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I'm an ex-Facebook exec: don't believe what they tell you about ads

theguardian.com

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Re: I'm an ex-Facebook exec: don't believe what they tell you about ads

#121

Post by thr0waway1239 »

[deleted] wrote: post #75

[deleted]

>> you can also target people who search for ways to suicide on Google

Not that either companies' employees seem to care, of course.

Once again, a little reminder about my suggestion to create a public dataset of all employees of Facebook and Google for improving the state of the art of ML and DL algorithms (consider it a public service).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14245513

If you obtain private information and exploit it, it is called doxing. If a megacorp does the same, it is called a business plan.

We should probably start with Antonio Garcia-Martinez as the starting node, and do a BFS. Or is DFS better? I just get super stoked about all these technical riddles, I can't really help it!

Re: I'm an ex-Facebook exec: don't believe what they tell you about ads

#122

Post by smt88 »

brokenmachine wrote: post #119
mattnewton wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they did it would still be seen as a Democratic-leaning message.

So Republicans don't want people to vote? Real question, I'm in Australia and don't know.

That's correct. Get-out-the-vote efforts are seen as partisan. I volunteered to help register people to vote (as a non-partisan without any messaging at all) and was verbally abused by Republicans on the street.

Republicans also regularly impose laws to disenfranchise voters. An example is Georgia's law where voters are purged from the rolls every 3 years. Minority voters often only vote every 4 years.

The list goes on and on. These voter suppression tactics are very, very targeted at minorities and Democrats, often to the point that the Supreme Court has to strike them down as unlawful.

Re: I'm an ex-Facebook exec: don't believe what they tell you about ads

#123

Post by jhanschoo »

Mendenhall wrote: post #9

Ahh the old "so what" argument. So what if I can target recovering alchoholics with alchohol ads? So what if I target gambling addicts with my gambling platform? So what?

On the other hand, I've found that if you're suffering from health or mental problems, the ads that you see are those offering medical and psychiatric help. Which I thought was pretty welcome, contrary to worries of exploitative targeting.

Re: I'm an ex-Facebook exec: don't believe what they tell you about ads

#124

Post by rs86 »

moomin wrote: post #11

Wow, I can't decide if this guy is more morally or intellectually bankrupt. Seriously, "sometimes data behaves unethically"? Data doesn't do anything. Not even analysis or deep learning does anything. People (or programs written by people) execute decisions on the basis of data. It's still the people being unethical. Big data isn't some magic wand that absolves you of moral responsibility, but it's extremely interest…

Data is the new supernatural ruling entity that spinned the world for fun and guess what is still interested in it

Re: I'm an ex-Facebook exec: don't believe what they tell you about ads

#126

Post by AdamSC1 »

delphinius81 wrote: post #7

Misleading title - since when did FB product managers become executives? Though completely believe FB will use their data in any way possible to make money, ethical or not.

To be fair "Executive" means "A person or group having administrative or managerial authority in an organization."

Seniority of the product manager role depends on a number of factors. Sure, most FB product managers are not considered execs these days, but he was their first Product Manager responsible for ad targeting and then their advertising exchange all the way back in 2011. That probably brought with it a team, a good salary and a lot of sway.

Unlike the cookie-cutter 9-5 corporations of yesteryear, startups have been pretty loose with standard job naming convention. You can be fresh out of a BA and get called "CMO" or you can be a 20-year veteran leading a team making executive decisions and just be a "Product Specialist."

The responsibilities and compensation define executives far more than titles.

Re: I'm an ex-Facebook exec: don't believe what they tell you about ads

#127

Post by TECHnickAlly »

Just started reading Chaos Monkeys. Thoroughly enjoying it so far (am up to Zuck's inner circle of desks). Guardianistas are a funny lot aren't they. They write as if people who can endure the push and shove of business long enough to try to improve things from the inside (unlike themselves) are going to be anti-business (like themselves).

Re: I'm an ex-Facebook exec: don't believe what they tell you about ads

#129

Post by virtuabhi »

virtuabhi wrote: post #42
moomin wrote: post #11

Wow, I can't decide if this guy is more morally or intellectually bankrupt. Seriously, "sometimes data behaves unethically"? Data doesn't do anything. Not even analysis or deep learning does anything. People (or programs written by people) execute decisions on the basis of data. It's still the people being unethical. Big data isn't some magic wand that absolves you of moral responsibility, but it's extremely interest…

Of course data can behave unethically. For example, data might show that people of a particular race in a particular neighborhood have high concentration of bad credit scores. Though using this information to approve/deny loan applications might be illegal. And when algorithms are run on large datasets, are closed source, and their downstream effects are difficult to measure, then yes data/algorithms can behave uneth…

Edit: The example of loans-neighborhood relationship is real. See http://www.dictionary.com/browse/redlining
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