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.
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Used to think otherwise, that I was immune to the phenomenon that you’re describing. But then the other day I realised my shoes were hurting my feet. I was seriously considering buying shoe inserts (if that’s their English name), even had the brand in mind, until I realised what was happening.
I’ve seen ads for this brand on tv like a decade ago. Before that, I honestly had no clue such things existed, I’d seen them in a store like, twice. Never seen anything related to them ever since. Literally forgot about them until I felt the slightest urge to buy them. I was really taken aback when I realised what had happened in my “advertising-immune” mind
It isn’t one or the other. They’re trying to both persuade you and develop brand awareness. But they’ll settle for brand awareness.
Fuckin love pink ladies
I used to sometimes. When there was a simple, clean ad for something I was interested in, I would click through.
Mind you, this was in an era when the internet amounted to strings and cans because I’m a fucking dinosaur. Since then, ads first went obnoxious and loud, then they got plastered everywhere, then they started being invasive.
Fuck ads at this point. There’s nothing good in them for us at all.
In a way I kind of miss the old banner ads. Smack the monkey and win $1,000,000 or whatever it was. I swear I hit that monkey so many times.
Now I can’t even read a page without pop up after pop up on top of the embedded ads in between every two sentence paragraph.
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
Ads work on the general population or else these companies would stop paying for them.
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.
but but but but you’d get something good for it! You would never have missed it, but maybe you just didn’t know you wanted it? Come on, I’m sure consuming shit that will make you happy twice for two minutes each (once when clicking buy, once when getting and opening the package) will fill that hole in your soul! Spending money on stuff you don’t actually need is good!
(That was sarcasm, if it wasn’t clear enough.)
True. The only personalized ads I ever receive are for products I literally just purchased.
I don’t know how there’s so much money in the ad space. It just seems like a huge waste.
A lot of times people will visit a website for a product they’re interested in and may not immediately pull the trigger. When they see it later 3-4 more times, the chances of conversion are way higher.
Google probably doesn’t really know if you purchased the product, and may not care, as you may want to purchase another.
I’m sure it’s like gambling and microtransactions where the vast majority of income is derived from a small minority of people who aren’t bothered by the onslaught of ads shoved down their throats.
The only time I click on ads are on websites that actually have people buying ad space on websites that make sense.
Like… Fountain pen ads on fountain pen blogs. Or Linux product ads on Linux learning websites.
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.
I used to click on ads back in the day when you’d get paid for it (I was a poor school student, don’t judge. :p).
I see an ad and I zone out or ignore it.
you are not immune to propaganda
I’m not sure this applies to stuff like ads. Like, if you always prioritize foss and ethically sourced products, ads can’t really persuade you to buy certain things. And you make those decisions by doing research and buying local, or even better, making as much stuff as you can yourself.
Targeted ads are designed to make you feel inadequate or incomplete. Even if it doesn’t convince you to buy the product advertised, it can still shift your expectations and world-view just by normalizing a certain type of consumption (or attitude, or media, ect).
Just because you don’t spend money, doesn’t mean ads aren’t still subtly manipulating your expectations.
It is a trillion dollar a year industry for a reason.
It also just lets you know the product exists or reminds you of it while strengthening certain associations in your brain. I know I can’t think of VPNs without thinking of NordVPN and if I were to decide I want one, I don’t think there would be a chance it didn’t at least occur to me to maybe look into
And you almost certainly leave thinking you aren’t being careful enough with your privacy and you should look into getting a VPN. Works the same with any ad, or even a promoted social media post. “You’ll like this thing because of how we know you think of yourself.”
It’s pernicious and erodes everyone’s ability to be happy and content, no matter how resistant you think you are to advertisements.
Or you could just hate shopping. I hate it all, online, in store. I end up doing way too much research and it’s too mentally taxing. I buy a phone like once every 7 years because the stress of just shopping for it is annoying, not to mention the actual process of switching.
I really need to buy clothes again… but that’s like my least favorite thing to shop for…
Oh, I totally get you! I hate shopping as well, even though it’s a necessity. In fact, I dislike it so much that I’m actually learning to make my own clothes. I realise this isn’t for everyone and that not everybody has the time, but I’m sure there’s stuff that you can do on your own that you may actually enjoy!
Have a nice day!
That’s cool! I am guessing you’re female? Women’s clothes seems to be easier to make in my experience. Making a pair of men’s pants was a challenge, the materials were expensive and they didn’t even come out that great, and I almost never wear them.
A sundress is like 10x easier to sew than a pair of pants.
I see an ad and wonder why my ad blocker failed.
I’ve never, not once in my life, saw an ad which managed to make me buy something.
It doesn’t matter what it’s selling. The fact that it’s disrupting whatever I’m doing or making my experience worst makes me refuse to buy whatever it’s selling, and it doesn’t matter how personalized it’ll get. I will never be influenced to buy something just because I saw it on an ad.
This feature will literally do nothing for me. I’ll still block ads, or if they are unblockable for any reason, I’ll just ignore them until they’re done.
true, but remember the ads are mostly subconcious. you often wont think about buying something after seeing an ad, but in the back of your mind you might have a slightly better opinion, or mental association to the brand. so next time you go to buy a product your more likely to remember that brand and buy from them. as much as i would like to believe otherwise, no-one is immune to propaganda
If you’re the type of person who buys new things often then yes. But if you buy the exact same stuff that you’ve been purchasing for 30 years, ads aren’t going to impact you today.
Or if you’re ADHD and need to do a ton of research for a week on stupid little purchases before you commit to something.
Don’t @ me
fair
If only it worked the other way as well:
Doctor: “Your blood cholesterol is abysmal. Your blood is more similar to maple syrup than blood.”
Subliminal advertising: “Mmm, Coca-Cola means DEATH.”
It’s mostly unsettling and a bit creepy. Like you’ll be doing something during the day and then later you’ll see it on Google. Like someone’s watching you.
At this point I assume everything about me is known to all the corporations. When stuff like that happens, I just go “yeah that tracks”.
I’m just like this too, but you have to remember that for every person like us, there’s a person like my wife, who’s buying garbage that she sees on instagram ads nearly every week.
I beg her to at least search for the item and buy it directly so that the website she’s on isn’t getting revenue for ads. It’s petty but makes me feel better.
From where comes the idea that personalised ads are good? I hate this timeline.
Google is a large company, they need to pay their employees and server. It’s pretty entitled of you to expect them to work for free. /s
I read this everywhere these days. Shilling has become culture.
No I understand why websites show ads. I don’t understand why whenever I disable personal ads, I get a message saying “Are you really sure? If you disable this you won’t see your favourite ads anymore and only see ads for things you probably don’t want to buy. That’d be awful wouldn’t it?” and expect me to change my mind because that’s definitely not why I wanted to disable it in the first place.
They act as if people like to see ads because then they can buy stuff they think they want/need. And I’m getting afraid that’s actually true for a lot of people too.
I dunno how other people operate but I never once bought something off an ad.
me neither I think? but it probably still subconsciously affects me
Does it? Can you even remember a product that you bought after looking at its ad?
Games probably. If I’m browsing the store looking for new games, any games I’ve seen in ads will probably pique my interest more because I recognise them.
Same with food, movies, so many other things.
Let me take a look at what I buy. No, everything has been reviewed, thought upon (cos I ain’t rich) and then maybe bought.
Frightening, isn’t it?
They frame it that way to reenforce the notion that ads are an inevitable thing.
As Netflix and producers of toilet paper know well, people in the end are happy to pay for things they like or need. But Google and its like have discovered that instead of selling stuff to me, it’s much more profitable to sell me to others.
No thanks.
God I wish the days would catch on in america, you just don’t get the same level of clean with toilet paper, seriously I used to have problems with an itchy anus, doctor always said it was normal. Even when it was red from wiping too much just to try to get rid of the itch.
Switching to a bidet cured everything.
If I start to itch back there I just use the bidet, clears it right up
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I support indie/small groups of devs who want some money for their work.
It’s just the rich companies I despise.
Sadly it hasn’t become culture, that was a thing even back in the days when the internet was just gamefaqs, new grounds, and whatever Message Board your mates went to.
From the fact that they can sell them at a higher price.
They are good on paper
But not in execution
If you’re going to show me ads thag I give a shit about they may be less annoying.
We wouldn’t have gotten this far if they weren’t good in execution. Ads may not work on you or many people in this thread, but it works on enough people to make this worth it.
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
Ok then hear me out. Let free content supported by ads die out. Make everything paid.
This is practically impossible because piracy is easy and convenient.
Ads emerged right because they are a simpler way of monetization
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?
Unfortunately, a majority of the population like the ad based free service model, so here we are.
It’s funny how small incremental changes over the years felt like nothing big was happening and then at some point we all woke up to a world where the largest advertising firm in the world basically is the internet for the vast majority of people. Everyone uses chrome and rarely types in a web address, they just type the name of the thing into Google and trust mommy to show them what’s appropriate. They’ve back doored the entire population into basically what AOL was trying to be 20 years ago.
“we are going to help protect your privacy” from WHO Google? Is it from you? Because it seems like we need protection from you most of all. Constantly being gaslit by mega-corporations is the new American dream. It’s okay because they love us, deep down, and we know that even though they don’t show it.
It’s funny how small incremental changes over the years felt like nothing big was happening and then at some point we all woke up to a world where the largest advertising firm in the world basically is the internet for the vast majority of people.
In a microcosm of the same kind of creeping normalcy, Bethesda charging a few bucks for horse armor in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was once a reach too far, until it wasn’t.
Now we have Star Citizen levels of grifting as well as ActiBlizz “buy a currency to get a currency that is leveraged as currency to get credit toward a currency in a battle pass” layer cake grifting.
EDIT: Typo’d on the sequel count.
Can you expand on the last paragraph? I am not a gamer, so although I understand most words in that sentence I really have no idea what you’re referring to.
Well, to put it simply there are these things called microtransactions, basically you want items in a game or extra lives or something like that, you can pay for them instead of earning them, sometimes they make it so that certain items can only be paid for, worse they make it so that certain items can only be paid for and will only be offered for a limited amount of time. If you miss the window to buy them now you will never be given another chance. Normally this is something cool like a tie in with a new movie that came out or something of that nature. Fortnite does this a lot, hope you got those Marvel characters when they were offering them cuz you’re not getting them now.
But as if that wasn’t bad enough there was another layer to it, one of the things you can buy with microtransactions, using real money, is a form of money that can only be used in the game.
So, what you give them a dollar, they give you 100 coins, and there isn’t even exchange rate? Of course not
There are various bundles where you can buy the premium currency as it is often called. Typically the more expensive bundles give more, and it’s not tiered properly, so let’s say $5 gives you 800 coins, but $10 gives you 2,000 coins, it’s to goad you and to always buying the higher amount, even if you only want that one item.
But it can get worse, they can set the prices so that you can just barely afford the item you want with that $10 tier, so the next year is 5000 coins for $20. And with that you can get enough coins to buy the item you want and have just a little left over, but not enough for you to do anything with unless you buy a lot of coins to supplement that amount, which can trick you into thinking that you’re getting a good deal when you are actually being fleeced pretty hard.
Fortnite is so bad because despite it being a good game, it does all of the above and targets to children who don’t know anything about money.
There are cases where you can buy one form of Premium currency with real money, so that you can buy a higher tier of Premium currency with the premium currency you bought with real money, forcing you to pay even more.
And this is one reason why modern games suck, the other reason is that everyone is using the same Engine.
That’s fascinating, it’s like microtransaction recursion. I actually want someone to say fuck it and pull the wool off and just create a legitimate gambling first person shooter… I would love that. I used to play counter strike a long time ago and love poker. Just have like an ammo buy in cost that forms the prize pool. Make it tournament style with a bounty a top 3 and just rake part of the pool for profits and all that money your going to have to pour into cheating detection.
I imagine one day these practices will be cracked down upon when the European Union comes out for blood, the European Union is actually pretty good at getting us new laws that help regulate the internet and Technology.
I don’t have a problem with a game that is based on gambling, I just don’t think one should be targeted to children, and I definitely believe that you need to be upfront about what you’re actually doing.
Sadly the European Union is a case of, the wheels of Justice move slowly, but they are moving. Only recently did they make loot boxes illegal, but loot boxes had already been abandoned by the industry in favor of something far worse, the battle pass.
Basically you pay a fee, and then you can unlock various features by doing certain missions, but if you don’t claim everything by the time the battle pass goes off of sale, then tough luck, and if you don’t get that battle pass, you are likely never getting a chance to get those features. So not only does it encourage you to buy a battle pass, but to play the game obsessively to make sure you unlock everything from the battle pass in time. And all that time there are bombarding you with ads for various other products that you can buy with micro transactions. It is Devious.
I play World of Tanks which has frequent battle passes. I used to try and grind earlier but then came a moment where I said fuck it, this feels like work and not fun. So now I just treat the base game as what I get. Any other reward is just a bonus. This change in mindset has worked quite well for me.
Elder Scrolls 4 but yes
Oops, genuine error there. I played since Arena so I should have caught that.
small incremental changes over the years felt like nothing big was happening and then at some point we all woke up
I (and many others I presume) has been saying Chrome is shit since the beginning. It didn’t feel like nothing was happening, it felt like we were slowly getting to the old days of IE and Netscape.
There are always a few that see this stuff coming, but they usually get looked at like a crazy person shouting about the sky falling.
It also feels like they really push a lot of the terrible on mobile first, get people used to concepts with the “that’s just how mobile is, it’s a different world” and then when most are accustomed to it they move to regular pc enshitification.
I do not like how websites prioritise the mobile view over desktop view even when it is on a desktop. You have a widescreen and want to waste all that horizontal space? Just ridiculous!
Yeah yeah, I understand it is less maintenance from a developer point of view, but still it is infuriating as a user.
They gotta their digital peasantry, I mean users, from other feudal lords, I mean corporations, to maximize their power over them and ability to exploit them, I mean … No wait that’s right.
It really is unfortunate that almost all their users are asleep at the wheel and don’t care.
The mundanes/normies whatever you wanna call em.
They won’t understand anything without a song and dance number
That describes all of us in at least a few areas beyond our competencies and interests.
The only time I see ads is when I look into someone else’s screen
I’m already seeing all the ads I want to see.
Fucking. None.
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.
enhanced privacy
Why does it need to be enhanced?
I’m poor and I hate stupid bullshit. The only way to personalize ads for me is to make them go away.
“Give us your preference data to prevent your preference data from being used in advertising.”
“new privacy feature” and then “sites you visit can determine what you like”
translated: “this new privacy feature reduces the amount privacy you have!!! what a cool new feature!”
Idk why the heck you just got downvoted into oblivion for pointing out the irony in google calling this a “privacy feature.” Good old reddit moment it seems.
lol it’s no worries. actually I have the privilege of being bot-downvoted by CCP sympathizers because of comments on this post https://lemmy.world/post/2338419, there is also the possibility that I’m just an asshole.
Damn, you’re still copy pasting that? That link doesn’t even go anywhere lol
He thinks he’s getting bot downvoted, but there’s actually people invested enough to stalk him. Cute.
Yeah, he’s definitely “important”
I don’t particularly care about your or his internet spats or attempt to control the all important narrative on lemmy. You are the one giving him rent free space in your brain and on your keyboard though.
didn’t think about it like that! i feel loved :)
Ah the privacy sandbox that was overwhelming disagreed with, but that Google forced onto the web because they’re a monopoly.
This must be some new use of the word ‘privacy’ I wasn’t previously aware of.
I’m so confused by the 1-2 people in here casting downvotes to comments critical of chrome
