Political ads running on site

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For a community that strives to not be explicitly political, it's a little jarring to have Charlie Kirk showing up in the banner ads. (An extremely political right-wing political talking head in the US.)

Is there a way to tell your ad vendor to not include political ads? Because 2024 is going to be a bumpy road and I suspect we won't want the resulting ads showing up here.

 

[Reynard]

For a community that strives to not be explicitly political, it's a little jarring to have Charlie Kirk showing up in the banner ads. (An extremely political right-wing political talking head in the US.)

Is there a way to tell your ad vendor to not include political ads? Because 2024 is going to be a bumpy road and I suspect we won't want the resulting ads showing up here.

I think it is based on your own "ad profile." I sometimes see ads for, shall we say, risque online retailers. It is jarring until I realize that I probably have some cookies in my system from said shops,

 

[Morrus]

As always, ads are individually served to you by Google based on what it knows about you. We don’t all see the same ads (I see lots of ads about dog toys, and don’t know who that person is and am unlikely to see ads about them). You can adjust settings in Google to determine how it uses your personal data, browsing history, etc. and what ads it shows to you.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Ew. I need to go pour bleach all over Google, then.

Thanks.

 

[Reynard]

Ew. I need to go pour bleach all over Google, then.

Thanks.

It is so hard to tell what is going to cause that sort of thing. I like D&D (obvs) and metal music (not exclusively) and video games and working out. Every once in a while after I follow my feed to an unknown to me content creator, I am suddenly getting ads for tactical hoodies, survivalist tools and anti-trans documentaries. It is infuriating.

 

[Blue Orange]

I've had this experience.

1. Clearing the browser history seems to help, for me at least. (I can always tell my history's gone generic when the sports ads appear. You might find an equivalent for you if you are a sports fan.)
2. Alternatively, you could make a habit of browsing lefty sites so the algorithm picks that up. Interestingly, this won't work for TikTok--it will happily serve you hard left and right-wing propaganda all day!
3. Some other browsers like Brave are better about storing data, I think.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I am happy to say that I have trained myself to not even look "over there" and I have no idea what ads run on my feed. (Your post had me look, and I was happy-ish to see that it was just some silly ad for a bank.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have two different Google accounts, one for work, one for my regular life. I think this is picking up the fact that my work email gets a lot of political emails for work reasons. (Yes, you should pity me for this.)

That said, Google doesn't seem to have a category for "politics" in their ad categories, so other than telling Google I didn't want ads for banks (?!), I'm not sure how much I accomplished going through the settings.

 

[Jahydin]

I have two different Google accounts, one for work, one for my regular life. I think this is picking up the fact that my work email gets a lot of political emails for work reasons. (Yes, you should pity me for this.)

That said, Google doesn't seem to have a category for "politics" in their ad categories, so other than telling Google I didn't want ads for banks (?!), I'm not sure how much I accomplished going through the settings.

I've noticed in my office I get targeted for what my coworkers are looking up too. For instance, we'll hire someone new who's really into archery and all of a sudden we're all seeing ads for bows and arrows. So maybe the same thing?

Haven't figured out if it's because we're running through the same "pipes" or because we all huddle are cell phones next to each other...

 

[Tonguez]

I think it is based on your own "ad profile." I sometimes see ads for, shall we say, risque online retailers. It is jarring until I realize that I probably have some cookies in my system from said shops,

really? all I'm getting is shoes, tropical holidays, clocks and kickstarters