The ads are a window into a blatantly illegal underground economy that Meta is not only failing to moderate, but is actively profiting from and injecting into users’ feeds.
  • riodoro1@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1195·
    1 year ago

    The biggest media corporations are allowed to advertise literal crime. Meanwhile saying the word cigarette on tv will get you jail time.

    • deranger@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      24·
      1 year ago

      Some, sure. I asked my weed dealer to show me a bit on how this works. You’d be amazed at how much dealing is done over clearnet on FB messenger, whatsapp, etc. Little to no technical security. Selling drugs online has become much more mainstream than it was during the $10 bitcoin days. Not that I’d personally use clearnet for drugs, but that’s where a ton of deals are happening. This article only confirms what I’ve already seen.

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        Yep, so much stuff that used to be on TOR moved to discord. Then if they are smart they use Signal or Session, but I have heard of a lot of stuff just straight on FB… it’s crazy. I guess with that many transactions, it’s a really though game of whackamole. Especially since the internet made it much easier to deal drugs without needing to hold huge quantities at once.

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      31·
      1 year ago

      That wock is absolutely fent, and with those prices, that LSD is probably 25i.

      The DMT seems legit tho

  • Remmock@kbin.social
    473·
    1 year ago

    ITT: People who are so quick to suggest ad blockers they miss the point of the conversation.

    • Nightwatch Admin@feddit.nlEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Well, Instagram did just that for my little book publishing company. I signed up for a business account in the hopes of selling some books, putting up some ads, and posting a few updates, only to get a fucking PERMABAN during fucking SIGNUP.

      So you are right and it really is super easy.

          • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            But conceivably they could be enforcing the law by putting pressure on these companies to stop facilitating advertising of illegal services and thereby the flow of business. If they instead just don’t bother with that so that they can use these ads to pick out and track down the juiciest, lowest effort prosecution targets, representing a small proportion of the total market, that’s pure corruption with little to no social benefit.

            To be clear I don’t actually know if this is what is going on, but if it was it would be reprehensible.

        • Mr_Vortex@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          14·
          1 year ago

          I use an alternative side-loaded Instagram app called Instander which blocks ads and comes with other nice features. I don’t use the platform much anyhow, but when I do it makes the experience actually tolerable.

        • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
          81·
          1 year ago

          No, what people should start doing is demanding that governments actually enforce the law against Facebook for acting as an accomplice to the myriad crimes the article discusses. Facebook should be dissolved and executives should go to prison.

        • Echo71Niner@lemm.eeEnglish
          24·
          1 year ago

          People use the app, have their info exploited and than complain this is the only way to use a service that is exploiting your clicks, and yet, you don’t stop using it, really weird.

          • thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.mlEnglish
            4·
            1 year ago

            eh, I’m a photographer/videographer. sadly I more or less need to use it if I want anyone to find me…

        • mindbleach@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          As opposed to when?

          At what point in internet history do you think website advertising was tolerable? Because in my eyes, it’s always been an aggressive obstacle to usability, since the dial-up era.

            • mindbleach@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              3·
              1 year ago

              Movie piracy can be both, and it’s straight-up illegal. Hosting text is nothing in comparison. Images and video snippets are barely more than that. If all a website provides is bandwidth and storage, we all have that in spades, and if a website can’t let us share it, then a website is the wrong model.

              Running a glorified chat server and image board in the year two thousand and fifty gigabits should not be remarkable. You are currently on a service patched together by randos hosting servers for fun. It replaces a website which, despite strenuous effort, made fuck-all revenue from a highly constructive and ordered community of millions.

              I fail to understand how people got into the mindset that every website needs to make money. Some worthwhile and widely-desired things simply lose money, and that’s fine. Expecting to monetize your family would be gross. Expecting to monetize community is not much better, and equally fruitless. Squeezing any blood from that stone requires some fundamental betrayals of what those relationships mean and why people seek them.

              Social media sites only turned a profit when they undermined democracy. Advertising is propaganda for sale. If you think capitalism prevents us from even talking to one another without being gouged for the privilege or subjected to destabilizing abuse, then torches and pitchforks are on your left.

  • NAS89@lemmy.worldEnglish
    36·
    1 year ago

    Similarly, my YouTube shorts are filled with gambling videos and “get rich quick scheme” videos. Seems as though “do not recommend channel” blocks the channel but assumes you have some growing interest in the topic.

    I just want to watch woodworking shorts and plumbing videos T_T

    • 10EXP@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Maybe do Not Interested and then Do not recommend channel?

      Unless doing the former just hides the video immediately and doesn’t let you do the latter, in which case just call me a fool.

      • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        51·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, Not Interested hides the video just like Do Not Recommend, so you can’t do both on the same one.

        But it doesn’t really matter, because for me Not Interested is actually signaling Youtube with Hell Yeah Gimme More! and anything I say I’m not interested in I see ten times more of. So I just block channels, which does seem to work reliably, except the list of shit channels is never ending.

        Blocktube is an awesome extension, but it doesn’t run on the browser I actually sign into Youtube as myself. I run it on another browser where I never sign in to avoid a one-off or accidental video choice skewing my recommendations for the indefinite future.

        The number of gyrations required just to watch what I want to watch, and not see what I don’t want to see, on Youtube is never ending.

        EDITED a word

    • boringbisexual@lib.lgbtEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I just got an extension that removes shorts. I tried blocking channels, saying I wasn’t interested, pressing the thumbs down button, but it would still show trash like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate.

  • mindbleach@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    333·
    1 year ago

    This shit’s going on in centralized big-name websites, while Lemmy instances fret about discussing piracy and ban people for being impolite to bigots.

    I fucking hate the modern web.

      • mindbleach@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        25·
        1 year ago

        No I definitely hate many disparate elements of the modern web. Browsers are controlled by an advertising giant that can’t even operate a decent search engine anymore. Legislators are still trying to demonize pornography, of any kind, as if two adults fucking in private is child exploitation… somehow. Every website that centralized disparate forums / galleries / chatrooms simultaneously went pants-on-head crazy in a panicked frenzy to make N+1 dollars.

        I also hate people who demand “be polite!” without viciously cracking down on actual trolls saying stupid shit to bait blunt correction. And those trolls, obviously. It doesn’t have to be exclusive. There’s plenty to go around.

        • stevedidWHAT@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          I felt the same way but with the Reddit thing I started switching up some of my sites.

          Have you used any of the SearX instances? Works just as well as google for the most part

          • mindbleach@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            I have now, and I’m underwhelmed. As a test case I used a repeated failure point for Google and DDG: ‘“Apple I” keyboard’. As in, keyboards for the Apple I, which came before the Apple II. (I have some very stupid hobbies.) Major search engines overwhelmingly return Apple iWhatever keyboards, or just Apple keyboards in general, with occasional vintage or retro hardware tossed in. The handful of SearX instances I tried returned nothing.

  • Margot Robbie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    261·
    1 year ago

    Now here’s the exact problem with the so called “personalized” ads, that Google and Facebook serves what the advertisers think you want to see, instead of what you actually want to see.

    This is the fundamental conflict of interest which the obvious conclusion is that online banner/video advertisements doesn’t work, and has never worked, because ultimately, no matter how many times you shove ads in people’s faces via a thoughtless machine, you can’t “trick” people into liking something. What people want is thoughtful, sincere recommendations by real people, which is why we have seen the rise of sassy brand Twitter accounts being so successful for a time: because there is a real person behind it.

    (Of course, it’s really funny if you take blatant advertisment to its logical extreme, and even that seemed more effective.)

    Of course, Google and Facebook will never admit that they’ve been lying to everyone and themselves for more than a decade, because to do so is to admit that their entire business of Web 2.0 was built on an absurd and illogical premise of again, if you show people ads for things they never asked for a thousand times, then you can brainwash them into liking something.

    In other words, Google and Facebook’s entire advertisment business model, if you really think about it, is really no different than pick-up artist logic, and. They. Just. Won’t. Go. Away.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      1 year ago

      Turns out though you can absolutely trick them into believing conspiracy theories with social media ads.

    • DryTomatoes4@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Pretty much every industry works by tricking people into liking things.

      Like the razors with four+ blades on them, people buy them cause the commercials say “more blades is better”.

      People wouldn’t seek out extra blades if they weren’t tricked into liking it. They are objectively worse than single blade razors.

      • Rev3rze@lemdit.comEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Exactly. If it didn’t pay off these companies wouldn’t keep shoveling money to Facebook and Google to show their ads time and time again. Marketing is expensive. If it didn’t at least break even then nobody would be doing it anymore by now. Obviously it works, otherwise I wouldn’t ever know what the fuck a squarespace or a goddamn raid shadow legends is.

    • Halosheep@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      The ads that I mind the least and the ones I find the most effective are sponsors for creators that I like. Short sponsor segments really don’t annoy me as much and I have actually tried a couple products that have advertised that way.

      That said, almost all of them sucked in the end but that’s another subject entirely.

  • tony@lemmy.hoyle.me.ukEnglish
    251·
    1 year ago

    You’re clearly a known customer for those products :p The algorithm is never wrong…

  • Astroturfed@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    1 year ago

    Drugs or Chinese scam products. Had a friend tell me he ordered something that never showed up, turned out they sent these super cheap toothbrushes in the mail and then tried to use that tracking info as proof he received what he bought. They just allow anyone who will pay to advertise illegal shit, scams, whatever it’s the wild West.

    • theangryseal@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      I may or may not have acquired exactly the acid in those pics.

      I definitely did not.

      Or did I?

      It looks identical actually and I’m willing to bet it came from the same place.

      If I actually had it that is.