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Instagram Has Become SkyMall
- Method-X 5y agoI bought something from one of these ads last summer. It was supposed to be a battery powered pump (like to blow up a pool float). The thing that came in the mail was just a cheap hand pump. Moral of the story here is be careful of these products. I assume lots are bait-and-switches like what I experienced.
- moltar 5y agoI think it looks more like The Shopping Channel than SkyMall. Although there’s definitely an overlap.
- dunnevens 5y agoI don't use Instagram much, but I am on Facebook too often. The limitations of the advertising algorithms are very interesting to me. For example: I participate in ex-evangelical groups because of my childhood experiences. Also follow pages which discuss American Christianity from a secular or journalistic perspective, and in Christian groups which interpret their beliefs from a left-ish ideology. "Liking" any post from those groups will trigger an onslaught of ads almost exclusively for conservative churches and conservative organizations. The algorithms can't differentiate between "pro", "anti", and "observer" on a particular topic. Nor does it seem to have any awareness of ideology. It's very rare when I see progressive churches advertise. I understand that the algorithms are going to have difficulty with subtleties. But I'd think they'd still have some rough awareness about "anti" vs. "pro". And thus not flood people who dislike a thing with ads promoting the thing. At any rate, I suppose it's oddly reassuring Facebook is so inaccurate. Judging by the high number of critical comments on the religious ads, there are many uninterested people being targeted.
- smt88 5y agoI don't necessarily think you're experiencing an important flaw here. I'd wager that the vast majority of people interacting with content related to evangelical Christianity are in the "pro" category, so people in the "anti" category are an acceptable false-positive. For example, if I'm trying to sell something to evangelical Christians and 95% of my views are "pro" and 5% are "anti", that's still hugely valuable to me and something Facebook can charge a lot for. Maybe FB could increase the price without the false positives, but neither they nor their advertisers care that much.
- dunnevens 5y agoYou're probably right and it isn't necessarily a huge flaw. But, the failures are interesting. Especially when it involves a subject where the for / against lines are so clearly drawn. If Facebook is failing at such an easy subject, then what else are they getting wrong?
- hectormalot 5y agoTheir definition of successful targeting is different than yours. Back in 2019(?) Google published average display ad click rates of 0.03% I think. If FBs targeting gets them to 3% (100x better), that’s hugely valuable to them, while you still see mostly non interesting ads.
- pestaa 5y agoSure the algos can always be better, but consider the possibility that conservative churches just spend absurdly, mind-boggingly large sums of money on fb advertising.
- jaspax 5y agoTo pick a nit, I don't think that it's the churches per se that do most of the advertising (though they probably do some), it's mostly Evangelical publishers, etc. selling to church-goers.
- aledalgrande 5y agoIf you want to see SkyMall open aliexpress and with no search terms start scrolling. Some of my favorites: a watch with a lighter flame, toilet with motion sensor that switches a blue led on and champagne squirt gun.
- exikyut 5y agoI honestly wonder whether the people who make these things are having the time of their lives or in some kind of idea-sweat-factory trying to come up with things all day and burning out quickly.
- Sunspark 5y agoIt's so weird how long the reach is. Just yesterday I was looking up a product on a company's website on my phone. Then I went to use my desktop and logged into facebook and there was an ad for the product I was looking at on my phone's web browser.
- jasonkester 5y agoIs it the app that shows ads? I just checked Instagram for the first time in a week, and I made it all the way down to where I’d left off without seeing a single ad. This is using the website on an iPad, with no ad blocker or anything. If it’s just the app, then no worries. I gave up trying to use it on my phone because the photos and text are just too small to see and they go out of their way to make sure you can’t zoom or change the font size to something legible. Its just way more pleasant on a tablet or desktop.
- Crash0v3rid3 5y agoInstagram, a place where I used to share pictures with my close friends and family. Now, useless ads and inappropriate posts from random kids I have zero interest in seeing.
- kevinventullo 5y agoI don’t understand, are you following random kids you have no interest in seeing?
- travoc 5y agoHave you ever scrolled past the tiny “view older posts” link?
- heartbreak 5y agoYeah, that’s where I end up in a sea of wildlife photography.
- baby 5y agoI think that’s only when you have a new account and you don’t follow many people?
- heartbreak 5y agoI follow a bunch of wildlife photographers.
- Crash0v3rid3 5y agoNo, I don’t follow these people. Once I view all the new content from the people I follow, Instagram starts showing me posts from people I’ve never seen before.
- jcims 5y agoAre you using the app or browser? I just use Safari on iOS and I only follow my two kids and I just go back years of posts and there’s nothing from strangers on there.
- codetrotter 5y agoI mostly tend to get ads relating to music production, owing to the fact that.. I follow quite a few music producers and related hashtags. But now I kind of wish that I got to see ads for these kinds of ridiculous products in my feed too.
- paulcole 5y agoI love it. I don’t even post on IG. I just browse and find stuff I want to buy.
- abendy 5y agoThe app itself can quickly turn into a never-ending scroll of infomercials from ads and accounts if you go beyond your social circle. Even if said accounts are not directly selling a product through the store feature, it's often advertising a desirable lifestyle not your own and general consumerism. How many photos are staged versus candid? This type of content-as-ad imagery is what the app lends itself best to versus any other social media app. Of course, you can just not follow any of these accounts or limit them or have better self control over your time spent there. But, the company is also probably working against your best interests, bottom line and all that...
- busymom0 5y agoSome of the brightest minds and smartest people go to work for companies which spend every minute of their existence to figure out how to place an ad in front of our eyes for 1 more second.
- Taek 5y agoI really dislike the suggestion "just have better self control". It's you versus an army of machine learning experts all tuning algorithm on personal data about you to learn your weaknesses and bait you into spending more time on the app. Blaming the consumer ignores the adversarial role that the apps play in our lives.
- abendy 5y agoI agree. I wasn’t trying to place blame merely stating that there are ways to make the experience personal and closed to the people you know only. The sentence following the one you’re referring to was meant to convey your sentiments.
- sneak 5y agoThe fact that you use the term "bait" illustrates that it is about self-control and not compulsion. It's absolutely not adversarial. People voluntarily install these apps. This is opt-in advertising.
- 5y ago
- Kiro 5y agoI want to buy every single thing I see here. I've been really happy with the kind of ads I've been seeing lately. Instead of generic commercials I'm getting very specific products solving problems I have but didn't realize could be solved by a gadget.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- MattGaiser 5y agoI turned off my adblocker for Facebook as the ads started being far more relevant to me. Lots of interesting games or hackathons or nifty tools.
- 6f8986c3 5y agoI use Brave and love my ad-free life.
- kaszanka 5y agoFacebook seems to put a lot of effort into making ads hard to block too.
- post_break 5y agoI'm in the same boat. Normally I despise ads, but the ones on facebook I'm seeing I have actually clicked on to learn more. Not a robot, hate facebook to the core, but some of the ads I get are interesting.
- aikinai 5y agoI almost never check Facebook and when I do, I only login in a private tab, but even from this sandbox, Facebook somehow has the best ads for me by far. I actually get very little value from the normal content, but I’d probably even sign up for a newsletter of their ads for me. Edit: They always seem to have very cool Kickstarters for me, for example, so then later I’ll try to go right to the source, but I’ve never found something good myself on Kickstarter.
- 5y ago
- firecall 5y agoAn enjoyable read!
- sircastor 5y agoI found the same enjoyable read on BLERFMARKET.COM. It’s where I buy all my reads now.
- fermentation 5y agoThe app has become about 30-40% advertisements which I think is far too much. I don't ever want to buy any of these things because all of my ads are for coffee beans, which I would much rather buy fresh from a local shop.
- paulpauper 5y agoi don't see any ads. the desktop version is better
- pyrophane 5y agoInstagram is like a magazine if the magazine was just ads and the ads were written all by the staff writers who you trust.
- quartesixte 5y agoYeah imagine a real magazine that would do...hey wait a minute
- dylan604 5y agoAll of this reminds me of the scene in Fight Club where they animate the magazine ad as the apartment.
- notatoad 5y agoand there's a reason magazines are mostly irrelevant these days - we found new, better sources of entertainment. i'm not sure emulating magazines is a good goal for the medium that supplanted magazines.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y agoIt is if you want to see them supplanted by something else.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- simonw 5y agoI've noticed a lot of ads like this on Twitter too recently.
- busymom0 5y ago> The thing is, SkyMall was a blast. It was so consistently unhinged — night-glow toilet seat! night-glow toilet seat actually turned out to be quite a popular product on Shark Tank. Kevin O'Leary put $100K for a 25 percent stake in it. https://mashable.com/deals/oct-11-shark-tank-bathroom-products-sale https://mashable.com/deals/oct-11-shark-tank-bathroom-produc... There's been many copy cats all of which have tons of sales: https://www.amazon.com/illumibowl/s?k=illumibowl https://www.amazon.com/illumibowl/s?k=illumibowl
- 55555 5y agoThe product preceded this company. It has been advertised on infomercials since at least the 90s and possibly earlier.
- endisneigh 5y agoIs there anyone else out there who refuses to buy something if they first learned about it from an ad?
- puranjay 5y agoI make it a point to support small businesses that are creating interesting products, even if I learned about them from ads.
- wyager 5y agoAbsolutely. If I see an ad for something I make a mental note to search for competitors before buying that brand, assuming I need the product. If a company is spending money on ads, that’s money they’re not spending on R&D or cutting prices, and it also means their product is too weak to get traction organically.
- allendoerfer 5y ago> If a company is spending money on ads, that’s money they’re not spending on R&D or cutting prices, and it also means their product is too weak to get traction organically. Or they just want to make even more money than they could make organically, which they can then put into R&D or into cutting pricces (through economies of scale).
- robbedpeter 5y agoYes, it is possible to do things ass- backwards. The first way is better for consumers, the second way exploits consumers at a subconscious level, and is more often leveraged to maximize profit than to benefit consumers. E.g., Imagine all the good pharmaceutical research that could be funded if we just allowed blatant snake oil to be sold for unlimited profit? Surely the ends justify the means? Corporations trend toward consumer exploitation and as they get bigger, there is less chance for any human concerns like ethics or morals to correct negative behavior.
- 5y ago
- chiph 5y agoOK, the colored acrylic cube looks like a fun desk toy. But not at $23.
- cratermoon 5y agoI've noticed nearly everything I see on IG is a version of something that can be found elsewhere for less. Sometimes MUCH less. In some cases the IG ad is for a "prestige" brand, so you're paying for the name, but in many cases it's a brand with no recognition but advertising as "artisanal" or hand crafted. Look deeper, though, and discover these just big cheap brands rebadging their stuff.
- perardi 5y agoI would just like to take this opportunity to post these screenshots I took over the past 2 days: https://imgur.com/a/SLrJaUJ https://imgur.com/a/SLrJaUJ I am surprised by just how many ads for drugs I get. They know their audience. But still. Lots of ads for testosterone, growth hormone, and now ketamine.
- birdyrooster 5y agoIG is a gateway drug
- andrei_says_ 5y agoTo?
- perardi 5y agoYou want a real hot take based off a throwaway comment? It kinda is for steroids. (Hold on, don’t downvote me yet, I’m going somewhere.) I am a 30-something gay male. Here’s my Recommendations view: https://imgur.com/a/1Paravn https://imgur.com/a/1Paravn Hot dudes, dogs, and one computer setup that’s either based off my search for standing desks or mechanical keyboards. Instagram is a body dysmorphia engine. If you are in a certain demographic, it is so easy to drink from a constant firehose of thirst traps of men with very suspiciously large traps. You get that every time you open Instagram? It does start to warp your brain, and make you consider trying pharmaceutical interventions. Conflict of interest: I am absolutely one of those monsters posting thirst traps: https://imgur.com/a/2JGOYwL https://imgur.com/a/2JGOYwL
- sydthrowaway 5y agoThe ads, like on YouTube, are getting unbearable. And this time you can’t even block them
- bscphil 5y agoWhy can't you block them?
- geerlingguy 5y agoPresumably using the app? The thing I hate most is if I click on search it starts autoplaying some random thing that has no relevance to my social circles, until I start typing my search query (usually just trying to find a friend or an account I already follow).
- bscphil 5y agoI generally assume that installing an app to use a website is voluntarily opting in to a worse experience, so you're probably right. Still, though, maybe a PiHole would be effective?
- geerlingguy 5y agoI'm running one and it makes no difference.
- herbst 5y agoMost ads are loaded as 'normal posts' I tried but pi-hole is not the solution here.
- sydthrowaway 5y agoYep, the explore page always turns up some barely clad women.
- CptFribble 5y agoSome time ago YT and other majors started serving ads from the same domains as content, so it's become much more difficult to reliably block them. https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/88vsz1/youtube_ad_domains/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/88vsz1/youtube_ad_d...
- imgabe 5y agoSomething changed about Instagram recently, maybe it’s just because I changed how I used it. I used to only follow people I know, but then I added a few accounts that post Simpsons screenshots and clips. Now my feed is overrun with meme accounts, other Simpsons accounts I don’t follow, similar accounts for Futurama, Seinfeld, etc. Admittedly, some are amusing sometimes, but it feels likes it’s turned into 9gag or something. It’s like if you follow one instance of something Instagram immediately assumes you exclusively want to see every single thing like that.
- vmlinuz 5y agoOk, so I'm going to hijack this slightly... I'm an elderly (mid-40s) non-USian techie, and I've never done Instagram. On Facebook I mostly follow people I've largely lost touch with in real life (particular these past couple of years), and on Twitter it's news sources and journalists, plus a selection of 'celebs' from various niche interests like tech, sci-fi, winter sports and comedy. Am I likely to be missing anything interesting by largely ignoring Instagram?
- dharmab 5y agoI'm a US tech person in my 20s who does not use Twitter, Facebook or Instagram at all. I do miss out on things because friends and family use Facebook for event planning, so I have to hear about things secondhand from mutual friends. But I never feel like I miss anything from the others.
- Igelau 5y agoI follow a few artists on it. It's good for when you want to see what people are making without the kind of chatter you get on Facebook or Twitter.
- dvtrn 5y agoAgree with this, I'm a big fan of sci-fi and high-fantasy art, and follow a great deal of amazing artists on IG, there's more than a couple of great space paintings in my living room that I saw on the site, contacted the artist and offered to buy a print from. That and of course seeing friends in their own necks of the woods is what makes the platform for me.
- technothrasher 5y ago> Am I likely to be missing anything interesting by largely ignoring Instagram? I'm going to say, no. But then, if you consider mid-40s elderly, I'm positively geriatric.
- steve_adams_86 5y agoI’m an elderly mid-30s dinosaur. Are you pre-big bang?
- elorant 5y agoThe thing I hate about Instagram is how lenient they are on nude pics. While Facebook has a strict policy, on Instagram a lot of celebrity content is borderline porn.
- Izikiel43 5y agoI see that as absolute win.
- throwaway3699 5y agoI'm not a puritan by any means, but literally millions of kids use this app. It's not a good idea to have these things mixed.
- Izikiel43 5y agoThe would you think of the children?!? Argument is so destructive for anything privacy or freedom related, it is politicians silver bullet for any issues. When anyone makes that point now I completely ignore it, as you can use it for anything to do whatever you want, specially curtail freedoms. Educate your children if you are so worried about them, that’s the best thing you can do.
- throwaway3699 5y agoInstagram is a closed source, proprietary app developed by a megacorp. Freedom has nothing to do with anything on that app. Or so I'm told...
- CRConrad 5y agoI've heard children don't actually die from seeing a bit of boob, or even actual genitals.
- gccs 5y agoWhy are you browsing celebrity content in the first place?
- dhosek 5y agoBefore I completely dropped social media, I had a f—k the algorithm attitude towards the ads. I made a point of clicking through everything that was completely uninteresting to me. That road led to a non-stop flood of class-action lawyer ads.
- manwe150 5y agoI like to read this with the belief that his attitude towards the ads had somehow led to the class-action lawyer ads being 100% relevant.
- nolaspring 5y agoIt’s a race condition to the bottom.
- gnicholas 5y agoI’ve heard that mesothelioma class action lawyer advertisements are among the most expensive on social media. Cynical hypothesis: once the platforms realized you’ll click on anything, they decided to show you their highest-compensated ads.
- Breza 5y agoNot cynical at all, this is exactly how Real Time Bidding (RTB) works.
- winterchil 5y agoYou're not wrong but it depends on the platform and campaign. If the ads are bought click-optimized then yes... if conversion optimized then the algorithms will learn to avoid zealous clickers.
- laurent92 5y agoIt’s funny, once I started watching luxury houses (I became rich last year, bought a house and wanted inspiration to decorate), I got flooded with ads about “How to become rich”. (Obviously none of those include programming…).
- cratermoon 5y ago"hey, do you ever find it a huge hassle to pour cereal from a box?" Just like the Snuggie, many of these products were invented to help people with various disabilities. See e.g. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/20/17791354/products-people-disabilities-sock-slider-banana-slicer-lazy https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/20/17791354/products-pe...
- BobLaw 5y agoHumm, not exactly "Some of the most useful products for people with disabilities weren’t developed with them in mind"
- cratermoon 5y agoped· ant | \ ˈpe-dᵊnt \ Definition of pedant 1a: one who is unimaginative or who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge
- smabie 5y agoCan you show me a snuggle ad with a disabled person in it
- cratermoon 5y agoCan you show me any ad with a disabled person in it?
- barrkel 5y agoThe canonical example of SkyMall equivalence for me is wish.com ads. They're odd enough that they're frequently clipped and commented on - https://www.google.com/search?q=wish+ads https://www.google.com/search?q=wish+ads
- quickthrower2 5y agoWhat is wish.com? Comes up in a lot of search’s, shows me an absurdly cheap price for a product and then I can’t buy it, it’s out of stock or something went wrong
- _samjarman 5y agoOne day, someone will have the courage to build a paid-for social media platform and we can put all this nonsense behind us.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nsonha 5y agowhat else was it supposed to be? An educational website?
- smakmur 5y agoI wonder who is manufacturing these items? Are they able to design and manufacture these items profitably with the volume?
- avalys 5y agoI get great ads on Instagram. Generally, they’re niche products related to my interests from small companies I’ve never heard of before. Yes, there’s a few misses, but it’s way better than the absolute scum-sucking garbage I see elsewhere on the internet from other ad networks. “Doctor shares one weird trick for emptying your bowels every morning”, “Alan Greenspan tells you what to buy instead of Litecoin”, and similar. However, I don’t really use Instagram to connect with people I know. I follow a bunch of accounts related to my hobbies and interests. That probably primes the ad-targeting pump a lot better than if I was just following my friends and family on there.
- milofeynman 5y agoInstagram ads are the only ads I like and I am insanely anti-ad. They're currently showing me ads for furniture and house stuff. What I find frustrating is there is no way to view my recently seen ads. They'll cut off early in stories and I'll not be able to get them back.
- astrange 5y agoI agree Instagram ads are usually good and certainly the only ones I've ever seen properly targeted to me - I've even used it 2-3 times for high value things - but I'm still annoyed that it keeps trying to sell me startup Viagra for millenials. ("hims" and "Roman")
- Tenoke 5y agoThinking about it I dont see many ads on the internet but I do on Instagram and have clicked on them multiple times and been happy to find some stores which I wouldn't otherwise.
- makeitdouble 5y agoThe other side of the coin: people who get easily fished by scams get more and more well targeted scams. I had to help deal with a scam on a very low profile product (less than 20$ worth) that will just never arrive, the company just vanished away and she was left to deal with her bank to convince for a chargeback. I thought it was just back luck, but I got to look at her timeline later on, and half of the ads could have been same level scams.
- spicyramen 5y agoI clicked all the conservative sites, I clicked all liberal ads,all Chinese ads, all Spanish ads, all rich people ads. I'm a Mexican drug cartel Trump supporter who speaks Chinese according to IG.
- forgotmypw17 5y agoMy biggest problem with both Facebook and Instagram is that I feel completely out of control over what I see. There is neither a way to avoid what I don't want, nor a way to ensure I see my friends' posts. The timeline shows me the same handful of people in mystery sort order mixed with ads, and then I later find out I haven't seen months' worth of someone's content when I happen to visit their profile. The only half-ass solution I've found is to bookmark each profile and check them individually, which is, of course, not very practical past a dozen or two. All in all, it feels like Facebook thinks I'm an idiot and treats me accordingly. And maybe I am an idiot, since I've yet to figure out an alternative.
- Tenoke 5y ago>There is neither a way to avoid what I don't want, nor a way to ensure I see my friends' posts There's both on Facebook. You can set it so you always see a person's posts and you can click on any post to see less of that type of content (or none from the poster).
- forgotmypw17 5y agoHow do I check what my current settings are, list all the people I've set to "show always", and all which are hidden? I also do not recall ever hiding anyone intentionally, because then I'd probably just unfollow them. I could be wrong, however. Also, is there a way to see friends I'm currently not following, in case I did that by accident? Thank you, that would be very helpful. Edit: I am reminded now of the settings you must be talking about, the "show me more of this" preferences. I tried them, but they seem to have no effect on what I see or don't. And, of course, I can't hide the ads.
- Tenoke 5y agoThere's also an option (maybe it was by adding them to favorites) to make it so you always get a friend's posts. You can also do the 'see less of this' on ads. Alternatively you can also just install FB Purity or a similar extension to tweak what you see better.
- 5y ago
- underseacables 5y agoI have trained Instagram (and Facebook) over the years to give me only the most pointless and unappealing ads as possible. I have no qualms about ignoring and forgetting each and every one. I despise ads and do my best to block and avoid.
- agotterer 5y agoIf you’re in search of a Skymall alternative, check out Hammacher Schlemmer (https://www.hammacher.com/ https://www.hammacher.com/). The brand has existed for over a hundred years, they have a physical store in NYC, a website, and a catalog (still being sent out). I just looked at a few products for sale on their homepage: make sure not to miss the transparent canoe or the kickball dart board.
- FreakyT 5y agoIIRC Skymall used to feature Hammacher Schlemmer products pretty often, so it's not surprising that there'd be a lot of overlap.
- underdeserver 5y agoI wonder if this happened because every time he randomly got a SkyMall-flavored ad, he stopped and clicked through.
- amelius 5y agoThis guy should try AliExpress. In fact that's probably where all the stuff advertised on Instagram comes from.
- herbst 5y agoThis. Even most 'influencer brands' are basic Ali rebrands
- puchatek 5y agoThe one SkyMall i remember from a US flight ages ago was one for shoes with springs built into the heels which claimed they would make you walk faster. Deciding whether the whole magazine was a witty caricature of US capitalism or honest advertising took me a while. I then decided to keep the magazine as a souvenir but have unfortunately lost it since.
- grishka 5y agoMaybe it's just me, but I dislike the whole concept of advertising in places that aren't related to shopping. I go to Instagram to look at my friends' pictures, not to be sold something I don't actually need. If I were to shop, I'd go to a mall, thank you very much. Anyway, at some point Instagram ads (especially the autoplaying video kind, with sound) drove me crazy enough that out came jadx and apktool and I found a beautiful way to inject my own code into Instagram's networking. The code I injected rewrites the API responses before the rest of the app sees them. I can now scroll through my feed without annoying salesmen begging for my attention. I've also enabled a "secret" debugging menu while at it, where there are manual overrides for server-side settings, and there are at least several hundred of them — it's a bit creepy what they're A/B testing, like slightly different wording or different button colors. The only problem that still remains is that the feed is still algorithmic, and there's nothing that could be done with that with client patches.
- 0x0nyandesu 5y agoIt's definitely just you. Women go on Instagram to see fashion with links to shopping "the look".
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoSome people go to instagram for fashion, but that is definitely not all women nor just women. I personally just wear a black shirt and black pants almost every day, am not all that interested in fashion, and am a woman.
- coldtea 5y ago>Some people go to instagram for fashion, but that is definitely not all women nor just women. No, but it is the third option you ommited: mostly women (doing that).
- OJFord 5y agoGreat, does it matter? I think GGP's comment's point was that some do want that. They said 'women' but I don't think it really matters (or affects the point) who it is.
- h0nd 5y agoThe examples taken from instagram are probably very region specific and further matching a profile. However, I must agree that IG ads got worse and worse. So what is very common here: 1. Take a stock picture of Americans lining up for petrol at a petrol station because of an extreme situation/limitation. 2. Link to a website that looks like a normal webshop (the ad is done by an account that only exists on facebook and its page is empty, not promoting a shop) 3. The user gets redirected from the shop website (that actually exists and can be loaded manually from desktop) to a fake website, that looks like the website of the largest local news outlet. 4. There is an article about how to get rich with crypto and some celebs promote it. On the bottom of the page you can register with your phone number. You will get redirected to a trading platform that most likely rips you off. Way to go instagram. Allowing scammers to their platform.
- throwawayswede 5y agoWhat's tragic here is that the author is complaining about one ad-infested, tracker-infested piece of trash of a product, on another ad-infested, tracker-infested piece of trash that is Medium. Why the the fuck people still write on Medium even though it prevents people from reading content after a few times without either paying or logging in is beyond me.
- yunohn 5y agoThere’s ads on Medium? I’ve never seen any. BTW you can easily open an article in incognito mode, to bypass the login-wall. They do however use analytics, like any other platform that wishes to quantify engagement and provide value to their content creators.
- throwawayswede 5y agoWith or without ads, Medium is the absolute essence of trash software.
- jerbearito 5y agoMedium had a brief period when it was enjoyable and not overflowing with clickbait, listicles, and ads. Now it is, indeed, trash software.
- behnamoh 5y agoJust like Quora at its early age.
- FearlessNebula 5y agoWhat are some good alternatives? I’m not a fan of Medium either. Their user experience is very disrespectful. Edit: alternatives for a reader
- jamietanna 5y ago
- herbst 5y agoEveryone is just posting stories today. So when I open Instagram I don't get pictures and updates from people I care about but I do actually get a wall full of ads. Sometimes there is no actual content for 20+ posts. Nothing that could actually interest me. It's awful and I don't know how people can use this for their own entertainment.
- mxxx 5y agoI was going to reminisce about a print catalogue that we had in Australia when I was a kid, when I realised that it actually still exists, possibly even still in print form? https://www.innovations.com.au https://www.innovations.com.au Lots of equally hilarious garbage in here. I used to love it when I was young. My grandma would get them delivered in the post.
- subpixel 5y agoI go to great lengths to anonymize myself on Instagram (futile, but I do what I can), and as a result I get what I guess are 'standard' ads: - gun modification products - survival stuff: knives, para cord etc. - conservative 'mens group' retreats It's dark.
- throwawayswede 5y agoget out while you still can...
- Traster 5y agoI think what's essentially happening here is that Instagram has lots of tracking and targeting so it's very good at telling advertising "Hey, here's the list of people you want to advertise to, and here's how much it will cost". The result of this hyper-targeted approach though is that if you're not in any of the targets no one wants to advertise to you at all. This is the weird part though, rather than accept this, Instagram juts lowers the cost of advertising to you to practically zero. This is what opens the door to these trash ads - it's a kind of noise floor where ads are so cheap you may as well just spend some money on advertising something that costs you zero capital and has crazy margins - cheap chinese drop shipping rubbish. Because there's practically no barrier to entry, it immediately becomes a race to the bottom and the price of the adverts will perfectly match the margin times conversion rate. What's interesting here is that Instagram have basically decided not to put a floor in. They could very easily say "Hey, we don't yet know how or what to target at these people, but they're still users, let's just not show them many ads, keep them happy on the platform, and give up on that ad revenue until we get it figured out, once we've firgured it out they'll probably be valuable". Instead what they've decided is "Hey, we have no idea how to target at these people so let's just drop the price of ads to the point where anyone will advertise any crap, it'll give the users a terrible experience and forever associate our app with cheap tat, but atleast we get to pick up that tiny revenue stream from drop shippers"
- neycoda 5y agoEverything I've bought from an Instagram ad was easily-breakable, not as described, and shipped from an Asian country (to the US), or never arrived.
- chrisstu 5y agoThe author is on-point here. I now love the instagram ads for their comedy value. Although I'm currently seeing a lot of elasticated waistband trousers that apparently look like normal well-fitting trousers. I guess my instagram browsing habits now fit that middle aged fat guy demographic. Damn!
- JulianMorrison 5y agoGeneral principle: if the gadget seems pointless or lazy, ask yourself, "how could this be useful to disabled people?" Because it was probably developed for them, but they aren't a big enough market. So it has to be sold as a gimmick.
- base698 5y agoI feel like Instagram was always like Maxim or Cosmopolitan magazine. Lifestyle marketing to people looking for what to buy to be cool. Guess I can see Skymall too.
- bofh23 5y agoI think https://ThisIsWhyImBroke.com https://ThisIsWhyImBroke.com is closest to the SkyMall experience but I’m a sucker for a good catalog. Here’s a gag gift that caught my attention: Roast Beef Sandwich Bath Soak https://www.thisiswhyimbroke.com/roast-beef-sandwich-bath-soak/ https://www.thisiswhyimbroke.com/roast-beef-sandwich-bath-so...
- greyhair 5y agoI joined Instagram well before Facebook bought it. It has been a downward slide ever since. Slow, but downward none-the-less. I had a Facebook account early on, but as the filtering advanced, my feed turned to shit, so I closed the account completely. It wasn't enjoyable at all any more. I fear Instagram is headed in that same direction.