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Making ads in your Twitter feed feel less creepy

Week 117.0 — 20th January '20

The way ads are targeted at us these days is pretty creepy, our privacy is sold to the highest bidder and we're bombarded.

I found that Instagram ads were oddly specific so I've disabled mic and camera access and they've been more random ever since. It might be a coincidence but I've seen plenty of conspiracy theories about how invasive Facebook so I'm happy to give up features I never use anyway. I should look into what I can disable on WhatsApp come to think about it...

Back to Twitter, you have the ability to mute accounts and I've gone to town on anyone that targeted me with ads. Not universally, but I have a loose set of criteria I use

  • I mute/block betting accounts anyway, but there are plenty I wasn't aware off, but thanks to their targeted advertising, I can mute them and remove them from my timeline
  • Both the official and fan accounts for rival teams that use targeted ads
  • If I see the same admire than a handful of times, it gets repetitive

It's surprisingly effective and while I'm sure it doesn't really make any difference to the invasion of my privacy, the ads become things you can scroll past with ease.

I would love to know if this helped anyone and if you felt it made a positive impact on what you see in your feed.

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Notable

Quick links and commentary on interesting articles, videos and more throughout the week.

  1. 117.1 – Monday
    1. Road travel in the US is safer than ever informationisbeautiful.net
    2. The global parental leave paradox axios.com
    3. THIS IS NOT A DRILL — Barcelona climate emergency decleration barcelona.cat
    4. Best chicken dances from Arrested Development Netflix Is A Joke on youtube.com
    5. Zenith DEFY 21 Land Rover Edition wristwatch   £11,400 coolmaterial.com
  2. 117.2 – Tuesday
    1. Miami Blue Porsche Carrera 4 GTS Richard Le on flickr.com
  3. 117.3 – Wednesday
    1. "Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution" trailer Netflix on youtube.com
    2. Biofortified Cassava is set to transform the health of millions informationisbeautiful.net
  4. 117.5 – Friday
    1. Apple to completely remove Flash support in next version of Safari apple.news
    2. Twitter thread on Facebook's damaging political ad policy @JuddLegum on twitter.com
    3. New figures suggest Apple's location privacy controls in iOS 13 are working macrumors.com
    4. Solar System changes xkcd.com
    5. The GODFATHER NO. 7 cocktail recipe @jackdaniels_us on instagram.com
  5. 117.6 – Saturday
    1. Life is a mirror swiss-miss.com
    2. 30 Countries could be 100% powered by renewable geothermal energy informationisbeautiful.net

Jump to notable items for Week #116, Week #118 , view the notable archive or my favourites.

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