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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

#321

Post by dba7dba »

lapinot wrote: post #249
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…

This would be a solution if the problem was social media. The problem here is the intrusiveness of advertisement. Personally targeted advertisement exists on the non-social web, on the phone, in your mailbox, at your door. Group-targeted[#] and still intrusive advertisement exists in the public transports, on the radio, in newspapers, in the streets, on most "things" in your house (as branding), on your clothes. I th…

The entire modern economy seems to exist for, because of, and due to ads.

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

#322

Post by vortico »

wilg wrote: post #208
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…

You can't put an ad blocker in native phone apps, like Instagram. Sure, you can do it on the mobile website, but then you have to switch to the mobile website.

Apps that change the /etc/hosts file work great. Nearly all social media apps pull ads from separate domains, which can be easily curated into a list. Requires rooting your phone.

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

#323

Post by d--b »

Tough story...

What’s interesting in the post is that the author is not mad at ads in the first place, she’s angry at the failure of the algorithm to adapt to her situation.

So this is something that companies could fix. Like when they infer something about your state, they could ask you about it, and have a setting “on and off” ads.

Like: “hi, our algo tells us you may be pregnant, are interested in seeing ads for these kinds of stuff or not”? And that could be a setting you could remove.

Maybe it’ll spook some users off...

In any case there should be a button “stop trying to infer shit about me”.

Perhaps it’d be a good way to introduce pay $5 a month for total privacy Facebook.

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

#325

Post by kkarakk »

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…

>they all compete

this is amazon's answer when an employee asks about work culture. it's working for now but the wheels seem to be falling off as the months pass by

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

#326

Post by camillomiller »

Two years ago my relationship of 11 years came to an end. While I was going through a very painful breakup, Facebook would constantly inundate me with “memories” full of fake algorithmically tuned enthusiasm. My ex was constantly part of that. Understandably, so. I just wonder what it would be for someone that has actually lost a child or a dear one. Yes, I know I can deactivate the relationship status and choose not to see that person anymore, but that won’t work with memories that don’t have that person tagged in, but will still depict something that you’ve still done together in the past, like the picture from a trip, a piece of furniture you built together, or a pic of her amazing cat (who also tragically died years ago).

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

#327

Post by foobar1962 »

VikingCoder wrote: post #317
foobar1962 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consideration from whom? Some advertisers have bought the right to display their ads to people the platform has probably identified as “women having babies soon”. Does the OP want consideration from the platform or the advertisers? I feel the OP is venting the feeling that they’ve had a huge personal tragedy yet the world has just kept on going like nothing happened.

If an advertiser saw this and were horrified, I'm sure they'd be asking the platform to try to do something about it. If the platform saw this and were horrified, I bet advertisers would appreciate or at least not mind, if they fixed situations like this. If you and I saw this and were horrified, we might amplify her voice.

What if the ads for baby products were on advertising outside (or inside) the hospital. Should there be NO advertising for baby products because 1% of pregnancies end in stillbirth?

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

#328

Post by VikingCoder »

foobar1962 wrote: post #327
VikingCoder wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an advertiser saw this and were horrified, I'm sure they'd be asking the platform to try to do something about it. If the platform saw this and were horrified, I bet advertisers would appreciate or at least not mind, if they fixed situations like this. If you and I saw this and were horrified, we might amplify her voice.

What if the ads for baby products were on advertising outside (or inside) the hospital. Should there be NO advertising for baby products because 1% of pregnancies end in stillbirth?

I'm pretty sure OP is saying, "Hey, tech companies, if you're going to mine my data to figure out I'm pregnant, maybe you should give me some way to tell you that the pregnancy ended in sorrow, and I don't want to see any ads about baby needs."

It's not calling for a ban on baby product ads.

It's saying that force-feeding ads on baby products to someone who has lost their child is awful, and it doesn't seem like a big stretch to let a user say, "I don't have a baby!" in a way that tech companies / advertisers can use, to be more sensitive.

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

#329

Post by remilouf »

My wife and I went through something similar a little less than a year ago (baby die at 6 months from a heart failure). Every now and then I still get the occasional diaper ad popping up.

What disturbs me the most are colleagues who said it was my fault since I hadn’t shared my grief on social media, and algorithms could not learn (I work in data « science »). As if targeted advertising was a law of Nature and there was nothing we could do about it. Just deal with it. And blame yourself for not showcasing your pain in front of hundreds of people.

The issue with algorithms is not that these events are statistically unlikely (unfortunately). They just have memory, enough memory to be accurate. So the day happy messages are replaced with the word « death », it hasn’t had the time to learn baby was not there anymore. There may be ways to improve that, but I bet you’d be trading accuracy for the remaining 95% people. Guess what version wins at a business meeting?

I’m not blaming colleagues who write these algorithms. They didn’t know this could happen, they didn’t think about it before this happened to me. We’re all math and CS geeks priding ourselves in [insert your metric here] score above the 90% mark, and that’s all we optimize for. I’ve heard a joke once that the difference between science majors and humanities major was that scientists build the atomic bomb, humanities major explain to them why it’s not a good idea to use it. Targeted advertising is not as bad as the atomic bomb, of course, but you get the idea.

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

#330

Post by sundvor »

tathougies wrote: post #307
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…

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 thi…

Sorry to hear of your loss, it is a horrible thing to contemplate. Hope you (will) recover(ed) in time; all the best.
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