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This is your periodic reminder that personalized advertising, which is a gigantic invasion of all our privacy and makes the entire web significantly slower and shittier to use, is often less effective then simple situational advertising (on a blog about ponies, advertise pony stuff).

We are losing so much of our privacy for what is essentially a scam all the way around. The best sales pitch made by advertisers is the one they made for themselves. They fuck us, and the people that buy the ads.
in reply to Jesse

Tio
Tio
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Ads are all cancer. Waste of our time, and resources. Period. And targeted ads are a natural evolution of a system of trade. Trade this for that, this is the game that we play on a global scale. Ads are a way to "advertise" the traded goods and services. I agree with you but I will encompass all ads. And all trades for that matter.

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in reply to Jesse

an ephemeral fille
an ephemeral fille
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cold take: the only personalized ads we need are situational ads, which are personalized in that only people interested in the situation are gonna see ads related to it
in reply to an ephemeral fille

Seirdy
Seirdy
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Frigid take: the only ads we need are first-party descriptions of one's own product since we know those are inherently biased anyway.
in reply to Seirdy

an ephemeral fille
an ephemeral fille
• •
first-party description says the product is terrible and please don't buy it but all the reviews are stellar and your friends are raving about it

(flappy bird)
in reply to Jesse

jaryl
jaryl
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if it was less effective than why are record breaking amounts of money being spent on it? There are endless dashboards and reports of numbers proving the effectiveness of these campaigns, measurements that can only be done with the internet as a medium.

We lose so much more than our privacy. Most people think that they are unaffected by ads, but these people end up being the ones that are unknowingly influenced to vote against their own interest, or buy things they don't need, etc.
in reply to jaryl

Jesse
Jesse
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Have a look at for example this post by @pluralistic about why targeted ads aren't as good as they claim to be:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/05/behavioral-v-contextual/#contextual-ads

Relevant snippet:
The ad industry's core competency isn't selling advertisers' products to consumers: it's selling advertising services to advertisers. Moving product is a good way to do that, but so is bullshitting in ways that drive up payments.

Pluralistic: 05 Aug 2020 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

pluralistic.net
@Cory Doctorow

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in reply to Jesse

JP
JP
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Vital context is Facebook's "pivot to video" disaster: they lied about the effectiveness of a type of content that benefited their ad business, and it levelled an entire industry. And they weren't even really punished for it! That was the moment it should've been clear to everyone that this entire ad tech economy was built on lies and should be completely dismantled via regulation.

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in reply to Jesse

like jam or bootlaces
like jam or bootlaces
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not only are we not the customer, we aren't even the product: We're the commodified complement of the product.

@jaryl@pluralistic
@Cory Doctorow @jaryl

Seirdy reshared this.

in reply to like jam or bootlaces

jaryl
jaryl
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exactly, with advertising the top bidders buys our consent, our choices. Buy this unnecessary thing, hate this group of people, support this (profitable) war, believe this outright lie, are but some examples of what the actual product is.
in reply to like jam or bootlaces

Seirdy
Seirdy
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Commodification means something else; I’m assuming you’re referring to “commoditize”, as in “commoditize your complement”. Although in this context the words have some really interesting overlap, which is why I brought it up. See "Commodified vs. Commoditized by Douglas Rushkoff.

We are first commodified by being made a complement to a product, then gradually commoditized as complements ideally are.
@kingannoy@jaryl@pluralistic # note from https://seirdy.one/notes/2022/06/01/commodified-and-commoditized/

Commodified and commoditized

Reply to not only are we not the customer, we aren't even the product: We're the commodified complement of the product. by @idlestate@toot.
Seirdy's Home
#posse @Cory Doctorow @Jesse @jaryl
in reply to Seirdy

Seirdy
Seirdy
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wait i just realized you replied about this very distinction already 🤦🏾‍♂️.
in reply to jaryl

Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan
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I believe you are confusing targeted advertisement (like Facebook showing an ad to a specific subset of users) which is effective and generally harmful but not a particular privacy concern and personalized advertisement (like you getting ads "relevant to you" no matter the website you are visiting) which is ineffective and a privacy nightmare.
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