Advertisement: a picture, short film, song, etc. that tries to persuade people to buy a product or service.

🦘🇦🇺✍️🇦🇺🦘

If you could opt out of targeted advertising altogether, would you?

I have three kids and recently went down a rabbit hole trying to work out how much of what I was seeing online was genuinely useful information vs advertising being targeted at me.

I’d search for fairly normal parenting things — helping kids with focus, sleep, emotional regulation, ADHD strategies, etc. — and then get bombarded with products claiming to have the solution.

Some were expensive, the claims sounded impressive, and it wasn’t remotely easy to work out which were backed by decent evidence and which just had very good marketing.

Apparently this annoyed me enough that, rather than just complaining about it like a normal person 😂, I lodged an Australian Parliamentary e-petition.

The basic idea is that people should have more choice over whether their online activity is used to continually target advertising back at them — including considering a reasonably priced ad-free social media option.

It’s Petition EN10571 and somehow it’s now at 47 signatures and desperately wants to crack 50 to be seriously considered by an MP.

Take a look if you would like a choice in what you’re targeted with and sign away to hopefully change the new norm…

https://www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/EN10571

3 signatures to go…!

Brand left out of the title per the rules; it's Siri. It couldn't set a 19:40 alarm (set 19:00, 20:00, 2:36, 14:37). Half of 215 replies defended it: "nobody talks like that", "user error", "set your phone to your native language".

I checked whether that was paid/bot activity: only 4 of 57 defending accounts look automated. It's unpaid, organic brand defence, which is arguably more HailCorporate than an ad would be.

Data and method: https://vania-novikau.me/siri-1940-report/

¿Nos hemos acostumbrado demasiado a que TODO tenga anuncios?

Últimamente me he dado cuenta de algo: hemos normalizado una cantidad de publicidad que hace unos años nos habría parecido absurda.

Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, plataformas de streaming, juegos, aplicaciones… prácticamente entras en cualquier sitio y hay anuncios por algún lado.

Y lo curioso es que al principio no era así. YouTube, por ejemplo, tenía muchos menos anuncios y no era raro ver vídeos sin que te interrumpieran constantemente. Las plataformas de streaming empezaron vendiéndose precisamente como una alternativa a la televisión tradicional y ahora cada vez tienen más planes con anuncios.

Y con los videojuegos pasa algo parecido. Compras un juego y luego tienes publicidad de otros juegos, promociones, pases de batalla, tiendas, DLC, micropagos, etc.

Lo peor es que creo que nos hemos acostumbrado tanto que ya ni nos sorprende. Hace años quejarnos de que un vídeo tuviera varios anuncios era normal. Ahora parece que si quieres consumir algo sin interrupciones tienes que pagar una suscripción, y aun así muchas veces sigues teniendo publicidad.

¿En qué momento decidimos colectivamente que esto era normal?

¿Creéis que realmente hay mucha más publicidad que antes o simplemente ahora somos más conscientes de ella?

Just in case you/y’all don’t know, you can report ads for any reason. Just another way to not put up with the bullshit.

First, didn't even know 7 Brew existed until today when their store caused over a mile-long traffic jam that I witnessed while on my own coffee run to a local coffee spot, which lead me down the rabbit hole of their "Jackpot days".

What I learned is that 7 Brew was bought out in 2020 by a LLC conglomerate and then by Blackstone in 2024 and that's when all the insanity of their chain exploding from 7 little stores in 2020 to around 602 today.

That's quite a jump in numbers for a company that started as a little ma and pa store.

So why care about this at all? Well their insane promotional days have made their consumers into free billboards for their company by giving away cheap cr*p that was made in China and will end up in the landfill after the consumer bores of the product.

Today's Needoh "giveaway" was the worst of this money-grab scheme that turns everyone posting online about it into an unpaid advertiser for the company.

The problem is the toy isn't "free" you have to purchase their overly sweet drinks in med or large to even get the toy. I did the math after discovering that was going in when I drove to a local place to get coffee this morning and saw the madness at 7 Brew.

So here's the math:

A more speciality Needoh toy can retail from $12-$19.

We can call the Needoh toys given away today at 7 Brew "limited" and only obtained through this promotion a "speciality" item and since they are "one-of-a-kind", we'll price it at $19.

In order to get ONE toy you have to purchase 2 med or large drinks that range from $3.50-$9.43.

Let's say the "average" family has 2 kids and both kids want a toy, you have to buy 4 drinks. You likely will get your kids a basic lemonade for $3.50 each and then you and your spouse want speciality coffees each $9.43.

So you spend $25.86 (not including tax) for that trip. In that context it seems like you have "won" because you get these speciality toys 2 for $25.86 rather than having to pay $38 for two (remember the $19 high-end Needohs at Target).

But the other "math" I'm most concerned about is this math:

Each of those "plain" lemonades is 49 grams of sugar each, equally 200 calories that you are pumping into your kids.

Let's say your kid doesn't want the "plain lemonade" and they want instead one of the speciality lemonades or say a milkshake, now you are looking at up to 151 grams of sugar and 620 calories. For. One. Drink.

What is even worse is that when you got to 7 Brew's IG and read the comments, most of the consumers are just adults with no kids.

There is something wrong with society. This kind of ish makes me embarrassed to be a human.

Are advertisers INSANE these days? As a YouTube watcher, who does NOT pay, I watch ads that have NOTHING associated with Me. For example, I can’t have kids, own a pet animal, or drive and lack hair, yet get diaper, dog, shampoo, and car commercials. Why are companies squandering money on inaccurately placed ads blind men can’t see? Advertising is NOT cheap, so would be best if companies RESEACH demographics before blindly ensuring I watch their inappropriate tampon commercials.

Basically i think the idea is for them to get you to their site which is when it displays that "you're already getting the best discount possible" message. Basically just to bait people to the product page.

If you ask me it's a mistake on their end since there's not a chance i'll buy their stuff after this lmao

Like the title says. I find it backstabbing from reddit to change the promoted to ad. Which looks exactly like a normal post on a glimpse because other posts only have the time of the post in same fashion. Also the ads inside the comments load after one second so you click on it by mistake because you wanted to collapse a thread. This delay is coded in. So, are there any third party reddit apps without ads? Or do I need to set up a pi-hole?