Reddit is Removing Ability to Opt Out of Ad Personalization Based on Your Activity on the Platform
upstart writes:
Reddit is removing ability to opt out of ad personalization based on your activity on the platform:
Reddit said Wednesday that the platform is revamping its privacy settings with an aim to make ad personalization and account visibility toggles consistent. Most notably though, it is removing the ability to opt out of ad personalization based on Reddit activity.
The company said that it will still have opt-out controls in "select countries" without specifying which ones. It mentioned in a blog post that users won't see more ads but they will see better-targeted ads following this change.
"Reddit requires very little personal information, and we like it that way. Our advertisers instead rely on on-platform activity-what communities you join, leave, upvotes, downvotes, and other signals-to get an idea of what you might be interested in," Reddit said.
The company is essentially removing the option to not track you based on whatever you do on Reddit.
[...] The company noted that ad-limiting controls will possibly show you fewer ads from mentioned categories if the toggles are turned off, but won't possibly filter out all ads. Reddit justified this by saying it uses manual tagging and machine learning to label ads, so there is a chance that it is not 100% accurate.
[...] The social platform has made several changes to increase monetization. It infamously made changes to its data API terms that led to many third-party clients shutting down and subreddits protesting inretaliation. Last week, it rolled out a new creator rewards program to incentivize people to post more and better content on the platform. But it also introduced a change that made it easier for users to purchase Gold rewards.
In an interview with The Verge in June, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman responded to IPO rumors and said "Getting to breakeven is a priority for us in any climate."
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