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Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

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Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#401

Post by thinkingemote »

crazygringo wrote: post #345
bootlooped wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the first time I've ever heard a person worry about the quality of the ads that are served to them.

I've often wondered why nobody brings this up more. If you're going to see ads for things, why on earth wouldn't you want them to try to better target you? The whole point is for you to find out about things that might be useful for you. Why would I want less of the useful things? Why would I want worse advertising?

I think the question is what is advertising. Is it a service that educates or is it an intrusion that attempts to sell things? Is it both things?

Why do some people dislike advertising? Is it only that they are unmatched? Are there other reasons. If you wish to find an answer to your wondering, wonder on those issues.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#403

Post by rhamzeh »

aaron_m04 wrote: post #391
late2part wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name one free, popular, profitable, large scale service that offers limited capacity on their offering. Very very few. You offer unlimited and you charge for increased value or you monetize with ads. Freemium is mostly dead.

I thought freemium _was_ charging for increased value.

I think the freemium model discussed here is severely limiting your product and it's value for non-paying customers in order to get them to pay up.

One of the most powerful advantages of Gmail vs the competition is it's superbly powerful spam filtering and search features - I doubt it's worth losing that powerful image in order to get a few more users to pay up.

Just like the biggest advantage and product feature ProtonMail has is privacy and encryption - it would be a bad product decision to remove encryption from all free customers in order to get them to pay up.

The alternative is to offer a fully functional free* model that focuses on your strength, and charge customers for extra - extremely useful and important, but non product essential - features.

* Some would argue that Google's model is not free, as you are paying for it with your data, but that is a different discussion and outside the scope here.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#407

Post by fserb »

CaptSpify wrote: post #376
fserb wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's the use case you are worried about? Tell me a story. Who is accessing your date, for which purpose, when, how much, etc... and explain how Gmail is a bad solution because Google "can read it". Yes, Google does not offer you protection against the Government. That is a true statement. But that doesn't mean that it's all or none. There are so many privacy rights before "a warrant request". And news flash, unless…

The use case is pretty obvious by now: people trying to manipulate me (ads), overreaching government intrusion, and invasions of privacy. I never said that Google just sends everything over to them, but they can come and access my data without me ever knowing, and that's a problem. Just because there are (imo broken) checks in place does nothing to negate that fact. Those checks are provably bullshit by the previous…

as I said, government intrusion can't be defended as is. Name one web technology that is government intrusion proof. Fuck that. Name on technology that is so. Air gapping isn't. Granted, air gapping allows you to at least know about it. But that's that.

"invasions of privacy" is not a use case. Give me details. By whom? Your partner? Your coworker? 4chan? Your mayor? Russia? What information are they getting from you? Why? It's very likely that whatever use case you come up with, you are better defended with 2auth gmail than with whatever other solution.

That's a problem with the web. In 15 years, and not counting legal government requests, there were what? 3 cases of email data breaches that were caught? 5? That's your "provably bullshit"? What do you use on your life that has a lower failure rate than this?

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#409

Post by rubber_duck »

jodrellblank wrote: post #386
rubber_duck wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Relevant ad is euphemism for "ad that makes you buy stuff you would happily not own otherwise". Since ads in general work (they make people buy more or different stuff) and you can not objectively evaluate whether you was influenced by ads, it is rational to avoid them. Umm - you should avoid getting information because it might influence you to buy things ? There's nothing wrong with what you said, in an ideal worl…

Umm - you should avoid getting information because it might influence you to buy things? UMMMMMMmmmmm - yes? Obviously? If you wouldn't let a salesperson barge into your house, interrupt your reading to try and convince you to get discount eye surgery, why would you let that happen in visual form? in an ideal world ads would be just that - informing the customer about your product This is not anything like an 'ideal'…

>Ideal brains would search for what they need, and buy the most fitting thing.

That's not really how things work - there are certain things you need to accomplish other things where your reasoning partially applies but even then it's debatable. But then there are things you do for pleasure - and how you value those things can be completely separate from their physical properties.

For example there was a study[1] where they gave people 5 vine samples, a cheap wine with 5$ price tag, same wine with a 45$ price tag, 90$ vine and the same 90$ vine with a 10$ label, and a correctly labeled 35$ vine. They found that reported enjoyment and measured fMRI activity went up with price even for same vine. Plenty of similar studies that show similar effects for branding, etc. So these things actually create value even if they don't physically change the product - you end up enjoying it more and it's purpose is your enjoyment.

I mean most of the high end stuff ends up being blowing smoke up your ass to make you feel good about paying 2-10x markup, even when the quality is superior they bundle the bullshit and inflate the price extra because they know you'll pay.

[1] http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2008/pr-wine-011608.html

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#410

Post by rubber_duck »

watwut wrote: post #372
rubber_duck wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Relevant ad is euphemism for "ad that makes you buy stuff you would happily not own otherwise". Since ads in general work (they make people buy more or different stuff) and you can not objectively evaluate whether you was influenced by ads, it is rational to avoid them. Umm - you should avoid getting information because it might influence you to buy things ? There's nothing wrong with what you said, in an ideal worl…

Ads are not information. They are not factual. Psychological marketing does add at value to me, just like being manipulated in person does not add value to me.

Like I responded below, psychological marketing effects like branding, exclusivity, etc. have been shown to increase peoples enjoyment of products in multiple studies.

Being manipulated can also add measurable value to you. For example if a doctor gave you a sugar pill for some condition and the placebo effect helped you get better - would you say that it added no value just because the sugar pill physically did nothing ?

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