Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

321–330 of 494 posts

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

#321
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have acknowledged that my reasoning is less sound than the occam's razor, and I didn't really assert data impropriety. So calm down. But about your first point. I don't think even the designers and maintainers of this blackbox understand the system. Looking at it from that point of view, the chances of a hacker finding proof for this is pretty low.

The thing is you can disapprove one piece without understanding the whole system. It would be pretty easy to show that a) sound is not being continually recorded and streamed over the internet and b) the device is not using enough processing power to decode speech. Both have been done, so this is veering into conspiracy theory territory.

My dude! we are talking past each other. I am not asserting data handling impropriety. That is not what concerns me. What concerns me is they are letting these black box systems emotionally manipulate me.

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

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think guitars are like bicycles where the optimal number to have is n+1 where n = the number you currently own.

Unless you are married or in a committed relationship, then it becomes n-1 where n = the number at which your significant other leaves you.

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

#323

Crazy! I read this HN thread on Safari on my mobile that i never use to access Facebook... a few hours later I’m on Facebook on my laptop in Chrome incognito mode, and one of the first ads that shows up is for Voltaren...how in the world?!?

IP address, maybe?

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

#324
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its legitimate. distasteful but legitimate.

The word you're looking for is "legal". It's legal. It's illegitimate but legal.

The first three results on Google show the definition of legitimate as "allowed by law".

If you want to make a moral argument for why it shouldn't be allowed, then do that.

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

#325
post #203

March 2020, heydays of coronavirus paranoia. I came back home from somewhere, put my keys onto the dining table and went to the bathroom to clean up. My girlfriend, upon seeing the key-chain on the table started reproaching me for being careless about hygiene. When I returned from the bathroom I saw her washing the key-chain in the kitchen sink. This time I got angry and asked how come she hadn't thought that the usb…

Did you order the water-proof usb memory stick? It might have contained a backup of your keychain memory stick. ;)

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

#326
post #290

Today I browsed Google from my desktop PC about "Gundam" (the japonese anime) for about 1 hour. Pretty niche topic. Then when I was done, I closed all browser tabs, I unlocked my smartphone to check Instagram, and the second ads I get is a Gundam ad. I have no idea how my shadow "desktop" ad profile and shadow "mobile" ad profile matched. I share no accounts between my desktop and my smartphone : - I use different Go…

LiveRamp connects all the “anonymous” identifiers together for a household.

Third party SDKs also report your location to these services[0], which makes it trivial to track your phone to your location (or they could just buy that info directly from the carrier).

Your home ISP's assigned IP is also in a database with your name and a unique identifier. So it doesn't matter what adblocking you use, they still know where the hits are coming from.

All this data is traded around the ad "ecosystem" and integrated real-time, so it can be milliseconds from action to ad-impression.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/locat...

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

#327

Crazy! I read this HN thread on Safari on my mobile that i never use to access Facebook... a few hours later I’m on Facebook on my laptop in Chrome incognito mode, and one of the first ads that shows up is for Voltaren...how in the world?!?

Your IP? And your mobile and laptop have been fingerprinted earlier to belong to the same person?

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

#329
post #203

March 2020, heydays of coronavirus paranoia. I came back home from somewhere, put my keys onto the dining table and went to the bathroom to clean up. My girlfriend, upon seeing the key-chain on the table started reproaching me for being careless about hygiene. When I returned from the bathroom I saw her washing the key-chain in the kitchen sink. This time I got angry and asked how come she hadn't thought that the usb…

To everyone suggesting that it's the result of statistical bias: Why can we rule out what should be obvious hypotheses, like you are being listened to?

Biases are not successful explanations by default, they are merely alternate hypotheses which require almost no evidence to assert; which is why people take randomness as null or prior.

But it shouldn't be rational to stop investigating alternative hypotheses just because of the possibility of bias - this amounts to not desiring further evidence, being incurious.

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

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, though this is an excellent story, this is just an example of a bias known as "frequency illusion". It happens with a lot of things, like seeing the clock at 11:11 more than you do at 11:09. Or seeing lots of your make/model car but being blind to the hundred of other variants on the road. How many times have you opened up your laptop and not seen a Facebook add for something you just did, or something…

I don't know how many times I internally chuckle when I glance at the clock some time before I go to bed and it's "21:12"; a meaningful number to me as the "2112" album and the band Rush was a big part of my youth. That, and I tend to go to bed between 21:00 and 22:00. But I don't attribute it to anything but me being in a position to look at the clock around that time, and I haven't wondered if I see it any more tha…

I have the same for Rush 21:12.

Recommended. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZm1_jtY1SQ

Post reply on HN