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.
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 what they're A/B testing, like slightly different wording or different button colors.
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 wonder why they left the debugging stuff in live release builds. Common best practice for Android is to have a separate build flavor with debug settings and layouts, and make sure they aren't included in live builds.
I’d love to read a write up on how you did that. I wonder if it’s possible that one endpoint returns a chronological feed whereas another endpoint returns an algorithmic field?
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.
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.
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.
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.
At any rate, I suppose it's oddly reassuring Facebook is so inaccurate.
Facebook's ad market tools give advertisers plenty of power to choose who to advertise to. If advertisers didn't want your demographic cohort to see their ad they could easily filter you out. Rather than seeing this as inaccuracy, it might be more prudent to ask why they haven't. It's probably just that the advertiser hasn't configured their ad settings very well, but it's also possible that they believe skeptical people will return to their church in a crisis and they're building brand recognition or something.
> It's very rare when I see progressive churches advertise.
You’d just be setting your money on fire. You’re trying to find the people at the intersection of progressive attitudes and serious commitment to Christianity. Progressive churches have lower commitment because they have minimal to zero differences in morality with progressives who don’t go to church and they’re less likely to have children continue in the faith. Same phenomenon as how the Jewish assimilation treadmill goes Orthodox > Conservative > Reform > Secular > does not identify as Jewish.
I don't necessarily think you're experiencing an important flaw here.
I'd wager that the vast majority of people interacting with content related to evangelical Christianity are in the "pro" category, so people in the "anti" category are an acceptable false-positive.
For example, if I'm trying to sell something to evangelical Christians and 95% of my views are "pro" and 5% are "anti", that's still hugely valuable to me and something Facebook can charge a lot for.
Maybe FB could increase the price without the false positives, but neither they nor their advertisers care that much.
Sorry to sound stupid, but I live in the UK and have literally never seen an ad from a church (except maybe on a board outside). What is the purpose of the ad? What is their motivation?
"And thus not flood people who dislike a thing with ads promoting the thing."
But isn't that what these ads are about. They want to show the people who dislike a thing with ads promoting the thing so that hopefully one day they will like it.
Sure it could make you hate it more, but unconsciously or whatever, you will be affected.
I see ads for shoe brands I don't like or care about, but for sure, the next time I need to buy a pair of shoes, that brand name is on top of my mind.
I‘m a cyclist in an European city and in groups about making traffic better and safer for everyone. But the ads I get are all about cars, like you can only get around with a car, while that‘s the thing we are trying to fight. And this is not just on Facebook. I see this generalisation of topics everywhere, while they say they‘d need to track me to improve the ads. Bull.
If you were running these ad-campaigns, how en who would you target and what would be the revenue?
I think those ads could have a very good return, the more provocative the ad the more they will be talked/thought/bought, and that is the whole idea of advertising.
Sure the algos can always be better, but consider the possibility that conservative churches just spend absurdly, mind-boggingly large sums of money on fb advertising.
I get great ads on Instagram. Generally, they’re niche products related to my interests from small companies I’ve never heard of before.
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.
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.
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 only use insta in the browser on my phone, which is quite a nice watered down experience that doesn't show ads (even without an ad blocker) or annoying account suggestions.
i've never seen those ads before. aren't instagram ads tailored based on your browsing history? if anything, those ads may just be indicative of your recent interests.
My biggest problem with both Facebook and Instagram is that I feel completely out of control over what I see.
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.
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.
All in all, it feels like Facebook thinks I'm an idiot and treats me accordingly.
And maybe I am an idiot, since I've yet to figure out an alternative.
> All in all, it feels like Facebook thinks I'm an idiot and treats me accordingly.
This is the way of social media algorithms. I suspect it makes sense be cause the majority of users are indeed "idiots", in the sense of doing a poor job managing their subscription feeds and such. I'm sure they have tons of data showing how they improve user retention in aggregate by treating them like idiots.
But those of us willing to build and curate our own experience, we're the edge case not worth accommodating.
Nah, it’s not because they think you’re an idiot but because this way they can keep you longer in the website.
One clear example for me was when YouTube changed the homepage to show random videos instead of the subscriptions. My subscription videos run out, but random videos don’t. Same goes with unrelated sh*t every other social media companies show you.
Related: Twitter literally suggested a post under the topic: Hot dogs. [1] You can’t make this stuff up.
During election season I went through and blocked every forward source that wasn't highbrow, ie 99% of them. Unfollowed a few OCD people as well. Cleared things up a lot.
After the latest revamp my favs no longer showed in the timeline. Went in and unlikd then liked again, and now they are listed prominently. Sheesh.
>There is neither a way to avoid what I don't want, nor a way to ensure I see my friends' posts
There's both on Facebook. You can set it so you always see a person's posts and you can click on any post to see less of that type of content (or none from the poster).
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...
I really dislike the suggestion "just have better self control". It's you versus an army of machine learning experts all tuning algorithm on personal data about you to learn your weaknesses and bait you into spending more time on the app.
Blaming the consumer ignores the adversarial role that the apps play in our lives.
Some of the brightest minds and smartest people go to work for companies which spend every minute of their existence to figure out how to place an ad in front of our eyes for 1 more second.
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.
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 - https://www.google.com/search?q=wish+ads
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.
I honestly wonder whether the people who make these things are having the time of their lives or in some kind of idea-sweat-factory trying to come up with things all day and burning out quickly.
and there's a reason magazines are mostly irrelevant these days - we found new, better sources of entertainment. i'm not sure emulating magazines is a good goal for the medium that supplanted magazines.
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 you 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.
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"
[+] [-] grishka|4 years ago|reply
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 what they're A/B testing, like slightly different wording or different button colors.
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.
[+] [-] distances|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bat_sy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FearlessNebula|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 0x0nyandesu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Izikiel43|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dunnevens|4 years ago|reply
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] onion2k|4 years ago|reply
Facebook's ad market tools give advertisers plenty of power to choose who to advertise to. If advertisers didn't want your demographic cohort to see their ad they could easily filter you out. Rather than seeing this as inaccuracy, it might be more prudent to ask why they haven't. It's probably just that the advertiser hasn't configured their ad settings very well, but it's also possible that they believe skeptical people will return to their church in a crisis and they're building brand recognition or something.
[+] [-] barry-cotter|4 years ago|reply
You’d just be setting your money on fire. You’re trying to find the people at the intersection of progressive attitudes and serious commitment to Christianity. Progressive churches have lower commitment because they have minimal to zero differences in morality with progressives who don’t go to church and they’re less likely to have children continue in the faith. Same phenomenon as how the Jewish assimilation treadmill goes Orthodox > Conservative > Reform > Secular > does not identify as Jewish.
[+] [-] smt88|4 years ago|reply
I'd wager that the vast majority of people interacting with content related to evangelical Christianity are in the "pro" category, so people in the "anti" category are an acceptable false-positive.
For example, if I'm trying to sell something to evangelical Christians and 95% of my views are "pro" and 5% are "anti", that's still hugely valuable to me and something Facebook can charge a lot for.
Maybe FB could increase the price without the false positives, but neither they nor their advertisers care that much.
[+] [-] beardyw|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plater|4 years ago|reply
But isn't that what these ads are about. They want to show the people who dislike a thing with ads promoting the thing so that hopefully one day they will like it.
Sure it could make you hate it more, but unconsciously or whatever, you will be affected.
I see ads for shoe brands I don't like or care about, but for sure, the next time I need to buy a pair of shoes, that brand name is on top of my mind.
[+] [-] nedt|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djantje|4 years ago|reply
I think those ads could have a very good return, the more provocative the ad the more they will be talked/thought/bought, and that is the whole idea of advertising.
[+] [-] pestaa|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avalys|4 years ago|reply
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.
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.
[+] [-] dhosek|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawayswede|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] perardi|4 years ago|reply
https://imgur.com/a/SLrJaUJ
I am surprised by just how many ads for drugs I get.
They know their audience.
But still. Lots of ads for testosterone, growth hormone, and now ketamine.
[+] [-] mfgs|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] birdyrooster|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] novoblade|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Igelau|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forgotmypw17|4 years ago|reply
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.
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.
All in all, it feels like Facebook thinks I'm an idiot and treats me accordingly.
And maybe I am an idiot, since I've yet to figure out an alternative.
[+] [-] B-Con|4 years ago|reply
This is the way of social media algorithms. I suspect it makes sense be cause the majority of users are indeed "idiots", in the sense of doing a poor job managing their subscription feeds and such. I'm sure they have tons of data showing how they improve user retention in aggregate by treating them like idiots.
But those of us willing to build and curate our own experience, we're the edge case not worth accommodating.
[+] [-] perardi|4 years ago|reply
But a small workaround, if you are a member of any useful Facebook groups: there is a real, permanent sorting option.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/[groupid-goes-here]?sorting_...
Bookmark that with a group for a proper chronological view.
[+] [-] cunthorpe|4 years ago|reply
One clear example for me was when YouTube changed the homepage to show random videos instead of the subscriptions. My subscription videos run out, but random videos don’t. Same goes with unrelated sh*t every other social media companies show you.
Related: Twitter literally suggested a post under the topic: Hot dogs. [1] You can’t make this stuff up.
1: https://ibb.co/WpCXCxt
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|4 years ago|reply
After the latest revamp my favs no longer showed in the timeline. Went in and unlikd then liked again, and now they are listed prominently. Sheesh.
[+] [-] Tenoke|4 years ago|reply
There's both on Facebook. You can set it so you always see a person's posts and you can click on any post to see less of that type of content (or none from the poster).
[+] [-] endisneigh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abendy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Taek|4 years ago|reply
Blaming the consumer ignores the adversarial role that the apps play in our lives.
[+] [-] cratermoon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] busymom0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Crash0v3rid3|4 years ago|reply
Now, useless ads and inappropriate posts from random kids I have zero interest in seeing.
[+] [-] vmlinuz|4 years ago|reply
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.
Am I likely to be missing anything interesting by largely ignoring Instagram?
[+] [-] Kiro|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barrkel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] busymom0|4 years ago|reply
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.
https://mashable.com/deals/oct-11-shark-tank-bathroom-produc...
There's been many copy cats all of which have tons of sales:
https://www.amazon.com/illumibowl/s?k=illumibowl
[+] [-] fermentation|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aledalgrande|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exikyut|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agotterer|4 years ago|reply
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).
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.
[+] [-] pyrophane|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quartesixte|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylan604|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notatoad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sunspark|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Traster|4 years ago|reply
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"