Yeah I thought ads are worthless too, as everyone I know just blocks them. But that’s when I realized the people like us who block ads ARE the 10% they now neglect! the other clueless 90% of masses are the ones they are after. There are so many more of them and they are so much easier to monetize

They gave up on us because we are too smart and they cant squeeze anything out of us.

IMO that’s why we have to accept that its time to leave and build our own better internet lol

Call me a conspiracy theorist but the amount and intensity of data they must get out of this is huge. They will know all the accounts that are anti-spez which they can monitor and algorithmically demote (soft censorship).

Reddit, like most captive-tech these days, is shifting to optimizing only for providing endless distraction to the 90% of mindless hoards which are easy to monetize.

I suspect Youtube will be next in line to squeeze the lemon, now that they are trying to block adblockers.

I mainly use FreeTube on PC and NewPipe on phone, not to avoid ads, but I just find it a much nicer and more peaceful experience (free of recommendations, Shorts etc).

I actually do pay for YouTube Premium family subscription, but its mainly to protect my less tech-savvy family and friends from ads, and to avoid seeing ads on my Android TV projector.

@nostupidquestions
It is great! I just wrote a post about it: https://vijayprema.com/using-lemmy-from-my-existing-mastodon/

@devve

- Nextcloud
- Miniflux
- Gitlab
- HomeAssistant
- Wallabag
- Ghost (for my personal blog)
- Umami analytics
- Searx NG
- OnlyOffice document server
- ntfy
- Lychee
- LAMP Stack
- TheLounge (IRC web client)
- Cockpit (server manager)
- RSSHub
- Jellyfin
- Adguard

On an Intel NUC in my closet.