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

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

#131

Post by monksy »

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.

Google really hates this. They've got some heavy anti-spidering watchers going on to prevent this. There was a Github project that was designed to randomize the search queries under your account. I'm not sure if that got shut down by google, or what happened. Suffice to say, not so good things happened.

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

#132

Post by danso »

woolvalley wrote: post #121

What she is asking will probably be even more creepy. Currently these platforms are basically associating words to your user, which advertisers then select from a pull down. Past some specialized categories created out of advertiser demand - such as political leaning, location, age and gender - there isn't much reasoning behind it. First her user id got the pregnancy keywords associated, now she also has sad / still…

The author describes manually removing herself from being targeted, e.g. clicking "I don't want to see this ad" and "It's not relevant to me". Are we supposed to be content with platforms that are unable to incorporate such manual feedback? I mean, we (the average user on HN) get pretty irate when software ignores or reverts config options we've previously set. I don't see how this is much different.

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

#133

Post by danso »

Perseids wrote: post #70

I'm someone saddened that the discussion here focuses only on what the advertiser (/ tech companies) should have done and leaves out the aspect of how we have failed to bring the obvious solution to the harmed individual: Install an adblocker at the first sign of trouble. How come she was so morally obliged to watch any ads in the first place instead of engaging in basic self defense? Or if the answer is technologica…

She describes clicking "I don't want to see this ad" and "It's not relevant to me".

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

#134

Post by matty22 »

stabbles wrote: post #125
NorthOf33rd wrote: post #100

Instagram is not a person. Don't ask it to be decent. Those ads are not your friends. Don't expect them to treat you like they care. You're not sharing your information with a human. You're sharing it with a business who is tuned to maximize profit. The ROI on dealing with still births for advertising is probably negative. They don't care about you. You've made the decision to let a business deep into your personal l…

It's possible to interpret your comment as a direct response addressing the mother who put out the tweet, which seems very inappropriate. The point you're making might be true, but maybe it's better to rephrase it.

I also read it as a direct response to the mother who put out the tweet and it seems pretty appropriate to me? What part of the parent comment is inaccurate?

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

#135

Post by jeremy7600 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #122
monksy wrote: post #111

While her situation is tragic, She's demonstrating a huge amount of entitlement and technically illiteracy. She's making assumptions that all of these studies from data science and usage of recommendation/personalization systems are for her benefit. They're not, she's not paying the bills on that. That's for someone to sell her something. She's entitled because she believes that her unusual/rare situation should be a…

> She's demonstrating a huge amount of entitlement and technically illiteracy. No, she's not. I do have a problem with all of the various people that we interface with, including insurance organizations and pharmacies, abusing data sharing agreements intended for subrogation and similar procedures to manage pharmaceutical sales quotas and conduct outbound marketing. My wife was admitted to the hospital due to complic…

Forces.. WHO?! to care? You can't be serious.

And she sounds exactly entitled. The system isn't there for her.

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

#136

Post by jeremy7600 »

kerbalspacepro wrote: post #119
monksy wrote: post #111

While her situation is tragic, She's demonstrating a huge amount of entitlement and technically illiteracy. She's making assumptions that all of these studies from data science and usage of recommendation/personalization systems are for her benefit. They're not, she's not paying the bills on that. That's for someone to sell her something. She's entitled because she believes that her unusual/rare situation should be a…

1) Her situation isn't rare/unusual. Miscarriages happen all the time. 2) >She's making assumptions that all of these studies from data science and usage of recommendation/personalization systems are for her benefit. They're not, she's not paying the bills on that. That's for someone to sell her something. Advertising (at its best) is for the consumer's benefit. A consumer needs to make informed decisions about their…

Where is the "literal terror"?

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

#137

Post by celticninja »

rib3ye wrote: post #117
cronix wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am coming to the conclusion that the only way to beat the system is to not play in the system. Or play as little as possible. I no longer go on FB, Instagram or Amazon. I do my best to just be anonymous. I don't "need" to hang out on social media. I lived quite happily before these services even existed, and will continue without them. We have control. We can resist their shiny toys. If we are waiting for THEM (or…

I think you're taking Joshua's quote out of context: The WOPR learns about futility in game theory, not anonymity through exclusion.

I think OP is just reapplying it to another context where it works equally as well.

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

#138

Post by i_phish_cats »

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.

Doesn't clicking on ads reward google, instead of punishing them?

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

#139

Post by jlpicard »

Banner ads are fine. Im happy to visit a site that has the odd banner ad, hell even 1 or 2 ads in the side are fine too. Its the tracking that bugs the shit out of me. Tracking and pop ups.

I'd use Facebook|Insta|Twitter more if it did less tracking, showed a couple of ads, allowed me to have a TIMELINE over a NEWSFEED and suggested maybe a few popular news stories from reputable news sources. If I want news stories from Daily Wire, I'll subscribe. If I want BBC, I'll subscribe.

I get it, it'll make less money from less targeted ads - but it'll probably feel less ethically bankrupt.

Or maybe im just a mad man.

If Amazon ads were a bit smarter ( like yeah, I JUST purchased 12 cans of Monster - I dont need another fucking ad ) I'd be less annoyed at the ads.

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

#140

Post by ForHackernews »

nyxxie wrote: post #118

I felt immense pity for the mother in this scenario, and after reading the article I agreed that FB aught to have some sort of way to indicate that such advertisements are offensive and should not be shown to the user. Ideally, I'd like to see a paid tier that gets rid of advertising altogether. Then I read some of the comments here and on other sites. To put it bluntly, I don't understand the tone of entitlement peo…

> What I don't understand is why they think they have a right to demand that a platform they aren't even paying for should cater to them.

Because those platforms consistently and repeatedly lie to their users: they claim that they are here to serve you, or to help connect you, or help you find things you love.

If all you ever hear is "we're here to help you!", is it any wonder people expect help with their issues?

Maybe if they changed their tagline to something like "Facebook: Here to sell you to advertisers" then people's expectations would be different.

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