Got this notification when I opened Chrome when coming back to my desk after lunch.
“We changed our privacy settings to allow us to snoop on what you’re looking at and shove you ads accordingly. Feel free to opt out, but we’ll probably opt you back in when you aren’t paying attention.”
I’m always a bit amused when these sites and apps say things like, “If you turn off ad personalization, the ads you see won’t be as useful to you.”
My dude, I don’t think I’ve ever willingly clicked on an ad in my entire life. “Personalizing” them won’t change that.
Even if any of these companies were any good at ad targeting, I wouldn’t want “personalized” ads anyway cuz I’d just spend more money.
Ads work on the general population or else these companies would stop paying for them.
I don’t think I’ve ever willingly clicked on an ad in my entire life
Same here and I’ve certainly never purchased anything through an ad. You’d think there’d be some advantage for advertising networks to identify people (there are dozens of us!) who never click on ads and refrain from serving any to them - and use this as a selling point for ad buyers so that their expenditures are not wasted.
Just because you don’t click on an ad doesn’t mean it didn’t work though. If you see an ad for Coke you may not click on it to order a case of Coke online right away, but when you go out to lunch maybe you’ll fill your cup with Coke.
I mention food ads because I feel they are particularly effective for this type of behavior. You don’t need to click on a food ad, but I know I’ve had a craving for a certain restaurant or food from seeing it mentioned online (whether an ad or just a comment/post) and then gone to get that food for dinner.
Of course, this type of ad result is very difficult to track.
it’s not about your clicks, it’s to influence you, it can influence people in multiple degree, maybe next type when you go buy something think about it
Only did it once. The Rest EverCool comforter ad I kept seeing. Looked up a bunch of reviews and as someone who is a very hot sleeper. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s the softest coolest blanket I’ve ever felt. Every square inch is as cool as the other side of the pillow.
Upvoted for saying the phrase “as cool as the other side of the pillow”. Heard that once when someone was talking about a sports commentator and haven’t forgotten it in probably 35 years at least.
ESPN’s Stuart Scott used this as his catchphrase starting in the mid-'90s, so not quite 35 years (but damn close). Like all ESPN catchphrases, it was clever and funny the first time, not so much the next 5000 times.
I remember it from Billy and Mandy. But it’s a fun saying.
Basically the only times I click on ads is when I’m searching for something and the search engine I’m using has paid ads for the thing I’m searching for at the top.
Beyond that I can’t think of any times I’ve ever clicked on an ad intentionally.
Use Firefox
This is why I use Linux at home, along with TOR and a VPN. I’m not doing anything other than looking up woodworking and camping stuff, but fuck all ya’ll for being nosy.
Literally Ron Swanson
My dude. All the feels right here.
What’s the benefit of Tor and a VPN? Isn’t a VPN sufficient?
Doubly paranoid, doubly protected. Lol.
Ironically enough, using a VPN makes TOR protection weaker
Firefox ftw
Just want to point out that Firefox has sponsored links, sponsored articles, and Mozilla ads that randomly pop up. Is it way better than Chrome and anything Google? Absolutely, by miles and miles. Is it completely innocent in the ad game? No.
I use LibreWolf. It’s a Firefox fork with enhanced privacy and it gets rid of the built in adware. Combine with uBlock Origin for an ad-free experience.
I just use ublock with Firefox, I’m fine with the baked in ads on Firefox I don’t mind supporting them. Considering what the other option is, I want to support them.
This is why I use Firefox
Plain Jane Firefox ain’t any better than Chrome. Just putting your info in a different database.
Many friends of mine are like saying why would i care i’d rather see ads that are relevant than ones that arent. Like dude i dont want ads at all and i dont want my data to be used to influence my buying behavior.
I don’t care if I have to see unobtrusive ads (not overlays, not popups, not unskippable videos) ads help keep many web services free, sometimes I even find it helpful when ads are relevant to my recent searches or the page I am looking at. But having companies build up profiles about me and then share that between themselves is bullshit, that kind of behavior would be treated as stalking if done by an individual, why is it ok for a business?
While this is an understandable desire my question is as follow:
If you don’t want ads, and don’t want to pay for every service, how’s all the internet system supposed to be sustainable on the long run? How should things be financed?
Honestly that’s not our problem to solve. If we disagree with a business model we can choose not to use it, the onus isn’t on us to find another one for the business.
If your product isn’t worth paying for that’s a you problem and if your business goes under because it wasn’t sustainable that’s also a you problem.
Is pretty likely that the business offered nothing new or innovative at a price people would part with their money for and just because you want to start a competing business in a market means nothing.
Competition is great but no business is entitled to a piece of the market solely because they want to exist. There’s no point being a carbon copy of an existing service if you expect people to pay when your offering already exists somewhere else and if you want people to pay your business instead of another you need to improve something or create something of benefit for them to at a price point both sides can work with.
You’re absolutely right, but this is a different case I think: It’s freerider problem, people WANT to use internet services, want to use social and so on, the problem is, if possible, they don’t want to pay for it. In the scenario where we make ads completely illegal, companies will look for other ways to monetize the service, because a system which is not in break even on the long term is cursed to bankruptcy.
People want to watch Netflix, but without paying, that means that if everyone do like that, Netflix will find other ways of monetization. That’s why games became full of microtransanction and always online stuff, for example. That’s what made ads popular in the first place, don’t want to pay? No problem, here’s a free sites with ads. should socials be closed community where you can access only paying, like pay tv? Because even right now removing ads on Reddit or YouTube paying is possible.
Even Lemmy growth at a certain point will incur in this, because a platform can’t hold itself on 2 unpaid developers and free labor of volunteers who pay for server costs too.
Would we better off without these sites if we’re not willing to pay for them? Maybe yes. But what certain is that without financial stability a project can’t go far. The problem is both of the producer of the producer, sure, but also its users should wonder how much they want the platform, because it will evolve accordingly.
Honest answer: by op’s friends!
Most people don’t mind the parasites? Great! Let those who wanna be part of the system subsidise those of us in the margins who don’t.
We already paid for the Internet though.
You pay for internet connection, not internet content.
Services don’t get a penny out of what you pay your ISP
Why don’t businesses do away with free and go to a completely paid model?
Let’s continue on this path of thinking: Customers already pay using their data. So if you want to show ads you have to pay customers since you are scrapping their data?
Wonderful, my day is complete. Thank you Alphabet for providing me a choice in which flavor of dystopian nightmare I’d prefer.
They are good times indeed… Good times…
“More useful ads” Well the best ads is no ads.
You should swap to something else. Anything else, tho ideally something that actually respects your privacy like Firefox. If more people did, maybe WEI would not be on the horizon.
Fuck google
“Give us your preference data to prevent your preference data from being used in advertising.”
Why are you using chrome if you care about things like this?
I’m poor and I hate stupid bullshit. The only way to personalize ads for me is to make them go away.
Why tho? Just block ads at all. They just want to be “friendly” when the web drm changes hit
> Privacy
> Chrome
Yeah…
