Removing the ability to opt-out of ad personalization based on your Reddit activity, except in select countries.
Reddit requires very little personal information, and we like it that way. Our advertisers instead rely on on-platform activity—what communities you join, leave, upvotes, downvotes, and other signals—to get an idea of what you might be interested in.
The vast majority of redditors will see no change to their ads on Reddit. For users who previously opted out of personalization based on Reddit activity, this change will not result in seeing more ads or sharing on-platform activity with advertisers. It does enable our models to better predict which ad may be most relevant to you.
edit: updated link to old.reddit.com
except in select countries.
something’s telling me it’s the countries that make being able to opt out of profiling a legal requirement. praise be GDPR.
praise be GDPR.
Thanks, I almost forgot to request my data like I do every month at https://www.reddit.com/settings/data-request
oh my
Why every month??
It costs Reddit $$
If many of us did it, yeah. For the occasional demand compared to their user base? Probably negligible costs.
That was the idea during the 3rd party kurfuffle
Most likely to annoy someone at reddit
I still moderate on Reddit, and will continue to do so (the community is in the process of migrating over, and the community members are important to me)
I’m going to stop upvoting, downvoting, and joining/leaving communities. Already wasn’t doing much of the later.
Screw this change
eat my fucking ass spez
This is not going over well in Reddit’s comments section.
I hope Lemmy can capitalize on this and convince more users to switch.
I really hope so, or at least make some users decide enough is enough.
The problem is Lemmy has completely squandered this time between waves of new users. There’s improvements in the pipeline but it may be too late at this point.
Squandered how? It feels waaaaay more stable now.
No one squandered anything. The devs have been working full time, as well as third party contributers / third party apps & frontends. There’s only so much work they can do. They’re not a multil-million dollar company. Good things take time
Nah, word of mouth is powerful. I’ve been enjoying my time, and started to tell friends about it. Many are already bitching about reddit and their many poor decisions over the years, and at least in my social circle, others turn to me for what I use and recommend. I’m certain of course that there are many, many more like me.
It doesn’t need to be a landslide, it just needs visibility with trusted friends using it to grow organically and easily.
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I can’t even remember the last time I launched the app.
As some of the comments point out, they already have a precise list of interests per user.
The subreddit lists. Yet they aren’t using that data. Although I suppose the “why not” is that they maybe don’t want advertisers knowing all of the subreddits.
Because my day isn’t shitty enough, I went over there to see what’s the vibe. Sure enough, people are complaining. There’s also a surprising amount of bootlickers who parrot the “argument” that people have been saying things have been going downhill, but Reddit still is popular so it can’t be going downhill. As if shitty things can’t be popular.
I’ve seen a couple of people who saw this as the last straw, which is better than nothing, but I feel that those remaining in that site, no matter how they kvetch about it, deserves to be frog stew (as in that boiling frog metaphor). I’d love to be proven wrong though.
deserves to be frog stew (as in that boiling frog metaphor). I’d love to be proven wrong though.
https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/12/07/3085614.htm
Professor Hutchison says: “The legend is entirely incorrect! The ‘critical thermal maxima’ of many species of frogs have been determined by several investigators. In this procedure, the water in which a frog is submerged is heated gradually at about 2°F per minute. As the temperature of the water is gradually increased, the frog will eventually become more and more active in attempts to escape the heated water. If the container size and opening allow the frog to jump out, it will do so.”
I’m aware. Not every metaphor has to adhere to scientific fact, though it’d be neat. Thanks for the elucidation though.
Seems like a lot of those people need to read Foundation.
The entire trilogy.
I am unfortunately unfamiliar with that title. What is it about and what does it say about this situation (enshittification of Reddit, etc)?
At a guess, it’s a correlation between the Empire having it’s head in the sand about it’s gradual collapse, and the enshittification of Reddit over the trust thermocline.
Edit: sorry, I thought you said you were familiar with the source. In Foundation there’s a Galactic Empire which culturally and technologically stagnates to the point that the outer provinces break away, leading to the slow but inevitable collapse of the Empire. A breakaway faction (the Foundation) seeks to preserve the knowledge and technology of the Empire to reduce the duration of “barbarism” until a new Empire can form.
Ah, thanks for the explanation.
Enshittification stage 5: beyond plaid
Targeted ads has become such a boogey man, that you all can no longer view these things rationally. There is nothing wrong with companies wanted to get their products advertized to the most likely customers and there is nothing inherently wrong with a platform using your activity to see what ads you are most likely interested in.
The potential issue with it, is your personal data leaking everywhere and being assimilated by questionable companies who could create a psychological profile of you, that knows you better than you know yourself.
If they truely only let companies target you, by presenting them an internally grouped collective of likely customers in which you happen to be included, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Same goes for the newest change in how chrome manages ads.
I feel like the issue is more nuanced than this scenario you’ve provided- there are legitimate concerns as to whether your personal data can be ethically handled by a chain of organizations and individuals that have no linkage to you and see you as nothing more than income. That’s aside from the fact that selling personal data raises moral concerns akin to those raised by the usage of DNA-testing services as they relate to things like healthcare coverage, and blood quantum in tribal nations- issues of not having control over who can and cannot access personal, private information that could potentially be used against you. Once that data is collected, it’s effectively impossible to control who has it.
These scenarios are also assuming that everyone handling your data is, at best, a neutral entity. If your personal data is collected and makes its way to someone who would like to steal your identity or otherwise cause you harm, that’s a really big problem.
If they aren’t above illegaly selling your data, then aren’t above illegaly collecting your data, even if you ticked a little “I do not consent” box. I fail to see, how this change can be anything but positive.
Yeah, for sure lol someone could dox me and steal my identity or set me up for murder tomorrow, bad actors are bad actors. My point isn’t that the data is highly abusable, though it for sure is, my point was that even the people WHO DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT YOU are exploiting your personal information for monetary gain. In, again, the case with health indicators and the medical industry, the insurance companies don’t give a damn about you outside of your worth and your potential liability. There doesn’t need to be any one person responsible for that fact- it’s just the way the system is set up. So if they get data showing that I’m prone to leukemia genetically, then yeah, they’re going to make it impossible for me to get insured at a reasonable rate, because I’m suddenly a huge risk for them.
It’s not an exploitation for monetary gain, it’s an exchange of services. Do you think those massive servers they got are running for free? Aside from hardware, facilities and electricity, they have to pay programmers, accounting, management, cleaning services, etc. etc.
People have to get over the fact, that this is how the world works - and also the only way the world as we know it can work.
The healthcare industry is not providing you any service by buying your personal data and using it to determine that your rates should be extortion-level high. It doesn’t matter that some companies are benign in their usage of your data, because there are organizations who have incentives to act on that data in ways that benefit them, directly at your expense. Do you understand what I’m saying?
That sounds like it’s explicitly against the law in California, where they are headquartered.
Hm.
They did say “except in select countries”.
They should probably change that to “jurisdictions” imo
Anyone still using reddit is a lost cause
The majority aren’t dissatisfied enough to do anything about it, despite complaints. However, I’m hoping that some future action from Huffman will affect them adversely enough that it’d push them over that threshold and decide to do something about it—quit that site. I doubt a lot of them will make their way over here, so just them quitting is good enough for me.
That’s how it worked for Mastadon. People come over in waves each time it gets slightly shittier, or so I’ve heard.
I still use Reddit on desktop but I’ve switched to Lemmy on mobile since Reddit killed third party apps.
I would use just Lemmy but it hasn’t hit userbase criticality yet.
It’s fine as a link aggregator but frustrating when a post I’m interested in has a deserted comment section.
Somehow coming to the Reddit sub Lemmy feels like the “Reddit recovery group” 😁
… Hi, I’m ConstipatedWatson and I’ve not used Reddit for the past 4 days!
The problem is that 99,9% are using reddit, and we are the 0,1% that don’t.
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I like it here, but certain topics doesn’t have active channels here, much due to not having a big enough userbase. So we would certainly benefit from a bigger userbase
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May I suggest editing this link to old.reddit.com?
And yet another reason why I am glad I left over the summer.
Meanwhile, I just installed Boost for lemmy, immediately paid to remove ads, and am having a great time.
Voyager has no ads 🥰
That’s cool too. I used Boost for Reddit, so I’m happy to support them in this burgeoning era of fediwhatever. 😉
Indeed, I used the free version of RiF for years and only found out there was a paid version available when they announced they were sitting down. I bought it in their last month of operation because they deserved it.
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Yeah the free version has ads.
Neither does Jerboa. 👍
Yeah, using Lemmy feels so many ch better. I was using jeroba and it has some issues that were not being addressed. The lack of ads was nice, but paying $5 for no ad Boost feels like a great deal.
How much is it to remove ads on boost actually?
$3.50 USD
$4.95 CAD
Same here! I go where boost goes! Hopefully many more keep following
Who in the actual fuck keeps all this garbage alive? Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, all gone to shit, why do people insist on staying with them?
Because all their friends are there, and redditors do not belong outside reddit.
Are you familiar with
?The central limit theorem?
It’s an enshittification speed run
is it, though? I’d say the redesign was when things started going seriously downhill, and that’s been introduced about 5 years ago. not much of a speedrun.
What redesign?
- 3rd party app & old.reddit.com user since forever
RES gang rise up
Had Reddit Enhancement Suite on desktop and exclusively third-party apps on mobile since 2011. Saw the redesign for the first time earlier this year and was mortified.
