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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?

#111

Post by ncke »

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.

"Engrossing technical problems are convenient blinders for inconvenient truths."

Where does this take us though? If you build a bridge, how do you know what will go across it? Either we all stop or we accept that not all ethical questions can be resolved by individuals acting alone.

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

#112

Post by nl »

ars wrote: post #26
thisismine wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cookie is a thing.

It's not cookie, it happens across different browsers. It's IP based.

It's probably still cookie based.

If one logged into Amazon in both browsers then it is really just linking to the account (even after logging out).

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

#113

Post by friendzis »

ry_ry wrote: post #66
hiisukun wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This has always bothered me too - guess they focused more on tracking users and building a strong graph rather than actually making good recommendations. Perhaps the coming A.I.pocalypse™ will give us better predictive suggestion algorithms before turning on us... Or the sentient networks just start recommending really dangerous products to wipe ourselves out with! ;( Chatting with friends, I've discovered FB are als…

I don't know how much does it have to do with advertisers choosing profiling criteria and profiling itself, but often it feels like ad targeting is actively trying to teach me to ignore the ads.

Not really technical friend gets a smarthpone. We check specs on gsmarena, then check few other phones, read a bit more. Lots of hits over short time. Ad targeting: you must be searching for a smartphone, here get some ads for smartphones! I check various pages over few weeks, compare phones, check availability. Ad targeting: very rare hits, must be accidental.

For the past few weeks I have been selecting a pair of products. Watching youtube, reading various forums, browsing manufacturer pages, browsing stores, comparing prices, usual stuff. A single ad for at least one of those two product categories? Nope, instead I see ads to subscribe to my current carrier.

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

#114

Post by sumedh »

danilocesar wrote: post #91

Not totally related to the post, but IMHO the following happen too often: I'm looking for a camera. So I opened a market place in my country that sells those cameras. Then I decided to buy one. Then, for a few days, I open facebook and I only see ads about cameras, from the same marketplace. That's useless as I'm sure (and they should know with some confidence) I'm not buying another camera. They should/could target…

Maybe the tracker did not track your purchase and still thinks you are looking to buy one.

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

#115

Post by kristianc »

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.

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

How many people do go into computer engineering with an idea of making the world a better place?

Don't misunderstand me, I'm sure many computer engineers are nice, socially conscious people, but if your primary motivation in life is to make the world a better place through your work, there are many more direct ways to achieve this.

It's telling that the Gates Foundation, which has enormous resources, and which could build, should it so wish, the world's best-funded 'change the world with code' startup, instead chooses to allocate its resources on physical things such as malaria drugs.

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

#116

Post by sumedh »

mrhektor wrote: post #96

On a related note, I had a weird experience where I was talking about a trip to Vietnam with my friends. A few hours later, I saw an ad for air travel to Vietnam on my FB page. Now I'm 100% sure I hadn't googled or searched for Vietnam previously. At first, the conspiracy theorist inside said "they're listening!" through my phone microphone or whatever. But then, I thought, could they have been forming a pattern of m…

When you say talking do you mean you guys were physically close to each other then if your friends searched for Vietnam, FB will know that this group of people whose current GPS coordinates are the almost the same are interested in Vietnam.

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

#117

Post by oelmekki »

theweirdone wrote: post #106

As others have pointed out, it's an advertising technique called retargeting. Here are some of the technical details of how exactly it is done(Facebook's implementation might differ somewhat from this, but overall concept is same) /* DSP - Demand side partner (Entity which works with someone who wants to show their ads) SSP - Supply side partner (Entity which works with some who have potential space on web to show ad…

Thing is, OP mentions using two different browsers, which is why it's surprising.

I guess there's still the possibility that a cookie was added months before that and that "tainted" browsing was forgotten. But it's still worth wondering if some other identification mechanism could be at play.

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

#118

Post by Grustaf »

MichaelGG wrote: post #97
Grustaf wrote: post #92

I read your question as being about how facebook found out from amazon what you bought. I don't know much about web technology but it seems to me they don't need to know, since the ads you mentioned came from Amazon, even if they're served inside facebook. So it's enough if facebook gives enough info to amazon so that the latter can infer who you are, then they know that you bought that bike. It's somewhat encouragin…

Are they stupid? I've cancelled and bought a competing product more than once, though not via ads (adblocker), just searching or reconsidering.

I think in general you are not very likely to buy a new bike (or phone in my case) the day after buying one, but there may be exceptions.

Perhaps it's enough to be so crude as to not take timing into account. I mean it IS true that people who buy bikes online once are likely to do it again at dome point.

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

#119

Post by exelius »

dx034 wrote: post #79
exelius wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I would bet that Amazon does this intentionally. I don't know their rationale, but they're a data-driven company so they wouldn't keep doing it if it didn't produce desirable results.

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

#120

Post by dhimes »

kennethh wrote: post #103
yogrish wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I can understand the feeling, but it might seem wasted but Facebook and Google have actually made it easier for small business to do business by enabling them to get segmented customers more easily by breaking down barriers for entry. 20 years ago one could not as a small company get US or global reach without using a lot of money and it was not easy (possible) to segment either. This again have increased competition…

While true, I feel like they shouldn't break down all the barriers. They were helping small business do business before re-targeting. Just giving us an affordable way to get in front of interested prospects was huge.
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