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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

#231

Post by rocqua »

eridius wrote: post #223
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are advertisers going to notice that 1% of people in the 'Just had a baby' group actually had stillbirths? I'd guess not, especially because advertisers don't get to know who they advertised to.

Is FB or Google going to change this to improve their conversion rate by ~1%? Probably not, 1% is not a lot. In the end, as long as the advertising platform gets a decent conversion rate on 'Just had a baby' for the advertisers, everyone is happy.

Heck, advertisers might prefer 10% accuracy and 90% recall over 50% accuracy and 80% recall. If pushing that recall up a bit yields a few more customers, the extra cost of showing that to a lot more non-viable people might just work out.

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

#232

Post by pbhjpbhj »

wesd wrote: post #65
mc32 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There was a thread about this about a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18535748 "This one is funny, and has a couple of obvious solutions that have been prevented due to internal politics. The short answer is that they have a couple of different recommender systems, all competing against each other internally for sales lift. One is purely based off of pageviews. When you get recommendations for somethi…

>after you filter for returns and replacements, that the probability of sequentially buying two of the same vacuum cleaner was effectively zero.

But aren't the returns segment significant? "I bought this vacuum cleaner, returned it because it didn't suck (!); oh and look, this advert said this one has the best suction."?

Also, it seems common amongst some sectors to rebuy: like parents might buy a coat, find it's good, rebuy for the other children. Landlords might update their properties, rebuying items that work well and are robust enough, etc..

?

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

#233

Post by rocqua »

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.

I doubt people hear this story and say 'Meh, fuck em'.

However, what about (in thought not out loud) 'False positives are hard to prevent, special cases like these are very rare. Instrumenting our platform with exceptions like these is a massive undertaking for which I don't have the political capital. Lets not take action now.'

From outside the company, those are nearly the same reaction. From inside the head of the thinker, they are very different.

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

#234

Post by eridius »

rocqua wrote: post #231
eridius wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Are advertisers going to notice that 1% of people in the 'Just had a baby' group actually had stillbirths? I'd guess not, especially because advertisers don't get to know who they advertised to. Is FB or Google going to change this to improve their conversion rate by ~1%? Probably not, 1% is not a lot. In the end, as long as the advertising platform gets a decent conversion rate on 'Just had a baby' for the advertise…

Serving up ads that are known to be offensive to the user isn't just a lost opportunity to make money, it's also going to encourage that user to start blocking ads, which the advertisers and Google/Facebook don't want.

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

#235

Post by justapassenger »

crazygringo wrote: post #93

I don't mind the ads... I just wish we could manually update our inferred advertising profiles ourselves! Like, "I already bought that product on Amazon so you don't need to advertise it to me anymore." Like, "I already shop at store X so you don't need to keep showing it." Or the obvious case in this article. Sure, draw your inferences... but please let us correct them! If I'm gonna see ads, I want them to be releva…

https://www.facebook.com/help/247395082112892?helpref=relate...

https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662856

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

#236

Post by harryh »

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.

Nah, this is definitely not evidence of brokenness. People rebuy things they've bought recently all the time, certainly more often than the general population. Maybe they want a 2nd one. Maybe the 1st one broke. Maybe they liked it so much they want a 2nd one to give as a gift. All kinds of reasons.

patio11 has a great tweetstream on this issue.

https://twitter.com/patio11/status/982208307057246209

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

#237

Post by mc32 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #232
wesd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a thread about this about a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18535748 "This one is funny, and has a couple of obvious solutions that have been prevented due to internal politics. The short answer is that they have a couple of different recommender systems, all competing against each other internally for sales lift. One is purely based off of pageviews. When you get recommendations for somethi…

>after you filter for returns and replacements, that the probability of sequentially buying two of the same vacuum cleaner was effectively zero. But aren't the returns segment significant? "I bought this vacuum cleaner, returned it because it didn't suck (!); oh and look, this advert said this one has the best suction."? Also, it seems common amongst some sectors to rebuy: like parents might buy a coat, find it's goo…

As a different poster than Parent posted, people are not goldfish. In all those repeat purchase scenarios the buyers know what they bought and can buy again if they so choose (in the near future). If it's six months down the road, I can see maybe this would be useful.

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

#238

Post by StudentStuff »

mrspeaker wrote: post #211
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.

I'm sure that by now the ad networks must have figured out that I compulsively lie to them and take that into consideration. Youtube just can't believe that I've mysteriously never heard of a single product they ask about in their surveys... "Wow, this guy has never heard of Starbucks either?!" Lying to CAPTCHA is getting tougher these days - it takes me a few minutes now before they let me through even though I've i…

That is part of why I switched away from Google & containerized Youtube in Firefox, its really easy to end up in CAPTCHA hell it seems. Qwant and DuckDuckGo are sufficient, and actually better when searching specific item names or part #, its pretty impressive how shit Google's results have become as of late for this use case IMO.

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

#239

Post by darkr »

walrus01 wrote: post #68
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…

I recently viewed the Amazon page for a 55 gallon drum of personal lubricant and you would not believe the weird ads I get now.

Personalised recommendations can be a very slippery problem to solve.

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

#240

Post by OliverJones »

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…

USA stillbirths occur in about 1% of pregnancies. It may be unlikely for any particular woman. But it is more common than, say, people in the market for a truck.

There's no reason at all, except laziness on the part of marketers, not to handle this case. Marketers who hope for a long-term relationship with young families might be really smart to avoid alienating them by pitching snuggly carriers to women who've just suffered a miscarriage.

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