81–90 of 131 posts
"We are committed to providing you meaningful privacy choices" -> "We are committed to selling your data if you let us" I hate this sort of pseudo-friendly weasel-wording that's getting increasingly popular these days.
"We are committed to selling your data unless you tell us not to" (opt-out vs opt-in)
So there are essentially remnants of our browsing history linked to our devices shared among numerous ad companies. They then serve relevant ads for us all over the web depending on where they are being paid to display relevant ads. Twitter is at it. We've experienced the same behavior from Google & God knows Facebook is at it too. I've even had conversations where the only connection we had to the web was our locall…
I'm confused. If this technology is so pervasive and supposedly efficient, why do I always get such terrible ads, completely irrelevant to my interests? Usually the only targeted ads I get are ads for products I was searching for to buy, but usually they show up after I bought the product, so, no, I am not going to buy a new fridge within few years anyway.
Not only does this problem remain true despite the high amount of information that advertisers have, but it's compounded by the business model. They don't want you to buy just anything you'd like, they want to sell you some particular product or service which you may never like, no matter the information that's been gathered on you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't have an alexa, perhaps. But if you believe alexa did that and you still haven't murdered it with fire, I guess you never will. (Edit: as pointed out below, it was an alexa but not his own so my criticism is undeserved)
It's not my Alexa I'm talking about! I have no reason to buy one. I made a list of benefits and it really wasn't strong enough!
I thought with Alexa we were still in the "in some dystopian future they're going to use that data for ads" phase. If we've moved to that already, I'd like to read about it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A) Almost all websites from newspapers and other outlets have many of the same advertising problems on them. In fact, I would imagine sites like twitter have more control over the ads placed on them than many websites for local papers. B) Whenever announcements or tweets or other newsworthy events are reported in the paper, I still like to go to the primary source to get the full context. So, the solution you propose…
Thank you, this is the point of my comment above. Also, many of the small announcements made by schools, police departments, parks, utilities, etc are not considered newsworthy and so Twitter or Facebook is literally the only source of that information.
If they post information only on Twitter ... well, it's not that important. I bet some of us lose perspective on the relative importance of messages when they are coming in from all directions.
There is no shortage of good reasons to block ads. Passive ads no longer exist, if they ever did. They are all actively exploiting, tracking, and selling you- even if you never interact with them. Some might say, "Stop using twitter", but how is any American supposed to do that when the President of the United States uses it as his platform? Beyond Twitter, there is no shortage of school systems, police departments,…
I believe one essential step in the right direction would be to create an ad platform that allows companies to create and developers to show truly passive ads. To specify what I mean: Display a jpeg with the advertisement and link it to a website using a referral ID in the URL. This referral ID would obviously only be a vague indicator of success, but I believe that even though targeted advertising might be more effe…
Selling advertisements based on impressions incentivizes publishers to maximize impressions through various means such as click-bait titles, auto-refreshing ads while you're on the page, or implementing slideshows. All of these things degrade a website's experience in the long-term for the sake of ekeing out a few more dollars in the short term.
There is no shortage of good reasons to block ads. Passive ads no longer exist, if they ever did. They are all actively exploiting, tracking, and selling you- even if you never interact with them. Some might say, "Stop using twitter", but how is any American supposed to do that when the President of the United States uses it as his platform? Beyond Twitter, there is no shortage of school systems, police departments,…
I don't use Twitter, and your reasoning is a complete non-sequitur.
I don't play golf, and the President plays lots of it. How is that possible? By... my not playing golf.
There is no shortage of good reasons to block ads. Passive ads no longer exist, if they ever did. They are all actively exploiting, tracking, and selling you- even if you never interact with them. Some might say, "Stop using twitter", but how is any American supposed to do that when the President of the United States uses it as his platform? Beyond Twitter, there is no shortage of school systems, police departments,…
> Some might say, "Stop using twitter", but how is any American supposed to do that when the President of the United States uses it as his platform? I don't use Twitter, and your reasoning is a complete non-sequitur. I don't play golf, and the President plays lots of it. How is that possible? By... my not playing golf.
You can't even conflate the two. Twitter is his method of communicating to us. He doesn't use the media like previous president's.
There is no shortage of good reasons to block ads. Passive ads no longer exist, if they ever did. They are all actively exploiting, tracking, and selling you- even if you never interact with them. Some might say, "Stop using twitter", but how is any American supposed to do that when the President of the United States uses it as his platform? Beyond Twitter, there is no shortage of school systems, police departments,…
> Some might say, "Stop using twitter", but how is any American supposed to do that when the President of the United States uses it as his platform? I don't use Twitter, and your reasoning is a complete non-sequitur. I don't play golf, and the President plays lots of it. How is that possible? By... my not playing golf.
There is no shortage of good reasons to block ads. Passive ads no longer exist, if they ever did. They are all actively exploiting, tracking, and selling you- even if you never interact with them. Some might say, "Stop using twitter", but how is any American supposed to do that when the President of the United States uses it as his platform? Beyond Twitter, there is no shortage of school systems, police departments,…
> Some might say, "Stop using twitter", but how is any American supposed to do that when the President of the United States uses it as his platform? I don't use Twitter, and your reasoning is a complete non-sequitur. I don't play golf, and the President plays lots of it. How is that possible? By... my not playing golf.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Some might say, "Stop using twitter", but how is any American supposed to do that when the President of the United States uses it as his platform? I don't use Twitter, and your reasoning is a complete non-sequitur. I don't play golf, and the President plays lots of it. How is that possible? By... my not playing golf.
What the president says on Twitter affects me or the world, whether or not he uses a 9 iron or a driver to get the ball out of the sand trap does not. You can't even conflate the two. Twitter is his method of communicating to us. He doesn't use the media like previous president's.