It is truly unbelievable how bad it has become. Even informational articles might only have a paragraph of text between ads. Plus, the frequent animations/pop-unders/whatever.

Everyone can decry the loss of the "small web" as much as they want, but the cram-ads-into-every-pixel dystopia means why should anyone bother? Even big brands are not immune to this behavior. At least if someone stays on the Instagram/Reddit/Tiktok experience, the ads are a consistent frequency and intrusiveness.

> Even informational articles might only have a paragraph of text between ads.

The thing that made me realize how bad it's gotten was ironically an inability to use ad blockers. At one job, we weren't allowed to install any adblockers to the browser (there was a lot of bureaucracy so I never figured out why). Ended up writing my own JS bookmarklets to remove ad elements from sites I commonly visited. Also started browsing the web more in the terminal with Lynx because there are no images, it's just text. No distractions.

Taking your typical "How do you frob a xyzzy in the foo framework?" Medium article, the entire thing would usually fit on my screen in the terminal. The GUI browser had one or two lines followed by an image of ad.

> At one job, we weren't allowed to install any adblockers to the browser (there was a lot of bureaucracy so I never figured out why).

It could have been the IT department fielding too many "this web-based app" isn't working requests due to ad-blockers. A lot of time can be spent trying to troubleshoot an issue before figuring out the cause is the ad-blocker.

Edit: It could also have been a policy to disincentivize people to use their work computer for non-work-related tasks. Ads typically don't pop up on work-related web applications.

Wasn’t there a protocol (?) with just text, Gemini or something like it?

Even the text on the web has gotten more and more drawn out.

So much more text to make it look like they have more content where 1 paragraph would've sufficed.

It's like my English teacher took over the web '3,000 words minimum'... except that doesn't count if you just don't have more to say.

Occasionally I use a computer that's not my own (I've been using Firefox and UBO for years, and have PiHole here). I can't believe how AWFUL it is. It's just not worth bothering with any more for the most part... it's like I live in this quiet backwater town where everyone walks everywhere, and then I get teleported to the middle of rush-hour Tokyo.

Rush-hour Tokyo is not too bad by big city standards. Rush hour in Atlanta, now… that’s hell.

IE being very advertising friendly and user hostile was the original reason for Firefox to emerge and Chrome to be created. Both blocked popups and provided more user control. Both had extensions. And ad blocking quickly became a popular application of extensions. I've not used a browser without an ad blocker for probably close to seventeen years or so. Why would I opt in to ads?

IE did not survive the competition. And Google did well with chrome. But technically it's weird that they continue to convince people that use operating systems that come with a different browser to install Chrome. Firefox has the same challenge.

It seems that Google has gotten a bit too used to that being a thing that users are eager to do. The more ads that slip through the defenses, the more market share they'll loose to other browsers. This is a classic throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Their ad revenue (i.e. most of their revenue) is largely dependent on Chrome being something users want to use. More ads means less users. And as MS has demonstrated with IE, having a leading position is no guarantee whatsoever of keeping that. Even their position as the dominant fork of Chromium is not guaranteed. If people get annoyed enough, they might just fork and cut loose. Happened before when Google forked Apple's webkit. Which in turn was a fork of khtml. Not saying that's likely to happen soon but it's always an option.

Anyway, I'm happy using Firefox. No ads for me. Also not on Youtube.

This is an interesting point. If this is good for Firefox, then I... support this...?

And possibly great for Brave. Brave has the same feel as chromium.

War makes life worst. People like a good life so they should fight for peace. I guess war is good for life.