Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son's birth

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 362 posts

Re: An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son's birth

#51

Post by chmod775 »

jrockway wrote: post #34
GuiA wrote: post #25

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.

Is he paying for that advertising or are journalists voluntarily giving him publicity?

Big difference here. When I read the news I freely subject myself to what the journalists of my choice considered newsworthy.

I have little say in what kind of ads I'm bombarded with, as OP demonstrated and banksy implied.

Re: An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son's birth

#52

Post by hangonhn »

That reminded me of this speech by Jeff Bezos to Princeton:

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2010/05/30/2010-baccalaureate...

“Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

It really had an impact on me.

Re: An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son's birth

#53

Post by 40acres »

srvo wrote: post #21

This seems to happen a lot when one's experience is statistically unlikely, or when it doesn't neatly mesh with a commercial opportunity. For instance, I am a transgender woman and I get THE WEIRDEST ads. Makes sense, since an algorithm meshing together my engagement histories from ten years of social platforms must see something quite strange. The only appropriately targeted advertisements I get are from academics i…

Very interesting perspective. I think stories like yours are why I believe in the ideas behind the diversity effort going on in tech right now. As a black male I've definitely interacted with these platforms and just have been puzzled by the outcomes.

On the other hand I wonder, would you be okay with these ad networks being able to identify you as transgender? And then tailoring ads towards you? I'm sure there are things that are still interesting to you post-transition.

Re: An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son's birth

#54

Post by dingaling »

mc32 wrote: post #35
40acres wrote: post #13

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.

I once heard that that is at least partially intentional in order to reassure the customer that it was a wise purchase. To prevent post-purchase regret and cancellation.

Re: An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son's birth

#55

Post by protomyth »

res0nat0r wrote: post #43
protomyth wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, I don't think the story is looking for comfort from Facebook ads. I am pretty sure she is looking for Facebook not to add to the pain and just get out of any conversation she is having with those that support her. That's the point of the letter.

Frankly, if you are an advertiser and know your ads are being served to someone who, through tragedy, cannot use your product and instead are now part of a thousand cuts treatment, you should be pretty offended yourself.

Re: An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son's birth

#56

Post by jonathankoren »

gnu8 wrote: post #18
mike_n wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe I’m singing, “Don’t Ban The Bomb”[0], but algorithmic advertising literally pays the mortgage and puts food on my table.

You can live your life just fine. No one is interfering with it. No more than getting a flier in the mail asking if you want to drive for Uber is a big disruption. In fact, enough people find some level advertising useful, and have for literally hundreds of years.

[0] https://youtu.be/lSEtCz61O_8

Re: An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son's birth

#57

Post by jbob2000 »

40acres wrote: post #46
jbob2000 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s a system that’s impossible to build. You’re describing something that can perfectly predict human behavior. If we built a system like this, it would not be used to sell me Tide Pods.

Re: An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son's birth

#58

Post by throwanem »

skystrife wrote: post #16
joe_hills wrote: post #8

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…

Interesting idea, but I'm bothered by the idea that social media platforms would be effectively monetizing grief in this solution. This sort of thing, to me, points at the deficiencies of appealing to purely statistical patterns without any guard rails placed on top. After all, statistically, the most likely relevant categories after "pre-natal" are going to be surrounding children who _were_ born safely. So if you a…

They already monetize joy. Is monetizing grief worse? Why? What about monetizing neither? What's the signal to pivot the relevance model significantly away from a world full of robots constantly self-optimizing to exploit emotions they cannot understand or share?

(Or if we can't manage that, maybe at least we could somewhat curtail the misbehavior of the ML systems they foist on the rest of us.)

Re: An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son's birth

#59

Post by res0nat0r »

protomyth wrote: post #55
res0nat0r wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, I don't think the story is looking for comfort from Facebook ads. I am pretty sure she is looking for Facebook not to add to the pain and just get out of any conversation she is having with those that support her. That's the point of the letter. Frankly, if you are an advertiser and know your ads are being served to someone who, through tragedy, cannot use your product and instead are now part of a thousand cuts…

> Frankly, if you are an advertiser and know your ads are being served to someone who, through tragedy, cannot use your product and instead are now part of a thousand cuts treatment, you should be pretty offended yourself.

How, exactly, are they supposed to know that? The bigger issue here is everyone expecting Facebook to somehow be omnipotent. They're not. They are a sharing platform that makes money by selling targeted ads. They're not all knowing.

Re: An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son's birth

#60

Post by joe_hills »

ghostly_s wrote: post #47
joe_hills wrote: post #8

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.

Personally, my method for avoiding being insulted by Facebook has been to not use their website or services for the last five or so years.

I was challenging myself to imagine what tactics they might try to discourage others from abandoning their platform in cases of extreme grief.

Post reply on HN