It's fascinating to see to what lengths advertisers go to identify users only to serve irrelevant ads. The bike ad after a purchase is completely useless and would've better been served to any other user.
Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?
81–90 of 131 posts
Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?
#82Earlier 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.
You can't tell in advance what trains, in general, will carry.
When writing ad targeting code, user surveillance, nuclear missile guidance, VW pollution test circumvention code... you know exactly what is going on.
Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?
#83Would the same thing have happened if you were using the Brave browser (supposed to protect your privacy) - https://brave.com/?
Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?
#84It's fascinating to see to what lengths advertisers go to identify users only to serve irrelevant ads. The bike ad after a purchase is completely useless and would've better been served to any other user.
> It's fascinating to see to what lengths advertisers go to identify users only to serve irrelevant ads. The bike ad after a purchase is completely useless and would've better been served to any other user.
On the contrary, I'd wager that a person who's purchased a bike is far more likely to buy another than a random other person. I'm not saying there's isn't someone more likely to buy one than the guy who just did. But he would be more likely than someone who has no recent bike related purchases or interest.
It could be as simple as, "Hey this is a nice bike I bought. I bet my wife/sister/brother/friend would like one too. Hey Bike Co is having a sale!".
Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?
#85It is enough for you to only once have used the same browser / profile with both accounts. There are cookies to keep track of who is who and then it is a matter of matching identifiers on one platform to the other.
It is hard to believe you have been diligent enough to keep things absolutely 100% separate between Facebook and amazon.
Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?
#86Straightforward: 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.
> it's unfortunate that so many smart people use their intelligence to enable this kind of gross technology
We live in a capitalist society.
It just so happens that this "gross technology" makes advertising insanely profitable for millions of companies (mine included), which makes FB billions, so they'll happily pay really smart people millions to build it. And those smart people will happily accept millions to solve those hard problems.
It's just business. If you can figure out how to better align individual and corporate incentives with making the world a better place, we're all ears.
Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?
#87Would the same thing have happened if you were using the Brave browser (supposed to protect your privacy) - https://brave.com/ ?
No. Using Brave they have no way to follow you (no cookies).
Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?
#88Straightforward: 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 completely agree. I pity those PhD's using their Intellect for increasing Ad revenues to FB rather than creating/using algos to solve the pressing real-world problems - Diseases, Nutrition,Drought predictions,Curb terrorism etc. Are they even motivated by what they are doing..after all money is not everything (I agree FB pays a bomb).
Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?
#89Earlier 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 unfortunate that so many smart people use their intelligence to enable this kind of gross technology We live in a capitalist society. It just so happens that this "gross technology" makes advertising insanely profitable for millions of companies (mine included), which makes FB billions, so they'll happily pay really smart people millions to build it. And those smart people will happily accept millions to solve…
It's unfortunate, not surprising.
Re: Ask HN: How does Facebook know what I buy on Amazon or vice versa?
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
How could IP-based possibly work for people at places like college campuses?
They take the number of people from the same IP into account. IPs are broken down into public IPs vs private IPs based on traffic/timing of usage etc. There are research papers on this sort of feature contruction using only IPs. Cross device especially uses it extensively to be able to probabilistically ascertain if the person from your house who is checking their phone is the same person who checked smth on the Desk…
Interesting. Do you have the links of these papers so that I can read more?