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LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

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Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#291

Post by gwerbin »

luxuryballs wrote: post #247
gwerbin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost certainly they are using that for audience segmentation and ad targeting. Clever and disgusting. This isn't the invention of some evil moustache-twirling executive, this was the invention of an employee or group of employees who value money more than morals. We should think of such employees as henchmen.

if they do a better job at showing me an ad that might be relevant to me, how is that disgusting? if I have to see an ad at all I at least want them to give it their best shot

Imagine if someone was following you around with a clipboard writing down everything you do, then rifling through your bookshelf to make note of certain books on the bookshelf, and then using that to target ads at you.

You'd say that's a ridiculous and illegal thing to do without you explicit consent, right?

Maybe you personally don't mind and would be happy to offer that consent. But they're doing it without your consent, regardless of whether you want it or not.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#292

Post by jamespo »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #259
surajrmal wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, soon you'll need to pay every website 5.99 a month because AI is destroying click through rates. The internet will likely be far worse without ads than with ads. Solving the tracking problem doesn't need to be mixed up with blocking ads outright. What's funny is that tracking isn't nearly as meaningful for click through rates on ads as relevance to what's on the page, and yet so much effort is placed ont…

I would rather pay people and websites for content. I already do this today for journalism orgs and a handful of high value substacks, I'm happy to pay for more. I'd pay for HN. Free does not scale (with the caveat being orgs like Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, and others who have an endowment behind them and can self fund alongside donations; this, of course, is a model others can adopt), people need to eat, pay f…

Sadly you are atypical and the vast majority are freeloaders, who even without ads or tracking will try and find another way not to pay.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#293

Post by DebtDeflation »

surajrmal wrote: post #256
lastofthemojito wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is why I run ad blockers. It's pretty wild that we live in a world where the actual FBI has recommended we use ad blockers to protect ourselves, and if everyone actually listened, much of the Internet (and economy) as we know it would disappear. The FBI is like "you should protect yourself from the way that the third largest company in the world does business", and the average person's response is "nah, that w…

Don't worry, soon you'll need to pay every website 5.99 a month because AI is destroying click through rates. The internet will likely be far worse without ads than with ads. Solving the tracking problem doesn't need to be mixed up with blocking ads outright. What's funny is that tracking isn't nearly as meaningful for click through rates on ads as relevance to what's on the page, and yet so much effort is placed ont…

>The internet will likely be far worse without ads than with ads.

Ads won't go away. They'll just move from infesting websites to infesting AI chatbots.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#295

Post by jcgrillo »

surajrmal wrote: post #256
lastofthemojito wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is why I run ad blockers. It's pretty wild that we live in a world where the actual FBI has recommended we use ad blockers to protect ourselves, and if everyone actually listened, much of the Internet (and economy) as we know it would disappear. The FBI is like "you should protect yourself from the way that the third largest company in the world does business", and the average person's response is "nah, that w…

Don't worry, soon you'll need to pay every website 5.99 a month because AI is destroying click through rates. The internet will likely be far worse without ads than with ads. Solving the tracking problem doesn't need to be mixed up with blocking ads outright. What's funny is that tracking isn't nearly as meaningful for click through rates on ads as relevance to what's on the page, and yet so much effort is placed ont…

> soon you'll need to pay every website 5.99 a month

No, I won't. I'll just stop using them. So will almost everyone. I don't think there's a single ad-supported product that would survive by converting to a paid subscription, because they're all so profoundly unnecessary.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#296

Post by iso1631 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #259
surajrmal wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, soon you'll need to pay every website 5.99 a month because AI is destroying click through rates. The internet will likely be far worse without ads than with ads. Solving the tracking problem doesn't need to be mixed up with blocking ads outright. What's funny is that tracking isn't nearly as meaningful for click through rates on ads as relevance to what's on the page, and yet so much effort is placed ont…

I would rather pay people and websites for content. I already do this today for journalism orgs and a handful of high value substacks, I'm happy to pay for more. I'd pay for HN. Free does not scale (with the caveat being orgs like Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, and others who have an endowment behind them and can self fund alongside donations; this, of course, is a model others can adopt), people need to eat, pay f…

I run into occasional articles, often linked from here, for say economist or ft.com or new york times

I'm not signing up for a subscription for that journal, but paying a small amount for access to that one article is a no brainer. I don't subscribe to a newspaper either, but I'll happily buy one.

The New European did this a decade ago using "agate" (named after the smallest font you'd get in a newspaper), top up with a few quid, then pay for each article.

Sadly didn't catch on. TNE dropped it in 2019[0]. Agate still exists, having been renamed to "axate", but consumers aren't willing to pay with anything other than their time.

[0] https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/new-european-drops-micro-pay...

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#297

Post by juliangmp »

nickvec wrote: post #222
lastofthemojito wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is why I run ad blockers. It's pretty wild that we live in a world where the actual FBI has recommended we use ad blockers to protect ourselves, and if everyone actually listened, much of the Internet (and economy) as we know it would disappear. The FBI is like "you should protect yourself from the way that the third largest company in the world does business", and the average person's response is "nah, that w…

Majority of people use their mobile devices these days to browse the Internet. Installing an ad blocker on your iPhone is a significantly bigger challenge than on desktop.

Can't speak for IOS but for android users I highly recommend Firefox for android, since you can install ublock origin within it. Let's be real, browsing the modern internet is downright impossible without it today.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#299

Post by ajsnigrutin »

surajrmal wrote: post #256
lastofthemojito wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is why I run ad blockers. It's pretty wild that we live in a world where the actual FBI has recommended we use ad blockers to protect ourselves, and if everyone actually listened, much of the Internet (and economy) as we know it would disappear. The FBI is like "you should protect yourself from the way that the third largest company in the world does business", and the average person's response is "nah, that w…

Don't worry, soon you'll need to pay every website 5.99 a month because AI is destroying click through rates. The internet will likely be far worse without ads than with ads. Solving the tracking problem doesn't need to be mixed up with blocking ads outright. What's funny is that tracking isn't nearly as meaningful for click through rates on ads as relevance to what's on the page, and yet so much effort is placed ont…

But those websites would have to provide 5.99 a month of value, and many don't.

We used to have "static" banners on sites, that would just loop through a predefined list on every refresh, same for every user, and it worked. Not for millions of revenue, but enough to pay for that phpbb hosting.

The advertisers started with intrusive tracking, and the sites started with putting 50 ads around a maybe paragraph of usable text. They started with the enshittification, and now they have to deal with the consequences.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#300

Post by tombert »

surajrmal wrote: post #256
lastofthemojito wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is why I run ad blockers. It's pretty wild that we live in a world where the actual FBI has recommended we use ad blockers to protect ourselves, and if everyone actually listened, much of the Internet (and economy) as we know it would disappear. The FBI is like "you should protect yourself from the way that the third largest company in the world does business", and the average person's response is "nah, that w…

Don't worry, soon you'll need to pay every website 5.99 a month because AI is destroying click through rates. The internet will likely be far worse without ads than with ads. Solving the tracking problem doesn't need to be mixed up with blocking ads outright. What's funny is that tracking isn't nearly as meaningful for click through rates on ads as relevance to what's on the page, and yet so much effort is placed ont…

I don’t think it would necessarily have to be six bucks a month.

Something Awful is a one time fee of ten bucks (a few bucks more to get rid of ads).

I wouldn’t really mind a one-time fee for a lot of sites if it meant that they didn’t have to do a bunch of advertising bullshit,

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