I switched browsers several years ago to Mozilla Firefox, and it's made the internet a better place. It's also made it a fundamentally different place, such that when I'm looking at someone else's device, I start hyperventilating a little just looking at ALL of those ads. It's a turn off, and I can't wait to be done with whatever it is I need to do on said machine. Ew.
So you can imagine how distressed I was when I went to use my favorite YouTube trainer and had to sit through five seconds of ads. Yeah, I know, that doesn't sound like much, but it was more time than I wanted to give them of my life (and, oh yeah, no, I'm not going to need an airbnb rental any time soon, so screw). Then, since I do occasionally indulge in sudoku games, I practically pushed back from the screen when I saw half of the screen covered in various ads. How do people live this way?
For some reason, it looks like the latest update of Firefox disabled my ad-blocker. I reinstalled that thing very quickly. Good news: it took with YouTube; bad news, not Sudoku. Okay, maybe that's not bad news, since I do have better things to do with my time. But still.
It's bad enough you go to an imperfect news site like CNN and you see all kinds of "sponsored content": to my knowledge, there's no way of blocking those (which is just one reason I don't go there unless I'm looking for something very specific). But no, while trying to get the news, I should not have to scooch through inane advertisements. Yeah, yeah, yeah--that was the bargain our parents and grandparents made for their "free" programming. Forgive me, but that's just one reason that programs in other parts of the world were better, particularly the UK.
I'll either get around this, or I won't, which means I'll use the internet for even less than I do now. For me, that is probably not the worst thing in the world, but I know that isn't an option for everyone else. That's terrible. I think we need a new internet.
Deb in the City
