“Back in my day” if a platform or service would look at all your messages and sell the data it would be called active spyware and we treated that like the antichrist.
I’ve a friend who uses chrome on Windows and absolutely refuses to switch to Firefox for ublock. His kid is three and already knows what ads are.
I don’t get it.
It’s because most people do their browsing on their phone and so when they use a computer browser the internet just looks “normal”
That’s the thing: that’s still true, it’s just that Windows, Chrome and Facebook/IG are all malware, and people (of all generations) seem to fail to process that undeniable fact.
What ads? uBlock, Sponsorblock and an automatic cookie decliner and the Internet experience is only hindered by log ins.
Also change your DNS and if you can use a VPN and a faked user profile like user agent switcher.
Sites these days collect all the data they can, that includes your screen size, system data like sound drivers and operating system or your language and IP Adresss which sites you visit at what times (that is where the DNS comes into play).
But yeah, the Internet has changed a lot and for the worse. So far there are ways to mitigate them.
gen-z and alpha don’t know anything about computers.
frankly, i have no idea how anything is even maintained. it’s probably on the backs of millions of first and second-gen immigrants.
some of these dumbasses i work with can’t even navigate basic windows features–and these are college bound young adults.
gen z here, you’re thinking of young gen z or gen alpha. us old gen zs have a lot in common with milenials, as in we’re the ones doomed to export to .pdf and “fix the wi-fi please”
Hello friend, welcome to the next ten years of explaining to people that being 29 and being 39 are not the same
except when a website stops working when you enable adblockers, ive ever used monkeyscript
ome of these dumbasses i work with can’t even navigate basic windows features–and these are college bound young adults.
It’s funny, if you have a generation that hasn’t ever needed to use Windows, wasn’t trained on it, pretty hard to knock them for it. It would be the same thing as taking Windows users and dumping them on Mac, or worse, dumping them into a rando Linux distro and saying ‘good luck, why do you suck at this’. Its a pretty popular YouTube video topic for the tech sphere lately though.
Can you believe these nincompoops can’t even boot into DOS?
the same thing as taking Windows users and dumping them on Mac
Which has happened to me and was no problem, its very intuitive to use most systems.
get this man a true
Still the case. Except now the malware is from the OS/hardware vendor.
The whippersnappers think that as long as the ad is coming from someone hot and it’s in their FYP, it must not be an ad.
People have a FYP?
(what’s a FYP?)
For You Page.
The feed.
Well these days the OS is the virus
Advertising is the most prolific form of environmental pollution wrought by commerce.
It needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking, and every instance of it must be exhaustively scrutinised and required to be justified.
Completely agree. The worst are maybe the nonstop ads for various prescription medications. Those used to be illegal.
Thank you. People use power usage against cryptocurrency but their eyes glaze over when I ask how much of our resources are wasted serving constant ads to every screen in existence.
You mean the people who consume ads get extra work breaks throughout the day?
That could be a perverse incentive to have businesses curtail their excretions.
If you see that many ads you still have malware, we just call them apps now.

I miss AIM :(
How did you get a screenshot of my ex wife’s old Samsung netbook?
She called me up once, asked if I could have a look at it because it was slow as hell. Opened IE and I’m not kidding when I say that literally 1/3 of the tiny screen was toolbars.
Where’s WeatherBug?
I was looking into making a toolbar extension for fun, they look really whimsical. But all major browser removed the possibility :(
Fake and gay, we had and trusted chrome by then
Windows XP predates Chrome by 7 years.
Watching TV, ads ran every 15 minutes and lasted 3 minutes when I was a kid but then jumped up to 4-5 minutes. So, 4 minutes of ads and 11 minutes of show, then another 4 minutes of ads. Unskippable, awful ads for deodorant and slap chop
Oh discussion is only about computers. I remember the first popup ads and pop under ads and they put a fake x so when you click it instead of closing it takes you to install malware
Some countries have ads right before the end credits of a TV show.
Now the virus is the operating system.
I screamed when I saw a ad in the fucking Windows 10 start menu. Literally suggesting you download Minecraft. Like wtf Microsoft – this is a work computer.
Not sure what win11 has but I bet its Cortana or bing or whatever AI slop they use.
Facts.
I mean, I haven’t seen that shit on my system in years because I run redundant adblockers but… when viewing someone elses computer… it’s crazy.
I gave my grandma ublock origin
Going to my parents’ house is mildly maddening. They watch network and cable TV… The sheer number of ads is unbelievable to me.
Imagine paying money to watch ads.
how young do people think gen z are? older gen z people will turn 30 next year which is in roughly 3 months
i’m on the older end of gen z and can absolutely remember this.
windows xp was used for a very long time and this is a windows xp and before era thing
The main problem is, that the “generational concept” is sociologically useless.
I also find this weird. I feel like millennials have more in common with gen z than any other two of the “gens”.
I remmeber early years of Facebook and other similar era stuff. It was pretty alright as far as ads go.
















