this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
102 points (97.2% liked)

Showerthoughts

34398 readers
909 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Otherwise, I can't explain why they don't take it more seriously to stand up to bots. Even more so with meta and their eagerness to put in more accounts pretending to be human to "cover the friend market".

Besides, what's to stop them? They are the ones who control the information and surely they know perfectly well which accounts are authentic and which are bots. Maybe even several of those accounts are controlled directly by them and they use them to inflate the statistics to charge advertisers even more.

Or maybe I'm jut tripping...

top 19 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 26 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

They're definitely lying about the reach of their ads, this already came up a couple of times during elections. Though in the case of elections, it's more about the precision of their targeting - apparently, a lot of the time they weren't even able to precisely target the population of specific election districts. Or maybe just unwilling, who knows.

I'm also pretty sure that a lot of advertising clients are not happy that they're sharing ad space with porn ads and scam ads.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 13 points 2 days ago (2 children)

m also pretty sure that a lot of advertising clients are not happy that they're sharing ad space with porn ads and scam ads.

I love how these parasites think that their slop is above porn and gambling 🤡

[–] Holyginz@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

At least porn is honest in what its providing.

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 days ago

still haven't figured out we're all whores in a capitalist society

In their defense, they were probably lying before the advent of so-called AI as well.

[–] MushuChupacabra@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They are one hundred percent ripping off their advertisers.

Consider how advertising on any of those platforms looks compared to five or ten years ago.

Never liked ads, but have experienced a sharp drop in my tolerance, based exclusively on the nonstop ratcheting up of ad delivery.

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Consider how advertising on any of those platforms looks compared to five or ten years ago.

How does it look? I haven't braved the web without an adblocker in years.

[–] bluesheep@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Annoying as shit. My girlfriend doesn't have an ad-less youtube app on her phone, and whenever we watch a video on her phone I get genuinely annoyed by the ads.

I've offered to do it for her but so far she doesn't see the need to install one, but apparently youtube is pushing more ads cause she recently started complaining too.

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I really don't understand how so many people just put up with it. I actually helped an older relative with it a couple of months ago, he isn't even the tech-illiterate type. Mere weeks after that, he's back to using YouTube with ads.

[–] bluesheep@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago

In my case it's kind of my fault since I'm on iOS so I have to sideload uYou+, and sometimes I forgot to refresh the app which means I have to connect my phone to my pc and refresh it manually, which put her off of a third party app.

But she has an android phone and, if all is still well and good in phone world since after I switched to Apple, she wouldn't have to deal with that, which I told her. But so far she's not interested and like you said, I have no idea why she puts up with it.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Also the incentives of this setup are pretty screwed up. The advertising agency gets money as long as they are able to convince the advertiser that their services are worth it. But how do you really measure that? Sure, we have lots of fancy tracking technology, but not all consumers click ads to buy stuff. Whats the role of those purchases? Who knows. The agency will undoubtedly claim that all the sales were a direct result of an advertising company, and they have every incentive to say that. Do they really have any incentive to be completely honest about the effectiveness of their ads. I doubt it.

[–] NONE_dc@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

It's just that, the way the market is run, there is no incentive to be honest with the data. If the line has to go up, it has to go up, even if it's an imaginary rise.

[–] Dragonstaff@leminal.space 3 points 2 days ago

Tracking ROI from advertising is pretty sophisticated. Ad agencies will be tracking conversions in most cases. Especially on FB, where you have people's real names and can track if someone who saw an ad bought through another platform.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Wouldn't shock me. But from memory advertising is paid based on clicks per view ratio.

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If one were the size of google, and lacked ethics, they could bot the clicks as well as the views.

[–] Arsecroft@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

google has ethics?

also, i think it would be more cost effective for them to just make the numbers up, no bots needed.

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago

The site itself might be tracking views, so might need it. Dunno how to make the bots not look like datacenter IP addresses though.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I thought they went by "impression" or whatever and that doesnt require a click?

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

I could be wrong but impression seems like something very easy to fake so as an advertiser you would like something more concrete then just 'We showed your ad X amount of times.'