All my life I give up all my data to any product of any company I use. I accept all cookies to track me, send auto-reports and telemetry, try to join all beta products and gladly report bugs that occur. I use one nickname everywhere it is available, my home address and phone number and all social network pages are easily googlable, all my profiles are public. I always say what I think. I’m from Kyiv, Ukraine, and I have never had a single negative occasion due to my Internet behavior. AMA.
Just a personal story to bring one example into focus.
I got sober 8 years ago and never talked about it online until I was about 4 years sober. Never saw a single promotion for anything related to alcohol…
Until the day I made a single comment on Reddit telling my story to help support another person who was just starting their own sobriety journey.
And like magic, all promoted communities to me were alcohol related. Even though I’m an ublock user, when I would selectively disable it every advertisement I saw online was related to booze.
So even though there are ethical applications for my data, I found that it was used in an attempt to target me based on human frailties.
I found that it was used in an attempt to target me based on human frailties.
This doesn’t even make sense. It’d be much more lucrative to target multiple things you speak fondly about it or have expressed personal interest in by actively searching.
If you enjoy something you buy it occasionally. If you are addicted you buy it every day, every time you have money, you think about it all the time. That’s way more lucrative, it’s the whole business model of the tobacco industry too.
Things we need are higher on our priorities than things we want, and addiction convinces you that you need that thing. So anything that can monetize that addiction is going to be more effective and consistent than something you merely want.
I made two posts one on asshole design and one on dangerous design and they cumulatively got something like 7,000 up votes and then “magically” the problem was fixed on reddit!
Personally I’ve found that “how do I stop myself from doing a Kirby impression on this junk food?” is the wrong question.
Consider asking instead, “what am I trying to get by devouring it all?” Followed by, “is there a more helpful way to meet that need?”
Me, I like to eat for sensory enjoyment/stimulation. So I use the other senses instead, with things like music or a melting wax tart or a reusable bubble wrap toy.
If you like video games, try a search for a video game of choice and add the words “role play”.
I was playing a lot of Kenshi and I found some YouTubers who make long playthroughs of games. Specifically I enjoyed Rycon Roleplays Kenshi which was something like 80 videos and each about an hr long. It would put me to sleep.
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