Week 117 was posted by Charanjit Chana on 2020-01-20.
The way ads are targeted at us these days is pretty creepy, our privacy is sold to the highest bidder and we're bombarded.
I found that Instagram ads were oddly specific so I've disabled mic and camera access and they've been more random ever since. It might be a coincidence but I've seen plenty of conspiracy theories about how invasive Facebook so I'm happy to give up features I never use anyway. I should look into what I can disable on WhatsApp come to think about it...
Back to Twitter, you have the ability to mute accounts and I've gone to town on anyone that targeted me with ads. Not universally, but I have a loose set of criteria I use
- I mute/block betting accounts anyway, but there are plenty I wasn't aware off, but thanks to their targeted advertising, I can mute them and remove them from my timeline
- Both the official and fan accounts for rival teams that use targeted ads
- If I see the same admire than a handful of times, it gets repetitive
It's surprisingly effective and while I'm sure it doesn't really make any difference to the invasion of my privacy, the ads become things you can scroll past with ease.
I would love to know if this helped anyone and if you felt it made a positive impact on what you see in your feed.
Tags: advertising, privacy, twitter, advertising, privacy, twitter