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300 followers on Instagram + YouTube Ads update
2 years ago
General
Firstly, thank you so much for 300 followers on Instagram!
Secondly, yesterday marked 4 years since I retired (or abandoned) my YouTube channel dedicated to mostly train videos.
I had the idea of bringing that channel back to life since I have a lot of related clips I've filmed since then as well as the ToonThick YouTube channel, but I doubt I'll do that now mainly because YouTube has implemented a blanket ban on ad blockers from the site.
Put simply, YouTube wants to make me see ads that are clearly fake and non-genuine!
Examples of the ads I've seen on the YouTube app include:
AI Ponzi schemes claiming to have the endorsement of Elon Musk and certain politicians (some having the Tesla logo and showing "Official website");
Fake or non-genuine dating sites (I had this problem on DeviantArt before I started using AdBlock Plus in 2018);
Ads promoting excessive gambling and/or claiming to have the official endorsement of certain casinos (these ads shouldn't even exist as they're probably illegal). In one example, there was a fake news screenshot designed to fool people;
Ads that are way out-of-date (e.g. "New Year's sale" being shown all year round);
Ads for businesses not in my country (some even being in a different language), and;
Ads supposedly promoting the Australian Kmart but showing the wrong logo (that being the unrelated and almost non-existent American Kmart);
And of course, there were all of those Temu ads that everyone on YouTube was being bombarded with!
YouTube has allowed the fake and non-genuine ads to thrive on their platform for too long. Rather than force people to see these ads by banning ad blockers, they could use the time and resources to get rid of these fake ads, once and for all!
At this point however, my days on YouTube are probably numbered. I believe YouTube might also have a strike system in place for anyone refusing to allow ads on YouTube (I saw a screenshot of this a few months ago), potentially resulting in account suspension.
I also hate to think that one day, YouTube may only have 2 options available for uploading videos; "made for kids" or "age restricted".
Anyway, I'm going to scale down my presence on YouTube, for my own good. I also plan on phasing out my use of Instagram's "Stories" by the end of the year. I'll write more about that later.
Thanks for reading.