just found this on reddit... this is freaking hilarious 😂😂

Ah yes, Brave, the browser that "respects your privacy" has started putting ads directly *in* the browser.

When they introduced Brave Rewards and people were confused why I was upset, it's because I knew it was a slippery slope to toward this sort of thing.

EDIT: Turns out, the ad is targeted towards LGBT people. As an LGBT person who just wants to live life in peace, this shit aggravates me even more. First, corporations are not your friends. They do not care about you. It's virtue signalling. Second, it's a bit ironic seeing as how Brenden Eich made Brave. If you don't already know, Brenden Eich (also creator of javascript) is pretty anti-gay.

So many things wrong with this. Can't wait to stop leasing away my devices' resources to advertisers.

Online ads....

I think the problem is that in the age of "AI" and "machine learning" etc etc - the reality is that targeted or personalised advertising is absolutely shite.

All I see when I browse around are ads for things that I bought. It's like - I FUCKING BOUGHT THIS WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO SELL IT TO ME??!

I think anyone worried about the machine uprising enslaving humanity can relax and not worry about it, at least until amazon can understand when it has sold you something or you just looked at something.

It blows my mind that Google, advertisers, and a lot of companies seem to not understand the concept of a need fulfilled.

Google news: If you notify me of an article, and then I click on that notification, you can assume I read it. And you can also assume that I don't wish to read it again 2hrs later! So stop notifying me!!!

Amazon, AdSense, Facebook, everyone else: just because I bought new headphones, doesn't mean I wanna see ads for headphones. Actually it means the exact opposite. I don't want new headphones. I literally just bought some. And I especially don't want the exact same ones. I already have them.

Somehow, the targeted ads are worse than random. That's annoying.

How is this hard?

How did targeted ads become so...accurate?

I did a search for a new service on Google last night.

Today, an ad appears on my Facebook feed highlighting my search term on Google the night before.

I bought this beer just because of it's name. Is there any whiskies or other drinks with geeky names?

Ok this is freaking creepy. I searched for information about login systems on other websites for some time. Not once did I touch Facebook. Then Facebook show me targeted ads when I hoped on 30 minutes later. How the heck does Facebook get that data in the first place? I'm starting to get pissed that my data is just handed out to everyone, even by search engines.

This popped up on Best Buy while I was looking around for ideas for my next chair. Somehow I don't think they are on speaking terms with their daughter anymore 🤣

!rant

tl;dr at the bottom

This might not be a popular opinion, so please, if you throw things at me, limit yourselves only to tomatoes and other soft projectiles. Thank you!

So this being said, i must say ut: i actually like how facebook use this data overall. While i am completly against privacy violation, that data is given up by ourselves with a choice to do it, so we can't hand them for it. However, i think the fact that we got ads for what our interests are is quite awesome! For example because of this i found webcomics and artists i curently hold really high in my praises and this might not have been the case if FB had another business model.

This being said, i just think people should focus on problems more important than how social media manages to earn some bucks, and while is our choise to be part of that we can't simply call ourselves "products". History holds many stories about civilization that gaved no choice if you wanted or not to be a product so we could be at least glad it is not the case anymore.

Anyway, if you read all the way down here, tnaks for your time!

TL;DR: Facebook is no holy church but it actually not so bad, we can find things we get to love or actually needed in the first place in their targeted adds system. At least we have a choice to be part of this or not!

So enlighten me here. Am I the only one that doesn't lose his absolute shit when it comes to privacy?
I know that some companies are collecting data, and to a certain extent, I'm fine with it as long as the trade-off is good.
I like that Google is "learning" who I am and what I like, cause now, I only see news and articles relevant to my interests, and search predictions are much better. Same with targeted Ads. On an off chance that I'm not using Adblock I like seeing products that I might like, which I otherwise probably wouldn't even know existed.
Except for Microsoft. I have no idea why, but that's where I draw the line.

TL;DR: Stop. Hating. On. Ads. Here are 5 reasons why:

1. "No one likes ads"
I love seeing *good* ads before I watch a YouTube video. Or I looked up videos that YT recommended because they sounded fun and they were fun:
- Coke - Hey Brother is an amazing and touching short film
- Fressnapf (="food bowl") had an incredibly enjoyable "things you didn't know about cats" video I clicked on purpose and it was good.
- I found JetBrains through ads (free for me, student perks. But tbh I use atom)
and I could name more.

2. What are the alternatives?
I know there are some non-profits and that's cool but you wanna be paid in your job, right? So ads are why Facebook (I know, Facebook isn't enjoyed here but), YouTube, stackoverflow, etc. Wikipedia asks for a few million dollars of donations each year because they don't run ads. Smaller businesses can't do that really. Hell, even codepen has a "sponsored" section. Imagine you would have to pay for all of those services.

3. "Manipulation"
isn't a bad thing unless you abuse it. I manipulate you when I say that I love codepen in the same way an ad does. No one forces you to use a product or watch an ad (you can look away and often times skip).

4. Adblock
What if everyone did that? Adblock blocks happened a while ago and the war between adblock and ad-senders is still ongoing. The moment you see an ad, you are using/watching etc something which the creators thought is worth making money off. If you don't think so, leave the site. I am an adblock user but if the site politely asks me to disable it and I enjoy the content - I will disable it with pleasure.

5. Targeted ads
Yes. The internet is a huge data-crawling piece of shit. But there are many more questionable or even dangerous ways of data-harvesting online. I am glad to see ads I like and not the ones my sister might like. Some services allow you to disable personalized ads. Or use vpn if you really want to.

Google doesn't seem to understand. I don't want more personally targeted ads and block what goes against their definition of inappropriate advertising. I want to block some very annoying advertisers like the Chinese TEMU crap shop. So I will have to use an ad-blocker again, I guess.

I see ads on marketing tools every fucking where.
Do I look stupid to you, Facebook and Google?
I don't fucking need them.
Who needs those stupid products anyway?

I even saw a reskinned XAMPP being marketed as 'local testing for your WordPress website', like what the actual fuck? Isn't that fucking scamming?
Oh, right. They were targeting WordPress monkies. Oh.

Anyway, please show me some more keyboards instead.
I've been in keyboard market for like 2 weeks you know.

Holy fuck.

Social media site/app... I think social media is such a saturated market yet everyone seems to think their spin is somehow unique and worthwhile...

Although, not sure if DevRant counts as 'social media' but tbh I see real value in getting developers to form a community, where to profit potential comes from potentially linking developers to recruiters/employers (targeted ads to devs for shit we would want). And devs get a nice platform to socialize and bullshit about things we all experience (ie, the 'community' is real and valuable to us)

I'm so pissed off with people who complain about YouTube ads. See the thing is, either you pay up for YouTube premium which legit costs like $4, or stfu with your "iM sEeinG nUde gIrls in Mah Ads" or "tHey tryYinG to gEt me mArRied". It's not their mistake that that is the only thing that draws people's attention in your general vicinity/age group..

One is a company supplying content worth more than your entire life and then there is you, not even important enough for the algorithm to give you targeted adverts. Deal with the reality, beggars can't be choosers..