Why would anyone use this over Proton Mail or the gazillion alternatives if it treats people like shit.
this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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DeGoogle Yourself
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The only way to disable them is to disable the inbox sorting setting (where it sorts primary, promotional, and social). As it is, it only puts adds in the promotional inbox. The worst thing is, i swear it knows where your mouse is and re sorts your emails so an ad lands right below your mouse, increasing the number of ad clicks and the ad revenue. I've had this happen to be multiple times.
Yep, first thing I do whenever I add an account to Gmail is disable inbox sorting — presto, zero ads. This has been going on for years, but if OP just made a new Gmail account for the first time since 2013ish, it could be the first time they've seen the ads. Feels bad.
If they were really doing this it'd probably be considered fraud.
Clicks need to be real and organic and placing something so a person accidentally clicks it intentionally when they sell the ads would be fraudulent.
But good luck proving it if so.
If you have a Gmail account with promotional emails, go into your promotional inbox and just mouse around a little bit near the top 10 emails. You'll most likely see it move the ads around
I have the promotional section and actual email from companies are there, but no ads from Google. Maybe it's not allowed in Canada?
Nice! Maybe so.
That's called a dark pattern, and Google has been gaining a reputation for using them. I totally believe it
Dark pattern, i learned something new today, thank you. Using that term had led me to others who notice it as well.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31314672
Glad to help, and it goes the other way too - teaching others the concept spreads the ability to notice it
Seeing as you saw fuckery afoot before you were primed to see it, I doubt I need to sell you on the importance of spreading the concept