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From the outset people have enjoyed free services, and free means and ment “paid for by advertisers”, facilitated by Big Tech. We created an economic system th

• throwawayboise 5y ago
  As someone who never sees ads on my phone or online, here is how: Ad blocker (uBlock Origin) in the browser. No social media apps on the phone. No other "free" apps on the phone. Location services always disabled unless I'm actively using Maps navigation. Bluetooth always disabled. I pay for YouTube Premium to not see ads. If there is another app that I find useful, I pay for it to not see ads.
  • erhk 5y ago
    Maybe you should pay for a navigation app too
    • rusk 5y ago
      They paid for their phone which comes with Navigation as a feature. Debatable perhaps.
      • Guest42 5y ago
        I’d opt for a clear contractual agreement that could be entered and exited, or a paid alternative priced fairly. Same with the phone, one shouldn’t pay for a phone in cash (or payment plan) and continue to pay indefinitely with personal data. It could be worked out contractually that way a person knows what they are buying at time of purchase.
        • nicbou 5y ago
          Don't apps end up using Google Play services anyway?
  • walrus01 5y ago
    It's kind of cute you think youtube and other google services aren't geolocating you (approximately) by the IP of the ISP you're on at any given time, and your pattern of life analysis using the internet at work vs home vs friends' wifi. And when your traffic shows up as coming from IP blocks belonging to your LTE mobile phone carrier vs a terrestrial ISP. If they have a data set from a hundred other people whose behavior you can't control, using android phones in a default configuration, in a residential /24 DHCP IP block belonging to some last-mile ISP, where those people do turn on location and GPS services, and you regularly show up with traffic from the same block, you're being correlated with your neighbours. Additionally lots of other people with fully-default android or ios location/advertising permissions are using other social media apps from the same netblocks that your traffic regularly appears from in a predictable daily wake/sleep pattern (facebook, instagram, twitter, reddit, tiktok, etc).
    • est31 5y ago
      These correlation methods exist, and indeed reveal a lot about you, but they have precision limits. In rural areas, the ip block might be as large as an entire municipality, or even larger. If you turn on location services, Google knows which house you are in, and even where you are inside that house from the wifi networks you give them.
      • jjeaff 5y ago
        I live in a suburb and my IP frequently locates me all over the place spanning multiple counties and millions of people. So it is only really useful to get region.
        • walrus01 5y ago
          Within the precision limits of what they'll publicly tell you from ARIN registration data for your ISP's netblocks and other geolocation services like maxmind, yes. But not in terms of what data they actually have access to for peoples' android phones in their homes, with full location services and GPS turned on, in IPs directly adjacent to you in the same last mile service segment. They don't share that.
  • jimbob45 5y ago
    No free apps? What about if you need one for banking or health insurance or something else essential?
    • Wingy 5y ago
      If I understand correctly, these are paid for by you or by taxes, not through an app download fee.
    • acomjean 5y ago
      I think those apps are subsidized by your membership or accounts. They aren't services paid for by ads. But it might be better to use those in browsers with ad-blocking, though honestly I'm not sure
      • cle 5y ago
        That doesn't mean the apps aren't using analytics services that feed the data back to ad networks. Not only are these data useful for targeting ads to you later, they are useful for targeting to other people since they can be used to infer characteristics and behavior of similar people, which can then be used by advertisers for more precise targeting. There's an built-in conflict of interest with mobile platforms, both Google and Apple, who both run advertising networks that are incentivized to collect data on you to improve targeting, whether you look at ads or not. (It is helpful that Apple's core business is not advertising, though I still don't trust them.)
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• onion2k 5y ago
  we enjoy being nurtured by marketing moguls who will tell us what will Solve All Our Problems I don't think we do enjoy that, at least not once we're experienced enough to understand that it's all lies designed to sell us stuff rather than actually help at all.
• bostonsre 5y ago
  Paid for by advertisers != paid for by ads backed by persistent surveillance The public promise was always it's free because we show you ads. The general public equates that with having to view a billboard on the highway. The fact that persistent surveillance is used to serve ads now is never called out or publicized by these companies for a reason. They know that most people would think that is creepy and that they are going to far. The reasoning that we give the users a free app therefore we can do everything in our power to surveil and exploit the information of those users for money is bs. I can't think of a single person who has no conflicts of interest that would say otherwise. There is also so much hand wavy stuff thrown around with this argument like "but we're making the world a better place, so the means justify the ends". I haven't worked at any of the large social media or similar companies but I still feel guilty like I have blood on my hands because of those that feign altruism while being bloodthirsty capitalists in this industry. I am definitely a capitalist but some actions just aren't moral and I don't think we should ignore the reality of those actions.