This became obvious a few years ago. I went to a startup pitch event (actually to get pointers on how to write my own) and was genuinely horrified at what all of the ad-tech guys were up to.
There is no reason to assume any moderation or morals here. The naked greed of surveillance capitalism is such that all of the precautions that might have looked like the province of tinfoil hat wearers are now justified.
I left the ad industry because of data tracking
71–80 of 241 posts
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#72What are they doing with all this data tracking because it sure isn't giving me relevant ads. In addition to the often noted situation where you buy something online and then get ads for that thing you already bought, I routinely see totally irrelevant ads and recommendations. I've been on Facebook since around 2003. I've had an Amazon account for even longer. Their ads and recommendations for me are terrible. Two re…
Ad targeting is intentionally fuzzy to avoid creeping you out. Companies like Acxiom have an incredible amount of data on you. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
A friend of mine worked for Acxiom, and when they looked themselves up they found 6-7 different profiles, all fantastically wrong, some clearly mixed with information from other people.
Admittedly it's a very private person that I'm talking about who deliberately obscures themselves by leaving incorrect or misspelled information when forced to give any information, and who moves, switches jobs often, has an odd name, and changed that odd name through marriage. But I think that a lot of us are falling for the marketing of these intelligence companies, rather than judging them by predictive effectiveness because we don't have any access to that.
There's no real theory of mind behind all of this stuff; it seems to be that it will only ultimately be effective for creating black/whitelists where you don't care about a lot of false positives.
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your post is also an attempt to “reinforce complex concepts in our minds subconsciously” isn’t it? The entire field of marketing is an attempt to influence people to engage in a particular behavior. Why single out hedge funds and intelligence agencies?
The difference is those have the power to make dissidents vanish and make it seem like everything is perfect.
Hedge funds make dissidents vanish?
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#74What are they doing with all this data tracking because it sure isn't giving me relevant ads. In addition to the often noted situation where you buy something online and then get ads for that thing you already bought, I routinely see totally irrelevant ads and recommendations. I've been on Facebook since around 2003. I've had an Amazon account for even longer. Their ads and recommendations for me are terrible. Two re…
Watched some Youtube yesterday, it kept showing me the same freaking ad for like 20 times in a row. Sometimes I get the same 2-3 ads for weeks at a time. Not sure what's the idea, if you're going to show ads at least make it a barable experience, it's almost as if they're trying to trigger some breaking point.
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#75[deleted]
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#76This whole "article" is a slimy, PR-firm-injected ad. Hell would freeze over before I touched this guy's "privacy" "filter" with a 10-foot pole.
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#77What are they doing with all this data tracking because it sure isn't giving me relevant ads. In addition to the often noted situation where you buy something online and then get ads for that thing you already bought, I routinely see totally irrelevant ads and recommendations. I've been on Facebook since around 2003. I've had an Amazon account for even longer. Their ads and recommendations for me are terrible. Two re…
Relevant ads were never the goal, it's just the least creepy sounding excuse for spying.
What is the goal then, for profit seeking advertising companies like Google and Facebook?
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#78Edit, remember not to shoot the people asking questions
I'm not sure why that data is so horrifying. I work a job that I willing put on Facebook, and I live in a house i am a registered voter at.
You can probably guess my route to work.
I'm unsure why this is bad, it sounds more useless than anything.
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good point on mobile. I use Adguard Pro on mobile after reading about it on HN. Yet to test Pi-hole. The work part is unavoidable, I guess.
Consider trying AdGuard Home as well: https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardHome
Thanks, this looks great. I put pi-hole on a vps I use, but once I started tinkering with it; it broke.
It's a nice project, but seems fragile. I'm going to try adguard home. I like that it has the ability to control access, so I feel safer running it in the cloud.
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#80Hedge funds and intelligence agencies are fingerprinting all groups within our society by monitoring the responses of various target audiences to engineered stimuli. This comes in the form of observing the response to selective dissemination of content with a known effect on observers (you). A few years ago we heard about some outrage nobody did anything about when it became clear Facebook was manipulating reader emo…
This is paranoid. I remember the story about Facebook doing emotional manipulation through the feed, but you go from there to hyper rich hedge funds and shadowy intelligence agencies at the reins of public life shaping the course of history through social media black magic. I don't doubt there are bad actors trying to do bad things via advertising and social media, but this is quite the claim. The rich and powerful are bad enough without adding internet/advertising mediated mind control to the mix.
It's weird that the story you picked was a black man saving a white woman to describe the shift of the Overton Window. Where is the window moving to, and from where?