• morto@piefed.social
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    15 hours ago

    My mom always said when she had to see unavoidable ads:
    “The money they spent making those ads, they could have used to reduce the prices instead!”

    It’s funny to see her getting angry and reacting like that every time

    • MyNameIsIgglePiggle@sh.itjust.works
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      46 minutes ago

      Ironically ads exist almost exclusively to raise prices.

      Anyone can buy corn, but to purchase premium corn you need to have the value communicated too you. Maybe the corn comes from a riverbank somewhere, maybe it’s been infused with peppercorns.

      But to charge more for that corn you need to convince people to spend more on it. The more “reasons” you have to buy it ie. Peppercorns. The more you can charge

    • End-Stage-Ligma@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      If you make a product that you have to manipulate people into buying, maybe it’s a piece of shit and you’re and even bigger piece of shit. Your boss is probably a fetid old piece of shit which has dried and stuck to the side of the bowl for decades - the morbid husk of a once human thing that exists only to steal the fruits of Labor. Yet even the boss covets the power of the Great Rich Ones whom they serve in the hopes that they will be elevated to their number. The Great Rich Ones, possessed of insatiable greed and unfathomable indifference, travelling in relative silence behind the shadows cast by our world like titanic fecaliths unlit by the sun, pulling smaller objects into their crushing embrace. At the center of this madness is Assathoth, the blind idiot God, whose benighted diarrhea-dipped tentacles guide the Market from angles beyond perception and weave the waking nightmare of our capitalist reality.

      Uh anyways fuck ads.

  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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    13 hours ago

    You’d be surprised at how little they paid to annoy specifically you that one time. And each time.

  • squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de
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    19 hours ago

    2003-you installs three browser toolbars to get paid for watching and clicking ad banners (spoiler: you’ll never reach the threshold for the payout)

    • Magister@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      oh I did, it was a banner maybe 100 pixels height. I had a small app to make window transparent by clicking on them, so I started the bar, started the app, click the bar, it dissapeared but still registered viewing. I got maybe 25$ after a couple of months

      • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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        16 hours ago

        xdotool - write a little bash script. Also keeps you as showing online on slack.

        • Feddinat0r@feddit.org
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          16 hours ago

          Well, that was a windows only thingy.

          And you have not just to wiggle around you have to press the one word which was green, and the position changed every time.

          But mostly, it was windows time

          • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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            16 hours ago

            I haven’t written windows code in like 25 years, but I think you could do the same thing with the MFC / Win APIs.

            I think I did something similar in Java to script RuneScape clicks. Man people would get pissed when I kept thieving on that chest upstairs from the cake stalls.

  • gary@piefed.world
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    19 hours ago

    Closest I ever came was trying brave browser for a couple months a few years ago and I made a cool $0.83 in digital Monopoly money 💅

    • meejle@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      I think I made about $15, but admittedly it was over the course of like 2 years

  • petersr@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    Well, ads are just a middle man for increasing desire to buy a product. So you could just cut out the ad middle man as well and just buy the products you want.

  • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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    19 hours ago

    This was the idea behind Basic Attention Token, the people who made the Brave Browser

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      I think we should simply bring back Pogs. Every time you watch an ad, you get a Pog. You can collect them, trade them, and even redeem them for mystery prizes. This will become the foundation for a new American economy.

  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    Or you could condition yourself to have a negative reaction to all advertised products, then charge the ad companies a fee to block their ads.

  • Thatuserguy@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    No idea if they’re still around but that was the basis behind Swagbucks and AppTrailers back in the day. Bought a shitty $25 android phone that I just babysat at my desk running those all day long just hitting the next button when it showed up every couple of hours. Wasn’t a massive payout by any means nor fast, but I racked up multiple $25 payouts that way. Still free money for minimal work. As a broke college student sitting at his desk most of the day anyways, that was solid

  • BootLoop@sh.itjust.works
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    18 hours ago

    There was a number of companies that did this in the late 90s/early 2000s. None survived the dot com bubble.

  • hope@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    Why stop there? Just have the companies taking out ads send random people their products!

  • Corngood@lemmy.ml
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    19 hours ago

    Counter-proposal: you get to opt-out of advertising by signing up to automatically buy all the products they advertise.

  • MynameisAllen@lemmy.zip
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    18 hours ago

    But then who would collect all your data to eventually sell it to the government to bypass the 4th amendment???

  • vane@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    I’m waiting for free phones / tv with split screen 50% AD 50% your content but only AI generated.

  • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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    18 hours ago

    Yeah idk why this model never took off, I’m guessing cause of greed.

    Give me a wallet, I can fill it with watching ads and then use it for your service.

    I think the reason why it doesn’t work is because it allows the user to minimize their ad exposure, not maximize.

    • Cort@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      I think the reason why it doesn’t work is because it allows the user to minimize their ad exposure, not maximize.

      I’d think the opposite is also true. If you’re trying to maximize your exposure to ads and increase your income, you’re probably not the target audience for the advertised products. If you’re relying on fractions of a penny per ad viewed, you’re not likely to be able to afford the product they’re hocking

      • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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        17 hours ago

        That makes sense, they want to show ads to people who don’t want to see ads and don’t have time to see many.

        IMO it just means advertisement is self defeating in the long run.