Reddit is to remove ability to opt-out of tracking

[Ydfhlx]

Summary

 

In yet another controversial move, Reddit is to remove the ability to out-out of tracking on the platform. It is unclear if the tracking data will be shared with advertisers, as Reddit contradicts themselves on this one. This ability is to be replaced with allowing to reduce specific add categories. Specifically, reduce and not ban, due to using machine learning in flagging the ads.

 

Some countries are to be excluded from the removal of out-out. It is unclear which at this time, although it is likely those are EU members, as GDPR requires such ability.

 

Quotes

Quote

Removing the ability to opt-out of ad personalization based on your Reddit activity, except in select countries.

Quote

...this change will not result in [...] sharing on-platform activity with advertisers. It does enable our models to better predict which ad may be most relevant to you.

 

Quote

We are adding the ability to see fewer ads from specific categories—Alcohol, Dating, Gambling, Pregnancy & Parenting, and Weight Loss

 

My thoughts

Although this is about 3rd time I'll say this, I believe this is the actual reason why they banned 3rd party apps. They just want to collect even more user data. And I'm not surprised at all, in fact it's remarkable that this ability was still there.

 

People in the EU have it better, as this move isn't legal there. And a further proof that regulation is sometimes necessary.

 

Finnaly, i don't think many people will stop using reddit. There isn't really any alternative. At most, people might start using adblocks more and even on mobile (for instance through mobile browser).

 

Sources

 

[Middcore]

2 minutes ago, Ydfhlx said:

It is unclear if the tracking data will be shared with advertisers

 

Please. Of course it will be. What other reason for tracking is there? Like the API changes that pissed people off, this is all about monetizing the platform. 

[Mark Kaine]

... that's illegal,  batman...

 

 

gl with that in the eu also

 

 

[jagdtigger]

https://privacybadger.org/#What-is-Privacy-Badger
 

Problem solved, also i think an account deletion is long overdue.....

[Rodinski]

Just get off reddit. That place is beyond disturbing at this point. It's just a political crap hole of the worse of the worse. 

[Mark Kaine]

43 minutes ago, Ydfhlx said:

There isn't really any alternative. At most

every drug has alternatives...

 

this is what this is all about,  dopamine ...

 time to make it illegal ~

[NinJake]

12 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Problem solved, also i think an account deletion is long overdue.....

Depending how this is handled, I may just hop off reddit as well. Sadly, it's the only social media platform I'm actually engaged with.

 

3 minutes ago, Rodinski said:

Just get off reddit. That place is beyond disturbing at this point. It's just a political crap hole of the worse of the worse. 

While I agree with you in some aspects, there's plenty of smaller communities that are still excellent places for information or sharing experiences with people who are interested in the same thing as you. The subreddit functionality of reddit is what makes it so appealing to myself and others who (like those on LTT forums), enjoy the communication that can be had in forums. Reddit's subreddits are very close to a traditional "forum" in that regard.

 

Out of curiosity, can you name some alternatives to reddit that aren't as "toxic"?

 

[NavyCobra1417]

10 minutes ago, Rodinski said:

Just get off reddit. That place is beyond disturbing at this point. It's just a political crap hole of the worse of the worse. 

Disturbing and political content is very easy to filter out if you spend 5 minutes curating your feed lmao

[Mark Kaine]

13 minutes ago, NinJake said:

While I agree with you in some aspects, there's plenty of smaller communities that are still excellent places for [...]

yeah but it doesn't matter, any of these could be easily re-established, this is the internet,  there's no need to centralize everything, in fact decentralization is its biggest strength, by design. 

 

 

13 minutes ago, NinJake said:

Out of curiosity, can you name some alternatives to reddit that aren't as "toxic

there should be no substitute for something like reddit because its toxic by design. 

 

(ps: hint: there's a gazillion of forums that serve a similar purpose for "small communities", without the toxicity,  because they're usually maintained by enthusiasts and real people instead of bots and mega corporations...)

 

 

[lafrente]

Ah that one site which is filled by passive aggressiveness and where random comments get downvoted for no reason? I know how that "community" will fix this.

 

Random subreddits will go private as a protest and come back online a week later.

[Needfuldoer]

If they get rid of old.reddit.com I'll be angry.

[Mark Kaine]

2 minutes ago, lafrente said:

Ah that one site which is filled by passive aggressiveness and where random comments get downvoted for no reason? I know how that "community" will fix this.

 

Random subreddits will go private as a protest and come back online a week later.

funny if you don't have an account nothing came back... 99% of reddit is just a black "404" site for me lol ~ (its pretty great ngl )

[NinJake]

16 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

(ps: hint: there's a gazillion of forums that serve a similar purpose for "small communities", without the toxicity,  because they're usually maintained by enthusiasts and real people instead of bots and mega corporations...)

I think you'd be surprised at how "elitist" some dedicated forums can be when you might be an average joe in comparison to them.

 

It's also pretty hilarious you describe reddit as a whole as a toxic place, when I literally just said there's plenty of subreddit's that I'm a part of that I would not consider toxic. Will you have a few trolls here and there? Sure, but I bet you'll have trolls everywhere on the internet. It's not a good look when using blanket statements.

 

Regarding the OP and removing the ability to opt out of tracking is still a shitty move and will cause a handful of people to leave, while most people won't care enough or even be informed of the change and will continue to browse their website. (look at facebook...)

[Mark Kaine]

4 minutes ago, NinJake said:

It's also pretty hilarious you describe reddit as a whole as a toxic place, when I literally just said there's plenty of subreddit's that I'm a part of that I would not consider toxic

its not funny,  im saying reddit needs to go and there will be alternatives *especially* for small communities,  but without all the up and down voting nonsense.

 

as for elitist forums,  ig they exist but i don't use them , forums i use are typically not elitist at all.

 

that's the advantage of "non centralized"

[jagdtigger]

42 minutes ago, NinJake said:

Depending how this is handled, I may just hop off reddit as well.

We can leave as soon as reddit comes out of full-on retard mode:


Is this even legal?

[NinJake]

8 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

its not funny,  im saying reddit needs to go and there will be alternatives *especially* for small communities,  but without all the up and down voting nonsense.

The biggest benefit of up/downvoting is in "smaller" communities that are actually appropriately moderated, the people have the power to either promote or demote information. In general, if there's actual useful information being shared, it gets upvoted. If there's a troll doing troll things, they get downvoted to a point where the post by default is hidden from view.

 

The other benefit to something like reddit, is a LOT of people use it. So even with "smaller communities", you'll end up with more opinions and information than something like a dedicated forum where a lot of the "average joes" won't take the time to register and partake in.

 

Once again, I'm not saying it's perfect or anywhere near perfect by any means. I agree with most of what you're saying except for the "it's all toxic".

8 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

there will be alternatives

Hopefully this is the case, time will tell.

[Mark Kaine]

3 minutes ago, NinJake said:

The biggest benefit of up/downvoting is in "smaller" communities that are actually appropriately moderated, the people have the power to either promote or demote information. In general, if there's actual useful information being shared, it gets upvoted. If there's a troll doing troll things, they get downvoted to a point where the post by default is hidden from view.

 

no, that's the entire issue with reddit in a nutshell,  just because you don't agree with someone doesn't mean their "trolling" up down vote system entirely exists for 2 reasons:

 

to create a hivemind (illegal as it equals a cultist organization) 

 

dopamine rush (get some weed instead?  lmao)

 

im honestly baffled there are smaller reddits that actively use this system,  the ones i was in that wasn't a thing at all, nobody got "downvoted" because they actually weren't toxic.   but its not worth keeping this platform in its entirety just for these few exceptions. 

 

really get it out of your head, up and down voting is inherently toxic and not needed in any circumstances. 

 

[Mark Kaine]

29 minutes ago, NinJake said:

Hopefully this is the case, time will tell

actually,  i wasn't thinking of this at first, besides forums, there's always discord... im in several "smallish" ones, in none you get banned or anything for simply having your own opinion and what they all have in common is they're extremely friendly,  even when you argue about something,  and they're genuinely funny, and not always the same memes over and over...

 

ok that one discord im "banned" a gazillion times, but everyone is, even the moderators lol, it doesn't matter,  its like a "cool badge" or something  

 

you can still post, nothing happens if you get banned haha  

 

also you can *very easily* make your own if you so wish to... cant get anymore freedom fries than that!

[NinJake]

13 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

really get it out of your head, up and down voting is inherently toxic and not needed in any circumstances.

I'm not disagreeing with you. It ultimately comes down to the userbase.

 

If I do disagree with something you say on reddit, that does not mean that I'm going to downvote you. It's the other users who actively downvote people just because they disagree or are simply trolling. It's like if you're looking up a technical problem relating to microsoft, you can do a web search for "how to fix office 2010" or something like that and go to a microsoft community page. You'll find multiple answers and the "top answer" will have something along the lines of "45 people found this helpful". I may be inclined to try that solution over a solution that has "2 people found this helpful". Does that mean the latter is an invalid solution? No.

 

No type of system will ever be "perfect" from any type of bias. Whether it's users upvoting or downvoting, or moderators of a discord server (or forum) picking and choosing what can or cannot be said, all methods will have abuse in some shape or form sadly.

 

I was simply saying it's silly for you to use a blanket statement. It would be no different if I had "one time where someone disagreed with me" and "consider that toxic" and now claim that LTT forums is a toxic place. It's simply not true lol. I believe, and agree with everything you have said except for for the blanket statement. Either way, this has strayed quite a bit off course of the OP and I understand if this gets removed.

 

I will also reiterate my take on the OP. Removing the ability to opt of tracking preferences sucks, but it seems that's the way big companies have been headed for a long time. Privacy badger is an excellent add on/ extension as recommended earlier. And using something like a raspberry pi and setting up your own pi-hole dns can help if you don't agree with big tech taking all of your data and making money off you w/o your consent. (That's just business on the internet these days)

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, Rodinski said:

Just get off reddit. That place is beyond disturbing at this point. It's just a political crap hole of the worse of the worse. 

It's ok platform for corporate contact or at least contact to focused corporate community. I used to use Twitter for that, to reach out to companies when official support goes full retarded pikachu. But since Elon took over Twitter (sorry, the X), I don't have the slightest desire to be there.

 

With Reddit, I already stopped using the Reddit app after they killed 3rd party clients and I insist on using their webpage for it even on phone and if they manage to get it even worse, I'll probably stop using it fully just like Twitter.

[IkeaGnome]

Certain types of websites are blocked at work. Even in the man camp... even on our personal devices. Those "types" of subreddits still work. Until someone gets our corporate IT to roll back that policy, I know a camp of ~600 people that will fairly regularly go to Reddit while away from their wives.

[Taf the Ghost]

How to say "Our Business Model requires selling User Information to Someone" without saying that's their entire business model at this point. 

 

 

[TetraSky]

Wait, there's ads on Reddit? 

[divito]

4 hours ago, NinJake said:

Sadly, it's the only social media platform I'm actually engaged with.

That is pretty sad; Reddit's UX has always been abysmal compared to virtually every other social network. Outside of having to visit some subreddits through a Google search, nothing has ever been enticing about that platform where I'd want to visit it on purpose.

As for the OP, this is just another nail in the coffin, as much as it will have a smaller effect than it probably should. That, and EU has it better.

[NobleGamer]

7 hours ago, Ydfhlx said:

Although this is about 3rd time I'll say this, I believe this is the actual reason why they banned 3rd party apps. They just want to collect even more user data.

It's not JUST that - I didnt think they could get the same ad revenue, if any, from 3rd party apps tapping their APIs.  To be clear I thought it was the Reddit chose to monetize their APIs (just like X/twitter), and therefore 3rd party apps chose to shutdown rather than pay?