Technology
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Yeah, meanwhile they are getting increasingly more invasive with their own ads right in my inbox. They even put "unread" ad emails down in the middle of my inbox which is like torture for my clean inbox OCD brain.
... Wait, seriously? That sounds insane.
It's really irritating. They have had ads in the inbox for a long time, and at some point they started looking exactly like emails, but they were a slightly different shade and were grouped at the top.
Recently they started just strewing them about the top 50 mails that show in your inbox. And you can click them to clear them but they just come back.
It's terrible.
That's honestly so bad. I wonder why I haven't noticed this? Presumably it doesn't happen on paid / institution accounts? I do have a garbage gmail for junk mail, but maybe that's all spam anyway so I haven't noticed... Or maybe on the web interface ad blockers get rid of that trash. I'd be horrified if they started actually making them e-mails and sending them over IMAP, though.
God, yeah I don't think they come through on imap. I don't see them on mobile either, only on the web interface.
Honestly, this reminds me that using an ad-blocker is kind of problematic in the sense that you will accidentally direct people to websites that have a bunch of ads without realizing what other people are going through. I mean, obviously I wouldn't give up the ad blocker, it's just unfortunate when you realize something is way worse for most people and you didn't even notice.
I feel like Google is taking their first real steps into enshitification. I didn't mind them having a near monopoly over the services I used when those services were far and above better than the alternatives.
Recently I switched to Firefox because of the impending ad/privacy nightmare, even though my UX has been worse with Firefox. I switched to DuckDuckGo because Google searches are shittier and more ad filled than ever. It seems like I'll stop using my Gmail soon too.
It's been a long slow spiral for years now IMO. We're just finally starting to feel the effects in tangible ways.