Seen in a SF Muni station
Edit to add: Jeez, relax. I was on my way home from a doctor’s appointment and saw that ad. It made me chuckle so I posted it here.
If seeing this post really upsets you, take some deep breaths and keep scrolling. With any luck, you’ll have fully healed in a couple of days.
Related note
I’m a Ublock Origin kinda guy, but not a SponsorBlock one
Because gestures at capitalism is the thing for now:
Sponsorships, when transparent and well-chosen and clearly labeled and clever, are less grating and don’t use anti-privacy targeting methods. That’s a path forward I’m pretty much OK with (remember capitalism is the thing, you & I have to eat like the YouTubers?).
My expectation is not “everyone should do everything for free” or “you’re only allowed to sell merch, without ever mentioning it” or “uploaders must have live shows and sell tickets if they ever want a dollar”. It’s “ewww, ads” and the malware that we’re exposed to alongside them.
Meant to make a post about this but your comment triggered it early :)
Surpressing sponsors is a perverse incentive too; all the more reason to not disclose who’s paying the creator.
And yeah, any ‘moral’ justification for web ads is dead like 100 times over. I hate how hard it makes life for ‘old web’ style sites with like one innocent banner ad, but still.
Wow great point!
btw I’d also thought to mention how I wish it could just be merch or live show tix b/c: did that creator I love REALLY like the new widget that was released or were they financially incentivized?
Which is why I mentioned transparency & labeling. Some will falter and some good people will subconsciously be incentivized, but some will choose sponsors so well they’ll be fine, too.
Its kinda like influencers (and their younger viewers) are relearning the history of journalism from scratch, heh.
Are you saying creators should not disclose their sponsors? If so…
I disagree, we need more transparency about finances of companies in the world. If a sponsor can pay somebody like LinusTechTips 40k a video to promote their video, than that means we as a consumer are overpaying for the product.
In a lot of European countries you can just see an annual report of a company which you can use to say filter out dropshippers since they generally spend a lot on ads and marketing.
We aren’t going to be able to stop ads on the web unless we start paying subscriptions for everything and that is a good way to get a lot of people into financial trouble. I also wish we could more easily go back to simple websites with no tracking and barely any ads.
Nah I meant the opposite. Journalistic integrity was learned through long, hard history.
Now that traditional journalism is dying, its like the streamer generation has to learn it from scratch, heh.
I only use SponsorBlock because I do not use adblock. I pay for YT Premium, and YT Premium views are worth far more than ad-driven views. I don’t like paying for something and seeing ads so I skip sponsor spots
You can allowlist certain channels and allow certain types of sponsors (self-promo for example) from what I remember
Not saying you have to get sponsorblock tho
I like that
i will stop using sponsorblock the day sponsorships stop feeling like those fucking cigarette ads in the flintstones, it’s disgusting and the alternative to sponsorblock is unsubscribing from anyone who does sponsor reads.