this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 299 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah yes, just like how free speech means corporations must be allowed to bribe politicians.

[–] EatYouWell@lemmy.world 68 points 1 year ago (5 children)

But they're people! Well, only in that one instance and not in any others that would allow punishments levied against people to be applied to businesses.

Like, if I sold poison that killed millions of people every year, I'd get the death penalty.

[–] FaeDrifter@midwest.social 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe you should have thought of that before you became peasants.

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[–] gomp@lemmy.ml 214 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Didn't you know? Disabling ad blockers ensures free speech and apparently may also peacefully end the current crisis in the middle east... oh, did I mention it helps with world hunger too?

[–] FMT99@lemmy.world 75 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don't worry we only serve "ethical" ads.

[–] solivine@sopuli.xyz 54 points 1 year ago (4 children)
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[–] NatakuNox@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It'll also make your penis 10 inches long

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[–] miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml 144 points 1 year ago (2 children)

We are dedicated to safe and ethical advertising practices

Mates, that ship has long sailed

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 37 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There are ethical ad services, but I've never seen outside of one random blog site.

[–] narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago

Overcast iOS app comes to mind.

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[–] i_promise_nothing@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What gets me about them (and any other sites really) saying that is there are safer ways in showing ads and that’s just hosting them from their domain instead of selling page space to random ad buyers.

Guess that’s too much trouble and not enough profit for these corporations.

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[–] planetaryprotection@midwest.social 81 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Corporations are not people, therefore do not have a right to free speech.

[–] Ulvain@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wasn't that the whole crux of Citizens United?

[–] FaeDrifter@midwest.social 33 points 1 year ago (4 children)

CU vs FEC was specifically about campaign financing, but yeah basically ruled that organizations like corporations are protected by 1A, and money counts as free speech.

Which is obviously bullshit on every level, but just one way that a SCOTUS with a few corrupt individuals can destroy democracy for an entire country.

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[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 71 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I allow USA Today to speak freely, including speaking their ad frames and images.

But that doesn’t mean I’m compelled to listen to everything they say.

USA Today: speech isn’t free if I’m forced to listen to it.

[–] Deconceptualist@lemm.ee 24 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Well you're not forced. You don't actually have to go to their website at all.

They seem to be making the argument that if you want some of their content, you have to accept all of it (ads included). Of course, that's absurd. I can pick up a printed newspaper (if those still exist) and skip right to the comics if I want, and bypass the sports and classifieds entirely if I wish. I can pick up a book or album and only enjoy a single chapter or track. You get the idea.

[–] hydrospanner@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

While I agree with you in principle, I'm not sure the newspaper example supports your position, although it is an apt analogy.

I would imagine that the counter argument would take the form of something like, "Yes, you don't have to read the whole paper, but you can't just buy the comics. You buy the whole paper, get access to the whole thing, and the ads come with it. Similarly, with our web presence, in order to access everything, whether you choose to consume it all or not, the ads must come as a part of it."

Personally, I don't fully agree with either that argument or yours, can see the merits and flaws of both, and fall somewhere in the middle.

I'd argue that while they're within their rights to create, distribute, bundle, and price their content as they see fit, just like the current debate with social media companies, your monitor is your own personal, privately owned platform, and you shouldn't/can't be forced to offer a platform to any content you don't wish to publish (to your audience of one). So you're perfectly within your rights to want and attempt to only view the content you wish to see, while they're also perfectly within their rights to want and attempt to package their content in such a way that links their articles with the advertisements of their sponsors.

So at that point, it's just an arms race between the producer doing their best to force ads onto screens and consumers doing their best to avoid same. Neither side is morally right or wrong, and while there likely is a middle ground that wild be acceptable to both parties, there's zero good faith between the two sides which would be necessary to establish that middle ground.

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[–] K3zi4@lemmy.world 58 points 1 year ago (4 children)

"We believe in free speech, so you should let us sell your data."

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[–] NutWrench@lemmy.ml 56 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, advertising is not "free speech." It's a way for corporations to steal your life from you, 60 seconds at a time

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[–] w00t@lemmy.ml 47 points 1 year ago (8 children)

FREE* speech for everyone

*~conditions_apply~

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 23 points 1 year ago
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[–] Jaysyn@kbin.social 43 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Injection hackers do not give a single wet fuck about your "safe and ethical advertising practices".

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[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Whether or not USA Today believes in free speech, its sponsors to not. They expect brand safe conduct.

Also USA Today's upper management has opinions on what they would publish. You won't see pro-anarchist op-eds in USA Today.

That said, news agencies are less good for getting news rather used in conjunction with others to confirm their veracity.

[–] Kaidao@lemmy.ml 40 points 1 year ago

Lol how insane and out of touch

[–] Anonymousllama@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hilarious, though this was an onion post

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[–] dadaredone@lemmy.ml 34 points 1 year ago

If garbage had a face.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 34 points 1 year ago (14 children)

why does nobody know what the concept of free speech actually is? it literally means congress will make no law restricting your right to assemble or speak as long as it doesn't infringe on anyone else's rights to do the same

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[–] nick@midwest.social 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
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[–] ElBarto@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 year ago

Don't use your freedom of choice, it hurts our bank accounts and bonuses 😭😭 - board member.

[–] aceshigh@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

award winning content

sure jan.

[–] ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's "safe and ethical advertising practices"? Is it like pacifist inclusive Nazism?

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[–] lowleveldata@programming.dev 23 points 1 year ago

We believe in free speech, do you? Give us all your money and send us your nude to prove it.

[–] shotgun_crab@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

How many lies can you fit in one sentence

[–] stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

PROVE YOUR FUCKING PATRIOTISM AND GIVE UP YOUR PRIVACY FOR [INSERT_COMMON_LOOTCRATE_ITEM]

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

If you don't look at ads on USA Today's website, YOU HATE AMERICA.

[–] java@beehaw.org 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

"Turn off your ad blocked to prove that you believe in free speech."

This is a hilarious level of argumentation. What's quality of their content?

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[–] BilboBargains@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago
[–] yote_zip@pawb.social 19 points 1 year ago

Are you using uBlock Origin? I don't get that popup after clicking to a few articles.

[–] banazir@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 year ago

I decide what speech is welcome in my home.

[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 year ago

Free speech = you must do what we say.

[–] ultratiem@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 year ago

Yes let’s let corporations dictate our freedoms! Literally nothing bad could ever happen guys!

[–] BreakDecks@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to be forced to consume something (including ads). Freedom of speech includes not sending all of my metadata to you and your business partners.

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[–] bnjmn@lemm.ee 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Dark patterns, gotta love em

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[–] eee@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Just use the right ublock filter to get past these silly anti adblocks

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[–] 1984@lemmy.today 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Lol that's the dumbest thing I've seen in a while.

There is no free speech in news.

[–] ironeagl@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 year ago

Your ads are award-winning?!?

[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago

Oh, so you believe in free speech? Let me scream into your ear for 30 minutes straight then.

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (24 children)

Its a bad marketing campaign because it is easily turned into threads like this. Also, I have no idea if USA Today is good or not (I genuinely have never even thought about it).

But it is worth understanding. News outlets need to get funding from somewhere. Some are state funded and I should not need to explain why that introduces biases. Others take massive sponsorship deals from companies and ensure that John Oliver will always have something to talk about. And others run ads to varying degrees of curation.

The last option is subscriptions and those are few and far between.

Its more or less the same thing we saw with ads in general over the 00s. More and more people learned how to block ads so more and more websites needed to add obnoxious flash based ads and insane uses of javascript and so forth to get any impressions. And fewer and fewer "good" companies wanted to advertise to adblock heavy audiences which led to more and more trojans and so forth. Which leads to more and more ad blockers and...

In the case of news media? We mostly see this manifest as less investigative journalism and more listicles and "clickbait" articles because those at least get the facebook crowd to click.

So it is very much worth looking in to more permissive blocklists and even permitlists. Block tracking cookies because fuck that shit. But permit sites that you "trust" to have reasonable ads and look in to finer grain blocklists that still allow the actual ads to be displayed, even if they aren't the ones based on Amazon figuring out you have a foot fetish.

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