Is it just me or is Google quietly in serious distress?
Ads have been getting a LOT worse very quickly. Almost every ad I saw in a day when my UBlock wasn’t working was advertising an actual fraud. Whether crypto or recession get rich quick or “aluminum is giving you cancer.”
Advertising frequency is cranked way up. On mobile 5 second unskippables are 6-7 now. I’ll do a search and my ENTIRE screen is advertising until I scroll down and find results.
Same nonsense on Facebook. It’s all payday loans, crypto scams, and magic mushrooms.
People say it’s based on your history, but I don’t buy that as none of what it shows me is even slightly relevant. It just seems like they don’t have enough relevant ads to show, so they throw shit at the wall.
Interesting. It’s the same on my end. I’m not interested in any of the stuff I see and I have no idea why an algorithm would think so. Crypto is relentless. Payday loans are around, but not as prevalent. I get a lot of ads for weird novelty toys too. I’m not sure I’ve ever clicked one, let alone looked them up.
I’ve wondered if it’s because I’m into 3d printing and many other people who are into are interested in action figures/minis/what have you. Possible connection?
In any case ads do seem to be getting less relevant and skeezy themes are developing.
The worst one I’ve been seeing a lot of is “single Ukrainian women”. One went as far as showing a quick and easy process of selection and “purchase”. I have no idea how that would be targeted at me, but it see a lot of them.
Maybe there's a "HN User" stamp on your ad profile?
Jokes aside, if you do your data request from FB you should see your advertising selectors come back. Before I deleted my account, FB thought I was a 17 year old girl interested in boy bands and makeup.
For me it was especially shocking because I've experienced no transition, straight from 0 to 100 instead.
I've always exclusively interacted with Youtube from my PC, with uBlock enabled. I don't see ads and because I haven't for such a long time, I've normalized that state.
Until I got a new TV, with a fancy TV OS. My mother-in-law was visiting and I was trying to play some clips of her favorite music via the TV app. I was absolutely shocked. Every 2 minutes or so, 2 brief ads in succession.
It makes viewing anything with joy impossible. You can't get into the moment as its constantly stopped in its tracks. Absolute hellish ad regime.
We used to let the kids watch YouTube videos. But now it’s “daaaaad Ad…” every two minutes. YouTube is now banned on the TV.
And while we’re on this topic: Google’s rockstar elite engineers and designers removed the ability to force a resolution for YouTube + Chromecast. But it also wrongly auto detects my gigabit internet as being too weak so it’s literally impossible to get anything above 480p on my basement TV. (Twitch and others stream in HD without issue)
Ads have been getting a LOT worse very quickly. Almost every ad I saw in a day when my UBlock wasn’t working was advertising an actual fraud. Whether crypto or recession get rich quick or “aluminum is giving you cancer.”
Advertising frequency is cranked way up. On mobile 5 second unskippables are 6-7 now. I’ll do a search and my ENTIRE screen is advertising until I scroll down and find results.