The Absolute State of Intrusive Advertising

So I went to Makati the other day and tried to watch TV on our Sky Cable box.

I was surprised how the cable boxes actually disable themselves and need “refreshing” if it’s off for a long time. It’s easy to fix (a click in their website) but I was shocked to see that it had more banner ads plastered in the screen than before.

The ads were updated, but the main service turns off for a while. And now there’s more ads!, and this was on top of their previous nagging “messages”. They had the audacity to update the ads while the box remained deactivated.

This experience reminded me further of the time when I was in the hospital and hated every banner ad and their persistent “reminder” plastered on the screen to subscribe to Cignal on select channels.

Like honestly, What the fuck?#

I’ve been blocking ads aggressively since I graduated from college and nowadays, I’m disappointed at the intrusiveness of today’s advertising, and somehow it’s made acceptable to have them while spending money for the services. This is NOT cool and it’s getting worse.

And even for free places like the rest of the internet, the levels of bullshit you can see on websites like Fandom (wiki) are on an extreme sick level of advertising. Autoplay videos that occupy half of the screen, fake related articles that are actually ads, banners and interstitial ads, such garbage! It scares me because a majority of internet users are used to this and have resigned into it, and I’m actually experiencing a different, better internet that everyone actually deserves, but don’t.

This is why I do not hesitate to block advertising. Back then, it’s a moral decision to support the sites and services for free, but when they’re shoving autoplay VIDEOS and consuming my mobile data because they can, then I can also nuke their garbage from orbit if I want.

So yeah, adblocking is a necessity nowadays.#

For those who haven’t heard of adblocking, now’s the ripe time to start learning about it. I highly suggest this setup:

• Apply NextDNS and its private DNS features. This applies on any device, and can be configured on your router.
• (iOS) Install Adguard. Even the basic free Safari protection is better than just the DNS-level blocker.
• (Android) Use Firefox, install uBlock Origin. This will filter the more sophisticated ads that can’t be captured on the DNS level.
• (PC) Install uBlock Origin on any browser, but Firefox is recommended because Chrome is taking away features under the hood that makes uBlock Origin efficient. Also, use Strict Enhanced Tracking Protection (Firefox).