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

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

#141

Post by KingMob » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 7:25 PM UTC

jeremy7600 wrote: post #126

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…

No, I felt the same way. The platforms are just doing what they are programmed to do, its not meant to be offensive. The fact that it is offensive is not something a computer could detect, exactly, so in my mind the platforms have done nothing wrong.

But at the end of the day, humans are still in charge, not algorithms. If they can't adequately control the algorithms, perhaps they're not ready to be deployed.

To see this a little more clearly, if a military deployed autonomous killer robots that kept accidentally killing civilian children, would you then argue the military isn't responsible?

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

#142

Post by Klathmon » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 7:27 PM UTC

cat199 wrote: post #124

Klathmon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google at least let's you specifically go into ad settings and check/uncheck specific categories of things that you get ads about (that's an oversimplification of the process behind it). I'm not sure how but one time I started getting a few ads in Spanish about toothpaste. I had also just found out about the ad settings page, and after taking the minute to remove the handful of wrong interests, the incorrectly target…

> Google at least let's you specifically go into ad settings and ... ... improve the tracking accuracy of your data in exchange for reducing your annoyance with ads

I mean right at the top of the page is a single switch that lets you turn off all targeted advertising if that's what you want.

But personally I like targeted advertising. Ads let me use services for no monetary payment while still providing income for the content creators, and I like seeing ads that are targeted towards my interests more than ads that aren't. And while it's not ideal that you might have to go in and change what your preferences are in cases where they get it wrong, I much prefer it over the alternative of all ads being "wrong" for me.

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

#143

Post by kaitai » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 7:28 PM UTC

dkrich wrote: post #73

I feel like I’m alone in asking this but does personal responsibility play no part in this? She starts by admitting that she voluntarily signaled to these platforms that she was pregnant. They are ad platforms. She then goes on to admit that she continued to go back on the platforms after and then blames them for showing ads she herself engaged with at one point! I don’t think anyone would ever wish someone grieving…

These ads are served by models. She's saying, "Hey model-builders, add in the stillbirth option. You can detect that using machine learning too -- throw in some sentiment analysis and call it good." As someone who is not building these models herself, that's as much personal responsibility as she can take. And it's a good point. Brands that want goodwill and sales if she has a kid later should want to not be seared in her memory as a pain-point after stillbirth.

It's a bit much to say "ads she herself engaged with at one point" -- Facebook and email marketers serve you a lot of ads for companies and sites you may never have engaged with directly.

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

#144

Post by Wowfunhappy » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 7:30 PM UTC

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…

In the case of the letter author, I suspect the problem isn't just that stillbirths are rare, but that you can't really monetize a stillbirth. Better to assume the baby was born successfully than miss out on the opportunity to advertise to a new mom.

I'm sure no one in the room of marketing execs has considered personal consequences like this one.

This type of thing is why I do my best to enable privacy settings and disable personalized ads. I don't actually care whether Google knows what I ate for dinner last night, but I don't want constantly see Google's fuzzy judgements of my humanity as I browse the web.

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

#145

Post by VikingCoder » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 7:30 PM UTC

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…

I don't think the OP is asking for regulation.

I think the OP is begging for consideration.

As a user, we have every right to state our opinions.

It's not "immoral" or "unfair" to say, "You're making money off of me, I'd really like you to change your behavior."

I don't know why or how you jumped all the way to "regulatory hoops."

Have you seen people advocating laws in this discussion? I haven't.

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

#146

Post by monksy » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 7:30 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #115

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…

Not everyone is as enlightened about data science as you seem to be. If you actually want GDPR-like reform in the U.S., then part of the discussion involves people pointing out the absurdities and injustice in how data science is currently implemented. Imagine your line of condescending argument being applied to someone complaining about being wrongly convicted and incarcerated, and who is calling for criminal justic…

As technical people: We generally understand that data science works in the following manner:

  1. You collect and annotate data (This is probably about 90% of the work here)
  2. Someone has a goal of something to find or query
  3. Develop models that can solve that goal, or redefine
  4. Use the output

For the results of data science, you are always going to get generalized approximations of segments (groups of people) That's just how statistics work. (It's also how medicine tends to work as well.. but I digress)

> Criminal justifce reform

The consequences from are a lot higher. We've seen this over 1000+ years about some of the conerning court cases. That's why we have ideas such as "spirit of the law," human judges, juries, and appeals. Additionally, this is why the law is so complicated and murky. Computers are very bad at this.

I'm especially hard on this individual because she's using her position with WaPO to try to publically "humiliate" those tech companies.

> Giving feedback

This is where some of the techincal literacy comes in a well, she doesn't seem to understand that the feedback requires human understanding is not something that is "intelligently" accounted for. Systems like that do not exist. The ad platform isn't something that is designed to accomidate her needs. (which is why I used the word entitled) It's a bit like being upset over those same ads being shown on TV. (media literacy covers, those are ads they may or may not be targeted towards you and those do not have to reflect your reality)

---

As far as the data privacy bit goes: We should have control over the data that is collected about us and have the ability to remove it later. At the moment the strongest thing we have is the GDPR, but that's for European Union citizens only.

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

#147

Post by NorthOf33rd » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 7:31 PM UTC

save_ferris wrote: post #127

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…

I don't disagree with this, but this argument fails to acknowledge the responsibility of social media companies to communicate what information they gather about you and how they choose to use it. On both fronts, they're still entirely too opaque. It might not be a fair comparison, but I feel like this argument is the equivalent to smoking for 40 years without realizing that it causes cancer because the hypothetical…

Social media companies are incredibly clear about what information they gather and how they will use it: everything and however they want. Is anyone actually unaware of this? The individuals may not consider the consequences, but twitter has no responsibility to tell you that they'll use your pregnancy post to advertise to you, and what the ramifications of that might be. Advertising algorithms are amoral tools put into this world by amoral entities.

The woman's situation is a use case with an ROI attached to it. It's a PBI for Twitter.

Elsewhere in this thread there's a transgender individual. Their use case is another PBI.

The transgender person's use case will be solved first because the transgender community represents more advertising dollars than a grieving mother.

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

#148

Post by monksy » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 7:32 PM UTC

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…

If we're talking about data privacy and control, I'm 100% with you on the situation.

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

#149

Post by abootstrapper » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 7:34 PM UTC

jeremy7600 wrote: post #126

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…

No, I felt the same way. The platforms are just doing what they are programmed to do, its not meant to be offensive. The fact that it is offensive is not something a computer could detect, exactly, so in my mind the platforms have done nothing wrong.

No, with power comes responsibility. If I make an automated car that runs over pedestrians but otherwise runs great. I can’t ethically write it off as “well, it’s just doing what it was programmed to do. There aren’t many pedestrians compared to cars anyways.” These ad companies that presume too much deserve the backlash when they get it wrong. They are responsible for their creations actions good and bad.

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

#150

Post by VikingCoder » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 7:34 PM UTC

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…

Any person can ask others to change their behavior.

And if they get the attention of the company, the company may change its behaviors.

Whether out of sympathy or self-interest is kind of immaterial.

As users, we'd like the companies to change their behavior.

Companies rely on users' good will. Once they depend on users for revenue, they need to act to a certain degree as though they care about those users. Or users may leave. These are the consequences.