I left a couple of months ago. Couldn’t be happier.
The writing is on the wall. The leader thinks the Genius-with-hair-transplants is a superstar, despite destroying a globally recognised brand. Inspired by this, Spez is trying to get Reddit ready for an IPO. This means, maximise profits by any means.
I love how everybody is so busy about mining your behavior for ad tracking data and then like 2/3 of the ads I actually see are utterly irrelevant gut doctor / toenail fungus / 17 Most Embarrassing Topless Celebrity Moments crap.
(I think the reality is that they’re mining that data to identify a small number of people susceptible to high-value scams - like getting addicted to an F2P mobile game and spending $1000s on it - and the rest of us just get generic infill)
Yea it feels like something has been rotten with the ads industry for a long while. I’ve read a few pieces here and there about how it could collapse and that it’s built almost entirely on dumb lies. But it’s still here.
I’m no economist, but my best guess is that it’s a little like war and the effort we put into it. Complete trashy waste almost all the time, except for when one person or country decides to put effort into it, because then you have to as well or run huge risks. We’d all be better off without ads, including brands/companies, but when one is doing it every company has to too.
built entirely on dumb lies
I see you have learned about “impressions”.
I don’t believe I know what you’re referring to.
Ads are meant to get brand recognition out there for most things. Then when you’re in a store you buy what you’ve heard of before. They wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t effective.
You’re putting too much faith in the talent and insight of marketing executives. Large companies throw tens of millions of dollars at their marketing department. They’ll spend the money on a diverse ad campaign that ticks boxes, not one that is actually effective. People don’t buy based on the commercial they saw last. People buy what’s shoved in their faces.
That’s great, but you’re still wrong.
Absolutely spot on reply.
Brand recognition and memory triggers is what big brand ads are about.
Cleanex, Hoover, Coke, most cologne/perfume ads, Old Spice…
Brand recognition and memory triggers is what big brand ads are about.
Cleanex, Hoover, Coke, most cologne/perfume ads, Old Spice…
Late reply, but-- the above makes much sense to me when it comes to inexperienced / first-time buyers of a product. And/or buyers who simply get in to a rut and keep buying that product without trying anything else out.
But for everyone else, I would think they sample enough tissues, sodas, perfumes, etc to gain an understanding of the ins & outs of a product, settling on choices which best represent their favorites / desired price point. For bigger-cost stuff like vacuum cleaners, I’m thinking people in this group also learn to use review resources to evaluate best choices rather than buy a Hoover just because some ads ran.
So what does this all mean? Aside from overlap between these two groups, that there’s enough revenue being produced by the former childlike group such that ad systems can afford to almost completely ignore the latter, more adult group…?
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With very, very few exceptions, any time I see an ad I make a mental note to never buy that product. As such, most products I am familiar with(presumably because I saw an ad) I will not buy. The exception is pretty much just Hershey’s chocolate bars, I can’t live without them.
You had me on board until… Hershey’s chocolate? That’s not even chocolate anymore, it’s like putrid brown wax!
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And by definition it’s still nothing but systematic brain washing. It’s actually very 1984, and I can’t understand how some people are ok with being manipulated into buying shit 24/7 and think that global perpetual invasive advertising is this perfectly normal thing that humanity has always had around…
I think capping it 1984 is a bit extreme, but I do agree with the overall sentiment. We’ve gone wag overboard in trying to monetize evert aspect of modern life. It gets old.
Your data isn’t just being sold to advertisers. There are all kinds of companies that are willing to pay big bucks to get near real-time insights into consumer behaviour, prices, manufacturing and anything else that can be tracked somehow.
Edit: And there’s a near 0% chance that you’re not part of a dataset that’s being sold to someone, somewhere…
You see ads? Bruh…
^ me when I visit friends…
Where are you seeing ads? Do you not have uBlock Origin installed?
Why don’t you use applications, plugins and/or DNS settings to never see any ad?
I love how everybody is so busy about mining your behavior for ad tracking data and then like 2/3 of the ads I actually see are utterly irrelevant gut doctor / toenail fungus / 17 Most Embarrassing Topless Celebrity Moments crap.
Have you had yourself checked out for toenail fungus bro? Might be a thing.
If you wanna keep your bookmarks and the subreddits (communities) that you’re subscribed to before deleting your account, I made a free tool to help you store and offload that data.
It’s called Reddit Account Manager, and it’s 100% free.
You can also use it to manage your Lemmy account(s), of course.
Thanks for posting the link, just saw this news and decided to finally jump ship. Between this and Reddit wanting to pay for use it’s high time I leave it.
Isn’t there something that scrapes posts from Reddit like a newsfeed? Or do most people just use lemmy.world now?
Isn’t there something that scrapes posts from Reddit like a newsfeed?
If you got an Android, there’s Stealth. On iOS, you’re SOL as far as I know.
Or do most people just use lemmy.world now?
This would be the best avenue, yeah. I thought it was gonna be difficult to leave Reddit too, but thankfully, I was wrong.
I guess they didn’t make API millions by charging usage fees? Scraping the bottom of the barrel now while people use the site less and less.
The API fees clearly weren’t made to make money directly though, it was meant to get rid of 3rd party clients so they could more effectively do what the OP is about.
I bet the they lost single percent of people. And most use it and don’t care.
I still use it with patched Boost. The moment the API is gone I am too.
We don’t know their actual engagement numbers, what I do know is: quality on non-default subs has pitfalled. That is subjective, but its common across other reddit users I know.
I’ve also heavily felt the quality decline.
I’ve kept using reddit because relay for reddit kept working without paying… until today.
Fuck spez
Both the quality has declined, and the tone seems consistently more negative. Like there’s an even bigger majority of angry teenagers running the site.
Ars and Reddit are under the same parent company, conde nast or however that’s all structured. I also have noticed ars seems to write very frequently about Reddit, even if it is usually in a critical light.
I get mixed feelings about articles like this one.
I wouldn’t say they have a disproportionate amount of Reddit coverage, spez’ shenanigans are well within their usual scope. Before the api-pocilipse I don’t remember the last Reddit column they put out.
It think the editorial direction follows the interests of the kind of readers they get. Not so many Facebook or Tiktok stories unless there’s particularly egregious behaviour. Their readers are too young to care as much about the former and too old to care about the latter.
Out of all the social media, xitter gets the most, but then every day is clownshoes there. As Reddit started aping them, they got more coverage.They spell the correct relationship out clearly in the article:
Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.
They’ve been separate for more than a decade now
No they got bought back a few years later. They’re majority owned by the same parent company as Ars. Tencent also has some pretty big investments in Reddit.
It’s at the bottom of the article:
Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.
I remember Reddit. It’s a shame what happened there. 🤷♂️
I never thought I’d be talking about Reddit in the past tense like when I talk about Digg.
wait, it’s all enshittification?
always has been
I read the announcement about changes to privacy on their website while signing in to delete my account literal second ago and clicked the link in the official post: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/16tqihd/settings_updateschanges_to_ad_personalization/
Safety & Privacy Settings
I kid you not, this is what it shows:
Edit: misspelling
I tried reading them. I can’t because the fucking website doesn’t scale to my phone. It realises something should change, but it’s so shitty I can immediately see the edges and see text, images and flair cross over where it shouldn’t. Ffs.
It’s worth pointing out that Ars Technica’s parent, Advance Publications, owns a stake in Reddit. And they have been giving no quarter to enshittifiers.
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As I said in an earlier post, better get out now and migrate while the communities are still intact rather than slowly bleeding out due to these policies. There is going to be one kind of content on Reddit and that’s the ad-friendly, corporate supported kind.
I think 99% of my interactions with Reddit these days are pulling RSS feeds, most of which just get marked as read. I almost never load the actual site anymore.
Any app or so to do that? Would love an RSS feed Reddit just for reading
I use Inoreader, works quite well for reddit.
After posting, I actually found Stealth to be just what I needed. It webscrapes Reddit so no api, but also no Interaction which is fine for me.
Damn…i gotta do this…so many threads though… I did this a while back with youtube and it was very much worth it.
Finally made the jump and just deleted my account… Sad, but their own fault
You had to delete yours? All of mine were permabanned long ago.
I just tried to delete and I keep getting an error
I’ve wasted a lot of time. but not on reddit 🥀 These sites feel like the big 3 car co’s. future is hard. some looking to cash out
I got a message from Reddit
https://old.reddit.com/r/u_cy_narrator/comments/16w4uzj/witness_the_carnage/
I still had my Reddit account just for posteroties sake. I don’t anymore now. I refuse to accept changes or rules that allow for them to steal all my data. I’ve not gotten to this point with Google or Microsoft yet, but they’re not far off the chopping block.
But there is a second option, the one I plan to do with this current Reddit account and my Facebook account.
Dont delete, dont say you will delete. Just stop using. When its out of sight, it becomes out of mind. Maby deactivate Facebook account at most but I think it will be okay if it just stays there
BTW, because I use third party apps all my wall posts got turned NSFW even though none of them are. I wonder if it is indeed the end of time.
While this is the final straw for me, there is still one thing reddit is good for, searching: is [thing] worth it reddit. You were a good friend Snoo…
We have the moral high ground.
If you use SearXNG sometimes it will load a feddit instance of what you want.
Nice I will have to check that out. Btw what is your favorite searXNG instance?
https://opnxng.com/ is the one I am using.
Alright thanks
Thanks for the reminder. Reddit account deleted.
