Wtf does their browser history look like to be getting those sorts of ads?!
In the article he states that he kept clicking on those ads on purpose, in order to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
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I saw that double post ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I would be very curious to see the algorithm adapting to that:
User: click on shrooms ad
AI: Oh he likes shrooms with his cocaine! Let’s try a marijuana to snort with his cocaine.
Way better than actually targeted ads
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Some, sure. I asked my weed dealer to show me a bit on how this works. You’d be amazed at how much dealing is done over clearnet on FB messenger, whatsapp, etc. Little to no technical security. Selling drugs online has become much more mainstream than it was during the $10 bitcoin days. Not that I’d personally use clearnet for drugs, but that’s where a ton of deals are happening. This article only confirms what I’ve already seen.
Yep, so much stuff that used to be on TOR moved to discord. Then if they are smart they use Signal or Session, but I have heard of a lot of stuff just straight on FB… it’s crazy. I guess with that many transactions, it’s a really though game of whackamole. Especially since the internet made it much easier to deal drugs without needing to hold huge quantities at once.
How would one find the discord groups so I can be sure to stay away from them?
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That wock is absolutely fent, and with those prices, that LSD is probably 25i.
The DMT seems legit tho
ITT: People who are so quick to suggest ad blockers they miss the point of the conversation.
im getting the wrong type of ads lol
Yeah I just get fed with bullshit on ADHD and Autism nonstop.
This shit’s going on in centralized big-name websites, while Lemmy instances fret about discussing piracy and ban people for being impolite to bigots.
I fucking hate the modern web.
You don’t hate the modern web. You hate people.
No I definitely hate many disparate elements of the modern web. Browsers are controlled by an advertising giant that can’t even operate a decent search engine anymore. Legislators are still trying to demonize pornography, of any kind, as if two adults fucking in private is child exploitation… somehow. Every website that centralized disparate forums / galleries / chatrooms simultaneously went pants-on-head crazy in a panicked frenzy to make N+1 dollars.
I also hate people who demand “be polite!” without viciously cracking down on actual trolls saying stupid shit to bait blunt correction. And those trolls, obviously. It doesn’t have to be exclusive. There’s plenty to go around.
Similarly, my YouTube shorts are filled with gambling videos and “get rich quick scheme” videos. Seems as though “do not recommend channel” blocks the channel but assumes you have some growing interest in the topic.
I just want to watch woodworking shorts and plumbing videos T_T
Maybe do Not Interested and then Do not recommend channel?
Unless doing the former just hides the video immediately and doesn’t let you do the latter, in which case just call me a fool.
Yeah, Not Interested hides the video just like Do Not Recommend, so you can’t do both on the same one.
But it doesn’t really matter, because for me Not Interested is actually signaling Youtube with Hell Yeah Gimme More! and anything I say I’m not interested in I see ten times more of. So I just block channels, which does seem to work reliably, except the list of shit channels is never ending.
Blocktube is an awesome extension, but it doesn’t run on the browser I actually sign into Youtube as myself. I run it on another browser where I never sign in to avoid a one-off or accidental video choice skewing my recommendations for the indefinite future.
The number of gyrations required just to watch what I want to watch, and not see what I don’t want to see, on Youtube is never ending.
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I just got an extension that removes shorts. I tried blocking channels, saying I wasn’t interested, pressing the thumbs down button, but it would still show trash like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate.
Now here’s the exact problem with the so called “personalized” ads, that Google and Facebook serves what the advertisers think you want to see, instead of what you actually want to see.
This is the fundamental conflict of interest which the obvious conclusion is that online banner/video advertisements doesn’t work, and has never worked, because ultimately, no matter how many times you shove ads in people’s faces via a thoughtless machine, you can’t “trick” people into liking something. What people want is thoughtful, sincere recommendations by real people, which is why we have seen the rise of sassy brand Twitter accounts being so successful for a time: because there is a real person behind it.
(Of course, it’s really funny if you take blatant advertisment to its logical extreme, and even that seemed more effective.)
Of course, Google and Facebook will never admit that they’ve been lying to everyone and themselves for more than a decade, because to do so is to admit that their entire business of Web 2.0 was built on an absurd and illogical premise of again, if you show people ads for things they never asked for a thousand times, then you can brainwash them into liking something.
In other words, Google and Facebook’s entire advertisment business model, if you really think about it, is really no different than pick-up artist logic, and. They. Just. Won’t. Go. Away.
Turns out though you can absolutely trick them into believing conspiracy theories with social media ads.
You can absolutely trick people into liking drugs too
Fuuuuuuck the Sacklers.
Learn the TRUTH about this thing you’re already primed for by your bias!
click
Holy crap! He’s a alien! U cud tell frum the eyez! 👁️👁️👀👽
Pretty much every industry works by tricking people into liking things.
Like the razors with four+ blades on them, people buy them cause the commercials say “more blades is better”.
People wouldn’t seek out extra blades if they weren’t tricked into liking it. They are objectively worse than single blade razors.
Exactly. If it didn’t pay off these companies wouldn’t keep shoveling money to Facebook and Google to show their ads time and time again. Marketing is expensive. If it didn’t at least break even then nobody would be doing it anymore by now. Obviously it works, otherwise I wouldn’t ever know what the fuck a squarespace or a goddamn raid shadow legends is.
The ads that I mind the least and the ones I find the most effective are sponsors for creators that I like. Short sponsor segments really don’t annoy me as much and I have actually tried a couple products that have advertised that way.
That said, almost all of them sucked in the end but that’s another subject entirely.
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Sure, assuming that their job is filling beds in prison rather than actually reducing crime.
it’s astonishing
people still not blocking ads, use adblock!
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I use an alternative side-loaded Instagram app called Instander which blocks ads and comes with other nice features. I don’t use the platform much anyhow, but when I do it makes the experience actually tolerable.
No, what people should start doing is demanding that governments actually enforce the law against Facebook for acting as an accomplice to the myriad crimes the article discusses. Facebook should be dissolved and executives should go to prison.
ReVanced says they support removing timeline ads from Instagram. I don’t use Instagram, so I haven’t tested it, though.
Pihole oughta do it.
PiHole doesn’t work when ads and legitimate content are both served from same domain.
That is true, didn’t think about that.
People use the app, have their info exploited and than complain this is the only way to use a service that is exploiting your clicks, and yet, you don’t stop using it, really weird.
eh, I’m a photographer/videographer. sadly I more or less need to use it if I want anyone to find me…
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As opposed to when?
At what point in internet history do you think website advertising was tolerable? Because in my eyes, it’s always been an aggressive obstacle to usability, since the dial-up era.
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Movie piracy can be both, and it’s straight-up illegal. Hosting text is nothing in comparison. Images and video snippets are barely more than that. If all a website provides is bandwidth and storage, we all have that in spades, and if a website can’t let us share it, then a website is the wrong model.
Running a glorified chat server and image board in the year two thousand and fifty gigabits should not be remarkable. You are currently on a service patched together by randos hosting servers for fun. It replaces a website which, despite strenuous effort, made fuck-all revenue from a highly constructive and ordered community of millions.
I fail to understand how people got into the mindset that every website needs to make money. Some worthwhile and widely-desired things simply lose money, and that’s fine. Expecting to monetize your family would be gross. Expecting to monetize community is not much better, and equally fruitless. Squeezing any blood from that stone requires some fundamental betrayals of what those relationships mean and why people seek them.
Social media sites only turned a profit when they undermined democracy. Advertising is propaganda for sale. If you think capitalism prevents us from even talking to one another without being gouged for the privilege or subjected to destabilizing abuse, then torches and pitchforks are on your left.
Pixelfed
Ain’t that many thots there. Could be a good it bad thing.
U saying there’s an untapped market? 😏
If only there was a Pixelfed instance that hosted OnlyFans, Cosplayers, and random exhibitionists. Everyone else could just subscribe to it.
Oooohhh nooooooo!~ :3
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I may or may not have acquired exactly the acid in those pics.
I definitely did not.
Or did I?
It looks identical actually and I’m willing to bet it came from the same place.
If I actually had it that is.
lucky 😮💨 all mine are weight loss scams and laptop deals
Are the drugs any good?
Mine is all for phone cases. How do I get the ads for drugs?
Aren’t those ads personalised to your browsing history?
Should that be a reason to get adds for illegal things? … at all?
Tangently…you read one gay rights article and suddenly your ad feed is filled with hot single dads in my area…
Nice 👍
Do you have a link to the article?
They are personalised by the “bucket” that data collection companies like Google or Facebook placed you into based on profiling. Browsing and search history is only one of the factors that is taken into account when you are profiled, there are myriad more ways to collect data about you.
And then what ads you see is determined by what advertisers think your “bucket” wants. If you are male in your 20s living in rural USA and advertisers think that males in their 20s living in rural USA are interested in guns, then that’s what you will see - even if you never clicked on gun ad or searched for guns on Google.I thought that was pretty obvious from the framing of the article but yes that is the conclusion
You’re clearly a known customer for those products :p The algorithm is never wrong…
I’m trying to kick an opiate habit and seeing that I can buy them on Instagram is not helping
If it helps, there’s a 99.9% chance they just take your money and not send any drugs
That’s exactly why I’ve never actually tried one of these things. I had someone on Reddit message me once and give me a dude’s telegraph info and it was so obviously a scam.
The dude asked what I wanted and I said something really vague and he immediately said “okay how many” without clarifying. Then when I didn’t respond, he sent a screenshot of allll his notifications from messages he was getting from “happy customers”