You're not alone. Not at all. I'm also tired of the mentality that we need advertising or the internet would cease to exist. In my opinion, if you need invasive advertising revenue to exist, you don't need to be on the internet.
Advertisements are slowing everything down. Tracking us. Serving us malware in some cases. We don't need them. Pi-hole/adguard could be standard. I'd rather pay $200 more for a TV set than have one with "analytics." I'm sick of the ads and block as many as I can - Google's "unobtrusive ads" included.
Other people have a glass box with ants inside... I sometimes enjoy starting AdNauseam [1] inside a VM so that I can watch the machine click on all those ads that I never see (as long as the pi-hole works).
It feels a bit like a bonfire with other people's money ;)
Hardware like TVs are especially insidious because unlike a service you don't simply decide to stop using it one day and the ad revenue stops. Rather ad revenue continues for the lifetime of the TV and there is very little chance that a company will forgo that recurring ad revenue in exchange for an increase in up-front MSRP
"I'm also tired of the mentality that we need advertising of the internet would cease to exist."
IMO, it's not a mentality, it is just propaganda. When "tech" companies are advertising-supported intermediaries conducting internet surveillance, then they are in a position to control the flow of ideas across the wire. There is no limit on the number of self-interested, bad arguments that Silicon Valley can inject onto the internet as attempts to influence the www using public and protect its "business".
That's why I pirate; no reason to pay for these streaming companies, and have my personal info collected to be sold and receive ads. Just frak these companies, I'm tired of this.
Remember that old meme (I was not even called a meme at the time!) about the steps required to watch a genuine DVD compared with the ones required for a pirate file? We need an updated version.
I'm exhausted to the fact that we have no rights to our own data or bio-metrics.
Airline (TK and Delta do this) wants to roll out face recognition.. TAKE YOUR MASK OFF AND GIVE US YOUR FACE DATA. No explanation of opting out. (Turns out it's being used to implement exit controls at the US border)
Have you published anything regarding your smartwatch or speech recognition solutions? I'd be interested to read about your custom watch project and your offline speech recognition project if you've published anything about those.
In the last few years I've also made the switch to a Linux workstation, alternative Android OS (Calyx), pi-hole, etc in an attempt to take back some of my privacy. I also spent some time trying to build my own voice assistant using Mycroft AI but I found it lacking at the time. I just ordered a smartwatch a few days ago (after avoiding them for years) and I went with a simple model with an e-ink screen to hopefully give me some new functionality without demanding my attention. If you've shared any details about your projects I'd love to learn more about them.
I wanted to have WiFi connectivity and an e-ink display. But yes, I could have saved myself a lot of effort by purchasing a PineTime... It's just that I truly enjoyed the "work" of building my own.
This is an acceptable solution for those who are able and willing to put in the time and effort, but it entails essentially becoming a part-time sysadmin. Great if it’s a hobby; not great if it’s not.
We should have regulations so that everyone can enjoy this level of privacy easily.
It's worth considering a reduction in how much you watch. Let's be honest; you can just exist without being told to buy something every 15 minutes. Don't use services that force ads on paying customers, limit your passive screen time to no more than an hour per day, and find other things to do that advertising can't touch. Try being content not living vicariously through fictional characters or real people arguing with each other.
You're right, but I think that takes the spirit of the issue a bit too far. In my experience, it's highly dependent on where you live. Where I live, which is somewhere between urban and suburban, there really aren't enough ads plastered everywhere such that it's at all interrupting. I don't think most people outright hate every single form of advertising – it's the frequent interruption, obnoxious music, unreasonable audio volume, and over-repetition that frustrates people, not to mention the quite blatant social engineering present in at least half of TV commercials in America. In certain urban centers, yes, the outdoor advertising approaches the absurdity of TV commercials, but that by no means represents most livable places. Most reasonable people would agree that there is an acceptable level and forms of advertising.
No, it really doesn't take it too far. If anything, it doesn't go far enough.
You know those ads in Minority Report that track people viewing them? They're here now. Maybe not out on the street, and maybe not via retinal scan per se, but there certainly are eye tracking and facial recognition technologies watching to see if you're looking in the direction of indoor digital ads.
Yes they are out on the street. They were already discovered in electronic billboards in Belgium.
Retinal scan no but face scanning is very feasible. The Chinese government has made an art out of this and will have no qualms selling it to western companies.
Does an adblocker not solve this problem for you? I see very few advertisements day to day, but I go out of my way to not watch TV live and turn up to the cinema late because I dislike ads as much as it seems you do.
Im exhausted about people complaining about. It's a fact that targeted ads pay a lot better. This enables better services that are free to the end user. Most people just don't want to pay for things. 99% of facebook users have never paid meta a dime, yet they have the audacity to complain about a free service. There are paid social media alternatives, or even self hosted ones, but by and large they fail because certain industries can't sustain off of a end user paid model.
Ads are also a great progressive tool. Indirectly the rich pay more than the poor for the same service.
> I'm so tired of good, useful tools and services requiring a forfeit of my privacy in order to use them
You forgot free [w/ good & useful]. If the market could support paying for the services and tools instead of ads, businesses would move that way.
No matter what you think of the privacy aspects, I worry that we've decided to build the entire modern tech universe around the mother of all bubbles. All manner of bad business decisions seem to be running with the assumption that back-end ad/targeting/etc. revenue will eventually patch the hole in the sides of their business model.
Here's my theory for the bubble factor:
You can sort of divide the ad market into four quadrants.
1) Premium advertiser, premium content. Coke and Toyota paying to be on the front page of the New York Times etc.
2) Premium advertiser, low-grade content. A lot of this is remarketing, where that damned fridge you looked at once six months ago follows you across the web.
3) Low-grade advertiser, premium content. This is likely the rarest quadrant, as it's too expensive for amateurs to play in.
4) Low-grade advertiser and content. Think of the chumboxes at the bottom of news sites.
I feel like Quadrant 1 and 2 are surprisingly at risk.
Premium advertisers have experts running their campaigns and analytics up the wazoo. Eventually they're going to ask "Is it worth paying Google/Meta/etc. NN% of the total spend when we could probably call top-50 publishers directly and arrange a deal? They may also be more brand-sensitive, worried about blowback from inappropriate ad placement in Quadrant 2.
There is a real risk that the "better" sections of the ad market eventually graduate away from brokered networks, and eventually Google and Meta are left as a glorified Taboola. Is there a lot of money in there? Possibly, but I wonder how sustainable the money is. I suspect a lot of revenue from small advertisers is due to very poor inefficiency (bad campaign design, poorly managed spend, dark pattern tooling), and it runs a risk of death-spiraling as the quality of the network tanks.
Facebook is an interesting monetization problem because the product is so intensely based on network effects. A strategy to maximize ad revenue may end up coming at the cost of some user abandonment, which is the ultimate risk for their platform. They need to thread the needle of "how creepy can we be without making people leave."
it's even worse. I actively go out of my way to ensure I do not support these companies...and I petition all my friends to avoid them. I will offer them free training to get off the services. gladly would give a couple hours of my time to setup their own personal streaming services....just to see Disney cry a little...and Netflix and the rest of the moronic executive scum
A capitalist economy isn't the problem, the problem is that we have a capitalist government. Laws could be written to keep the amoral monsters who value increased profit over everything else (including human life) in check, but "our" representatives have been bought and paid for by companies who want to push ads and since money = votes oppressive multinational corporations have more power over our government than any of us do.
If the kids is below 13, targeting would probably not be allowed.
"The act, effective April 21, 2000, applies to the online collection of personal information by persons or entities under U.S. jurisdiction about children under 13 years of age, including children outside the U.S. if the website or service is U.S.-based.[1] It details what a website operator must include in a privacy policy, when and how to seek verifiable consent from a parent or guardian, and what responsibilities an operator has to protect children's privacy and safety online, including restrictions on the marketing of those under 13.[2]"
Yeah but at least your kid isn’t going to run up to you begging to join a mesothelioma or trans-vaginal mesh class action suit because they saw it on TV. Some ads are just out of phase with them. I like this idea.
That might be a good idea in some cases. But, some platforms put limitations on your account if you're under 13, so it may not be what you want in other cases (requires a second parent account to manage the under 13 account, can't make account changes, content restrictions, inability to make purchases, etc).
My kids watched different content at 2, at 8, and at 16 years old. Anything beyond late teens maybe could be chalked up to "advertising BS" but I would push further that my older parents watch markedly different content then I do at middle age, and I watch markedly different content than when I was in my early twenties.
They could probably figure out watch preferences with good statistics, (and do), but asking for age probably gets them in the right ball park a lot faster.
Here's the problem: None of that is remotely generalizable. What you watch at, say, 40 is only going to apply to you. What you allow your children to watch at age 8 is also going to only apply to you.
Tying things from what you watch to what you might want to watch will be miles more effective than your age, because your age has nothing to do with what shows you watch.
I've known parents to show their kids "The Passion of Christ" or "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." I also know parents who watch (and love) shows like Phineas and Ferb or Spongebob.
What? I apologize, but that is absurd. Entire industries are built around the idea that people of different ages _generally_ have different tastes.
Take the "children's" television network Nickelodeon - someone realized that kids like different shows than adults, so they made an entire, 24/7 tv network dedicated to it.
Then they realized that kids go to bed at an earlier hour, so they made "Nick at Nite" for adults where they showed reruns of old tv shows. Then they realized that really young kids like different shows than older ones, so they made Nick Jr. Then they realized that ~college age people liked different shows, so they made Adult Swim. Then they realized that some older adults wanted to watch classic cartoons so they made Boomerang.
These weren't one-off "oh, one person likes different shows". These were entire age-based demographics. And this is but one example, plenty of industries - especially entertainment industries - target exactly this.
And plenty of hard science is based on the fact that human brains "mature" and adapt over time. Young kids brains are different that geriatric brains,
That is not to say any of this perfect. As these algorithms collect what a person does and doesn't like or watch, they can and should change.
And if someone wants to show their kids "age innappropriate" material to their kids, that's there choice. But don't recommend "The Human Centipede" to a three year old when they turn on the tv, and don't recommend Cocomelon to me.
I believe we look to government to solve these problems. I do not think whining online or thinking the power of my wallet is going to solve massive systemic issues like the entire advertising industry.
I have dim memories of lego positioning their stuff as gender-neutral when I was a kid. That went comprehensively out the window in the mid-90s or so, presumably when some lego marketer discovered the (dubious) joys of market segmentation.
I really don't get this, having things be gender neutral was never the goal, it was to be gender inclusive. Boys, girls, and enbys are allowed to like different things and it's not evil to take off the blinders and use your gendered knowledge to help you figure out what to make. It only becomes an issue if you say boys can't like princes and princesses, playing house and girls can't like rockets and nerf guns.
He-Man wasn't any more targeted at boys than Transformers was.
She-Ra was the most overtly gendered (being a "girl version" of an existing show) but it wasn't any more targeted at girls than My Little Pony was. Many cartoons in the 80s were just ads selling toys that were intended to be sold in either the blue aisle or the pink aisle.
Growing up I watched both He-man and She-Ra, in fact I thought She-Ra was the better show since it had a somewhat darker tone than He-Man did, but I didn't know any boys who owned She-Ra toys.
Jem and the Holograms was supposed to sell fashion dolls sold in the pink aisle (competing with Barbie), but the show itself was specifically written with lots of action to keep boys interested so they wouldn't change the channel and prevent their sisters from watching.
What is or isn't gender-neutral is quite subjective. Pink lego sets about princesses and ponies may seem quite gendered, but what about a fire truck set? Lego City, Castle and Space each started out in the late 70s. Where those gendered? Perhaps not as overtly gendered as pink princess stuff, but nevertheless I bet they sold more of those sets to boys than girls.
To Lego's credit, they did seem to make a point of putting both girls and boys on their advertisements.
I didn't really mind it because when you mixed them up in a tupperware bin there was no "girl set" or "boy set", just a mess of Legos. Plus, like you said, there was a glut of gender-independent sets that were frankly pretty awesome. It doesn't matter if you're a boy, girl, or otherwise - you want to build that $399 Death Star kit if it's the last thing you do.
There are good and valid reasons to ask for age and I would argue legal is one of those types of reasons.
“Comply with age-related legal obligations
However, delivering ads is not something I would be willing to accept. Drop the lines below Disney and I might consider thinking about talking with wife about approaching trial run:
“Personalize your content and experiences
“Deliver targeted advertising to you”
<< age doesn't exact ring alarm bells for me here.
Not everyone is ok with being profiled from every possible angle.
At the start Netflix was about getting rid of ads ridden cable TV so you now you can get competing Disney+ which is now just a cable TV with targeted ads based on your personal data. It is evolving, only backwards.
At first, cable TV had no ads because it was funded by subscriptions. Then most cable channels slowly started adding more and more ads and demanding higher and higher rates from cable operators to carry their channels. Then the local channels started demanding rates from cable operators to carry their channels that are otherwise available for free over the air. Then eventually they even started showing ads at the movie theater before the movie you paid to see.
What is happening with streaming services adding ads was entirely predictable because the financial incentives of a company that adopts a subscription model are to add ads to the subscription once they think they can get away with it. If they already have ads, the incentive is to add more and more of them until there's pushback (i.e. the NFL has been cutting down on commercial breaks because they got long enough and frequent enough to become a common source of fan complaints when ironically the 2 minute warning was originally added to the rulebook in the early 70s to guarantee TV broadcasters at least one commercial break each half that wasn't because the clock ran out on a quarter).
This is why all of the people who want a subscription based model for online services that are currently free are hopelessly naive. If they get their way, things will get better for a few years and then will eventually end up right back where they are but worse because you'll have to pay for the privilege of watching ads.
I am from Eastern Europe, so I have missed the "cable used to be subscription based without ads" time, so thank you for showing me how history rhymes and that ads in subscription based medium are inevitable.
Ad free cable may have been US centric and that era didn't last very long. The New York Times had an article in 1981[0] about how cable networks were excited about the potential to start running ads.
I looked into this and it’s not true that cable existed without ads.
From a 1981 NYT article
> Although cable television was never conceived of as television without commercial interruption, there has been a widespread impression - among the public, at least -that cable would be supported largely by viewers' monthly subscription fees.
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...
Cable television may not have been conceived of as television without commercial interruption, but it was heavily advertised as being ad free and for a time it really was. I remember the ad creep. It started with channels adverting themselves or shows/movies that would air or replay later on their channel, then came ads for shows airing on other channels, then came the commercials for cars and dish soap.
Absolutely. In my area of the Midwest, first it was Channel 100 [0]. Then eventually they launched HBO. Shortly after that there came Cinemax and Showtime. These were all premium channels that showed only movies. (And many of them are still around.) It was a little while before they started having normal crap channels with ads, like WGN [1] and TBS [2].
Since many services now split into two tiers with a cheaper option for no ads, maybe ads showing up in no-ads tier won't happen. There really wasn't the possibility to do that before streaming (multiple cable channels I guess could have been done). I pay for ad free YouTube, HBO, and Netflix (although often cancel for awhile when nothing on the service interests me). Ads for other shows on the service at the beginning of shows/movies that I can fast forward through is the most ads I will tolerate.
Yeah, that’s really weird because my spouse and I watched a few seasons of it ad-free on Netflix. I think they had something like 16 seasons available, all ad-free. It seems really odd that the company that produced it couldn’t make it also ad-free.
Market would be a hell of a lot healthier and better for customers if we'd prevent vertical integration of production and distribution, like we (in the US) did with movie theaters until very recently.
Age and gender are the two highest signals that targeted ads take into account. The Facebook growth team has always wanted to remove gathering age / gender from the sign-up flow (which reduces friction to sign up). But, ad targeting would take such a large hit, they could never do so.
It was a huge deal internally when "Custom" was added as a gender option in the sign-up flow, and even then, there's a nudge towards the binary to retain better ad targeting.
In addition to that, companies wants you to acknowledge that you're over 13 so they can be more loosey-goosey with data collection (thanks California!).
> It was a huge deal internally when "Custom" was added as a gender option in the sign-up flow, and even then, there's a nudge towards the binary to retain better ad targeting.
It's odd that advertisers would dislike that change for targeting -- surely the people who pick "custom" are sending a major signal that correlates with other preferences. It's a third grouping they can specifically target! If they split "male" into "HYPER-MASCULINE ALPHA MALE: CARS, GUNS, AND FOOTBALL FUCK YEAH!" and "I have a penis but I try not to let it make decisions for me", advertisers should presumably love that distinction too. Of course the reality is that their decades of research deciding what constitutes "male" and "female" has gotten them stuck in a shitty local minimum and they can no longer abandon this binary concept that they cling desperately to without admitting that they've never actually known what the fuck they're doing.
If there was a 300 dimensional vector expressing your nuanced gender identity that would be even better, but advertisers would have no idea how to target it (at least at first).
The easiest way to do this would be to train a bandit model to be a bidder, using this vector as part of the input features.
You would spend some time and money doing randomized exploration (maybe something more sophisticated with active learning, but just uniform random could work), then train a basic bidder to optimize whatever you are currently interested in.
The process of manually deciding which tags fit which ads is not long for this world.
They're not terrible signals. They're by far the highest-signal metrics that have been found for ad targeting. Legions of engineers and data scientist and project managers have been working on finding better metrics for a decade, and there hasn't been one found.
I mean it literally. Money is a social construct. The joke here being that it's funny/ironic to claim that gender being a social construct is "meaningless" but then turn around and claim that another social construct -- money (which is what the "bottom line" is made of) -- is meaningful.
The fact that something is a social construct doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Heck, once you get past the basic "keep this biological organism alive" level, most of human life is lived within social constructs. That doesn't meant they're not real or not meaningful.
Gender is a social construct in that various 'gender typical behaviours' don't necessarily correlate with sex between cultures. That implies it is a learnt behaviour.
In a society where someone of the male sex is pressureed to be male gendered there will be a larger correlation between gender and sex. Which would mean miracle balding cures would do better targeting the male gender if they don't have the inofrmation to target the male sex.
Does ANYBODY EVER provide an accurate response to a question like that (except when there's reason to believe they can detect it and do something to your detriment if you lie)?
If so, why?
Anybody who asks deserves to be chaffed into oblivion with garbage data.
Especially, who would be dumb enough to admit to being under 18, or, worse, under 13? An 8 year old should see the obvious reasons not to do that. A bright 6 year old.
I used to lie and say I was really old, but now I'm really old so I just lie at random.
My "birthday" is January 1, 1970 (an homage to unix) for any database/system inappropriately asking. This way they don't have my data to leak or abuse, but I still know what I specified if I'm asked to verify it.
I don't expect there's any reason for them to divide by a datetime...but one can hope that some ad server somewhere has crashed as a result.
My go-to birthday has always been January 1st of the year I was actually born. That way it doesn't raise any eyebrows if I want to convert something to a real account or interact with real people, but it fails verification if they mishandle my credentials.
That's worked great, except that one time when I inadvertently booked a flight on united.com (who should have my actual birthday, with whom I'd flown internationally several times before) with a session token or something set by a random travel search engine to whom I had given my fake January 1st birthday and then (I thought) abandoned before picking a different flight. Customs had pointed questions about the authenticity of my passport and driver's license, because their system showed that my documents should be different and they couldn't tell me why... They eventually let me back into the country, but that was not fun.
Even better, if it ever ends up mattering -- say, at a border crossing -- you have plausible deniability. "Oh, that's the first Unix epoch timestamp, must be a bug in the system."
Not sure how much it would help at a border crossing... but with any kind of tech support it would immediately elicit a chuckle.
I remember playing Leisure Suit Larry at 8 or 9 years old. They'd test you to make sure you were over 18 but if you said you were over 99, it would just reply "No you're not" and boot you. I don't remember what they'd do if you said you were under 18, I don't know if I was dumb enough to ever try it once.
That can't be all of them. I swear there was one with Bo Jackson as well, which I would confuse with the Bo Derek ones (didn't know who either was at the time).
I gave Google an off-by-one birth date way back when. A few years ago they figured it out -- sorry, don't recall what hints they may have been working from -- and demanded a correction. After considering the implicit threat, account termination, I surrendered the actual birthdate.
Yah I used to type 1911, but its interesting just how old some sites allow you to be. Some places can't even deal with 100 year olds (which isn't that uncommon) while others allow you to be 150+.
Presumably some places appear to just be doing todays date-120/130 years. So its possible to create an account that likely won't be able to revalidate ones birthday using their age validators in a few years unless they adjust the age because you will be over what they think is the max age.
Yeah, but the problem is that it often locks you out of the site completely, which they don't tell you until you've answered. And when it doesn't, it often breaks features or locks down your access to content.
I guess in theory it could also trigger them to ask for a note from your parents...
> but the problem is that it often locks you out of the site completely, which they don't tell you until you've answered.
I see now. Children under 13 are not currently permitted to register on the sites and apps for Disney Parks. For activities on apps and other online offerings, minor children under 13 years old may access some content under the supervision of a parent or guardian within that person's account.
I know somebody who lost an instagram account like this. Provided fake info when signing up. Years later, get a request to post an id or get banned. Id didn't match the fake info of course, so account banned all the same.
Why does Disney really need this information for advertising purposes when they already know what shows somebody is watching? I realize that any age/gender can watch any show, and of course a lot of Disney's catalogue is pretty universal to age/gender, but there's going to be some kind of a signal in anybody's viewing history.
If some profile is routinely watching a show about makeup or horses or ballet dances, you have a pretty good guess about the age/gender. Likewise if some profile is watching a lot of shows about monster trucks, little league baseball, and RPG games, you likewise can make a pretty reasonable guess about who they are.
Because watching Starwars doesn’t equate to buying Ziplock bags.
Playing video games, of any kind as an adult is such a norm today that it’s not entirely accurate to say “well this person plays Mario, let’s advertise crayola”,
Tiktok asked for my birthday and I couldn't navigate away from the page. I uninstalled and reinstalled the app to try and circumvent entering a birthday. They banned my account.
This account was active for 2+ years and they out of the blue REQUIRED a birthday like wth.
I thought the same, but everyone I've asked hasn't run into this question. I signed up with my phone number and didn't give them an email, maybe they're getting age from SSO for other users?
Good for them, I "pirate" content legally since I pay huge fees in Czechia from each storage media (last time I bought 64GB flashdrive, the copyright fees were more than cost of the flash drive), so I can legally download copy of any movie, TV show or music for my own use.
Pahe in India, Philipines, PSA on PM, MKVking and plenty of other options to download legally content even without torrenting.
Ah, I guess I'll just lie and if they somehow lock me out or give me trouble, let's just say it's their loss more than mine. Streaming services should remember they keep customers by offering convenience and the feeling of doing the right thing at a reasonable cost, not because they managed to enforce exclusivity of their content. That's a battle they never won.
Just Pirate and store stuff using Jellyfin. It's an infinitely better experience, and everything just works. And you don't get advertised to, demographized, tracked, or anything. You download, copy, go!
I used to recommend Netflix back in the day, cause it just worked. Now, there's 30+ different streaming services, and many have switched to the "leak an episode once a week/month".
Just pirate. It's better, cheaper, AND not hostile to the end user!
I went from Exodus to Covenant and then eventually gave up on tweaking kodi and slowly went the path of least resistance to streaming services. But now it just feels like a repeat of cable tv with balcanized services.
What do you recommend in the high seas, and how do you manage the threat of malware?
So first, get a VPN. I go with ProtonVPN. Mullvad is also high quality VPN. You need these because the copyright wonks surveil popular torrent trackers.
Then, I stick primarily with video and audio. I stay away from software piracy because I prefer my data to be in FLOSS formats.
MAKE SURE to use Firefox, with "uBlock Origin" and "Privacy Badger" plugins before going to any of these links. Also if you're on Windows, go enable in Windows Explorer to show "file extensions" - some torrents will be malware with movie.mp4.exe and try to trick you to run malware.
--------------
Movies:
RARBG.to - One of the most organized public trackers, gets new content very quickly. Can search by IMDB tags (eg. tt0258038, appearing in IDMB URLs)
rutracker.org [.org, .net, .nl] - The best general tracker from Russia and arguably the best one overall. It's great for niche movies, especially from Russia and other east European countries.
TorrentGalaxy.to - Another highly recommended site for movies & TV. Proxy list.
ettvdl.com
Zooqle.com - Easy to use torrent site
1337x.to - Many public p2p releases/encodes are released here, including Tigole/UTR/YIFY. Cams are typically uploaded here as well.
psarips.com - Small-sized x265 (re-)encodes
[Documentaries] forums.mvgroup.org - Very good documentaries tracker. Registration required.
[Anime] Nyaa.si
[Anime] hi10anime.com
[Anime] shanaproject.com
► DDL (Direct Download)
forum.dirtywarez.com - Popular DDL forum. Has a request section.
scnlog.me - Scene releases
rlsbb.ru - Scene releases
ddlvalley.me
movieparadise.org
adit-hd.com
megaddl.co
rmz.cr
2ddl.ms
rarefilmm.com - Rare movies
psarips.com - Small-sized x265 (re-)encodes
► Private Torrent Trackers
Nebulance (NBL) - Very good alternative to BTN and easy to join. Great for finding/requesting old, unpopular, obscure shows. NBL can be joined through MAM. You are eligible the moment you become PU, which is 1 month.
Filelist - One of the largest general private trackers. Romanian tracker, but media content will typically include dual language audio (English and Romanian). The tracker might be smaller compared to IPT but the quality control is better, especially for movies and TV shows. You will be able to find high quality encodes from PTP and BTN which you might not find on IPT. Can be joined through MAM with a 5 months old account
IPTorrents - The largest general private tracker, period. Definitely worth to have as a back up. Invites are easy to come by if you make acquaintances otherwise you can join it through EMP (unofficial invites; need access to invite forum so you have to be Good Perv user class which requires 8 weeks on the tracker). Also, don't forget to log in every 3 months or you lose your account (called Inactivity rule)
Secret Cinema - If any of the following keywords interest you then this is the tracker for you - old (as early as the 1st movie ever), non-mainstream, non-English, arthouse, experimental, rare - movies and Tv shows. This tracker can be joined through MAM (6 months old account required) and RED.
PassThePopcorn (PTP) - Movies tracker. Best source for movies, period. Couple of unique features - !!!!* The amount of active fleshed out collections available to discover content to watch. It's often better than some legit sites dedicated to this stuff. !!!!* High quality encodes. Many torrents are marked Golden Popcorn (GP). They are best of the best encodes. It is like Oscars but for encodes. Currently it is not possible to join PTP unless you know someone who has an account there and can invite you. The best strategy suggested is to reach as high of a user class you can reach on RED as feasibly possible. This will increase chances when PTP starts recruiting again. In the meantime you can join SC, BHD, BLU etc and make requests there
beyond-hd.me (BHD) - Movies/TV tracker. Focuses on HD and some SD content. Originally home to the famous FRaMeSToR remux group but then many more after AHD died. Currently the best alternative to PTP and BTN. After AHD's demise, this is now the 2nd best tracker for high quality encodes too. Can be joined through RED (either be Elite user class OR power user with 6 months old account)
pixelhd.me - Movies tracker. Known for producing small sized encodes. PxHD Mobies - 720p/AAC/mp4 at 1.5-2GB (esp. for Mobile Devices); PxHD/PxEHD - 1080p/AC3/mp4 at 4GB and 8GB; and PxHDA - 1080p/DTS/ at "whatever size is necessary" for high transparency (usually 6-12gb). Can be joined through RED (Elite or "high-level" PU; + 2 more proofs; all 3 accounts at least 6 months old) and MAM (Elite or "high-level" PU; + 2 more proofs; all 3 accounts at least 6 months old)
HD-Torrents (HDT) - Movies/TV tracker. Focuses on HD content only. This tracker is great for HD movies though not as good as PTP. Specialty lies in allowing of multiple untouched material of the same movie, which helps in getting those foreign languages, different audio/video quality, or even different content in audio/videos. Slightly superior to PTP in this regard. You can pay for an account through their website. (Note - Only buy the account from their own website, not a 3rd party)
uhdbits.org (UHDB) - Small movies tracker. Should not aim for it as your primary tracker but it is good to have as backup, aim for BHD instead. Can be joined through RED.
TV Chaos UK - TV tracker. Great site for UK TV content. Best joined through requesting on /r/invites (proof of ratio from other sites required). Quality lacks a bit so use it with a TV tracker like BTN to get the most of UK content
Broadcast the Net (BTN) - TV tracker. Best source for TV related content, period. Currently this tracker is not recruiting anywhere but it is recommended to join PTP where BTN will recruit again in the future
TV Vault (TVV) - TV tracker. Best private tracker for old TV shows. Best way to join it is through MAM.
More Than TV (MTV) - Movies/TV tracker. 2nd best private tracker for TV after BTN. Retention is not good but with a strong request section, this is not an issue. Can be joined through RED
asiancinema.me - Movies/TV tracker. A neat little tracker for Asian content.
animebytes.tv - Best place for anime on the internet. Can be joined through RED (account has to be 1 year old)
AvistaZ - Movies/TV tracker. One of the best places for Asian (mainly Japan, South Korea, China etc) movies and TV shows. Best place for Korean dramas. Easiest way to join is through application on their site. Also one of the few top trackers that have open signups from time to time.
Blutopia - Movies/TV tracker. Very nice tracker for Movies and TV. Like other private trackers, you can make the most of it through the use of its request section. As SD encodes are not allowed on this tracker, it is a great source for untouched DVDs, especially if you aren't in top trackers yet
TorrentLeech - General scene tracker. One of the largest general private trackers
alpharatio.cc - A general private tracker focused on scene releases. Inferior in content compared to other general trackers like IPT, TL, FL etc but has a very strong request section. Great for requests for which personalised trackers don't exist or aren't good enough. Can be joined through MAM and RED during AR's global invites period, keep an eye out
► Live channel Streaming
pluto.tv - Official legal service
github.com/iptv-org/iptv - Mass IPTV aggregation
sportsbay.sx - Sports & non-sports channels
123tvnow.com
cxtvlive.com
stream2watch.ws
time4tv.stream
► Sports
/r/rugbystreams - Live streams. Links posted within the hour of the match
/r/MLBStreams - Live streams. Links posted within the hour of the match
/r/ncaaBBallStreams - Live streams. Links posted within the hour of the match
/r/WWEstreams - Live streams. Links posted within the hour of the match
/r/mmafights - Live streams. Links posted within the hour of the match
/r/motorsportsstreams - Live streams. Links posted within the hour of the match
rutracker.org > Sports - Torrents. Sports subforum at rutracker
sport-video.org.ua - Torrent soccer, motorsports, baseball, basketball, football, hockey, rugby, other
footybite.com - Highlights and live streams. Soccer
nbafullhd.com - Replays. Basketball, football, F1
liveonscore.tv - Live streams. Soccer, MMA, motorsports, baseball, basketball, football, hockey
sportsurge.net - Live streams. MMA, boxing, motorsports, basketball, football, hockey
sporthd.live - Live streams. Soccer, MMA, handball, basketball, rugby, football, tennis and others
sportsbay.sx - Live streams. Football, soccer, basketball, hockey, baseball, NCAA, tennis, cricket, motorsports
worldcupfootball.me - Live streams. MMA, baseball, basketball, football, hockey, NCAAF, NCAAM
6stream.xyz - Live streams. MMA, baseball, basketball, football, hockey, NCAAF
bilasport.net - Live streams. Soccer, MMA, baseball, basketball, football, hockey
720pstream.me - Live streams. MMA, baseball, basketball, football, hockey, NCAAF, NCAAM
ripple.is - Live streams. Soccer, MMA, boxing, motorsports, basketball, football
nflbite.com - Live streams. Football
nbabite.com - Live streams. Basketball
Piracy, because these days a lot of shows never make it to DVD. Disney in particular is terrible about this (probably to push Disney+ subscriptions). Star vs. the Forces of Evil came out in 2015 and hasn't seen a DVD release. Same with The Owl House and their marvel shows
My experience is the opposite. It can be harder to find unpopular things, but there are very few things that aren't out there at all. More often (as is the case with Disney) piriacy can be your only option.
I do like having high quality physical media I can rip copies of myself when something is available but Disney doesn't like to give people that option no matter how recent/popular the show is.
We don't really have many official options for compensating creators either. It doesn't matter how much you watch The Owl House on disney+ it's not the same as writing Dana Terrace a check. Thankfully she was already compensated by Disney. Support for creators and their shows can be given in a lot of ways. You can always try to support a show you download by word of mouth promotion, seeding torrents, social media engagement, and buying merch.
Where X is some thing that may or may not be what the the poster actually wants, but the temptation to own them by saying it already exists is too great.
I'm fine with advertising as a trade-off when a service is free but if I'm paying for a service why does that service have to become an ad network?
Is the only answer to making money in tech to get massive traffic so you can get 1% of people that actually click on an ad and buy something? What I can't fathom is the amount of money being spent on ads, surely it must be paying off.
You can definitely consider tracking and advertising as an extra cost of any service. You are obviously free to cancel services that are too expensive for you.
The answer to your second question is yes. How many newspapers do you think we would still have without digital advertising? Close to zero.
What people are willing to pay for and what is actually good for themselves and society are two different things. Advertising is a capitalist way to democratize attention.
I also sincerely hope everyone complaining about advertising is a hardcore socialist or communist. If not they are awfully hypocritical.
I'll happily build them a model which estimates it.
Heck, it could be even better, since your "mental" age based on your interests in movies could be more suitable for delivering ads then your actual age.
I feel like this is rather superfluous on Disney's side. If my account has watched Frozen 172 times, you should be able to figure out which ad will be effective on it.
I recently did a month of Disney+ when they sent me promo for first month for $2.99.
During that month I watched the Pixar movies Soul, Luca, and Turning Red (and rewatched Onward). I also watched the Disney movies Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto. And Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs. Oh, and also the latest Dr. Strange and Thor Marvel movies, plus the Loki series.
Are you seriously claiming that all that was garbage?
Isle of Dogs is great! Disney+ is hardly the only place you can watch it though, and a lot of the other original Disney programming feels like Marvel-driven padding. The latest Pixar stuff is pretty mediocre relative to what they were making a decade ago, and Disney's modern films are... sketchy.
If you get a kick out of it, then more power to ya. Disney even gives you a place to put your money where your mouth is. For my money though, there's a lot more entertainment value to be found elsewhere.
> The latest Pixar stuff is pretty mediocre relative to what they were making a decade ago
What they were making a decade ago was Cars 2 and Brave.
Brave was pretty good, but I'm having a hard time seeing it as better than Soul, Luca, or Turning Red. And I'm having an even harder time seeing that for Cars 2.
Haven't seen Turning Red yet, but I enjoyed Brave more than Soul or Luca by a country mile. Different strokes for different folks, I guess, but Pixar's best work feels well behind them now.
NGL, until the last sentence I thought you were going in a completely different direction with this comment. I haven't seen Isle of Dogs, but the rest of that sounds like garbage / kids' stuff.
The Owl House is one of the best modern western animated series available right now. Of course Disney cancelled it because "it didn't fit to the Disney brand". If you're into animated series, that is one not to miss. Yeah, I am too very surprised it was on Disney+...
The Star Wars shows are very bland and generic plots with Star Wars layered on top (at least the ones I’ve watched). They aren’t very good as shows if you aren’t instantly wowed just by the fact that they are in the SW universe.
it really is an amazing show. I hope it does very well. However I can forsee two groups; the first, who won't watch because "it's star wars and i'm not into star wars"; the second, "i like star wars but this show doesn't have any light sabers or jedis or the force - why would i watch it?? boring!"
Or, someone could be so burnt out on the dozens of new Star Wars offerings (representing hundreds of hours of wildly-varying quality video) that they've given up on it.
I'm not into SW and less into Marvel (I'm repulsed by ubiquitousness).
That said, I found Mandalorian, Boba Fett and Andor all enjoyable; I'm guessing because they stand pretty much alone.
Likewise, I dig Pennyworth and Legion. I was well into watching both before I realized they were Marvelesque. Less Marvel seems to be my favorite Marvel.
It's like the existence of 40+ year old Harry Potter fans; the ones who were already adults when the books were first published. Hard to explain unless you acknowledge that many people are simple.
(At least with Star Wars, nostalgia for something they got into during childhood is a plausible explanation for anybody under 60 or so. But even so, I'm surprised more people don't grow out of it.)
> It's like the existence of 40+ year old Harry Potter fans...Hard to explain unless you acknowledge that many people are simple.
That's a weird take. I read the books as an adult and they were genuinely entertaining. What's hard to explain about that? It's not as if books marketed to children are the only things I read, but I've read a lot of children's books as an adult that were delightful.
Why judge people as being simple? I hope you aren't afraid to try something that isn't marketed to your demographic out of fear that people will think the same of you. Most people aren't so weirdly judgey, and people afraid to step outside of the boundaries drawn for them by marketers are probably missing out on creative works they'd really enjoy.
Part of me wants to just lean in and claim to be a "105-year-old they/them", but I know that the vast majority of people would happily provide this information just to keep their service up. What a shame.
Hm. Recession is making us cutback on our streaming services, but which ones to keep and which ones to cancel? Thanks Disney for making the choice easy!
People buy status symbols not for their direct benefit, but to communicate with their environment. A brand doesn't have to influence those who buy but those who don't.
I'm so tired of my information being sold off to third parties in order to deliver ads.
I'm so tired of good, useful tools and services requiring a forfeit of my privacy in order to use them.
Does anyone else wish that they could just exist without being told to buy something every 15 waking minutes?