| That page changes a lot rather quickly. I always use private browsing, and was not logged in at the time, so it would have only used my location when I viewed it. Though I did visit CaneTalk first so actually I guess it would have picked up on that. When you click the icon for more coverage under the top story for Rafael it's now in the "All coverage" section at the top of the right column in that section, which is four sections down the page. And out of curiosity, I decided to open a new browser where nothing is tracked, but my location, and it matches the one where I am not logged in. And then I viewed it when logged in and that page actually remains the same. All the pages have it in the "All coverage" section, but now it is the second from top in the right column. Like I said, it changes quick. (and just before posting this, half an hour after typing up here, it's now four articles down in the left column of that section) I was more curious so I compared other things to being logged in or not. If not logged in, there is a "More news" section. When logged in, that is a "For you" section. Local news is the same, so that is based on my IP address. "Picks for you" section is not populated when not logged in. "Your topics" section is always there, but must be based on other things as being logged in or not changes what is there. "Sources" changes on page refresh. It also says "Suggested for you" so that must be based on a variety of things. "Fact check" is the same when logged in and not. Same with "Beyond the front page". I've blocked certain things when logged in, like Fox News. I am often not logged in and see it, but I just ignore it. I can tell a Fox headline before I've seen the source. Social media is a problem. It has radicalized people to one ideology over another. Twitter is just Elon's playground now. Facebook doesn't care as much as they did in some past elections I think. And it's going to somehow get worse I'm sure. If you could spend a few minutes with each person who voted for the future president, you could probably get millions to understand why he shouldn't be the president. But those people never get the message. Their news and social media feeds are likely as close to 100% pro that guy. And throw in podcasts by a certain category of people. I get it the other way. On YouTube, I never get anything republican pretty much. A tiny fraction of a percentage maybe. It's all pro not that guy. I used to not mind knowing some of the other, but I just can't see stuff I know isn't true. I don't care if 70 million people believe the lie or just don't care and want to vote for change even though that guy hasn't ever put forward one single thing he'd do different, that isn't crazy. But social media is a real problem. Weather too on it. The more crazy it is, the more clicks it seems to get. And AI, that definitely has a lot of issues. It's nice to know you can turn it off. I actually turned it on when it was early on before they ever really rolled it out. It's gotten so much more annoying. It didn't show up much then. Now it's really there. You have to verify anything you see there as I have definitely seen obvious things wrong. I guess I've actually gotten to where I skip that section a lot and head down to the real links. That's crazy that your friend went through that. I block ads on my desktop computer. I keep them on at CaneTalk and HurricaneCity so I can see if the code conflicts with things, but otherwise I block ads unless I have to allow them on a site and I really want to use it. I use these ad blockers on Chrome and Firefox: https://adblockplus.org/ https://ublockorigin.com/ https://www.mcafee.com/en-us/safe-browser/mcafee-webadvisor.html Chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/adblock-plus-free-ad-bloc/cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ I see that Chrome is going to make some changes that may break some older addons, perhaps because they don't want people to block ads as easily. So I might have to make a browser change eventually. I haven't need to, but uBlock Origin Lite might be something I need to switch to in the future: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh As with anything, there are often privacy risks, so people should make their own decisions on what they want to install. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAfee_SiteAdvisor I will also say that McAfee WebAdvisor is annoying in that occasionally it asks if you want to switch your search to Yahoo. It's a free addon, so that's how they make money. |