this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
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Or my ad blocker for that matter. Sorry TV Tropes, I’ll miss you.
I instantly back out then block that site from showing in my news feeds or whatever. I am absolutely done playing this game. America sucks so hard its vacuum has consumed every aspect of most people's digital life. Not just Americans either.
I used to do email marketing analytics for JP Morgan like 15 years ago and the amount of resources being thrown at gaining personal info then using that to trick people into clicking a fucking advertisement or affiliate link for fractions of a penny is disgusting. And they would have me use heat maps to see where people hover their mouse while reading their shitty newsletter so they could place a clickable link in that spot just so accidental click through numbers could be inflated. I even regularly changed the color of a banner or a text so slightly you couldn't perceive it because that particular shade of orange had more read time or clicks than the other with a subset of the targets.
I had massive spreadsheets with shit on people like food allergies, household populations, and how that related to clicks or opens and then target those people with a particular color or layout on the emails to increase the success of the campaign. All because they clicked "I agree".
Disgusting shit and that was 15 years ago. I didn't even live in the same country as the people I worked for and never once saw or talked to anyone I worked for. Good pay though.
That is the most horrifyingly dystopian shit I’ve heard all year man. And it’s been a hard fucking year for that shit. I don’t fault you for taking the money but I absolutely loathe what you’ve helped create.
I was just labor. I didn't do more than extract the data, compile it, then wait for the email telling me what color hex to put where and which group identifier to send it to. I wasn't as much of a thinker back then and one day I was looking at the data as I organized it and was wondering why the hell do they know John Doe has 3 kids, rents, and had a shellfish allergy?
Then I realized pretty quickly what my job really was. The real terrifying part was those spreadsheets just lived on my laptop. Not password protected or any proprietary software. Just Excel and gmail to send them to whoever I worked for so they could send me the next week's campaign layout. Then I built the emails, added the links, sent them off to thousands and thousands of people grouped by whatever standards had been set that week. More than that, I obviously used a software for mass emailing, but my list of recipients was just another spreadsheet with countless people's email, names, and phone numbers.
I now realize why these huge data beaches occur everywhere from these giant corporations. You think they've got "security" or whatever and they protect your info. In reality a 26 year old stoner with a MacBook used for watching porn and pirating movies and games using whatever basic ass free antivirus software has all of it in a folder, labeled email list, literally on his desktop with an unbreakable pin of 1234, being employed by people who have never seen, heard, or talked to.
And he doesn't even realize the implications of having this at all. I'd like to think things have gotten more strict with security and whatnot, but if that was true it wouldn't happen so often.
I am screenshotting and bookmarking this for next time someone ribs me for how mad i get over the incessant advertizing or the data harvesting. It is exhausting to be made felt like I'm overreacting when it should be the normal response for your own home and devices to be constantly raped by ad-gorithms. FUCK MARKETING.
Good. It's honestly so much worse than people realize. But people don't care because magic pocket square go brrr
Well if the reality of what we see daily is any indication then it has gotten exponentially worse.
I don’t really know what we do about this besides just shutting down the internet. Kind of a lost cause. Capitalism has almost entirely ruined the internet. I don’t think it’s saveable at this point.
How is this even possible to do. Heat maps and knowing all of this data? Wildly new to me that this was even possible let alone 15 years ago.
If you think heat mapping is wild, the finger printing they've been doing for just as long is going to melt your mind.
Like this usually. At least in my experience...
"Sign up for your chance to attend "name event here" for you and 3 of your friends or family! You won't want to miss this investment opportunity as our special guest "fuck head" talks about the investment potential of upcoming alternative energies! Just fill out this form below or click here to reserve your spot."
The form would obviously need things like, what are your investment goals, do you have dietary restrictions, would you like to receive future communications about other exciting opportunities...
The heat map thing is nothing new and still def around. If you click I agree and don't bother to spend 8 years reading the fine print I guarantee you have a profile similar to this. Same as me.
The info is easy to get, people just need incentive but the better you can hide the reason for needing it (you might eat here if you win we need to know what you can't eat) or you are interested in setting up a college fund for your X amount of kids... The easier it is to mine that info.
I wish I was making this stuff up but I was an amateur back then and the capabilities nowadays are faaar beyond that. It's manipulation plain and simple.
Tracking links, mainly. Here's how to stop sharing them. Consider this a PSA, spread it far and wide. Sanitize your damn links!!
Wait, what? TV Tropes works without a hitch for me... (uBlock Origin)
Seems to work if you’re logged in to your Tv Tropes account. But why the fuck do I need a TV tropes account? Idk maybe your ad blocker is better than mine.
I don't have an accout, just Firefox and uBlock origin. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Weird. Maybe they just hate me. :(