A community for those that would like to get away from Google.
Here you may post anything related to DeGoogling, why we should do it or good software alternatives!
Be respectful even in disagreement
No advertising unless it is very relevent and justified. Do not do this excessively.
No low value posts / memes. We or you need to learn, or discuss something.
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Why would anyone use this over Proton Mail or the gazillion alternatives if it treats people like shit.
These ads only appear in the "promotions" section of Gmail, the section that is by definition for advertising emails. It's not great, but this is the least intrusive place to put ads.
Whoa, there's remotely tech-savvy people who don't turn off 100% of that "new" inbox sorting stuff? Color me surprised.
That Social/Updates/Promotion shit is absolutely trash shit garbage useless. It does nothing to improve email experience. It exists to serve you ads.
As someone who enjoyed Google Inbox before they killed it, it hurts to read this comment.
That's weird, I feel like it does improve my experience. I like how it categorizes my emails.
It's been like that for a long time.
It's definitely getting far worse lately. It used to only be in promotions but now I'm seeing it in updates too. In promotions it's about 1 ad to every 2-3 emails now when it used to be 1-2 at the top and that's it
Maybe I’m missing something, but hasn’t this been the case since forever?
I mean, Google is an advertising company. I would be surprised if they didn’t serve ads in their free email service.
I've never in my life seen an ad in Gmail mobile app in-line as though it were something in your inbox. I get really frustrated at the indignance over "ad company does ads and you're mad" as if there's not a difference when things get escalated.
It's under the promotions tab. Been that way for a while. I just don't use that tab myself so I don't see it often.
They've been picking up the density, for sure. I think adblock has also frequently worked on the webUI if you've used firefox, i'm not sure if they've updated it to get around ublock.
FAANG and the other high-cap tech companies have been cashing in on their market dominance these last few quarters - they're all getting bad. That's not a good sign if you're an average joe; it means you'll be bombarded with tracking and ads (even more than now) AND I think it's a bad sign for market stability. People have been predicting another recession for a while, but that signal is getting louder I think.
were these not always in gmail?
Yes. They have always been a part of Gmail. Even back when Gmail was invite only they implemented ads (one of my accounts is from 2004).
I've never seen them and have been using it for close to 20 years now
They only show up if you use the tabs. And then I think they are only in Promotions.
Yes they've always been a thing in the promotions/else tabs, anyone who says they aren't around simply hasn't clicked those tabs or registered they existed (in fairness, everything in that tab is generally an ad)
They have been for years now.
alwayshasbeen.jpg
Wait until you see Yahoo mail.
Edit: Before you say nobody uses Yahoo mail, it's probably the 2nd most used after gmail at my school, afaik, I haven't met another person using protonmail.
Do you go to school in 1998?
It's only in the promotions inbox, which if Gmail is sorting correctly is just full of commercial spam anyways. Doesn't really impact the experience for me since I rarely ever check it
Turn off your promotions inbox and only have a main inbox and you don't get ads
Yes it is. It is malware at this point. (It’s trying to trick you into clicking ads.) If I can invite you to try Port87, it’s an email service that I wrote that does the opposite. (Keeps spam out of your inbox, rather than inserting spam into it.)
Full disclosure: I developed and run Port87, and as such, have a financial interest in it.
Y'all they have been doing this for literally years. Don't act surprised it's not fucking new.
Advertising company puts adverts in one of few products they didn't shutter two years in.
Years ago.
More at 11.
If the service is free, you are the product. It's not complicated.
Pay for email, get no ads.
That statement just makes all of FOSS sound bad, and then people have even less of an idea what alternatives they could be using
Looks like your email account is nothing but adverts anyway, so probably not a huge deal?
I remember seeing this at least more than 5 years ago, before discovering the benefits of FOSS.
Lol who the fuck uses the promotions tab?
You are just using Gmail poorly.
Like going to a shopping centre and complaining the stores have ads in front of their stores. There's legitimate concerns about Google and then there's just dumb users.
It is insiane to me that Google shows these ads to google one subscribers.
I already pay google hundreds of dollars a year, and have done so for years. then over the last 2 yesr they slowly started rolling out intrusive ads into my mobile Gmail app.
It was the final straw for me. I've started slowing migrating my email off Gmail, but my goodness is that ever a slow and painful process.
Use k-9 mail (its a good email client and it supports gmail)
That's what Google is
The only way to disable them is to disable the inbox sorting setting (where it sorts primary, promotional, and social). As it is, it only puts adds in the promotional inbox. The worst thing is, i swear it knows where your mouse is and re sorts your emails so an ad lands right below your mouse, increasing the number of ad clicks and the ad revenue. I've had this happen to be multiple times.
The real culprit here is BIMI and the Marketing folks.
This is just the beginning, with more mail providers probably joining in sooner or later.
Google has always done this. I wouldn't know though because I've turned off a lot of the personalization settings and always use adblocking DNS.
Yep, getting about time to move the rest of my email over to proton...
Adguard must block this because I've never seen these in my life
It sucks that Gmail is pretty much the best app that works with, well.. Gmail accounts. At least from what I’ve found. Especially with the 2FA thing where it asks you to press “yes” in Gmail after signing into Gmail from a different browser.