On an emotional level, this deeply troubles me—but to address the problem analytically: It strikes me that an ad algorithm that forces grieving people to opt out of social media at a time when their friends and family are most interested in checking in on their well-being may encourage a broader pattern of falling back on non-ad-supported communication channels in the weeks or months to come. It seems like there's a…
I totally see what you mean, but the concept of gifting temporary "ad-free" internet media to grieving people feels dystopian to me.
I'd prefer the systems avoided showing users upsetting ads for free, I'm just not sure how that system would work or how to prevent users from gaming it.
I saw this post the other day, but this just seems like it is going to involve even more outrage at FB when the algorithm presents something incorrectly. Getting ads for "You just lost a child, would you like to call a helpline?" are going to outrage just as many people, which is why I expect they just stay away from that type of subject matter all together.
Its an Ad platform not a member of this person's inner circle. Just shut the damn ads off for anything having to do with babies. At the end of the day, you are creating a mechanism to connect a person with a company so they can buy products. If something would be inappropriate for a salesperson to say to a person, then make damn sure your Ad network doesn't say that. It would be wholly inappropriate for a salesperson…
I think this is the overarching issue with the original post, as they're looking for Facebooks ad network to comfort them or give them some kind of advice, and that is totally not what it is designed to do.
Banksy on advertising, in 2004: People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most…
I don't really see the difference between Banksy having himself plastered all over the media for shredding his artwork versus Colgate telling me to buy their toothpaste. Banksy understands and uses advertising better than anyone.
Well, that was 14 years ago. It's hard to remain on your outraged and righteous path when you start getting fat checks for it (see also Black Mirror s1e2, "Fifteen Million Merits").
I wonder if it makes sense for ad platforms to enable a "clear history" option just like our browsers do? That way you can say very clearly "the current model is wrong, please restart and try building a new one for me". That might also help this particular case: rebuild the model from scratch including only content going forward rather than backward. Should eliminate the baby ads effectively, right?
That'd work in this case, but would destroy lots of value when people like me would go in every few months and reset all my ad profiles. Then again, the total percentage of people who would care enough to go in and do that is probably pretty small.
I'm going to start sounding like I work for them, but Google already allows you to disable targeted advertising entirely, and Facebook at least let's you disable targeting for the vast majority of things (the major exceptions being age, gender, location, and the content of the page if I recall correctly).
I've been really interested in a 'digital agent' model for a while now. Some profile, and/or grand set of settings that apply to all my interactions online. I interface with way too many platforms online to keep track of, this can lead to unwanted and annoying targeting similar to (but obviously on a much lesser scale) to this mother. I recently bought a shaving kit for my future brother-in-law for Christmas, I looke…
Or we could all just start googling and searching for things that are completely irrelevant to us. This would fuck up the advertising models and marketers would be forced to change their practices. So I say to you all: go and google some random shit and do some deep dives into it. Be predictably unpredictable.
In theory, I don't mind advertising or machine learning based recommendations that is a nice mix of "here's more of the same" and "hey, how about this from left field". I think Spotify for instance has a good mix of this. My biggest issue, aside for privacy concerns, is the efficacy of these systems. If I could get some nice gift ideas before purchase that would be great -- if these systems could realize that I made this purchase as a gift and don't want it added to the model they have on me that would be great, these systems just really seem hit or miss right now.
On an emotional level, this deeply troubles me—but to address the problem analytically: It strikes me that an ad algorithm that forces grieving people to opt out of social media at a time when their friends and family are most interested in checking in on their well-being may encourage a broader pattern of falling back on non-ad-supported communication channels in the weeks or months to come. It seems like there's a…
Yes, the proper solution here is definitely for people to give Facebook money to not insult them. The disruptor hivemind delivers again.
from a marketer's perspective, it's one of the most lucrative life events, along with weddings and buying a house and falling ill -- huge amounts of money being spent on goods and services and new behaviors.
My life is my life, not a revenue stream for these parasites to capture. Adblocking isn’t good enough. There needs to be a way to punish these people and cost them money.
It looks like the author thought the ads were useful when the pregnancy was progressing normally, even clicking on at least one of them. The reason these ads are lucrative is that she is not the only person who found the ads useful.
I saw this post the other day, but this just seems like it is going to involve even more outrage at FB when the algorithm presents something incorrectly. Getting ads for "You just lost a child, would you like to call a helpline?" are going to outrage just as many people, which is why I expect they just stay away from that type of subject matter all together.
There is a choice on Google/FB/Amazon to turn off personalized ads I would presume? How good those choices are being respected or how long does it takes effect is another issue.
You should try it.
I switched interest based ads off on Google a few times, and also tried using YouTube while logged out. It’s pure trash.
When you opt out of interest based ads you actually opt in to their inventory of worst content imaginable. There’s no middle ground.
I've been really interested in a 'digital agent' model for a while now. Some profile, and/or grand set of settings that apply to all my interactions online. I interface with way too many platforms online to keep track of, this can lead to unwanted and annoying targeting similar to (but obviously on a much lesser scale) to this mother. I recently bought a shaving kit for my future brother-in-law for Christmas, I looke…
You know things are broken when after you buy things you begin to get ads for the very thing you just bought. Now, you could forgive one ad network not knowing, but when you get served up ads by the people who know (have a record of the transaction) you bought something, you know something’s not working the way it should, optimally.
But every ad network ive ever worked with already allows you to define categories of people you specifically don't want to show your ads to.
It's on the shopders of the ad creator to set that up though. I did read a comment one time that said the companies might be doing it on purpose, to "reaffirm" you made the right choice going with their product. Not sure how true that is, but it might factor in.