I urge everyone to install Adnauseum. You know what’s better than trying to starve advertisers of info? Filling their ad profile for you with total garbage.
Which is illegal in the EU and about to be illegal in Australia
¯\_(ツ)_/¯The EU just does so many things right.
America: “SoCiALisM”
Australia? How ? Isn’t Australia one of the five eyes country? Like more the data these companies collect its better for Australia.
I’ll be very surprised if our govt does anything positive when it comes to digital rights. The current shower of arseholes in government supported the previous even bigger shower of arseholes to pass diabolical legislation like data retention and assistance and access bills.
This may or may not be illegal, depending on what the “this” is you’re agreeing to. As a simple example, if it is “you agree to functional cookies by continuing to use the site”, that’s fine. If it is “you agree to us scraping your computer and selling everything we find to China”, that is most definitely not legal, nor is refusing service if you don’t agree.
Oh nooooo who could have seen this coming… anyway continues using Lemmy
Consider redacting your data and deleting your account
https://old.reddit.com/r/redditseppuku/comments/14frr4u/reddit_seppuku_how_to/
Thank God. I love seeing that place die
the people still on reddit are those with an unhealthy love of reddit. Its not dying, too many people are terminally online for them to care that reddit is vile.
Yeah that was definitely me until I got permabaned. Not being able to use Boost was the last drop.
honestly same, got banned with other leftists groups, they never gave a reason for banning me. Honestly one of the best things to happen to me.
Is reddit owned and operated by a malicious entity? I used to be addicted to that platform, but now I can’t stand it.
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two sided market,” where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
From https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
This is going to be the most quoted literary work of the 21st century
they are preparing for IPO, the most inherently malicious owner there is!
Are they really still just preparing?
Have been for years. Reddit is mismanaged, and the IPO is just an effort to get whatever they can before letting suckers hold the bag. They will never reach the valuation they had.
yeah they aren’t IPO yet, I think a lot of stuff didn’t play nicely for them, with the ukraine war, the tech bubbles popping and the general global economic conditions things aren’t exactly favourable. I think also the backlash to 3rd party apps and their general shittiness has been hurting them a bit more than they have said.
Is reddit owned by a malicious entity?
Always has been.
As with many things under capitalism, the ongoing mandate is that profits must go up, and must go up at a higher rate no matter what, or investors panic and the price drops steeply which can lead to a collapse. Reddit is just another ravenous profit-seeking vehicle of the same kind and is going into the same “line must go up” death spiral.
I wouldn’t say Reddit always has been owned by a malicious entity, Aaron Swartz was a cool guy. And if you’re telling me a man who freely distributed thousands of needlessly paywalled research papers is a some kind of arch capitalist, then there’s no helping you.
Swartz had good beliefs about freedom of information but politically was kind of a weirdo. What happened to him is an unlimited tragedy and outright criminal.
Swartz co-owned reddit for around 1 year, 2006-2007. His influence has overall probably been insignificant.
True true, I just specifically took issue with it always having been run by bastards. (I know it’s a meme template, but I just wanted to point to evidence that there is hope that not everything we use has always been yoked with pure greed. Call it a cope, IDC.)
there is hope that not everything we use has always been yoked with pure greed
If your basis for believing that is Reddit having one co-owner you liked for one year and that’s the best evidence you got, that isn’t a strong basis.
You can do sophistic tricks like exaggerating other people’s positions to try to make yours seem more tenable so you can mine for supposed exceptions, but the reality remains that capitalism requires increasingly unsustainable profit margins over time for the lifetime of each product and that consequently results in systemic enshittification of things that were previously decent and bearable. That is an inevitable ongoing process in this present system.
then there’s no helping you
That
tone isn’t necessary.One co-owner being around for one year doesn’t absolve the skullduggery of the other that is still here to the present day, as another poster already mentioned.
Honestly as a capitalist (I know, blasphemy) Aaron did the world a favor when he dropped those papers. Elsevier Wiley IEEE et al have a cartel and so many of them are NIH or DOD funded papers they should be public domain period.
The premise of our system depends on controls to avoid instilled entries extorting capital. Capitalism isn’t: it’s feudalism with extra steps
Honestly as a capitalist (I know, blasphemy)
Before you congratulate yourself again for internet bravery, do you actually own capital? Do you own the means of production? If not, you’re not a capitalist even if you wave pompoms and otherwise do apologia for capitalism.
Well damn, ya got me. I own a car. That’s about it.
You’re not really a capitalist in a meaningful way. You might cheerlead for it, but that isn’t a means of production no matter what Uber/Lyft might tell you.
The largest owners are Advance Publications and Tencent. Advance also own Condé Nasty (Reddit even used to be under the Condé Nast banner). Weirdly they also own everyone’s favorite plagiarism detection service Turnitin.
I know of Tencent and the controversy about them… I don’t know anything about Advance though. Are they also controversial?
how much does tencent actually own? I could swear they only bought company stocks and not direct controls over reddit.
I opted out by deleting every trace of my account and never returning. it was easy.
Is Reddit still alive? I have been away for months 😂
This is the message they are sending to users:
Hey u/username,
We will soon begin rolling out changes to Reddit’s User settings. It is getting a refresh that includes changes to ad personalization, privacy preferences, and location settings.
As part of these changes, we are retiring a setting that you have previously turned on that limited how we used your activity from the Reddit platform to personalize ads. We have replaced the setting with a new option to select categories of ads that you may not wish to see.
More details are available in our announcement and help center.
These changes are rolling out starting today and you may see the changes over the next few days.
What if you select every category because ads are a stupid timewaste?
Regardless how many times they are telling me that Diablo 4 is “the fastest-selling ARPG ever” and flaunt the phoney 10/10 “review scores”, it’s not gonna change my opinion that the game is dog poop and thoroughly unimpressive. So why inconvenience me by making me load that shitty picture, it won’t make me buy that shit.
I honestly don’t get the point of ads.
Unless it’s direct-response targeted, the point of adds isn’t to make you buy shit instantly, it’s to plant a seed and make you aware of a product so that one day you do spend money in it.
ＥＮＳＨＩＴＴＩＦＩＣＡＴＩＯＮ
I haven’t used reddit in months
I still check in to certain niche subreddits that don’t exist on lemmy. Those feel pretty close to how they used to. The other day I took a look at /r/all and… ooof. It’s very apparent quality has completely nosedived. Lemmy /c/all is a much better representation of pre-blackout reddit /r/all right now.
All the adds look like posts and all the posts are actually just adds now.
Has anybody seen that shitty boomer comic that’s been boosted to the top ad space on every YouTube video for the last two weeks.
Those have been the top post on comics for the last two days.
It is primarily bots advertising to each other at this point and liberals circlejerking each other that they’re the good guys for “critically” supporting nazis.
Reddit is making Dead Internet Theory more real.
Every time I see any news of Reddit, I’m glad I left
Sometimes I’ll check in to see if anyone’s asking me a question and it always just ends up being some random groyped up nazi posting vitriol on a comment that’s like, 3 years old. Now I don’t even get that because everyone’s either lost interest or jumped ship.
If we’re serious about transforming the conversation around this issue, we’ve got to be more intentional with the words we choose. Let’s call a spade a spade: labeling them as “personalized ads” is a gross understatement.
It’s more than that. It’s like someone constantly lurking behind you, watching every move you make, and getting into the private spaces of your mind. It isn’t mere content tailoring—it’s relentless stalking and a brazen assault on our psyche.
We need to call it what it is.
It’s theft is what it is. Personal data has value - so much value that companies like Google and Facebook have used solely data to become some of the wealthiest businesses in the world. These companies take our data for free, tell us it’s so worthless it isn’t worth paying us, and then they make pure profit. We might not know how to do what they do with the data, but you can’t build a car without paying for the nuts and bolts; we should be paid our fair share for every data point they collect.
we should be paid our fair share for every data point they collect.
And every time they sell it, every transaction it leads to.
People on sites like this really need to understand that for good or bad we are a vocal minority. People by and large understand “if you aren’t paying for it you’re the product”. Many people have come to terms with this be it reddit, or Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc.
Does it make it right? Or course it doesn’t.
But I seriously don’t know, outside of a serious privacy breach involving hundreds of deaths, how do we effectively change the narrative in a way the masses can not only consume but understand?
I’m in my echo chamber here but at the same time I’ve come to terms that if it’s online expect it to be sold and nothing is private.
I disagree with you there, what people need to understand - the masses in general - is that this is a completely new and deeply flawed way for human beings to trade value between each other. One where the things one party is giving up are poorly defined, and they don’t get anything in return or have any room to negotiate. Hell, it isn’t even really a transaction, they just invite you in and then rummage through your pockets.
We have a long-established set of rules for forming deals, called contract law, that we’ve developed over thousands of years. Mass commercial data collection flouts the core principles of this.
watching every move you make
Just like The Police.
Sting has a lot to answer for
I agree with you but let’s cut the hyperbole please? It is not “a brazen assault on our psyche”. Ain’t no one of sound mind seeking out a therapist for trauma because reddit changes it TOS.
My intention wasn’t to equate ads with psychological trauma, but rather to emphasize the profound impact such invasive practices can have on our sense of privacy and autonomy. The terminology of ‘personalized ads’ can often obscure the magnitude of surveillance behind it. I understand that this might come across as hyperbolic to some, but it’s essential to articulate the depth of concern many feel.
I think they are an assault on free will. Ads aren’t well reasoned arguments for the purchase of a product or service; they’re whatever they need to be to get you to change your behavior. If they have to scare, shame, trick, etc. they’ll do it.
Just out of curiosity how old are you? My sense is your opinion is probably shared by those younger people who came of age during the beginning of the death throws of cable.
I’m not saying your opinion is wrong for you. But I’m 46 now. I grew up inundated by commercials. They have always done all those things you mention. We were raised in an environment where media literacy included commercials allowing us to better see and smell the bullshit. Maybe that is what is lacking?
They are definitely not an “assault on free will” as you put it. Advertising is one of the oldest industries known to man and it will continue to exist and evolve.
That said, you are very correct in that it has gotten worse in recent years. This is predominantly (I feel) because government has stopped regulating specifically what is marketed to kids (thanks 1980’s!). There is also an angle that we stopped teaching media literacy like we used to.
I’m in my late thirties, actually. I think the difference in the ads we were exposed to compared to young people today is that nearly all of ours were broadly targeted. ie there was no micro targeting or anything really tailored to the individual outside of direct mail. We all watched the same commercials, you know?
Modern ad tech is much less “spray and pray” but as to what difference that makes vis-a-vis people’s ability to see BS, idk. I’d imagine the proportion of young people who are skeptical of advertising hasn’t changed much but the effectiveness of ads on those who are susceptible to it has increased. But again, I’m just talking out my ass here haha.
But all ads share the goal of altering your behavior to their own ends. Isn’t that in and of itself a reduction of your free will? An idea or thought you might have had is supplanted by one placed there by an advertiser, right?
Maybe this is where we differ then. I agree with everything you’re saying but at the same time in no way do I feel like my choice to choose is being taken away. I am not being forced to buy anything.
No, you’re not being forced of course. But advertisers are absolutely trying to bend your decision making process towards their products. That’s how ads work, right? They ultimately want you to spend money on something. Not saying you’re like Homer Simpson driving down the road stopping to obey all the billboards, I’m just saying it’s the inherent nature of ads. I didn’t mean to imply anything else
transforming the conversation
are we ever going to do shit about it or are we going to continue to sit and talk about the same thing over and over uselessly
some of us ARE doing something about it
lol I have yet to see barely a finger lifted by suburb libs to do anything for the rest of us
dude, don’t just assume my political beliefs based on nothing more than a comment…
sis if you have the ideology of a suburb liberal while not being one, you are an even sadder motherfucker than I thought you were
if caring about privacy and not wanting companies and governments to watch everything you do is “the ideology of a suburb liberal”, then fine, I’m a “suburb liberal” lol
if caring about privacy and not wanting companies and governments to watch everything you do is “the ideology of a suburb liberal”, then fine, I’m a “suburb liberal” lol
strawman, love to see it. How is any of what you said relevant?
Im unapologetic about my love of Marxist freedom, I wonder why you feel the need to hide your ideology…
how is this news, all social media is doing this. Its an inevitable consequence of capitalist internet ownership.
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I almost exclusively used reddit on my phone and RIF showed an ad once in a blue moon.
I do have RES installed on my computron’s browser, but RIF was just better.
Uhm, that option was intreduced by sites and ad networks because the GDPR requires it so unless they plan to shut down buisness in the EU it’s probably going to fail!
So they’re preparing to get sued tens of millions of dollors by the EU in March of next year?
The company said that it will still have opt-out controls in “select countries”
They’re not gonna go against EU.
People in “select countries” will still have a toggle.
