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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

#301

Post by anigbrowl »

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.

They're providing content that they're not even being paid for. Stop assuming that the person who own the hardware is automatically the rightful owner of the ecosystem there. Property relations are imaginary and arbitrary and can be rewritten.

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

#302

Post by jpindar »

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…

Hacker News: People are lonely and that's bad.

Hacker News: Making friends as an adult is hard

Also Hacker News: Dump your friends and family if they communicate using a site HN doesn't approve of.

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

#303

Post by tapland »

elwell wrote: post #292
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…

We're working on a chrome extension that blocks the existing ads on a page, and replaces them with privacy-safe ads that reward you with our crypto token for each ad you see. Chrome Extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clearcoin-the-ad-b... Code: https://github.com/clearcoin/extension

There are methods to hide ads.

This is just an ad?

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

#304

Post by NorthOf33rd »

ordu wrote: post #281
NorthOf33rd wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. There are no need to remind me that. I know it. But I know some more. These systems are part of more complex systems of society and of humanity in a whole, these systems are adaptive and reflective. All of them are adaptive, as a small so a large ones. They probably would not change…

>And yes, I'm not considering my language

Then we're done here.

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

#305

Post by crazygringo »

justapassenger wrote: post #235
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

Fascinating! Thanks, I'd never heard of this.

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

#306

Post by NorthOf33rd »

anigbrowl wrote: post #296
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…

You've made the decision to let a business deep into your personal life, a space once reserved only for loved ones. These are the consequences. Nice victim blaming there, let's hold individuals responsible for the bad experiences they have with the vast data collection and ad targeting infrastructure they're virtually forced to interact with. If only they had been studying the blade instead.

Victim? She's not a victim. She's upset she saw an advertisement. Aggrieved, offended, dismayed, rightfully very upset about the loss of her pregnancy, but she's not a victim.

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

#307

Post by tathougies »

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…

Given the amount of ads for fertility doctors I saw after we lost our son, and the ridiculous claims they were making, I think its safe to say that stillbirths are both lucrative and certainly advertised towards.

Honestly, I'm not sure theres anything to do about it. As awful as losing our son was, I'm not sure taking away others rights is really an appropriate response. While Facebook would be wise to take these things into account to build social trust, advertisers themselves are always going to want to advertise their products.

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

#308

Post by tathougies »

brohoolio wrote: post #259
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…

There’s over 3 million miscarriages a year in the U.S. Often time it’s the worst event in your life. Stillbirths are about 1/45 births. This reminds me of when engineers were designing the first air bags. They didn’t think about the size difference between women and men. Diversity matters because it gives you different perspectives about life. I suspect that if the ratio of men to women in the tech industry were reve…

Last time i checked on my mens stillbirth and miscarriage group, 100 percent of still born children had a father.

Trying to frame child loss as something that only happens to women is not only insulting to the equal number of men who have lost children but also furthers the notion that men dont care, when most research on the area shows they care pretty much the same as the mother. Comments that further this notion are what lead to the disproportionately high alcoholism and drug abuse rate for dads of loss

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

#309

Post by [deleted] »

brohoolio wrote: post #259
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…

There’s over 3 million miscarriages a year in the U.S. Often time it’s the worst event in your life. Stillbirths are about 1/45 births. This reminds me of when engineers were designing the first air bags. They didn’t think about the size difference between women and men. Diversity matters because it gives you different perspectives about life. I suspect that if the ratio of men to women in the tech industry were reve…

[deleted]

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

#310

Post by mynameishere »

jakobegger wrote: post #198

Does anybody ever see relevant ads? I guess retargeting kinda works, if I look for info about mortages I see lots of ads from banks, but for anything else? We're all human, we're amazingly complex, everyone of us is unique, and nobody likes to be put in a drawer. But then you have the smartest programmers in the world, working for the richest companies in the world, and all they come up with is "if someone googles fo…

They are astonishingly terrible. I'm especially amazed by the spam sent straight from amazon. Like...high-end fashion. Huh? Maybe I bought a pair of men's socks and they think I want pricey handbags? Or...ads for books I've already purchased. Like, umm... They have almost two decades of my buying habits and that's the best they can do?
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