you trouble, just search for ad filters for that site and then add them to your uBlock or ABP.
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LilyBLily

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #5 on: July 22, 2019, 11:46:43 PM »
I'd like to get rid of the tracking cookies on my computer, but it's probably beyond my abilities to remove the cookies that keep showing the same ads to me on site after site without also removing the cookies that allow me to browse many sites without having to sign in and remember a password. The tracking ads are ads for books, so I suppose they're relatively harmless. Otherwise, AdBlockPlus does a pretty decent job on most sites.

But that's not the whole problem. When I comply with the plea to not block a site's ads, the ads that appear are like flashing neon signs in the nightmare 42nd Street of some alcoholic's mind, vulgar and noisy, completely distracting, between every paragraph I'm trying to read, often offensive in content, and more. These ads usually are not tailored to the true audience of the site. They're junk. Without an adblocker, we're often seeing exactly what Shoe describes--clickbait ads that keep baiting us but never deliver. And these slimy companies are getting paid by someone for supposed ad views while basically doing what is illegal in print or other media ads--bait and switch.   

The bait and switch part is what keeps me firmly on the side of blocking the ads despite the pleas of legit media.
 
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Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #6 on: July 22, 2019, 11:50:37 PM »
I have a certain amount of sympathy for ads because I know how expensive running a website is becoming. Google's continued push for faster and faster speeds, even for people using mobile devices with 3G, will eventually limit website sponsorship to large corporations and the wealthy. Ads could be a way of offsetting the increasing financial costs, at least for a while.

That said, being flooded with ads, such as Shoe describes in his first post, is not a very smart way to serve ads. An ad every so often is one thing,  but I've seen websites with both right and left sidebars filled with ads and a narrow band of content down the center. Is that really effective? It's hard to imagine how. Nor can I imagine how the approach LilyBLily describes is effective.

I'm not a fan of overly aggressive invitations to sign up for a newsletter, either. That's why I don't use them on my own site, even though some studies say they're effective.

The best way to end low-content clickbait is to resolutely ignore it. If it didn't work, companies would stop using it.


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Post-Crisis D

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #7 on: July 23, 2019, 12:42:05 AM »
I have a certain amount of sympathy for ads because I know how expensive running a website is becoming. Google's continued push for faster and faster speeds, even for people using mobile devices with 3G, will eventually limit website sponsorship to large corporations and the wealthy. Ads could be a way of offsetting the increasing financial costs, at least for a while.

Not to mention regulations that, unless Congress acts to change things (they dropped the ball the last time it came up), will affect essentially every site that sells stuff.  I am not a lawyer, but I suspect this will apply to author sites as well.  Sad thing is that most people are unaware of some of these regulations until predatory lawyers strike.

On the subject of ads, I was never a fan of ad-blocking services.  I remember when people complained about banner ads.  I never had a problem with them.  Easy enough to scroll past and ignore if you weren't interested.  And I've used banner ads myself.

Anymore, banner ads are tame by comparison of what goes on now.  It seems to me that a lot of sites these days have more ads than actual content, and that's not counting the sites that exist purely as clickbait where they will have a "story" posted with one sentence and a photo on a page and you have to click and click and click to read the whole thing.  And each page is stuffed with ads.  And, typically, it's not like these sites created the content.  Obviously, I haven't researched them all, but a number of times I've tracked down where a story originated and it will have been a reddit thread or something similar.  Now, did these clickbait sites license the photographs?  Maybe, but I highly doubt it.  So, a lot of these clickbait sites are, I suspect, making money off of ads placed alongside content they neither created nor licensed.

And that is frustrating because it seems too often when people are sued over copyright infringement, it's the blogger that posted a newspaper clipping or some such thing and not these huge sites that are basically one big collection of potential copyright infringement lawsuits.

Outside of that, too many sites have way too many ads.  I don't mind advertising.  I don't mind site owners using ads to generate income, but when the ads outweigh the content, you've gone too far.

And newspapers, the ones that complain loudly about how the Internet has ruined the industry, I think sometimes have only themselves to blame.  I have seen too many newspaper sites with these dodgy ads running, the ones like Shoe and others have described.  If you're trying to promote responsible journalism, having ads with sketchy claims and assorted nonsense does not help your cause.  Maybe it helps with money in the short term but over the long term it's demoting journalism, in my opinion.  And there are newspaper sites I've seen with expanding banner ads at the top and if you accidentally run your mouse over them, they expand and cover the content you're trying to read.  And then you have to ask yourself whether the newspaper values the advertising more than the content because if the ads is masking the content and I have to scroll back and click the stupid ad closed, that's a bad reader experience.  Why would I want to go back to that site again?

And pop-up videos, ad or not, those are annoying.  If I want to watch the video, I will watch the video.  I don't like videos that popup in the corner and start playing and then often won't stop even if you click the "X" and then sometimes you click the "X" multiple times trying to get the stupid thing to close and then it closes and registers one of those clicks as clicking on the ad beneath the video and then you end up loading an ad you were never interested in because you were trying to get rid of a video you never wanted to watch.  And then the videos sometimes float in the corner, covering up content.  Ugh.

But, anyway, I suppose I digress.  The bottom line is that, these days, it's just too much.  Way too much advertising.  It's also why, for the first time, I am actually considering using an ad blocker.  I'm looking at one that I can install on my network and block ads/sites from all devices rather than installing ad blockers individually on each device.

Maybe it will cost some sites ad revenue--not me individually but collectively from all of us using or who will be using ad blockers--but they really have only themselves to blame because they've gone too far, I think.

The ones I will feel sorry for are the sites that didn't go overboard with ads who will be losing ad revenue from ad blockers due to all those other sites that took it too far.  It's always the little guy that pays, not the big fish that cause the actual problems.
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TimothyEllis

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Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #8 on: July 23, 2019, 12:50:32 AM »
...because I know how expensive running a website is becoming.

What sort of money are you talking about? And where does it go?
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LilyBLily

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #9 on: July 23, 2019, 01:16:30 AM »
I just added Ghostery to my Firefox and it seems to have done the trick to block the ads on one particular site that has been giving Adblockplus trouble.

Perhaps the basic problem is that the ad companies many sites are using are not as clever or sophisticated as the site's editorial copy and audience. If I go to a Broadway show, for instance, the ads in the Playbill (assuming it still exists; haven't been to a play in a while) are going to be for things people who go to the theater might conceivably be interested in. Other shows, luxury goods, charitable opportunities, investing, etc. Not flashy men's underwear, fake stories about TV personalities, or submissive Japanese brides.
 

Tom Wood

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #10 on: July 23, 2019, 01:16:47 AM »
 

Anarchist

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #11 on: July 23, 2019, 01:31:37 AM »
...because I know how expensive running a website is becoming.

What sort of money are you talking about? And where does it go?

I won't speak for Bill, but expenses add up quickly.

I used to run hundreds of websites. Each one could easily gobble up five figures in monthly expenses after paying for content (on-site and on other sites), PPC, links (to help organic search ranks), and hosting if you're driving a ton of traffic.

And once a site becomes huge, you should hire a team to handle these chores. That adds to the monthly expense.

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Gerri Attrick

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #12 on: July 23, 2019, 02:08:19 AM »
Just a techno-numpty question, please.

Would the likes of FB, BB and Amazon ads be hidden by ad blockers? Or are they different?
 

Post-Crisis D

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #13 on: July 23, 2019, 02:11:47 AM »
Would the likes of FB, BB and Amazon ads be hidden by ad blockers? Or are they different?

If not, I would imagine there'd be a way to add them to the blacklist.
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Shoe

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #14 on: July 23, 2019, 03:35:12 AM »
My ad blocker works well enough, and I have another Chrome extension that stops most videos from playing automatically (but never the little one in the right bottom corner)--so, no complaints there. I do complain when a site won't let you proceed without first unblocking ads and, if you do, it then delivers a torrent of deceptive advertising which blends in with the site's content. This is most evident with USA Today.

I looked at Time Magazine with ad blocker both on and off. Off, Time initially delivers nicely quarantined ads, which to me is acceptable. A few clicks into the site and the "blending" begins of content and advertising, which I find unacceptable. The ads MUST NOT follow the stylistic format of the magazine.

In the end, I doubt this aggressive advertising approach will work for major publishers, and they'll be forced to put up a paywall. Someone up-thread mentioned a subscription model based on aggregating websites like cable TV aggregates channels. That's a great idea.
Martin Luther King: "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
 

Simon Haynes

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #15 on: July 23, 2019, 04:30:57 AM »
I'm increasingly having the same problems with blocked sites, Shoe, so right now I'm trying what I hope will be a workable solution for me. I set up a second browser on my MacBook Pro without ad blocking. So when I hit an article I'd really like to read, I switch to that browser, but I use the one with ad blocking for most things. That still means a lot of articles I might otherwise read just get zapped and I never go back, but it at least it leaves me a way to read the ones that evoke more than mild curiosity.

This is what I do. View with Firefox normally, and if I really really want to read something behind a 'disable your adblocker' command I open it in Chrome.

Normally I just close the page. There's always more content out there.

One of our two local news websites just switched to a paid model, so I deleted the bookmark from my browser. The other one is owned by the same company and will probably follow suit, and then I'll ditch that too.

On the other side of the coin, I've been running my own pair of websites for over 20 years now. They cost me $200 a year for the domain names and the hosting is handled through my ISP, as part of my broadband account. I ran small link ads on them for a while, but not any more. I like to think of them as my own peaceful corner of the internet.

 

Bill Hiatt

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Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #16 on: July 23, 2019, 08:49:55 AM »
...because I know how expensive running a website is becoming.

What sort of money are you talking about? And where does it go?

I won't speak for Bill, but expenses add up quickly.

I used to run hundreds of websites. Each one could easily gobble up five figures in monthly expenses after paying for content (on-site and on other sites), PPC, links (to help organic search ranks), and hosting if you're driving a ton of traffic.

And once a site becomes huge, you should hire a team to handle these chores. That adds to the monthly expense.
A great deal depends upon what one wants to do. In answer to Timothy's question, a simple author site using shared hosting (or even a free blogger or WordPress.com account) if all one wants to do is have a place to show off books (and links to vendors) and maybe a little bio isn't going to be that expensive. It could even be free, but probably not if you also want newsletter signups, which seem to be a paid feature in a lot of places.

If you're running a site (author or otherwise) to which you want to drive significant traffic, that's a whole other ballgame. Free isn't going to cut it. Shared hosting isn't going to cut it. You're stuck with VPS or a dedicated server. That's partly because of SEO considerations, driven by the way Google ranks sites in search results. The ones on page 1 (aside from the ads) are likely to be the ones that run the fastest. An author who just wants people to have  website to see if they search for that author may not care. An author trying to pull people away from social media platforms and/or sell from the site is going need some SEO mojo. Oh, and you'll need a cdn like Cloudflare, so that your site will run fast in any major area Google tests it, not just near the main server where it's hosted.

But performance is not the only issue. Security is a growing concern, which means at least something like Wordfence, maybe also an external firewall like Sitelock or Cloudlfare's. (After being hacked, I have both.)

Then there's GDPR compliance. It may be easier in other environments, but in WordPress, it's almost impossible to prevent all cookies from loading prior to user consent. I tested at least a dozen plugins before finding the one I use--which is a paid plugin, as most of the GDPR ones are. Otherwise, you have cookies loading, some of which may gather information, before consent, and you're vulnerable.

Oh, and if you want to have a blog that actually attracts readers, a visually attractive layout helps, and, since all your posts shouldn't be ads for your books, that probably means licensing at least a few graphics.

The bigger the company running the website, and the higher the need for internet recruitment of customers and even sales, the more expensive the operation is going to be.



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dgcasey

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Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #17 on: July 23, 2019, 03:34:10 PM »
Which gets me to Social Media. It could die without a  receiving a whimper from me (note other thread on FB). I can't believe there is a generation that actually thrives on that stuff. Overall, we're the worse-off for it. I don't really need to know what my high school girlfriends look like today. I was, in fact, better off not knowing.

I created and posted this meme last week on Facebook and Pinterest and got hammered for it. The kiddies don't like anyone suggesting their favorite pastime is worthless.

I will not forget one line of this, not one day. I will always remember when the Doctor was me.
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Shoe

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #18 on: July 23, 2019, 04:24:22 PM »


The bigger the company running the website, and the higher the need for internet recruitment of customers and even sales, the more expensive the operation is going to be.

And if they're not selling something proprietary, even subscriptions, and are thus wholly dependent on ad revenue, their days are probably numbered.
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Shoe

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #19 on: July 24, 2019, 03:58:17 AM »
A timely headline in HuffPost (now basically just a shill for Amazon and Target) appeared today regarding failing media companies. It's a long piece (I read it in three chunks) but there's a lot of interesting stuff regarding the future of news site, Facebook, and Millennial culture:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mic-layoffs-millennial-digital-news-site-warning_n_5c8c144fe4b03e83bdc0e0bc
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Ros

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #20 on: July 31, 2019, 12:10:14 AM »
Just a techno-numpty question, please.

Would the likes of FB, BB and Amazon ads be hidden by ad blockers? Or are they different?

Yes and no on FB ads. It's a constant battle between them and the Adblock makers to dodge the blockers and update to better versions of blockers. FB is notably slowed down if you visit it with ABP enabled.

I would also recommend NoScript if you're using Firefox - the main drawback with ads isn't that they're everywhere, it's that some of them come with added malware.

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She-la-te-da

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #21 on: August 09, 2019, 03:50:02 AM »
Quote
FB is notably slowed down if you visit it with ABP enabled.

FB is horrible that way. I can barely use it, but it would probably be worse without the ad blockers.
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Marti Talbott

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #22 on: August 09, 2019, 04:10:59 AM »
Being the odd person out, I click on ads to keep my favorite sites in business, such as my picture puzzle site, etc. At 74 I need those to try to keep my mind sharp enough to keep working. When I occasionally go to a news site with ads, I just back page and move on. I am not invested in seeing them succeed and normally not that interested in the article.

However, I am concerned for authors paying for ads on FB, etc., not having the returns they hope for because of ad blockers. 
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Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #23 on: August 09, 2019, 08:09:17 AM »
Being the odd person out, I click on ads to keep my favorite sites in business, such as my picture puzzle site, etc. At 74 I need those to try to keep my mind sharp enough to keep working. When I occasionally go to a news site with ads, I just back page and move on. I am not invested in seeing them succeed and normally not that interested in the article.

However, I am concerned for authors paying for ads on FB, etc., not having the returns they hope for because of ad blockers.
That could be a legitimate concern, but my feeling is that people who block ads on principle are probably not really the target audience for ads. Would people who feel that way start buying from ads if they had no choice but to see them? In most cases, I'd say no.

Some people who use ad blockers because they exist and aren't that upset by ads might be a different question. If ad blockers had never developed, some of those people would have clicked on ads. Whether they would have bought anything probably depends on a number of answers.


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dgcasey

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Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #24 on: August 09, 2019, 03:12:34 PM »
Some people who use ad blockers because they exist and aren't that upset by ads might be a different question. If ad blockers had never developed, some of those people would have clicked on ads. Whether they would have bought anything probably depends on a number of answers.

I just watched Ghost In The Shell again last night and as I watched the characters move through their days, inundated with ads everywhere they looked, I began to think someone will be a multi-billionaire in that kind of society by developing an ad blocker for people's brains. And I would definitely be running it.
I will not forget one line of this, not one day. I will always remember when the Doctor was me.
"The Tales of Garlan" title="The Tales of Garlan"
"Into The Wishing Well" title="Into The Wishing Well"
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Marti Talbott

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #25 on: August 10, 2019, 07:50:19 AM »
You're not confused, Bill, I am.
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Tom Wood

Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #26 on: August 10, 2019, 09:48:43 AM »
I just watched Ghost In The Shell again last night and as I watched the characters move through their days, inundated with ads everywhere they looked, I began to think someone will be a multi-billionaire in that kind of society by developing an ad blocker for people's brains. And I would definitely be running it.

Here's the brave new world you're looking for!

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Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #27 on: August 11, 2019, 04:28:40 AM »
You're not confused, Bill, I am.
Everybody is confused from time to time. It's the complexity of the issues we have to deal with.


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Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #28 on: August 11, 2019, 04:35:13 AM »
I just watched Ghost In The Shell again last night and as I watched the characters move through their days, inundated with ads everywhere they looked, I began to think someone will be a multi-billionaire in that kind of society by developing an ad blocker for people's brains. And I would definitely be running it.

Here's the brave new world you're looking for!

https://vimeo.com/166807261
That's one of my fears about how virtual reality will end up. So many dystopian possibilities.

Then we'd need dgcasey's idea of blocking ads at the brain level. I could see that as an interesting premise for a story.

Even before VR and a lot of the current internet advertising crazes, science fiction had visualized overly intrusive ads. I remember the old TV show, Max Headroom, in which the pilot was based on a company creating blipverts (high speed ads that were intended to pack the sales pitch straight into a viewer's subconscious). The problem was that from time to time they caused sedentary viewers to explode.


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Re: RIP Internet: 1991-2019
« Reply #29 on: August 11, 2019, 06:04:05 AM »
Steve Allen foresaw something like this in "Everyone Hates David Starbuck," a short story in which the bad guy uses subliminal advertising techniques to influence the title character to commit suicide. It was written before the Internet, but the seeds are there.