I agree that this seems to have increased. Pushiness is advantageous to companies unless it disgusts so many people into leaving that it makes up for the added conversions (in the broadest sense: a conversion can be a sign-up, sign-in, consent for targeted ads, etc.) People seem to be too willing to put up with them. Long term brand damage is likely not much of a concern nowadays, given that it has been normalized. E…
Also, there's an increasing push in internet marketing circles to get people to sign up for things, even free things. The reason is that it bypasses a lot of antispying tech and law.
What honestly bothers me more is how "Yes/No" dialogs are increasingly being replaced by "Yes/Later", even in paid products/services. Seems like companies are done with even pretending to take "No" for an answer when they want to push something on you.
Even more evil, I've started to see things (mostly apps) use "Miss Out" instead of No, explicitly and literally feeding FOMO.
Things like that are a clear and obvious indicator that whoever is producing it are scumbags and shouldn't be trusted even a little. I never feel FOMO from them.
The reason is simple: These companies are ad-supported. When you create an account and log in, the ads they show can be better tailored to your interests. This is especially true for companies like Pinterest, where users catalog their interests on the site. I think this is surprising to people for two reasons: 1 - We've been told the "companies sell your data" narrative for so long that many people don't realize that…
> many people don't realize that Facebook and similar mega companies don't actually profit from selling your data.
I think most people here know this. The difference doesn't actually matter as much as the companies think, though.
Most of the web and apps feel hostile these days On Playstation starting the YouTube app now gets you a full screen unskippable ad before even reaching the app Prime video show you ads even if you're a paying customer Every now and then I listen to a podcast to fall asleep, 50% chance I'll be jump scared by a 0.1kbps ad in German that has the volume 4x louder than the podcast itself Google removing video previews for…
I've purchased more DVDs in the past year than the previous ten years combined.
It seems reasonable to assume that this is a byproduct of laws/regulations requiring more specific consent for tracking users. We're not in the wild west any longer.
The BBC has started doing it which I abhor. I saw it with Twitter too but don't scroll too far anymore. I generally don't sign up and stop going to those stupid websites instead.
I agree that this seems to have increased. Pushiness is advantageous to companies unless it disgusts so many people into leaving that it makes up for the added conversions (in the broadest sense: a conversion can be a sign-up, sign-in, consent for targeted ads, etc.) People seem to be too willing to put up with them. Long term brand damage is likely not much of a concern nowadays, given that it has been normalized. E…
Also, there's an increasing push in internet marketing circles to get people to sign up for things, even free things. The reason is that it bypasses a lot of antispying tech and law.
At the same time, not having a mailing list is suicidal when big tech is ramping up erroneous removal of accounts, pushing users elsewhere (Twitter potentially. And Facebook has reputation of being for old people now), or killing organic reach (Facebook since a few years back: pay up).
Agree. There's a bunch of websites I don't visit anymore: Pinterest (you need an account just to browse pictures? c'mon!), Reddit (some subreddits are only available via the app... I'll never install the Reddit app), Instagram, Medium, Twitter, lots of newspapers. I thought I was going to miss them, but I haven't.
You can use `scribe.rip` instead of `medium.com`. The former is just an anonymous frontend for the latter. All the info you need at https://scribe.rip/
Old school webmasters (perhaps this is redundant phrasing) know that's okay. Back in the day, you'd say "I'll put your animated gif on my site for $500 per month" and if you had a networking forum Cisco or whoever would happily pay that secure in the knowledge that your viewers were in the market for their product. Lesson: target the content, not the viewer. You know the general demographics of who is engaging positi…
This seems like so obvious an observation that I don’t get why advertisers haven’t made it. If I’m in work-mode, and you show me an ad related to a hobby of mine, I have a 0% chance of clicking it. If you show me an ad related to my work, it is probably more like .01%. Which is still an infinite-times improvement.
It's because there's an arms race to maximally exploit the massive amount of data they're collecting about individuals. The more specificity you can claim, the more the ad-buyers will pay. I'm not convinced it's doing any good, but I think a draw-down would be a hard sell for all parties involved in that market.