Removing the ability to opt-out of ad personalization based on your Reddit activity, except in select countries.
Reddit requires very little personal information, and we like it that way. Our advertisers instead rely on on-platform activity—what communities you join, leave, upvotes, downvotes, and other signals—to get an idea of what you might be interested in.
The vast majority of redditors will see no change to their ads on Reddit. For users who previously opted out of personalization based on Reddit activity, this change will not result in seeing more ads or sharing on-platform activity with advertisers. It does enable our models to better predict which ad may be most relevant to you.
is it, though? I'd say the redesign was when things started going seriously downhill, and that's been introduced about 5 years ago. not much of a speedrun.
Targeted ads has become such a boogey man, that you all can no longer view these things rationally. There is nothing wrong with companies wanted to get their products advertized to the most likely customers and there is nothing inherently wrong with a platform using your activity to see what ads you are most likely interested in.
The potential issue with it, is your personal data leaking everywhere and being assimilated by questionable companies who could create a psychological profile of you, that knows you better than you know yourself.
If they truely only let companies target you, by presenting them an internally grouped collective of likely customers in which you happen to be included, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Same goes for the newest change in how chrome manages ads.
I feel like the issue is more nuanced than this scenario you've provided- there are legitimate concerns as to whether your personal data can be ethically handled by a chain of organizations and individuals that have no linkage to you and see you as nothing more than income. That's aside from the fact that selling personal data raises moral concerns akin to those raised by the usage of DNA-testing services as they relate to things like healthcare coverage, and blood quantum in tribal nations- issues of not having control over who can and cannot access personal, private information that could potentially be used against you. Once that data is collected, it's effectively impossible to control who has it.
These scenarios are also assuming that everyone handling your data is, at best, a neutral entity. If your personal data is collected and makes its way to someone who would like to steal your identity or otherwise cause you harm, that's a really big problem.
The majority aren't dissatisfied enough to do anything about it, despite complaints. However, I'm hoping that some future action from Huffman will affect them adversely enough that it'd push them over that threshold and decide to do something about it—quit that site. I doubt a lot of them will make their way over here, so just them quitting is good enough for me.
Yeah, using Lemmy feels so many ch better. I was using jeroba and it has some issues that were not being addressed. The lack of ads was nice, but paying $5 for no ad Boost feels like a great deal.
I have an old account that I wiped 9 times, but used to post the spez getting railed by busty Garfield meme, that of course were deleted by an admin.
It’s lately getting harassment PM’s/comments regarding older posts that were reactivated despite multiple deletions. It’s like they’re trying to bait me back into an argument lol, it’s weird and really sad for the communities.
Because my day isn't shitty enough, I went over there to see what's the vibe. Sure enough, people are complaining. There's also a surprising amount of bootlickers who parrot the "argument" that people have been saying things have been going downhill, but Reddit still is popular so it can't be going downhill. As if shitty things can't be popular.
I've seen a couple of people who saw this as the last straw, which is better than nothing, but I feel that those remaining in that site, no matter how they kvetch about it, deserves to be frog stew (as in that boiling frog metaphor). I'd love to be proven wrong though.
The problem is Lemmy has completely squandered this time between waves of new users. There's improvements in the pipeline but it may be too late at this point.
Nah, word of mouth is powerful. I've been enjoying my time, and started to tell friends about it. Many are already bitching about reddit and their many poor decisions over the years, and at least in my social circle, others turn to me for what I use and recommend. I'm certain of course that there are many, many more like me.
It doesn't need to be a landslide, it just needs visibility with trusted friends using it to grow organically and easily.
No one squandered anything. The devs have been working full time, as well as third party contributers / third party apps & frontends. There's only so much work they can do. They're not a multil-million dollar company. Good things take time
I still moderate on Reddit, and will continue to do so (the community is in the process of migrating over, and the community members are important to me)
I'm going to stop upvoting, downvoting, and joining/leaving communities. Already wasn't doing much of the later.
As some of the comments point out, they already have a precise list of interests per user.
The subreddit lists. Yet they aren't using that data. Although I suppose the "why not" is that they maybe don't want advertisers knowing all of the subreddits.