this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
1030 points (99.3% liked)
AssholeDesign
11057 readers
141 users here now
This is a community for designs specifically crafted to make the experience worse for the user. This can be due to greed, apathy, laziness or just downright scumbaggery.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's their purpose. Do you pay for websites or apps with ads? Do you get ads on paid websites or apps? (Yes i know there are exceptions)
If the savings are not for me then neither is this gas station.
No, their purpose is to increase shareholder/executive profits.
Yes, clearly. This is my point. If they had made it about saving money for the customer then it would be acceptable. They absolutely could have. But they didn't, so fuck them.
My point is ads have never been about saving the consumer money.
I get where you're coming from, and you're probably right in this instance, but I disagree with your absolutist "never" stance (insert/ignore star wars meme per preference.)
There are plenty of free ad-supported services out there, a classic example being Gmail. If the user was not getting anything of value from this "free" service they would not use it. So they ARE getting something for free because of the ads. The fact that El Goog is selling their data for profit, making the user the actual product and the advertisers the customers, is a separate matter, and I suspect, is what you're leaning in to.
I haven't used Gmail in years, are there ads in your inbox? I don't rember that.