It also, consequently, makes the advertisements which they show to you far less valuable. So this feature is not widely advertised.
If Google actually honors this setting.
They do. When enabled, they don’t use it to serve you ads based on those things.
They still collect and sell it. They just don’t show you ads based on it.
Google says it doesn’t sell your personal info to third parties. While you would be well within your reason to suspect this isn’t true, it is actually legally relevant because it means, as a consequence, Google doesn’t provide a “do not sell my personal information” opt-out link which would otherwise be required by California law (where Google is headquartered).
No, selling your personal info would be detrimental to their business model. It would feed their competitor’s databases. They sell aggregate data, though.
It doesn’t stop them collecting and selling data, just using it to harasses you directly.
Right. Can’t be too good. Gotta keep some evil practices going. Can’t be Google without some evil.
Don’t have an account there. Block ads. Simple as that.
No, you don’t need gmail. Every other E-mail service has also a web-interface that sucks.
Unfortunately the insidious fuckers got into “education” for obvious reasons and now i cant be a parent without a gmail account.
What, why not? Did Google make it incompatible with not-gmail?
Nah fuck them, they can mail my disroot acct, or I don’t have an email and they can call me, anything else send a note home with the kid, free courier. It’s not like gmail is incompatible with email, add my addr to the mailing list and quit crying.
It also, consequently, makes the advertisements which they show to you *far* less valuable. So this feature is not widely advertised.
I do wonder how much more effective surveillance capitalism-style ads are compared to ads like what DuckDuckGo has that are based on what you’re searching for right now, or ads based on the content being viewed. I’d personally be more likely to click on an ad based on my current search or content I’m viewing where it’s directly obvious how they know my interest, as opposed to seeing a creepy ad on a random website where they magically know I recently considered buying new shoes.
Assuming I’m reading the abstract correctly, it’s about twice as effective.
“prevents”
Turning off the targeted ads settings indeed prevents Google from showing you overtly targeted ads. It makes no claim that it prevents Google from harvesting the same data that is used to target ads
Yea, but then you get an absolute fuck tonne of gambling or ai girlfriend ads because they will not limit their advertising scope.
You can use uBlock Origin (browser extension) to block all advertisements. Then in the event you visit a site you want to support, turn it off.
Doesn’t stop chromecasted videos.
Setup a Pi Hole for network level ad blocking.
That broke years ago. Even with adguard home and black holeing Google’s name servers they still get in.
SmartTube
Get an AppleTV, google sux
Apple is no better.
There’s ads on the Internet?
Every once in a while i reglimpse the other side of how humanity lives online (my video downloader thats most convenient conveniently doesnt have an adblocker, its a fucking nightmare). Its the stuff of slow suicides
It’s annoying but I take it as a sign that it’s working and marketing money is being wasted on me
Yeah, I’ve gotten some not so subtle anime tentacle porn game ads.
Go through all your settings: https://myactivity.google.com/more-activity
What? I use locally hosted searxng, ublock origin, librewolf, noscript, chameleon, libredirect, a massive no AI block list, and a self hosted pihole with unbound DNS resolution. I use yt-dlp with sponsor-block via a self hosted invidious instance and “subscribe” via RSS feed when I need to watch something from youtube.
On mobile I use grapheneos, fdroid, and tubular.
Wtf is a google and wtf is an advertisement?
You know what both of those things are.
I had a TRS-80 once. You hit the power button and it started. I used programs stored on audiotape. Simpler days.
Wait, you guys are getting ads?
The joke is on them as I am the sort of person who does not see the ads. I mean I see them of course, but they extremely rarely make me interested. Like it is very rare that I see an ad and click on it. This the case on all platforms and I am not blocking my data. I wonder what % of people are like me as I cannot be the only one? I am not even saying that there could not be more ads I would be interested in, but clearly the tech no matter how advanced they say it is, is not very sophisticated as of yet.
The only ads I ever click on are when I search something like “brother dcp-l2550w toner” and the first result is an ad for Staples where I was going to buy the thing anyway. Even if I saw an ad for that exact toner and said “ah, that reminds me I need more toner,” I’d still not click that ad but rather go search as described because I do not click ads.
There have been times I’ve been so annoyed by a company’s ads that instead of buying their product I go with their direct competitor out of pure spite (if I needed something like the item in question, ykwim).
What’s an “advertisement” on the internet look like?
Usually a picture with text, that lies to you and tries to manipulate you into buying something.
They also spy on you, so the ad-provider can figure out your secret interests, to better manipulate you.
I just don’t use Google.
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Or…I could just continue not using google.
I’ve turned off all the history tracking on my google account for years. I’m sure somewhere in their data lake, the data exists. They just don’t make it available to see on the web. I think this probably because when presented with a subpoena, they seems to have the data. Shocking, I know.









