What do you think about ''interest-based advertising?''

[Deidre]

Not sure if this in the proper subforum, but if not, mods please move it.

I was wondering how you all feel about the advertisements that pop up when you're on this website, or any website, showing items/products that you were or are interested in, or perhaps purchased at a prior date?

I personally love it. So many friends of mine hate the ''algorithim'' that aligns different advertisements with what you may have looked at, or purchased at an earlier time.

Idk, I think it's cool. Do you? Or do you find it annoying and invasive?

 

[Deidre]

lol people are voting ''no''

Idk why I find that so funny.

 

[LuisDantas]

I like the idea somewhat, but it does not seem to work too well in practice. Time and again I am presented with much the same ads, sometimes for products that are not even available.

It would be nice to have some way of toning it down, as well.

 

[Duke_Leto]

I don't like advertisements to begin with, but for me, the kicker of internet advertisements is how invasive they are. Advertisement companies make an effort to track absolutely everything you do, or look at, online. Google, for instance, scans every single email to or from their Gmail servers in an effort to more effectively tailor their advertisements.

For anyone seriously worried about their online privacy, but not sure where to start, here's some advice:

1. Browsers: Google Chrome is possibly the most invasive browser on the planet. Avoid it whenever possible. Most other corporate browsers (Opera, Vivaldi, etc.) are just as bad. The TOR browser, while decent for what it does, is too slow and probably overkill for regular web browsing, on the other hand. What you need is Mozilla Firefox, or one of its off-branches, like Waterfox. Firefox is free software, meaning (among other things) that its code is open -- that is, its code can be reviewed by any programmer to make sure that it doesn't do anything malicious --, it does not try to infringe your privacy, and (as a bonus!) it is completely free. Development is funded by donations and volunteer work. What's more, as of a recent update (Firefox 57), it is now just as fast as Chrome, while using far less memory.

2. Browser extensions: uBlock Origin is the first, and most useful, extension you can use. It blocks ads, as well as invasive tracking methods, without interfering with normal browsing. As a word to the wise, avoid extensions such as Adblock Plus (which accepts money from advertisers to not block them), as well as "uBlock" (which is different from uBlock Origin).

Another useful extension you might want to use is uMatrix. If you aren't really familiar with how the Web works, this might be confusing to you, and will almost certainly interfere with your browsing until you add to your whitelist parts of webpages that you want to use. This takes time to learn, but the privacy tradeoff is worth it if you're willing to do it. I'm happy to help anyone who wants to use this extension, but is confused by it.

3. Operating Systems: Microsoft Windows is not actually your only choice, as much advertising as they've done to make it seem that way. I won't take too long to describe everything wrong with the system, since absolutely everybody who uses it is familiar with its frustrations, but I'll run over some major points:

Windows collects data on virtually everything you do, and by default uses a keylogger to record every key you type, as well as everything you copy and paste. It installs updates without users' permission, treating them as if they don't own their own computers. Many of these updates are malicious, adding even more tracking measures to the system, and some are just plain frustrating -- have you ever tried uninstalling Candy Crush, just to watch as it's automatically downloaded once again as soon as you've finished? Windows is incredibly slow compared to anything else (something you may not notice if you've only ever used Windows). Windows becomes even slower over time the longer you use it, which I can't fathom the reason for. Windows can only use the NTFS file system, which is ancient, slow, and prone to fragmentation. Windows likes to overwrite parts of storage drives it's not installed on, treating anything it touches as the property of Microsoft. Many parts of the system are hidden and features obfuscated, purposefully making it difficult for users to change much of the system. Finally, it periodically scans users' hard drives for files it deems suspicious (such as pirated software), and, without warning, silently deletes them from the drive.

An alternative you can use is a Linux distribution. If you've never heard of Linux before, Linux is a type of 'kernel', the core component of an operating system, somewhat analogous to the engine of a car. Most distributions are roughly the same 'under the hood', but are generally developed for slightly different purposes. An elegant, stable distribution well-suited toward beginners is Linux Mint.

There are an incredible number of advantages of using Linux:

1. Privacy. Unless you use North Korea's own Linux distribution, your computer will not record everything you do and send the record to some corporate server.

2. Control. Your computer will do exactly what you let it do, and nothing else. It will not, for instance, ever update unless you explicitly direct your system to update. It will not attempt to hide anything from you, error messages are verbose and generally give explanations, rather than numerical error codes like Windows. Furthermore, if you are a programmer or technically advanced, documentation for almost every installed program, or C/C++ library functions, is installed right onto your system, making it easy to develop or troubleshoot issues.

3. Speed. Every single supercomputer in the world runs some variant of Linux, as of a few months ago. There's a good reason for this. The system itself is blazing fast, while pretty much every desktop environment (with the exception of Gnome 3, the default on the Ubuntu distribution) is noticeably quicker than Windows, and, unlike Windows, doesn't slow down over time.

4. Software installation. Virtually all Linux distributions use a package manager, meaning you download your software from a centralized location. You will never again need to go onto some suspicious web site to download software; all you need to do is type "sudo apt install vlc" (or its equivalent, depending on the system) to install VLC, or use the provided graphical interface to download it from your distribution's servers. This method ensures that software you download is safe (it's been vetted), and that it's installed in a manner that makes it easy to remove.

The one, slightly inconvenient aspect of Linux is that some software (mainly Adobe software, Microsoft Word and some well-known games) don't run natively, and it might be difficult to get them working on the system. For this reason it may be wise to keep an installation of Windows on your computer's hard drive in case you need it for that software, and use Linux the rest of the time. There are some very good alternatives to Adobe software and Word though (LibreOffice for Word, for instance), that said.

I apologize for the length of the post. I'll probably go back and edit this later -- I'm short on time ATM. If anyone wants to do anything I've suggested and is running into difficulties, or has questions, I'm more than happy to help; send me a PM.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I like it because I know-how to "tune" my advertising.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

It strips privacy away from us, and when you have a broad range of things you look at they algorithms get confused and show you things that don't even apply to you.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Not sure if this in the proper subforum, but if not, mods please move it.

I was wondering how you all feel about the advertisements that pop up when you're on this website, or any website, showing items/products that you were or are interested in, or perhaps purchased at a prior date?

I personally love it. So many friends of mine hate the ''algorithim'' that aligns different advertisements with what you may have looked at, or purchased at an earlier time.

Idk, I think it's cool. Do you? Or do you find it annoying and invasive?

I think ads in general are annoying and intrusive.

In fact, I think ads are completely out of control and rampant.

Not to mention rude and at times destructive when it takes control of your web page browser and activity without your permission. Not to mention the load it can put on your computer rig to a point of lag and freeze issues.

Advertising is so bad and so out of control now I think people who put them out have a real mental sickness given the sheer volume and intrusiveness advertising brings.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I like it because I know-how to "tune" my advertising.

Chrome is not perfect in my case, but I'll admit it has improved things exponentially from what it once was.

 

[Flame]

I can't stand them. I've been running uBlock, HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger and Ghostery for awhile now.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I think ads in general are annoying and intrusive.

In fact, I think ads are completely out of control and rampant.

Not to mention rude and at times destructive when it takes control of your web page browser and activity without your permission. Not to mention the load it can put on your computer rig to a point of lag and freeze issues.

Advertising is so bad and so out of control now I think people who put them out have a real mental sickness given the sheer volume and intrusiveness advertising brings.

I have had that happen. I keep an ad blocker on my computer and will drop it for sites that I value, such as this one. I had that happen to me on a recipe site. Which I find rather disturbing. The site politely asked me to turn off my ad blocker so I did and I was immediately attacked and frozen. Luckily doing a turn off with the power button on the computer itself shut me down and on restart I did not go back to my webpages on my browser. Worse yet the recipe site does not have an obvious way to contact them. I would have explained what happened to me and why I would definitely not stop using my ad blocker for them. I still go there for recipes. They do not get any advertising dollars for my visits.

 

[Deidre]

I think ads in general are annoying and intrusive.

In fact, I think ads are completely out of control and rampant.

Not to mention rude and at times destructive when it takes control of your web page browser and activity without your permission. Not to mention the load it can put on your computer rig to a point of lag and freeze issues.

Advertising is so bad and so out of control now I think people who put them out have a real mental sickness given the sheer volume and intrusiveness advertising brings.

The thing about it that I agree with you is it does lag the page to load so that’s annoying. :/

 

[Misunderstood]

Not sure if this in the proper subforum, but if not, mods please move it.

I was wondering how you all feel about the advertisements that pop up when you're on this website, or any website, showing items/products that you were or are interested in, or perhaps purchased at a prior date?

I personally love it. So many friends of mine hate the ''algorithim'' that aligns different advertisements with what you may have looked at, or purchased at an earlier time.

Idk, I think it's cool. Do you? Or do you find it annoying and invasive?

Sorry to crash your thread, but there seem to be to many political conversations going on that are pretty vitriolic, this seems kind of benign.

I have mixed feelings, I do like that you get searches and adds for what you are looking for, I tend to research before I buy. So after I did research I will get ads most of the time better than what I found in my search. I do like that!

What I do not like is it takes over your searches. Like, say I am looking for Compasses (circle drawing) after picking that type a few times in a search, that will be all you get. Which is good while continuing the search. But, say I want to look up compasses (direction finding), it is very difficult to get them to come up.

The second and I find this the most annoying is all the adds that load on some site (especially news sites) sometimes I cannot get the site to load and move on because of the ads.

I do not like the invasion of privacy, but am not as concerned as I feel I do not have anything private to worry about. If you want to know something I will more than likely tell you.

 

[Misunderstood]

1. Browsers: Google Chrome is possibly the most invasive browser on the planet. Avoid it whenever possible. Most other corporate browsers (Opera, Vivaldi, etc.) are just as bad. The TOR browser, while decent for what it does, is too slow and probably overkill for regular web browsing, on the other hand. What you need is Mozilla Firefox, or one of its off-branches, like Waterfox. Firefox is free software, meaning (among other things) that its code is open -- that is, its code can be reviewed by any programmer to make sure that it doesn't do anything malicious --, it does not try to infringe your privacy, and (as a bonus!) it is completely free. Development is funded by donations and volunteer work. What's more, as of a recent update (Firefox 57), it is now just as fast as Chrome, while using far less memory.

I do use Firefox now, but got an email from Viasat for a browser they are developing. It is supposed to be be faster by stripping out unnecessary info on a webpage to speedup load times of webpages and par down the data used in browsing. Viasat is a satellite internet provider that has limits on it data usage, which is a big complaint with their users.

I was wondering if anyone has tried it and what they think of it? I havn't tried it yet.

 

[sun rise]

If I go to Amazon or another site I buy things from, having them show me "if you liked that, you'll like this" advertising is fine. I don't want companies knowing about and tracking every search I make and every site I visit. I use three browsers, Firefox, Chrome and Edge and privacy mode because of this. I also like that Firefox, my main browser, is getting stricter about such tracking.

 

[Duke_Leto]

If I go to Amazon or another site I buy things from, having them show me "if you liked that, you'll like this" advertising is fine. I don't want companies knowing about and tracking every search I make and every site I visit. I use three browsers, Firefox, Chrome and Edge and privacy mode because of this. I also like that Firefox, my main browser, is getting stricter about such tracking.

If you use Chrome or Edge, you let Google and Microsoft, respectively, know about and track every search you make and every site you visit.

 

[Brickjectivity]

Not sure if this in the proper subforum, but if not, mods please move it.

I was wondering how you all feel about the advertisements that pop up when you're on this website, or any website, showing items/products that you were or are interested in, or perhaps purchased at a prior date?

I personally love it. So many friends of mine hate the ''algorithim'' that aligns different advertisements with what you may have looked at, or purchased at an earlier time.

Idk, I think it's cool. Do you? Or do you find it annoying and invasive?

Its a tool. It can be good. It can be done right, so I vote in favor. Anyway Statistics is now a highly developed discipline, so there is no choice. Its here to stay.

I do oppose certain uses. I oppose the VIP programs that large stores use to successfully jack up prices. I favor targeted advertising but not targeted pricing and market division that charges differently depending upon your class and income. I am willing to hear other opinions, perhaps more informed ones.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I can't stand them. I've been running uBlock, HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger and Ghostery for awhile now.

I'd like to see some regulatory measures taken. Honestly advertising has just gone too far over the line when it comes to people's privacy and security. It needs to be reigned in considerably .

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Do you like ''interest based advertising?''

I don't like any advertising. I use an ad blocker on the computer and a PVR on the television, and watch nothing that isn't recorded so that I can fast forward through the commercials. Ads are useless to me.

 

[Deidre]

Advertising that is super annoying to me are those ads on YouTube. Ugh. I’ve watched a song video x times and I still have to wait to get past the ad.

 

[Milton Platt]

Not sure if this in the proper subforum, but if not, mods please move it.

I was wondering how you all feel about the advertisements that pop up when you're on this website, or any website, showing items/products that you were or are interested in, or perhaps purchased at a prior date?

I personally love it. So many friends of mine hate the ''algorithim'' that aligns different advertisements with what you may have looked at, or purchased at an earlier time.

Idk, I think it's cool. Do you? Or do you find it annoying and invasive?

If I have to see advertising to view a website, I'm okay with that. somebody has to get paid for their work, after all. I do not like pop-ups that cover the screen. If you have something I might want, and that is your method of presenting it to me, then you just lost the sale.

I do find it quite funny that when you type in a search string on Google, you will always end up with several items in the list of sites offering you a "deal" on what you typed in.
For instance, if you type in "mutilated bodies", you will inevitably get results telling you that you can get the best deals on mutilated bodies at Amazon, or the best selection of mutilated bodies on Ebay.