Paying to get rid of ads is paying for the privilege of doing their market segmentation for them. It's paying to segment oneself into the upper echelons of the market. People who pay to avoid ads have a lot of disposable income, the value of their attention increases.

I wish uBlock Origin would incorporate AI features too. It could automatically detect brand names and product placement and blank it all out. Works on images and video. Augmented reality glasses with uBlock Origin would be life changing.

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marssaxman 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I wish we could use AI to solve captchas for us. Perhaps I should "vibe-code" such a browser plugin.

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plasticchris 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s funny because captchas are meant to be hard for bots but easy for people and it might be the opposite now.

	▲	wlesieutre 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Some of the newer ones I've seen with random symbols scattered and rotated on a random background are really awful. As a person with all my mental faculties and mostly correctable vision I have to solve them carefully. Never would have imagine that "sit in a chair and browse the internet" would become an activity limited to the able bodied.

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delaminator 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I wish uBlock Origin would incorporate AI features too. It could automatically detect brand names and product placement and blank it all out.

that is a pretty good idea

back in the day I had an adblocker which replaced the banners with your own pictures.

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Scoundreller 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Paying to get rid of ads is paying for the privilege of doing their market segmentation for them.

My local newspaper used to be wide-open. I happily subscribed but never logged in.

Then they launched a paywall, so I unsubscribed. I didn't want to be a part of their logged-in paid premium user dragnet.

The phone-call to cancel was a bit confusing for the CSR.

"May I ask why are you cancelling?"

Me: "Oh, because of the paywall"

CSR: "Oh, that's just a technical issue, we can help you with that"

Me: "Nono, you don't understand, I'm cancelling because there is _a_ paywall"

I doubt my "reason for cancelling" got coded correctly.