this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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TL;DR: Reddit is removing the option to opt out of ad personalization, targeting ads based on user activity. Some specific ad categories can still be limited, but there's no more opt-out option.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I don’t understand how they can do this with iPhone when Apple requires all apps to prompt with the option to deny tracking?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

For those who are paranoid about this - some of you have a Facebook account, and half of you have a Google-filled smartphone. Privacy is important, but IMO there should be a balance between convenience and privacy - unless you actually do stuff that requires the utmost privacy or you need to stay fully anonymous everywhere as much as possible.

Division of identity - that is, having unique profiles/identities for different types of things you do on the web, using alias emails and anonymous email for certain things etc. - is a more viable strategy than trying to be 100% anonymous on the web.

Commercial social media that is free does and will track your activity on the site, whether for personalized ads or for algorithm purposes. Lemmy and Mastodon don't because they're FOSS, and don't run on ads (99.9% of the time).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Commercial social media that is free does and will track your activity on the site

I don't think many people have an issue with this. It's all the bullshit they pull to track you off the site that is the problem, and they do a lot of that.

Edit: and the selling of that information to third parties that you would never consent to. That's also a huge issue.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Time to poison their data, I guess.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think my adblocker cares what kind of ads they're trying to show me. If anything their algorithms will just get confused for why this guy who used to be here hours every day now only comes to watch war videos once a day but no longer comments or upvotes anything.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

How are people adblocking them on mobile?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Firefox lets you adblock.

a pihole can get you 90% of the way and it works in all apps and any other smart devices you have., but it doesn't work well if the site isn't using a 3rd party ad service (think YouTube, facebook)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My assumption was that at this point the majority of people are using the official reddit app, but I guess that's an option for now.

On Android anyway. No AdBlock (at least ublock) still on Firefox for IOS I believe due to platform restrictions. But would be cool if I'm wrong.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

RedReader still works. If you're gonna look at reddit, I recommend it. You can even turn off all the interaction buttons, so it's like a "look, don't touch" museum.

I uninstalled it though. Reddit is in too terrible a state to bother with any longer, except sometimes as a search result, imo.

Edit: I'm speaking of android though. Idk if redreader has an ios version or not.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which mobile? On Android you can use AdAway. A network level adblocker on your router can also take care of many ads for every device connected to it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

firefox + no-script on mobile is da way my dude

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Blokada. Firefox with uBlock Origin.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Here's the best summary I could make of the linked article


Reddit is removing the option for users to opt out of personalized ads. The site will now target ads based on a user's activity and account information. Reddit claims this requires little personal data and will improve ad relevance. However, users will no longer have control over whether their data is used this way. They can only filter ads by category, not opt out entirely. Personalized ads will still be optional in some countries due to GDPR laws.

Overall, Reddit users can expect to see more targeted ads based on their engagement with different communities and content.


This comment was generated by a bot. Send comments and complaints via private message.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Best of luck with that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Have you heard anything about uBlock origin, Ghostery and similar programs?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I use Jshelter alongside Ublock. They’re a good combination.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mean, does it really matter? At the end of the day, an obnoxious ad is an obnoxious ad regardless of wether it’s targets or not. Or am I missing something?

Any company/developer that puts ads in their app deserves to fade into irrelevant obscurity. And the more people put up with it and pay into it to remove the ads, the more you’re rewarding the behavior.

And it’s ironic that I’m sure a large percentage of people that pay to remove ads are the same people that whine about people pre-ordering games.

Sorry for the rant. But this shit aggravates me.

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