Ask HN: How does the Reddit iOS app get its content for targeted ads?

2 points by randomthought12 3 years ago | 4 comments

Hello,

something extremely weird happened yesterday and I would like to understand it.

A colleague came at my desk and we discussed his new "Nike air force 1" shoes. There was a lot of trolling about them for 5-10 minutes (they are the ones with the purple things on the sides).

At that time, I didn't know anything about these shoes, had never seen them nor look for information about them in Google/Bing or any other Apple products.

One hour later, I saw an ad about these specific shoes on the Reddit iOS app. Since I never wrote anything about them, could it be that the Reddit iOS app used my iPhone's microphone (locked and in my pocket) to get such information?

Where does the Reddit iOS app get the ads shown to users?

Thanks.

raxxorraxor 3 years ago |

I doubt it did but it could if the app had access to the microphone. Apps to browse content usually try to extract as much data as possible from the phone of the user. I don't believe it goes that far in this case though.

I would guess that Nike just advertises broadly so that there doesn't need to be a trigger. Would fit right into the advertising of Advanced Publications and this may have been a coincidence. Perhaps send any messages containing it? Or it is just a frequency illusion. Do you ever look at ads? Are you sure you haven't ever seen the ad before? Why did your colleague buy the shoes? And who in the world talks about shoes anyway?

randomthought12 3 years ago | |

I know that we are spied on whatever we do online, I am trying hard to get rid of all ads with extensions/addons/pi-hole but some of them still persist in phone apps.

If it is a coincidence, it is a scary one for sure. I never click on ads but I see them when I scroll the Reddit/Twitter apps. Those are the two main apps where I spend time mindlessly scrolling. I don't have Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Snapchat, Tiktok, ...

The usual ads I see on reddit are technical ads (programming tools or services), cryptocurrency or cyber security stuff.

I am absolutely sure that I've never seen the ad before. Twitter is only cyber security stuff since that's the only topic I follow and I don't have fitness related stuff on reddit.

I don't usually talk about shoes but when I saw these horrendous shoes, I had to troll him a little bit.

Anyway, I didn't consider the possibility of a coincidence so thanks. It could also be location tracking if he was connected on the reddit app. There was another colleague who liked these ugly shoes so maybe the two of them nearby and location tracking could result in this ad. I hope it is something like that.

raxxorraxor 3 years ago | | |

> but when I saw these horrendous shoes

Had to look them up and you are correct. Will take a look at ads now.

Perhaps you are in some advertising group with your friend and see it because he bought them. This could have been associated by him being a contact. Could also be another app that has access to your contact list that shares ad agencies with reddit.