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How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook

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Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook

#71

Post by Razengan »

okareaman wrote: post #56

I like targeted ads. I just wish they were better. For example I am open about being in recovery for alcoholism on FB but they still show me ads for hard liquor.

“Targeted” ads have -never- shown me anything I actually wanted to buy.

On the other hand, whenever I really wanted to spend spare money, say on new games or movies or music, every fucking company tries to put as many hindrances in my way as possible: The search systems of almost all stores is terrible and their filtering options are crippled.

With the exception of Steam, every store I’ve tried makes it really hard to find items matching some specific criteria.

Way to go ya Silicon Valley nincompoops. /clappingemoji

How about instead of pillaging my privacy to try to inaccurately infer what I like, why the fuck not just let me TELL you what I like?

Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook

#72

Post by [deleted] »

moksly wrote: post #52
smcl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you fill your date of birth on any age-protected content (websites for distilleries or breweries, for example) as 1st January 1940 or something? They could just mistakenly believe you're 81 based on that :)

Well I’ve had a friendly hemorrhoid for a few years that I frequently see a lovely anal surgeon for and I probably have some “this might be cancer” search entries from a few years back, but it’s been so long that I should’ve died by now if it was actually cancer down there. Other than that I have no idea heh.

[deleted]

Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook

#73

Post by benreesman »

Anyone who wants to can scroll through my comment history and see that on average I’m the ex-FB guy defending FB. And usually the claim or accusation is debatable, if not dubious.

But as someone who’s got a lot of sweat equity in seeing FB ads pay for all that long-haul fiber that HN smart asses take for granted, FB is on legitimately thin ice here. It’s possible for someone with a blog to learn things about a cookie that shouldn’t be shared. What FB can know and what FB should know, and what FB will admit to knowing are potentially all different things.

FB should learn to forget medical data, sexual data, political data, etc. etc.

The short term erection some lit major at an agency gets from seeing some intrusive targeting option is not worth the trust that FB has somehow managed to maintain with most real users. And if you’ve got a new take on why FB sucks and turned down an offer, feel free to take it there. The world has more than enough “I’m angry at leetcode” deep threads.

Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook

#74

Post by geoduck14 »

durnygbur wrote: post #33
mns wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to come back to my home country for a few weeks now, having been away for one year and a half, and it's absolutely insane how every ad on tv and radio is for drugs. They even target children for car sickness. Instead of educating people to avoid these things, everything is: smoke and bad breath, get breathazol, drink too much or eat only unhealthy stuff: forteliver plus. There was a movement to ban all pharma a…

Ah yes, the radio ads - forgot to mention these.

So vintage!

Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook

#75

Post by sslayer »

nkrisc wrote: post #66
rich_sasha wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One particularly funny side effect is that the narrator needs to read out a comprehensive disclaimer. I was once on holiday and with US TV, and saw a few times an ad for performance enhancement for older gentlemen. The ad showed an older couple, who first are not very happy, then much happier with each other, frollicking in the long grass and disappearing off shot etc. While that was happening, the narrator was readi…

It’s bizarre even as an American who is used to it. The most amusing thing is they’re clearly running out of good ideas for names. The names are getting stranger every year. They’re basically just gibberish now.

It has to be a branding/patenting thing around uniqueness. I couldn't imagine trying to come up with new website names on a daily basis that would be expected to stick in a consumers mind.

Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook

#76

Post by naturalauction »

moksly wrote: post #49
CapriciousCptl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, it's legal to advertise drugs directly to patients. There's not a lot of places in the world where it happens, I'm assuming Scandinavia is one of them.

Maybe it’s because of how we buy prescription medicine. You’ll get the prescription from your doctor, and then go to a pharmacy where they will default to offering you the cheapest brand available at the time of your purchase, and ask if you’re cool with that. So we sort of have a culture where you only really stick to certain brands if you’ve ever had a bad reaction to a copy product. I’ve got a hay fever for instan…

I don't think it's only that - there are plenty of ads for medications with no generics. I think it's also because doctors may usually prefer one treatment for an issue, but if you mention another treatment you found (either via ads or your own research) they might be willing to prescribe that instead. Hence the common ad copy "ask your doctor if _____ is right for you."

Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook

#77

Post by mbg721 »

designium wrote: post #37
smcl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you fill your date of birth on any age-protected content (websites for distilleries or breweries, for example) as 1st January 1940 or something? They could just mistakenly believe you're 81 based on that :)

But it could be similar to the case where Target was able to targets ads to women who did not even know they were pregnant. In this case, the above commenter could be doing things signaling that he may need a will soon due to diseases or life situation that he is not aware of. Or he/she has looked into content similar to those people in need. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

For every "Big Tech figured out my diagnosis before I did" there are a thousand instances of "You just bought a fridge--I bet you love buying fridges, here, let me show you some".

Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook

#78

Post by fighterpilot »

Ensorceled wrote: post #53
helloworld11 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you were downvoted into the grey zone. I don't entirely agree with your points about Big Pharma finding needy patients instead of doctors prescribing based on professional experience (though there's still plenty of room for bias there too) but overall, fully agreed, the pharmaceutical industry is a wonderful thing on the whole, and while it gets a lot of knee-jerk hatred from too many people, i'd lov…

Maybe the bribery to get your Doctor to recommend a different drug than is probably best for you or your pocket book? Maybe the campaigns pushing opioids on doctors and patients to the point of crisis? Insulin is at least twice the price (depending on type might be 3 or 4 times) in the $US as anywhere else in the world. There's that famous case where a Turing Pharma skyrocketed price of Daraprim that only they were m…

  "Insulin is at least twice the price"
That is the government's fault. What's the reason you can't import extremely cheap insulin from overseas? The government has endowed a local monopoly.

Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook

#79

Post by Ensorceled »

fighterpilot wrote: post #78
Ensorceled wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the bribery to get your Doctor to recommend a different drug than is probably best for you or your pocket book? Maybe the campaigns pushing opioids on doctors and patients to the point of crisis? Insulin is at least twice the price (depending on type might be 3 or 4 times) in the $US as anywhere else in the world. There's that famous case where a Turing Pharma skyrocketed price of Daraprim that only they were m…

"Insulin is at least twice the price" That is the government's fault. What's the reason you can't import extremely cheap insulin from overseas? The government has endowed a local monopoly.

I don't think you can entirely blame unethical, predatory behaviour on the government that enables it.

Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook

#80

Post by naturalauction »

moksly wrote: post #7

“If you’re a drug manufacturer looking for patients”. Maybe I’m just too Scandinavian to understand, but wouldn’t it be the other way around? Now I also wonder if I should see a doctor. I’ve been getting a lot of “is your will in order” commercials from law firms on Facebook recently. I sure hope big tech advertising doesn’t know something I don’t.

Patients and doctors need to know about a medicine to prescribe it. In order to increase brand awareness, drug companies can either advertise to or incentivize (free trips to conferences, consulting gigs) doctors to prescribe a drug or get patients to directly ask their doctor for a drug.
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