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

Post by strict9 » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 6:41 PM UTC

Klathmon wrote: post #67

strict9 wrote: post #64

Experienced this with a miscarriage in our family, it's the worst. Months and months later this stuff still follows me around the web like a taunting ghost. The worst part of targeted advertising is when it becomes targeted haunting.

I know it's not ideal, but if you go to the below URLs for Google and Facebook respectively, you can choose which categories you get ads about, and can even specifically "turn off" some categories of ads for you (it looks like facebook even allows disabling some categories for a specific period of time!) Again, it's obviously not perfect, but at the very least it can help the situation. https://adssettings.google.com…

Post by aaaaaaaaaab » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 6:42 PM UTC

jbob2000 wrote: post #20

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…

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.

Post by pdimitar » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 6:43 PM UTC

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…

Post by Notorious_BLT » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 6:46 PM UTC

cronix wrote: post #89

paulie_a wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't engage much on social media, I've found it better to randomly click an ad. I'm ruining their profile one click at a time. The ads I see across platforms and websites are so hilariously dumb and irrelevant now. You are going to be tracked, might as well ruin the analytics.

That might be a fun thing to do. Make google and the others pay out the nose by actually clicking as many ads as you can instead of avoiding them. Just have everybody be their own click farm. We could have an international "click to support business day" (hah) where for 24 hours everybody around the globe just clicks ads. That's what they want us to do, isn't it? Maybe we should give it to them.

Post by NorthOf33rd » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

cronix wrote: post #89

paulie_a wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't engage much on social media, I've found it better to randomly click an ad. I'm ruining their profile one click at a time. The ads I see across platforms and websites are so hilariously dumb and irrelevant now. You are going to be tracked, might as well ruin the analytics.

That might be a fun thing to do. Make google and the others pay out the nose by actually clicking as many ads as you can instead of avoiding them. Just have everybody be their own click farm. We could have an international "click to support business day" (hah) where for 24 hours everybody around the globe just clicks ads. That's what they want us to do, isn't it? Maybe we should give it to them.