An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son's birth

There are no need to remind me that. I know it. But I know some more. These systems are part of more complex systems of society and of humanity in a whole, these systems are adaptive and reflective. All of them are adaptive, as a small so a large ones. They probably would not change just because some women told they should, but such a system will change itself if there are prospects of greater earnings or treats of losses. PR is important thing that influences earnings and losses, so it is improbable for them just ignore that women. It is less improbable for them to ignore all other similar cases and to react just for stillborn, but I the worst scenario they would need a few more open letters, and then they'll search for all cases like that preemptively, not waiting for an open letter.

Look at Google, it learned to pay attention to AI biases preemptively. Yes, we can argue that google doesn't respect anything except money, but it would be arguing about hidden states of such a system as a google. At the same time "to pay attention to AI biases" is behaviour which you can observe. Shouldn't we prefer to speak about observable phenomena, not about some hidden ones?

> These facts may be well known, but you are certainly not considering them when choosing your language. You are letting an amoral entity into your very personal life for dubious reasons and expecting it do be "friendly to humans,"...

Please, stop making ungrounded assumptions about me. I'm using adblockers aggressively and see no ads. If some ads slip through my defences, I go into troubles to create custom filters to block them nevertheless. I'm blocking even more then just ads, annoying gifs for example (hate them for moving and disturbing my attention). I clear my cookies immediately after tab closes. I'm not using proxies or VPN, but I'm behind NAT and, I believe, there are at least few hundreds others with whom I share IP. Moreover this IP changes time to time. I use ~5 browser profiles with different sets of addons. I'm paranoid about tracking and any ad I can see makes me nervous. So I beg you, do not try to diagnose me by the singled fact I used word "friend" while speaking about advertising company.

And yes, I'm not considering my language, because I just do not look at reality through lens of morality. Morality is not a some kind of shiny fundamental law, morality is a dirty tool in hands of society. Or in hands of some groups. It is really dirty disgusting tool, each time you hear word "morality" you should be alert, the most common reason to speak about morality is to convince others that something amoral is moral, that black is white. So I do not think about morality at all, and when I'm speaking about someone I'm speaking about behaviour, or about hidden reason that leads to observed behaviour. When I'm speaking about "good" or "evil" I always point for whom it is good and for whom it is evil, because there are not abstract "good" or "evil", it is always dependant on point of view. And this case is not an exception. And yes, "friendly" doesn't mean "moral" for me, though it doesn't mean "immoral" too.

> It will be exactly as "friendly" as it needs to be, no more. And, if shareholders decide the cost of being friendly is greater than the benefit, then the "friendly" feature will be turned off.

It is precisely what I meant when I spoke about corporation trying to be friendly. I just omitted the obvious part about money.

Maybe a fair statement, but a fundamental misunderstanding of how ad targeting works.

Facebook doesn't know you searched for information about stillbirths because Facebook isn't Google. How fundamentally unintelligent do you have to be to not understand this? I'd be shocked if her IQ was above 90.

Any marginal increase in human friendliness this may cause is negligible because advertising in general is a inherently "thing" oriented industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

It is at odds with human satisfaction and survival.

I am reminded of an MLK quote:

"We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered".

Advertising is the driving force behind the current state of insatiable materialism/consumerism that is leading to the destruction our ecosystem.

With all that being said, "advertising" can indeed be used for "good", human oriented goals, but as it stands it's mostly being used for exploitation.