131–140 of 159 posts
I once watched a news report about the then tail end of the Ceaușescu regime. One of the indicators of the level of oppression they described was that they had video cameras mounted on street lamps.
Source: someone who lived through that.
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The EU did that and people still bitch about GDPR banners on websites.
The law had good intention but bad implementation. Also the law takes so long to change. Once it became obvious that companies would bypass it by having clicking gymnastics they needed to quickly update the law saying that it should only take one click to opt out.
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Why do they have to make money?
So that the website... stays online? Have you bought a domain before or anything online before?
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Yes, I hosted a website for about two years. Paid for it from my own pocket. Had some fun, learned a few things. There is this disgusting belief in modern society that everything one does needs to generate money, otherwise it's not worth doing. Were we always like this?
Yes. This predates websites, it's called commerce. Pick any medium, humans will always find a way to transact with one another, it's been like this for thousands of years. I don't understand why you think websites and the internet should be exempt from this? > > There is this disgusting belief in modern society that everything one does needs to generate money, otherwise it's not worth doing. Were we always like this?…
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The free internet of the workers and peasants? I mean, how will the websites make money?
maybe we're better off without websites that only exist to make money.
Militarism, surveillance, propaganda, statism. Reminds me of something. Are we the baddies now ?
Ive noticed that certain people are chronically incapable of recognizing this.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it! — Upton Sinclair
I ran into this one just today ....
"Let the logician and the Godman show
The foolishness, but let the word be spoken.
Tim embraced Tom, embarking for Heathrow.
Smiling, Christmas-elated, somewhat sad too,
Blessing the filthy world. Somebody had to."
— Anthony Burgess, Byrne
Militarism, surveillance, propaganda, statism. Reminds me of something. Are we the baddies now ?
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My personal website has been up for over two and a half decades. I've paid for hosting and for the domain name. Never had an ad on the site.
So do you expect everyone else to not earn an income from their website if they so choose? > Never had an ad on the site. You know there are other ways of people making money without doing ads right?
> So do you expect everyone else to not earn an income from their website if they so choose?
> You know there are other ways of people making money without doing ads right?
Yes, of course. And as per the conversion, there was no need to mention that obvious fact.
Comparing digital ads to the Stasi is just peak Western snowflake behavior, I'm sorry. There are many imaginary arguments about harm in the article, with precisely zero actual examples or cases. Data brokers, buy data, stalk somebody. Can you share at least something? No, it's all just hand waving. Because none of these people can offer any. The fact that the author still thinks Cambridge Analytica meant something sa…
Do you think if the Stasi, or someone like them, ever come into power, they'll just ignore all this extra surveillance we've built for free? Not really a hypothetical - look at China and Russia, or Saudi Arabia [1]. I'll let others make the case to add the US and European countries to that list - not because I don't believe they belong on the list, but just because I'm too lazy to meet the higher bar of evidence that…
Putin's cronies literally own the country's only remaining unblocked social network. They tend to prosecute people for public content, even comments or likes, but there's not a single case where ad targeting data was used.
And they have the capacity to locate a person through multiple other ways, primarily cell networks.
I know there is evidence like Apple ATT (iOS 14.5, April 2021). 15-25% opt-in. -$10B Meta revenue in 2022 (CFO David Wehner) But it sure looks to me like personalized ads are a paper tiger. I mean it seems like 30% of the ads I see on Facebook and YouTube are just transparent scams that they could serve me without any profiling. For instance for a week I have been in heavy rotation of an ad on Facebook which obviousl…
I try to disable a lot of web tracking stuff, so I kinda understand if advertisers have trouble targeting me. But the information they should be able to use to target me just isn't getting used at all. Are other people getting well-targeted ads? because in my experience, ad companies suck at it. I constantly receive ads on Youtube in languages I don't speak. I can kinda make out whats happening in some of the ads, I…
Always fun when the ads have less rigorous content policy enforcement than the actual videos.
I occasionally use non-adblocked youtube, and I think the ads were mostly Audible/Jet2 holidays? I don't think I've ever seen a local business ad on there, presumably because making a video ad in the first place is expensive.
The places for local businesses seem to be Facebook and Instagram.