151–160 of 247 posts
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When I watch YouTube on an Apple TV the ads seem slightly relevant - when I watch on a mobile device they are completely awful, literally no idea why I'm being shown most of them.
You probably disabled some privacy settings on your mobile (or you are not logged in with your user).
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Civilizations that think this way get conquered by ones that don't, and afterwards, nobody much cares what they thought.
we are being conquered by google and facebook already. them leaving would be the exact opposite.
They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory. I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs. You pay for instagram with your personal data, which i…
I think people more or less understand that. Nobody likes ads. Everyone realizes that the ads they're seeing are targeted. But I think every web designer knows that putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people. Making them enter a credit card -- even if you told them it would never be charged -- would send enormous numbers away. Many won't even create a free a…
To an extent. I think if everyday users were shown just how much personal data follows them around from site to site I think they’d be horrified. Enough to change their habits? Possibly not. But I don’t think people have full understanding.
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This is 5 million for this particular court case. Nothing is preventing others from filing their own, very similar cases. If Meta ignores the court's decision, a second lawsuit may end much worse for them. Though, practically speaking, America has been threatening to make the trade war they started much worse for the EU if it tried to enforce things like DSA and GDPR fines. We'll have to see how enforceable these law…
The US wouldn't be doing this if these American tech companies weren't lobbying the government hard to kill the DSA & GDPR. It seems like all regulatory enforcement is out of the window with this administration, so if they can kill the European regulations, they're free to do as they like. The scoping of the trade war as the US having a deficit with all countries by not counting services is ridiculous, it's the most…
This is over the "most recent" mode? Absolutely moronic decision. It punishes companies for giving users any choice at all.
Yes, the issue is forced algorithm-based feeds, where Meta is free to profile as deeply as they want and exploit what should be private knowledge about you. A "most recent" feed (of things you already chose to subscribe to/follow) should be a standard option on any social media app, and the app shouldn't switch back to their toxic algorithm automatically anytime you look away. This behavior itself shows how much Meta…
The moral panic over feed ranking models will seem to history as quaint as the moral panic over the telegraph and the train.
If your new technology isn't attracting a swarm of moral gnats buzzing about it corrupting the youth, are you even making something impactful?
As a European, I’m glad that the influence of big, potentially dangerous companies is being kept in check. From the start of October, Meta is completely switching off political ads and now I can look forward to my feed stopping with tabloids, politics and Russian propaganda and going back to technical curiosities and capybaras.
I, as a European, am worried that these rulings, regulations, and the prevailing mindset will lead to companies leaving and result in technological stagnation, due to our inability to compete with global markets. Of course, there is something to be said about the dangers, effectiveness, and societal impact of social media. But companies should have the right to decide how they conduct their business. They should also…
What Meta does is the equivalent of dumping nuclear waste in the middle of your city. I'm sure you don't think companies have the right to do the latter.
I'm very sceptical of the origin of comments like these. I don't know any actual Europeans who share these concerns because they know that the status quo is that the entire EU market is captured by US tech. And that this has been done through anticompetitive tactics as well as offloading trillions in negative externalities onto societies.
If you're truly a concerned European, you're incredibly naive, and need to read much more about how banally evil Meta is.
Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuckerberg: Just ask Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuckerberg: People just submitted it. Zuckerberg: I don't know why. Zuckerberg: They "trust me" Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks
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That would be the sensible idea in a free market. But that ship sailed LONG ago. Now there are apps and "markets" that are so important and dominating (Amazon, Facebook, ...) that the only alternatives are basically to split them, control them or regulate them in detail. The problem isn't lack of "innovation". Anyone can make any social app work the way they want to. But that doesn't mean the same rules and laws appl…
> That would be the sensible idea in a free market. Absolutely nothing stopping you from starting a social network > But that ship sailed LONG ago. I'm pretty sure there are hundreds? thousands? of startups ready to launch that all do some variant of FB. Why are you on YC if you think free market tech is dead? > But that doesn't mean the same rules and laws applies - or should apply - to one with 1B users as one with…
I have been visiting this forum for 12 years. It took probably 5 years before I _heard_ about the "other" part of ycombinator - the startup thing. But I never really cared about that bit, it's just an online tech forum that happens to share domain with the startup incubator.
> lol, what? We have different laws depending on how popular you are?
Absolutely. I think that is pretty universal already. For example laws preventing monopolies (government approvals of mergers, for example).
They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory. I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs. You pay for instagram with your personal data, which i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think people more or less understand that. Nobody likes ads. Everyone realizes that the ads they're seeing are targeted. But I think every web designer knows that putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people. Making them enter a credit card -- even if you told them it would never be charged -- would send enormous numbers away. Many won't even create a free a…
> putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people Dear god, yes, please, good. Pass laws that force the bloated companies to lose users. Yes. World = better.
My understanding of the parent comment and the comment above the parent comment was that the grand comment was frustrated on why things can't be subscription based internet instead of a sneaky ad tech which invades our privacy.
The comment responding to it basically said that it isn't profitable. Users just don't sign up and growth / stock profit matters to the company and so that is the reason why the world is the way it is right now with so privacy invasive ad spyware tech
Now, you want to pass laws to force the bloated companies to lose users, so deep down you are saying that losing users is unprofitable for them and that a subscription based model just wouldn't work for the internet which the grand parent comment wanted / preferred and many people do.
I might not be able to explain it but in just 3 different comments of different people, we might have gotten a justification as to why the internet is the way it is right now
Companies don't want to lose users or money :) which is why they turn to spyware. Now I am not for big tech at all but we need to understand them, we need to realize how this economy of privacy works to fix / liberate ourselves.
And also I think that a lot of these companies just pay fines when they do in fact breach any laws as for them its just a drop of bucket and there is very few amount of times that a company is genuinely punished reasonably and I am not even sure the last time that it happened...
but this is exactly why they spy on us, for profit and how we don't really pay for subscriptions or even let alone the idea of signing up or adding credit card details.
I feel somewhere somehow along the way, we got entitled to everything and we stopped paying for internet services and we started paying with our privacy. There is a point to be made that we live a world where evil adware no matter how much we might comment here is still more profitable sometimes than subscription for a lot of companies and so somehow I do think that its a bit of both on us and taking responsibility ourselves might help us too instead of just dunking them Completely on big tech.
I also think that open source is a good example of this, I just don't understand why people would much rather pay with their ads which might scam them or they might pay for subscription based software and not donate to an open source software.
We as a society complain about open source sometimes not being as good as closed source but why would it if we as a society don't fund it and open source is in a dire state of underfunding, how do we as a society then feel entitled of good quality open source...
The system is a bit broken and it starts from all of us I suppose.
Since the point of these comments on these websites to me seems to be to try to bring change imo otherwhere there is no point in discussing and I want to take it in that direction...
Like, The point I want to really ask is, do people care? Aside from the people here who might be passionate about it, but is there a way that the masses can be taught about such things in a way that they start caring?
Is there a way that we can show people how insane these companies track you all across the internet and how insane big tech is to the general public so that they might care and look at open source or any things like donations / subscriptions as a healthy medium and start taking part in it instead of being into yet another adware software part.
What are some mechanisms to help people share this knowledge I suppose?
Who will share this message of cutting the hand of algorithm when the algorithm is feeding the people the slop and people are eating it. The algorithm wouldn't listen, it wouldn't bother. We might need to think of something else and I just wanted to discuss it here if its alright.
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Europe has this delusion that they can keep living their magically relaxed life, and continue to both fund it and stay relevant on the world stage. FYI, the big players today are the US and China. Nobody has the heart to call and tell Europeans that they aren't really part of the future, they're still away on their 8th week long holiday of the year. Not staying economically relevant is far ( far ) more harmful to soc…
Yeah sure, because life in the USA is so much more awesome than in Europe. Naww, they can keep their relevancy in the world stage. We are good over here living in the "stone age".