I’m sure this happens but have no proof. I have family and friends who use my WIFI and I’m sure google and Amazon look at what they search for and think maybe I’ll be interested in it as well and start showinge ads. I guessed I was going to get a chess set for Christmas because I kept seeing sets in my Amazon account but I personally never looked for one or something similar. But my mom got me one. So there is that.
but what if that dude has adblocks? what a bummer
It’s sad how few people have ad blocking.
meanwhile in Ukraine - a steady barely contained stream of russian propaganda in the paid ads kinda conditioned everyone that ublock origin is the default extension no questions asked. Youtube was absolutely unbearable to watch with no adblock before Google pulled russian ad accounts - like just they bombarded with defeatist messages all the time.
Sponsorblock as well for youtube.
oh yeah, that’s a good one
Best Holiday present: Uninstall $SHIT_BROWSER and install Librewolf with uBO(which LW ship with by default).
You could also just tell them
Boring. Using the environment to your advantage. Sun Tzu approves.
Sun Tzu wasn’t using the environment to send messages to his allied generals, though.
Straight people aren’t big into the communication thing; they view it as unnecessary training wheels on their journey to direct telepathic communication
This is such a strange generalization.
Worry not my friend, it is a joke. One meant to draw attention to the absurdity its structure by being directed at such a large mass of people. The majority of all people, really.
Growing up queer, this is a style of joke that absolutely bombards you. It’s very visceral, no? Being openly attacked or deemed inferior because of who you are, when you know there isn’t a shred of truth to it?
But while intended as humor, as the conversation here develops, I am reminded that many of the people on Lemmy, who I love, may in fact be vulnerable in this situation where the intent is not made clear. My apologies it this has caused any anxiety, hopefully this will serve as proper clarification
I think the joke stands a chance at landing well in a thread where there was a tie into queer folks perhaps, since it tried to speak truth to power right?
May have seemed a non sequitur* as is—that clarification, definitely important. (*Some may have felt like two wrongs didn’t make a right maybe)
I consider it to have landed very well actually. Not sure how common it is for people to be seeing separate up/downvotes, but the comment is actually perfectly symmetrical with (as I’m checking now) about 50 votes both up and down. The responses I have received have also been equally split on sentiment, with several tuned in to the spirit of the joke and several taking issue with it at face value.
Humor is not just silliness, yes? It’s a way to address serious topics. So in a way it’s kind of the ideal result, sparking division and discussion on the topic. I post in this style often and had assumed this would be yet another generally well received but under the radar little post, so while I was surprised by the controversial reception, in the end I feel it was a good outcome
on the other hand, i like being surprised by gifts :( i don’t want to know what i’m getting beforehand
So neither of these methods will work towards that end
Domestic
abusetelepathyAs a straight person, this is 100% true and I am in constant pain because of it.
Happy cake day.
Straight people
Women.
I’m guessing you haven’t dated a lot of men?
Nope, but i’m friends with quite a few.
So you and the boys all have issues with women? And you’re sure it’s just the women who are the issue?
No, i guess its just the straight people, right?
What you described is a female way of communicating. By inference and mind magic.
Correct. I am an expert on straight people. You are clearly an expert on females. I challenge you to a formal debate
Ads?
What ads?
I mean, who TF is not running with a proper adblocker and multiple other anti-spyware and anti-malware add-ins in their browser?
I’ve been doing so since 2004, when the first adblocker came out for Firefox. Except for system set-ups of client machines and working on the machines of new clients, I haven’t seen an ad in over 20 years.
Of course, you actually need to be running Firefox to have anything approaching an effective in-browser adblocker… Chrome has massively neutered adblockers into near uselessness.
Seriously, people:
- uBlock Origin
- Smart Https
- Security Tweaks
- Referer Control
- Redirect AMP to HTML
- Privacy Tweaks
- Privacy Settings
- Link Revealer
- Link Protector
- Link Cleaner
- Decentraleyes
And for those on mobile:
- Mullvad encrypted DNS base (TLS) configuration profile (No app needed. Works at the system level, so it works across all installed apps where ads are not loaded from the same app URI/API as the official content)
You da real MVP.
Now granted, most of these will need additional configuration once installed to be effective. Downside is that you need good security knowledge to configure some of these settings. Most can be rather obvious, but some can trip up those without deep knowledge.
For example, Referer Control is particularly subtle, as its only mod requires you to set the referrer to be
[], and (if it is disabled) to have JS referrer handling active as well.
I mean, who TF is not running with a proper adblocker and multiple other anti-spyware and anti-malware add-ins in their browser?
The average person.
You really shouldnt need all of these extensions, and the more extensions you use the more fingerprint able you are. May I suggest stock LibreWolf/IronFoxn or Mullvad Browser instead?
Problem with multiple adblockers is more with inefficiency and breakage. Use multiple solutions only if they don’t overlap.
the more fingerprint able you are
Missed Privacy Tweaks, did ya? Look closer.
It lists these tweaks, none of which I understand to have anything to do with extension detection/fingerprinting:

extension detection/fingerprinting
So you’re talking about bot detection and bot denial of a website, then.
Well, I’m not a bot.
No, I’m talking about extension detection being used as part of the process to fingerprint your browser to identitify you as a unique person.
That’s used to track you across websites for ad targeting and other shit such as but not limited to sites displaying different prices to different people based off information they’ve gathered on you and connected to your unique fingerprint.
Fingerprinting effects a lot more than the ads you don’t see due to blocking them and bot detection. Please read up on it more instead of running with assumptions.
This makes sense for extensions that respond to and directly process and interact with page elements, such as Flash or Silverlight.
This makes absolutely no sense if the app has no ability to load or interact with anything in the page. If there is no interactivity - and why would there be, with simple blocking? - there is nothing for an external script to “grab”.
Which security add-ins, an external script can tell - at most - that an in-page element was not loaded by the web browser, but then anyone doing the tracking needs to contend with the dozen-plus add-ins that have the capability to block an element like that. The exact add-in is still not identifiable, only the class or type of add-in that has the functionality to block said element.
I have read through a number of white papers that explore this technology, and to a T,
- This is still largely experimental and proof-of-concept
- Is still primarily meant to block bots that are trying to mimic humans, and to ensure that the site visitor is actually a salty bag of mostly water
- Can only identify apps that are explicitly designed to produce a response, as a core aspect of their purpose and design. Which, by default, fails to include almost all security-based add-ins, which behave more as “black holes” that have never been designed nor have any capability to respond to external queries.
So when a website bitches about you having an adblocker installed, the site cannot tell WHICH ad-blocker is installed, only that ads are not loading because it is not getting any telemetry from them.
So the website cannot track you by your installation of uBlock Origin unless it has that mix of ads that uBlock’s particular DEFAULT blocking pattern can be identified with. And since you can add or remove black lists at will, this becomes an infinite game of whack-a-mole for anyone trying to track you. Plus, other adblockers can load the same black lists, giving the exact same pattern for any website not loading ads from many dozens of different sources.
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/browser-extensions/
Please give this article a read
Notable section from the Wikipedia article linked there as “stand out”:

I’m not well versed on it, but I believe installed extensions are directly query-able through javascript or html5 on sites loaded by the browser.
I believe installed extensions are directly query-able through javascript or html5
The requirement for this is that those extensions need to directly interact with - and respond to - page elements.
Security add-ins are a “black hole” in that the vast majority of them only block, they don’t interact. There is absolutely no way for a website to tell which ad-blocker is installed from purely the ad-blocking component itself. Provided the add-on is constructed properly, it should never respond to any code either on the client-side or server-side, it should only block the browser from not even requesting certain assets in the first place. In fact, a good adblocker should be indistinguishable from a failure of DNS in providing the IP address of the ad server.
Preaching to the choir.
The list above is the vast majority of my add-ins. I don’t use any which are sufficiently duplicated in the browser or which are not required for enhanced security.
I am not one of those people with multiple dozens of add-ins.
You say you aren’t one of those people but i genuinely dont believe most of those extensions are needed if youre using hardened Firefox (LibreWolf/IronFox/Mullvad Browser/Tor)
Prettt sure DecentralEyes has been abandoned. I think LocalCDN is the reccomendation now.
I also believe there are ways to configure uBlock Origin to handle referrer stuff, clean links, for smart https stuff, and to handle redirect links as well. Probably something you can do with it for amp links as well.
Also, just know that every extension installed absolutely spikes up your uniqueness to fingerprinting.
every extension installed absolutely spikes up your uniqueness to fingerprinting.
Missed Privacy Tweaks, did ya? Look closer.
That’s so disgusting to me… Social communication through targeted ads? What are we even doing here…
You can always think of it as wasting ad budgets on things you could trivially tell each other
That’s distopian as fuck.
It’s not the hints I have a problem with…
No one isn wasting and budgets, they would get ads anyway.
First of all, kinda cringe to not just have basic communication, second, that’s not the point of a present.
Why can’t she just say what she wants?
Women think it is “cute”, and themselves are so big on micro/subtle nonverbal communication that they legitimately don’t realize that it goes completely unnoticed by pretty much all men who aren’t gay or TG in the first place.
What’s even funnier is that if you call them out on this they gaslight you by calling you stupid and unintelligent. Like, men get absolutely no practise with this form of communication. Father-son and man-to-man communication is almost blindingly obvious and explicitly spelled out. Asking a man to pick up on subtle cues and hints is like asking a blind person to call out all the colours in the vicinity by touch alone.
Being raised with sisters help. It’s not so much a woman only issue, since men often struggle to describe abstract emotions that women are raised to recognize. I struggle to talk to my dad about a lot of things I can talk to mom about.
People need BOTH forms of communication. People need to learn to adapt to communication as it evolves within a relationship or society.
Does everyone not have their own profile? I lock mine when I walk away - login to your profile.
My wife was looking for neck massagers online so i bought her one for her birthday. She really loves it. I would never have thought of that without seeing the Amazon recommendations.





