Subj : Reddit will now force targeted ads on everyone as the site become To : All From : TechnologyDaily Date : Thu Sep 28 2023 17:15:04 Reddit will now force targeted ads on everyone as the site becomes increasingly monetized Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2023 15:59:29 +0000 Description: Reddit announced it would be removing user options to control how collected data is used by advertisers. FULL STORY ====================================================================== An official post from the head of Privacy at Reddit detailed the social media sites upcoming plans for how advertisers can track users activity, and changes to privacy settings. The short of it is that users will no longer be able to choose whether Reddit advertisers track you based on your site activity. In fact, comparing the handy before and after screenshots the post provided, we can see that most privacy settings have been gutted including Personalize all of Reddit based on the outbound links you click on, based on your Reddit activity and account info, based on your general location, and ads/recommendations based on your activity with our partners. Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: Reddit) Image 2 of 2 (Image credit: Reddit) This leaves only Personalized ads on Reddit based on information and activity from our partners in most regions, with an additional option allowing for your activity on Reddit to be toggled off in certain areas that werent specified in the post. Most likely those would be European countries protected under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which legally requires Reddit to offer privacy settings that protect user data. Reddit also stated that itll be rolling out controls to limit certain categories of advertisements, which you can see below. (Image credit: Reddit) Its the ability to see fewer ads, which means some will inevitably leak through, though the site maintains that since its using a combination of manual tagging and machine learning to classify the ads it wont be completely accurate. The current categories that can be found in the Safety & Privacy section of User Settings are alcohol, dating, gambling, pregnancy and parenting, and weight loss. Religion, however, is absent from that category list. Reddit is becoming increasingly user-unfriendly For months now, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has been trying to increase revenue from the site revenue that it already received from users unpaid labor mind you via an increasing number of anti-user moves. The most notable is gutting third-party API services from the site in order to peddle its own inferior first-party options, which resulted in blackout protests that lasted weeks (until the CEO forcibly reopened the blacked-out subreddits). Now Reddit has decided that users shouldnt have the right to control how their collected data is used, with the majority of options replaced by a single extremely vague toggle that could cover anything and nothing at all. And you can tell that the GDPR has the site by the throat, or it wouldnt even offer the extra toggle in select locations. Another issue is that the sensitive advertisements categories only limit how many ads you see and dont allow for their complete removal. Also note that religion is not one of these categories, which is at the very least a massive oversite. But if we were to be a bit more cynical about that, its most likely due to religious ads being a major revenue source and therefore Reddit has no motivation to restrict them at all. And the centralization and capitalization of the internet marches on. You might also like Reddit follows Twitter in killing off actually good apps Reddit is down, and I'm thinking of quitting the app - here's why The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes ====================================================================== Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/social-media/reddit-will-now-force-targete d-ads-on-everyone-as-the-site-becomes-increasingly-monetized --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 (Linux/64) * Origin: tqwNet Technology News (1337:1/100) .