Or my ad blocker for that matter. Sorry TV Tropes, I’ll miss you.
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
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I instantly back out then block that site from showing in my news feeds or whatever. I am absolutely done playing this game. America sucks so hard its vacuum has consumed every aspect of most people's digital life. Not just Americans either.
I used to do email marketing analytics for JP Morgan like 15 years ago and the amount of resources being thrown at gaining personal info then using that to trick people into clicking a fucking advertisement or affiliate link for fractions of a penny is disgusting. And they would have me use heat maps to see where people hover their mouse while reading their shitty newsletter so they could place a clickable link in that spot just so accidental click through numbers could be inflated. I even regularly changed the color of a banner or a text so slightly you couldn't perceive it because that particular shade of orange had more read time or clicks than the other with a subset of the targets.
I had massive spreadsheets with shit on people like food allergies, household populations, and how that related to clicks or opens and then target those people with a particular color or layout on the emails to increase the success of the campaign. All because they clicked "I agree".
Disgusting shit and that was 15 years ago. I didn't even live in the same country as the people I worked for and never once saw or talked to anyone I worked for. Good pay though.
That is the most horrifyingly dystopian shit I’ve heard all year man. And it’s been a hard fucking year for that shit. I don’t fault you for taking the money but I absolutely loathe what you’ve helped create.
I was just labor. I didn't do more than extract the data, compile it, then wait for the email telling me what color hex to put where and which group identifier to send it to. I wasn't as much of a thinker back then and one day I was looking at the data as I organized it and was wondering why the hell do they know John Doe has 3 kids, rents, and had a shellfish allergy?
Then I realized pretty quickly what my job really was. The real terrifying part was those spreadsheets just lived on my laptop. Not password protected or any proprietary software. Just Excel and gmail to send them to whoever I worked for so they could send me the next week's campaign layout. Then I built the emails, added the links, sent them off to thousands and thousands of people grouped by whatever standards had been set that week. More than that, I obviously used a software for mass emailing, but my list of recipients was just another spreadsheet with countless people's email, names, and phone numbers.
I now realize why these huge data beaches occur everywhere from these giant corporations. You think they've got "security" or whatever and they protect your info. In reality a 26 year old stoner with a MacBook used for watching porn and pirating movies and games using whatever basic ass free antivirus software has all of it in a folder, labeled email list, literally on his desktop with an unbreakable pin of 1234, being employed by people who have never seen, heard, or talked to.
And he doesn't even realize the implications of having this at all. I'd like to think things have gotten more strict with security and whatnot, but if that was true it wouldn't happen so often.
I am screenshotting and bookmarking this for next time someone ribs me for how mad i get over the incessant advertizing or the data harvesting. It is exhausting to be made felt like I'm overreacting when it should be the normal response for your own home and devices to be constantly raped by ad-gorithms. FUCK MARKETING.
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Wait, what? TV Tropes works without a hitch for me... (uBlock Origin)
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Might as well require a log-in with a free* account (No monetary payment required, please don't read the part about data sharing in the TOS).
"That thing you use for security? Disable it before you come in. Come on, live a little, huh? 😏 Nothing bad's gonna happen. Pinky swear."
I am clean, I swear.
"Security"
Amusingly I had to disable my vpn to post this
How odd. I have never heard of .world filtering based on VPN usage, although it's been some time since I used that instance regularly.
I can read without issue but more often than not posting comments or indeed posts fails unless I pause for 5 mins.
E. This went through without disconnecting as an example. Can't figure out if threshold a pattern
maybe the particular server of the vpn haz problems? have your tried switching that around?
In my experience, many Lemmy instances block what looks like bot traffic. I don’t think it’s as simple as VPN = blocked, but that’s probably one of the signals they pay attention to. I’ve noticed most comments will fail to post when I’m using Mullvad.
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That's how it works for me too...
Yeah. Never you mind where the fuck I'm actually from. You don't need to know. It's funny how badly you want to know though.
I have the same policy with sites that demand I turn off my adblocker
So, the problem with VPNs is that the cheap ones / resellers have known IPs.
So if you use them you get lumped in with all the people using them maliciously.
If you run a site with any kind of desirable the content the crawlers and scripters hound you endlessly and eventually if you don't want it to be your full time job you just end up banning the entire IP/ ASN that the malicious traffic is coming from.
It sucks and if anyone has any solutions I'm all ears.
first, the ips of all vpn providers are known, the problem with the cheap/free ones is that they spy on you.
instead of blocking ips use proof of work for those sus ips https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis
(it's the anime girl that checks if you are a bot. :3)
it drives the cost of crawling at scale high up while being minor for individual, "legit" requests
all the cool kids are using it
Governments could actually shut down the scammers. They know who and where but they don't act.
From visiting Core77 and being active in the forums every day to haven't gone on once overnight
I have them in RSS and have no problem opening their links over Mullvad
Might be my browser. Do you access them off Firefox? Site crashes on me every time since they must've updated something over the summer
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And then there's the mysteries like OneDrive, where I cannot upload without VPN. Either it keeps failing or it's slow.
With a graph, here's what it does without and with VPN, and eventually fails without one:
ISP problem. It means they are blocking stuff.
Joke's on you when their website is wrapped in an app that you have to use.
Happened to me recently with the app I use to buy train tickets.
On iOS I go into App Privacy Report and grab all those domains and put them into Tailscale to route through the correct exit nodes.
Usually it’s just one or two domains like api.example.com, CDNs typically don’t care and I block the other third-party shit via DNS (Blocky).
Yeah there's always a workaround. It's just annoying.
Stuff like this shows you who is just there to sell your data, and not sell you an experience.
I swear I saw this exact post from the same handle but the profile pic was vegeta.
This is sort of amusing because you need to disable your VPN to make an account on WAFRN last I checked.
But then how will you apply for a passport to emigrate* when they start making applications online only and probably require facial scans using your phone?
(*I'm assuming you're like already inside those countries that made such laws)
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Sadly, it's food delivery I've had to add exceptions for :(
Justeat and its local variations (liferando, pyszne) work just fine over VPN and can even be paid with gift cards
Not for me it doesn't. I don't believe it can detect you're using a VPN, I just think it's blocked all the IP addresses used by my provider
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You’re ordering food delivery through a VPN? Why?
I do ALL my Internet activity via a VPN. Why? No particular reason, other than I like privacy
I’ve done it several times (though I prefer pickup).
DoorDash isn’t known for being an ethical company so I don’t share my location with them, and I purposely use Apple Pay because like NFC it generates a one-time card number with only enough funds for the transactions.
Thankfully DoorDash has never denied me service even while ordering from what looks like across the planet to it.
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I really want to take this same approach but so many websites and apps that I use for shopping for things like groceries now just cease working unless I either manually force cycle through them, or just temporarily disable them. I really hate it.
there's always the old walk into the store
but yeah the convenience of pickup is nice
On iOS I go into App Privacy Report and grab all those domains and put them into Tailscale to route through the correct exit nodes.
Usually it’s just one or two domains like api.example.com, CDNs typically don’t care and I block the other third-party shit via DNS (Blocky).
Is there a guide you could point me to on how to do all that? I’ve not used Tailscale or “routed any exit nodes” before.
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