Enough with the F#*!ing Ads (Premium)

We live in an era of subscriptions, where any content can be ours for the taking, at least temporarily, via a monthly or annual fee. But the flip side of this all-you-eat model is grim: because many cannot afford subscriptions---especially multiple subscriptions---many services also offer free, ad-based versions. And because ads don’t pay as well as subscriptions, those ads are getting more voluminous. And more annoying.

We all saw this shift on the web long ago. Back in the mid-2000s, one could make a great living using just Google’s ad system, but that changed over time to become a lot less lucrative, leading to more and more aggressive ads everywhere. Today, virtually all websites---yes, including this one, though we do offer a Premium subscription that removes most ads---are a cesspool of annoying ads that include animations, auto-playing videos, elements that jump on top of actual content, and other terribleness. I can’t read an article via Google News on my iPad without dodging these irritants.

In fact, just this morning, I ran into a new low: a site that displayed an auto-playing and non-stoppable video ad between every single paragraph in the story. There was no avoiding them. I almost always could see two at once.

But it's not just this one site: ads are inescapable. It makes the fanciful scenes about pervasive advertising in the future as depicted in The Minority Report movie look quaint.

There are video ads at the gas pump now. And when you hear what used to be radio playing in a retail environment of whatever kind, these days, that’s just a streaming service. And oftentimes, it will be the free version of that service, complete with ads.

There are ads in Windows, as I’ve been complaining about since the initial release of Windows 8. You may recall that I referred to this practice of advertising inside of a paid product---the combination of free/ad-based and paid---as a “slippery slope,” and then can rue how very right I was when you realize how advertising has escalated in Windows and other Microsoft products in the years since.

And it’s not just Microsoft: content creators have been putting ads in paid products since the days of paper newspapers, and have continued this behavior in the digital ages. I’m looking at you, New York Times, and your horrible, horrible advertising. But this makes one wonder: how long before we see tiers of services like Netflix and Spotify that include monthly payments and advertising? Mark my words: it’s only a matter of time, folks.

And Apple, for all its golden PR, is just as terrible as any other Big Tech firm. It has ruthlessly copied third-party apps and services and included them for free in iOS and macOS, killing off partners. It has artificially promoted its own apps and services in its App Store, pushing customers away from what they’re looking for. And it has dramatically limited or prevented any relationship that content makers can have with thei...