We should strive to make anyone who gets manipulated into changing their behavior based on an ad they saw feel ashamed and stupid for falling for their tricks, and angry at the advertisers for manipulating them.
- I own a home that routinely needs services. Ads help me find willing businesses.
- I own a car that needs tires. Just yesterday I looked at ads for those selling them.
- I like to buy art for my house. Ads in apps like Etsy pop up things that might interest me.
- Sometimes I look for a new job. Enough said on that one.
Believe it or not ads exist because they perform a useful social function.
Whether you see an ad is entirely driven by how much the seller wants to spend to acquire your purchase. Ads give no indication of the actual quality of the service or product. In fact, companies with greater ad spending tend to be lower quality because a portion of your purchase price is going towards the advertisement at the expense of quality.
Do you really not read reviews when shopping, and just type in a search term and see what comes up? I'd be surprised if you didn't, but if you don't you should try using non-commercial speech when making a purchase decision. Level of advertisement is inversely proportional to value, so I think you'll be pleased with the results.
But then again, what percentage of ads is the kind you have to actively go and look for?
This sounds great, but:
A) how do you know/can you prove that you've been manipulated?
B) How do we know that we haven't all been manipulated? (After all, millions of people bought into this ecosystem to get away from ads, I think every person who's angry has a case that they've been manipulated)
and C) where is this social movement gonna take place? Social media, the bastion of internet advertising?
The answer is make tech less important in our lives. There's been a pattern going back decades that technology grows in scale and utility and eventually becomes corporatized to that point that it generates more income to work against its users. The answer is to live a lower tech life. Less time on phones and apps and more time in the real world.
Will never happen until we can dispel the notion that human are free agents. People will never give up this believe about themselves. Meanwhile, it's proven to be effective by virtue of it being a trillion dollar industry or something. Same thing with gambling.
What a disappointment, she likes actually 1 feature - photos, and the rest is subpar experience compared to her old galaxy S10 (almost 4 year old phone). But then she likes my android photos similarly, since I have 10x zoom which is great for kids always running around or for hiking. Its not even first weeks of her use of Apple, she has it few months. I can browse on my samsung S22 ultra random internet without being swarmed with ads and tracking (firefox and ublock origin, something Apple phones will clearly never have).
And all the rest. It has fingerprint sensor for unlocking, instead of ridiculously shitty faceid which doesn't work with masks (she is a doctor so does wear them often). It often doesn't work even without masks, ie non-ideal light conditions like right now (evening and dimmer lights). Comparable S22 is much nicer phone to look at, to hold, to carry, to charge, and to work with.
I regret recommending it to her at this point, I too was convinced by Apple's effective PR. But quality is just not there, the devices are worse, bigger in size with smaller screen, uglier, heavier, software is meh, raw CPU power is useless on its own when device is so limited. I don't believe a zilch of Apple's PR about privacy, as I didn't for the ads and various other PR talk, actions are the only thing that matter.
And after reading this topic, its clear I will continue shopping in Android's non-chinese realm for a very long time. I don't consider my device secure from state actors, and neither is Apple, so we act accordingly. Thus, no added value in Apple devices, just plenty of marketing, similar to say Hermes or Louis Vuitton purses. Nobody believes those are worth 500$ or 5,000$ to manufacture, yet rich people buy them.
If you are ok with using Safari instead of Firefox, that’s something that has been possible since 2015 on iOS [1].
> instead of ridiculously shitty faceid which doesn't work with masks
It does since iOS 15.4 (March 2022 [2]); I use it every day.
> It often doesn't work even without masks, ie non-ideal light conditions like right now (evening and dimmer lights)
Light has nothing to do with this because FaceID works with infrared: I’m able to unlock my iPhone in the dark with no issue at all. You’re probably holding it wrong [3].
> But quality is just not there, the devices are worse, bigger in size with smaller screen, […] heavier
I fail to find an iPhone 13 that’s bigger than your Samsung S22 Ultra. The Pro Max is 0.2mm wider but 2.1mm less tall and 1.2mm thiner (163.3 x 77.9 x 8.9 mm [4] vs. 160.8 x 78.1 x 7.7 mm [5]). It does have a smaller screen-to-size ratio (87.4% vs. 90.2%) and is slightly heavier (240g vs. 228g -- not sure how noticeable this is).
> the devices are worse, […], uglier, […], software is meh
That part is highly subjective. I personally find the S22 Ultra very ugly but that’s an opinion, not a fact.
[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34173732
[2]: https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/face-id-with-mas...
[3]: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/13/how-iphone-x-face-id-wo...
[4]: https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s22_ultra_5g-11251.p...
[5]: https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_13_pro_max-11089.php
People will come out of the woodwork with grievances (ex. crypto integrations, politics, etc) but all of that can be turned off and/or ignored and the browsing experience is quite pleasant
Going back a decade in terms of functionality is hardly an answer.
I did point out that it is in fact possible to order a cab using a telephone call.
On GrapheneOS[0] (privacy focused AOSP-based mobile OS) you can do that stuff easily while still owning your device/having root, etc (at least according to this video[1] I saw)
This is not a technical but a political problem. People owning (GNU-)Linux-phones (or just caring about the future of mobile computing) should demand from the companies that they do not force everyone into monopolies.
I suppose the one up-side to the situation is that there's not much point in even trying to spend the time figuring out how to root a device, or dealing with egregiously under-performing open smart phone hardware, and it might be possible to save some money going back to a dumb phone.