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Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

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Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#21

Post by nerdponx »

lonelappde wrote: post #17
DarwinMailApp wrote: post #12

So there are essentially remnants of our browsing history linked to our devices shared among numerous ad companies. They then serve relevant ads for us all over the web depending on where they are being paid to display relevant ads. Twitter is at it. We've experienced the same behavior from Google & God knows Facebook is at it too. I've even had conversations where the only connection we had to the web was our locall…

Amazon's code is not secret internally. If Alexa was targeting ads on your speech, someone from Amazon present or past would have confirmed it by now. Your conversation was probably influenced by the web ads campaign, or it was a coincidence, there are a lot of people seeing a lot of ads every 10 minutes.

Amazon's code is not secret internally. If Alexa was targeting ads on your speech, someone from Amazon present or past would have confirmed it by now.

Or not? How many people have access to Alexa source code, let alone that part of Alexa source code, and are also willing to break their NDAs and get fired and/or sued?

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#22

Post by tempguy9999 »

DarwinMailApp wrote: post #12

So there are essentially remnants of our browsing history linked to our devices shared among numerous ad companies. They then serve relevant ads for us all over the web depending on where they are being paid to display relevant ads. Twitter is at it. We've experienced the same behavior from Google & God knows Facebook is at it too. I've even had conversations where the only connection we had to the web was our locall…

Don't have an alexa, perhaps.

But if you believe alexa did that and you still haven't murdered it with fire, I guess you never will.

(Edit: as pointed out below, it was an alexa but not his own so my criticism is undeserved)

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#23

Post by [deleted] »

lonelappde wrote: post #17
DarwinMailApp wrote: post #12

So there are essentially remnants of our browsing history linked to our devices shared among numerous ad companies. They then serve relevant ads for us all over the web depending on where they are being paid to display relevant ads. Twitter is at it. We've experienced the same behavior from Google & God knows Facebook is at it too. I've even had conversations where the only connection we had to the web was our locall…

Amazon's code is not secret internally. If Alexa was targeting ads on your speech, someone from Amazon present or past would have confirmed it by now. Your conversation was probably influenced by the web ads campaign, or it was a coincidence, there are a lot of people seeing a lot of ads every 10 minutes.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#24

Post by b_tterc_p »

DarwinMailApp wrote: post #20
lonelappde wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's code is not secret internally. If Alexa was targeting ads on your speech, someone from Amazon present or past would have confirmed it by now. Your conversation was probably influenced by the web ads campaign, or it was a coincidence, there are a lot of people seeing a lot of ads every 10 minutes.

I like your point as I can relate to that opinion. However my outlook has changed in the last year or so. There has been several occasions where my conversation somehow turned into relevant web ads. I don't think I'm making a mistake here. A friend of mine told me of his good friend who left Amazon recently as his job was to listen to what users say to Alexa and ensure Alexa responded correctly. FYI that's both when…

1) I would assume your entire social network is well documented. A lot of conversations include one person looking something up before or after the conversation. Most conversations don’t come up randomly. That can probably signal that you might be interested in such a topic too.

For 2) it’s worth noting that when you say you didn’t say Alexa, it means Alexa at least thought you did. It’s not trying to constantly record, but may still be a problem to you.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#25

Post by dangero »

DarwinMailApp wrote: post #20
lonelappde wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's code is not secret internally. If Alexa was targeting ads on your speech, someone from Amazon present or past would have confirmed it by now. Your conversation was probably influenced by the web ads campaign, or it was a coincidence, there are a lot of people seeing a lot of ads every 10 minutes.

I like your point as I can relate to that opinion. However my outlook has changed in the last year or so. There has been several occasions where my conversation somehow turned into relevant web ads. I don't think I'm making a mistake here. A friend of mine told me of his good friend who left Amazon recently as his job was to listen to what users say to Alexa and ensure Alexa responded correctly. FYI that's both when…

Alexa does not send data unless you say “Alexa”. This happens at a hardware level. This is confirmed by hardware schematics and by security researchers who have sifted through every piece of data that leaves the device.

What you are saying isn’t true. It cannot be.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#26

Post by losteric »

lonelappde wrote: post #17
DarwinMailApp wrote: post #12

So there are essentially remnants of our browsing history linked to our devices shared among numerous ad companies. They then serve relevant ads for us all over the web depending on where they are being paid to display relevant ads. Twitter is at it. We've experienced the same behavior from Google & God knows Facebook is at it too. I've even had conversations where the only connection we had to the web was our locall…

Amazon's code is not secret internally. If Alexa was targeting ads on your speech, someone from Amazon present or past would have confirmed it by now. Your conversation was probably influenced by the web ads campaign, or it was a coincidence, there are a lot of people seeing a lot of ads every 10 minutes.

> Amazon's code is not secret internally.

That era is long gone. Internal-public is the default, but there are plenty of secret projects (private source/build artifacts)...

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#27

Post by tempguy9999 »

phoe-krk wrote: post #2

> 'fesses up Can we have proper English at least in the HN submission titles? I know that this is a direct quotation of the original, but "confesses" is much clearer and more readable than the original slang term.

Monolingual Brit here with very good English. I'm happy for others to alter, amend, extend and evolve this language. I am less interested in the finer points of grammar or vocabulary than people use it properly; to put across a statement that is relevant, precise, concise and in all other ways, well-expressed.

IOW I'm OK with this.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#28

Post by majewsky »

dangero wrote: post #25
DarwinMailApp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your point as I can relate to that opinion. However my outlook has changed in the last year or so. There has been several occasions where my conversation somehow turned into relevant web ads. I don't think I'm making a mistake here. A friend of mine told me of his good friend who left Amazon recently as his job was to listen to what users say to Alexa and ensure Alexa responded correctly. FYI that's both when…

Alexa does not send data unless you say “Alexa”. This happens at a hardware level. This is confirmed by hardware schematics and by security researchers who have sifted through every piece of data that leaves the device. What you are saying isn’t true. It cannot be.

How reliable is the keyword detection? Last week we had this story about Apple where Siri heard the word "Siri" out of random noise like creaking furniture.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#29

Post by 1qaz2wsx »

userbinator wrote: post #16

"We are committed to providing you meaningful privacy choices" -> "We are committed to selling your data if you let us" I hate this sort of pseudo-friendly weasel-wording that's getting increasingly popular these days.

unfortunately "selling your data" is why your 401k has been growing for last few years. it is not going to stop unless regulated by governments and tweaked over time as loopholes in those regulations are found (or added via lobbying). my take is, it is not going to stop, just kept in a pseudo check due to public awareness.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#30

Post by olivierduval »

For me, it looks like the European GDPR - that received a lot of harsh words here, on HN - is a little bit improving the situation for everybody on the net, at least regarding the Big Players.

Maybe some regulations is not bad after all (at least for de facto monopolistic business like Google, Amazon & co)...? ;-)

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