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.
Glad I left. It can only get worse…
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.
birds or polar bears
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.
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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
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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
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!
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.
And may it usher in the era of antisocial media. The era where we all stop trying to impress each other, monetize each other, and just buy a thing and have it do the thing we bought it for, and not be bothered. Long may it reign.
Lol that’s more like the end of American consumerism, and while I wholeheartedly agree, that’ll take a generation or two at least to decouple from American society. That shit’s been going strong here for over 100 years.
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Who views ads in Reddit? Except for all the shill posts, that is.
There’s enough astroturf on Reddit for a continent’s worth of obnoxious suburban fake lawns.
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.
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 would care if I used Reddit, but I don’t.
I don’t like Reddit.
'Tis a silly place.
On second thought, let’s not go there.
Have you heard anything about uBlock origin, Ghostery and similar programs?
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!
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?
Blokada. Firefox with uBlock Origin.
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
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.
Here’s the best summary I could make of the linked article
Reddit is removing the option for users to opt out of personalized ads. The site will now target ads based on a user’s activity and account information. Reddit claims this requires little personal data and will improve ad relevance. However, users will no longer have control over whether their data is used this way. They can only filter ads by category, not opt out entirely. Personalized ads will still be optional in some countries due to GDPR laws.
Overall, Reddit users can expect to see more targeted ads based on their engagement with different communities and content.
This comment was generated by a bot. Send comments and complaints via private message.
I don’t understand how they can do this with iPhone when Apple requires all apps to prompt with the option to deny tracking?
Correct me if im wrong, but didn’t EU ban this kind of practice?
If true, reddit would be fucked on the European market
Is that even legal in the EU?
In select countries, the option to turn off ad personalization will remain, allowing Reddit to continue to comply with GDPR restrictions.
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.
Best of luck with that.
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).
Commercial social media that is free does and will track your activity on the site
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.
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.
