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Disney+ demands users’ age and gender so it can “deliver targeted advertising”

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Re: Disney+ demands users’ age and gender so it can “deliver targeted advertising”

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to mentally be 6 if you’re enjoying the garbage they’re chucking onto Disney+.

Andor is one of the better shows I've seen - ever. Their Star Wars offerings in general have been very well put together.

it really is an amazing show. I hope it does very well. However I can forsee two groups; the first, who won't watch because "it's star wars and i'm not into star wars"; the second, "i like star wars but this show doesn't have any light sabers or jedis or the force - why would i watch it?? boring!"

Re: Disney+ demands users’ age and gender so it can “deliver targeted advertising”

#42
post #15

Age and gender are the two highest signals that targeted ads take into account. The Facebook growth team has always wanted to remove gathering age / gender from the sign-up flow (which reduces friction to sign up). But, ad targeting would take such a large hit, they could never do so. It was a huge deal internally when "Custom" was added as a gender option in the sign-up flow, and even then, there's a nudge towards t…

> It was a huge deal internally when "Custom" was added as a gender option in the sign-up flow, and even then, there's a nudge towards the binary to retain better ad targeting.

It's odd that advertisers would dislike that change for targeting -- surely the people who pick "custom" are sending a major signal that correlates with other preferences. It's a third grouping they can specifically target! If they split "male" into "HYPER-MASCULINE ALPHA MALE: CARS, GUNS, AND FOOTBALL FUCK YEAH!" and "I have a penis but I try not to let it make decisions for me", advertisers should presumably love that distinction too. Of course the reality is that their decades of research deciding what constitutes "male" and "female" has gotten them stuck in a shitty local minimum and they can no longer abandon this binary concept that they cling desperately to without admitting that they've never actually known what the fuck they're doing.

Re: Disney+ demands users’ age and gender so it can “deliver targeted advertising”

#43
post #29
post #22

Coppa "Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule ("COPPA")" If the kids is below 13, targeting would probably not be allowed. "The act, effective April 21, 2000, applies to the online collection of personal information by persons or entities under U.S. jurisdiction about children under 13 years of age, including children outside the U.S. if the website or service is U.S.-based.[1] It details what a website operator m…

Indeed. I don't understand the outrage at wanting to know the age of your customer, especially when: a) there are laws involved b) you have a variety of content/products specifically aimed at different ages I won't speak to gender, that's certainly a different concept, but age doesn't exact ring alarm bells for me here.

You don't need to know the age, you just need to know if they're under or over 13 to comply with laws.

Anything more granular is marketing and advertising BS which they have no need for.

Re: Disney+ demands users’ age and gender so it can “deliver targeted advertising”

#44
post #22

Coppa "Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule ("COPPA")" If the kids is below 13, targeting would probably not be allowed. "The act, effective April 21, 2000, applies to the online collection of personal information by persons or entities under U.S. jurisdiction about children under 13 years of age, including children outside the U.S. if the website or service is U.S.-based.[1] It details what a website operator m…

Should we all just tell all platforms that we are under 13? Is that a new iOS setting to stop Meta and Google?

No, because unlike Disney, they have no interest in an audience of children and will simply ban your account to avoid the hassle.

Re: Disney+ demands users’ age and gender so it can “deliver targeted advertising”

#45
post #42
post #15

Age and gender are the two highest signals that targeted ads take into account. The Facebook growth team has always wanted to remove gathering age / gender from the sign-up flow (which reduces friction to sign up). But, ad targeting would take such a large hit, they could never do so. It was a huge deal internally when "Custom" was added as a gender option in the sign-up flow, and even then, there's a nudge towards t…

> It was a huge deal internally when "Custom" was added as a gender option in the sign-up flow, and even then, there's a nudge towards the binary to retain better ad targeting. It's odd that advertisers would dislike that change for targeting -- surely the people who pick "custom" are sending a major signal that correlates with other preferences. It's a third grouping they can specifically target! If they split "male…

If there was a 300 dimensional vector expressing your nuanced gender identity that would be even better, but advertisers would have no idea how to target it (at least at first).

Re: Disney+ demands users’ age and gender so it can “deliver targeted advertising”

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My "birthday" is January 1, 1970 (an homage to unix) for any database/system inappropriately asking. This way they don't have my data to leak or abuse, but I still know what I specified if I'm asked to verify it.

At 00:00:00 UTC, I assume? I don't expect there's any reason for them to divide by a datetime...but one can hope that some ad server somewhere has crashed as a result. My go-to birthday has always been January 1st of the year I was actually born. That way it doesn't raise any eyebrows if I want to convert something to a real account or interact with real people, but it fails verification if they mishandle my credenti…

Even better, if it ever ends up mattering -- say, at a border crossing -- you have plausible deniability. "Oh, that's the first Unix epoch timestamp, must be a bug in the system."

Not sure how much it would help at a border crossing... but with any kind of tech support it would immediately elicit a chuckle.

Re: Disney+ demands users’ age and gender so it can “deliver targeted advertising”

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to mentally be 6 if you’re enjoying the garbage they’re chucking onto Disney+.

Andor is one of the better shows I've seen - ever. Their Star Wars offerings in general have been very well put together.

The Star Wars shows are very bland and generic plots with Star Wars layered on top (at least the ones I’ve watched). They aren’t very good as shows if you aren’t instantly wowed just by the fact that they are in the SW universe.

Re: Disney+ demands users’ age and gender so it can “deliver targeted advertising”

#48
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Andor is one of the better shows I've seen - ever. Their Star Wars offerings in general have been very well put together.

it really is an amazing show. I hope it does very well. However I can forsee two groups; the first, who won't watch because "it's star wars and i'm not into star wars"; the second, "i like star wars but this show doesn't have any light sabers or jedis or the force - why would i watch it?? boring!"

Or, someone could be so burnt out on the dozens of new Star Wars offerings (representing hundreds of hours of wildly-varying quality video) that they've given up on it.

Ditto Marvel.

Re: Disney+ demands users’ age and gender so it can “deliver targeted advertising”

#50
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we all just tell all platforms that we are under 13? Is that a new iOS setting to stop Meta and Google?

No, because unlike Disney, they have no interest in an audience of children and will simply ban your account to avoid the hassle.

Yep. I know someone who commented that they were 12 on YouTube and got their account terminated.

There is an official way to create https://support.google.com/families/answer/7103338?hl=en

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