this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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AssholeDesign
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This is a community for designs specifically crafted to make the experience worse for the user. This can be due to greed, apathy, laziness or just downright scumbaggery.
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I'm usually not in favor of this sort of thing. But I think there are some instances where that may be justified. This screen serves ZERO public benefit. It's just there to annoy you. So IMHO doing something like 3d printing a cover that you leave on the screen is a public service.
99% of advertisements serve zero public benefit. Its in society's best interest to actively hinder them whenever possible IMO.
Advertisement is the ruling classes' graffiti. Obliterating it is a public service.
I like this take
All right well I hate to disagree but advertisements do support a lot of websites and news organizations, or at least they used to before the tech Giants took most of the advertising money.
The question is not whether they support a business model, it's whether they are good for humanity. And they are bad for humanity from a socioeconomic perspective because it is labor power spent with negative net use value produced.
Compare it with imperialist wars: they are the business model of the entire MIC, and yet I hope you agree that wars of aggression are bad.
Without ads all news is subscription.
Or we could do the sensible thing and make a few taxpayer-funded news agencies, same as with the rest of public services. UK, Canada and Australia have public broadcasters, and while fundamentally they are still tools of imperialist propaganda they are usually more accurate with their reporting and truthful with their journalism than the billionaire-owned ad-ridden slop.
The rest could then be funded through a mix of grants, subscriptions and volunteers.
Continuing with the MIC/wars analogy: "without MIC and wars to fund it we wouldn't have done the research for transistors/ICs/microwaves/radar/...". It's obviously a false dichotomy designed to normalize wars of aggression. It's the same here, brainworm slop and paid slop are not the only two alternatives.
The government broadcaster would not work in the United States period It's bad enough in the UK and Canada comma although I like their public broadcasters to a degree Comma with their Israel bullshit though, and that is just the start. In this country? It would be a fucking nightmare. They would appoint like Fox News producers to lead it.
The principle in the UK is almost sound. Take taxpayer money and give it to an NGO. Though they do it through a separate "licence" company which is a parasite, the original idea was so it could demonstrate at all levels it was independent of government interference. Rather like US democracy, it hasn't worked out as well as it should have, but that doesn't mean it's not a reasonable idea in the future.
The US still does have an OK "public broadcaster" - PBS (even though it's mostly not known for "news"). It wasn't run by Fox News hosts either, it produced some fairly progressive or at least pro-scientific content. However it is getting destroyed right now, precisely because it doesn't fit the agenda of the current government.
The only solution to this is aligning the government with the people. I'm afraid revolution is the only way to do this (although there is a tiny sliver of hope that it can be resolved without too much violence). Until then ad-"supported" news won't save you, because they are all fundamentally capitalist. Iskra didn't have ads in it.
It is much much too late to save the country I'm afraid. Even now we fight under control deposition and most of you will viciously shout down anybody wanting a winning strategy with our perhaps last chance to take it back in the succession fight.
Sorry, whose infrastructure are these gas pump advertisements propping up? Pretty sure this is just going towards lining someone's pockets.
I was just responding to 99% of advertisement being whatever. Obviously this one is bullshit, a lot of it's bullshit. Maybe most.
It's in a gas station, why would it?
Why shouldn't it? Or failing that, why should it be there at all? Fuck capitalism, fuck the constant attempt to extract value from every single moment of our existence.
You answered already:
Agreed.