151–159 of 159 posts
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Perhaps even better than what you think you like yourself.
What you would like to watch. What you actually watch. This is why I hate YouTube recommendations. It feeds my monkey brain.
It's a lost cause fighting advertising.
It’s very simple: As a consumer, we cannot trust any advertisement company. Their goals are in direct conflict with user privacy. In fact it’s not a wishful goal, it is their business model. Our attention is very expensive and everything is designed around us to grab us by the neck so to speak. Flashing ads, stories and feeds. I cannot, absolutely cannot, trust Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Facebook, Visa, Amex,…
You left off Amazon from the “can’t trust” list. IMO they would be there even if they hadn’t recently started expanding into advertising, because their business model seems to be to expand existing operations until there’s a critical mass, then slither off into an adjacent sector and repeat. And, just to round out the list, Netflix looks like one that’s actually trustworthy. They don’t advertise, and the info they ha…
A major branch of Russia and China's attack is the ongoing negative PR campaign against tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon. Can these companies improve? Sure. But their infractions are incredibly minor compared to the dictatorships rising in Russia, China, Turkey, etc that are murdering foreign citizens as well as large numbers of their own. They are stealing billions of dollars from their own citizens and taking the world down a terrifying path.
Please reconsider the easy targets of tech companies and have the courage to face true evil in these dictatorships.
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No matter what you do, even if you don’t rate anything, Netflix knows what you watch, and whether you finished it. I would bet that information alone is almost as strong a signal as what you rate.
I'd bet that is a much greater of indicator of your real taste (and what they can get you to binge) vs. the taste you want people to perceive you as having via ranking
You make this sound like a question of honesty vs pretense, but "what they can get you to binge" reveals a different set of motives. It's sometimes a question of self-control.
I want to be healthy. I also want to eat junk food. What do I "really" want?
Imagine an online grocery store which noticed they could profit more by hiding healthy options from me and selling me more junk.
Would their AI be acting according to my "real taste"? In a sense, yes. Would it be serving my best interests? No.
If Netflix can entice someone to binge watch TV all weekend, does that mean that's what they "really" wanted?
Every AI serves someone's interests. It's important to ask whose.
And if you want to make an AI that truly serves your users (rather than exploiting them), give them explicit control. Stop with this "we know you better than you know yourself" nonsense. Let them say things like, "yes, I watched that movie / bought that candy, but I wish I hadn't. Please don't use that for future recommendations."
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That's a good point about Amazon, I added it. Amazon has an incredible amount of data about my purchase history. I'll also add Amex, Visa, and MasterCard. Netflix - I am conflicted between the choice of giving up my privacy to provide better suggestions. How about I actively go research for a particular movie on my own? Why do I need AI telling me what to watch. Word of mouth is a fantastic way to get recommendations…
Note that Netflix does not just use your data for making suggestions, but also for optimizing the content they create and buy.
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The thing is called "personal weblogs", or "blogs" for short.
Blogs are a good answer for the question "how do I post?", but not a good answer for the question "how do I read?". Most people want some kind of aggregator. There are many aggregators out there, but if the answer to the question "how do I post?" is different from the answer to the question "how do I read?", then most people won't overcome the technical friction. Facebook, Twitter, etc. solved the problem by answerin…
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What’s interesting in your Facebook history today is your daily route, when you use your phone, the people you’re connected to through two degrees of separation or by inhabiting the same locations at the same time, and also the provability to swing your vote on a few very particular issues.
I publish my daily route to Google map’s timeline feature. It can show where I have been to in high accuracy. It’s a pretty damn boring route
It may not be boring for your future employer or future DEA investigator or future parallel-constructed investigation case agent in case you have a funny name or non judeochristian religion or your cousin is an environmental activist.
All easily searchable, in a convenient hyperlinked online dossier, forever.
> If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. Cardinal Richelieu
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> decentralized social networks I'm sorry but what would the point of this be? A social network is only as useful as it's centralization.
Nope, decentralized doesn't mean disconnected. It means it's not owned or controlled by any one entity and runs on many independent but connected nodes.
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I think you're completely wrong. You and I care about privacy and it feels like everyone does too because we're only getting signals from inside our own little tech bubble. People don't care about their privacy, it's a simple as that. At least not enough to stop using Facebook and whatnot. Most of my friends and acquaintances are software engineers and couldn't care less about Facebook's scandals and how it uses thei…
And my friends think their phone is spying on them with the built in microphone, due to ultra personalized targeted data. Once I raise their awareness of scummy advertising industry privacy practices, in laymen terms, do they understand that there is a shadow industry tracking their movements and purchase history to manipulate them into purchasing products, do they agree that this is not the future they want to live…
Also, I simpatize with your last sentence but you must understand that consumers expect a lot of software to be free, nowadays. It's really hard to compete with free so I don't blame companies who go the FB route.