My personal rule is that I seek out a product/service, not the other way around. And ads really annoy me because they're not useful, they're just trying to sell me something, or get me to sell myself (looking at you, TikTok).

I don't want to see any ads either. Even unobtrusive ones. It's just different levels of annoying and given the choice, I'll pick zero annoyance. I also don't want to be the product. Not just as a target for advertisements, but from information gathering for profit.

I do see the problem with this. Most sites are run with the expectation of profit. And while not explicitly my intent, I go out of the way to be as unprofitable as possible to these kinds of business models.

I do opt to pay for a couple of privacy respecting online services and I... rarely but not never donate to sites I use frequently that are privacy respecting and not ad supported. And that gives me some feel goods to support sites and services that align with my values but it's not really viable for the internet as a whole right? Hoping for some spare change from a tiny fraction of your visitors.

I don't know what the solution to this is. But I mirror OP's concerns about this specific thing. I don't want my browsing to be DRM'd, and I have zero trust for Google. If this happens, they will abuse it.

Edit: Changed organizations to services. Felt more accurate.

Coming from someone with an unstable source of income, and that can just barely get by: I'll take advertisements over a subscription/donation based model. Just don't flood your website with them. Or use shitty ad services. And don't make it an unusable experience cough britannica cough

"Trust us, we are Google".

Yes. Yes you are... The filth of the web.

And every time these companies remove freedom they do it under the guise of protecting users.

You want to block users from visiting your site, go for it. But you should quit "virtue signaling" yourself that people need to just volunteer their privacy for the internet to even exist. Tracking is only necessary for rich corporations to get get richer by brokering surveillance data, and all we really get in turn is an ad for diapers on a tech blog instead of what might have been flash storage or something. It's dumb.

People like you are why AdNauseam exists, FYI. If you make the non-adblock experience intolerable and then ban adblockers, people have a nasty tendency to fight back rather than knuckling under. I say that as someone who'll whitelist ads - or donate to - sites I use regularly that aren't run by shitheads throwing video ads in my face and selling my data to the highest bidder.

The problem with ads is not a few ads here and there, it's how it negatively impacts every interaction with those sites:

• ads that load in later than the rest of the page, because they first need to finish the auction of who gets to show their ads... And bam I again missklicked the link because the whole fucking page got shiftet down a notch
• needing a short guide how to do something? Yeah first look at these five (5!) ads which are longer than the guide you want to watch, except... The freaking algorithm favors long videos, so the 30 second guides get padded to over 10min...(with more ads inbetween)
• these ads we show you, yeah they might contain some java script... So you screen them, correct?... Nonono, we can't do that at this scale!
• hey google where can I download this free tool?... Here is a list with download links... Ehh, the first five are ads and lead to some crazy scam site. Don't you check what you deliver as ads.?.... Nonono we can't do that at this scale
• look at this ad for this shady mobile again for the 25ths time today... But youtube that game doesn't look at all like in this ad!.... Thanks for your report... Here's the same fucking ad again!

There was also a report recently that google also screwed their customers (those companies who pay for the ads) where google showed ads as in-stream ads in some auto-running videos in the background.

The whole industey is just broken. Present me with non-intrusive, static ads served from your own site and nobody bats an eye (also ad blockers are a non-issue then)

nobody ever takes the time to do any thing to contribute to it

You are literally on the direct counterexample to this. Lemmy is like the old Internet.

well, you certainly live up to your name

I contribute to my masto instance. I will contribute to my Lemmy instance. I contribute on occasion to individual creators (big help if I can use apple cash because most of my "throw away" money is in cash or apple cash).

You do what you want to do. I just went to Linux as my primary OS to further distance myself from the commercialization and inevitable enshitification of everything that I've watched take over for the past 30 years.

And you know what? You and your users are welcome to play in your enshitified capitalistic wasteland where the only content is some form of propaganda or engagement trap. I'm going to find a community of folks who just want to share. And I'm going to contribute my own money and knowledge because I'll know it's being used by individuals and not going to shareholders profits making rich folks richer. Enjoy what remains.

Block users all you want, but don't expect me to "attest my hardware and software" from a 3rd party. Let alone make this a standard and think about leaving the keys to parties which are probably "themselves" only.

How on earth the expectation can be giving authority to third parties to set my hardware and software to be validated so they attest to an arbitrary standard which I will never have control over?

See the current SSL certificate authorities mess. I have to pay to a third party to asure my clients that my server can securely communicate with them. Now they are doing this to clients with a more strict manner.

Fine. Good luck. I will just use a different site. I do agree though... the web needs a better way and that way should not be ads and tracking.

Your opinion might not win any popularity contests here, but I'd have to agree that this is a natural consequence of the fact that people feel entitled to use online services for free, including not wanting to watch ads.

Voluntary donations generally just won't work well enough for it to be a viable option in many cases, so sites have more or less had to optimize content for ad generating ad views because that's usually the only way they can stay afloat.

Sure there's some sites that get by with donations, voluntary payments or merch sales or whatever, but they're the exception rather than the rule.

I find it ironic when people eg. complain about clickbait headlines and at the same time refuse to pay for news. This idea that we have to get everything for "free" online has directly led to the enshittification we all know and love