A few years ago I got involved with the wrong wealthy, connected crowd and many weird/violent things happened. The story is strange, so people assume mental illness. I'm seeing a counselor, taking pills that don't seem to help except make me fat and sleepy, and doing my best to get back to dev work before my funds run out.
I wanted to talk about my internet experience, though. I used to get ads for food, clothes, consumer tech. Now I get strange ads which are really not helping my situation.
On Twitter, ad with only a few views about "losing a game, checkmate the cost is your soul".
On IG, which I use to look at cat pictures and my friends, I get ads for Freemasonic end-of-life care, occult ritual materials, bizarre poetry sometimes containing my name/usernames, artwork with the tagline "Maybe you aren't paranoid and people are following you ;)", going blind, car accidents, ALS, cancer, organ failure. Or, my personal favorite when I've managed to distract myself from my troubles for a few hours, paraphrased "DID SOMETHING EXTREMELY BAD HAPPEN TO YOU AND YOU CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT?". I usually see that one multiple times a day.
I've shown these ads to other people; I don't have any history of seeing physical things others don't. I try to scroll past them fast but usually still see what they say. I usually don't take screenshots because I don't want the pause to register as engagement.
I get that most people would just ignore this stuff. I would have in the past. I don't know how to explain the change in perspective after you've been in life-threatening situations, had your windows smashed, or had weird totems left in your yard, etc etc. It's not a stretch to think "maybe this IS relevant to me, or a message warning me: bad thing going to happen!". Regardless, I want to avoid interacting with content like this.
I have long been opted out of search history or ad personalization on G/FB/AMZN/Twitter/Instagram/Verizon, and have repeatedly clicked "hide ad - irrelevant or not interested". "Why am I seeing this ad?" says "(wide age group) in your area", yet I've asked and my peers don't get ads like this.
I think I'm privacy savvy somewhat. Logged out, incognito/Ublock/Ghostery. Few apps, all permissions denied. DDG. Unique usernames, lurking or throwaways. No prescription rewards. I only visit a few websites. I don't share my computer. No other devices listening in the house.
The only information leaks I can think of are: * credit card billed for telehealth * short text journal on dropbox * friends may have discussed me/topic in their chats * a friend asked on Messenger why I disappeared, I said something like "I might have schizophrenia. Some violent situations happened and I'm struggling now."
I know, Messenger wasn't E2E, but I didn't realize it might flag me so easily. I haven't done anything else to indicate my interest in this topic; it's not like I'm posting in "targeted person" forums, buying anything other than groceries, or watching horror movies.
Even if the explanation is just "machine learning black box parses chat, determines unlabeled cluster demonstrates increased engagement with thrilling, morbid, suggestive, edgy content", well, I explicitly rejected opting-in to that. The supposed "opt-outs" have little effect, at best hiding one specific ad but not actually updating to the point of "I don't want to see ads about PTSD, dismemberment, horror, paranoia, accidents, tragedy, eschatology, or the occult, please start showing me only normie ads again".
I'm not sure what to think at this point, short of going offline or quitting social media. I did that in the past but I am trying to keep my weak network alive. Anyway, I'm curious to hear if anyone has feedback or advice on this situation. Am I missing something, mistaken, doing something wrong? Thanks!
I think this could actually explain your situation, if you give ad feedback like that too much you might run out of things for "the algorithm" to reasonably show you and you're getting fallen back to some sort of odd pool of low quality or new account test ads of some sort that are pre mainstream since you give feedback often or hitting some sort of weird bug after a point where it tries to find something to show you and then grabs for these weird ones somehow less shown and therefor less reported by other people?
I don't know the right answer, but I feel like something in this area could totally explain what you are experiencing. If you want to test the theory maybe make a new account on a service and don't give feedback on anything and see if you end up with mostly normal stuff?
Go on discord and buy famrmed gmails with a 30 day proxy. They are 5-10$ A piece resellers use them a lot. Use that account for 30 days then dump it and get another. If you still see wierd shit it’s because you are searching wierd terms or because you are visiting wierd sites or perhaps you are suffering from a untreated mental health condition. The metal health stuff can cause heightened awareness of things like this that other folks gloss over.
They sound so outlandish and insane (poems using your name) that I am sceptic.
You should screenshot and compile those ads in form of a blogpost or on twitter.
I am rather mentally ill and all I get are ads for those useless chatbot apps and meditation apps.
Perhaps turning personalization back on but using it only in a Firefox container with only normie browsing might be a good middle ground.
That said, the examples of ads you've posted seem more like attempts to get some attention by acting strange. Perhaps you're being shown low-bidders and that simply exposes you to total randoms rather than the usual polished ads. I experimented a bit with rock bottom bids and the engagement would often be from bizarre looking accounts. I'm guessing it may go both ways.
Even if advertisers are targeting you on this, they still need to outbid others. You don't need to completely change the data they have on you. You only need one new signal that attracts higher bids from some other category of advertisers. Merely changing your IP address or mobile device might be enough.
Also if you really saw your name or username in these ads then why worry about being targeted for a history of mental illness related stuff. If that's true then you've got a much bigger problem.
"militarism" — guns and shooting, martial arts, crossbows, and knives "violent occultism" — drugs, black magic, paganism "intellectual activities" — singing and making music, foreign travel, the environment "credulousness" — the paranormal, flying saucers "wholesome interests" — camping, gardening, hill-walking
Individuals are also rated on openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
The idea is that with the massive amounts of data one produces from surfing the Web or even merely being online, the software can decide which ads to show to which type of person. Do they engage in "violent occultism" and "credulousness" such as unironically browsing and discussing ideas in QAnon forums? Well, they're probably likely to engage with and respond to political advertisements, so the algorithm feeds them political advertisements on the assumption that they will engage. (This is a cloudy example, but the idea remains. Data that is remotely useful will be used. This is Big Data.)
I think what is interesting to note is that in their research/experiments, they've specifically targeted the Incel community specifically for this reason. Demographically speaking, Incels are typically young adult males "who can't get laid" (verbatim) and are highly susceptible to targeted advertising. If you want to read more about this, there is a book written about how Cambridge Analytica helped Donald Trump win the 2016 US elections by Christopher Wylie. I highly recommend it.
Facebook (including Instagram) is my favorite. For the most part, when you tell it to stop personalizing your ads beyond basic information, it obliges, although it does try to make that process difficult.
If you disable most targeted advertising on Facebook/Instagram, you’re going to see generic ads targeting the average person in your region—and it’s enlightening to see what those ads are. As you move between regions, the ads change dramatically.
Where I live, the ads I get are pretty mundane. However, visiting family members less than two hours away yields some interesting results. They’re in a relatively poor, conservative part of an otherwise affluent and liberal state, so there’s a lot of inequality and frustration. Violence and drugs are rampant, and the police seem to love exacerbating the social problems in the region.
What sort of ads do I get there when I have personalization disabled? Pretty much exactly what you described, although a bit less cult-oriented and more on the blatantly-violent side.
Want to test this out for yourself? Head to Facebook and remove yourself from all advertising lists and disable any personalization that you can. Then, head to the Facebook Marketplace. Set the location radius relatively small and move the location around a bit; assuming they haven’t changed it, you’ll see ads targeted to the average demographic in that location. It works best when current events are causing a significant political divide; for example, there were some fascinating ads around January 6, 2021.
(It will ask for confirmation first, so you can click on the link and read more about it)
All are potential sources of 'ad revenue'. When I was having a long distance relationship, every site tried to sell me 'Russian Brides' etc, it was highly offensive but it went away - I also quit certain sites and mail/messenger and now always UBlock everything
If you haven't spent like an hour or two, you probably haven't found them all. There are screens, and screens, and patterns to discourage you.
And if you haven't checked them in a month or two, there might be new ones.
My belief is that the game isn't that unfair, that they do allow you to turn stuff off, but it's difficult enough to ensure statistically most people won't.
I believe that FB Messenger is plenty enough explanation for your experience, by itself. Why would they not be processing every word?
> avoid interacting with content like this
an ad blocker is definitely a good option.
I think there is a chrome extension that will do this, i.e search random shit to poison all trackers. Maybe it will help you defeat it.
Learned this in school, it far easier to turn a F into E, I to T, etc by overwriting it with a pen and making complete nonsense of things than trying to erase it completely, which is harder and leaves more traces.
Taking a media break until your situation resolves or your targeting profile gets some less weird stuff in it might be good.
I've had good luck enabling all the tracking and searching for high-end lifestyle stuff. The prospect of selling luxury goods to the ultra wealthy is jucier to the ad auctions than exploiting a measly few thousand a month for prescription meds, and the ads for that stuff is eye candy anyway.
After kicking it a few times like that, I re-enable the ad blockers.
On a related note, Trump famously targeted the mental illness category with conspiracy theories and libel. It probably won him the presidency.
If I had my way, the entire surveillance capitalism industry would be banned (including targeted ads).