u/Ok-Point-1656

Al agents are starting to browse websites, compare products, and even shop for us.

But if I ask an agent to check 20 websites and just give me the best three options, I never actually visit those sites or see any of their ads.

So what happens to online advertising if more of our browsing starts working like this?

Do websites start advertising to Al agents instead of people? Do brands pay to get recommended by agents?

Kinda weird to think about who ads are even for if nobody is actually looking at the page.

Not necessarily Instagram, YouTube, or the obvious ones.

I mean those random apps you downloaded for one specific reason and somehow ended up using almost every day.

For me, it's probably an app that tracks where I've been. Weirdly, it's actually made me walk more and encouraged me to explore places around me that I haven't been to yet.

What's yours? And what does it do that keeps you coming back to it?

Not necessarily Instagram, YouTube, or the obvious ones.

I mean those random apps you downloaded for one specific reason and somehow ended up using almost every day.

For me, it's probably an app that tracks where I've been. Weirdly, it's actually made me walk more and encouraged me to explore places around me that I haven't been to yet.

What's yours? And what does it do that keeps you coming back to it?

Browser ads are pretty easy to deal with these days(with ublock+firefox), but in-app ads still feel like a completely different problem.

You have apps like YouTube, music apps, and others where the ads seem to come from the same place as the actual content, so they just slip through.

On iPhone especially, it feels like the options are pretty limited compared to browser blocking.

What are you guys actually using for in-app ads these days? Is there any setup that works consistently? Thank you.

I feel like paying for something used to mean you were done paying for it.

Now you buy a smart TV and get ads on the home screen. Pay for a streaming service and still get commercials. Buy an app and suddenly there's a new subscription to remove ads or unlock features that used to be included.

At this point, it feels like companies don't just want you to buy their products. They want to keep making money off you every time you use them.

What's something you paid for that later started showing you ads? Thank you.

Maybe this is just confirmation bias, but I swear I've had this happen more than once.

You download a VPN, start the free trial, test a few locations and everything feels surprisingly fast.Streaming works, pages load normally, and you think "okay, this is actually pretty good."

Then you pay for a longer subscription and a few weeks later it somehow feels slower and less consistent. Suddenly you're switching servers trying to find one that isn't overloaded.

I know there are a ton of things that can affect VPN speed like server load, location, time of day, routing, and protocol, so I'm not saying companies are intentionally doing this.

But has anyone actually tested the same VPN during the trial and again after paying? Did the performance stay roughly the same, or did you notice a real difference?

Maybe this is just confirmation bias, but I swear I've had this happen more than once.

You download a VPN, start the free trial, test a few locations and everything feels surprisingly fast. Streaming works, pages load normally, and you think "okay, this is actually pretty good."

Then you pay for a longer subscription and a few weeks later it somehow feels slower and less consistent. Suddenly you're switching servers trying to find one that isn't overloaded.

I know there are a ton of things that can affect VPN speed like server load, location, time of day, routing, and protocol, so I'm not saying companies are intentionally doing this.

But has anyone actually tested the same VPN during the trial and again after paying? Did the performance stay roughly the same, or did you notice a real difference?

I get why a free service needs ads. But paying a monthly subscription and still being shown ads feels like we somehow ended up with the worst of both worlds.

It also feels like the goalposts keep moving. First streaming was the cheaper, ad-free alternative to cable. Then prices went up, ads came back, and now you have to pay even more just to remove them.

At what point do you just stop subscribing? Are cheaper ad-supported plans still worth it to you, or would you rather cancel altogether than pay and still be advertised to?

Hope this is the right subreddit to discuss this topic.

I totally get ads on a free service. They have to make money somehow. But if I'm already paying every month and still getting hit with multiple ad breaks in one episode, that starts to get annoying Some streaming services are starting to feel a lot like regular TV again.

What's your limit? One or two short ads per episode? A few minutes per hour? Or if you're paying for the service, should there be no ads at all?

Most people probably install an ad blocker because they're tired of seeing ads everywhere, but blocking trackers might actually be the more useful part. Even if I didn't mind seeing a few ads, I'd still rather not have a bunch of trackers following me across different sites.

What about you? If ads became less annoying tomorrow, would you still keep your ad blocker just for the privacy side of it?

I feel like online privacy gets boiled down to "hide your IP" a lot, but websites can still track you in plenty of other ways through cookies, fingerprinting, trackers, and logged-in accounts.

If you had to prioritize one, would you rather keep your real IP private or focus on blocking as much tracking as possible? Which one actually makes a bigger difference in your day-to-day browsing?

Privacy tools (ya, VPN)always seem to come with some kind of tradeoff, and speed is usually one of them.

A small slowdown probably doesn't matter for normal browsing, but once streaming starts buffering or downloads take twice as long, it gets annoying pretty fast.

At what point do you stop thinking "this is the price of privacy" and just turn it off? Would you accept losing 10%, 30%, even half your speed if you felt the connection was actually more private?

Privacy tools (ye, VPN)always seem to come with some kind of tradeoff, and speed is usually one of them.

A small slowdown probably doesn't matter for normal browsing, but once streaming starts buffering or downloads take twice as long, it gets annoying pretty fast.

At what point do you stop thinking "this is the price of privacy" and just turn it off? Would you accept losing 10%, 30%, even half your speed if you felt the connection was actually more private?

I keep seeing people say a VPN should basically stay on all the time, but is that actually how most people use one?

Seems like there are plenty of times when having it on just makes things more annoying, like random sites acting weird or apps not loading properly.

Do you just leave yours running and forget about it, or switch it on and off depending on what you're doing?

I keep seeing people say a VPN should basically stay on all the time, but is that actually how most people use one?

Seems like there are plenty of times when having it on just makes things more annoying, like random sites acting weird or apps not loading properly.

Do you just leave yours running and forget about it, or switch it on and off depending on what you're doing?

I keep seeing people say a VPN should basically stay on all the time, but is that actually how most people use one?

Seems like there are plenty of times when having it on just makes things more annoying, like random sites acting weird or apps not loading properly.

Do you just leave yours running and forget about it, or switch it on and off depending on what you're doing?

I was thinking about this after seeing some recent discussion about VPN apps having trackers built in.

We use VPNs because we don't want our ISP or random websites seeing everything we do, but at the same time we're basically sending all that traffic through another company instead.

Even if they say "no logs," how much do you actually trust that? Do you look into who owns the VPN, how they make money, audits, privacy policies, etc., or do you just pick a well-known provider and assume it's fine?

I was thinking about this after seeing some recent discussion about VPN apps having trackers built in.

We use VPNs because we don't want our ISP or random websites seeing everything we do, but at the same time we're basically sending all that traffic through another company instead.

Even if they say "no logs," how much do you actually trust that? Do you look into who owns the VPN, how they make money, audits, privacy policies, etc., or do you just pick a well-known provider and assume it's fine?

Anyone else noticing this lately? Feels like YouTube is getting way better at catching ad blockers.

Something works fine for a while and then suddenly I'm getting warnings, videos not loading, or just weird playback issues. Kinda getting annoying having to keep switching things around. What are you guys using now? Anything still working reliably?

Curious how people are actually using split tunneling day to day.

Do you mostly use it for streaming, gaming, banking, certain apps, or something else? What do you normally send through the VPN and what do you leave on your regular connection?

Would be interesting to hear some real use cases.