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KupoGames — Ads are bad
Published: 2017-09-04 10:51:58 +0000 UTC; Views: 16861; Favourites: 34; Downloads: 0
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Hey guys, I recently took down all ads off my website and closed my Google AdSense account in protest against Google and the ad model in general. I only made a few hundred dollars per year off ads, so it’s not a massive sacrifice, but I feel like I’m doing my part.
Lately I’ve strongly felt that the ad model is doing serious harm to the content that is produced on the internet. It encourages safe, mainstream click-bait instead of high-quality, honest content. Some examples include:
• YouTube is de-monitizing any videos that could be considered controversial to appease advertisers, including video-game violence, swearing, and discussions about the news or politics. A lot of videos are also flagged falsely. For example a video providing help for suicidal people would be flagged as controversial as it’s related to a controversial topic. I’ve noticed that even harmless fail videos are censoring swearing. This is a bad direction to be going if you want a diversity of content to be produced (which I’m assuming YouTube is no longer interested in, despite this being a major advantage it had over TV).
• News websites are printing any garbage that will get clicks. They produce the most addictive headlines and site layouts, keep users outraged over petty nonsense, and do whatever it takes to keep users on the site longer to see more ads. I feel like this is doing major harm to public discourse as the most outrageous articles will always get the most exposure.
• Many ads are just outright scams or otherwise malicious. There’s obviously no quality control going on when ad space is being purchased. I often see ads like “Get Minecraft for free!” or “Try this new bullshit health supplement!” and other obvious scams. I’m assuming these are effective otherwise they wouldn’t be appearing.
So my recommendation would be to use an Ad Blocker (like uBlock Origin) for your own safety, but also to discourage platforms like YouTube and Facebook from bending over to the demands of advertisers. F.B. Purity is also a good chrome extension to block most of the garbage on Facebook.
If you can afford it, throwing a few dollars at your favourite creators on Patreon will do them more good than watching hundreds of ads will. Free stuff is great, but I feel like a couple of dollars isn’t a high price to fight back against the harm that ads are doing – and also to save you the time wasted on them.
And a final note: Short, high-quality content in particular doesn’t do well under the ad model. Stuff like animation or well-researched videos. Those don’t get a lot of clicks relative to the amount of work put into them, and it’s most important to support the creators of works like these through donations.
That is all. Thoughts?
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Comments: 43
I agree 100%
Especially the BS click bait websites. I feel like the standard layout is where they say "top (10,25,50) Life hacks...or secrets to dating or something enticing, and put each and every number in this list on it's own page just so you have to click through and see just a fuck ton of ads.
Even if it's something that actually is informative, it's just a huge waste of time. Idk how they thought bottle necking information like that, rather made up or not, was a good idea. But it's just something that really grinds my gears.
Despite how true the above is, ads are so deeply ingrained into everything, I don't think they'll stop pestering us anytime soon.
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Good journal, I think the same ^^ like a lot of people I guess lol
It's better to directly support the creators, no loss of money! (honestly who care about ads? If I want something, I will search for it -.-)
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You read my mind, YouTube's demonetization policy is crushing a good handful of the freedom and diversity on Youtube. It's honestly counter-productive too, if the freedom of speech on YouTube is restrained YouTubers are at risk, the very things that draws in people and makes YouTube money, a good part of their income is from ad revenue as well. If everyone resorts to using AdBlock as protest, YouTube won't have much a choice.
#MakeYoutubeGreatAgain
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Yep, the only website I have adds enabled on is SSSS simply because it's so awesome that even the tiny amount of money Minna get's from them is worth it for me. That and her having her own site=me not suppoting either youtubes bullshit or forgetting to enable it again when watching videos from people I'm not too keen on (or neutral towards) getting ad revenue.
She also makes sure that the adds aren't too obnoxious, no popups or audio so it's pretty easy to ignore.
Still, the drive by virus thing has made me even more happy about Linux, yay for functional and fixable computers that don't do stuff you don't want them to and that are pretty much immune to viruses as the code gets looked over by thousands of people and pretty much no one targets them :3 .
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I just hope YouTube can find a way to support themselves without ads. Every since advertisers have been pulling out due to their ads appearing on hate speech vids, youtubers I love are getting hit pretty bad by it. One of my favorites had to resort to Patreon just to keep making videos.
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It's often not even the advertisers, I've seen a few stories where the ad companies said they specifically wanted their ads on X's videos, but youtube was just not doing it.
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Not responding to business partners definitely does not sound good.
Youtube needs to fix something before people have to switch to other video sites.
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Yes but seeing how large youtube/google is that might not create enough problems for them to make it worth it and as far as I know there are no other video sites that come close to youtube.
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two words: CANADIAN MEDS.
Ask Yahoo Mail users about it.
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I agree 100% on this. If ads didn't take up more memory then they should, track your browsing, auto play music, and give viruses I wouldn't mind but the way things are, an ad blocker is needed.
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man if YT does all this censoring crap it opens the door for competition but u need shit ton of money for servers to store and stream videos and maybe even google will buy any competitors its not good we need petitions or something
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Yeah, there's been tons of competition to YouTube, and they've all failed quickly.
It's a very hard platform to compete with.
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I've used an adblocker for the past 6 or 7 years. I used to not mind ads back when they were like a banner or two per page and loaded instantly, but then people started making ads that auto-load videos and play music and generally be obnoxious. I even put up with those until I got a "drive-by virus" from some ad on the Funorb wiki. Parents didn't believe me when I said "I didn't download anything, I didn't play anything, I didn't click 'install' on anything, I was looking for a level map for Hostile Spawn and next thing I knew ads were popping up left and right and half my buttons stopped working"; we took it in to the computer place down the street and the guy told us we were the 4th or 5th person coming in with this problem on that day alone. They weren't able to fix it and one of their attempts wound up crashing our hard drive. Thankfully we didn't have anything of particular importance on it...
So now I adblock literally every site I visit and I tell everyone who talks to me about ads to do the same. There was an era when doing so was selfish and denying legitmately decent webhosts the ability to keep their sites running, but nowadays it's too dangerous to not block ads. If ads aren't literally giving you viruses immediately after loading with no click or download required on your end, they're blasting music or lagging the page horribly, to the point where they WILL crash your computer and force a restart if you so much as leave a page open too long. It is just NOT safe to browse the internet without an adblocker nowadays, and I don't watch enough Youtube or anything to warrant the use of the whitelist on sites I want to believe are safe.
In regards to KupoGames, I purchased EBF4 twice (once with Premium on AG or somewhere, once through Steam) and would have purchased Bullet Heaven 2 a second time if I had had money at the time. (KG was cool and gave me a Steam key.) EBF5 will be a day one purchase for me and if I had any friends who were into EBF games, I'd buy it for them too. KG makes quality products and I have zero issue buying his games multiple times and supporting him that way. I am completely unfamiliar with how Patreon works but it sounds like something I might want to look into.
But seriously, fuck ads. If anyone has any suggestions in regards to how to support KG and other awesome indie developers, I'm all ears. I love y'all and want to support you but the ads have to stay blocked.
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Thanks for your support!
I'm glad I haven't gotten any viruses from ads yet, but it seems to be a common concern.
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I disagree with "ads are bad". I wholly agree, however, with "the current way ads are handled is bad".
Like many things, the devils in the details.
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I have adblocker and it saves me the sanity of surfing the internet. I rather look at the website that I want to be on instead of being mauled by 10 ads at once, pop up included.
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The main issue I feel is that ads are becoming way to invasive towards are privacy and how they tailor each one you see to your specific likes and dislikes.
Sure half the time it doesnt work, but it still isnt a very settling thought
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i unfortuately cannot agree with you that adds are horrible and there are too many simply because i do not have the money to support my favorite content creators so instead i look toward adds. However i definitly am aware of the compain youtube is doing which is demonitizing videos and am not very happy about that, especially at some of the content that is flagged. For instance one of my subscribed channels had a video flagged requested it for review and an actual person said nope we dont like that so we are keeping demonitize on it. The reason? The video had two girls saying that they love each other, that is the only reason why they flagged it. What is more a lot of videos that i watch no longer have adds anymore which was my only way of supporting most youtubers since i dont have the money to pledge towards them. This has me scared for the future of my favorite youtube channels since my favorites are some of the ones getting hit majorly.
As for the too many adds on every site 1 it helps distract me while the things i am looking at load and 2 i just tend to ignore most adds and 3 like i said ealier adds support the creator of the website sure youtube is demonitizing a lot of videos but there are tons of other websites the maintain themselfs off adds in other words you are making useful sites like wikipedia and others disappear by using adblock software and i highly disapprove of taking away the ability for sites to maintain themselves
finally to add even some of the content creaters themselves are saying to stop using addblock because it is making it hard for them to keep making their content. Also most people use addblock nowadays but 1 the amount of people who can be supported by other ways are small and 2 the amount of people who actually use those other means are pretty small too.
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still if people are to make money so that they can keep making their content it should be through donations on patreon or moving to twitch which A LOT of them are doing
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Not all ads are bad. I've seen some really hilarious or creative ones floating around, or just ones that get to the point without being obnoxious. Those I don't mind seeing. But like you mentioned, ads as they are now don't have any form of quality control or standard, much like the sites that use them. Sadly in this day and age whoever shouts the loudest or most controversially is heard, but there are some people who actually use that responsibly and respectfully. Most just abuse that power and attention in the worst ways possible.
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Dude 100% agree. We are drifting towards what feels like a distopian story. A lot of people are taking just the head line for face value and go rabid with out looking at the article or reviewing the fact, the "Tom Holland wants to be Indian Spiderman" comes to mind.
What disturbs me even more is that even though Google is an American own company they are disregarding a huge keystone of America, freedom of speech. It's almost like the black listings in Hollywood during the Red Scare, cut off the actor with out looking into the rumors.
Hopefully this will change, hopefully ,fingers crossed.
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I really can't agree more with what you mentioned about news companies just throwing out garbage headlines to create attention and controversy. I mean, look at BBC - they're a huge news company, watched by the majority and highly trusted, and yet they don't even filter or check for typos in their headlines and articles. If they don't even check for typos, how do we know if they even check their facts? For all we know they could just be spouting some outrageous theory that would stir up the population and get them more views and commentary.
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I use Firefox and the adblock plus plugin for it. Dailymotion is kind of a hit and miss to me. You're limited to how a video is. File size, length, these limit the quality of a video. However, I would suggest giving it a try.
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Reminds me of how Microsoft and Samsung are when they compare themselves to others in their 'ads' that are basically b***hurt hate speeches that sounds more like a bully frustrated at a better person who also has better grades. It feels like that towards anything they spew out and shove down our throats.
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People are slowly migrating to vidme because of all the stunts that Youtube is pulling.
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Ads are the main reason I stopped watching TV years ago. I also can't tolerate obnoxious animated ads distracting me on sites where I'm trying to watch a video or play a game. Popups, ads with sound or pages that redirect you without warning are invading and inexcusable.
I don't even want to comment on the actual content of ads...
Speaking of desperate news sites, I love how they make every little story or article into a slide show so you have to click on next page over and over again to read it all, generating extra pageviews in a sneaky way.
If ads weren't so hostile towards users I may reconsider to turn off my Adblock, but I doubt any sites would become more reasonable in this regard in the near future.
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Given that I make quite a bit from my YouTube stuff, I sadly can't follow suit. Maybe if I was earning $1200+ on Patreon and/or Twitch, but until then, I don't have a choice.
Saying that, I do block Ads on sites when they get annoying or force me off the page.
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I just have in mind that I've already switched to DuckDuckGo about a year ago...
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I wish I could. But I need to Google stuff quickly for work, and DuckDuckGo's results just aren't good enough for me.
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Okay, in the beginning I often switched to google but it became less and less with the time. Now I'm using google through DuckDuckGo quite rare. Only if I can't find the results I want... but then I'm using the so called "!bang" where I just have to add a "!g" at the beginning of the searching term to search on google. Besides that, using the "!g" redirects me to the encrypted site of google.
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Been having the same thoughts and conclusions for quite a while now, and I've been using adblockers for many years now. While I don't have the funds to support my favorite creators as much as I feel would be fair, I am pledging to some on Patreon at least. Over time my pledges will certainly increase.
Especially documentary level stuff and well-researched fact-bombs on topics that are commonly abused to misinform and rile up people against their own interests (like the century-long pointless war on drugs) have been hit hard by what YouTube and co are doing.
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Yeah, it's ridiculous that YouTube is discouraging content creators from making videos about *the news*. I mean, that's just really low. How uninformed of an audience do they want?
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As uninformed as possible or so.
Then there's YouTube TV which came out with an awfully "convenient" timing, just as independent news took the hit. I'm not going full conspiracy theory, but I have no doubt some part of this has been conceived to preserve the status quo in terms of news delivery for just a little longer. I doubt this will work in long term though. Short term it'll prevent new indpendent news from popping up as frequently, but those with some followings are likely going to find a way, as can be seen with Secular Talk for example.
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To put things in perspective, I wanted to watch 70's Kamen Rider Amazon on a streaming site. I turned on adblock, and lo and behold, ads popped up anyways. There were SO MANY, that it actually crashed my wi-fi. I WISH I WAS JOKING!
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Pay five or so dollars to get access to some decent material, or sit and groan in frustration as a million damn ads pop up on my screen while I'm trying to read a wiki? Yeah, I don't think that's a hard choice to make.
That's the other thing, too: along with the points you mentioned about the ad system, the fact that some websites are so determined to get clicks that they will actively shove ads up your ass as soon as you open their page really speaks to how harmful it is. Pathetic, too. If you care so much about the paltry sum a clickbait ad gets your site that you're willing to alienate whatever audience you could have with a tidal wave of ads constantly springing up over the content they're trying to see, then you should probably consider getting a day job, because that just makes you look desperate.
Side note, a personal ad beef of mine are the ones with audio. I'm trying to read something, all of a sudden "HEY LET'S TALK ABOUT DESTINY 2!" Hey, let's not, I'm busy. And I don't appreciate having my speakers blown out.
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Yeah, it's weird when news sites have pop ups before I even get a chance to read the first paragraph of the article I went there for. Gonna leave instantly.
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Trust me, news site, your article isn't interesting enough for me to click out of a bunch of ads. I can just go to another site with the same story.
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I agree 100% with you on this. If sites want more revenue, I would think the best way to get that is to seek out and produce better content, not bombard people with annoying advertisements that are likely as not going to be ignored or outright blocked. Quality of experience has to come first... or so I theorize.
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