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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

#221

Post by wizardforhire »

paulie_a wrote: post #75
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…

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.

I’ve been doing the same thing. Originally blindly, now I can actually see my ad interests buried in the settings under account data and all the way at the bottom of the list... but it’s there. And oh how it’s funny to see what changes the list. What’s terrifying though, is the things on the list that I have not engaged in online that only could have been added as result of verbal conversations with people who have not set up even a modicum of privacy on their devices. Specifically flag words I use in conversations for just such a purpose. As a result, I’m collecting evidence for a massive privacy lawsuit that undoubtly will occur sometime in the future which I’m eager to take part and assist in.

That aside and in the interim, a small thing we can all do if you’re concerned about privacy is to inform people when discussing such matters where to go on their devices to learn about what is known about them.

No other conversation has scared indivuals I’ve met more than showing them their ad interests.

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

#222

Post by legostormtroopr »

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.

If you publish an open letter you invite open responses. Doubly so if you do it on the Internet. Triply so if you work in the media.

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

#223

Post by eridius »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #144
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…

> but that you can't really monetize a stillbirth

Serving up ads that are guaranteed to not apply are a negative because it means you're giving up the opportunity to serve up ads that might actually make money.

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

#224

Post by trophycase »

NorthOf33rd wrote: post #207
ordu wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those ads are not your friends. Don't expect them to treat you like they care. Why? Why they don't care? Is it technically impossible or what? You know, they can try to care and try to become a friend, maybe ads would work better in that case? How do you think? What you are doing in your comment is just stating facts that are known for everyone already. For what reason you are doing it? What are you trying to achie…

She will not succeed in making the system more human centered or friendly. She will succeed in changing the ROI of dealing with advertising to mothers of stillborn children, as another poster stated, by creating negative PR. Those are not equivalent. You are exactly the person I'm trying to influence by reminding you that these systems care about revenue, not you or your well being. These facts may be well known, but…

These systems are sociopathic. Full stop. It is in their nature.

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

#225

Post by ahi »

res0nat0r wrote: post #59
protomyth wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tar…

If I employ a human too stupid to not insult my customers, I would probably fire him.

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

#226

Post by graeme »

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…

Posting in case this may be of use. I've been able to make all the social networks more or less serve me irrelevent stuff or not serve me stuff. Here's how:

* I use Facebook in safari on ios and have ad blockers enabled

* I use the youtube app logged out

* Twitter I generally visit people's profiles directly or in a 3rd party all

Instagram is the only one I can't fix, as I use the app. Maybe if I did more in the web browser, but then I'd lose stories.

Anyway, Instagram consistently serves up ads that are in the ballpark of relevant to me. But other than that, the ads I see are random generic ads for stuff like cars and laundry detergent. The kind of mass market ads you'd see on TV. I get ads in other languages when I travel.

It's nice, I can mostly ignore them. Of course, key to this is that I prefer to ignore algorithms on things like youtube. This method won't work if you need that.

But if you don't mind algorithms not being personalized, you can make the ads irrelevant to you too.

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

#227

Post by paulddraper »

Twitter confuses me.

There is a character limit on text, so its users post images of text?

I know this is off-topic; it just seems an absolutely byzantine method of communication.

Reminds me of sending a YouTube video with Word. https://xkcd.com/763/

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

#228

Post by sinemetu11 »

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…

> the algorithmic rejection of my reality on these platforms takes a pretty consistent toll

That sucks. :/

https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ and https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts/blob/10bba14590738c445c...

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

#229

Post by TeMPOraL »

ahallan wrote: post #209
wiz21c wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> I'm sure no one in the room of marketing execs has considered personal consequences like this one. Your first sentence was more correct (I suspect) : they thought about it and purposely forgot about it 'cos there was no money to be made there.

Are people that callous? I work for a large corporate, and I can honestly say that I think no-one would make such a decision. Perhaps I am naive.

They'd just think, "all measuring has false positives", and wouldn't think about it beyond checking if there isn't too much of them.

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

#230

Post by lenocinor »

RandallBrown wrote: post #96
macleginn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works the same way in Spotify’s recommender system. It keeps recommending you records you not only have already listened to a couple of times, but also added to your library and even made available offline. This is so fixable.

Spotify has several ways of recommending new music. Discover Weekly is a brand new playlist of new music that you haven't listened to before. They have their Daily Mixes which seem to be based on music you listen to regularly, with a few new, but similar, things mixed in. I have found that it generally recommends the same type of music, so I can feel a little stuck in a few genres, but they just gave me a playlist of…

Note that I generally agree about Discover Weekly, but it can recommend (and occasionally has recommended, for me) music I have heard before. I suspect this might be due to another suspicion of mine, that Discover Weekly puts songs into the playlist that people you follow are listening to. I've seen this happen many times with Discover Weekly, but I can never know for sure if it's a coincidence or not.
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