There’s a very simple solution to this, and I’m honestly not quite sure why no one is doing it.
Make ads voluntary. Make them separate from the rest of the experience.
Make it so that you can watch ads and answer surveys based off of the ads in order to get credits which then allow you to watch videos.
Alternatively, make it so that you can purchase the credits out right.
Everyone fucking wins.
I don’t know why people are so stupid as to not even contemplate the easiest and most satisfying solution to all of the problems.
But the venn diagram of the group of people who take voluntary surveys and the group you want to advertise to have no overlap.
The problem with ads is that we’re barely removed from the era of all ads being malicious trojans if you clicked one. All ads are still malicious, just less insidious. They’ll silo you off into an echo chamber rather than brick your computer. Some will still brick your computer though.
I block ads because I don’t want to see ads, but I don’t want to see ads because I don’t trust any of them. Until they fix that, they’ll stay blocked. I don’t care if you’re Google or some boutique website, I’ll block them all.
