[alphakappa]

Google products have been incorporating a frustrating amount of dark patterns. In gmail for example, if you load one of the smart inbox tabs, it shows the rows of unread emails at the top. Right when you attempt to click on the top row, it rearranges the rows to show a few rows of ads instead (and the ads are fairly indistinguishable from the unread emails) so you end up unintentionally opening an ad.

Now, there’s no good reason for this loading pattern - since they intend to show the ads, they could have allocated a few rows, shown a loading skeleton, and then asynchronously loaded ads and emails in their expected place. Instead they now get a ton of extra ad clicks, but I wonder how happy their advertisers are to pay for these unintended clicks.

[mark_l_watson]

Wait, I am curious: you see ads on GMail? I haven’t seen ads in many years. What email client do you use? web app, phone app?

[tristan957]

I can't recall seeing ads on the Android app, but there are definitely ads in the web client. The ads must do a very good job of disguising themselves if you haven't noticed them. I have moved most of my email to ProtonMail. So much nicer paying for that from a company that respects me rather than using a free product from a company who has no other purpose than to drive ad revenue.

[travv0]

I also haven't seen an ad on the Gmail web client in years. Maybe because I pay for extra storage through Google One?

Edit: It looks like it doesn't happen in the primary tab and I have all the other tabs disabled which would explain it.

[sjroot]

I’ve never seen ads. I believe the difference (and potential explanation as to why GP hasn’t seen any either) is that my account is through google workspace.

[l33tman]

The ads are in the android app if you select a "smart" tab, like the Social or Campaigns (and I pay for google one, still get those ads). Fortunately I'm never in those tabs on the mobile client.

[lordgrenville]

Happens in the Android app too, just not in the "Primary" tab. So annoying.

[coremoff]

the ads are displayed in the smart inbox tabs; if you have turned this off, you won't see ads

[alphakappa]

Correct. The smart inbox puts in ads. As in the YouTube example here, it's fairly unpredictable if they appear, and when they do - how they appear.

[12ian34]

this surprised me so much I had to read it twice before realising that it's probably because I've used uBlock since I can remember