>> The problem? Every compound interest calculator online is terrible. Ugly interfaces, ads covering half the screen, can't customize compounding frequency properly, no year-by-year breakdowns. I've tried so many. They all suck.

While you can't do anything about (other peoples') interfaces, you can absolutely do something for ads. You can install an ad-blocker on your browser. This is not just for you, OP, it's for everyone: get an ad blocker. Your experience of the internet will be radically changed.

I am reminded of this anytime I sit at someone else's computer who doesn't have an ad blocker, or whenever I see internet conversations complaining about ads; I wonder "what ads"? Then I remember: the ads I'm blocking.

So do yourself a big, warm, fuzzy favour and make the internet better for you. Block ads today.

Choose your own ad blocker, obviously.

What, you thought this was an ad for a specific ad blocker, didn't you? Nah, any one will do. Just block bloody ads.

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Workaccount2 an hour ago | parent [-]

Using an ad blocker just shifts the cost of creating/providing content onto people not using ad blockers.

The enshitification of the internet is largely driven by people ad blocking, as is incentivizes more click bait, more ads, and sloppier cheap content.

For engineering/software related content, the impact is immense since the audience is largely people ad blocking. I won't name names, because they fear backlash from their "ad block is awesome" audience, but some well known youtubers in the hard nerdy tech space report 40-50% of views they receive no compensation for.

So you can evangelize how great it is to not have to compensate for content, but don't think it's some kind of everyone wins victory. It's just a cost shift onto someone else, which largely manifests as bad content being needed to cover costs.

The correct approach is paying for what you use, and avoiding ad-supported content to send the message that you want a paid option.

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Jaygles an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> The enshitification of the internet is largely driven by people ad blocking

This is unfairly putting the blame on only one rational actor in a prisoner's dilemma.

Content providers are free to put their content behind a paywall with no ads, but they choose not to.

They choose not to because people don't pay for content when they can get it from other providers who don't use a paywall.

Consumers then are left without the option to pay for an ad-free experience.

But ads are run on hardware the consumer owns, consuming their resources and harvesting personal information on the consumer, which is a security concern.

So even if they want to support content creators by viewing the ads they run, they need to also accept the security trade-off, which many reasonably do not

	▲	Workaccount2 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		40-50% of people are ad-blocking some rather beloved content creators. That means, not paying for premium, and not viewing ads. Ok, so maybe they are suscribing to patreon? Maybe Nebula? Well those two have conversion rates around (on a good day) 1%. You can swim in the waters of cognitive dissonance because ads really do suck and ad block is a great way to stop the pain while still getting what you want. Understand though, the statistics are so damning against the ad-block crowd, that you come off like the people screeching about human generated CO2 being totally fine for the environment (It helps plants grow!) because they cannot imagine having to give up commuting in their diesel monster pick-up truck everyday. (Ad block does no damage because I cannot imagine having to see ads...) As an aside, ironically, security nightmare ads are really only served to people with tracking blockers, because those people are the lowest value visitors and only scammers/bottom feeders really bid on their views. Regular tech illiterate people get ads for Tide and Toyota. The more you know.

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uuuuuquu 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Correlation is not causation.

The internet is shitty in many ways and ads are one reason. You can pay for ad-free streaming but still get low bitrate although you paid enough to cover traffic costs for higher bitrate. You can pay to have ad-free instagram but still see all this shitty AI-generated crap and bot posts. You can pay for Youtube Premium but Google will still massively invade your privacy.

Do you really think that if everybody turned off their ad blockers and paid for premium services, the internet would become better? The way I see it, corporate greed would milk consumers even more.

Instead of surrendering to ads, we should promote directly donating to (or supporting) YouTubers or websites that provide value to us.