I definitely consume too much dystopian content to be a fair dystopian barometer, but the sheer amount of ads being pushed my way is starting to make me feel legitimately anxious. It feels like a techno-dystopia where all of the neat and artistic elements have been extracted and then ground into dust for our corporate overlords. Even the ‘regular’ people are just trying to sell themselves. The streamers, the funny videos, the pet videos, the porn, the reposts of all of those, so much of it is just monetizing my attention.
Do ads even influence people that much? Does anyone even eat Church’s Chicken?! Do people consider switching their car insurance? I though the postmoderns were jumping the gun a little with the pictures they painted of a future with corporate logos and other advertisements spread across every visible surface, but now I have to see 5 ads and a cookie consent pop up to look up a quick definition. Watching a friend’s youtube video? 30 seconds of rapidfire ads from 15 brands. It’s starting to feel absurd. Are we going to be okay?
Does it also keep recommendations?
It does; you can log in to Youtube and all and still operate everything as normal. Some things don’t work (Netflix and HBO Max) because of DRM, which is a little bit of a worrying development. Librewolf seems like it cuts actually a pretty good balance of scrubbing stuff, making you log into services again when you restart it, but working pretty normally 90% of the time and not showing ads. It’s a much more pleasant experience (to the point that going back to Chrome and dealing with ads is real off-putting now).