Student Project Could Kill Digital Ad Targeting 177
An anonymous reader sends this quote from Ad Age:
"[Rachel Law's] creation, called 'Vortex,' is a browser extension that's part game, part ad-targeting disrupter that helps people turn their user profiles and the browsing information into alternate fake identities that have nothing to do with reality. People who use the browser tool, which works with Firefox and Chrome, effectively confuse the technologies that categorize web audiences into likely running shoe buyers, in-market auto buyers, or moms interested in cooking and football. ... It's a bit like the ad blocker extensions of yore, except it scrambles information to trick ad targeters, all in service of an addictive game deemed 'Site Miner,' which allows players to fish for cookies visualized as sea creatures. Players can gobble up cookies Pac-Man style, creating a pool of profile information that has nothing to do with their actual web behavior. ... Vortex features a profile switcher that people can use and share to take on a new identity while browsing the web. 'It's a way of masking your identity across networks,' she said."
I'm Sparticus! (Score:3, Informative)
You are not your cookie trail.
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Please note: It's Spartacus.
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Spartacus Load Letter?
Targeted ads are better than untargeted ads (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Targeted ads are better than untargeted ads (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly my feelings. It is one thing to block the ads completely — they waste my bandwidth and RAM, slow down page-loading, and degrade my privacy. But if any ad makes it through anyway, I'd rather it be related to something I may be remotely interested in.
Re:Targeted ads are better than untargeted ads (Score:4, Insightful)
>quote>But if any ad makes it through anyway, I'd rather it be related to something I may be remotely interested in.
I'd rather spend time making sure it won't get through the next time.
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"I want the brainwashing used against me to be highly effective."
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In other words, I think, I'm quite resistant to brainwashing, thank you very much...
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I'd rather get random ads.
you see, what kind of random stimulation are you going to get from seeing the same ads all the fucking time?
whole point of advertising gets kind of lost if nike is only advertising to fans of nike. if they're fans on facebook, da fuq do they need to be reminded that nike exists??
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Need FB account? (Score:2)
That's a fairly bizarre statement and I can't help venturing off-topic. I, for one, do not have an FB account — neither fake nor real — and fail to see, why would anyone "need" one... Care to elaborate?
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I agree completely, and I'm always amazed when people get so upset every time advertisers learn to target better. I can only guess it has something to do with lack of willpower. People know hey are susceptible to advertising and get mad because they know they are going to get "tricked" out of their money, or something like that.
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It's not the goal - targeted advertisements - that offends me; it is the method. I simply do not like the idea of there being a profile of me available to anyone who wants it. This is increasingly useful data to not only marketers, but insurance companies, employers, banks, governments, criminals, and other unsavory sorts. I'd like to believe I'm not being targeted by any of them right now, but who knows what the future holds? And there's no telling into whose hands it will fall, either due to loose ethics
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IME, the targeted ads are only slightly better than the random stuff. Lately, I've been getting a lot of ads for stuff I recently bought. Obviously, I'm interested, but I've already bought the damn product!
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Seriously, WTF people?
On top of that, all these extensions to block ads are going to end up backfiring in a huge way. When sites start to lose significant amounts of money, they're going to move to more and more annoying and integrated ads, until the ads become indistinguishable from the content itself. That's just making the web worse for everyone.
So block the annoying ads, let the non-annoying ones through, and don't destroy the internet.
Re:Targeted ads are better than untargeted ads (Score:5, Insightful)
When sites start to lose significant amounts of money, they're going to move to more and more annoying and integrated ads, until the ads become indistinguishable from the content itself..
I still won't see them, and if they hate their users that much then I probably won't care if they collapse.
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they're going to move to more and more annoying and integrated ads, until the ads become indistinguishable from the content itself
That's what shows their 'hate'. The 'good' users will have to see ads all over the place in an attempt to seep past the ad blockers, while a few people will update the ad blockers so the 'bad' users still won't see them. It's just like how legitimate software users have to put up with hardware dongles or whatever but 'pirates' don't because a couple guys somewhere will disable the checks each release.
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In response, let me counter with these three arguments:
1) This is not an attack against advertising; it is an attack against /targeted/ advertising. Seeing as how the marketing industry thrived for decades without this technology, I think that the lack will not hurt them significantly. Websites can still put up advertisement banners that have worth to the readership (based on the content of the website) rather than relying on targeting specific ads at people based on a profile.
2) Websites that use more obt
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Well, anyway, all you'd be doing is viewing annoying ads. The really annoying ones are still coming due to the tragedy of
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So block the annoying ads, let the non-annoying ones through, and don't destroy the internet.
Hilarious. You crack me up. As if the Internet was nothing until the ad dollars showed up. Ha. Ha.
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Seriously, WTF people?
On top of that, all these extensions to block ads are going to end up backfiring in a huge way. When sites start to lose significant amounts of money, they're going to move to more and more annoying and integrated ads, until the ads become indistinguishable from the content itself. That's just making the web worse for everyone.
So block the annoying ads, let the non-annoying ones through, and don't destroy the internet.
Meh. Too late. AdBlock Plus is already receiving sponsorships/bribes to let "quality" ads through:
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.horizont.at%2Fhome%2Fdetail%2Fgoogle-ist-geldgeber-von-adblock-plus.html&act=url [google.com]
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I agree. People who use ad-supported media (like slashdot, for the most part) with ad-blockers turned on are just moochers and hypocrites.
really? then why does slashdot give you a disable ads checkbox if you have an account?
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Sometimes they're not just targeted but also tailored. Consider if the prices get jacked up if your browsing history suggests you have disposable income...
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Define "better." (Score:2)
Untargeted ads are easier to ignore and thus less distracting. I don't want to train my eyes to look over towards the ad section of a webpage. I'd rather get in for the stuff I visited for and then get out. It's hard enough in this day of ever-present ads and neuromarketing to keep attention where I want it.
Plus, assuming targeted ads actually work as designed, I don't want to be encouraged to consume stuff I wouldn't have consumed without the ads. Studies have shown that we have a limited reservoir of
Re:Targeted ads are NOT better than untargeted ads (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll give you one reason: echo chamber. I don't particularly like seeing ads at all (yes, it's the price for "free" content); however, I like to broaden my perspective on the world. If I receive targeted ads for items that are of interest to me and a very small slice of society, I'm at terrible risk for mis-perceiving society at large. For example, I don't like (almost any) hip hop music. But I don't want to be denied the opportunity to be informed (via ads) that much of the rest of "western civilizatio
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re echo chamber, a good, overlooked point. Too much customization restricts worldview, which I don't see as a good thing.
Re:Targeted ads are better than untargeted ads (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure why I should hate targeted ads. I actually see ads for things I'm interested in... instead of random stuff.
Nice theory.
What actually happens is you only ever see ads for something you bought two years ago and have no intention of buying again. Either that or something you looked at once and thought "How can people be so stupid...?" then you spend the next six months seeing dancing adverts for it.
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I'm not sure why I should hate targeted ads. I actually see ads for things I'm interested in... instead of random stuff
Because its all a form offensive psychological attack, in which the advertiser believes he can overpower you and often does. Why participate in that?
Targeted ads are just a refinement; like a 500 lb JDAM instead of a 2000 lb Mk83. It'll still destroy you just as well.
If you need a thing you'll go out and search for it. If you don't need it, don't subject yourself to psychological attack.
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If I do a search for a specific preamp somewhere, I see targeted ads for EXACTLY THAT PREAMP everywhere I browse. And even though I already bought it, I keep seeing those ads everywhere. It's annoying. And creepy.
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I actually see ads for things I'm interested in...
The goal of advertising and marketing is to convince you to buy their product, convince you that you want to buy it. To implant a brand name so when you think of a product you think of them, or trigger an impulse purchase.
It is literally a form of brainwashing with the end result of separating you from your money.
Only a complete idiot would willing participate by making it easier for marketers to get inside their heads.
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Because the more you consume, the less you can save up, and the more dependent you are of maintaining your current job and/or the goodwill of your debtors, thus making you ever more helplessly bound and enslaved. Thus an ad should be considered an attempt to put another chain on you, an attack on your freedom, and a targeted ad a more effective attack.
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no, they are not.
An ads wants to make you buy stuff, which you did not want to buy before. Some ads may make you buy stuff you really wanted, but in a specific store. The stuff there will be more expensive, because they need to pay for the ads somehow. And if they got you to click an ad, the chances for a sale are higher than normal anyway. Do you remember the site, which gave appleusers higher prices? So much on the topic of targeted ads ...
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But then there are just people against ads period. Must be a slow, lonely world in that room.
It used to be if I wanted to be barked at by a carnival midway barker, I went to a carnival. Now, it's getting difficult to find the news in a newspaper or magazine for all the ads. It seems like half the vehicles driving down any street are hawking something. Ads are everywhere. Mad Magazine used to do jokes about people driving down the highway unable to see scenery for all the billboards. That's reality now. The labels on clothing used to be sewn inside. Now they're banner ads. Same with eyeglass
It's a cookie mixer (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd thought of doing that as part of one of my browser add-ons, but it has problems. The general idea is that you send your cookies to a central site which sends them out to others to confuse tracking. As the article says, "The Vortex system will build a database of cookies gathered by players." So you've traded multiple limited data collection systems for one central one. There are a number of obvious ways that can backfire.
Just turn off third party cookies. Or run Abine's Do Not Track Me.
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Just turn off third party cookies. Or run Abine's Do Not Track Me.
The problem with that is they may be able to profile you based on your having cookies disabled.
"This guy's a privacy freak, let's give him ads for browsing anonymously...."
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Serious question, does the drop command accept wildcards?
Nope [w3schools.com]
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While in this case the answer happens to be right, using W3 schools as a reference for anything is like getting all your international news from Hugo Chavez's ghost.
I despise tentacle porn... (Score:2, Funny)
but my alternate identity can't get enough of it!
I don't get it (Score:2)
Why are they pestering the user to be involved in the process? Just do it and don't bother me.
It's a good day (Score:2)
Not available for download. (Score:2)
Yeah I went looking for the plugin before reading the article. It's not available yet.
It's probably just a concept at the moment, and someone will probably code and release a plugin that does this or worse to advertisers before she releases hers in September.
Why? (Score:1)
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I don't think most people block ads, unless you restrict "people" to tech-savvy people.
On the other hand, most of the people who don't block ads will also not install this browser addon.
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I don't browse on my phone, only play some games or use other apps.
I see advertising when I happen to have wifi on (no mobile data) - and what I notice time and again is that the advertising is exclusively for other apps. No general products or brands are being advertised, only other apps, and those apps are either games or gambling related things.
Which makes me wonder: is it really me? Or is it geographically different? Or do general advertisers really shun the mobile in-app advertising realm?
Enemy of the State (Score:1)
How long before the student who designed this project is labeled a terrorist?
And anything that blocks ads or tracking will be categorized as a "munition" and made illegal to possess or use?
Human evolution could also work (Score:5, Interesting)
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If they ignore them, the ads are obviously irrelevant, and the targeting failed. If an ad is really relevant and useful for the user, they wouldn't be ignored.
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That's only the most minor of problems with targeted ads.
1. Ad company builds a database on you, sells it to anyone willing to pay $0.00001/victim.
2. You invite a friend round and the stupid targeted ads try to expose you as a pervert who is into diet pills and is looking for a dubious loan.
3. Shopping sites show you higher prices because they think you have money, based on the profile of you they bought.
4.Your health insurance premiums go up because your profile suggests you take drugs and enjoy using powe
what it OUGHT to do... (Score:4, Insightful)
is toss one site back to another, so they are tossing ads back and forth, making it look like all the hits are coming from other advertisers. I would suspect eventually the hosting sites will end up blocking themselves, and all will be well in the Twitterverse.
Kill advertisements? (Score:2)
Advertisers are profiling the wrong thing. (Score:2)
I don't understand why advertisers are so eager to profile users. Really. Now with ABP I don't see many ads, largely because they're usually so obtrusive and irritating, but that's another story.
The advertiser's key mistake is that they try to target users. The only thing about a user they should target (to make ads useful) is geographic location. E.g. when I'm looking for restaurants, I'd be happy to see advertisements of restaurants near me. I'm looking for restaurants in Mongkok, show me ads of restauran
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I don't understand why advertisers are so eager to profile users.
Well, that's what advertisers used to do, back in the days when it was a regular discussion about how companies can make money by advertising online. When some guys at MS pitched to Steve Ballmer that they should switch to targeted ads instead of content related banner ads he didn't buy it. Then Google came along and targeted the user. Companies started paying Google all of the money they could scrape together because of the noticeably higher ROI when advertising is targeting the user. That resulting in all
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The Google ads that I click most, and the Google ads of my campaigns that were clicked most (I haven't used ad campaigns for a few years now) are the CONTENT related ones. Just the ads that are placed next to search results, and targeting the search keywords entered by the user (i.e. content) and geographic area (related to the user's current IP address and browser's preferred language). I quite often search for things that are new to me, yet Google gives me the info I need (both in the form of ads and dire
This kid deserves the medal of freedom (Score:3)
I just wish (Score:4, Insightful)
Better targeted than random... (Score:2)
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Me onthe other hand, I don't mind seeing ads that much and if they help the site author I'm willing to endure them. What I don't like is business tracking us down and profiling us and potentially sharing this with government agencies. That's why I use Adblock, Ghostery, Privoxy and other tools. And why I don't bother much with Do-Not-Track me ideas.
Developed by George Maharis and P-Hound (Score:2)
"Vortex isn't available publicly" (Score:2)
From the article: "Vortex isn't available publicly or even in a closed beta form..."
As vapourwear goes, it would seem rather vapid then.
Kinda what I do (Score:2)
I use this free service http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/ [fakenamegenerator.com] to generated an identity. I keep hitting
generate till I get a zip code that's close and use that info for whatever site.
An email address to that identity is also available (for a price) but I use www.spamgourmet.com for that.
Cookies are taken care of with a .bat file.
And of course a HOSTS file, I use APK to gather all the HOSTS files, combine them then make a HOSTS file from it's output
http://start64.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article [start64.com]
What can go wrong? (Score:2)
There are ads on the net ? (Score:2)
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Then you will not have as many websites.
Making and supporting a web site takes time and money.
To support a website you need to be able to do the following.
1. Have the site support or extend a product or service you are paying for. This is most corporate web sites. Their features are about the company and extras are there to keep you on it so you remember the name.
2. Some sort or grant (IE Begging for money). This will work as long as you have enough supporters.
3. Pay to use the service (Pay Wall). Your
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Yeah, we might lose some mediocrity, but high quality will remain.
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Look at xkcd, not an ad on the site...
See this link?
You can get the Subways comic as a poster!
That's an ad. Them posters ain't free.
Not a bad ad, not an obnoxious ad, but still an ad.
Re:I fully support this! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's different, IMO, since it's part of the site. It's the difference between going to a concert and the band selling CD's, and going to a concert and the band painting a Wal-Mart logo on the stage.
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The reason why the ads aren't as bad now is because people rebelled and found ways to kick their asses off the websites.
Then the advertisers found ways around those first restrictions and plastered everyones faces again.
The users again found a way to deal with it.
This back and forth went on many times, and will probably continue for a long time to go.
The "not so bad" ads you see now are the resul
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When there is high-quality content, supporters will keep it alive. Look at xkcd, not an ad on the site but yet it still remains updated and high-quality and free.
Yeah, we might lose some mediocrity, but high quality will remain.
Your choice of what example you give of "High Quality" leaves me baffled. Of all the bazillion sites on the internet you chose a comic.
But looking past that.....
How do "supporters" keep something alive? What puts food on the owners table and shoes on his children's feet?
12 million hits per hour does nothing but put him further in debt to his hosting company.
If I want free content, I put up with some ads. If the Ads get too obnoxious the content is no longer worth the trouble and I leave.
Or maybe I read th
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The link worked for me.
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Today for most reputable sites You have a couple adds, more or less about stuff you are interested in.
Let me FTFY:
Today for most reputable sites You have a couple adds, more or less about stuff you were interested in before buying it from a different site last month.
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Right now, facebook
wants me to save 15% on my vacation (no thanks),
also offers to save me 40% on my vacation (are you fucking deaf?),
has determined that i need a harness for falling protection (huh?),
thinks that I would probably like a pulled pork burger (yuck!),
and wants me to test my smarts on some trade school's website (something to do on my 40% off vacation?).
Targeted ads are a joke, and this f
Re:I fully support this! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm a military contractor.
I'm also a fitness instructor.
Due to my searches for weaponry, vegas trips, and yoga mats Adsense thinks I'm gay.
Re:I fully support this! (Score:4, Funny)
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Honestly I'm a little confused myself so I'm not sure.
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Honestly I'm a little confused myself so I'm not sure.
Do you like gladiator movies?
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Only if there's a lot of drama and talking.
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Who doesn't?
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Due to my searches for weaponry, vegas trips, and yoga mats Adsense thinks I'm gay.
Similarly, my wife's interest in old movies and a few other "cultural" things seems to have convinced AdSense, Netflix, Amazon and others that she's a gay male. I'm not sure what they think I am, and maybe I don't want to know.
An even funnier confusion started years ago, when she was a student at a local university, and a friend of hers who was from Russian discovered that she was pregnant. The husband was still in Russia, and wasn't here when it was time for the birth, so my wife went along to the hos
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I'm guessing repeated searches for "catholic schoolgirls" are to blame.
Re:I fully support this! (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you will not have as many websites.
Only true insofar as quantity. Quality OTOH will likely improve, if you want the truth. Any site that relies (even in large part) on ad impressions for its survival is likely one that has starved itself to death a long time ago, is is barely straggling along.
there are far too many other ways of making income from a website (an internal store, premium content, even donations stand out as examples.)
Making and supporting a web site takes time and money.
So does any other worthwhile endeavor. Doesn't mean it has to have adverts, though.
I am not sure if you remembered how horrable adds were in the late 1990's early 2000.
I beg to differ - it's uglier today.
Turn off all your blockers/add-ins/extensions sometime, and go visit ZDNet or parts of CNET. They stand out as only a couple examples of how a company can jack in a shit-ton of intrusive dancing adverts (where even clicking on what looks like blank space will toss an advert at you). Also note that back in the late '90s you only had popups and cookies at worst (okay, they had Bonzi Buddy or whatever-the-hell-that-was, but that bullshit required your explicit collusion to install).
Today you have to contend with LSOs, stealth "toolbars" that slide in just because you updated Java and weren't paying attention, and other intrusive-as-fuck tracking techniques that slip right by most non-techies. Oh, and I won't even have to mention that now we get to put up with ISP collusion as a matter-of-course (ad-packed redirects for failed DNS lookups, anyone?)
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FWIW, I don't use blockers/add-ins/extensions. Of course, that means I find MANY web sites so obnoxious I only go there once. And that's without haveing flash installed.
ISTM that the basic idea is good, but it should, itself, be targetable. I.e., you should be able to "greenlight" certain web-sites, and to "red-light" certain extensions. This would, of course, interfere with it's anonymizing feature, but not, I feel excessively.
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Making and supporting a web site takes time and money.
Yes it does, and if you can't break even with it by asking for donations, you either accept that it's a hobby and you're not skilled enough to run it professionally, or your shove ads in people's faces. If we remove the latter option, I assert that the web will be a better place for it.
However, the main focus of the creator is the discrimination, that the information she is jumbling enables, like higher prices for certain groups of people. That we can sweep the legs from under advertisers too with her tool/
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Then you will not have as many websites.
Awesome. I can thing of metastatic cancers like Facebook thet can go away right away.
Making and supporting a web site takes time and money.
And you know what? If advertising is not intrusive, I'll even watch it. I think most people will. I think most people understand that the sites and merchants are there to make money. But that isn't really the issue.
When you have sites stalking you, as we do now, placing cookies in non cookie places, companies like Facebook tracking you, whether you have a faceboo
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Remind me again - does Slashdot have adverts? I've been getting that thing about "As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable advertising" for so long now, I ca
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It's more that ads from 201X are less irritating than ads from 200X in general.
Not at all true. Turn on a TV. Obnoxiously insipid and puerile, stars in their eyes twenty-somethings going gaga over shiny baubles they can't really begin to understand, and they want the latest version. Females futzing over cosmetics, shampoo, overpriced clothing, men extolling the virtues beer, of overpriced fuel guzzling hotrods, both of them falling for weight loss snakeoil, expensive and unnecessary pharmaceuticals, breast augmentation, hairloss treatments and cat toys. Halitosis, body odour, spli
Re:I fully support this! (Score:4, Insightful)
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I assume that he's talking about the Cat's Meow [youtube.com] motorized cat toy gizmo. This thing is advertised non-stop on daytime TV.
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Says the typical Slashtard.
Says the typical shallow as a pane of glass webmonkey. Go play on Facebook.
Re:I fully support this! (Score:4, Insightful)
Why destroy all ads and marketing? We still need a mechanism that allows us to know what is available, and at what price.
What I want to destroy is the means for marketers to set prices of goods and services based on "targeted" information that seemingly have no relation to the product or service being purchased. I hate when people in Florida have are offered a product via a WWW site that costs more than the same exact product offered to someone in Massachusetts. It is even worse when you take a look at the picture on a global basis. I hate it when I pay $100 more for an airline seat than the guy sitting next to me. We both got the same exact service, but at wildly divergent prices.
Make a good product...sell it at a price point determined by supply and demand (which I am guessing won't fluctuate each minute) where a reasonable profit can be had, and be happy with it. Probably a little naive...
Re:I fully support this! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Shit, I still can't believe I have a chequing account.
Also, I never called shareholders evil, that was your freudian addition. Myself, I would have difficulty pinning moral agency on a such a cypher-like class of people.
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It's a useful filter, so should stay in common usage.
When you're looking around at the games in the Play Store or iTunes, quite a few games say 'the most addictive....' which identifies them as games probably not worth downloading since their developer/distributor has to rely on stale memes to market them.