Twitter does this. Ads are the exact same format as posts, with the exception of a subtle 'Ads' label in the upper right. Of course everyone reads from left to right, so you can't really skim your feed without having your mind hijacked by at least the ad headline.
Even more insidious on Twitter: actual user posts (videos specifically) being promoted into your feed, with no ad label. However, the actual ad (which is not particularly well disclosed) is the pre-roll ad on the video - the user post is just the vehicle to do so. [0]
In your feed, it is indistinguishable.
Because I have Mr Beast blocked, I kept on getting posts from BANG! Showbiz, because the video selection available to Twitter isn't particularly high quality.
Tabloids like the National Enquirer were known for this but it was originated much earlier by far.
With something like reddit when it starts taking place where it never was before, you're supposed to be convinced you are getting the same thing you have been getting all along, even though it's not always the case any more.
Reminds me a bit of how it was before Whole Foods went public. They were a local Texas healthy market with upscale tendencies and some of the products were outstandingly well-sourced and completely world-class. Especially the minority of imported goods, or most of them wouldn't have even been there. One day some of those fancy European lines began to be replaced systematically with lesser alternatives and newly emerging house brands. They already had a few stores by then, not just the first two in Houston and Austin. The replacement products were not shabby, they were above average but nowhere near world-class most of the time, and this action was scattered throughout the store.
Before too long I found out they were going to go public, that was an IPO I did make decent money on. Co-incidentally that was one I had to inform brokers about, not the other way around.
OTOH, my Whole Foods shopping has gradually dwindled since before the 21st century, to almost nothing by now, an average of zero trips per month.
The more subtle the deception, sometimes the more annoying it can be.
There's a great timeline[1] showing how Google transitioned from the 'don't be evil' company to what it is today. Page and Brin at Stanford[2] laid into the fundamental problem of mixed motives that advertising-funded search engines have (see "Appendix A: Advertising and Mixed Motives").
Reddit and twitter aren't search engines, but they're dealing with related issues: the incentive to deceive visitors of their sites in order juice ad effectiveness and boost profits.
This is me. I blocked so many that nowadays all I get are fake marijuana ads and sex toy ads.
No I don't regularly smoke or otherwise imbibe weed and I definitely don't do stuff that would link me with a need for sex toys lol. And judging by the replies I see to those tweets it's happening to other users too.
Sometimes I wonder if targeted ads are just a giant hoodwinking by big tech over retail businesses. I constantly get youtube ads in languages I don't speak, for tampons or bras (I'm a man), or of musicians in genres I don't listen to. These all seem like extreme table-stakes targeting that can often be inferred from the singular video I'm watching alone, not even including my watch history.
I literally click "allow all" to tracking cookies everywhere. I also get completely inappropriate ads e.g. in languages I don't speak, for services to sell cars (I don't own a car) etc.
They're now making it so you can't block the account that posted the ad, instead you can just say "I don't like this ad" - which still results in the same ad being shown regardless.
I'm still only seeing this on some ads; not sure if it's a gradual rollout or A/B testing. Either way, I'm sure it won't be too long before it's all ads being served like this :(
Text seems like a much more difficult medium to bring ads in such that it feels ‘right’ while still being noticed. YouTube is effectively analogous to burying the ad Indicator late in the reading cycle by not indicating to you which video is going to have an ad when you read the thumbnail.
From my perspective since the ad cannot be skipped the ad is not separate from the video runtime experience behind the thumbnail - except in your reception of it.
Also another notable indicator of the coupled relationship between ad and video, being demonetized hurts the videos exposure.
> Of course everyone reads from left to right, so you can't really skim your feed without having your mind hijacked by at least the ad headline
This is an interesting perspective I hadn't thought of. I wonder if would be possible to use custom CSS to move that label to the left instead of the right? It wouldn't be a replacement for blocking ads outright, but it also feels like it might be something that would be harder for them to outright prevent.
