I think as a child I got viruses from one of the ads, you know, the ones would put on the side of the site. We had to call in a guy, to clean parents’ computer. I felt really guilty and never touched those ads again.

So Google’s and Meta’s main business are ads. And recently I felt confused. Do people click on ads? Don’t these ads feel phishy to them?

  • @ObsidianZed@lemmy.world
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    361 year ago

    On the rare occasion, I find myself on a mobile website or an app, and I know what I want to tap, what I need to tap, so I move to tap it, and the damn ad loads slower (I swear as intended) which shifts everything on my screen causing me to inadvertently tap it.

  • fox2263
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    161 year ago

    Accidentally so many times.

    goes to press download button HELLO CONTENT LAYOUT SHIFT clicks ad

    • Trollivier
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      21 year ago

      I was about to say this, because that’s 100% of the ads I click on.

  • Zeusbottom
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    141 year ago

    Banner ads, not for a long long time, at least not intentionally.

    Last week I needed parts for my snowblower, and Amazon was not helpful finding what I needed, so I googled the info I had. A competitor’s ad appeared as the first result. I was skeptical as hell as I clicked on it - my experience has always been similar to yours - but they had a comprehensive, easy-to-use database of parts, with diagrams, part numbers, in-stock notes, and cost all on the same page. No hacky website, just the right information presented well. Wound up giving them the business.

    I guess not everyone is a rabid, cheating, lying SOB. Just many people. Lol

  • @MrFunnyMoustache@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    On my devices I don’t see ads because PiHole and uBlock… But this week while using someone else’s device, and I saw an Ad, I tried to click the ‘x’ button, but accidentally clicked the ad because they make the button tiny.

    Screw ads.

  • themeatbridge
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    141 year ago

    Accidentally? Because a lot of ads are designed to trick you into clicking on them.

    I have a pihole that blocks most of them from loading, but sometimes I accidentally click on one.

    The last time I intentionally clicked on an ad, when I was fired from my job and I kept seeing google ads because we used gmail for everything back then, and I knew it drove the CEO crazy that he was paying per clickthrough. So I would click on it and bounce around the website all the way to the cart, and then abandon the cart with thousands of dollars of stuff in it.

    I’m pretty sure he could see my google account associated with the activity.

    • @lhamil64@programming.dev
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      21 year ago

      I’m confused by this. Your company had to pay when employees clicked ads in Gmail? I assume this the enterprise version? But then that implies that Google puts ads in the enterprise Gmail which sounds both unsurprising and crazy to me.

      • themeatbridge
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        31 year ago

        No, they paid when anyone clicked on their ads. I would click from my personal devices.

  • @rekabis@lemmy.ca
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    161 year ago

    I was there in the late 90s, when hitting the wrong website (or a good one on a bad day) would spawn oodles of pop-ups and pop-unders. And any attempt to close even one of these windows would spawn 10 more. Rinse and repeat until these ads brought not only your browser to a grinding halt, but also your entire operating system, forcing a hard restart of your entire computer.

    The moment an adblocking add-in was made for Phoenix (later Firefox), I installed it and never looked back.

    I feel for those websites who rely on ad revenue to exist, but that well was thoroughly poisoned for me long before you (likely) ever existed. I will never permit a browser to exist on any of my systems without an ad-blocker of some kind, and I will configure all of my clients to have the same protections in place.

    • Dessalines
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      61 year ago

      Every time my parents used the computer, even if it was only for a few minutes, it ended up looking like this

    • Christian
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      21 year ago

      The moment an adblocking add-in was made for Phoenix (later Firefox), I installed it and never looked back.

      Oh wow, I had totally forgotten that it started as phoenix. I only remember that name because the first time I downloaded the browser, the homepage read “Phoenix is now Firebird”.

  • @Avaq@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    The first and last time I clicked an ad was roughly 20 years ago. I was a child, playing RuneScape and orgazing a clan, and I wanted to post our clan events on a website.

    An ad for one.com (a web host, called b-one back then) was shown above the RuneScape client. I thought about it and decided to click it. I landed on the website and made an account, played around a bit, and asked my mom if she’d pay for it. In that moment, not only did I become a paying customer, I became a web developer. The latter of which I still am to this day.

    Being exposed to such life-altering artifacts on the daily seems like a terrible idea, so I’ve blocked ads ever since.

  • @NotJustForMe@lemmy.ml
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    211 year ago

    I don’t believe I’ve ever clicked on an ad without having been tricked into it by an overlay.

    I also believe that the ad-bubble market is the biggest scam in Internet history. A whole ecosystem keeps the illusion alive that it actually does something other than exiting.

  • @OpenStars@startrek.website
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    491 year ago

    You mean like… oh purpose!?

    There was a time long ago I did that to help them with their business. I’ve learned a lot since then and now I don’t do that anymore.

      • @OpenStars@startrek.website
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        121 year ago

        Companies need money to survive. Not every company should survive though.

        It is like mosquitos - I bear them no malice, and they are part of the food web too. I still swat them if then bite me. I am also okay with mosquito-cide on a mass scale.

        Symbiosis and Mutualism are great, but advertising as it is practiced 99.99999% of the time today is Parasitic, and I don’t want to encourage it any further.

  • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬
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    91 year ago

    It was when I wanted to click a link I was interested in but an ad that had delayed loading covered the link the moment I clicked.

    • @Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I vomited acid blood the last time that happened to me. It wasn’t an ad but an image loaded causing me to click something else instead.

  • @Shialac@lemmy.world
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    11 year ago

    I sometimes click on Instagram-Ads because some of them are so unhinged that I have to find out what they are about?