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[-] Heresy_generator@kbin.social 253 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

So on one hand they're cluttering user feeds with the spammiest, scammiest ads they can and on the other hand they're rolling out paid subscriptions to remove ads.

Cause a problem; sell the solution. Transparent scumbags.

[-] athos77@kbin.social 58 points 2 years ago

Didn't they also remove some of the things that indicated a post was "sponsored" or whatever?

[-] SevFTW@feddit.de 56 points 2 years ago

Pretty sure that’s illegal under EU law

[-] echolomaniac@lemmy.world 20 points 2 years ago

Something being illegal under EU law is used as an ace in the hole for some reason. These multi-billion companies will pay the fines in the EU and continue operating. On the off chance they roll back these changes in the EU, they'll keep using them in the US, China, Russia, wherever.

Only thing that'll stop this is global laws against it, which is impossible because of bribery. Oh sorry, lobbying.

[-] Womble@lemmy.world 12 points 2 years ago

Eh, not really. Some of the EU laws have serious teeth, there's good reason why pretty much all big tech companies ensure they are GDPR compliant. It doesn't matter how big you are being fined up to 4% of annual turnover is no joke to anyone.

[-] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 20 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Yes, though it was unclear if that was a feature or a bug. Since their dev team was decimated, the site has been struggling to even do basic maintenance and security updates. It’s entirely possible that was a bug, especially since it only appeared to be happening with certain users and servers.

[-] morriscox@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I remember when Circuit City fired the employees that were costing them the most money. https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Lessons-in-how-Circuit-City-s-job-cuts-backfired-3298517.php

They eventually went bankrupt.

[-] NevermindNoMind@lemmy.world 39 points 2 years ago

The author of the article determined that these ads are coming from the trashy ad networks that brought you such classic clickbait ads as "Doctors hate this one weird trick" and "[Current President] has slashed auto insurance rates in [your state], here's how" that you see at the bottom of low quality news articles. So, it's not just that X has spam ads, but they aren't even directly selling them, which the article summarizes is a sign of desperation to get any ads, no matter how shit in quality, no matter how low paying to X they are, on the platform. At least the low tier news sites have the decency to identify them as ads and label the ad networks that is putting them up.

[-] SkyNTP@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I despise Twitter's leadership as much as the rest, but increasing ads is not at all a "cause a problem" situation Twitter doesn't owe you ad-free usage of their platform. So no, not a scam/scummy behaviour, just bad value.

And you don't owe Twitter your patronage. So just move on from it.

[-] morgan_423@lemmy.world 43 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

You do realize that the actual issue is that this is kind of thing is going to be normalized, so that it can spread like a plague across the corporate-touched internet, objectively making the entire thing as a whole objectively worse... right?

Because it sure doesn't seem like it with that reply.

[-] bappity@lemmy.world 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Reddit is already following in footsteps of twitter. unsurprising but worrying because they could influence other companies to do the same

[-] Hegar@kbin.social 27 points 2 years ago

increasing ads is not at all a “cause a problem” situation

Tech executives would disagree with you - creating a problem that users have to buy their way out of is one of the most popular business models going at the moment. The mobile gaming industry, for example, is basically $140B worth of intentionally created frustration.

There's been so much written about this obviously scummy practice. It's everywhere.

It's either naive or disingenuous to suggest they're not obviously trying to annoy cash out of people.

[-] Uniquitous@lemmy.one 17 points 2 years ago

It's my bandwidth. If I don't want to use it to download ads, I don't have to.

[-] blargerer@kbin.social 9 points 2 years ago

They are allowed to try and monetize in various ways, but there are still ethical standards that are just consistently not followed in online advertising (like doing due-diligence to make sure the company advertising isn't some sort of transparent scam). But this change seems to be stepping away from one of the standards that is actually a legal mandate, properly labeling adverts and sponsored content as such.

this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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