Maybe it's just me, but I dislike the whole concept of advertising in places that aren't related to shopping. I go to Instagram to look at my friends' pictures, not to be sold something I don't actually need. If I were to shop, I'd go to a mall, thank you very much.<p>Anyway, at some point Instagram ads (especially the autoplaying video kind, with sound) drove me crazy enough that out came jadx and apktool and I found a beautiful way to inject my own code into Instagram's networking. The code I injected rewrites the API responses before the rest of the app sees them. I can now scroll through my feed without annoying salesmen begging for my attention. I've also enabled a "secret" debugging menu while at it, where there are manual overrides for server-side settings, and there are at least several hundred of them — it's a bit creepy <i>what</i> they're A/B testing, like slightly different wording or different button colors.<p>The only problem that still remains is that the feed is still algorithmic, and there's nothing that could be done with that with client patches.
I don't use Instagram much, but I am on Facebook too often. The limitations of the advertising algorithms are very interesting to me. For example: I participate in ex-evangelical groups because of my childhood experiences. Also follow pages which discuss American Christianity from a secular or journalistic perspective, and in Christian groups which interpret their beliefs from a left-ish ideology. "Liking" any post from those groups will trigger an onslaught of ads almost exclusively for conservative churches and conservative organizations.<p>The algorithms can't differentiate between "pro", "anti", and "observer" on a particular topic. Nor does it seem to have any awareness of ideology. It's very rare when I see progressive churches advertise.<p>I understand that the algorithms are going to have difficulty with subtleties. But I'd think they'd still have some rough awareness about "anti" vs. "pro". And thus not flood people who dislike a thing with ads promoting the thing.<p>At any rate, I suppose it's oddly reassuring Facebook is so inaccurate. Judging by the high number of critical comments on the religious ads, there are many uninterested people being targeted.
I get great ads on Instagram. Generally, they’re niche products related to my interests from small companies I’ve never heard of before.<p>Yes, there’s a few misses, but it’s way better than the absolute scum-sucking garbage I see elsewhere on the internet from other ad networks. “Doctor shares one weird trick for emptying your bowels every morning”, “Alan Greenspan tells you what to buy instead of Litecoin”, and similar.<p>However, I don’t really use Instagram to connect with people I know. I follow a bunch of accounts related to my hobbies and interests. That probably primes the ad-targeting pump a lot better than if I was just following my friends and family on there.
Before I completely dropped social media, I had a f—k the algorithm attitude towards the ads. I made a point of clicking through everything that was completely uninteresting to me. That road led to a non-stop flood of class-action lawyer ads.
What's tragic here is that the author is complaining about one ad-infested, tracker-infested piece of trash of a product, on another ad-infested, tracker-infested piece of trash that is Medium.<p>Why the the fuck people still write on Medium even though it prevents people from reading content after a few times without either paying or logging in is beyond me.
I would just like to take this opportunity to post these screenshots I took over the past 2 days:<p><a href="https://imgur.com/a/SLrJaUJ" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/SLrJaUJ</a><p>I am surprised by just how many ads for drugs I get.<p>They know their audience.<p>But still. Lots of ads for testosterone, growth hormone, and now ketamine.
My biggest problem with both Facebook and Instagram is that I feel completely out of control over what I see.<p>There is neither a way to avoid what I don't want, nor a way to ensure I see my friends' posts. The timeline shows me the same handful of people in mystery sort order mixed with ads, and then I later find out I haven't seen months' worth of someone's content when I happen to visit their profile.<p>The only half-ass solution I've found is to bookmark each profile and check them individually, which is, of course, not very practical past a dozen or two.<p>All in all, it feels like Facebook thinks I'm an idiot and treats me accordingly.<p>And maybe I am an idiot, since I've yet to figure out an alternative.
The app itself can quickly turn into a never-ending scroll of infomercials from ads and accounts if you go beyond your social circle. Even if said accounts are not directly selling a product through the store feature, it's often advertising a desirable lifestyle not your own and general consumerism. How many photos are staged versus candid? This type of content-as-ad imagery is what the app lends itself best to versus any other social media app. Of course, you can just not follow any of these accounts or limit them or have better self control over your time spent there. But, the company is also probably working against your best interests, bottom line and all that...
Instagram, a place where I used to share pictures with my close friends and family.<p>Now, useless ads and inappropriate posts from random kids I have zero interest in seeing.
Ok, so I'm going to hijack this slightly...<p>I'm an elderly (mid-40s) non-USian techie, and I've never done Instagram. On Facebook I mostly follow people I've largely lost touch with in real life (particular these past couple of years), and on Twitter it's news sources and journalists, plus a selection of 'celebs' from various niche interests like tech, sci-fi, winter sports and comedy.<p>Am I likely to be missing anything interesting by largely ignoring Instagram?
I want to buy every single thing I see here. I've been really happy with the kind of ads I've been seeing lately. Instead of generic commercials I'm getting very specific products solving problems I have but didn't realize could be solved by a gadget.
The canonical example of SkyMall equivalence for me is wish.com ads. They're odd enough that they're frequently clipped and commented on - <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=wish+ads" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=wish+ads</a>
> The thing is, SkyMall was a blast. It was so consistently unhinged — night-glow toilet seat!<p>night-glow toilet seat actually turned out to be quite a popular product on Shark Tank. Kevin O'Leary put $100K for a 25 percent stake in it.<p><a href="https://mashable.com/deals/oct-11-shark-tank-bathroom-products-sale" rel="nofollow">https://mashable.com/deals/oct-11-shark-tank-bathroom-produc...</a><p>There's been many copy cats all of which have tons of sales:<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/illumibowl/s?k=illumibowl" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/illumibowl/s?k=illumibowl</a>
The app has become about 30-40% advertisements which I think is far too much. I don't ever want to buy any of these things because all of my ads are for coffee beans, which I would much rather buy fresh from a local shop.
If you want to see SkyMall open aliexpress and with no search terms start scrolling. Some of my favorites: a watch with a lighter flame, toilet with motion sensor that switches a blue led on and champagne squirt gun.
If you’re in search of a Skymall alternative, check out Hammacher Schlemmer (<a href="https://www.hammacher.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.hammacher.com/</a>).<p>The brand has existed for over a hundred years, they have a physical store in NYC, a website, and a catalog (still being sent out).<p>I just looked at a few products for sale on their homepage: make sure not to miss the transparent canoe or the kickball dart board.
It's so weird how long the reach is. Just yesterday I was looking up a product on a company's website on my phone. Then I went to use my desktop and logged into facebook and there was an ad for the product I was looking at on my phone's web browser.
I think what's essentially happening here is that Instagram has lots of tracking and targeting so it's very good at telling advertising "Hey, here's the list of people <i>you</i> want to advertise to, and here's how much it will cost". The result of this hyper-targeted approach though is that if you're not in any of the targets no one wants to advertise to you at all. This is the weird part though, rather than accept this, Instagram juts lowers the cost of advertising to you to practically zero. This is what opens the door to these trash ads - it's a kind of noise floor where ads are so cheap you may as well just spend some money on advertising something that costs you zero capital and has crazy margins - cheap chinese drop shipping rubbish. Because there's practically no barrier to entry, it immediately becomes a race to the bottom and the price of the adverts will perfectly match the margin times conversion rate.<p>What's interesting here is that Instagram have basically decided not to put a floor in. They could very easily say "Hey, we don't yet know how or what to target at these people, but they're still users, let's just not show them many ads, keep them happy on the platform, and give up on that ad revenue until we get it figured out, once we've firgured it out they'll probably be valuable". Instead what they've decided is "Hey, we have no idea how to target at these people so let's just drop the price of ads to the point where anyone will advertise any crap, it'll give the users a terrible experience and forever associate our app with cheap tat, but atleast we get to pick up that tiny revenue stream from drop shippers"
"hey, do you ever find it a huge hassle to pour cereal from a box?"<p>Just like the Snuggie, many of these products were invented to help people with various disabilities. See e.g. <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/20/17791354/products-people-disabilities-sock-slider-banana-slicer-lazy" rel="nofollow">https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/20/17791354/products-pe...</a>
The examples taken from instagram are probably very region specific and further matching a profile.<p>However, I must agree that IG ads got worse and worse. So what is very common here:<p>1. Take a stock picture of Americans lining up for petrol at a petrol station because of an extreme situation/limitation.<p>2. Link to a website that looks like a normal webshop (the ad is done by an account that only exists on facebook and its page is empty, not promoting a shop)<p>3. The user gets redirected from the shop website (that actually exists and can be loaded manually from desktop) to a fake website, that looks like the website of the largest local news outlet.<p>4. There is an article about how to get rich with crypto and some celebs promote it. On the bottom of the page you can register with your phone number. You will get redirected to a trading platform that most likely rips you off.<p>Way to go instagram. Allowing scammers to their platform.
I bought something from one of these ads last summer. It was supposed to be a battery powered pump (like to blow up a pool float). The thing that came in the mail was just a cheap hand pump. Moral of the story here is be careful of these products. I assume lots are bait-and-switches like what I experienced.
General principle: if the gadget seems pointless or lazy, ask yourself, "<i>how could this be useful to disabled people?</i>"<p>Because it was probably developed for them, but they aren't a big enough market. So it has to be sold as a gimmick.
I mostly tend to get ads relating to music production, owing to the fact that.. I follow quite a few music producers and related hashtags.<p>But now I kind of wish that I got to see ads for these kinds of ridiculous products in my feed too.
Something changed about Instagram recently, maybe it’s just because I changed how I used it. I used to only follow people I know, but then I added a few accounts that post Simpsons screenshots and clips. Now my feed is overrun with meme accounts, other Simpsons accounts I don’t follow, similar accounts for Futurama, Seinfeld, etc.<p>Admittedly, some are amusing sometimes, but it feels likes it’s turned into 9gag or something. It’s like if you follow one instance of something Instagram immediately assumes you exclusively want to see every single thing like that.
I think <a href="https://ThisIsWhyImBroke.com" rel="nofollow">https://ThisIsWhyImBroke.com</a> is closest to the SkyMall experience but I’m a sucker for a good catalog.<p>Here’s a gag gift that caught my attention:<p>Roast Beef Sandwich Bath Soak
<a href="https://www.thisiswhyimbroke.com/roast-beef-sandwich-bath-soak/" rel="nofollow">https://www.thisiswhyimbroke.com/roast-beef-sandwich-bath-so...</a>
I was going to reminisce about a print catalogue that we had in Australia when I was a kid, when I realised that it actually still exists, possibly even still in print form?<p><a href="https://www.innovations.com.au" rel="nofollow">https://www.innovations.com.au</a><p>Lots of equally hilarious garbage in here. I used to love it when I was young. My grandma would get them delivered in the post.
I joined Instagram well before Facebook bought it. It has been a downward slide ever since. Slow, but downward none-the-less. I had a Facebook account early on, but as the filtering advanced, my feed turned to shit, so I closed the account completely. It wasn't enjoyable at all any more. I fear Instagram is headed in that same direction.
Everyone is just posting stories today. So when I open Instagram I don't get pictures and updates from people I care about but I do actually get a wall full of ads. Sometimes there is no actual content for 20+ posts. Nothing that could actually interest me.<p>It's awful and I don't know how people can use this for their own entertainment.
The author is on-point here. I now love the instagram ads for their comedy value. Although I'm currently seeing a lot of elasticated waistband trousers that apparently look like normal well-fitting trousers. I guess my instagram browsing habits now fit that middle aged fat guy demographic. Damn!
I have trained Instagram (and Facebook) over the years to give me only the most pointless and unappealing ads as possible. I have no qualms about ignoring and forgetting each and every one. I despise ads and do my best to block and avoid.
I go to great lengths to anonymize myself on Instagram (futile, but I do what I can), and as a result I get what I guess are 'standard' ads:<p>- gun modification products<p>- survival stuff: knives, para cord etc.<p>- conservative 'mens group' retreats<p>It's dark.
I feel like Instagram was always like Maxim or Cosmopolitan magazine. Lifestyle marketing to people looking for what to buy to be cool. Guess I can see Skymall too.
Everything I've bought from an Instagram ad was easily-breakable, not as described, and shipped from an Asian country (to the US), or never arrived.
Is it the app that shows ads? I just checked Instagram for the first time in a week, and I made it all the way down to where I’d left off without seeing a single ad.<p>This is using the website on an iPad, with no ad blocker or anything.<p>If it’s just the app, then no worries. I gave up trying to use it on my phone because the photos and text are just too small to see and they go out of their way to make sure you can’t zoom or change the font size to something legible. Its just way more pleasant on a tablet or desktop.
I clicked all the conservative sites, I clicked all liberal ads,all Chinese ads, all Spanish ads, all rich people ads. I'm a Mexican drug cartel Trump supporter who speaks Chinese according to IG.
The one SkyMall i remember from a US flight ages ago was one for shoes with springs built into the heels which claimed they would make you walk faster. Deciding whether the whole magazine was a witty caricature of US capitalism or honest advertising took me a while. I then decided to keep the magazine as a souvenir but have unfortunately lost it since.
The thing I hate about Instagram is how lenient they are on nude pics. While Facebook has a strict policy, on Instagram a lot of celebrity content is borderline porn.