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An advertising industry worker's take on adblockers
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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Some things that my company does:
Has someone watching you browse our site live. We can see everything you do in real time. All your searches, missclicks, mouse movements, etc. Only thing it cant see is credit card info.
Uses these live views to create a profile on you. Are you in the deep south and searched for something that could be "conservative"? Your now on our Conservative mailing list. Vise-versa as well, We have email marketing campaigns that are written to cater to demographics. For each email sales campaign we put out, there are about 8 varieties of those emails that are tailored to what we think you want.
Keep databases of all our customers and people who visit the site, with as much info as possible. IP, location, estimated salary, spending potential, whether or not you are more likely to click on our links. All kinds of info that isnt really protected in any meaningful way. Most of it is just on a Google Drive.
For our big spenders and repeat customers, we have a separate database that has even more personal info. The marketing manager has even gone so far as to look up Facebook and Linkden and whatnot on you and take whatever they can find. Family, friends, hobbies, jobs, anything that they think can be useful to sell more stuff. Again, none of this is really secured to well.
Im not in the marketing department of my job so theres probably a lot more that im not aware of. These are just a few things we do and im sure this is mild in comparison to bigger companies. My job is a small family business with like 10 people working there.
Yeah, the first time I saw he granularity of what Analytics could collect on a site, I was mortified. Like yeah, they may not record your specific name, but if they know every page you visit and everything you buy, you're still a unique and trackable entity.
This is why I run several layers of adblock on my network and use plugins to search random terms that seem real, while also clicking every ad that makes it through.
My goal ceased being to contain my interests/info when I realized how much they knew. Now my goal is to just make the data as poisoned as possible.
But what does your company do with this data? You put me on an email list, but if you have my spam only email... Then what? What do I stand to lose by your company doing research on me?
Why don't you give everyone here that kind of info then?
What are you going to give me in return?
It sounds like everyone already has all that info, and all they seem to do with it is recommend gifts my mom would like based on her search history.
I get targeted political ads, but who cares about those? I don't form my opinion based on ads.
You are so special thinking you are immune to propaganda.
It's pretty easy for ads, they're clearly labeled and anything in an advertisement is propaganda with little merit.
Ah, who among us hasn't been through an "I'm not influenced by propaganda because I know it's propaganda (even if it's granularly targeted to my biases)" phase? Many of us never get past it. I hope you manage to.
We're on Lemmy, formerly of Reddit. We sling propaganda at each other for fun, you think the Moms for America PAC can outdo the constant scrum on the politics subs?
If you think I'm wrong, please offer more than just "(((They))) have all your info and will 'propaganda' you, it's very scary and you'll never know it's happening!"
It sounds like fearmongering to me
Price discrimination is a major risk of lack of privacy.
Thank you for an example
Sorry, what's your argument here? That you're immune to propaganda because you're exposed to so much of it? Maybe that you're immune to propaganda that you (presumably) disagree with, like Moms for America, because you ingest so much propaganda that matches your existing opinions (political subs/communities)?
What about consumer propaganda (i.e. marketing/advertising)? Do you think your purchasing decisions are influenced by brand awareness and other marketing effects?
Genuinely trying to understand what you're trying to say here.
My argument isn't that I'm immune to propaganda, it's that Google, Amazon, and however many other unknown data hoarders have all my info already and aren't using it for anything important.
If anything, it's helpful. I got a suggested news article for some new research into my chronic condition, in it were targeted ads:
Some sort of dental credit card
A "smart" ring
Xfinity
Instacart
I don't use any of those, congrats on spending money harvesting all my data to give me ads for products I won't use.
I'm sure my purchasing habits are influenced by advertisers, especially new purchases into an area I don't know, power tools, for example. I've definitely started my research into purchases with "that brand I've heard of before".
But people in this thread are acting like AdSense is sewing my eyes open and mind controlling me into sending them my bank account details.
My job specifically? Probably nothing major except for some spam. We dont sell our customers info like a lot of places do. If we did then, the profile we have on you could be cross referenced with other companies and build a more complete profile on you. Allowing less scrupulous people to infer and fill in the blanks on the missing info for you and try to profit off that.
Nothing really. Most people are fine with it, and it's ok if you're fine with it too.
For me it's just the principle. Honestly my life would be more enjoyable if I could just switch this off but I fucking hate advertising. It really, really bothers me on an uncomfortable level. Basically, I want to choose the products and services I'm interested in engaging with at any time, I do not want products and services to be proposed to me.