Removing the ability to opt-out of ad personalization based on your Reddit activity, except in select countries.
Reddit requires very little personal information, and we like it that way. Our advertisers instead rely on on-platform activity—what communities you join, leave, upvotes, downvotes, and other signals—to get an idea of what you might be interested in.
The vast majority of redditors will see no change to their ads on Reddit. For users who previously opted out of personalization based on Reddit activity, this change will not result in seeing more ads or sharing on-platform activity with advertisers. It does enable our models to better predict which ad may be most relevant to you.
edit: updated link to old.reddit.com
It’s not an exploitation for monetary gain, it’s an exchange of services. Do you think those massive servers they got are running for free? Aside from hardware, facilities and electricity, they have to pay programmers, accounting, management, cleaning services, etc. etc.
People have to get over the fact, that this is how the world works - and also the only way the world as we know it can work.
The healthcare industry is not providing you any service by buying your personal data and using it to determine that your rates should be extortion-level high. It doesn’t matter that some companies are benign in their usage of your data, because there are organizations who have incentives to act on that data in ways that benefit them, directly at your expense. Do you understand what I’m saying?