advertising is just propaganda without a cause
Privacy
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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idk about other languages, but in Portuguese it's literally the same word
The cause is to separate you from your money and time. To reinforce and promote capital as the ultimate gatekeepers.
yeah but it's not made by the people the propaganda works for. they're just cogs. normal propaganda is made by the people championing the cause in question.
If you work for an advertising agency, you know that your job is to separate people from their money. They celebrate this. They have awards for this. It’s the whole purpose of their job.
Please put me on the haters list. (For advertising & marketing)
my kids have grown up with my adblocked version of the internet, when they connect to other internet thats not a filtered feed they get annoyed by ads in their games and on their videos
My wife initially hated my piholes, because they broke some of her phone’s stuff. She runs stock Samsung Android, so lots of the built in Google stuff got broken. She was constantly complaining about it. We eventually spent an evening hunt-and-peck’ing the various blocked DNS requests, to see which ones were required for her phone to work properly, and which ones were just Google Adsense BS. Got her set up with a WireGuard VPN connection that automatically activates when she’s disconnected from the home WiFi, so she’s always protected.
Now that she’s used to it, it’s like a wake up slap whenever she encounters ads. We moved a while ago, and all of my more advanced networking stuff (including the pihole) was sitting in a box until I had time to set it all up. She suddenly started seeing ads again, and was absolutely gobsmacked at how pervasive they are. What really sent her over the edge was when our Roku TV was paused, and went to its idle screen. The idle screen is an auto-scrolling image, and it had an ad plastered across the scrolling image. She was like “what the fuck we’re not even watching anything right now! It’s just idle! Why the hell are they advertising to us on the damned idle screen??” That was what finally pushed her to give me an evening to set all of the networking stuff back up.
Do you have links to any knowledge base docs or guides? I tried setting this up a few years back and couldn't really nail it down and just kinda gave up because it broke too many websites and my smarttv apps wouldn't work either.
If you want to actively shit on them, there is AdNauseam, which is a fork of uBlock Origin but in addition to blocking the ads, it clicks on absolutely everything, sending fake signals. Polluting their database is costing them money and they have to deal with all the noise.
Not for everyone, but definitely an active hostility towards these fucks.
Except it still rewards the site for hosting ads in the first place
As someone who works in marketing - they will tote these clicks as a great success and continue to do what they are doing, maybe even more so, but will be distraught by the lack of follow through when it comes to sales. I guess if it happened long enough, And on a big enough scale, they might eventually give up but it would take years
Or, more likely, they would not include the fake clicks in their metrics at all, and marketing would never see the inflated metrics.
It's a cute idea, but they would just incorporate some amount of false clicks into their metrics.
Exactly, its data poisioning.
If someone is trying to build an ad profile on you (even if you personally dont see the ads) then it feeds them junk data instead of real date.
If you think clicking all the ads makes a meaningful difference, then all the power to you.
Its purely out of spite, plus, im not clicking anything.
I run the full ad blocking suite anyway and see more ads watching a sportsball game with the family than I do on my home network over the course of months.
- I dont see the ads
- The data they generate is wrong and random, if that is used to train AI it runs the risk of poisioning the model.
- The site Im on gets paid by the ad vendor, even though the interaction is fraudulent.
I call it a win-win
Blocking ads definitely doesn't help the site get paid, that's what I was talking about above.
For the same reason, it's probably not doing any meaningful "poisoning" either.
Then go read what the AdNaseum plugin does and we will talk then.
Whatever table you imagine clicks to be stored in, add a column called "Using adblocker".
Filter out any rows where that column = true.
Ad-blocking is a property right. I have every right to control what my device does or does not display, by definition of ownership. Conversely, advertisers or other parties attempting to colonize my device by forcing it to display something against my (the owner's) will is a hostile act that violates my rights.
Thats fair if you also hold the stance that they can block you if you aren't paying to use the service. But i doubt you do.
Everything belongs to the working class brother
It might be an unpopular opinion, but I like the ads! They are very useful because they help me remember the brands not to buy. Edit: /s was not obvious it seems
True but at the same time entire businesses are built on advertising and wouldn't exist without it. All your favorite YouTubers, virtually all internet published media, etc.
If they can’t exist without ads then it’s time to die
Great, wave goodbye to all your favorite publications.
Bad take. There's also subscription models for example. Or grants or donation / donor based.
Bad take. Those are simply not sustainable in most cases on their own. They just subsidize other revenue models.
Such a small share of ad-revenue goes to creators it's not worth it. You lose in wasting time, getting your brain turned to mush and getting manipulated by the ads. It costs less to support the creators directly.
I just wish there were easier ways to do so. Something decentralised with all the creators where I could fix an amount per month to spend on content creation and getting it split between what I appreciated.
Such a small share of ad-revenue goes to creators it's not worth it.
Uhhhh I mean there are lots and lots of people doing it every day, so it very clearly absolutely is worth it for them.
It costs less to support the creators directly.
That's great but it's not sustainable.
Oh no
Anyway
HaHa
Don’t forget; sports events. Even the Olympics don’t exist without ads. Adds rule the world (unfortunately). It gets problematic when your privacy gets compromised.
Sporting events existed for thousands of years before advertising—don’t mistake current conditions for necessary ones.