How to Never See Anyone Again
How To Never See an Advertisement on the Net Always Once again (Including YouTube Commercials)
The 2-infinitesimal procedure I've taken to avert ii.57+ million ads and so far
Having now spent more than two decades of my life online — I attended an early e-high schoolhouse while still on punch-upward — I've come up to the conclusion that the internet is similar God: The experience isn't the same for whatsoever 2 people.
Sadly, for about people, the internet has go a highly-toxic, anxiety-inducing, privacy-eroding, sleep-robbing, piece of work-distracting, ad-blitzing, time-devouring wormhole to nowhere. Or, you know, believing the world is run by lizard people.
For most of my friends, the internet is like a giant shopping mall where they're bombarded with ads the entire time — Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Gmail ads, YouTube commercials, popup ads, sidebar ads, the listing goes on and on.
But not for me.
In our dwelling, the net is like a library. It'due south tranquility and informational — a real business firm of cognition — a identify to go acquire and ponder and read and write and create. And, like most old-school libraries, it'southward completely advertizing-complimentary.
The Futurity Is Advertising-Free
My female parent-in-law still sits through viii minutes of commercials per half-hr of telly, but I don't know anyone in my generation who even owns a Television set with cable or satellite.
Advertizement-based platforms like Facebook and Instagram are expressionless, they just don't know it nonetheless. People are growing wary of privacy-invading addiction algorithms. More nations volition adopt ad-protection policies like the EU's GDPR and go far stricter. We can all spot and avoid paid ads from a mile abroad. As the cost of advert rises and the return on investment falls, the market will but evaporate.
To exist clear, permission-based content marketing isn't going anywhere, but traditional paid-placement digital advertising'south best days are in the by.
The hereafter of marketing looks a lot more than like Medium and Netflix.
The Internet Is a Tool
The reality is that all tools employ us.
A hammer cannot hit a smash without using a human.
A saw cannot cut a board without using a human being.
A phone cannot evangelize ads without using a human being.
Once we understand that tools use us instead of the other fashion around, then we can kickoff to figure out what sort of a tool a cell telephone actually is. To do that, we take to ask an extremely uncomfortable question.
What Is the Smartphone'south Primary Commercial Purpose?
It isn't a pull a fast one on question.
Based on full revenues, the answer is clearly to serve advertisements. The phone's secondary commercial purpose is to sell apps. Its tertiary commercial purpose is to get you to upgrade your phone every few years. But primarily, the smartphone is an ad-delivery device. That's how the FAANGs became trillion-dollar companies.
Social media is specially horrible for blitzing us with ads. Unlike subscription services like Medium and Netflix, social media's entire business plan is:
- Step 1: Promise connection with others
- Stride 2: Go you fond
- Pace 3: Advertise to you
Social media sites literally cannot make money without our eyeballs seeing ads and/or Russian propaganda. Our phones are using us to earn big bucks for powerful elites — merely are we receiving a fair value substitution?
And far more importantly, do nosotros really need ad to connect our lives to other people?
Existence Social vs. Social + Media
When I was a kid growing up in the early nineties, life was extremely social. And so much then that my parents had to limit my talk time on the (corded) phone, and had to force me inside for supper. There was simply too much basketball and road hockey to play with the neighboring kids.
Past loftier school, nosotros had sleepovers, parties, campouts, movie nights, road-trips (sometimes across the entire country), and not a single one of us required a phone or an offshore multinational company with an habit algorithm to keep us connected.
We didn't need media to be social.
What Is Advertising?
Advertising is the hope of life improvement in substitution for cash. The trouble is that appurtenances and services never give us more value than they take. It's pure math: profit margin = retaining more value than expending. This doesn't stop advertisers from promising us the moon, of course. As Seth Godin said, "all marketers are liars."
Today'south advert is almost exclusively screen-based. It's a calculator-manipulated cue that nudges us in the direction of the advertiser'southward desired behavior, non our ain.
Nosotros're Seeing More Ads Than Ever
Dorsum in the seventies, people saw an average of 500 ads per 24-hour interval. Today, that number has jumped more than than tenfold. We at present meet an average of 6,000–10,000 ads per day. Most people don't realize the millions of nudges they're receiving each year.
The average cyberspace user sees 1,700 banner ads per calendar month. Facebook serves up hundreds of billions of ads per day. YouTube viewers are wasting millions of hours per twelvemonth staring at commercials, thousands of little pushes.
My best friend always asks: How many pushes make a shove?
Are we really making our ain life decisions, or are there commercialized life-script editors who are trying to re-write our thoughts, words, and actions?
Readers should be the customer, non the product. That's why sites like Medium will continue to be successful, and people volition go on to get burned out by toxic sites like Facebook and Instagram.
For at present, the reality is that nosotros're all being digitally profiled, tracked, stalked, addicted, and influenced by sophisticated algorithms that even their creators cannot fully sympathise. Accordingly, we demand to defend ourselves against the onslaught of advertiser-manipulators that want to control our actions.
Here's how I created an ad-gratis cyberspace in five easy steps. This will accept y'all less than three minutes to execute and will save you hundreds of hours of life.
1. Download uBlockOrigin
Forget AdBlocker — uBlockOrigin blows information technology out of the water. This free wonder app has blocked over 2,573,000 ads since I installed it in 2018. All-time of all? No more YouTube commercials!
2. Download Ghostery
Ghostery specifically focuses on blocking trackers. It's shocking to see the massive list of blocked trackers populate when you visit a new site.
The one-two dial of uBlock+Ghostery should eliminate 95+% of the advertising in your life.
iii. Use an Anonymous Browser
If y'all're really serious well-nigh protecting your data from ad trackers, consider switching from Google-owned Chrome or Apple-owned Safari to an anonymous browser that doesn't track your clicks or record your history.
Epic
Ballsy is "a private, secure spider web browser that blocks ads, trackers, fingerprinting, crypto mining, ultrasound signaling, and more." It stops 600+ ad-tracking attempts in an average browsing session and has the option to turn on network privacy with a free built-in VPN with servers in 8 countries.
This is particularly handy for accessing articles and videos in other countries. Tin can't watch that YouTube video because you're in Canada? Switch the server to America. Tin't read that article because you're in Sweden? Switch the server to the United Kingdom.
Tor
Tor is a long-time favorite spider web browser of journalists working inside authoritarian regimes (and, sadly, child pornographers.) People use Tor to protect themselves confronting tracking, surveillance, and censorship — there's even an selection to connect a bridge if Tor is censored in your abode land.
Text-based browsers
If y'all're really serious almost getting unhooked from ad shoves, check out i of the many browsers that wipe all images from the web. (This is peculiarly handy in places with weak internet connections.)
Once you lot've switched to an anonymous browser, you can also switch from Google/Yahoo/Bing to an anonymous search engine.
four. Use an Anonymous Search Engine
As the U.S. government'due south anti-monopoly suit against Google progresses, millions of people are realizing it knows far too much about us, and are abandoning the search engine for a more than privacy-friendly alternative.
The leading contender is the rather dopily-named DuckDuckGo. Other options include Qwant, Gibiru, SwissCows, or SearchEncrypt. (I like DuckDuckGo for its ability to change your location to one of several dozen different countries before searching locally.)
Basically, employ any search engine but Google.
5. Install Facebook Newsfeed Eradicator
The average Facebook user spends near 58 minutes per twenty-four hours on the social media behemoth. I calculate that this free app has saved me over 1,000 hours in the past iv years — the equivalent of 25 weeks of total-time piece of work.
I cannot recommend Newsfeed Eradicator enough. You can even so run across what your friends are up to, but you'll have to consciously and intentionally visit their walls. Today, I just accept Facebook (desktop) Messenger — no Newsfeed, zero ads, no mobile version. Information technology'southward effectively my social inbox and picayune else.
Determination
"Hard choices, piece of cake life. Piece of cake choices, hard life."
— Jerzy Gregorek
The end of non-permission-based paid digital advert is an extremely skillful thing for innovative marketers and their customers. Rather than bombarding strangers and manipulating them with nudges, pushes, and shoves, creative marketers find ways to delight their fanbase so thoroughly that their customers become their greatest advertisers, spreading the word authentically, organically, and for complimentary.
I hope this article saves you thousands of hours and millions of ads.
For me, the spider web is at present an enjoyable, private, low-feet, time-controlled environment with zilch ads and minimal tracking. It's a nice place to exist, and it contributes to my life goals instead of keeping me from achieving them.
No matter your level of screen management, the primal is to accept a program. We need to know our values and priorities and goals and life purposes, and then choose and use our tools accordingly.
There are unbelievably powerful entities whose addiction algorithms are aggressively seeking to shape every waking minute of our lives, but with deep intentionality, nosotros can non only stop them but live life on our ain terms.
The ability is literally in our easily.
Source: https://bettermarketing.pub/how-to-never-see-an-ad-on-the-internet-ever-again-including-youtube-commercials-acf8b500f96d
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