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Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

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Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#241

Post by m463 »

trylfthsk wrote: post #85

I think it's a common sentiment here, but I'm turning into a more extreme anti-advertising zealot every day. Even the large ad networks show paid content that violates what I would consider widespread ethical norms - presenting everything from hyperbolic claims to straight fraud to people with little repercussion. I'm reminded of a poignant example in television, where episodes of Jeopardy! are intertwined with their…

Are you objecting to the actual advertisement?

Because that is small potatoes compared to the tracking, matching and profiling of individuals. I believe that is the big threat to society (and possibly democracy)

Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#242

Post by drpixie »

Lots of Ubiquiti hardware can run Openwrt open source Linux-based router software. And (at least) lots of the Ubiquiti software is based on (really old versions of) Openwrt!

I've been using Openwrt for a while now, and been very happy with it. It's not perfect, but neither is the crap software that comes with most routers, and at least you can see what's going on - and maybe sort it.

Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#243

Post by m463 »

Roark66 wrote: post #238

I think reacting to scammy ads by banning all of them is an overreaction. There are many useful products and services I would've never found out about without ads. How about simply making all ad networks responsible for the content of the ads they serve? You lost your life's savings to a Ponzi scam advertised on Facebook? Sue Facebook for damages. There should be laws in place that allow it. This would fix the proble…

It would be unlikely that you could prove cause and effect in court, and with the distributed nature of data gathering, matching and reselling.

Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#244

Post by TeMPOraL »

m463 wrote: post #241
trylfthsk wrote: post #85

I think it's a common sentiment here, but I'm turning into a more extreme anti-advertising zealot every day. Even the large ad networks show paid content that violates what I would consider widespread ethical norms - presenting everything from hyperbolic claims to straight fraud to people with little repercussion. I'm reminded of a poignant example in television, where episodes of Jeopardy! are intertwined with their…

Are you objecting to the actual advertisement? Because that is small potatoes compared to the tracking, matching and profiling of individuals. I believe that is the big threat to society (and possibly democracy)

One follows from the other. Tracking, matching and profiling of individuals isn't done for kicks, or because evil governments are asking - it's done for two reasons:

- Tune the advertising to best manipulate a particular person (think of it as a PID controller tuning inputs to a system);

- Ad attribution - i.e. determining which companies in the advertising chain should get paid when a customer buys something from someone.

Restricting the shape and form advertising is allowed to take addresses the driving factors behind privacy violations.

Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#245

Post by drpixie »

luckman212 wrote: post #105

I see a lot of complaints here, but nobody offering any substantive alternatives. Mikrotik is mentioned several times, but always with the caveats that it has glitchy UIs or poorly implemented features. EnGenius... you've got to be kidding. I've been a UI fan for many years and was also dismayed by the 6.x releases and the switch to Mediatek, but every time I went looking around, I saw the same tire fires at other ve…

Openwrt runs on lots of Ubiquiti (and other) hardware, and generally runs pretty well.

Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#246

Post by rglullis »

m463 wrote: post #241
trylfthsk wrote: post #85

I think it's a common sentiment here, but I'm turning into a more extreme anti-advertising zealot every day. Even the large ad networks show paid content that violates what I would consider widespread ethical norms - presenting everything from hyperbolic claims to straight fraud to people with little repercussion. I'm reminded of a poignant example in television, where episodes of Jeopardy! are intertwined with their…

Are you objecting to the actual advertisement? Because that is small potatoes compared to the tracking, matching and profiling of individuals. I believe that is the big threat to society (and possibly democracy)

I recall an interesting interview I had with eyeo, which bought the original Adblock Plus extension and have since been pushing for their "Acceptable Ads".

  - Do the ads still track users?
  - Yes, but they are not unobtrusive
  - Yeah, that is not acceptable.

Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#248

Post by wyuenho »

ylyn wrote: post #219
wyuenho wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either they are ads or they are not, whether they are intrusive or what they are selling, or even aren't selling anything are immaterial. If they are promoting something, it's an ad.

Lol. You are missing the point. You pay Ubiquiti for the hardware and software to control the hardware. And they still show you ads in the software! You're paying nothing to GitHub.

Github shows self-promotion even on paid accounts.

unify.ui.com is not just any software. It's a hosted management interface. They are selling you a service on top of some hardware. Services self-promote.

At this point, I'm willing to argue the issue at hand isn't even about intrusive ads or whether SaaS should self-promote. This is likely a case of people's idea of ownership has been challenged. They thought they bought a physical good, they hold complete ownership of it, and they didn't tell the hardware to sell them things. What lots of people have failed to connect is, Ubiquity routers are hardware/software/service bundles. Specifically in this case, they are trying to sell you "powerful insights and control", AKA some analytics and remote management capabilities that's only available on specific hardware/unify combo. People don't have a problem with SaaS running on some cloud hardware self-promoting, so logically why should people have a problem with SaaS attached to some hardware that you can touch self-promoting. Well, it turns out people don't like that. It's too drastic a change, it upends our traditional understanding of what purchasing physical good means. People still think they bought a piece a hardware, they can move it around and open it up, and therefore they own everything related to it. It requires thinking to process that in fact, you've bought some hardware, but the service is just a license, and you don't own it. None of these reactions are rational, it's just human psychology.

Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#249

Post by dspillett »

furyg3 wrote: post #222
trylfthsk wrote: post #85

I think it's a common sentiment here, but I'm turning into a more extreme anti-advertising zealot every day. Even the large ad networks show paid content that violates what I would consider widespread ethical norms - presenting everything from hyperbolic claims to straight fraud to people with little repercussion. I'm reminded of a poignant example in television, where episodes of Jeopardy! are intertwined with their…

My mother got a new laptop, and at some point I got remote access to help her get a few things set up (password manager/ad-blocker/backups/etc). I was really amazed at what her Facebook feed looks like. Actual Facebook advertisements for literal scams. 'Michelle Obama's investment tips' for some bitcoin platform. 'Patagonia Outlet' with items at 25% of the cost, at domains like patagonia-outlet.shjss72828.sub.domain.…

> but KYC-ing advertisers and screening/auditing ads for blatant and obvious scams or false marketing is many orders of magnitude less resource intensive

And very easy to automate. We know they can do it. But until there is sufficient threat of action if they don't then they are happy to let their users get fleeced in exchange for the advertising $.

There is an argument that "if they crack down on the easy to detect stuff, the scams will just get more clever" but that is not at all why they aren't making more effort.

One funny thing I've noticed with facebook, is that if you start responding to such adverts with comments along the lines of "this is obviously a scam because..." responses, they start showing you more and more of that sort of scam presumably because you have shown engagement with the previous ones.

Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

#250

Post by karmicthreat »

donmcronald wrote: post #113
karmicthreat wrote: post #98

For people needing alternatives. I've had good luck with foritgate. Some of their APs are dogs, but the fortios in general has been decent.

Way too many SKUs IMO and I think they’re quite a bit more expensive, aren’t they?

A fortigate 30E is around 400$. So it's a little more but their lower end equipment is definitely affordable by small and medium sized businesses.
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