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Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

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Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#161

Post by vfinn »

hobs wrote: post #150
dorkwood wrote: post #63

I suspect all the people putting this claim on the same level as "my phone is listening to me" conspiracy theories are living outside of the USA. One of the first things I noticed after moving to America was that I was being served ads for oddly specific in-store purchases. I checked my bank's terms and discovered that, sure enough, they were sharing my transaction history with "non-affiliates" so that they could mar…

Your phone is listening (or at least some are) - I thought it was crazy until I was corrected by https://twitter.com/thezedwards who actually helped build one, reformed himself, and now does pro privacy work.

Did he tweet about it or?

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#162

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

seoaeu wrote: post #83

Because you aren't using an adblocker. Seriously, you should really consider uBlock Origin or similar. Google doesn't honor Do Not Track, so you should feel no obligation to honor their desire for you to look at their ads.

It's always surprising when I happen to have to use devices that aren't my own, and there are ads. Disgusting!

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#164

Post by rkachowski »

StavrosK wrote: post #19
halotrope wrote: post #9

It might be that you are just noticing the ads now that you bought the product. I read about similar observations recently. Might be a cousin of frequency illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion?wprov=sfti1

It's been a few times now where I've talked with my wife about some new product (physically, in the room) and she starts seeing ads about it. I thought that was the explanation too, but it's happened too many times for comfort. I know my devices are (probably) not listening, but I can't explain it either. Neither of us searched for the product or saw it online or anything, we just discussed something and got ads abou…

You don't notice all the times you talk about something and you don't see relevant advertisements. After talking about it you're primed to notice it more. Additionally this isn't isolated - you could be talking about it indirectly due to advertisments being out there (e.g. someone else sees an ad, posts / talks / youtubes about it, you talk about it and then see the ad).

Ads are getting more targeted and getting closer to the kind of things you would talk about based on your interests and data that networks have collected about you, but we are still pretty far from continuous ad surveillance.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#165

Post by reader_mode »

chillacy wrote: post #138
reader_mode wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's been a few times now where I've talked with my wife about some new product (physically, in the room) and she starts seeing ads about it. I thought that was the explanation too, but it's happened too many times for comfort. The wierdest instance of this is I told my wife her father should consider geting those fixed bridge dentures, next day I start seeing all-on-4 ads on the phone. I asked her if she looked it…

Another possibility: switching the cause and effect, e.g. maybe you received ads for fixed bridge dentures and didn't notice consciously (how many ads do we gloss over each day "not paying attention"), but later brought it up because the mind assimilates ads subliminally (arguably the whole point of advertising). This is perhaps even more creepy than just "phones listening in", but it's not an explanation I hear very…

It's possible - but this was in relation to a discussion she started, and why show those ads to me in the first place ?

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#166

Post by matthewdgreen »

ancarda wrote: post #86
ecopoesis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because credit card rewards aren’t free? Banks compete for credit card consumers by offering rewards. Those rewards cost them money. Selling consumer information is another revenue stream to make up for the cost of rewards. Most consumers are okay with this trade off: they get their airline miles / low interest / cash back in exchange for their purchase history.

>Because credit card rewards aren’t free So this isn't covered by the 1-3% transaction fee the merchant pays every time you use your card? >Most consumers are okay with this trade off No they aren't. Most consumers aren't even aware they are paying with their privacy, so you cannot take a low opt-out rate to mean high levels of consent.

It doesn’t matter if credit card providers are paid 0%, 3% or 5% on each transaction. If the law (and/or customer blowback) allows a company to sell customer information, management will eventually give in to selling it because it’s a revenue source. When called on this they will give you a story about how it “lowers customer costs” and some people will accept this as a valid excuse, but none of this changes the reality.

PS: this is really a response to grandparent poster, not parent.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#167

Post by hobs »

vfinn wrote: post #161
hobs wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your phone is listening (or at least some are) - I thought it was crazy until I was corrected by https://twitter.com/thezedwards who actually helped build one, reformed himself, and now does pro privacy work.

Did he tweet about it or?

Yeah, I honestly couldn't be arsed to search in the twitter hose but he specifically corrected me on the topic.

edit: and to clarify his comments were mostly that the data is not realtime, but the idea that audio recorded is then processed and within a day or two was much more realistic.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#168

Post by bopbeepboop »

scruple wrote: post #158
metafunctor wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I’ve bought several guitars in a row…

Well I've had it happen with toilet seats. In 40 years on this planet I've only ever needed to purchase that one. I'd imagine if I needed to get more than one that I would get them all at the same time.

Its a math mistake on Amazons part.

They’ve conflated “most purchases of a toilet seat are made by someone who buys another” and “most people who buy one toilet seat buy a second”.

There’s a small, but high volume group of toilet seat purchases — eg, office buildings or apartment maintenance.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#169

Post by snowwrestler »

bladewolf47 wrote: post #135
washadjeffmad wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many purchases are recurring consumables. Food, clothing, medicine, office supplies, car parts- none of it lasts forever. What does it cost to be reminded that you can buy more? Also, completely unrelatedly, if you saw some armchair internet rando claim they'd debunked a major and long-standing business strategy of market sector leader, how seriously would you take them?

Not sure if it fits with what the poster you replied to was saying but I find it a bit curious when I buy say a guitar on Amazon and my recommendations (emails or ads in other sites) over the next few days are still guitars. I do not remember seeing one of those promotions which follow a purchase being about accessories or add-ons.

No automated recommendation system is going to be perfect; it’s either going to over-recommend or under-recommend. From the way the Amazon system works, we can infer that they have decided that missing to the over-recommend side is a better business strategy than missing under.

And it kind of makes sense if you think about it... really, what are the consequences of seeing these silly over-recommendations? Did you stop buying from Amazon? I bet the vast majority of people shrug or laugh, but don’t change habits.

Also, big one-time purchases tend to be rare, so optimizing a recommendation system around those is probably suboptimal compared to optimizing it around frequent consumable purchases.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#170

Post by karmakaze »

FredPret wrote: post #139
atat7024 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only works if you trust Apple instead of the firm you're running from. But it does "work". iPhone is the only phone besides a GrapheneOS phone with an intact security model worth writing about.

Not to say that any organization (eg Apple) is trustworthy to an outsider, but at least Apple makes a lot of money upfront from the device’s price tag. Their incentive is to not annoy their rich & powerful customer base with privacy violations.

> Their incentive is to not annoy their [...] customer base [...]

Apple knows how much they can get away with annoying, that's why they can push updates that slow down your phone, or make devices less repairable.

Privacy is trickier though because it's based on trust not annoyance and it doesn't take much to lose it. I've already lost trust in Apple. What I do trust is that 'privacy' is currently working for Apple to increase their market share. It also conveniently keeps data away from competitors.

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