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Got this notification when I opened Chrome when coming back to my desk after lunch.
"We changed our privacy settings to allow us to snoop on what you're looking at and shove you ads accordingly. Feel free to opt out, but we'll probably opt you back in when you aren't paying attention."
I'm always a bit amused when these sites and apps say things like, "If you turn off ad personalization, the ads you see won't be as useful to you."
My dude, I don't think I've ever willingly clicked on an ad in my entire life. "Personalizing" them won't change that.
I used to sometimes. When there was a simple, clean ad for something I was interested in, I would click through.
Mind you, this was in an era when the internet amounted to strings and cans because I'm a fucking dinosaur. Since then, ads first went obnoxious and loud, then they got plastered everywhere, then they started being invasive.
Fuck ads at this point. There's nothing good in them for us at all.
Ads aren't supposed to make you click through, they're supposed to lodge a brand in your brain.
If you've seen 5 ads for red delicious apples and 0 for pink ladys, the next time you go to buy an apple you're more likely to pick a red delicious even though pink lady's are superior in every single way. That's how they get you.
Used to think otherwise, that I was immune to the phenomenon that you're describing. But then the other day I realised my shoes were hurting my feet. I was seriously considering buying shoe inserts (if that's their English name), even had the brand in mind, until I realised what was happening.
I've seen ads for this brand on tv like a decade ago. Before that, I honestly had no clue such things existed, I'd seen them in a store like, twice. Never seen anything related to them ever since. Literally forgot about them until I felt the slightest urge to buy them. I was really taken aback when I realised what had happened in my "advertising-immune" mind
it's not about your clicks, it's to influence you, it can influence people in multiple degree, maybe next type when you go buy something think about it
From where comes the idea that personalised ads are good? I hate this timeline.
Google is a large company, they need to pay their employees and server. It's pretty entitled of you to expect them to work for free. /s
I read this everywhere these days. Shilling has become culture.
No I understand why websites show ads. I don't understand why whenever I disable personal ads, I get a message saying "Are you really sure? If you disable this you won't see your favourite ads anymore and only see ads for things you probably don't want to buy. That'd be awful wouldn't it?" and expect me to change my mind because that's definitely not why I wanted to disable it in the first place.
They act as if people like to see ads because then they can buy stuff they think they want/need. And I'm getting afraid that's actually true for a lot of people too.
I dunno how other people operate but I never once bought something off an ad.
Frightening, isn't it?
As Netflix and producers of toilet paper know well, people in the end are happy to pay for things they like or need. But Google and its like have discovered that instead of selling stuff to me, it's much more profitable to sell me to others.
No thanks.
I've seen it even on Lemmy. Sync shills keep repeating "Man needs to eat!" "Man's running a business!"
The Lemmy developers themselves are managing to eat without stooping to such levels.
I support indie/small groups of devs who want some money for their work.
It's just the rich companies I despise.
From the fact that they can sell them at a higher price.
I've never, not once in my life, saw an ad which managed to make me buy something.
It doesn't matter what it's selling. The fact that it's disrupting whatever I'm doing or making my experience worst makes me refuse to buy whatever it's selling, and it doesn't matter how personalized it'll get. I will never be influenced to buy something just because I saw it on an ad.
This feature will literally do nothing for me. I'll still block ads, or if they are unblockable for any reason, I'll just ignore them until they're done.
true, but remember the ads are mostly subconcious. you often wont think about buying something after seeing an ad, but in the back of your mind you might have a slightly better opinion, or mental association to the brand. so next time you go to buy a product your more likely to remember that brand and buy from them. as much as i would like to believe otherwise, no-one is immune to propaganda
If you’re the type of person who buys new things often then yes. But if you buy the exact same stuff that you’ve been purchasing for 30 years, ads aren’t going to impact you today.
Or if you're ADHD and need to do a ton of research for a week on stupid little purchases before you commit to something.
If only it worked the other way as well:
Doctor: "Your blood cholesterol is abysmal. Your blood is more similar to maple syrup than blood."
Subliminal advertising: "Mmm, Coca-Cola means DEATH."
It's mostly unsettling and a bit creepy. Like you'll be doing something during the day and then later you'll see it on Google. Like someone's watching you.
Many friends of mine are like saying why would i care i'd rather see ads that are relevant than ones that arent. Like dude i dont want ads at all and i dont want my data to be used to influence my buying behavior.
I don't care if I have to see unobtrusive ads (not overlays, not popups, not unskippable videos) ads help keep many web services free, sometimes I even find it helpful when ads are relevant to my recent searches or the page I am looking at. But having companies build up profiles about me and then share that between themselves is bullshit, that kind of behavior would be treated as stalking if done by an individual, why is it ok for a business?
While this is an understandable desire my question is as follow:
If you don't want ads, and don't want to pay for every service, how's all the internet system supposed to be sustainable on the long run? How should things be financed?
Honestly that's not our problem to solve. If we disagree with a business model we can choose not to use it, the onus isn't on us to find another one for the business.
If your product isn't worth paying for that's a you problem and if your business goes under because it wasn't sustainable that's also a you problem.
Is pretty likely that the business offered nothing new or innovative at a price people would part with their money for and just because you want to start a competing business in a market means nothing.
Competition is great but no business is entitled to a piece of the market solely because they want to exist. There's no point being a carbon copy of an existing service if you expect people to pay when your offering already exists somewhere else and if you want people to pay your business instead of another you need to improve something or create something of benefit for them to at a price point both sides can work with.
It's funny how small incremental changes over the years felt like nothing big was happening and then at some point we all woke up to a world where the largest advertising firm in the world basically is the internet for the vast majority of people. Everyone uses chrome and rarely types in a web address, they just type the name of the thing into Google and trust mommy to show them what's appropriate. They've back doored the entire population into basically what AOL was trying to be 20 years ago.
"we are going to help protect your privacy" from WHO Google? Is it from you? Because it seems like we need protection from you most of all. Constantly being gaslit by mega-corporations is the new American dream. It's okay because they love us, deep down, and we know that even though they don't show it.
It's funny how small incremental changes over the years felt like nothing big was happening and then at some point we all woke up to a world where the largest advertising firm in the world basically is the internet for the vast majority of people.
In a microcosm of the same kind of creeping normalcy, Bethesda charging a few bucks for horse armor in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was once a reach too far, until it wasn't.
Now we have Star Citizen levels of grifting as well as ActiBlizz "buy a currency to get a currency that is leveraged as currency to get credit toward a currency in a battle pass" layer cake grifting.
EDIT: Typo'd on the sequel count.
small incremental changes over the years felt like nothing big was happening and then at some point we all woke up
I (and many others I presume) has been saying Chrome is shit since the beginning. It didn't feel like nothing was happening, it felt like we were slowly getting to the old days of IE and Netscape.
There are always a few that see this stuff coming, but they usually get looked at like a crazy person shouting about the sky falling.
It also feels like they really push a lot of the terrible on mobile first, get people used to concepts with the "that's just how mobile is, it's a different world" and then when most are accustomed to it they move to regular pc enshitification.
I'm already seeing all the ads I want to see.
Fucking. None.
It really is unfortunate that almost all their users are asleep at the wheel and don't care.
The only time I see ads is when I look into someone else's screen
You should swap to something else. Anything else, tho ideally something that actually respects your privacy like Firefox. If more people did, maybe WEI would not be on the horizon.
"new privacy feature" and then "sites you visit can determine what you like"
translated: "this new privacy feature reduces the amount privacy you have!!! what a cool new feature!"
enhanced privacy
Why does it need to be enhanced? 
I'm poor and I hate stupid bullshit. The only way to personalize ads for me is to make them go away.
"Give us your preference data to prevent your preference data from being used in advertising."
Ah the privacy sandbox that was overwhelming disagreed with, but that Google forced onto the web because they're a monopoly.
Why tho? Just block ads at all. They just want to be "friendly" when the web drm changes hit
This must be some new use of the word 'privacy' I wasn't previously aware of.
I'm so confused by the 1-2 people in here casting downvotes to comments critical of chrome
This is why I use Linux at home, along with TOR and a VPN. I'm not doing anything other than looking up woodworking and camping stuff, but fuck all ya'll for being nosy.
Suffering, now with more customization!
"More useful ads" Well the best ads is no ads.