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I left the ad industry because of data tracking

fastcompany.com

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Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#231

Post by YUMad »

satokema wrote: post #170
heer4it wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be frank, I don't think you've actually conducted an empirical comparison of "black male + white female couplings IRL and in the media", nor do I think such a discrepancy would be worthy of comment even if it exists, and perhaps most importantly, I do not believe in the innocent motives of anyone who brings up the subject and then acts like they are only attempting to make an innocuous anthropological observation.…

In defense of the guy that brought it up: race-mixing is a huge scissor statement. It's already working here - you're getting your socks in a tizzy over a mention of it and can't get past the object-level. The meta-level is it doesn't matter what concept they use - race, gender, sex, identity - posters can and will use it to make you fight people you would otherwise get along with.

Now that the drama is over and I won't be accused of lying, I'd like to point out that I'm European and a child of a mixed marriage myself. So the reaction of this wannabe Jihadi John SJW is even more troubling.

As for the scissor statements, here's another good one: 'Women have smaller brains than men'. It is true (on average) but it will draw out mouth-frothing SJWs without fail.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#232

Post by unclefishbits »

oarsinsync wrote: post #214
jorams wrote: post #167

At some point companies like Fast Company have to accept that they are a significant part of the problem, and just writing articles about it is not enough. This page contains a ridiculous number of trackers. The site pulls in content from the following 3rd-party domains: s.skimresources.com, sb.scorecardresearch.com, secure-cdn.mplxtms.com, z.moatads.com, ml314.com, secure-us.imrworldwide.com, www.googletagservices.c…

This point was made recently about the NY Times having an editorial about advertising / tracking being invasive, while also having advertising / tracking on their own page. The justification / defence given was that you want separation between editorial and business decisions. If the two are aligned, the freedom of the editorial team to write what they want will diminish, and the business will ultimately dictate what…

As their long form journalism with moving graphics and images is so popular and gets so many clicks, think how awe inspiring and what a major effect it would have to shut down all of that stuff on articles talking about that stuff, just to give people a dose of what it could/would be like. It would be respected, get other articles about it, etc.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#233

Post by somatic »

overthemoon wrote: post #180
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…

I have similar feelings, don't get me wrong. I too have experienced that shift. I guess I just want to know, is what technologically possible? I see two possibilities here: one is a handful of unimaginably wealthy and powerful hedge funds and intelligence organizations (heretofore unnamed) which are somehow coordinated in their efforts to shift public opinion to... something. The example given is something about blac…

If I had to guess, I’d say that most of these people are aligned in factions, most of which probably have roughly similar interests and so are working fully or partially independently towards roughly the same things, probably with no little amount of internicene jostling for position.

And in the process they’re probably producing technological horrors simply because it’s convenient and effective to do so. No hard feelings.

Conspiracies happen all the time, and I would imagine that few ever come to light.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#234

Post by somatic »

edmundsauto wrote: post #191
somatic wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

Are you familiar with Hannah Arendt's book, Eichmann in Jerusalem? The narrative is that the Nazi regime was comprised of completely normal people. She then examines what the implications are in a world where perfectly normal people perpetrate the Holocaust. One addendum, it's worth keeping in mind the base rate for these awful gov't incidents you mention. If you only see the bad things, you have subconscious blinder…

I’m all for good governance, and I’m glad that most people in government are trying to do the best that they can with what they have available.

But I think that it’s pretty clear that they’re not running the show, where it really matters.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#235

Post by somatic »

entropea wrote: post #114
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…

Read Manufacturing Consent & Surveillance Valley if you haven't already.

Will do, thanks.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#236

Post by lame88 »

velp wrote: post #226
lame88 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy, it just means advertising doesnt cover everything. The fact that they know so much about you is valuable in itself and they can sell access to that data, for example... to cambridge analytica. Advertising is just one of the ways in which corporations exploit information to manipulate people’s behavior.

Facebook never sold data to CA

Please elaborate on how i've been misinformed in this respect. I've gotten downvoted a bit without much feedback. Also, since the distinction matters, I would like to point out that I claimed selling "access to" that data, not selling the data directly.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#237

Post by edmundsauto »

somatic wrote: post #234
edmundsauto wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you familiar with Hannah Arendt's book, Eichmann in Jerusalem? The narrative is that the Nazi regime was comprised of completely normal people. She then examines what the implications are in a world where perfectly normal people perpetrate the Holocaust. One addendum, it's worth keeping in mind the base rate for these awful gov't incidents you mention. If you only see the bad things, you have subconscious blinder…

I’m all for good governance, and I’m glad that most people in government are trying to do the best that they can with what they have available. But I think that it’s pretty clear that they’re not running the show, where it really matters.

I think it's pretty clear that no group of humans is running the show, where it matters. Humanity is too large, with too much complexity, too many interconnections and Nth-order side effects, for any group of people to be running it.

We are, for better or worse, cruising on a giant ship with limited steering, and all we can do is try to control how much fuel we shovel into the engine.

But the direction of the boat is controlled more like an Ouiji board; our direction is an emergent behavior.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#238

Post by otabdeveloper3 »

cik2e wrote: post #228
otabdeveloper3 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every advertiser I’ve interacted with is either doing individual-level targeting or striving towards it. Only if they're clueless. For example: Nike really wants a dataset of "people who buy expensive sneakers for fashion purposes". This dataset is probably hundreds of millions of anonymous people, and not personal data. If there was a way to get this dataset directly, Nike would do that in a heartbeat. Unfortunate…

There are many sites that have quite accurate PII for large fractions of the American population. Think job boards for instance. One approach that I have seen used successfully is simply buying whatever data such companies are willing to sell. I’m not necessarily talking about demographics, but rather clickstream data, and anything categorical that you can get your hands on. You join that to your CRM and build a mode…

Are you reading what I'm writing? No?

Let me repeat again. PII is a crutch used for matching, because current matching/segmenting technologies are crude.

Advertisers don't want PII. What they want is target audiences with predictive power, which means data sets where the central limit theorem holds sway. (I.e., thousands and millions of people lumped together.)

If advertisers could get at these segments directly without PII, they'd do it in a second.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#239

Post by m463 »

jorams wrote: post #167

At some point companies like Fast Company have to accept that they are a significant part of the problem, and just writing articles about it is not enough. This page contains a ridiculous number of trackers. The site pulls in content from the following 3rd-party domains: s.skimresources.com, sb.scorecardresearch.com, secure-cdn.mplxtms.com, z.moatads.com, ml314.com, secure-us.imrworldwide.com, www.googletagservices.c…

CDNs absolutely identify and track you on the backend.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#240

Post by m463 »

jccalhoun wrote: post #40

What 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…

On relevant ads.

You see ads from companies with the most to gain from getting to your eyeballs.

These companies are not the ones you are interested in, who will probably get your business anyway.

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