Futurama - Internet ads
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN uses it as a joke or reference whenever advertising intrudes into a new medium, since the show predicted it.
What it is
A short Futurama clip lampooning pervasive internet advertising, first aired in March 2000.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2017 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Cites BLKNSLVR · 2023-02 · on “The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web”
Google and Meta seem to have no idea what's going on within their own advertising networks. Similarly to all the stories (with two currently in the front page of HN, eBay and PayPal) about algorithms that are just insufficient for the range of realistic scenarios these companies must deal with on a regular basis. It's merely the equation of profit outweighing customer service. Admittedly, they're working on a scale that's difficult to comprehend, but that shouldn't absolve them of aiding and abetting criminal use of their systems. Google's and Meta's profit motives are the base cause of this continuing escalation of the ubiquity and user-hostility (to put it mildly) of internet advertising.