this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
1015 points (98.4% liked)

Technology

60055 readers
3620 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 196 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I don’t think the facts match the claim, but I completely agree with the sentiment.

For years, the ‘legit’ consumer has had to deal with ad interruptions and bad UI and service disruptions and having media removed from their library. Something that pirates don’t even have to think about. The music revolution that Jobs and Apple created with iTunes, which allowed people to just buy music and just own it and just use it however they want (no DRM) with an ease that made piracy look difficult and seem too risky to bother, never came for TV or movies or books or any other media category.

And now the streaming revolution has all but undone that progress as well. You don’t own anything, a company decides when you have or lose access to something, and even if you pay money for access you are still advertised to and your data is still sold off.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 2 months ago (5 children)

I remember iTunes only letting you change computer like 2-3 times max before the drm would make mysic not work any more, but maybe it was no-drm in the beginning.

I had a chinese 1GB shuffle though so IDK if that's correct.

The chinese shuffle also doubled up as a usb key (very useful back then) and also didn't need iTunes to function smh.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yeah IIRC you're right, though I remember you could contact apple and reset it.

It was called FairPlay DRM and they only really got rid of it around a decade after iTunes launched. I'm not 100% but I think I had to pay to upgrade my already paid-for library to DRM free too

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago

It may have originally had DRM but it doesn’t now.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

But then later for like $10 I could take all my pirate music, legitimize it, and download a copy from iTunes if theirs was better quality. That was nice.

Edit: iTunes Match

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Yeah this guy is on some Apple fanboy shit if he thinks iTunes was drm free. Their shitty design for iTunes and decision to force you to use it despite it making the experience of listening to music much worse is the primary reason an ipod is the only Apple device I've ever owned. Freedom of choice and Apple have never mixed. That's such a weird angle to take when describing them.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

That didn't last very long.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 163 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Ads you say?

I'll have to take your word for it...

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I feel like most of the kind of people who go out of their way to pirate also go out of their way to avoid ads.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (5 children)
  1. Download Firefox (or other preferred gecko browser)
  2. Install uBlock Origin add-on

Really going out of the way to avoid them.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 87 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Advertising needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking.

It indiscriminately pollutes whatever environment it’s conducted within, and causes secondary harm to non-participants by incentivising hoarding of PII in the cheapest and least secure manner.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It causes genuine harm, I'm visually impaired and I've wandered into construction zones because advertising billboards are mounted near and "road work ahead" signs and everything is all just bright and bold.

I don't know what's official, everything is competing for my attention but I have very little capacity to dedicate my full attention to a visual sign. The end result is incredibly fatiguing, seeing a bright sign and straining to ensure I read it because it's colours look important, nope, it's an ad, that was a waste of energy, oh look another one with the same blurry colours and type setting it's probably the same ad.... Nope that one actually needed my attention, and now I'm somewhere I shouldn't be and I'm in danger.

I'm also hard of hearing, but fortunately audio adber in the public isn't as bad, but anyone who's hearing impaired knows how fatiguing it is to try and filter through noise. It's the exact same for visual impairment.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Adblock is a cure for migraines.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

Amen, I just need IRL adblock now please.

[–] [email protected] 67 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Depends on the piracy site. If you go to some of the pirate streaming sites or the blogs that host tons of pirated software with 30 rapidgator links that die after a month (instead of just using a torrent like a normal sensible person trying to share a 2-30+gb file that is begging to be taken down) without Adblock it’s absolutely comical how many ads there are. Even with Adblock those are the sites that manage to still have ads because they’re on the cutting edge of sketchy shit. It’s like seeing a late 90s to early 2000s website with how much random bullshit is pasted everywhere

Despite that I’m pretty sure that Amazon, google, etc do far more nefarious shit behind the scenes in terms of tracking/fingerprinting you and collecting data to sell

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago

I’m pretty sure that Amazon, google, etc do far more nefarious shit behind the scenes in terms of tracking/fingerprinting you and collecting data to sell

You even get to pay more and more for this privilege…smh

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 66 points 2 months ago (11 children)

Once ads are allowed into a platform they will ultimately be what destroys it eventually.

Might take a week or a decade. But the lust of that easy ad money will ruin the thing they were put there to fund in the end.

load more comments (11 replies)
[–] [email protected] 63 points 2 months ago (4 children)

ublock origin. I don't care if some website dies. Whole internet is turning to shit anyways, just let it all burn

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago

Ublock does such a good job at blocking the old janky torrent sites, especially compared to the increasingly aggressive and intrusive new shit.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 57 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Whats a piracy site? Theres zero ads in the search window on qbittorrent…

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Where you find the torrents

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 months ago (1 children)

qittorrent has a search function where you input and save the associated plug-in/address of the torrent site/feed you want and then you can just search within qbittorrent for whatever torrent you are looking for and select whatever you want for download without having to go to an website or another app/protocol.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Yes but does it have Dark Mode?

Gottem

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

It has custom user-made themes that are dark mode, so it probably has dozens of dark modes.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Using the rather fittingly named Dracula theme. Fantastic darkmode theme for qbittorrent

https://draculatheme.com/qbittorrent

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I don't. I let my arr apps do it for me.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 months ago

Much like the twenty minutes of unskippable ads on commercial DVDs, the media companies and social media will enshittify until the general public turns to piracy.

Essentially, the sooner we all come to terms with piracy being ~~acceptable~~ necessary, the sooner they let off on their enshittification efforts.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And yet I see 0 ads in either of those sites.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

There are in the videos as sponsors for a lot of channels on YouTube, and as sponsored results on Amazon

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 months ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Of all the ads being pushed on us, this type seems like the least egregious to me.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Tbh I don’t care about the sponsor segments in videos. It’s actually my favorite way of advertising, as I can skip it or watch the funny ones (tomska does really funny - although slightly incorrect - segments).

But boy do I hate sponsored results on Amazon or similar platforms. I feel like I have to search through them to get to the actual products, and then I can’t trust the reviews

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago

Ad revenue is like Crack to corporations. Once they get a taste for it, it's all downhill from there.

Mostly because it's the easiest money they'll ever make and it's more profitable than subscription models. Gotta see those numbers go up at all costs.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago

Corporations like google and amazon damage the market and the industry more than "piracy" does

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I have legit never bought a single thing because I saw and ad for said product. I don’t know who is out here making these campaigns so profitable

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Brand awareness gets you subconsciously

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago

Here's a really horrifying fact about ads, they don't expect you to go right out and buy their product. Ads target your subconscious and manipulate your way of thinking. There was a study done by some university and tested by a few people across different fields of study that proved this to be correct. I wish I could remember off the top of my head where this was published. If you do a little browsing you can probably find it and you should because you can't trust a stranger like me to properly relay the information.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago

Adblock my beloved

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

Not the way I use legit sites!

Jokes aside, I agree and I hate it

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Besides streaming, i.e. the capability to watch the movies and series when you want and how much you want, and lowering the entry to produce videos for more people, they pretty much reinvented cable. Or did I miss something substantial?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

They're already consolidating in streaming services that bundle content packs.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (4 children)

You know I was just thinking this the other day, and they are just as intrusive as the ones that piracy sites have

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

What do you mean as intrusive, none of the piracy sites are trying to work around my adblocker.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›