I left the ad industry because of data tracking • Hacker News Board

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#101

Post by somatic » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #98

somatic wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know about you, but the Snowden Revelations dramatically shifted my baseline of “paranoid schizo”. Before, I thought the prospect utterly bananas that “the government” was tapping every phone call, strong-arming ISPs, and intercepting mail en route to its destination. Then I found myself in a rabbit hole of Tuskegee experiments, Operation Northwoodses, MKULTRAs, human-animal hybrids, and so on. Now, the quest…

>Then I found myself in a rabbit hole of Tuskegee experiments, Operation Northwoodses, MKULTRAs, human-animal hybrids, and so on. These things aren't interrelated, or even very similar.

Sure they are: they’re all things which normal people wouldn’t do to other people, and in which the perpetrators weren’t punished.

And by “normal people wouldn’t do to other people”, I mean “stark raving mad”.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#102

Post by michaelt » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

throwayEngineer wrote: post #78

Edit, 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.

Location data tells me how often you go to the gun shop and the shooting range, when your house is empty, which political protests you go to, how often you visit the pharmacy/doctor, what prostitutes you visit, what gay bars you visit, how often you break the speed limit, how much sleep you get, when you visit your lawyer or your STD clinic, whether you've kept up going to Alcoholics Anonymous, what restaurants you go to and how often, how often you're late for work, and how often you visit your grandma.

I'm not an Iranian gay gun owner, but I still have a problem with an advertising company assembling a database of Iranian gay gun owners.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#103

Post by luckylion » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #72

xfitm3 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> 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.

With my tin foil hat on tight, maybe they create shitty profiles on all their employees so they don't get freaked out and run for the hills!

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#104

Post by MisterBastahrd » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 1:50 PM UTC

overthemoon wrote: post #80

2Ccltvcm wrote: post #52

Hedge 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 a…

When I was a developer for a publisher, I could choose the race, gender, interests, location, and career of people to target my ads with. As long as my ads didn't explicitly break their TOSes, I was good to go. You don't have to be rich and powerful to gain influence over people. A modest budget will give you this access, because the rich and powerful will sell the access to you. They aren't even necessarily interested in using it directly, because there's more money to be made and less regulatory pressure if they're middlemen.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#105

Post by hmhrex » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 1:51 PM UTC

taormina wrote: post #100

hmhrex wrote: post #54

Me and a few other people have been pushing for ethical advertising. It doesn't have to be this way. We meet monthly to give each other advice and help each other out. It's hard, it can take more time, but it's been a great experience, and I hope that this starts to become the norm over time. Here's the group: - Eric Berry with CodeFund ( https://codefund.io ) - David Fischer with ReadTheDocs ( https://docs.readthedo…

I absolutely love this. Have y'all been collecting your advice? I'd love to learn what has and hasn't worked so far for your projects.

I've been trying to do a monthly report on the RH blog, but I'm behind by a couple months. I've actually been thinking more about how to get more info about this. If you have any specific questions, I can try and answer them for you or bring them back to the others.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#106

Post by TheTruth54321 » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

2Ccltvcm wrote: post #52

Hedge 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…

LOL ... man-up.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#107

Post by mobjack » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 1:54 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #6

Another very frustrating article about advertising. I don't doubt any of his conclusions, or his moral claims. But, I do want more details. What are the various tracking and correlation mechanisms, what do they look like practically? Does anyone actually really use canvas the way we all fear, or are smartphone apps and Android itself doing all the heavy lifting? Would a user's privacy settings in their phones mitigat…

Tracking still mainly relies on unique identifiers on cookies and mobile apps.

The main thing I see fingerprinting used for is tracking users between mobile apps and websites. That mainly relies on IP addresses.

The best way to track users is just to ask for information. Ask for a users email address to log in and you have a simple means to track a user across devices.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#108

Post by luckylion » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #62

titzer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> legal guardrails What many companies do is they sprinkle some magic "anonymous" pixie dust on their data and then tons of laws no longer apply, even if the data is trivially identifiable stuff. And location data is often of that nature.

The will is there sometimes to attempt this, which is why following risk procedures is tied to performance ratings at better companies. Companies also delete data after specified time, as required by numerous legal entities. And engage with third party matching services so that personally identifying information is salted and hashed until the print shop Etc.

Do you know whether there are actual audits happening by third parties?

I've never had anything to do with ad tech, but the (few) certification processes I've been involved with were largely documentation and "yes, we do have backups. no, unauthorized persons cannot access our servers" promises without anybody actually auditing/testing.

Do they have independent auditors regularly look at the tech and operation to verify that they actually do conform with the laws and don't just claim to?

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#109

Post by DailyHN » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 2:00 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #83

DailyHN wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using Google retargeting ads, less than 5% of desktop traffic goes on to click anywhere on my website. And it's worse for mobile than on desktops. Source: I setup Google Analytics event tracking to trigger on every page click. Edit: change 10% to 5%. And it's actually only 2.5% over the past 14 days. Edit2: and that was from ~200 clicks over 14 days.

> I setup Google Analytics event tracking to trigger on every page click. Thank you, I now feel as good as I'll ever feel about using uBO.

As someone who never uses any blockers, what's the benefit to you?

I imagine you have some role in building the internet since you're on HN.

As far as I'm aware, by not blocking ads I am experiencing the internet that the majority of people also experience.

And I think that's how I can better understand the people I build things for.

Maybe if more tech workers took off their tin-foil ad-blocking hats then the ad industry, and the whole internet, would be better off.

Edit: I wonder how many developers that work for ad companies also use ad blockers. Probably a lot?

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#110

Post by luckylion » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

nerdponx wrote: post #51

Good, as software engineers, machine learning researchers, etc. we have the real power here. Just stop working for these companies. There are jobs and good incomes to be had in other industries. Tell recruiters you are not interested in ad industry.

Somebody else will work for them though. While I'm not saying "so it might as well be you" (unless you're going undercover), "not doing it" might not be enough. Actively undermining their efforts may be necessary.