You can turn off targeted ads on most platforms so the ads you get are useless.

But you are right, when searching for anti drinking info ads for drinking shouldn't appear. I seem to remember there was a alcohol shop that was giving discounts for drinks if you gave them your sober token things you get.

I had 2 interventions in my life and neither worked. In fact, they made it much worse for me.

I suggest that you go to AlAnon and learn a bit about alcoholism before trying anything (btw, AlAnon is not AA, but is a program to help non-alcoholics understand what they're dealing with.)

Your friend is lucky to have you. Don't give up on them. It truly is hellish, and they'll need your support.

Shit like this is why I use ad blockers and route all my home network traffic through a Pi Hole.

If Google gets their way with their evil "Web Environment Integrity" bullshit this is going to get so. Much. Worse.

I quit smoking years ago and I really felt like the world wanted me to quit. Indoor smoking at restaurants was being banned. No more smoking section on flights. Movies were no longer depicting everyone with a cigarette in their mouth all the time like they did in the 60s. Many hotels stopped offering smoking rooms. Nicotine patches and gum were available to help.

I felt like trends in the world were behind me and it helped.

Alcohol is a totally different story. Alcohol is not being banned. It is still something almost everyone does. It is allowed at restaurants and virtually everywhere else. Everyone I know drinks. They haven’t cracked down on advertising in the same way. Hotel rooms have booze in the room for you. Airlines bring you drinks. There are no OTC quitting aids.

If someone has an alcohol problem and needs to quit, they’re really going to have a much harder time than quitting smoking.

Happened to me when I quit drinking. It was so engaging. Suddenly every other ad online is for hard liquor, too drastic to have been a lot of coincidences lining up.

It's less Google fault directly, more that finding sobriety terms is part of the alcohol manufacturers SEO/ad words strategy. Which is absolutely disgusting.

I hope your intervention goes well, it wouldn't have worked well on me for sure so I hope your friend has more grace than I did when I was drinking.

Don't do one of those "5vs1" interventions! All it will do is make your friend think you are "ganging up" on him. Talk with him one on one, make your other friends do the same with some time in between.

Why privacy matters, reason #854203

Yeah I learned stuff was spying on my voice because I was talking to my wife about how I need to take a break from drinking for a bit to recalibrate my habits and then for several days literally nothing but alcohol ads. No searches were made.

If they can’t resist doing this then maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to advertise alcohol.

Your friend is lucky to have you. Good luck, I hope everything works out for the best.

Sorry for spamming, i already wrote this in response to another comment, but i kind of find this important for everyone:

First thing everyone should do on a new phone ( or old phone, any phone )

1. go to Internet & Network Settings

2. Enter "dns.adguard.com" for Private DNS

3. Profit: never see ads anywhere on your phone. Not in apps and in no browser.

It's as simple as that. That's all you need, in order too block ads globally.

Iirc there are different DNS servers from adguard with custom filters. Some are more strict and others more loose on the blocking.

This instruction is for Android, since it's what i use, but I'm sure, similar setting exists in iOS.

The level of advertising on the internet is why I haven't been without an adblocker since the early 2000's. And when the ads aren't displayed, you also get to see just how much god damn space is devoted to them, with all the now empty space left on any given page.

Switch to Firefox, duckduckgo, don't use google of at least turn off personalized ads

Just as a note to OP, some levels of alcohol addiction are so deep that they cannot be halted at once without risk to the addict’s health or even life. If you suspect your friend could be that far gone, it requires medical intervention.

Alcoholic here. Super bowl ads are toxic. All hail the protective ad blocker.

The amount of alcohol and gambling ads seem to have shot threw the roof over the last few months. I'm not a fan.

There’s actually a setting at least on Facebook to specifically disable alcohol and gambling based on some settlement a few years ago but they hid it really welll

"Why should I care about privacy? I have nothing to hide, who cares if they target advertising at me?"

Not to make light of your situation, but if anyone in the crowd has said this to themselves at some point, the answer to why they should care is "shit like exactly this." This is a prime example of "not illegal stuff to hide but targeted advertising actively making your life harder purposefully in an attempt to manipulate you into buying their products."

Take back your privacy, use alternate solutions and avoid shit tier companies that attempt to take it from you for their own financial gain, even at the expense of your own financial ruin. Make "unsecure" a black mark companies have to crawl their way out of or else their products won't be used or bought. Fuck them. Is it possible to gain 100% anonymity online? Likely, no, but you can put in a little effort to stop it as much as you can, and use adblockers of course to block what they would send. There is effort to it to be sure, but it is worth it, and the more people take their privacy seriously the more tools will be developed, improved, etc.

Again sorry to sort of hijack your post for this comment, that sucks and fuck whoever is serving you (and by extension actual alcoholics seeking recovery) those targeted ads. I just feel it's necessary to point out real world examples of "this is why" because when you're just talking about privacy as a concept people always pretend that since they aren't a Sicario for Sinaloa they have no reason to care. You do, something as "small" (legal) as this is a reason.

Facebook briefly offered you the option to select topics you didn't want to see advertised at all, I chose alcohol and politics. Want to guess what 90% of my ads on that garbage site are?

Gambling and alcohol ads have to be among the most unethical form of marketing in existence, yet, it really is everywhere. These companies (Google/Meta/Twitter) are even showing these ads to minors on an ongoing basis.

I couldn't imagine being an addict or former addict and having to be exposed to this mindfuck.

I would encourage everyone to actively find ways to block ads, even if solely to preserve one's mental health.

If you don't block ads and you type things into searches about alcohol you will indeed get a lot of alcohol ads. The thing is though, I never got them as frequently when I was still drinking, or maybe never noticed them. Also I once got served ads for beer on a page about quitting booze lol, it seems pretty intentional even though it's most likely not that targeted.

Make a new account on Instagram and see how much of it is pedo shit on a new feed. Everything is out of control.

You guys are getting ads?

Oh man, this sounds like it could become a news piece.