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I just had the first YouTube ad get through ublock, and of course it was a kamela Harris donation beg on a completely non-politics-related video.
Other people are reporting this happening even on gun videos and other conservative content. Has anyone here noticed it?
It seems like not only are they spending huge amounts of money on an ad blitz to legitimize her, google is helping by burning blocker exploits.
This is very interesting, any further discussion on them or details of the particular blocks they avoided working around until the Kamala blitz?
I feel like it should be trivial for google to bypass ublock on their own properties. They have access to ublock, they can just change how they are serving the ad until it succeeds. It should be a cat-and-mouse game where at least google can stay ahead for a couple of hours before ublock can release a new update.
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It does seem like kind of a strange choice to introduce her with a massive ad-blitz where she asks for money so prominently.
Shouldn't that come later? Isn't it weird to ask for money in an ad that costs lots and lots of money?
Just nit-picking.
The thinking is probably that if people donate, they’ll feel more invested in her campaign and will be more likely to keep supporting her in the future. It also just seems to be a Democrat thing. I’ve seen dozens if not hundreds of ads featuring Harris, Biden, Stacy Abrams, and the parents of a child who was killed in a school shooting. Every single one was a plea for money. In contrast, almost all of the Republican ads I’ve seen have been the usual “vote for me” or “my opponent is bad” type of ads.
Republicans use campaigns of daily texts and emails to their supporters instead.
I recently donated to Trump and the tone and quantity of their email and texts is concerning. If I were wishy-washy it might be enough to turn me off. I ended up unsubscribing. Here's the start of a recent email:
They send about six of these every day.
Those are for our older relatives who love getting emails because they're retired and might say 'well shit, I guess I can send another 20 bucks"
Most of the time you hear politicians touting how their average contribution is 20 bucks, that's from the same handful of people donating over and over again. There's something quite tragic about it all
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I get 4-5 of those, 2-3 Greg Abbott pac- with a considerably more disciplined tone-, a Glen Hagar(Texas state comptroller and very probably a senator in ‘26), and probably an RNC in an average day.
/u/NewCharlesInCharge
I haven't been a democrat for a decade but was in deep enough in back in the day I cannot 'unsubscribe' from everything, ever. Here are a few of the ones from the last few days:
Kamala Harris just SOUNDED THE ALARM: "We need to fight." 700% MATCH your Dem donation to flip the House:
PLEASE! Kamala Harris CAN defeat Trump. Top Dems are so confident they've unlocked a 700% MATCH!
URGENT: Will you sign our card THANKING President Biden for his incredible career of public service?
I have never signed up for GOP stuff (because I don't want the same thing happening lol) but first thought is that this seems much better? More for 'normal people,' at the very least
Definitely less crazy sounding, but still just as unhinged as any other "URGENT PLEASE SOUND THE ALARM" fundraising campaign that doesn't actually need your $7. Still less unhinged than Wikipedia's needless begging though.
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On this website you need to use "@" rather than "u/".
Thanks man, appreciate it
( @NewCharlesInCharge I shared some dem fundraising messages and attempted to tag you in the post to which @ToaKraka is replying)
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I think everyone on this site, me included, is way too online either as a leftoid or rightoid to really intuit how ads like this play to grass touching normies. In my online bubble there is a ton of grassroots excitement and optimism about Kamala. Joyful memeing and shitposting like in the early Trump days.
In other replies, people, presumably in the other side’s online bubble, see the opposite.
I don’t think anyone like us, poisoned by our respective algorithms, can resolve the discrepancy through intuition and anecdotes.
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I've also gotten a few of these ActBlue ads. They seem extremely low quality. This is not conservative content though, unless walkthroughs on how to install a car seat are now conservative...which...I guess?
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It's been annoying, but also interesting.
First, it's surprisingly low-context. Kamela doesn't identify herself by name, her association with the campaign, and there's no time reference. More to the point, it doesn't mention Joe Biden, or his resignation.
This is interesting, because the nature of the timing (it started within 24 hours of Biden's resignation) is a clear indication that it was being planned / scheduled as part of the post-resignation media push that was being planned even before it succeeded, but that the video was being created in a plausibly deniable way, which could still have been used even if Biden didn't resign. In other words, a dual-use product that wouldn't necessarily have raised any alarms within the Biden Camp if they'd been internally linked, as- hey- this is part of her job.
But on the flip side, the videos are also relatively law quality in terms of production effects, which suggests haste. There's the sub-par audio quality, minimal (any?) audio background to stir emotions to the audience like most fear-themed electioneering despite that being the crux of the video openings (existential threat to democracy narrative). It's basically just... Kamela, sitting down and talking, but not self-identifying. The lack of polish could be indicative that they wanted this to be a lower-profile recording, and not go through the sort of review / focus testing that would lead to larger internal awareness before running, which fits the pre-planned release narrative.
The existential threat to democracy theme is notable, as the Democrats have largely dropped that since the assassination attempt. It's coming back in some ways, but had been much lower in priority/prominence than before. That suggests this fundraising video was possibly made before the assassination attempt- so more than a week ago- when the narrative was more in vogue, but that they didn't have the time / opportunity / desire to re-record. Which would make sense as the last week before resignation had Kamela under scrutiny by the Biden Camp, watching for disloyalty, when her ascent relied on other actors (coordinated by Party VIPs) acting without her in direct coordination.
The mass distribution is probably not accidental either. The Democratic Party is quite capable of tailoring messaging when it wants to, but this has been a full-blast to unrelated topic-media, including topics typically associated with the politically apathetic/unfamiliar who normally aren't targetted precisely because of said apathy and lack of return on monetary investment. That suggests that a non-monetary investment may be part of the goal, and one of the potential goals for such sudden pervasiveness is to raise the profile of Kamela herself to people who frankly likely wouldn't know or recognize her. Even without directly identifying her, it's putting her face and her voice in their mind to build familiarity when they do see her on national media.
That was my thought too: it's a legitimation drive to establish her in the general public mind ahead of attacks, blunders, etc.
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Why is she asking for money instead of using her ads to tell me why I should vote for her?
I continue to be stunned at how bad Democratic messaging is. They don’t say, “Donald Trump tried to steal your vote, and he’ll do it again if he gets the chance,” they say, “Donald Trump is a threat to ‘democracy.’” Things are actually pretty good in America right now. Why are they running on abstract concepts instead of things people care about?
Are they, though? I agree that according to metrics like GDP per capita or unemployment, things are rosy.
But the introduction of smart phones and other digital content has taken our collective mental health to all-time lows. I just read "Boys in the Boat", which was set during the peak of the Great Depression. College students then had a standard of living that was worse than the average Burger King worker today. But, can we really argue that today's 20 year old is better off than the equivalent in 1936? I'm not sure.
Economists puzzle over the "Vibecession", not realizing that more money fails to fill the giant gaping hole in people's hearts. The average person spends like 12 hours a day behind a screen and has 2 friends. Things are fucked, and more money can't solve it.
It's not the economy, stupid.
Unfortunately, people on the Motte tend to live in the same economic bubbles that most Silicon Valley liberals do. For the lower classes things are not ok. They are barely hanging on. For most of America, this “greatest economy ever” and “vibesecession” stuff is a load of obvious horse shit.
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Part of the problem with using GDP and U3 unemployment numbers is that it really doesn’t capture the truth of the economy. If you’re not rich enough to be upper class, the economy isn’t all that great for you. Grocery and gas prices have gone up by a lot since 2020, the pay that you take home hasn’t kept pace. We have a crisis in the housing market where most people under 40 have no chance of buying a house (which for most people is the only way to build generational wealth), a student loan crisis in which has people pay 20% of their salary for decades for a college degree that isn’t necessarily worth it, and so if you’re in a position where you need to get on the economic ladder, it’s a lot harder to get started.
The vibesession isn’t really vibes. It’s an anomaly in the data collection which doesn’t capture the economy of the prole classes who are really struggling to maintain what used to be a reasonable lifestyle. I think the gap between the reported measurements and the real economy are deliberate attempts to hide a bad economy from the public.
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A point could be made that the enormous, vast level of wealth that Americans possess hasn't made them happier (though I feel like Americans are happier and less neurotic than Europeans), but I don't think Trump is making that point or really has solid ideas to change that.
You have to specify which Europeans, but having been all over Northern Europe for the past twosomething years after a long stint in the US, this really does not align with my impressions. Sure, the Germans (and to a lesser degree everyone else) have a contingent that has mentally spiralled into climate doomsdayism, but those are still way outnumbered by tribalism doomers in the US (just look at this forum!) and on average I just see more random people having more friends, hanging out with them more, and more of the sort of existential slack that makes people take 2-month vacations, backpack or go back to university for some wacky self-actualisation degree at age 50, while typical Americans are desperately hustling to keep/advance their social standing, make rent and fill their array of anxiolytic prescriptions.
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Because the video isn't based around shaping the general election and persuading the general electorate, it's about security the Democratic convention and indirectly introducing her to a largely unaware broader audience. General election stuff comes later.
Putting her face on the airwaves is putting her face and voice on the Democratic brand in lieu of Biden's. It's basically just planting a flag on the airwaves of Democratic political media, and doing so in such volume / pervasiveness that no one else can challenge. An informational show of force to deter anyone from trying to mount a meaningful challenge or threaten a contested convention.
The role for the broader (non-Democratic) audience is indirect association, a sort of 'Generic Democrat' introduction. Note that the videos don't mention or identify her name, but the voice and face are clear, and without the ominous music or slick visual effects a lot of negative/condemnation electioneering videos may do. This serves to make Kamela more familiar to less-politically-tuned-in audiences, but without directly associating herself with, well Biden. This sort of hazy-ambiguity is a way to deliver a 'generic Democrat' introduction, which is likely to be Harris's strategy for countering Trump vis-a-vis Biden's 2020 'you know me' familiarity.
(This is probably a better strategy, as the reported polling for Democrats show that generic democrat outperforms named democrats, and Harris in particular has a bad reputation with people/voters who pay much attention to her specifically.)
It's curious, then, that she doesn't introduce herself in any of the ads I've seen. In fact, she just immediately brings up Trump, literally in the first sentence. She introduces herself only as the anti-Trump ticket.
When I say she's providing a generic Democratic introduction, I don't mean she's providing an introduction that is generic, I'm trying to indicate that she's introducing herself as [Generic Democrat]. [Generic Democrat] is a concept / identity that regularly polls higher than [Specific Named Democrat], and so a stronger association to the party / position than to the identity as a person actually favors her in the immediate term of presenting herself as the new candidate.
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Because it works. “Donald Trump will end democracy” or “Donald Trump will make woman’s healthcare illegal” is something I hear almost verbatim from my lib friends.
I don't think that means it "works". It's very typical that it's relatively easy to convince your own committed partisans to embrace a particular framing and to get them to repeat it. But that has little bearing on how appealing or convincing it is to people who aren't already rusted on.
Getting "proper" swing voters is one thing, but I get the impression that there is a decent number of people who disliked Trump enough to be somewhat receptive to this rhetoric, while also thinking Biden is sufficiently senile that they didn't want to vote for him either.
Also, Harris has a lot of unpopular policy positions, so just focusing on how bad Trump is and otherwise staying as "generic democrat" as possible might genuinely be the most EV-positive for her overall.
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Those are already the true believers.
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Advertisers and ads are in a constant arms race.
It's not notable that advertisers briefly got the upper hand, and that one of the biggest spenders happened to be the ad that played.
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I read an article a few weeks ago saying they wanted to switch to server side ads maybe? The gist was it was going to break ad block. Unfortunate.
It's still the only one that's gotten through my blocking, nothing else seems to have changed. Very strange, I'll update if any other ad gets through.
curious, in my neck of the woods they already rolled the server side ads and while uBlock fails to block 1 in 20 ads, a simple refresh of the page gets me to the video immediately.
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This was Google executive's reaction last time Trump won. Of course they'd pull out all the stops.
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Kamala is burning through cash, and it seems like this is pretty common for democrats(republicans target their ads a lot better). I'm pretty sure she's just spamming so many ads you're bound to see one.
Re. What dean said, I think this is probably a pretty good use of cash (which Dems essentially have infinite amounts of because most of the spending goes right back to their allies).
They need to get over both "kamela who?" and people's vague memories of not liking her. They need people to see her sitting down behind a desk girlboss presidenting just like all the lady presidents on Netflix.
There's already a huuuge propaganda campaign for "wise vaguely-brown lib woman politician with superpowers" that Dems didn't even have to pay for, so they just need to tap into that.
Let Hollywood make all the impossible promises about her competence so the campaign doesn't have to.
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I think that "some ads got through ublock" is not really sufficient evidence for the claim that Google is trying to help Harris here. Google has been quite vocal about their disdain for ad blocking, and their attempts to get around it, for a long time now. Occam's razor suggests that without further evidence, it's probably just that the timing of their latest attempts to get around ad blockers happens to line up with the election campaigning.
If I were going to debut a new advance in ad blocking workarounds I'd probably try and debut it a month or two before the election in order to maximally benefit from the proverbial firehoses of money that are going to be coursing through, personally.
unblockable ads will be a firehose level revenue surge either way, imagine being in sales for google adsense and being able to pitch your product as one of the only unblockable ad spaces on the internet, its gonna print money
I always thought being in sales for Google would be easymode but I’ve since met a number of people who’ve said it’s pretty miserable even relative to the rest of that field.
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Unless, of course, your users leave because they are sick of the ads.
I'm not sure there really is a viable alternative currently. Youtube marketshare as a "Media Players And Streaming Platforms category" is at 97.67%. If you look at streaming or short form videos there are competitors, but for long form videos there still isn't any real competition. YouTube rolled out a horrendous UI update but rather than quitting I just found some solutions online via some uBlock filters and Tampermonkey scripts to mostly revert it back to an older UI. I don't know where else I would view videos!
Personally, I would never live without AdBlock, but most people actually don't even bother.
According to one source, 32.8% of people globally use some kind of AdBlock.
Some more stats for US users:
One could consider how much time people that use AdBlock spend online relative to those that don't, but I've met plenty of people that spend hours on their phone, and they don't use any form of AdBlock.
Granted he's not quite there yet, but I think this is an overarching goal for Elon with Twitter -- which does seem achievable if YT becomes sufficiently unfriendly. (although it remains to be seen how he would monetize it without resorting to ads himself -- or further strongarming on paid subscriptions I guess)
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They won't be shedding many tears if it's the portion of the user base who would be using ad block anyway.
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And assuming that it works consistently and can't be countered by an adblock adaptment.
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