Reddit CEO defends allowing Trump ads ahead of presidential election

Reddit is gearing up to run ads for President Donald Trump ahead of the 2020 presidential election despite concerns from employees, TechCrunch has learned. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman addressed some of these employee concerns during an all-hands meeting last week, viewed by TechCrunch.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/10/reddit-ceo-defends-allowing-trump-ads-ahead-of-presidential-election/

#US #Reddit #ads

The Internet Looked at My Private Photos and Made an Ad

Super sophisticated and creepy advertising machine apparently doesn’t understand style.

We generally accept that our phones listen to us in order to serve up ads that are more effective. And yeah, we’re cool with that. And, until recently, I was cool with that.

Over the past couple of years I’ve noticed “coincidences” that have fed my yearning for a good old conspiracy theory — not the alt-right kind that drives vulnerable people to take drastic action (like drinking bleach, taking pills, and acting violently after the likes of Trump fuels the conspiracy fire) — but the kind that brings me back to the days of Mulder and Scully in the X-Files.

https://medium.com/predict/the-internet-looked-at-my-private-photos-and-made-an-ad-b5b00724fd33

#privacy #ads

Why We Think Our Phones Are Secretly Listening to Us

A developer explains the computational complexity of Facebook listening in

Months ago, before lock-down started, I had a friend round for dinner. He was on the keto diet; a high-fat, low-carb regime, mainly consisting of meat and cheese. Also fine, he told me, are Shirataki Noodles. I didn’t know what to cook. Shirataki Noodles were not a helpful suggestion.

Another guest was a vegan, so meat, fish, eggs, and cheese were out. I found myself mumbling dark comments about the keto diet. In the end, we went out to a restaurant.

Later that evening, as I scrolled through Twitter an ad popped up for the keto diet. I’d never shown the remotest interest in dieting before, and my mind raced. Were Facebook and Twitter secretly listening to my conversations? I pictured Zuckerberg with a headphone-clad, Gene Hackman-like figure in the shadows, identifying ads to push to me.

https://onezero.medium.com/why-we-think-our-phones-are-secretly-listening-to-us-4fd4176a43e3

#Facebook #Ads #privacy

Apple to delay privacy change threatening Facebook, mobile ad market

(Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) said on Thursday that it will delay until early next year changes to its privacy policy that could reduce ad sales by Facebook Inc (FB.O) and other companies targeting users on iPhones and iPads.

The delay could benefit Facebook, which last week said the changes to the iOS 14 operating system would render one of its mobile advertising tools “so ineffective on iOS 14 that it may not make sense to offer it.”

Apple announced new privacy rules in June that were slated to take effect with the launch of its iOS 14 operating system this fall. Among them is a new requirement that advertisers who employ an Apple-provided tracking identifier, or other tools that have a similar function, must now show a pop-up notification asking for tracking permission.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-advertising/apple-to-delay-privacy-change-threatening-facebook-mobile-ad-market-idUSKBN25U2JU

#US #Apple #iOS #privacy #ads

Companies can track your phone’s movements to target ads

A startup gathers data on when you pick up your phone or go out on a run.

Google and Apple have taken steps this year they say will help users shield themselves from hundreds of companies that compile profiles based on online behavior. Meanwhile, other companies are devising new ways to probe more deeply into other aspects of our lives.

In January, Google said it would phase out third-party cookies on its Chrome browser, making it harder for advertisers to track our browsing habits. Publishers and advertisers use cookies to compile our shopping, browsing, and search data into extensive user profiles. These profiles reflect our political interests, health, shopping behavior, race, gender, and more. Tellingly, Google will still collect data from its own search engine, plus sites like YouTube or Gmail.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/companies-can-track-your-phones-movements-to-target-ads/

#phones #tracking #ads #privacy

The Blurred Lines and Closed Loops of Google Search

Seemingly small design tweaks to the search results interface may change how and where people find information online.

January 13 was a fairly eventful day, at least for pre-pandemic times. Cory Booker dropped out of the presidential race. LSU trounced Clemson in the college football national championship game. Attorney general William Barr asked Apple to unlock an iPhone. And Google pushed out a seemingly tiny tweak to how it displays search ads for desktop computers.

Previously, the search engine had marked paid results with the word “Ad” in a green box, tucked beneath the headline next to a matching green display URL. Now, all of a sudden, the “Ad” and the URL shifted above the headline, and both were rendered in discreet black; the box disappeared.

https://www.wired.com/story/blurred-lines-closed-loops-google-search/

#Google #search #ads

Samsung TV owners complain about increasingly obtrusive ads

In the beginning, Samsung TV owners were seeing ads for new streaming content, apps or Samsung products. Owners are now complaining about larger, increasingly obtrusive, and unrelated ads.

Ads in your TV interface

Sometime in 2016 Samsung began pushing a software update to enable ads in the user interface of previously acquired Smart TVs as well as new TVs. The ads were shown above a new icon in the bottom menu.

The move upset some owners of Samsung TVs while others accepted it. Back then, the ads related mostly to new services (such as GameFly), new content from close partners (such as Google Play or Amazon Video), new movies in theaters (such as Angry Birds 2), Samsung's own services (such as TV Plus) or its own products (such as Galaxy smartphones).

Towards the end of 2019, owners have started to voice their dissatisfaction with larger, increasingly obtrusive, and unrelated ads showing up on their Samsung TVs. These include ads for canned beans or discount supermarkets such as the one embedded below or the one shared on Samsung's community boards.

https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1583755244

#Samsung #ads

Your phone is LISTENING to you - Ultrasonic cross device tracking

Ultrasonic cross-device tracking uses an inaudible, high-frequency sounds to link your devices − TVs, phones, tablets and PCs − so that advertisers can better track you.

📹 Watch it via:
YouTube || Invidious

📖 Bat in the mobile. An Study on Ultrasonic Tracking Read more...

📡 @howtobeprivateonline
#Surveillance #Ads #IOT #Tracking #Location

Is Instagram Spying on Me? When Ad-targeting Gets Too Personal

Advertisers bank on personalising ads, but this was too much.

A few days ago, my girlfriend and I saw an Instagram ad that felt eerily familiar. The image was a bedroom featuring a white designer cabinet, a bed with yellow and white-striped sheets and soft furnishings in shades of beige and light brown. Just like our bedroom.

We were paralysed for a few minutes. I had never come across ad content that hit so close to home before. Was it possible that Instagram was somehow spying on our room?

The ad for Bonsoirs’ “Club Holiday” Campaign. Bonsoirs is a French linen company.

There has been plenty of speculation in recent years about whether apps can listen to us or watch us. But there are lots of sensible reasons why an ad for something you’ve recently talked about might pop up on your phone. It’s possible you’d already seen it and never noticed, or maybe it’s related to something that you or the people you share your wifi with have searched for online.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/935p7d/instagram-ad-bedroom

#Facebook #Instagram #ads #privacy

Modified perl script of @ robertoprubio to use the local file

perl disable-trackers-from-recovery.pl --exodus-trackers-pathname <pathname>

where <pathname> refers to pathname of the local exodus file that you've downloaded from https://etip.exodus-privacy.eu.org/trackers/export

#disablebadservices #disable #blocker #watt #mat #block #ifw #intents #services #ads #tracking

How to watch YouTube without using YouTube App/Website.

Bypass Google, block ads & trackers and circumvent age restriction. NewPipe is the most free and private way of watching YouTube Videos on Android. There are other privacy respecting clients for Desktop also.

📹 Watch this video via:
Invidious || BitChute || CloudTube

• Get NewPipe App via
Website || NewPipe F-Droid Repo

• Desktop Alternatives
FreeTube || MiniTube || YouTube Viewer

• Website Frontend
Invidious || CloudTube

📡 @howtobeprivateonline
#YouTube #Alternatives #AI #Ads #Privacy

How product placements may soon be added to classic films

Product placement is big business for movies and TV series alike, and items can now be added digitally to films and programmes both new and old.

Fans of classic war flicks will know the scene - actor Steve McQueen revs his motorcycle furiously as he is chased by German soldiers.

Hoping to use the bike to jump over a barbed wire border fence, and reach safety in Switzerland, he pauses to gather his thoughts by a barn.

On the side of the building is a big poster advertising a best-selling beer.

You don't remember the billboard advert? Well it might not have been there the last time you watched The Great Escape, but it could well be the next.

Product placement in films is almost as old as the movie industry itself. The first example of the phenomenon is said to be the 1919 Buster Keaton comedy The Garage, which featured the logos of petrol firms and motor oil companies.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56758376

#CGI #ads #movie

Apple’s Privacy Changes Are Poised to Boost Its Ad Products

Under iPhone maker’s new rules, advertisers will get more ad-performance data for ads bought through Apple than through third parties

Under Apple new privacy restrictions, advertisers targeting iPhone users will get more data about ad performance if they buy Apple’s ad space than if they buy through third parties, according to ad-industry executives.

The difference could eventually give Apple’s small but growing ad business an edge over rivals, ad executives and app makers say.

Apple’s latest operating system for iPhones has set off a firestorm in the ad industry and beyond by letting users decide whether to let apps track them for advertising purposes—changes that mean companies may soon have less data about who sees their ads. Apps on Apple’s iOS platform must ask users’ permission to track them for advertising purposes.

When targeting users who have opted out of tracking, advertisers who buy ads through third-party platforms will have to wait three days for insights on their campaigns and will receive only aggregate information, such as the total number of users who took an action after an ad, people familiar with Apple’s ad products said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-privacy-changes-are-poised-to-boost-its-ad-products-11619485863

#Apple #ads #privacy

The Instagram ads Facebook won't show you

Companies like Facebook aren’t building technology for you, they’re building technology for your data. They collect everything they can from FB, Instagram, and WhatsApp in order to sell visibility into people and their lives.

This isn’t exactly a secret, but the full picture is hazy to most – dimly concealed within complex, opaquely-rendered systems and fine print designed to be scrolled past. The way most of the internet works today would be considered intolerable if translated into comprehensible real world analogs, but it endures because it is invisible.

https://signal.org/blog/the-instagram-ads-you-will-never-see/

#signal #instagram #facebook #DeleteFacebook #ads #data #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv

Facebook shut down Signal’s ads because they exposed too much

Facebook has barred privacy-focused messaging app Signal from running a series of Instagram ads, which would have exposed just how much personal information the photo-sharing network – and its social media behemoth owner – has on individuals as they browse their timeline. Signal had intended to use Instagram’s own third-party advert tools to reveal some of the precise targeting that advertisers can buy access to.

There’s a general acknowledgement these days that advertisers can filter who, exactly, sees their commercials. That makes good business sense, after all: there’s no point in showing ads to people who are unlikely to be interested in your product.

However it’s likely that few mainstream consumers are aware of quite how much targeted information ad network providers like Facebook hold on them. Collated across multiple interactions online – with websites, apps, services, and more – they help build unexpectedly precise profiles about each user. Those profiles can then in turn be sold as visibility filters to more advertisers, so that they can further narrow down their campaigns to whoever they believe will be the most receptive audience.

https://www.slashgear.com/facebook-shut-down-signals-ads-because-they-exposed-too-much-04671574/

💡 read as well:
https://t.me/BlackBox_Archiv/2138

#signal #instagram #facebook #DeleteFacebook #ads #data #thinkabout
📡 @nogoolag 📡 @blackbox_archiv

#Twitter is putting #ads where you can see them -- in the middle of conversations.
https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/twitter-is-putting-ads-where-you-can-see-them-in-the-middle-of-conversations-71634203836111.html

An iframe from googlesyndication.com tries to access the Camera and Microphone

The last thing we want is for an advertising network to access the Camera or Microphone on our computer. But, while looking for something else, I stumbled upon messages in the Safari JavaScript console saying that an iframe loaded from safeframe.googlesyndication.com tried to do exactly that.

https://techsparx.com/software-development/security/csp-camera-microphone.html

#google #ads

How to block #ads on #Android, with root and without root

https://www.xda-developers.com/block-ads-on-android/

#adblock

#Google Wants To Use People’s Browser History To Target Them With #Ads

https://ift.tt/lcoxUsh

@reclaimthenet
#why