Reddit is removing ability to opt out of ad personalization | Hacker News Reader

Reddit is removing ability to opt out of ad personalization

techcrunch.com

44 pointsistotex19 comments

I have used reddit for over a decade but I stopped recently. It's turned into a bunch of political echo chambers. I have been banned from subs just for commenting in a different sub. I have been banned for saying slightly controversial things that subs don't agree with. Not to mention literally every single time I've ever tried to post to large subs like shower thoughts or whatever, I get blocked by a bot. Some times I've seen nearly identical posts submitted after I tried to submit mine, I have wondered if they just block everything and repost for karma farming or something.

Anyway, reddit has become a toxic shithole. Better to stay away.

And ublock origin always comes up as our only solution all the time. I really wish that one day it will be available on iOS (Still not working on Orion).

It's tyranny of the docile. The recent batch of user hostile practices adopted by Reddit and Twitter will become industry norms because they worked, too few people actually left those services. Network effects work more against us now than for us.

And the enshittification continues.

On the other hand, you can’t run a heavily trafficked website without any revenue. It’s very unlikely more than a tiny fraction of their users will pay any amount to use Reddit. They need advertising.

In that situation, Reddit has to be partially accountable to their advertisers. The advertisers will want some measure of control over who sees the ads and some reporting on performance.

I get that no one likes ads but I don’t think it’s that hard to understand Reddit’s situation. You would do exactly the same if you ran an expensive website. In 30+ years of the web no one has found another model which works.

> The advertisers will want some measure of control over who sees the ads and some reporting on performance.

They don't get either for highway billboards or magazine ads, radio or TV ads, yet for decades they advertised that way. They want control and spyware, but they don't need it.

If a makeup company wanted targeted ads for their dark-colored cream, they would advertise on BET instead of Hallmark TV channels.

They have traditionally had this functionality.

They have this online as well - advertise dark-colored cream on reddit.com/r/blackpeople, and light-colored cream on r/whitepeople. Tracking individuals is fundamentally different.

If they had the ability to track people on the radio, they absolutely would. There is of course lots of market research and demographic profiling into how people consume old media, the internet just allows them to do it more easily.

So because nobody has found a solution in the vast amount of time that is 30 years, it could never be found? And we must bow down to advertisers? Okay bud.

They didn't say that. They just said it hasn't been found.

> You would do exactly the same if you ran an expensive website.

I can say with 100% certainty that I would not do the same.

but there was revenue.

reddit gold paid for hosting expenses, some communities had accumulated decades worth of server time by reddit's own reported metrics.

of course that method becomes unsustainable when you add hundreds of employees whose job is to make the site more profitable.

Quite honestly, I don't give a single fraction of a shit what the advertisers want. As someone with ADHD, I find their entire industry to be quite ableist towards myself and others for whom focus is fickle.

> You would do exactly the same if you ran an expensive website.

I'd keep it from being expensive to host to begin with. I wouldn't try to roll my own video player nor image hosting since I started as an aggregator where people were okay using external links. I wouldn't grow the website to the point of 2000+ employees to do... well, whatever reddit was trying to maximize profits. I also wouldn't kick out attempts for others to provide functionality that other power users may enjoy. Heck, I don't even think Reddit Gold is a bad idea (engaged users paying for a "super vote" that puts shiny things next to a post but has relatively small effects on the actual voting algorithm. Perfect), but I wouldn't axe it and then try to make a program where people are incentivized to further spam low quality content for money.

I'm not saying you don't require a lot of staff to maintain such a site. But for some reference, Wikipedia is ~400 employees and that sounds much more reasonable to maintain a top site with very little dynamic content. But the attitude of tech companies isn't to be satisfied with modest profits. So I don't have much sympathy here.

Is it even okay with the external ad providers or GDPR?

It isn't, but it isn't relevant because GDPR is nowhere near enforced enough for Reddit to get in trouble for this.

When Facebook and Google are dealt with, then Reddit will have to worry and will change course.

So the classic case is happening. If you are powerful enough, you don't need to worry about any regulation.

When it comes to the GDPR you don't even need to be powerful. Even very small players get away with breaching it.

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