Title: Hi HN, hope this topic is ok. I&#x27;m looking for commentary or advice from readers familiar with ad systems.<p>A few years ago I got involved with the wrong wealthy, connected crowd and many weird&#x2F;violent things happened. The story is strange, so people assume mental illness. I&#x27;m seeing a counselor, taking pills that don&#x27;t seem to help except make me fat and sleepy, and doing my best to get back to dev work before my funds run out.<p>I wanted to talk about my internet experience, though. I used to get ads for food, clothes, consumer tech. Now I get strange ads which are really not helping my situation.<p>On Twitter, ad with only a few views about &quot;losing a game, checkmate the cost is your soul&quot;.<p>On IG, which I use to look at cat pictures and my friends, I get ads for Freemasonic end-of-life care, occult ritual materials, bizarre poetry sometimes containing my name&#x2F;usernames, artwork with the tagline &quot;Maybe you aren&#x27;t paranoid and people are following you ;)&quot;, going blind, car accidents, ALS, cancer, organ failure. Or, my personal favorite when I&#x27;ve managed to distract myself from my troubles for a few hours, paraphrased &quot;DID SOMETHING EXTREMELY BAD HAPPEN TO YOU AND YOU CAN&#x27;T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT?&quot;. I usually see that one multiple times a day.<p>I&#x27;ve shown these ads to other people; I don&#x27;t have any history of seeing physical things others don&#x27;t. I try to scroll past them fast but usually still see what they say. I usually don&#x27;t take screenshots because I don&#x27;t want the pause to register as engagement.<p>I get that most people would just ignore this stuff. I would have in the past. I don&#x27;t know how to explain the change in perspective after you&#x27;ve been in life-threatening situations, had your windows smashed, or had weird totems left in your yard, etc etc. It&#x27;s not a stretch to think &quot;maybe this IS relevant to me, or a message warning me: bad thing going to happen!&quot;. Regardless, I want to avoid interacting with content like this.<p>I have long been opted out of search history or ad personalization on G&#x2F;FB&#x2F;AMZN&#x2F;Twitter&#x2F;Instagram&#x2F;Verizon, and have repeatedly clicked &quot;hide ad - irrelevant or not interested&quot;. &quot;Why am I seeing this ad?&quot; says &quot;(wide age group) in your area&quot;, yet I&#x27;ve asked and my peers don&#x27;t get ads like this.<p>I think I&#x27;m privacy savvy somewhat. Logged out, incognito&#x2F;Ublock&#x2F;Ghostery. Few apps, all permissions denied. DDG. Unique usernames, lurking or throwaways. No prescription rewards. I only visit a few websites. I don&#x27;t share my computer. No other devices listening in the house.<p>The only information leaks I can think of are: 
* credit card billed for telehealth
* short text journal on dropbox
* friends may have discussed me&#x2F;topic in their chats
* a friend asked on Messenger why I disappeared, I said something like &quot;I might have schizophrenia. Some violent situations happened and I&#x27;m struggling now.&quot;<p>I know, Messenger wasn&#x27;t E2E, but I didn&#x27;t realize it might flag me so easily. I haven&#x27;t done anything else to indicate my interest in this topic; it&#x27;s not like I&#x27;m posting in &quot;targeted person&quot; forums, buying anything other than groceries, or watching horror movies.<p>Even if the explanation is just &quot;machine learning black box parses chat, determines unlabeled cluster demonstrates increased engagement with thrilling, morbid, suggestive, edgy content&quot;, well, I explicitly rejected opting-in to that. The supposed &quot;opt-outs&quot; have little effect, at best hiding one specific ad but not actually updating to the point of &quot;I don&#x27;t want to see ads about PTSD, dismemberment, horror, paranoia, accidents, tragedy, eschatology, or the occult, please start showing me only normie ads again&quot;.<p>I&#x27;m not sure what to think at this point, short of going offline or quitting social media. I did that in the past but I am trying to keep my weak network alive. Anyway, I&#x27;m curious to hear if anyone has feedback or advice on this situation. Am I missing something, mistaken, doing something wrong? Thanks!
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