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He's a nice guy. But his book is way past its sell-date - time to stop milking it so much & get on to the next gig/book/whatever. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=antongm
Dumb article is dumb. Ex-product manager = / = Facebook exec, this person also hasn't worked there in four years. "Targeting emotionally troubled teens" without detailed explanation as to how someone could implies simplicity in the matter, but it's not like an advertiser is typing in "show my ads to emotionally troubled teens please."
I don't agree with his claims that the following are among "a long list of Truths That Cannot Be Stated Publicly". I don't think anyone would care; I care very much about racism and can't imagine anyone I know objecting to these. * "people who liked Jay Z were more likely to like Obama" * "Hispanics between the ages of 18 and 25 probably do engage with ads singing the charms and advantages of military service." (I'm…
A little off-topic, but from the article: > I’ll illustrate with an anecdote from my Facebook days. Someone on the data science team had cooked up a new tool that recommended Facebook Pages users should like. And what did this tool start spitting out? Every ethnic stereotype you can imagine. We killed the tool when it recommended then president Obama if a user had “liked” rapper Jay Z... The author left Facebook in 2…
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A little off-topic, but from the article: > I’ll illustrate with an anecdote from my Facebook days. Someone on the data science team had cooked up a new tool that recommended Facebook Pages users should like. And what did this tool start spitting out? Every ethnic stereotype you can imagine. We killed the tool when it recommended then president Obama if a user had “liked” rapper Jay Z... The author left Facebook in 2…
I don't agree with his claims that the following are among "a long list of Truths That Cannot Be Stated Publicly". I don't think anyone would care; I care very much about racism and can't imagine anyone I know objecting to these. * "people who liked Jay Z were more likely to like Obama" * "Hispanics between the ages of 18 and 25 probably do engage with ads singing the charms and advantages of military service." (I'm…
The Jay-z example was real and the tool was shot down by policy. Some targeting is really prohibited thanks to policy.
"The fact that Facebook could easily throw the election by selectively showing a Get Out the Vote reminder in certain counties of a swing state, for example, was a running joke." Woah. They're asking to be regulated.
He's a nice guy. But his book is way past its sell-date - time to stop milking it so much & get on to the next gig/book/whatever. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=antongm
Lol. Nope. It's been out less than a year. How many writing careers do you follow?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I get that it is unfortunate to say the least that people need/want these loans. However, what is the right thing to do about the loans? If they are predatory, maybe they should be illegal. But who am I to tell people what they can and cannot do with their money? That would be rather patronizing. If we assume that people getting these loans are grown adults why shouldn't we allow people offering them to advertis…
If you're an advertising platform, you can choose what sort of products are advertised on it. All of them do. You can, quite reasonably, decline to advertise things that are unethical. For instance, predatory loans. You are choosing not to profit off the misery of others. This is not nearly as complicated as you make it out to be.
Other choices might include an even more predatory local check-cashing place and a guy named Vinnie who seems to own a lot of baseball bats for someone that never plays baseball.