PSA: Reddit is Forcing Users to Accept Personalized Ads
macrumors.com
TL;DR: Reddit is removing the option to opt out of ad personalization, targeting ads based on user activity. Some specific ad categories can still be limited, but there's no more opt-out option.
I have the feeling the whole internet is turning into shit rapidly. Youtube is crap, Reddit is crap, everything you use needs a cloud account, my doorbell is sending me notifications about a new product, wtf is up with that. I paid for that thing and now you send me ads? Pisses me off. This corporate greed is getting too much.
There are upsides to it, like me spending considerably less time on the random internet surfing because my annoyance overshadows my dopamine kick.
Conversely, I'm so opposed to the enshitification that I've carefully tailored my internet usage to places that aren't shit and have no prospect of becoming shit, like Lemmy. Since I don't even have the motivation of not supporting an evil company, I'm more addicted that ever.
It’s really accelerated in the past few years. It’s nearly impossible to just read an article or use any product without giving it some kind of information. Lots of people (myself included many times unfortunately) just accept this. I mean, what can be done? If you want or need to use the thing you almost have no choice. If you want to avoid information leaks or being tracked you have to do so much research and work just to find an option, and then hope they don’t get purchased by a company that will reverse it all. I hate it.
We have to act collectively.
I think it might also be helpful to have some kind of (independently verified) privacy labeling program for products and services. It would ease some of the burden from consumers when shopping around, and could become an easy marketing tool for companies that want to attract customers.
Honestly, number 3 is the only thing that would have marginal impact. Consumers don't have the time and energy to research every product to the depth required foe the first two.
You don't need to go on a research project to see the personal info fields in a sign-up form.
For more complicated stuff, a labeling program would help.
On some products, these steps occur after you've purchased and opened the product and are setting it up.
1a. Exercise your right to return things that have invasive hidden requirements.
(And this is another area where a labeling program would help.)
That's not the only way companies get data about you though. Some collect it through their app - the sites that try and force you to use the app instead of the site are usually the worst offenders. Others just buy data from data brokers like Acxiom, Experian, LiveRamp, etc. and correlate it with the details they have on you (phone number, email address, ad targeting ID, etc).
Where possible, use sites instead of apps, since it limits the types of data that can be collected (as sites are highly sandboxed compared to apps). Good sites let you install them as PWAs for a more app-like feel.
Nobody said it was.
I was mostly replying to the top level comment about choosing companies/products that respect your privacy. It's pretty much impossible to tell if a company cares about or respects your privacy just from the sign up form.
It read as though you thought picking out one particular case that I didn't address somehow refuted what I wrote. (Which it doesn't, of course, because I wasn't making an exhaustive list.)
I see. That was confusing, since the top-level comment wasn't mine, yet you replied to me. Thanks for clarifying.
And the vast majority of consumers don't even understand what's going on, and don't care. Look at how many people happily download and use the TikTok app, despite evidence that it's harvesting your biometric data and sending it to a government overseas. They don't fucking care.
Yes it’s hard to deal with. I try to do my best to boycot companies that do this. Youtube, Reddit, Google search and chrome are things I don’t use anymore and the list keeps growing. My next doorbell will be a different brand but choices are limited ofcourse.
On the other hand, there are more and more alternatives popping up lately, Mastodon, Lemmy, Peertube. This is a sign that people are getting tired of this shit. I hope this trend continues.
For a doorbell, get one that can work entirely locally, ideally that supports ONVIF for the video feed, and use it with Home Assistant.
I don't have a fancy doorbell, but I use Blue Iris, Home Assistant and Node-RED for my security cameras. Works well, including notifications when a person is detected, and everything is local. When I want to watch the cameras remotely, I connect to a VPN into my home.
Thanks I will look into this, also using Home Assistant.
I think Reolink make decent doorbells (even though their cameras aren't the best) but I've never tried them myself so can't make a personal recommendation for them.
And the big companies are intentionally breaking their services on clients that give any measure of control back to the users. That should be a blatant anti-trust suit, but they don't care. Just the cost of doing business if for some reason one of the politicians they own actually takes any action against them.
IMHO it's cyclical.
It will be decades more before humanity accepts the teachings of Richard Stallman.
Could you point me to some starting points or good reads by Richard Stallman? He got a solution to the cycle, then I'm down.
Free software, Free society is his collection of essays.
Except it's possible to work around it, with a minimal amount of knowledge, or by using alternatives.
Reddit? Lemmy.
Twitter? Mastodon.
YouTube? Peertube. For youtube just use piped.video
Ads? UBlock.
My TV has ads. Not the cable part, like when I turn it on, the menu has ads. I paid $2k for it.
They just went from we love you guys to we don’t even give a fuck bend over boy in like 6 months.
Twitter has also shifted into a dystopian QQ wannabe.
Meta has been a dumpster fire for a decade now.
Tik Tok. heavy sigh
This kinda seems like end of times.
if this is your version of the end of times, I suggest you take a look out your window at the burning hellscape of western north america and other locations around the globe. I also hope you're not too attached to birds or polar bears.
My world ends whenever someone doesn't understand hyperbole
Now I become death, destroyer of literary device
You became Death? How did you manage that?
By taking things literally, apparently
This makes me want to just set myself on fire!
Phew! Luckily I just like penguins...
I have bad news. Penguins are a hybrid of bird and polar bear.
Even the name Penguin is a hybrid of polar and penguin.
It's almost like we can be upset about multiple things at one. Wow.
Why are we playing these games of let's come up with something worse so we can devalue what someone else is talking about? This isn't a competition. That is such unnecessary behavior.
How am I devaluing what they are saying by pointing out there are much, much, more serious signals of a looming apocalypse?
It's like worrying about the mosquito biting you in a room full of blood thirsty canibals.
I realize I shifted off topic, but they were getting a bit dramatic with the end of times bit
How is it dramatic when it's all interconnected to begin with? People noticing a shift like that online might start to get involved in other ways as well if they start to feel more of the effect personally. It's a good thing that people are noticing this stuff.
Again it's not a competition and people shouldn't have to have their frustrations compared to something else, that is devaluing it. We are allowed to be upset about something and have that stand on its own without others chiming in and acting like it doesn't matter because of something else so that they can act self important or more intelligent. It's just old and tired.
You seem to have an incredibly bad attitude and I wouldn't be shocked if you were trying to start something, so I'm done here. Maybe try some empathy out for a change.
I'm not trying to start anything, I just don't follow your logic, and your comments seem like an over reaction.
I'm happy to agree to disagree though, and won't presue a conversation neither of us really wants to have.
Hopefully you find other people on here that are more suited to your perspectives (I'm legitimately sorry we're clashing). Lemmy is a great platform and I want you to enjoy it as much as I do
If it's the end of the era of social media, I'm plenty ok with that. Shit's been cancer for almost a decade now.
I'm increasingly glad I got the fuck out of there.
Same.
Glad I left. It can only get worse...
Some of us remember there was a time when things like Reddit didn't exist, and neither did Facebook, Twitter etc. Lots of people lived just fine without them then. It's completely possible to take a hard line on this stuff and just refuse to use sites/apps/products that don't respect your privacy. Remember, there's always a smaller, friendlier or mechanical version.
Reddit was unique - at least in my experience - in that it expanded my horizons and allowed me to grow in many ways.
Before Reddit I just searched out sites / forums about my interests.
Reddit allowed me to organically gain new interests through daily interactions.
I’ve left it since they killed Apollo but I will admit that there were various good communities that I do miss!
Is that even legal in the EU?
If it's anything like Twitter, it resigns you up to them anyway. There's no "turn off all" as far as I could see. The missus has to run some JS to untick all the boxes for her. Next week she'll go back and it will have ticked more.
Who cares? Haven't touched Reddit since they turned maggot.
I still dabble over there, but I had long forgotten that they have ads because I use uBlock Origin.
I thought all you guys left Reddit already
I left r/popular and r/all but lemmy still not yet an adequate replacement for non-tech niche hobbies and interests.
Can you give me an example of subreddits that you still follow? I'm setting up a fediversed instance on alien.top, which would mean that you'd be able to follow/interact with people still on reddit from the fediverse.
r/India, r/India investments, r/Kerala, r/malayalammovies, r/insidemollywood, r/watches, r/Porsche.
Nice, thank you. I'm still fixing some issues with the deployment, but hopefully it will be working soon. Do you mind if I send you a DM when it is ready?
FYI: You can subscribe now to !watches@style.land which is mirroring /r/watches and !porsche@gearhead.town is mirroring /r/porsche.
Do you know if the admins at https://kerala.party would be interested in having the mirrored India-related subs?
@gonta
Is that mostly due to a lack of critical mass of users, or are there other factors?
@JCreazy
The former. I would love to start these online communities but I don't have the time nor emergy to maintain them; I'm barely browsing reddit and lemmy as it is.
For now, I can only compromise and use reddit.
"I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Spezymandias, Admin of Kings;
Look on my Reddit, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Hey great poem
Great username. Worth a follow.
Thanks for pointing it out, too. I almost missed out on an awesome username.
Random question - is it possible to follow a user?
It is on Kbin. Lemmy doesn't have that capacity yet as far as I know. It's one of the main reasons I recommend the former - Kbin bridges the gap between Mastodon and Lemmy, and includes functionality from both types of instances. Following users increases your feed content here exponentially.
Correct me if im wrong, but didn't EU ban this kind of practice?
If true, reddit would be fucked on the European market
Get Mozilla Firefox and add uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and Ghostery plugins.
For over the top action, but a Raspberry Pi with an ethernet port and install PiHole and change your router DNS to the IP address of the PiHole and bask in glory that 99.999% of the crap out there, will not come or go out of your household.
It boggles the mind that there are people who still don't use adblocking measures these days.
I don't like Reddit.
'Tis a silly place.
On second thought, let's not go there.
Who views ads in Reddit? Except for all the shill posts, that is.
I'm pretty sure it's everyone who uses their app, since every third post and every fourth comment on it is an ad of some sort (or at least that's how it seemed). I'm sure anyone on old.r with an adblocker is unaffected but during the brief time I had their app installed there were enough ads to render it unusable and unnavigable.
Shill posts, shill posts everywhere.
There's enough astroturf on Reddit for a continent's worth of obnoxious suburban fake lawns.
I would care if I used Reddit, but I don't.
funny as im seeing this while nuking my old reddit account. havent used it since they took apollo from me and honestly i won't miss it. they are just digging their own grave at this point.
I don’t understand how they can do this with iPhone when Apple requires all apps to prompt with the option to deny tracking?
They will not be forcing me to accept personalized ads. How are they going to personalize them when I have no reddit account, block their cookies, use a VPN and change my IP address often, and don't use their website.
Well if you don't use their website you aren't a user.
Isn't it sad that we have to do all this to prevent our information being spread around the corporate world like a virus
They should teach defensive web-browsing in schools.
I want to live in that reality
For those who are paranoid about this - some of you have a Facebook account, and half of you have a Google-filled smartphone. Privacy is important, but IMO there should be a balance between convenience and privacy - unless you actually do stuff that requires the utmost privacy or you need to stay fully anonymous everywhere as much as possible.
Division of identity - that is, having unique profiles/identities for different types of things you do on the web, using alias emails and anonymous email for certain things etc. - is a more viable strategy than trying to be 100% anonymous on the web.
Commercial social media that is free does and will track your activity on the site, whether for personalized ads or for algorithm purposes. Lemmy and Mastodon don't because they're FOSS, and don't run on ads (99.9% of the time).
Apple is not considerably better for privacy either by rhe way. They just pay more for marketing that says they're more private than the rest of big tech.
I don't think many people have an issue with this. It's all the bullshit they pull to track you off the site that is the problem, and they do a lot of that.
Edit: and the selling of that information to third parties that you would never consent to. That's also a huge issue.
Time to poison their data, I guess.
Here's the best summary I could make of the linked article
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Best of luck with that.
I don't think my adblocker cares what kind of ads they're trying to show me. If anything their algorithms will just get confused for why this guy who used to be here hours every day now only comes to watch war videos once a day but no longer comments or upvotes anything.
How are people adblocking them on mobile?
Firefox lets you adblock.
a pihole can get you 90% of the way and it works in all apps and any other smart devices you have., but it doesn't work well if the site isn't using a 3rd party ad service (think YouTube, facebook)
My assumption was that at this point the majority of people are using the official reddit app, but I guess that's an option for now.
On Android anyway. No AdBlock (at least ublock) still on Firefox for IOS I believe due to platform restrictions. But would be cool if I'm wrong.
RedReader still works. If you're gonna look at reddit, I recommend it. You can even turn off all the interaction buttons, so it's like a "look, don't touch" museum.
I uninstalled it though. Reddit is in too terrible a state to bother with any longer, except sometimes as a search result, imo.
Edit: I'm speaking of android though. Idk if redreader has an ios version or not.
Which mobile? On Android you can use AdAway. A network level adblocker on your router can also take care of many ads for every device connected to it.
firefox + no-script on mobile is da way my dude
Blokada. Firefox with uBlock Origin.
I use Jshelter alongside Ublock. They’re a good combination.
I mean, does it really matter? At the end of the day, an obnoxious ad is an obnoxious ad regardless of wether it’s targets or not. Or am I missing something?
Any company/developer that puts ads in their app deserves to fade into irrelevant obscurity. And the more people put up with it and pay into it to remove the ads, the more you’re rewarding the behavior.
And it’s ironic that I’m sure a large percentage of people that pay to remove ads are the same people that whine about people pre-ordering games.
Sorry for the rant. But this shit aggravates me.
I think the only distinguishing factor is to target, it must gather data. So that means your activity is being tracked, stored, and shared with third parties. Of course for some people this will matter more than to others, but for those privacy focused you now know for certain they are storing data on you, potentially making money off of selling it, with no way to opt out.
Good point. I missed that.
Have you heard anything about uBlock origin, Ghostery and similar programs?