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Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?

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Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?

#71

Post by mariushn »

Razengan wrote: post #63
md224 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... what about step 2? > Like a building full of PhD's advanced. On a more serious note, it's unfortunate that so many smart people use their intelligence to enable this kind of gross technology. It's all about "solving puzzles" rather than making the world a better place. There's gotta be more productive ways to advance your career.

> It's all about "solving puzzles" rather than making the world a better place. I'd figure it's more about getting paid. Making the world better usually doesn't make anyone money, or at least, costs too much before it starts making anyone money. Making the world truly better requires us to give up a lot of what gets ingrained into us since childhood. We've made money an ends instead of a means. I'm not making a polit…

>> It's all about "solving puzzles" rather than making the world a better place.

>I'd figure it's more about getting paid. Making the world better usually doesn't make anyone money, or at least, costs too much before it starts making anyone money.

This. I get paid (a lot) for handling marketing campaigns. I also started a health project this year (would love to work on it fulltime on a 10% payment vs what I make now), but that gets ignored.

Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?

#73

Post by scandinavegan »

ams6110 wrote: post #59
aresant wrote: post #8

Straightforward: 1) Amazon tracked your research and likes to use " ad retargeting" if they see you leave before checking out to remind you to come back and purchase. 3) FB offers advertisers a variety of retargeting means + insanely advanced cross-device tracking. Like a building full of PhD's advanced. Maintaining privacy by logging in from different devices / accounts / etc is a thing of the past if you EVER cross…

But sort of silly to be advertising you for something you've already bought? They think maybe you liked the bike so much you'll buy another, but only if you see an ad?

I'm pretty sure I read here on Hacker News that one idea to advertise the exact same product that you just bought (I had that with a basketball I got for my daughter) is that they want you to feel good about the purchase. If you see it in ads after you bought it, you'll start thinking it's a popular product and will feel that your choice to buy is being validated.

And they of course get to repeat the name of the store for you so that you're more likely to think of them the next time you need a related product, even if it's not a basketball. You'll remember that you've seen the name of store X in multiple places, so they must be popular.

Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?

#74

Post by rangibaby »

chb wrote: post #69
md224 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... what about step 2? > Like a building full of PhD's advanced. On a more serious note, it's unfortunate that so many smart people use their intelligence to enable this kind of gross technology. It's all about "solving puzzles" rather than making the world a better place. There's gotta be more productive ways to advance your career.

The banality of evil. So many engineers just want to make the trains run on time with a better algorithm. Never mind that they cary oil or weapons or the victims of our next genocide. Engrossing technical problems are convenient blinders for inconvenient truths.

But maybe for all of us there is something about what the Germans did that pleases and excites us-something that opens the catacombs of the imagination. Maybe part of our dread and horror comes from a secret knowledge that under the right-or wrong-set of circumstances, we ourselves would be willing to build such places and staff them. Black serendipity. Maybe we know that under the right set of circumstances the things that live in the catacombs would be glad to crawl out And what do you think they would look like? Like mad fuehrers with forelocks and shoe-polish moustaches, heiling all over the place? Like red devils, or demons, or the dragon that floats on its stinking reptile wings?' 'I don't know,' Richler said. 'I think most of them would look like ordinary accountants,' Weiskopf said. 'Little mind-men with graphs and flow-charts and electronic calculators, all ready to start maximizing the kill ratios so that next time we could perhaps kill twenty or thirty millions instead of only seven or eight or twelve.

Excerpt From: King, Stephen. “Different Seasons.”

Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?

#75

Post by Angostura »

md224 wrote: post #44
aresant wrote: post #8

Straightforward: 1) Amazon tracked your research and likes to use " ad retargeting" if they see you leave before checking out to remind you to come back and purchase. 3) FB offers advertisers a variety of retargeting means + insanely advanced cross-device tracking. Like a building full of PhD's advanced. Maintaining privacy by logging in from different devices / accounts / etc is a thing of the past if you EVER cross…

But... what about step 2? > Like a building full of PhD's advanced. On a more serious note, it's unfortunate that so many smart people use their intelligence to enable this kind of gross technology. It's all about "solving puzzles" rather than making the world a better place. There's gotta be more productive ways to advance your career.

I suppose it depends on whether you think that Facebook is a worthwhile product that should be commercially viable, rather than closing. If you do think that, you are making the the world a better place for some values of better and world.

Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?

#76

Post by Angostura »

TekMol wrote: post #9

I have had similar experiences. Others have already mentioned some cross-browser fingerprintig techniques. One of the worst that many people don't know about is that browsers hand over your local IP. Check this proof of concept: http://net.ipcalf.com/ The media device IDs the browsers provide look even worse: https://jsfiddle.net/u4n4s296/ I am not sure if these are unique to the device type (for example a certain so…

Just tried this on iOS Safari (running iOS beta, haven’t checked earlier version). Those media ids change on every page load.

Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?

#77

Post by netsharc »

reustle wrote: post #11
dtft wrote: post #7

Three words......Facebook Tracking Pixel You go to Amazon, they tell Facebook what you are looking at, and then can dynamically create ads specifically for you.

Does Amazon really use the fb tracking pixel? I wouldn't think so

Op said he visited a website that sold bicycles. If this website has a "Like" button or such a tracking pixel or Facebook analytics (do they have that?), Facebook would then know that OP is interested in this bike.

An effective ad network would know that OP already bought such a bike, so it's actually useless to try to sell him bikes... maybe accessories.

Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?

#78

Post by smcl »

hiisukun wrote: post #57
aresant wrote: post #8

Straightforward: 1) Amazon tracked your research and likes to use " ad retargeting" if they see you leave before checking out to remind you to come back and purchase. 3) FB offers advertisers a variety of retargeting means + insanely advanced cross-device tracking. Like a building full of PhD's advanced. Maintaining privacy by logging in from different devices / accounts / etc is a thing of the past if you EVER cross…

I love picturing a room full of PhDs developing a crazy complicated algorithmic wonderland. Their celebrations at the complexity and genius of their work probably cut short, when users are targeted with ads telling them to buy something that they just bought. When human male user "Joe" purchases a women's bath robe 1 week before Mother's day, does he really need ads for women's bath robes for the next month? Of cours…

Courtesy of @kibblesmith on Twitter:

    Amazon is a $250 billion dollar company that reacts to you buying a vacuum by going THIS GUY LOVES BUYING VACUUMS HERE ARE SOME MORE VACUUMS
https://twitter.com/kibblesmith/status/724817086309142529?la...

Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?

#79

Post by dx034 »

exelius wrote: post #62
lxchase wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is most likely. To take it one level further, since you bought something, it can be DLX data (or Oracle now) or some other purchase-based data (from Visa or Nielsen Catalina). Facebook can ingest these as custom segments to target. For instance, I can buy a data segment of past purchasers of Giant bicycles for $1 CPM that will be layered on whatever partner is integrated. With every "match" there will be drop of…

Right; I think it would really creep people out to know what data is available to target for advertising purposes and how deeply it goes. Basically, there are a bunch of methods for tying your session back to your identity, and most DMPs will run through a good dozen or two. Most will fall back on geolocation patterns (which are surprisingly accurate themselves) but it's actually very hard to totally anonymize your i…

But even with all that data, they still show irrelevant apps? In this case the user already bought the item and gets shown ads for it afterwards. That's very likely ineffective marketing. Is data mining this complex really worth it if the result is that bad?

Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?

#80

Post by nol13 »

hiisukun wrote: post #57
aresant wrote: post #8

Straightforward: 1) Amazon tracked your research and likes to use " ad retargeting" if they see you leave before checking out to remind you to come back and purchase. 3) FB offers advertisers a variety of retargeting means + insanely advanced cross-device tracking. Like a building full of PhD's advanced. Maintaining privacy by logging in from different devices / accounts / etc is a thing of the past if you EVER cross…

I love picturing a room full of PhDs developing a crazy complicated algorithmic wonderland. Their celebrations at the complexity and genius of their work probably cut short, when users are targeted with ads telling them to buy something that they just bought. When human male user "Joe" purchases a women's bath robe 1 week before Mother's day, does he really need ads for women's bath robes for the next month? Of cours…

but is he 0.5% more likely to need a bath robe than [random internet user]?
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