this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2026
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186
When did Google get so f-ing weird? (sancho.bearblog.dev)
submitted 6 days ago by muelltonne@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 17 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Ad companies earn money by selling your attention.

Other people in your lives, like friends, absorb a lot of your attention and that's a potential source of revenue.

All they need to do is replace your friends with a chatbot and they have a new way to sell access to you.

"Hey I'm here if you need someone" responses to searches indicating a potential emotional vulnerability are incredibly slimy and manipulative for blatantly financial purposes.

Google isn't much different than romance scammers trolling the Internet for vulnerable people to groom for cash.

Pretty gross

[–] one_old_coder@piefed.social 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The CEO of the biggest French TV channel said in 2004:

What we sell to Coca-Cola is available brain time (time when the brain is available)

Shitty translation but source in French (it has its own article FFS!): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temps_de_cerveau_humain_disponible. He explicitly said that he was not selling to viewers but to advertisers, before the internet became mainstream.