Random Blogpost 2

I hate ads. I used to just buy whatever “premium” account I needed to avoid watching them but it has become ridiculous. There's now so many streaming services and subscriptions I need to buy just to get rid of some stupid ads. This had led me down a rabbit hole of technology to limit the amount of ads I see on a daily basis and take control of my viewing experience.

The most basic solution are ad-blockers. There are a couple ad-blocking solutions for desktops/laptops that can perfectly block YouTube ads but they have limited success for websites. As ad-blockers have become more prevalent, websites have started detecting them and requiring them to be disabled to view content. Many website are more ads than content and have a terrible viewing experience. Although there are solutions like Adguard, which is a DNS level ad-blocker, they are more involved to set up and do not block EVERY ad on streaming services or websites.

To truly remove the ads and stop paying subscriptions to view content, I started hosting a Plex server. Plex is an app/website that allows user to share any piece of their own personal media collection. Many users are able to setup a collection of apps to automatically download new content (whether it is legally obtained is the user’s problem) and share with their family and friends. It’s like making your own Netflix library with curated content. Best of all, there are no subscription and NO ADS! Setting up Plex is really simple and only requires a computer to host the server. A lot of users repurpose older unused computers to host the files as it can run on very basic hardware. It took me quite a while to build a server and setup all the necessary programs to have a fully automated eco-system, but now I have (legally obtained of course) a huge media library and have unsubscribed from many streaming services. 

Plex has been called out for making piracy easy, but they are simply a medium to allow easy access to content a user already has. This is an entire other topic so I will end this post here before I start rambling again.

Comments

  1. linh huynhApril 9, 2023 at 4:22 PM

    Hi Alexis, thank you for your post—it was very insightful and relatable. I also really hate ads. YouTube ads are the worst in my opinion. I used to encounter 2-minute unskippable ads like every 5 minutes of a video and I think that’s absolutely ridiculous. I now use an ad-blocker called Ublock Origin which works well for catching YouTube ads, but I don’t think it catches everything on other sites. It’s really cool that you started hosting a Plex server to remove ads though—kudos for taking matters into your own hands haha.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lieza FolkinApril 10, 2023 at 11:19 AM

    Hi Alexis,
    I definitely need to look into this solution. I actually found a "hack" a long time ago for iPhones: you could block ads via a parental control feature but they patched that up pretty quick.
    - Lieza

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thomas BApril 10, 2023 at 1:28 PM

    Hey Alexis,
    I can't say ads every bothered me as much as you, but I do appreciate efforts to stifle the annoying little clips/popups. Friends of mine have their own cultish library of shows and movies on Plex, so I'm looking forward to diving into this platform. Let's take back our right to free, distraction-less distractions!

    ReplyDelete

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