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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   2842 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 25, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Essentially, I've developed a belief that everyone is going to be surveilled to the maximum extent possible, and that surveillance is going to be used in all the conventionally dystopian ways

Yes, but... we're talking about surveillance used for ads for three decades now, and the ads targeting is still utter crap. I mean, they are threatening me with personally targeted ads for all this time, and I am sure by now they must have all the most intimate data about me, but do I ever get even remotely relevant ads? Heck no. I get the same liberty-biberty utter crap as everybody else. I don't know what they are using all that info for, really. Maybe it's for thought police (I must have a real fat file there if so...)

I get targeted ads that aren't even in one of the top ten most spoken US languages, in addition to the usual targeted ads for senior citizens and other groups I'm not a part of. The algorithm just hallucinates and misfires all the time.

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