this post was submitted on 29 May 2026
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151
US says troops were targeted with location data, as senator warns ad industry is a ‘national security threat’ (www.wyden.senate.gov)
submitted 1 day ago by beep@piefed.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1157779/us-says-troops-were-targeted-with-location-data-as-senator-warns-ad-industry-is-a-nation

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[–] Zier@fedia.io 39 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Advertising is a cancer.

[–] Tiger666@lemmy.ca 3 points 21 hours ago

It is a(and one of the many we suffer from) symptoms of capitalism.

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Online advertising is a cancer I would say. When I get an ad mailer I'll look through pretty much the whole thing, because it's most likely local businesses and I know just looking won't come back to bite me in any way.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

OTOH, it seems like ~44% of junk mail gets thrown away without ever being opened: https://zerojunkmail.org/environmental-impact

That's a bunch of environmental destruction and personal annoyances caused, so the label "cancer" seems fair to me.

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

If they try to deceive me by making the outside look handwritten or using wording like "FINAL NOTICE" then yeah, straight in the trash without a 2nd look. If it's obviously an ad from the get go I'll usually give it a skim at least.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

That's good! But I'd still prefer if I and the other 44% could at least say "please stop producing and sending us trash".

They should really make mailed advertisements opt-in, but of course the industry won't do that. And this what makes it cancerous IMO: they never give up trying to inject ads into people's lives.

[–] dan1101@lemmy.world -4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

OTOH, serving content is not free and something needs to pay the hosting/publishing bills.

The problem IMO is invasive ad serving tech and deceptive ads, which are often both uncurated and deceptive.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 8 points 1 day ago

Sure, serving content isn’t free. Maybe we don’t need to serve so much damn content then.