The Adpocalypse Situation

Let me be honest here, how many of you actually like ads showing up on the internet? No one? Good, because the way the ads work on the internet is getting really, really bad. I'm talking unusable levels here. This is just annoying at this point.

Now hold on, you may be wondering, "But companies need to make money!" I know companies need to make money to survive, but putting ads in front of everything is not the solution to this. Yes, I'm looking at you websites that spam ads in front of everyone and your anti-adblock policies; you will scare away more people than get them to watch ads. That's just how it is.

Also, there is a trend where if you try to force people to do something, they do the opposite of that; that's just how it is. Just telling people to turn off their ad blockers will encourage MORE people to turn on ad blockers. I am not kidding; just try it for yourself.

At this point, it should be a basic human right to use an ad blocker. Heck, even the FBI recommends ad blockers, since there are ads being pushed that are actually malicious and could render your computer useless. I am not kidding; look through sites and tell me if you see a suspicious ad somewhere. Don't see it? You will eventually.

Also, it should be illegal to play 30-60 second ads on a video every 2-3 seconds of a video. You can literally see this happen in this video; that's just how bad the decisions are when companies are 'trying' to make more money.

It's like a Tom and Jerry scene where they are trying to find every penny and nickel possible to survive. That's not how business should work. What you should actually do is:

1. Sell high-quality products that gets more people interested in it (DON'T make free products paid; actually make new features that work better for the premium module, but also simultaneously making new free features as well)

2. Show fewer ads. Ads don't give off as much cash as selling real products, so make the overall experience better, or you can scare off more people with bloated ads.

3. Remove anti-adblock scripts; people will pirate no matter what, so don't even try to stop them. In many cases it'll encourage even more people to buy your products since they'll see pirates liking the products, and they'll legitimately buy your products, so it's a win-win.

4. Ads should show up only when a break is really necessary. After an intense scene on a video, an ad should play there to give viewers some time to breathe before getting back into action. Also, ads should only play in increments of 15-20 mins for a 1-4 hour video, 5-10 mins for a 20-60 min video, 30-60 mins for a 5-12 hour video, and only twice for anything shorter than 20 min videos. Ads should never appear for music videos; it's not a very fitting place to put ads there

5. Delete ads that violate terms of service (TOS). Normal videos are normally deleted if they violate TOS, but for some stupid reason ads can ignore TOS?! Let me be clear here: should I really be allowed to make a p**n ad or otherwise offensive ad that shows up in underages' eyes and get away with it? NOOO!!!!! So I should get a community guideline strike for that. We should have the same 3 strike system from YouTube to here; if I get 3 strikes I am gone for good. That's how ad policies should work. The same can be said for scam ads.

So basically, no one can stop me from using Brave's shields until all of these issues get resolved—not one, not two, but all five of them. The same can be said for everyone that uses ad blocks.

Update 8/7/2024: So apparently now Google is hustling to disable manifest v2 extensions, which includes most adblockers, including uBlock Origin, and to be honest, this is a stupid decision because:

1. It turns off tools that make the internet more usable

2. More scams can happen than they really should

3. This doesn't even give extension developers enough time to make any changes to their extensions

4. This probably will affect many Chromium browsers, including MS edge and Brave

To people reading this: Good job making the internet more unusable! Now you'll make it 10 times more likely to get infected by malicious ads that you refuse to remove!

*Sigh* why can't companies just do what customers want, even if it's the bare minimum?

Update 1/18/2024: Ok, this is unrelated to what I talked about here; however, I did want to add onto here about a *different* adpocalypse situation. I don't want to talk much about it, but basically there have been Chrome extensions like Honey and Pie, which claim to be extensions that give you FREE coupons when you check out.

Now, if that sounds too good to be true, it is. Behind the scenes, these extensions, at the last second before checkout, show a popup showing what coupons can be used to 'save' money. Even if the extension doesn't find any usable coupons, it still shows the popup saying, "Hey, I'm just coming up to say you don't have any coupons, but I'm just letting you know." And when you go too close to the popup, it does the most unhinged thing I've ever seen, which I never thought would be guessed by Markiplier several years ago.

No matter if the extensions find coupons or not, they will steal any commissions the site may be giving. Say, if you had the extension, you saw a YouTuber sponsoring a product, you were interested in getting it, and the popup at the last second during checkout would STEAL that commission from the creator, even if the site doesn't work with the extensions.

Now THAT has to be illegal. Even if the ads are becoming too common, which doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon, that alone should have penalties, and as of writing this, there are professionals currently SUING Honey in a class-action lawsuit. I can't talk much more about this; many other YouTubers already have done this, so go watch them for more detailed explanations.

That's all I got. See ya.