Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#31

Post by rags2riches » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 1:02 PM UTC

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…

Whether or not they are actually listening to you is a detail. The creepy thing is that they obviously know you as good as if they were listening. How that is achieved isn't really the point.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#32

Post by DarwinMailApp » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 1:05 PM UTC

tempguy9999 wrote: post #22

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)

It's not my Alexa I'm talking about!

I have no reason to buy one. I made a list of benefits and it really wasn't strong enough!

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#33

Post by DarwinMailApp » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 1:09 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #28

dangero wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My point exactly.

Just last night myself and my girlfriend were talking and Alexa decided to activate itself without us saying Alexa first.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#34

Post by koolba » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 1:19 PM UTC

DarwinMailApp wrote: post #32

tempguy9999 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

It's not my Alexa I'm talking about! I have no reason to buy one. I made a list of benefits and it really wasn't strong enough!

I’d love a FOSS one that operated totally locally.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#35

Post by noselasd » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 1:19 PM UTC

rags2riches wrote: post #31

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…

Whether or not they are actually listening to you is a detail. The creepy thing is that they obviously know you as good as if they were listening. How that is achieved isn't really the point.

That is an odd reasoning.

If they know this based on data from Alexa, you and others can eliminate Alexa - or decide not to buy it in the first place.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#36

Post by skocznymroczny » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 1:21 PM UTC

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…

I'm confused. If this technology is so pervasive and supposedly efficient, why do I always get such terrible ads, completely irrelevant to my interests? Usually the only targeted ads I get are ads for products I was searching for to buy, but usually they show up after I bought the product, so, no, I am not going to buy a new fridge within few years anyway.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#37

Post by jerf » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 1:28 PM UTC

b_tterc_p wrote: post #24

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…

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 reco…

I've been keeping my eye out for good, solid proof that these assistants are doing ad-based targeting based on things being overheard, but I haven't found anything despite looking, and the arguments they aren't are reasonably compelling. (The people looking are quite motivated to find it. Big feather in their hat if they do and can even convincingly cast shade on Amazon, let alone prove it.)

My conclusion is that the targeted ads that people report are either A: coincidence (millions of users, only really tens of thousands of types of "things" to advertise with, sooner or later life coincidences would be expected to happen to large numbers of people) and/or priming (you notice the ad for camping gear since you were just talking about it, but don't notice the several hundred other impressions for camping gear that you just edited out entirely) or B: they didn't get it from your speech; you gave out other signals without realizing it, like a Google search that may not have been "wanna buy camping gear" but unknownst to you is known to be correlated to it, or as you say, your friend ran a search and now you're getting ads, or you're talking about camping gear in the first place because you are in a coffee shop near Camping World Outlet, and in general, the advertising machine knows that you're interested in camping gear right now because that's how well they have you under surveillance... they don't need your actual speech to know that's what you're talking about.

The first is mathematically inevitable, but poorly explains the cases where it recurs to one person. That seems to be the second. In a sort of way, I say that's even creepier than "they're listening to your literal speech and targeting you based on that". They've got you so pegged from everything else they're doing they don't even need that signal. That's creepy.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#38

Post by tictoc » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 1:29 PM UTC

Here's an idea. Stop using twitter.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#39

Post by spacehome » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #34

DarwinMailApp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not my Alexa I'm talking about! I have no reason to buy one. I made a list of benefits and it really wasn't strong enough!

I’d love a FOSS one that operated totally locally.

I think it exists already, but I make no claims as to the quality.

https://www.home-assistant.io/components/snips/

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#40

Post by Cthulhu_ » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

tictoc wrote: post #38

Here's an idea. Stop using twitter.

You don't need to use Twitter (or Facebook, google, etc) for them to collect your data. Any site with a Twitter embed, a FB Like button, and/or Google Analytics will gather and process your data.