this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
85 points (89.0% liked)
Privacy
39370 readers
866 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It’s an interesting concept, but I’m not sure the payoff justifies the effort.
Even with AI-generated noise, you’re still being tracked through logins, device fingerprints, and other signals. And in the process, you would probably end up degrading your own experience; getting irrelevant ads, broken recommendations, or tripping security systems.
There’s also the environmental cost to consider. If enough people ran decoy traffic 24/7, the energy use could become significant. All for a strategy that platforms would likely adapt to pretty quickly.
I get the appeal, but I wonder if the practical downsides outweigh the potential privacy gains.
you guys are getting ads?
My entire family is ad free for years... with the exception in podcasts. I am tempted to block them too (is there a way now?) but still not too intrusive... it is a way for me to keep connected to the ad world anyways. Now, the moment they abuse them here tii... I'll find a way to block these.
I’m not, but OP would if they started opening up their IP and fingerprints to anyone who wants them, in order to inundate those parties with garbage data. Admittedly, I might be missing some clever part of their plan.
Getting more targeted ads is not really in your interest. That is an idea promoted by the ad people.
I’m not seeing the relevance of your comment
You said
Irrevant ads = less targeted ads. You seem to think this is a negative. I'm saying it is actually a positive.
Taken by themselves, yes you are correct. Less targeted is a positive. I would rather just not have the ads, which is where I am at now. So I don’t understand why I would give that up, which is what the OP’s strategy would seem to require.
No clever plan. Just picked up this idea and like to see different opinions from people maybe far more advanced in that field
Okay but irrelevant ads is the dream. I'd prefer not to get recommendations at all either. I'll hear from word of mouth what's worthwhile to watch, or I'll look for it myself. Recommendations consistently muddy things up, it makes all modern social media useless, I have no idea how people can put up with it.
I agree, which is why this approach to me seems ultimately counterproductive on an individual level.