Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, Mozilla does this. So does Google. And Apple. And Microsoft. Everyone does. Pruning is a healthy and expected part of running a business. So what? All software is temporary, given a long enough timeline, even gmail. It's a user's fault for expecting otherwise.
Some companies kill projects much more frequently than others.
Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety
371–380 of 438 posts
Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety
#372While unlikely, I personally believe that advertising revenue should be taxed at 50%. This would do a lot to align industry incentives. Advertising revenue would be looked at less as a free cash stream that can be bolted on everywhere. In this case, maybe the app could be monetized directly instead of whatever the fuck is happening now.
Revenue isn't taxed. Profit is. I suppose you could tax a proportion of your profit at a higher rate, according to the proportion of your revenue that came from advertising. But advertising isn't a "free cash stream that can be bolted on everywhere". It's part of a business model that either is sustainable or isn't. If you taxed it that much higher, a lot of businesses would simply go out of business, because people…
You can tax anything, even beards. Advertising is a business model, but it's a bad one that poisons the social environment. Advertisers are economically incentivized to lie and to push the common denominator ever lower. It is cancer.
Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty sure all the data for all targeted advertisement is automatically collected? When I search for things on AliExpress, and then later browse the Internet, it shows me ads for those things. Your solution sounds equivalent to banning all advertising on the Internet essentially when I do a Google search for something am I consenting to see ads for that thing?
> Pretty sure all the data for all targeted advertisement is automatically collected? Sure is. > Your solution sounds equivalent to banning all advertising on the Internet Not at all. We made targeted advertising a central pillar of the Internet before we realized what that meant. We've normalized the notion of being spied on on the Internet at all times, but that's a choice we made (or perhaps didn't make) that can…
>Same for not being able to employ children. Same for being made to employ women and other minorities.
I don't quite understand your worldview. So they want to employ children, but not women and minorities?
>Regulations get passed, society benefits.
A very doubtful statement. Especially if you look at the growth of wages compared to the level of labor productivity.
Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some companies kill projects much more frequently than others.
https://killedbygoogle.com/ vs https://killedbymozilla.com/ Yet Mozilla has the stigma here?
Mozilla launches fewer projects in general, so the denominator is smaller.
But yes, Google is the worst at this, and they've built up a reputation which has really hurt them! For example, basically no one believed that Stadia would stick around long-term, which (I would argue) became a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very basic example nobody argues with. Did you know your local news station gets some stories to present as their own and they are paid to present them? You may, but many might find that to be a shocking revelation. I was maintaining cognitive accessibility in that example.
I don't think the news thing would surprise anyone either. I think there's a weirdly patronizing approach that blames so much on advertising, and if by chance if folks got their way they'd be astonished to find that people make bad choices all on their own, and they know they do ...
> I don't think the news thing would surprise anyone either.
People who you'd expect to realize this still read the news acknowledging everything they're till they get to a specific domain the news covers. A la Gell-Mann Amnesia.
Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am, but that's because this is 1998. Where would you ever get such a training dataset with real cycle data tied to shopping data? Menstrual tracking apps weren't a thing then. And any anonymized medical studies that actually did such tracking certainly couldn't have been correlated with identifiable shopping data, I would think.
I think the idea is that the cycle is inferred by analyzing purchasing data.
The person I responded to literally said "training dataset with real cycle data".
Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get the downvotes. Plausible deniability is a valid concern when menstrual cycles and geolocation can lead to criminal repercussions in many states of USA [0]. Nevertheless, if I was a fertile woman, I'd be more concerned of my phone/tablet/car leaking my visits to an abortion clinic than a police officer checking my phone. 0. https://states.guttmacher.org/policies
Is this actually enforced?
Are abortion bans actually enforced? Yes, absolutely.
Have period tracker apps been used as a source of evidence in such prosecutions? Not that I know of.
Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
> Obviously nobody's being investigated for routine miscarriages. Sorry, how does a third party know the miscarriage was "routine?" What is a non-routine miscarriage? Why would it be criminal, it's still a miscarriage? What's the suspicion? The article you refer to, the investigation happened, not because there was a miscarriage, but because a body was seen being dumped... Maybe it was the mistake of the other poster…
>I do not understand your unwillingness to provide a response ... as to whether or not you think a miscarriage is a normal occurrence
Why would I? It's such a rude question. We are discussing the nuances of suspicious "miscarriages" that appear to be home abortions constituting valid reason for investigation and possible prosecution, and you are hung up on ridiculous strawmen as if you're the only person who understands the issue so everybody else who disagrees must be an uninformed sociopath. It's disrespectful and immature. Yes, I have the basic concepts of mammalian biology well understood. And this will be my signoff to you and this discussion.
Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety
#379Can anyone tell me why this would be as much of a problem for safety as they are saying? The only thing I can see happening is easier selling of pads and tampons during a certain phase of the moon. Apparently this is what the article suggests too, that certain things are easier to sell at a certain point in the cycle. It’d be embarrassing if someone knew, not dangerous. And even that much feels weird to me for a very…
Woman gets pregnant, flagged as such in business intelligence database, she doesn't start buying baby stuff and instead travels out of state, suddenly treated as criminal suspect.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/she-got-abortion-so-te...
I cannot fathom why you think that highly personal data like this should be sold or shared with law enforcement.
Re: Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety
#380A fascinating chapter in The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg describes market-basket analytics at Target. They wanted to be able to determine whether a shopper is pregnant because that is an event that they believed women to be willing to reconsider their otherwise steadfast shopping brand loyalty. They got too good at their target ad mailers and so had to throw in decoys like motor oil and lawn equipment.
The tipoff for expecting women was purchases of larger quantities of lotion and washrags.