How to See What the Internet Knows About You • Hacker News Board

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#101

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 8:12 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #84

anigbrowl wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Staying off Facebook means committing social semi-suicide for a lot of people. It's the primary channel for my local community, contacting local elected representatives, family members in distant places, and several sociopolitical communities of which I'm a part. For many people it's a necessity, and other channels like email etc. are far less efficient precisely because they don't leverage the networking effects. Th…

> It's the primary channel for my local community, contacting local elected representatives, Which should be recognised as madness in itself. Hopefully you're mistaken, and it's merely one such channel.

'Primary' implies at least a secondary, not a unity.

My local councilmember tends to respond within minutes or hours to community concerns raised through Facebook, vsa day or longer via email. Given the democratic nature of the position, being speedily accessible/accountable via social media seems entirely appropriate, not to mention efficient.

I don't like that the dominant social media platform is a privately owned commercial operation, but absent an accessible federated open source social media tool with significant network effects, that's what we've got.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#102

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 8:14 PM UTC

quesera wrote: post #70

anigbrowl wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Staying off Facebook means committing social semi-suicide for a lot of people. It's the primary channel for my local community, contacting local elected representatives, family members in distant places, and several sociopolitical communities of which I'm a part. For many people it's a necessity, and other channels like email etc. are far less efficient precisely because they don't leverage the networking effects. Th…

> This advise is like telling someone who's worried about toxins in their food to eat less of it. Which, depending on toxicity, is exactly appropriate. You're arguing that there are no options, but that's clearly not correct.

No it isn't. The appropriate response is to maintain quality of supply, not to passively accept the existence of substandard food.

I am not arguing that there are no options, and I don't know what point you aimed to make by suggesting that.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#103

Post by pauhana » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 10:12 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #94

gaius wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. The current heuristic is "he has bought X so show him an ad for X", but would it be so difficult to flip that to "he has bought X so show him the next thing on the list of interests we know he has" or even just "anything but X". I strongly suspect noone is doing this because there is no point, they get paid the same regardless.

That's not the current heuristic; it's not nearly that simple. Think about how you know if someone is interested in something. What does it mean to be interested? How does that translate into a sale? A person just bought a vacuum cleaner. Does that mean they are interested in vacuum cleaners? Are vacuum cleaners things that people get interested in? Do people who are interested in vacuum cleaners buy more than people…

Amazon already does this. It is called "People who purchased this item also purchased this item"

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#104

Post by OJFord » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 10:49 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #101

OJFord wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the primary channel for my local community, contacting local elected representatives, Which should be recognised as madness in itself. Hopefully you're mistaken, and it's merely one such channel.

'Primary' implies at least a secondary, not a unity. My local councilmember tends to respond within minutes or hours to community concerns raised through Facebook, vsa day or longer via email. Given the democratic nature of the position, being speedily accessible/accountable via social media seems entirely appropriate, not to mention efficient. I don't like that the dominant social media platform is a privately owned…

Yes, I think Facebook being the primary channel - however many others there are - is mad.

Re: How to See What the Internet Knows About You

#105

Post by wfisher » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

ingenuous2 wrote: post #77

reaperducer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got to think beyond the computer. Most big companies pay per ad view, not per click. Per click is for the low-end advertisers. Per action is for bottom-feeders. Think about billboards, TV, radio, and magazines. Can't click on any of them, yet hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on them every year because repeating the brand, logo, visual, or message works. There's a reason McDonald's and Coca-Cola advert…

I strongly disagree about your CPM/PPC/CPA categorization. I work on conversion focused ad campaigns, so YMMV. For conversions, obviously CPA and PPC are superior. I do agree that CPA can be bottom feeders, but PPC is probably the bread and butter of most people I know. I would suggest that most big companies are paying their agencies, who like pay per view because they can spend more without direct accountability li…

Why is CPA for bottom feeders. What do you mean by that? Seems like the perfect way to optimize the funnel if you know exactly what you're after (an "acquisition").