this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 4 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

They should push you to buy a dehumidifier. Then you can put them on opposite sides of the room for humidity wars.

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 19 hours ago

that's a crime against humidity

[–] Walk_blesseD@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 20 hours ago

The targeted advertising bubble cannot pop soon enough.

[–] bassgirl09@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Almost as good as when I went to Home Depot and the next day I got an email asking me to rate my experience during my recent visit. That creeped me out so much I removed the app from my phone and forced logout on all devices. I have not been back since. And no, I did not pay using a Home Depot card and I am not part of any rewards program with them. Just eeew. If you advertise to me, I will ignore your product and buy something else. If there is not an alternative, then I will either plug my nose and buy it assuming that it is a need, otherwise I go without.

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

A very annoying feature of that company. Always trying to sell you what you just bought, sometimes at a lower price its like theyre saying HA HA you got screwed

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 day ago

Y'all need to go on the dark web, people are gambling millions on humidifier vs. dehumidifier battles, the videos are disturbing and end dry or moist.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 21 hours ago

My hypothesis is that they sell that you searched for a humidifier (more or less) and they don't update it with you having bought one. Probably because it's difficult for the folks buying the ads to deduce if it actually results in a sale. They're likely only seeing impressions and clicks. And the folks selling the ad space don't care, because why would they? An ad is an ad. They aren't really incenticized to.

[–] southernbrewer@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Round here we tend to buy dehumidifiers. Why would someone intentionally increase the humidity in their home? That way lies mo[u]ld

[–] piranhaconda@mander.xyz 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I live in Colorado, quite dry, and occasionally wake up with nose bleeds if I don't use my humidifier at night

[–] musubibreakfast@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago

Yeah but you're a fish, you should stay in your tank.

[–] axexrx@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

For a lot of people, humidifiers only get brought out when theyre sick, so the hot wet air soothes their lungs and they cough less...

Then there was my grandmother. She had both in her music room, to protect her piano and custom built harpsichord. They were set to keep the humidity in a fairly narrow range to keep her from needing to retune.

The dehumidifier was mounted on the wall, with a hose running into the tank for the humidifier below it, so it kept it topped up with the h2o pulled from the air on rainy days, with another hose running out of that tank at about the 1 gallon mark, that fed through a hole in the floor to the basement sink, to dispose of excess water. Both were wired up to an old school analogue hygrometer, with a control circuit powering each unit when it fell outside of its respective range.

[–] southernbrewer@lemmy.world 3 points 21 hours ago

That's some hardcore humidity control!

[–] Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 day ago

Too dry and your skin gets all dry and cracky, and every lightswitch or piece of metal furniture shocks you when you touch it

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 2 points 21 hours ago

You can never be too humid.

[–] PhoenixDog@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My partner found the wedding bands they wanted to buy. They're metal bands in the design of para cord as I was in the military at the time and their father is a retired Lieutenant-colonel. The two of them together was like $150 and we got them off Etsy.

For nearly a month after I bought them for us, my phone was giving me ads for wedding rings. Like... Bro, we got them already. We don't need more.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago

Similarly:

We've been tracking you for decades now. We know your location at all times. We know about the humidifier you bought. We know you do everything in English, but we also know you're trying to learn Spanish. We know who your family members are based on your interactions with them, and we have vast databases on them too. We know about the plane ticket to Turkey. We know about the new bathing suit you bought. We know about the English language guidebook you bought for Turkey.

We know you're now in Turkey on your vacation.

Here's an ad in Turkish for a humidifier sold in a Turkish store.

You go to a different country, and despite the massive privacy invasions, and the terabytes of data they have about every aspect of your lives, they think you speak the local language and show you ads you can't even understand for products you'd never buy while there on a vacation.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I've been recently rewatching all the X-men movies in order on Disney+.

After each one it's like "why not watch the first one again?" like it doesn't know full well I watched it a few days ago.

All this data collection, and for what?

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

So they can charge advertisers/companies money for "relevant" ads. I assume there's pushback in the market on this but even so, that's wasted ad space/time (since they seem to think it's so important to advertise that route. Maybe it's not even such a bad idea since so many products are shit and you may well be in the market soon anyway.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Selling ads to people wanting to make money is like selling picks and shovels to people heading to the gold rush. Those selling shovels don't even really care if their buyer finds gold (despite any apparent enthusiasm), they don't even care if they'll even need or want the shovel after figuring out most gold in this rush is found panhandling rather than by digging or that the amount of digging you'd have to do to find a decent amount of gold is more than what a shovel can handle (actually they might use that to sell you a shovel subscription).

They only care that your desire for money has brought you to them, where you can make them money whether you do or not.

[–] JargonWagon@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

You want one? Why not a bunch! Buy buy buy! /s

[–] Thatuserguy@lemmy.world 176 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] Ferrous@lemmy.ml 67 points 2 days ago (9 children)

I wish someone could quantify how much energy goes into this.

[–] Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 40 points 2 days ago (8 children)
[–] fartographer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I hate to be so American, but what is that in 3 month-old elephant seal pups?

[–] Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

Not sure, but I can tell you it is exactly 226 SMUs. This is - as you're already well aware - standard mcunits. 1 SMU is one standard mcdonalds cheeseburger, 300 Cal or 348 Wh.

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#NotHumidiferAdvice

[–] jqubed@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago (1 children)
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[–] bcgm3@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

You may have heard of the "sales funnel," well, let me introduce you to the "sales loop..."

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

With some products, that's entirely intentional. The goal is to convince you to keep thinking it was a good idea so you say you like your car in consumer satisfaction surveys that work as better sales drivers since people tend to do a degree of research on them, and to keep people from trying to return the product or make complaints.

But that's typically things like "cars", and they target you very precisely because they know exactly who you are, having just sold you a car.
The humidifier is that they see you bought a "home air treatment device - consumer grade - basic", which puts points in you being in the category of people who want to improve their home air quality. And you know what the most common purchase by that category of people is? Humidifiers!
As big and horrifying as the models are, they can't track everything and rely on putting people into consumer groups, and labeling products by relevance to groups and then tracking them that way.
So even though you're probably in the group because you just bought the thing that most people buy to put them in the group, it's still statistically the thing someone in the group is most likely to buy.

All that to say, it's a fucking sham and you get 95% of the results by matching ads to products instead of people, and it costs a fraction to do it that way.

[–] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Yup, I just bought a tank jet printer, so clearly I'm turning my apartment into the world's most inefficient print shop.

[–] tetris11@feddit.uk 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

tank jet printer

Anyone who thinks this is a typo is a communist!

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

The Tankies They Don't Want You To Know About

[–] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Heh. *The printers with refillable ink tanks.

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[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 56 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Seriously, though, is this bullshit actually effective enough to justify all the money and effort they put into it?

I really doubt it. I think targeted ads are just window dressing to hide the real reason they want to spy on us everywhere all the time.

[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 60 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I used to wonder this, too, and think that it couldn't be that effective. Then I went to my last job, and there were MULTIPLE people who said they actually liked the ads because they learned about new products that they would like. What's worse is that a couple of those multiple people actually clicked the ads and would buy things.

All that to say, yes, it is actually at least somewhat effective, and it erodes my faith in humanity.

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[–] Viceversa@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Use Hanlon's razor.

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[–] jojowakaki@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I recently purchased a small apartment. According to calculations, it was cheaper to pay the mortgage than rent a similar size apartment. Now meta thinks I am into collecting apartments in the same postcode. On the other hand, I do find it somewhat useful to see what is happening to the apartment prices around.

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 13 points 1 day ago

To be fair there's probably people who're interested in collecting all the apartments in your area.

[–] Alvaro@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago

It’s funny how advanced algorithms can still miss the simplest context. One purchase and suddenly you’re a “collector.” Technology keeps evolving, but sometimes it still feels very human in its misunderstandings.

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 40 points 2 days ago (19 children)

After reading an article about ad metrics I realized this is ad fraud.

What is going on is a business buys ads and pays one rate for ads shown but pays a higher rate if the ads resulted in a conversion (a sale). But the ad contracts are monthly or longer. So a business buys ads for their product and the ad company after noticing you bought it, stuffs your feeds with ads for what you just bought so they can bill those ads at the higher conversion rate.

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[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago

I’m also amusedly infuriated when “smart” advertising takes the exact wrong pattern …..

“ I see you recently bought a part for a Toyota. You must have a Toyota. Let me sell you the same part for a Volkswagen. “

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