How much crap do you really think you generate each day ? #digitaldebri
There, I used a Hashtag, and that in itself is a form of Digital Debri.
What is a hashtag? good question, lets Hashtag it... #Hashtag
And if you click on that what happens?
Lets try this link instead
Holy shit, thats ugly, there must be a better way to reference this? One day I will figure it out...
But before a formal definition of digital debri... lets just look at some.
Facebook - My first foray into the digital landscape of public voyerism, and has taught me well. To advertise, or not advertise is always the question, and each platform, and the internet itself, at the hand of Google, has its own way to give you what you want, wether you want it or not, and this we can leverage to our own demise. Facebook, like a Hashtag, has a way of filtering base on your preferences listed, and your actions recorded.
Lets look at a paid ad that just "Popped up" on my Facebook account randomly while scrolling through shit.
<iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpermalink.php%3Fstory_fbid%3Dpfbid0jSLvQkmkqucNsmyZJovt7nU48e82C8TU3pb6eH87gZMd56FSyND6Wcujh4DcnozVl%26id%3D100070738132465&show_text=true&width=500" width="500" height="732" style="border:none;overflow:hidden" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; web-share"></iframe>
Ya thats ugly too, so you may want to just find a post on your facebook page and follow thru.
So here is a guy, who comes up with an idea, creates a web page, and then wants to promote. So one way to do that is to create a Facebook page and post some videos to hook you to got to his site... cool. This one happens to be a paid ad, but it doesn't have to be. It has a short hook video, embelleshing something that you want, get rich quick, bigger penis, smaller but (for the girls) and in this case, better health from stretching. So you click, join, and your hooked. This my friends, is but one form of Digital Debri. The good kind, the kind we want to create, but there is also the other kind.
But lets stay on topic... so how does Facebook know to put this ad in front of you? Now we get into ad choices. Pick a paid for ad, and click the three dots ... in the upper right. Scroll to "why am I seeing this" The advertiser in this case, sets the parameters of the types of people they want to target, this is the Advertisers choices. Click on Advertisers choices and on the bottom click, See ad details in the Meta Library. Now you see info about this ad, how long it will run, the platforms that it is advertised on, (Facebook, Instagarm, and Messenger, are all Facebook ad platforms)
https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?id=1492459911547404 - this is the actual ad I have used
and now click on About ads and data use, and scroll down
Oh my... they mine every bit of information they can collect, to taylor an ad to the desired audience... you.
Your location via ip address, your activity across multiple platforms, your clicks with other business's, and on other websites... and how do they know all this? Cookies is one way, and we will get into that later. These "Other web sites" collect info based on cookies that you have agreed to, and send the informaiton to suppliers, and ad sites such as Facebook, and adsence.
And what can happen, and has happened to me, is because of all this #Digitaldebri that I have supplied, a host of similar ads flooded my account. All for the same bozos that run an internet get rich quick pyramid scheme. They convince people to pay for a course, that teachs you if you run Facebook and Google ads, falsely promoting their training, you will get rich... ya, i've heard all of it before, no thanks.
So how did I make it stop? I went into ad prefernces, and tried to change what I didn' want to see, but it didn' work... why ?
"You can also browse topics you were added to based on your activity under Ad topics advertisers can use to reach you and choose to see less of the ones you aren’t interested in."
But if you happen to be a teen... oh thats another story...
Because you can't completely opt out of ads... sneaky bastards... #sneakybastards
But, what you can do... is poison the water... I went into my personal data and made myself undesirable. I move to Warsa Poland, I became 105 years old, or you could try becoming 18 again, but you may run into age restriction problems, you see Facebook cannot show certain types of ads to teens, aka guns, sex, sugar coated cereals, but cigaretes and dope are ok. #dopeisok
Now back up a couple of spots with the left arrow, back to accounts center Profiles, and click on Your Information and permissions and access your information. And there it all is, pages and pages of digital debrit, collected from you, used to Facebooks advantage, all designed to get your to BUY BUY BUY... but isnt that to our advantage if we want someone else to buy what we have to sell ?
Are you starting to understand what Digital Debris is? And this is only Facebook.
This ad started on Dec 5th, but we don't know how long it will run, doesn't say, but rest assured when they stop paying, poof... the ad is gone.
Now what about non paid ? Find a post that has been "suggested for you" which just means that facebook looked thru your prefeences and thinks you might be interested in this. you will see an option to Join this group, or page. Now click on the three dots ... and click Hide post, then manage your Feed.
So you have a few options here, but still not many, you can reduce, but not eliminate the content you recieve. But you can eliminated some unwanted traffic snooze, etc.
And how has this helped? Well, I started a facebook group, not a page, but linked a page of the same name calle JHPE Jensen Healey Parts Exchange
And after 3 years, my little group hit 1000 members, now ok thats no viral, but I didn't lift a finger to advertise, Facebook did it for me, word of mouth, search's etc. And you have to think there were only 10,000 of these cars made, and maybe a third still exist, and about 1500 are still on the road... so thats not bad. What if my topic was something else, such as retiring at 60 and exploring the world, all with a passive income stream to back you up, and then, of course, there is driving around in your Jensen Healey sports car.
So there is a good side, and a bad side to Digital Debri, both of which we will explore in later chapters.
Bye for now...