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  • Showing only topics in ~tech with the tag "advertising". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. Is fandom.com actually getting worse?

      I have been a frequent visitor of the various websites that are now under the Fandom.com umbrella, going back to when it was called Wikia. And if there's one thing that's been a consistent...

      I have been a frequent visitor of the various websites that are now under the Fandom.com umbrella, going back to when it was called Wikia. And if there's one thing that's been a consistent irritation with the platform, it's just how intrusive and annoying the advertising is. (For a sense of how long this has been a problem, see here.)

      But worse than the intrusiveness of the sites' ads, their biggest problem is their performance. They can bring Firefox to a crawl.

      For a while, it seemed like Fandom had been making some improvements. I could visit, say, Memory Alpha without the CPU on my computer spiking like crazy. But I just tried to look something up on the Forgotten Realms Wiki and, good god, it was terrible.

      (And before anyone says anything, no, I have no intention of using an ad blocker to deal with it.)

      Am I imagining it or is the platform actually getting worse again?

      57 votes
    2. How to find out which extension opened an advertising tab?

      Recently I've been coming back to my chrome browsers to find a tab open with the following URL: (link disabled to prevent giving them any more clicks) https...

      Recently I've been coming back to my chrome browsers to find a tab open with the following URL:
      (link disabled to prevent giving them any more clicks)

      https ://theaisecrets.beehiiv.com/p/chatgpt-can-now-work-docs-apps-websites-emails

      This is happening across all my computers, both linux, windows, and linux VM, so I don't think it's OS-specific malware, but I suspect a rogue chrome extension is opening the tab, because I have chrome synced across all affected devices via my google account.

      I've searched for this particular problem and URL to no avail, so I wondered if there's a way to track back which extension opened the tab, other than by doing a binary search disabling half my extensions at a time (which would be annoying as hell - the tabs only seem to get opened once a day or so).

      14 votes
    3. Are unwanted Reddit push notifications a new thing?

      I haven’t touched reddit since the APIcalyspe. I’m planning to delete my account but haven’t gotten around to it yet. I was a heavy Apollo user on iOS but never subscribed to it for its push...

      I haven’t touched reddit since the APIcalyspe. I’m planning to delete my account but haven’t gotten around to it yet. I was a heavy Apollo user on iOS but never subscribed to it for its push notification service, instead I kept the official reddit app installed and the only thing I used it for were its notifications. I still have both apps installed.

      Anyway, I was surprised to see one pop up yesterday, especially since it wasn’t connected to my user activity (a new private message or reply to an old comment of mine or something). The notification was just an ad. More specifically, it was promoting some trending post on the site that had “>12,000 upvotes.” In many many years of having the app installed I’ve never seen that before. Is it new?

      Reddit’s had a mildly antagonist relationship with its users for ages, but it feels like they are REALLY intensifying things now. I’m glad I got off the train when I did. And sorry for making yet another post about reddit, I think we’re all getting tired of harping on it here.

      53 votes
    4. Are phones really listening to us at all times?

      Had an interesting conversation with my colleagues this morning. We were pretty split whether phones listen to us for advertising or not. On one hand, we anecdotally see Google news and ad...

      Had an interesting conversation with my colleagues this morning. We were pretty split whether phones listen to us for advertising or not.

      On one hand, we anecdotally see Google news and ad suggestions based on what we say. We know our mics are on at all times for voice assistant and music detection. But we also read online talking about how there is no evidence about the phones recording us. It's hard to trust anything nowadays.

      67 votes
    5. How you use YouTube in desktop and mobile devices. YouTube to limit usage of ad blockers soon.

      YouTube limits ad blocker usage in new test YouTube could be testing a three-strikes policy for ad blocking (Update) So its clear now that YouTube is going to limit the usage of Ad blockers in the...

      YouTube limits ad blocker usage in new test
      YouTube could be testing a three-strikes policy for ad blocking (Update)
      So its clear now that YouTube is going to limit the usage of Ad blockers in the coming future
      I use Ublock Orgin with Firefox which basically used to block all ads and on mobile device I use NewPipe

      110 votes
    6. Why are we often hesitant to spend money on digital services?

      This is sort of a "does anyone else?" type question, but I think it can create some interesting discussion. We have become accustomed to having many things for free online. Search, social media,...

      This is sort of a "does anyone else?" type question, but I think it can create some interesting discussion.

      We have become accustomed to having many things for free online. Search, social media, news, videos, games etc. The price of course is ads and our personal data. But spending money on these kinds of services that exists for free sometimes feels like a hurdle to overcome. I recently gave the paid search engine Kagi a try, and I spent way too much time pondering whether it was worth the $5. Yet I can spend ten times as much on random physical purchases or a round drinks with only a few seconds of decision making.

      Even though we have lived with digital products for decades now, having something tangible and physical between your fingers still feels better. With some exceptions, because most people are paying for streaming services but renting movies in the video store have always cost money, so we are used to that - unlike stuff like search and email which many of us have gotten used to being available for free.

      Can this ever change outside very tech-minded people? Because services that rely on subscriptions rather than dataharvesting and ads do exist, but with the exceptions of maybe the big streaming services, few get wider appeal and the masses flock to the so-called free services instead. I find it almost depressing that we have all these brilliant and innovative tech companies around the world doing amazing things, but a good deal of it all ends up with the goal of showing more ads. It is hard to compete with free, but is it possible to challenge the current most successful business model of "paying" with ads and data?

      36 votes
    7. Is it even worthwhile to turn off ad personalization or location tracking for services/apps?

      So, I’m moving to a new phone and revisiting a lot of accounts, apps, and settings. When it comes to things like location history or ad personalization or whatever, is it even worthwhile to turn...

      So, I’m moving to a new phone and revisiting a lot of accounts, apps, and settings.

      When it comes to things like location history or ad personalization or whatever, is it even worthwhile to turn it off? Am I really supposed to believe that because I have some toggle off that Google suddenly doesn’t track where I drive on Maps? Like if they are going to be tracking me, which I assume they are, I might as well be able to see it to rather than have it exist in the aether somewhere where the info is attributed to me but not viewable in the UI.

      Even with ads, I know shadow profiles are a thing, and that they definitely have data beyond what they show in the UI, so might as well opt in there too right? Plus, the non-targeted ads I get are basically porn-tier ads or stuff for gay men.

      What should I do here? Move into the woods? Feels like I can’t win.

      22 votes